We were just mocking the government's position that it cannot reveal the "metadata" on the numbers of FISA orders (and the number of people impacted) when those same people insist that we shouldn't worry about many NSA surveillance programs since they…
The worlds of Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill are still separated by more than just thousands of miles. The two cultures – one predicated on agility and risk, the other on process and consultation – occupy opposite…
The Internet crowd on Thursday was called on to make real Elon Musk's vision of a Hyperloop transport system that carries passengers in pressurized tubes at near-supersonic speeds.
The Hyperloop project went live on freshly-launched crowdfunding platform JumpStart Fund, which marries crowd-sourcing expertise with crowdfunding.
"We believe the world is full of entrepreneurs who have great ideas but do not have the time or resources to make them a reality," said JumpStart Fund chief executive Dirk Ahlborn.
"JumpStart Fund was built for that reason alone - to provide them with a place to bring their ideas to reality."
The platform was launched a week ago by California-based online community Jumpstarter, which has been involved in matching investors with technology opportunities.
Jumpstarter said that it reached out to Musk's private space exploration firm SpaceX to feature his Hyperloop plan at the platform.
Earlier this month, Musk unveiled a design for a super-fast Hyperloop transport system that could zip people between cities.
Musk, who heads electric car maker Tesla Motors and SpaceX, released a 57-page document describing the project, which he claimed could connect Los Angeles and San Francisco in 35 minutes.
Musk depicted it as a new form of transport, different from traditional rail, which would carry passengers and goods in pods in a contained system elevated on pylons.
The system is capable of speeds reaching 1,220 kilometers (760 miles) an hour, or Mach 0.91, according to Musk's document.
The technical paper said Hyperloop "consists of a low pressure tube with capsules that are transported at both low and high speeds" along blankets of pressurized air.
Musk has referred to the system a cross between a "Concorde, a rail gun and an air hockey table."
Musk billed his small team's technical paper as an "open source design" for others to build on but noted that he is "tempted" to build a demonstration prototype.
The Hyperloop concept will be among the first to go through a JumpStartFund.com vetting process that involves the online community refining worthy ideas in business models.
"Members will be further asked to collaborate on every aspect of bringing the concept to reality," JumpStarter said in a release.
The process includes coming up with additional ways of using the idea, and creating a development team.
While raising money from the masses on the Internet has become common at websites such as Kickstarter and Kiva, the new fund goes further by adding patented technology and problem-solving perspectives to the formula.
"We are trying to give startups tools they need to make their product more successful," Fund co-founder Ahlborn told AFP. "Crowdfunding together with crowd-sourcing is a solution."
JumpStart Fund was designed to be an online community where people can share ideas and build businesses, with individuals getting stakes in startups based on what they bring to the mix.
"Ideas get submitted, or it can be a patent, and we move it to a work-in-progress stage," Ahlborn explained.
The Hyperloop project was expected to win enough votes at the Fund to become a work-in-progress.
Those who participate in shaping startups get advisory points which translate into shares in revenue.
Business ideas can be submitted from anywhere, but resulting companies will be formed in the United States, according to JumpStart.
Business models built with knowledgeable input from the "crowd" and based on viable technologies should prove enticing to investors, who are welcomed in JumpStart's online community, according to its founders. gc/dw
Internet phone company said it is developing the technology in the lab but it could be several years before it reaches the market
Skype has confirmed it is developing 3D video calls – but said it could be many years before we can use the technology.
The Microsoft-owned internet telephony firm revealed it is experimenting with 3D video calls on its 10th anniversary.
In an interview with the BBC, Mircrosoft's corporate vice-president for Skype, Mark Gillett, said: "We've done work in the labs looking at the capability of 3D-screens and 3D-capture.
"We've seen a lot of progress in screens and a lot of people now buy TVs and computer monitors that are capable of delivering a 3D image. But the capture devices are not yet there."
Gillett, who joined Skype in 2010 ahead of its $8.5bn takeover by Microsoft, said currently "you have to add multiple cameras to your computer, precisely calibrate them and point them at the right angle" to make 3D video calls possible.
But he added: "We have it in the lab, we know how to make it work and we're looking at the ecosystem of devices and their capability to support it in order to make a decision when we might think about bringing something like that to market."
