| Canadian Cellphone Users May Get Justice Over Phantom Charges May 18th 2013, 23:18 An anonymous reader writes "For years, Bell Mobility customers in northern Canada were charged 75 cents a month for 911 emergency service. The problem is that cellphone users outside Whitehorse, Yukon, don't have access to 911 service. The Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories ruled against Bell this week, following a class action lawsuit which challenged the phantom cellphone 911 billings. Subject to a possible final appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, Bell will likely owe 30,000 northern cellphone subscribers some bucks." Read more of this story at Slashdot.     |  | Wired Writer Imagines Google Island May 18th 2013, 22:19 theodp writes "The last thing Wired's Mat Honan remembered before awaking on the self-driving boat that dropped him on the island was sitting through a four-hour Google I/O keynote in Moscone Center and hearing Google CEO Larry Page promote a vision of a utopia where society could be free to innovate and experiment, unencumbered by government regulations or social norms. 'Welcome to Google Island,' a naked-save-for-a-pair-of-eyeglasses Larry Page tells Honan. 'As soon as you hit Google's territorial waters, you came under our jurisdiction, our terms of service. Our laws — or lack thereof — apply here. By boarding our self-driving boat you granted us the right to all feedback you provide during your journey. This includes the chemical composition of your sweat. Remember when I said at I/O that maybe we should set aside some small part of the world where people could experiment freely and examine the effects? I wasn't speaking theoretically. This place exists. We built it.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | Syrian Electronic Army Hits Financial Times Sites, Feeds May 18th 2013, 21:16 puddingebola writes with an excerpt from the New York Times: "The Web site and several Twitter accounts belonging to The Financial Times were hacked on Friday by the Syrian Electronic Army in a continuing campaign that has aimed at an array of media outlets ranging from The Associated Press to the parody site The Onion, according to a claim by the so-called army. The Syrian Electronic Army said it seized control of several F.T. Twitter accounts and amended a number of the site's blog posts with the headline 'Hacked by Syrian Electronic Army.' Hackers used their access to the F.T.'s Twitter feed to post messages, including one that said, 'Syrian Electronic Army Was Here,' and another that linked to a YouTube video of an execution. Both messages were quickly removed.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | Arduino Branches Out, With a Plug-and-Program Robot May 18th 2013, 20:21 mikejuk writes "The new Arduino robot looks a bit like a robot vacuum cleaner, but it has a lot more going for it and it certainly doesn't suck — well not unless you add an air pump to it. As always, the Arduino Robot is completely open source and comes as an easy to assemble kit involving no soldering, just some plugging in of components. It consists of two circular boards, 19cm in diameter, each with its own Arduino controller. They fit together to create a stack about 10cm tall. The bottom board has two wheels and motors which allow it to move in any direction. The top board contains lots of sensors and a central display. The two communicate via a serial connection. There is also a lot of space for expansion. There is a new library which can be downloaded to help write programs for this fairly sophisticated robot. There is only one big problem with the Arduino robot — you can't buy one at the moment. If you really can't wait, until early July when they should start shipping from the Arduino shop and from distributors, then you will have to get to the Maker Faire San Mateo (May 17-19) where they are being demonstrated and sold." Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | Yahoo! pronta a sborsare 1,1 miliardi di dollari per Tumblr: l'annuncio (forse) lunedì May 18th 2013, 19:36 YAHOO! | Marissa Mayer offre 1,1 miliardi di dollari in contanti per acquisire Tumblr David Karp
6 luglio 1986.Fondatore del sito di microblogging Tumblr. Il ragazzo da 1,1 miliardi di dollari David Karp se la starà godendo tutta. Pare che la trattativa con Yahoo! per l’acquisto di Tumblr, il sito di microblogging da lui
creato nel 2007, sia arrivata a
un felice capolinea. «Per ogni nuova funzione che aggiungiamo a Tumblr ne cancelliamo una vecchia. Molti grandi siti non lo fanno e questo è un problema». Da quando Marissa Mayer ha preso la guida di Yahoo!, con buona pace del femminismo più scatenato, ha messo tutti in riga. Lo storico marchio del web, dopo aver attraversato un periodo assai poco felice, sta provando lentamente a rimettersi in carreggiata. Le azioni nell’ultimo anno sono salite del 74,59%. Oggi viaggiano sui 26,52 dollari. Vicine a quelle di Facebook, quotate 26,52 dollari. Miliardi di anni luce da quelle di Google, oramai inarrivabile a 909,18 dollari. Un abisso significativo che dovrebbe far capire quale sia il peso e l’importanza di Mountain View rispetto agli altri due giganti del Web. Tornando in tema di acquisizioni, l’anno scorso Facebook soffiò Instagram al temibile (neanche poi tanto) Twitter. Dick Costolo, CEO della popolare piattaforma di microblogging, offrì appena 500 miseri milioni di dollari. Zuckerberg raddoppiò. Mise sul piatto un miliardo. Kevin Systrom, neanche a dirlo, firmò a occhi chiusi. David Karp: Tumblr ha 102 milioni di blog attivi. Sulla piattaforma vengono pubblicati 75,6 milioni di post al giorno. 
