firehose

An anonymous reader writes "A Microsoft server accesses URLs sent in Skype chat messages, even if they are HTTPS URLs and contain account information. A reader of Heise publications notified Heise Security (link to German website, Google translation). They replicated the observation by sending links via Skype, including one to a private file storage account, and found that these URLs are shortly after accessed from a Microsoft IP address. When confronted, Microsoft claimed that this is part of an effort to detect and filter spam and phishing URLs."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Using open data, MapBox is taking on the big players in online maps. Now they want to fix satellite view.

If you missed the One Show in Portland this past February, you're not alone. Here's a nice little recap of some of the show's best. But if you skip to the 1:30 minute mark, you'll find an interesting and all together nerdy custom built with parts from a Mac.

Daily Mail

Obama lists assets worth up to $6.9 mln - White House Chicago Tribune WASHINGTON, May 15 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama lists assets worth between $1.85 million and $6.88 million, of which. $1 million to $5 million were in intermediate-term Treasury notes, according to federal financial disclosure forms released ... Obama's Financial Disclosures Show Cautious StrategyBloomberg No mortgage refi for Obamas, records showWashington Times (blog) Obama Net Worth Between $1.8M And $6.8M, Owes Money On Mortgage On ...Huffington Post Washington Post (blog) all 15 news articles »

Because of Angelina Jolie's revelation, the Myriad Genetics case is in the news again. If you don't know what I'm talking about, look it up. Because of the patent Myriad can charge thousands of dollars for a test which would otherwise be much cheaper (and putting it out of reach of many without health insurance). My question here is simple: if you are a geneticist do you think Myriad's position has any validity? The reason I ask is that I know many geneticists, and I know many geneticists read m

An anonymous reader writes "Back in April 2012, the U.S. Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple and a number of publishers for allegedly colluding to raise the price of e-books on the iBookstore. As part of its investigation into Apple's actions, the Justice Department collected evidence which it claims demonstrates that Apple was the 'ringmaster' in a price fixing conspiracy. Specifically, the Justice Department claims that Apple wielded its power in the mobile app market to coerce publishers to agree to Apple's terms for iBookstore pricing."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google delivered some news for users of its Cloud Platform stable of services at its I/O event on Wednesday. Its Compute Engine service ? which competes with Amazon Web Services ? will now be available to all users, not just those willing to shell out $400 for support. But it also announced the addition of the most commonly requested feature for its App Engine platform cloud: support for the PHP programming language.

Fotonica comes from Italian development house Santa Ragione, which makes sense considering how positively vogue the game is. It's a one-button, first-person runner in duotone with a smooth, blippy soundtrack - and right now it's all just $1. Fotonica is 80 percent off direct from Santa Ragione's site (using that handy Humble Store widget), now and for six more days.

Fotonica supports PC, Mac and Linux, and it's available through Desura, Indievania, OnLive and the Mac App Store, though that $1 deal is via Santa Ragione only. The developers would like to see Fotonica on Steam and are making a leap with Greenlight - if it gets voted in, Santa Ragione will create new levels, modes and music for all Fotonica players.

Fotonica lands a $1 sale for six days originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 15 May 2013 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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EA has announced it will discontinue its Online Pass program. "Yes, we're discontinuing Online Pass," EA's senior director of corporate communications John Reseburg told GamesBeat in an e-mail. "None of our new EA titles will include that feature."

Reseburg added that "many players didn't respond to the format," despite EA going on record months after instituting Online Passes, reporting it had not seen a "significant" backlash. "We've listened to the feedback and decided to do away with it moving forward."

The Online Pass, a one-time use code required for online play, was first introduced in 2010 with the intent of being exclusive to EA Sports games, though it quickly escalated from there. Online Pass revenue generated between $10-$15 million for EA in its first year alone.

EA puts an end to its Online Pass program originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 15 May 2013 20:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Linux developers are considering this week replacing Mozilla Firefox with Chromium, Google's open-source version of their Chrome web-browser, for the Ubuntu 13.10 release...

Patriots release defensive tackle Kyle Love after diabetes diagnosis:

Two weeks after he was diagnosed with diabetes, former New England Patriots defensive tackle Kyle Love was released by the team via a non-football injury designation.

“This comes on the heels of Kyle having been diagnosed within the past two weeks with Type-2 diabetes,” Richard Kopelman, Love’s agent, told ESPN Boston. “Naturally, we are disappointed that the Patriots decided to part ways with Kyle, especially in light of the fact that a number of elite professional athletes with diabetes – both Type-1, which is known to be far more difficult to manage than Type-2 diabetes – have had very successful careers in professional football, hockey, baseball and basketball.

“Prior to the diagnosis, Kyle recently experienced unexplained weight loss, but since being diagnosed and having altered his diet, Kyle has regained most of the weight he lost, is in good health, and was not limited in any way during offseason workouts in which he was engaged up until being told he would be released.”

“One of the most remarkable characteristics of Sherlock Holmes was his power of throwing his brain out of action and switching all his thoughts onto lighter things whenever he had convinced himself that he could no longer work to advantage.”

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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, His Last Bow (via polymnia)

…And this is something that so often gets dropped out by those who don’t know canon. The moments when Sherlock says (paraphrasing here, but the cites are easily produced) “Screw this, Watson, let’s go out to Romano’s and have a big splurgey dinner!”, or “Come on, let’s get the hell out of here, Tchaikovsky’s conducting at Covent Garden tonight!” Canonical!Holmes is ascetic by choice only: he kicks his transport to the kerb when he’s working (or having trouble working). The rest of the time he doesn’t mind indulging the body’s and mind’s love of food and music and other arts. Just think about “A Dinner With Sherlock”, and the concert after.. :)

itsspelledcaitnotkate:

daunt:

motivatedslacker:

blueandbluer:

bubonickitten:

gothiccharmschool:

And now, a break to look at adorable snow leopards.

thetadelta: Snow leopard tail nomming compilation, because tails are just awesome.

Photos are from: tanidareal, leopatra-lionfur, denisesoden, rheazblaze, bledsoevball30, and eisenmann87 from DeviantART and barrybaskin from Flickr.

I love how they can manage to look judgmental and disapproving all while having their tails in their mouths.

I’ve reblogged this before, but I don’t care you’re not my mom.

Om nom nom, tasty tails.

Tail noms! :’)

Is this just like… a thing snow leopards do?  Or what?  Because it’s hilarious!

rembrandtswife:

benjgray:

Q’s replacement?

My brain just took this and ran to Craig!Bond dealing with Beaker wearing Ben W’s glasses and cardigan. “Meep meep meep!”

AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FL—During the trophy presentation at this year’s Players Championship, tournament winner Tiger Woods told the assembled crowd that he struck the ball well the entire week, that since his public meltdown four years ago his li...

SALEM, OR—Sources confirmed that local man Paul Gallagher emailed friends a link to an eight-minute-long YouTube video Wednesday, evidently experiencing some kind of psychotic break that left him deluded enough to believe people would want to watch ...

NEW YORK—With the launch Tuesday of a massive nationwide ad campaign, athletic footwear manufacturer Adidas has officially unveiled the Adidas Bystander, the first shoe designed for running away from a mass public shooting.

MIAMI—As the Chicago Bulls prepare to face the Miami Heat in what is a must-win playoff elimination game for Chicago, sources around the world confirmed Wednesday that a bitter feud is rapidly building up between Bulls center Joakim Noah and the res...

CANNES, FRANCE—In a brazen attempt to avoid serving jury duty and missing work days, film director and head festival juror Steven Spielberg told the organizing committee of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival that he strongly dislikes black actors.

CABO SAN LUCAS—Acclaimed novelist Cormac McCarthy, 79, wowed Cabo beachgoers Wednesday after debuting his sizzling new summer physique in a light-blue Vilebrequin swimsuit that showed off at least 20 extra pounds of lean muscle.

danomac writes "Canipre, a Canadian anti-infringement enforcement company, has been using photos on their official website without permission. This company hopes to bring U.S.-style copyright lawsuits to Canada, and they are the company behind Voltage's current lawsuits. It says right on their website, 'they all know it's wrong, and they're still doing it' overlaid on top of the image used without permission. Multiple photos from different photographers are used; none of them with permission. Canipre's response? 'We used a third party vendor to develop the website and they purchased images off of an image bank,' they said, trying to pass the blame to someone else. Some of the photos were released under the Creative Commons, meaning they could have used the photos legally if they'd provided proper attribution."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

cyachallenge writes "Scientists say they have, for the first time, cloned human embryos capable of producing embryonic stem cells. 'We had to find the perfect combination,' Mitalipov says. As it turned out, that perfect combination included something surprising, caffeine. That ingredient, plus other tweaks in the process, including using fresh eggs and determining the optimal stage of each egg's development, Mitalipov says."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jamie Smith Hopkins at The Baltimore Sun writes about the tiny homes more and more Americans are opting for: "U.S. houses got bigger for decades ... even as household sizes shrunk, according to Census Bureau figures. But the housing crash, foreclosure crisis and rough recession have pressed some to think differently."

KEVIN DRUM looks to have set the topic for the day with his article in Mother Jones on the economics of our robotic future. The argument is a good recap of several points that have also turned up in speculation by others, including Paul Krugman and my colleague, on what happens once artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence and robots start replacing us not just in manual labour or repetitive processing tasks, but in, well, everything. Assuming Moore's Law keeps churning away at its normal exponential pace, Mr Drum figures that will happen somewhere around 2040, and it will gradually make our current economic assumptions untenable: most humans will become permanently unemployable since there will be nothing they can do that a robot can't do better and cheaper, which means there will be too few consumers to create demand for the products the robots can create. The only way out will be to vest humans at birth with ownership shares in the robot means of production, as Noah Smith has suggested, creating a post-capitalist society of hereditary aristocratic humans and robot slaves. Karl Smith agrees, but adds a moral caveat:

What’s going to happen is massive income transfers to flesh and blood human beings. These income transfers will come to be seen as a right-of-birth. This will make complete social sense once you realize that most of the beings on earth will be robots and therefore not-of-birth.

Birth is something that happens to a minority of beings who are special, flesh and blood humans.

The concern, as I see it, is over accepting the dual truth that robots will in all likelihood be sentient beings with an inner life just as ourselves, and they will live in grinding inescapable poverty.

I think both Mr Drum and Mr Smith are failing to integrate one more special factor about the artificial-intelligence revolution, though. Here's the thing about robots: they will be telepaths. When we think about intelligent entities, we instinctively model them on our own experience, where the thoughts we have take place through lightning-fast interchanges between billions of neurons inside our brains, while connections to information sources outside our skulls take place via relatively slow, dumb, evocative means like language, vision and empathy. For robots it won't be like that: information processing via electromagnetic links with the cloud will be just another form of neural connection, much as my laptop right now is actually writing this blog post on a server thousands of miles away. In fact, it's quite likely that the first entity to achieve human-like levels of intelligence will be Google, rather than some metal humanoid. We're talking the Borg, not C3P0.

As the Borg example makes clear, telepathy takes the concept of individual identity and schmears it. From that perspective, I think Mr Smith's concerns about the injustice of treating humans as persons while conscious artificial intelligences are treated as slaves is insufficiently pessimistic. The real problem with AI's is that it won't even be clear where one AI stops and another one begins. If Google were a person, what would it encompass? Would it include my docs on Google Drive? I have a couple of Google tabs open right now. Who do those tabs belong to? Me? It? Its shareholders?

Even this, though, fails to take on what may be the real long-run challenge. Brain-computer interfaces are still in their infancy, but there's no reason to suppose they won't progress just as rapidly as AI itself. By 2040, people may well be communicating directly with servers through chips implanted in their brains, which is to say they may be communicating telepathically with each other. If two servers at Google headquarters are both part of Google, what are two humans linked by a terabit-per-second direct neural link? Ten humans? A million?

I think the writer who's addressed these concerns most clearly is Charlie Stross. In "Glasshouse", for example, Stross makes it clear that in a post-Singularity society the key concern becomes the protection of individual identity, because infinite access to information tends to make everything bleed into everything else.

Our economy and our sociopolitical structure are systems of activity embedded in a physical platform. They both presume that individual persons encased in a single skull can be treated as independent actors and given rights of ownership and legal responsibilities. This hasn't always been the case; other and earlier social systems and economies often worked with families as the unit capable of owning or being held legally responsible, and our own particular current system posits a legal entity called the "corporation" which can also own things and be held responsible for actions even though it has no physical body. Our system of making individuals independent and responsible works because we train individuals to act independent and responsible. I think one of the real challenges as artificial intelligence develops is that we're going to have to look increasingly at how intelligence emerges in systems that have no clear boundaries and can't be delineated as separate persons, and our political system and our economic laws may come to seem increasingly antiquated and baroque, designed for beings that no longer exist.

(Photo credit: AFP)

Super Metroid (SNES) is on sale for $0.30 through the Wii U Virtual Console right now, as part of the Trial Campaign promotion celebrating the Famicom.

Super Metroid is fourth on a list of discounts that kicked off back in February - predecessors include Kirby's Adventure, Punch-Out!!! Featuring Mr. Dream and F-Zero. Super Metroid will be $0.30 for 30 days, until Yoshi comes in and takes over on June 12.

The Virtual Console launched on Wii U late last month. The initial launch list included Balloon Fight, Donkey Kong Jr., Excitebike, Ice Climbers, Kirby's Adventure, Punch Out, F-Zero and Super Mario World. This week, Super Mario Bros. 2 will be available for $5.

Get Super Metroid for 30 cents on Wii U Virtual Console right now originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 15 May 2013 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Exclusive: Disney bravely responds to Merida makeover outrage, says 2D new look was for “limited” use only | Inside the Magic:

This 2D representation of Merida is the official version used for the ceremony, not any other version that has found its way across the Internet. The character seen here, sporting her bow and arrows, more closely resembles the one seen in the film, though converted to 2D instead of 3D CG.