There are an estimated 1.5 million owners of televisions able to play 3D in the UK. But the availability on the BBC of flagship events, including Wimbledon and the Queen's Christmas message, has not been met with huge takeup. Both the BBC and Disney recently announced that they are putting their 3D experimentations on hold.
Gillet said that 3D video chats would take longer to catch on than other services, such as television and film.
"I can imagine a day when you have a 3D-cellphone screen that doesn't need 3D-glasses to use it," he said. "It's less clear to me that we're close to having 3D cameras on cellphones.
"We're in the first year of your TV at home potentially having a camera attached to it, but we're several years away from the cameras capturing 3D in that context.
"You'll see much more penetration of 3D on TVs, on computers and ultimately in smartphones, probably, ahead of seeing it for sending a video call."
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2013
This was rumored for weeks before the former White House IP czar (technically "Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator") even had announced that she was stepping down from her job, but now it's been confirmed: just weeks after leaving the White…
A few years back, The Pirate Bay agreed to team up with the Cybernorms Group at Sweden's Lund University to do some detailed research on who uses The Pirate Bay, and look at the "habits and norms within the file-sharing community." Over the past few…
Spammers posting links on Facebook fan pages to send people to third-party scam sites are earning $200m every year, according to calculations by a team of Italian security researchers who have investigated hundreds of thousands of posts on the social network.
Andrea Stroppa and Carlo De Micheli, the leaders of the group, analysed pages across the network, and identified spam through the use of phrases such as "Hey click here for a free iPhone" followed by links to sites outside the network.
They also discovered sites where spammers offer to set up fake fan pages in order to tempt Facebook users to click on links.
The postings breach Facebook's terms of service, which says that "third-party advertisements on [fan] Pages are prohibited without our prior permission."
But trying to catch and get rid of the spammers is a growing problem for Facebook. The revenue that the spammers - and those running the sites linked to - do not form part of Facebook's revenue, but instead piggyback on the success of the social network, which now has more than a billion users worldwide.
The URLs to the outside sites have their destination hidden by using legitimate link-shortening services such as Tinyurl.com or bit.ly. That also makes it possible for researchers to track the ultimate destination - and figure out how many people click on the link.
About 9% of the pages that users were directed to by spammers instead use Google's AdSense - meaning that Google inadvertently gets a cut from the money being made by the buyers of spam services.
Pay per post
"The spam posters get paid an average of $13 per post, for pages that have around 30,000 fans, up to an average of $58 to post on pages with more than 100,000 fans," De Micheli told the Guardian. "If we consider these two as extremes, the pages we analysed generate a revenue of 18,000 posts per day, times the revenue per post - ranging from $13 to $58 - 365 days a year."
That gives a range for the spammers' earnings of between $87m and $390m - but when they took into account the number of fans of the pages, the weighted average was just over $200m annually.
Often the spammers begin by setting up their own "fan pages" and attract human users to them - and then once they have enough Likes on the page they can begin selling links on it to third parties.
Stroppa and De Micheli found 20 key sites where spammers congregated offering "black marketing" in which they would contract to post spam links in return for cash.
But the spammers argue that they are helping Facebook. One told the researchers over Skype: "Facebook doesn't ban us, simply because we generate the content on Facebook itself. Everyday I materialize funny, and interesting content full of phrases and so forth that is shared and liked by thousands of users. Without the fan pages Facebook would be an empty place. Tell me how many links do you see shared by your friends on your timeline everyday? You see - the answer is simple."
But Stroppa and De Micheli counter that the spammer's motive is pure financial self-interest: "For people involved in this business the sole reason to continue is for the profit. We even found somebody who was selling a page dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Boston terrorist attack for $1,000."
In April, the Italian team uncovered the multimillion-pound business of selling fake Twitter followers, estimating then that as many as 20m were created by spammers and so fake. There, they calculated that Twitter followers were sold in packages - ranging from $1 for 1,000 extra followers, up to $1,000 for a million. They reckoned that made it a business worth between $40m and $360m.
Long term business
In looking into Facebook spam, the researchers found posts offering to sell spam links on Facebook fan pages dating back to 2010. But on the present-day forums, they found spammers' prices for posting to pages which already had more than 30,000 "Likes" - and so would be likely to show up in peoples' News feeds, or be regularly visited - varied from $8 to $20. For pages with over 100,000 Likes, the prices ranged from $35 to $100.
They also uncovered a network of 30,000 pages involved in posting spam to Facebook.
"Third parties pay spammers to post their links on Facebook pages, to reach the largest amount of users possible," said De Micheli. For the financial model to work, the third parties must be accruing benefits even greater than they are paying the spammers - though it is impossible to know what their rate of return might be.
"We notice that it is rather common for the landing page [from a link] to be a product on an e-commerce site made to monetise quickly rather than to generate traffic on a home page," De Micheli said. "Links to YouTube can be used to generate views, and so money - view generation on YouTube is a fast-growing market." YouTube offers revenue-sharing arrangements with a number of users.
Another outside site identified by the researchers promises that some people who post affiliate links - which pay an intermediary small amounts for clickthroughs to the main site - are getting paid "thousands of dollars per day".
According to their analysis, around one in eight of the pages they looked at was actually harbouring spam links.
Facebook action
Facebook takes action against spam pages and posts where they are reported by users, but the sheer volume of spam postings could overwhelm its checkers' ability to crack down on spam.
A Facebook spokesperson said: "Protecting the people who use Facebook is a top priority for us, and we have developed a number of automated systems to identify potentially harmful links and stop them from spreading. Those systems quickly spotted these links, and we are working to clear them from the site now.
"In the meantime, we have been blocking people from clicking through the links and have reported the bad browser extensions to the appropriate parties. We believe only a small percentage of our users were affected by this issue, and we are currently working with them to ensure that they've removed the bad browser extension. We will keep improving our systems to ensure that people continue to have a safe experience on Facebook."
NASA is jumping on the 3D printing trend with a vengeance. It 3D printed rocket parts and fired them. Apparently it’s a much cheaper way of producing certain materials. [Source: Ars Technica]
A 15-year-old schoolgirl who recently posted a video diary giving advice to victims of bullying and speaking of her own experiences of being bullied has been found dead.
Sinead Taylor, an aspiring dancer, revealed she had been driven to self-harm because of bullying in the past over her tomboy appearance and unwillingness to fit in at school. But she said the bullying had stopped two years ago.
The exact circumstances of her death have not been released. The Metropolitan police would only say: "Police were called by London ambulance service on Friday 23 August at 17.44 to an address in Woolwich [south-east London] where a 15-year-old girl was pronounced dead at the scene. The death is being treated as non-suspicious."
In an agony aunt-style, nine-minute video diary, posted on 11 June, Sinead said she had been emailed for advice on bullying. She said she had been bullied at primary school and during the first two years at an all-girls secondary school. "I was bullied for a long time," she said.
"It all got to me at some point and I did some self-harming." But then had she decided to change and it had all stopped, Sinead said.
She said she had been bullied because of her tomboy appearance, and that people called her lesbian and bisexual.
Sinead, who was a pupil at Corelli College in Blackheath at the time of her death, said: "Self-harming doesn't help. It just makes it worse. Committing suicide makes it worse. Doing anything to harm yourself is worse, and I have noticed that.
"You have just got to stand up to them and be, like: 'Look, this is who I am. Take me for who I am or not at all.'"
She ended the video talking happily about her boyfriend of five months and her hopes for a dance career, saying she had applied to a new dance school.
On a Facebook tribute page, a family member, Niall Baker, wrote that Sinead's family had suffered a huge loss. Appealing for privacy he warned people not to speculate about her death.
Her uncle, Manoj Sangar, a retail worker from New Eltham, south-east London, told the London Evening Standard: "We just cannot believe what has happened here. It seemed Sinead was a happy girl and she was loved by the whole family. She did not appear to have any problems.
"She was lovely and knew her own mind and the difference between right and wrong. We are all devastated and I cannot come to terms with it."
On Wednesday a memorial was held for Hannah Smith, who took her own life after being a victim of cyberbullying. The 14-year-old was due to start school at Lutterworth College on Thursday.
Her father David Smith and sister joined pupils from Hannah's Year 9 group, teachers and governors for a moving service at Lutterworth high school, Leicestershire.
Following the 20-minute service, the family placed flowers beside a plaque commemorating the teenager's life in the school's garden.
Website Ask.fm launched an independent safety review after coming under scrutiny following Hannah's death on 2 August.
The teenager's family said she endured months of torment on the question-and-answer website.
Speaking before the service, the headteacher of Lutterworth High School, Nora Parker, said: "The whole community has been devastated by what has happened and everyone is trying to come to terms with why a young, bright and popular girl who had everything to live for should take this course of action.
"However, we hope the service will be an occasion when people can come together to share their sorrow, remember Hannah and celebrate her life."
A US federal court is close to imposing an antitrust remedy on Apple that narrows the scope to the company's e-book business.
US District Judge Denise Cote said in a Tuesday hearing that the remedies to price-fixing that Apple must take should be narrow and should not target Apple's content businesses other than e-books.
Cote struck language proposed by the Justice Department in the draft injunction that would have allowed scrutiny of Apple's sale of movies, music, television shows and other retail products.
The injunction will only cover e-books, she said. She hopes to finalize the injunction in the next week.
Cote, in a withering July 10 decision in the government's much-watched antitrust trial against Apple, concluded that Apple was liable for "facilitating and encouraging" a price-fixing conspiracy among publishers that cost consumers hundreds of millions of dollars.
An additional trial on damages is scheduled for May 2014.
Cote signaled that she wants to avoid excessive oversight of Apple while imposing remedies to the price-fixing.
"I want this injunction to rest as lightly as possible on the way Apple runs its business," Cote said, according to a transcript of the hearing.
"I want Apple to have the flexibility to innovate, but at the same time, I want to prevent a repetition of the illegal conduct like that shown with overwhelming evidence at this trial."
However, Cote said that while she initially resisted appointing an external monitor for Apple, she now viewed the step as necessary in light of Apple's "blatant and aggressive disregard" of the law as demonstrated by the trial. Apple's correspondence on antitrust compliance since the verdict has been "inadequate," she added.
"I have been reluctant to appoint a monitor for several reasons. But I believe based on the record before me now that I should," Cote said.
The purpose of the monitor will be to evaluate Apple's antitrust compliance policies and procedures, as well as to oversee its antitrust training program for staff.
Cote said all staff who work on content-related negotiations, whether on books, music, movies or other products, should receive antitrust training.
The training could be effectively executed in as little as 30 minutes for some employees, she said.
"The training needs to make an impression, to be memorable and to be helpful to an employee who wants to succeed for Apple and to do so within the bounds of the law," Cote said.
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Twitter and The New York Times were hit with cyber attacks, with credit quickly claimed by a group backing embattled Syrian strongman Bashar Al-Assad.
The Times site remained out of service early Wednesday following the attacks that began Tuesday.
The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), ironically, used Twitter to tout its efforts to take down the globally popular one-to-many messaging service and the Times news website.
"Media is going down," a message at the SEA Twitter account proclaimed. "Twitter, are you ready?"
The cyber attack was evidently aimed at the Domain Name System that that acts as a directory of sorts for routing online traffic to website addresses.
Hackers can hijack web traffic by altering DNS address information to send site visitors to websites of their choosing.
An Australian domain registration service appeared to have been hit in the attack.
"Our DNS provider experienced an issue in which it appears DNS records for various organizations were modified, including one of Twitter's domains used for image serving, twimg.com," Twitter said in a post at its status blog.
"Viewing of images and photos was sporadically impacted," the San Francisco-based company's message explained.
"No Twitter user information was affected by this incident."
The trouble was resolved within two hours, according to Twitter.
The New York Times said that its website went down Tuesday due to a "malicious external attack."
Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy also made the announcement on Twitter, two weeks after the site went offline due to what the daily said was an internal server problem.
Her full tweet said: "re: https://nytimes.com - initial assessment - issue is most likely result of malicious external attack. working to fix."
The newspaper's main Twitter account said shortly after 2000 GMT that the website "is experiencing technical difficulties" but that news was still being published via Twitter and other links.
Matt Johansen of WhiteHat Security said in a tweet that the technical aspects of the website during the outage were "pointing to Syrian Electronic Army."
The SEA has claimed responsibility in the past for cyber attacks on other major news outlets.
The Washington Post website was hacked this month in an attack blamed on the SEA.
The Times said in January that hackers stole its corporate passwords and accessed the personal computers of 53 employees after the newspaper published a report on the family fortune of China's Premier Wen Jiabao.
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