All’epoca i commenti sulla folle cifra pagata da Facebook si sprecarono. Un miliardo di dollari erano e restano oggettivamente troppi. Chissà se, visti i risultati decisamente poco entusiasmanti, il caro Mark lo rifarebbe. Marissa Mayer però, oggi spiazza tutti e mostra letteralmente le palle alle sue controparti maschili. Come per ricordare, ci siamo anche noi di Yahoo! E offre 1,1 miliardi di dollari, in contanti, per Tumblr. Lasciamo perdere la notizia in sé. Facciamo un altro discorso. Quello della finanza creativa. Quando qualcuno si accorgerà dello scollamento tra valore finanziario e valore reale di questi gingilli salteremo di nuovo tutti dalla sedia come nel 2000. Peccato solo che oggi non è il 2000. Siamo molto, molto, molto peggio. Anche i mutui subprime sembravano una genialata. Gonfiarono le prospettive finanziare delle più importanti banche d’affari americane con numeri da capogiro. Almeno sulla carta. Finché qualcuno non sgamò l’inghippo. Nel 2006 i subprime hanno causato l’innesco della peggiore crisi finanziaria di tutti i tempi. Quella, tanto per capirci, in cui allegramente stiamo annaspando senza vedere la luce alla fine del tunnel. Ma si sa. Tutto quello che è Web è sempre tutto figo e tutto bello. E allora brindiamo a Tumblr. 1,1 miliardi di dollari. Tutto così entusiasmante. Tutto così grandioso. Che assomiglia tanto all’ennesima insana follia.  | | Electronics-Loving 'Crazy Ants' Invading Southern US May 18th 2013, 18:20 From an article at the Houston Chronicle (not The Onion) comes a report of concern to anyone in a warm climate with, well, electronics. From the article: "According to researchers at The University of Texas at Austin, invasive 'crazy ants' are slowly displacing fire ants in the southeastern United States. These 'Tawny Crazy Ants' have a peculiar predilection toward electronics as well. 'They nest in electronics and create short circuits, as they create a contact bridge between two points when they get electrocuted they release an alarm pheromone,' says UT research assistant Edward LeBrun. 'The other ants are attracted to the chemicals that other ants give off,' he adds. At this point, more ants arrive and create a larger nest." The L.A. Times also has a report, which says "Thus far, the crazy ants are not falling for the traditional poisons used to eliminate fire ant mounds. And when local mounds are destroyed manually, they are quickly regenerated. 'They don't sting like fire ants do, but aside from that they are much bigger pests,' LeBrun said. 'There are videos on YouTube of people sweeping out dustpans full of these ants from their bathroom. You have to call pest control operators every three or four months just to keep the infestation under control. It's very expensive.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | Intel Rolls Out "Beacon Mountain" Android Dev Platform For Atom May 18th 2013, 17:18 MojoKid writes "In an effort to coax developers to begin taking Atom seriously as an Android platform, Intel has just released a complete suite of tools that should help ease them into things — especially since it can be used for ARM development as well. It's called Beacon Mountain, named after the highest peak outside of Beacon, New York. As you'd expect, Beacon Mountain supports Jelly Bean (4.2) development, and with this suite, you're provided with a collection of important Intel tools: Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager, Integrated Performance Primitives, Graphics and System Performance Analyzers, Threaded Building Blocks and Software Manager. In addition, Android SDK and NDK, Eclipse and Cygwin third-party tools are included to complete the package." Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | Fed. Appeals Court Says Police Need Warrant to Search Phone May 18th 2013, 16:17 An anonymous reader writes "In a decision that's almost certainly going to result in this issue heading up to the Supreme Court, the Federal 1st Circuit Court of Appeals [Friday] ruled that police can't search your phone when they arrest you without a warrant. That's contrary to most courts' previous findings in these kinds of cases where judges have allowed warrantless searches through cell phones." (But in line with the recently mentioned decision in Florida, and seemingly with common sense.) Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | UK Consumers Reporting Contactless Payment Errors May 18th 2013, 15:19 leathered writes "The BBC reports that some customers of UK retailer Marks and Spencer have reported that the store's contactless payment terminals have debited their cards despite being in their bags or pockets, sometimes paying twice when they have used another payment method. The cards are supposed to work only when the card comes within 4cm of the terminal. Customers of fast-food chain Pret a Manger have been reporting similar problems, and in both cases cited the customers weren't even aware they had been issued with NFC-enabled cards by their bank." Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | FBI Considers CALEA II: Mandatory Wiretapping On Every Device May 18th 2013, 14:20 Techmeology writes "In response to declining utility of CALEA mandated wiretapping backdoors due to more widespread use of cryptography, the FBI is considering a revamped version that would mandate wiretapping facilities in end users' computers and software. Critics have argued that this would be bad for security (PDF), as such systems must be more complex and thus harder to secure. CALEA has also enabled criminals to wiretap conversations by hacking the infrastructure used by the authorities. I wonder how this could ever be implemented in FOSS." Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | Bloomberg To HS Grads: Be a Plumber May 18th 2013, 13:25 An anonymous reader writes "This being college graduation season, the insights provided by commencement speakers should be familiar by now: find work in a field you're passionate about, don't underestimate your own abilities, aim high, learn to communicate and collaborate with others, give something back to your community. Billionaire Mike Bloomberg, whose current job is Mayor of New York City, evidently decided to break the mold by advising less academically adept youngsters to consider a career in plumbing. High wages, constant demand, no offshore competition. 'Compare a plumber to going to Harvard College — being a plumber, actually for the average person, probably would be a better deal'. Ouch! And hey, like a lawyer, a plumber can always dabble in politics." Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | Of 1000 Americans Polled, Most Would Ban Home Printing of Guns May 18th 2013, 12:28 An anonymous reader writes "In results that may signal some discomfort with the enormous DIY promise of 3D printing and similar home-manufacturing technologies, a new Reason-Rupe poll finds that an otherwise gun control-weary American public thinks owners of 3D printers ought not be allowed to make their own guns or gun parts. Of course, implementing such a restrictive policy might be tad more difficult than measuring popular preferences." This poll is of only 1000 people, though; your mileage may vary. Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | Happy Culture Freedom Day! May 18th 2013, 09:25 Blug_fred writes "For the second edition, today is the time to celebrate Culture Freedom Day. While not as popular as HFD or SFD, celebrating Free Culture involves finding Free Culture artists, inviting them to your place and having them perform, display or talk about what their creation(s). Of course you can always simply project a couple of Free Culture movies and launch a discussion about their business models. Either way you can find all the happening for today here on the map and we sincerely hope there will be something of interest near you." Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | RPiCluster: Another Raspberry Pi Cluster, With Neat Tricks May 18th 2013, 06:20 New submitter TheJish writes "The RPiCluster is a 33-node Beowulf cluster built using Raspberry Pis (RPis). The RPiCluster is a little side project I worked on over the last couple months as part of my dissertation work at Boise State University. I had need of a cluster to run a distributed simulator I've been developing. The RPiCluster is the result. I've written an informal document on why I built the RPiCluster, how it was built, and how it performs as compared to other platforms. I also put together a YouTube video of it running an MPI parallel program I created to demo the RGB LEDs installed on each node as part of the build. While there have certainly been larger RPi clusters put together recently, I figured the Slashdot community might be interested in this build as I believe it is a novel approach to the rack mounting and power management of RPis." Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | NASA Meteoroid-Spotting Program Captures Brightest-Yet Moon Impact May 18th 2013, 03:12 From a NASA press release published Friday: "For the past 8 years, NASA astronomers have been monitoring the Moon for signs of explosions caused by meteoroids hitting the lunar surface. 'Lunar meteor showers' have turned out to be more common than anyone expected, with hundreds of detectable impacts occurring every year. They've just seen the biggest explosion in the history of the program." Watch the flash for yourself. Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | Password Strength Testers Work For Important Accounts May 18th 2013, 00:33 msm1267 writes "Many popular online services have started to deploy password strength meters, visual gauges that are often color-coded and indicate whether the password you've chosen is weak or strong based on the website's policy. The effectiveness of these meters in influencing users to choose stronger passwords had not been measured until recently. A paper released this week by researchers at the University of California Berkeley, University of British Columbia, and Microsoft provides details on the results of a couple of experiments examining how these meters influence computer users when they're creating passwords for sensitive accounts and for unimportant accounts." Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | |
