Monday, August 19, 2013

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Apple cultists aim to raise $50k for monstrous Steve Jobs statue

Posted: 19 Aug 2013 05:32 AM PDT

Dedicated apostles of Apple's fruity cult have taken to the crowdfunding website IndieGogo to raise cash  for a monstrous Statue of Liberty-sized homage to the dead chief executive.

"The memory of Steve Jobs is a source of inspiration," the campaign starts. "His humble origins, personal imperfections and the turbelence of his career make his story relatable; his prolific, world-changing career make his story admirable".

The entrepreneurs behind the project say they saw the Jobs statue in Budapest, Hungary, but are convinced the world could do with more than one, and that a building in the USA would be more fitting for the executive.

Pledging $666 - the Mark of Jobs and the launch price for the Apple 1 - will give contributors the rare opportunity to be directly involved in building the personality cult of Jobs. 

Investing $1,955 will get you a VIP invitation to the statue's unveiling.

Those behind the campaign identify themselves as "young entrepreneurs living in San Francisco," for whom Steve Jobs is "a role model for us". 

So far, the IndieGogo page has raised $427 of its $50,000 goal with 31 funders, but still has 57 days to go to make Jobzilla happen.

Google crashes, internet traffic halved

Posted: 19 Aug 2013 05:30 AM PDT

More than 40 percent of the world’s internet traffic disappeared after Google suffered a spectacular outage on Friday.

The outage only lasted from one to five minutes, depending on where you were, but all of the services from Google Search to Gmail to YouTube to Google Drive went down.

Google has not said why the outage happened, but according to web analytics firm GoSquared, global internet traffic fell by around 40 percent during the black-out.

According to Sky News, this figure reflects Google's iron fist control of the internet.

GoSquared developer Simon Tabor said that it was clear that for many users, the reliance on Google is huge.

Seconds after the outage, page views spiked shortly afterwards as users managed to get to their destination.

A message on the Google Apps Dashboard showed all of its services were hit.

"We're aware of a problem with Gmail affecting a significant subset of users. The affected users are able to access Gmail, but are seeing error messages and/or other unexpected behaviour," it said.

What is interesting is that Google itself only thinks that 50 to 70 percent of requests to Google received errors. This means that if the outage had really been total the figure could have been much worse.

Google has a vested interest in never letting that happen again.  In the four minutes it was down it would have lost $500,000 in lost advertising.

To have a problem that size there would have had to have been a  physical infrastructure problem.  Google is saying nothing,  so we can probably make up an excuse and no one will deny it. We are pumping for alien invasion, defeated by the common cold minutes after the final waves landed.

Ubuntu Edge hits crowd funding block

Posted: 19 Aug 2013 04:46 AM PDT

An ambitious crowd funded campaign to create a smartphone which transforms into a PC is running aground, nearly $20 million below its target.

The Ubuntu Edge has raised $11.3 million at the time of publication, which is very impressive for crowdfunding - but it still has $22 million to go. The money has been raised on Indiegogo, and the money will only go into the Edge if it reaches its goal. There are just days left.

All this suggests that there is a limit to the amount of cash you can raise on crowdfunding sites. The previous record holder, smartwatch maker Pebble, topped out at $10.3 million on Kickstarter.

The idea of a superphone was rather nice. It would run both Ubuntu mobile OS and Android, and convert into a desktop PC via a monitor.

However, according to All things Digital, it does not appear that Canonical actually expected to reach its goal.

Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth went on record as saying he was surprised at the level of interest. He indicated that it was possible that the campaign would be extended, or that large manufacturers might help. 

iPhone uses more electricity than a fridge

Posted: 19 Aug 2013 04:02 AM PDT

Apple's iPhone might be burning up more electricity than an average American fridge, according to a report from Digital Power.

Mark Mills, CEO of Digital Power, penned a report with the catchy title "The Cloud Begins With Coal".  After adding up all the numbers and dividing by his shoe size, Mills has calculated that an average iPhone uses about 361 kilowatt-hours each year after factoring in wireless connections, data usage and battery charging.

By comparison, a medium sized refrigerator with an Energy Star rating only uses about 322 KWh a year.

While smartphones and tablets require very little energy to charge, the true culprits aren't the devices, but the stuff running in the background that supports wireless connections that are always on.

To run an iPhone there are servers that run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. These need air conditioning, manufacturing centers to build the devices, and nonstop electricity to power broadband networks.

The global ICT ecosystem uses 1,500 terawatt-hours of power every year. This is equal to the total electricity generated by Japan and Germany combined, and as much electricity used to light up the entire world in 1985. ICT consumes about 10 percent of all electricity generated in the world, Mills wrote.

Humanity is moving to a world where each house has a refrigerator and owns several smartphones. To make matters worse mobile internet and cloud computing require more energy than wired networks, he added.

Mills thinks that the world will need a lot more electricity in the future.

All of this adds to a carbon footprint that continues to grow in size, and coal is still the largest source of electricity in the US - with carbon producing coal plants stuffing up the world's ecosystem. 

Britain detains Glenn Greenwald's partner under Terrorism Act

Posted: 19 Aug 2013 03:52 AM PDT

The British government now thinks it is acceptable  to harass members of the press who publish exposés about Edward Snowden, but rather than take them on directly, they are going for their family instead.

Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald's partner was detained at Heathrow airport in a Kafkaesque warning to him not to release any more material. Greenwald is sitting on more of Snowden's leaks which he is currently editing.

His partner, David Miranda, was questioned under the Terrorism Act and locked up for nine hours, which is the maximum the local authorities could get away with without charging him. As Greenwald pointed out, this is a failed attempt at intimidation

Miranda passed through London's Heathrow airport on his way home to Rio de Janeiro after a trip to Berlin. He was stopped by officers at 8.05am and informed that he was to be questioned under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

Most examinations under schedule 7 last less than an hour, and only one in 2,000 people detained are kept for more than six hours.

Miranda's electronics were seized, including his mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles.

While in Berlin, Miranda visited Laura Poitras, the American film maker who has also been working on the Snowden files with Greenwald and the Guardian.

Greenwald is understandably furious at what he calls "a profound attack on press freedoms" and the news gathering process.

The Guardian reports he said that, to detain his partner for nine hours while denying him a lawyer, and then seizing his possessions, is clearly intended to send a message of intimidation to those of who have been reporting on the NSA and GCHQ.

He said that the actions of the UK pose a serious threat to journalists everywhere.

What the government does not really understand is that intimidating journalists always is counter-productive because it makes journalists want to report aggressively.

The Guardian is urgently seeking clarification from the British authorities as to what the government thought it was playing at. Scotland Yard has confirmed the questioning took place but has refused to say why.

The move is such a blatant attack on western press freedom that it has managed to catch oppositon politicians by surprise.

Labour MP Tom Watson said he was shocked at the news and called for it to be made clear if any ministers were involved in authorising the detention.

Watson pointed out that it was impossible, even without full knowledge of the case, to conclude that Glenn Greenwald's partner was a terrorist suspect.

Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act has been slammed for giving police broad powers but it has not been used in this way before.

Even the government itself has started to admit that the law is too heavy handed and plans to reduce the maximum period of detention to six hours, as well as conducting a review of the operation on schedule 7.

The move has also angered the Brazilian government which it said it had "grave concerns" over the detention of one of its citizens and the use of anti-terror legislation.

In a statement, it said that the measure is without justification since it involves an individual against whom there are no charges to justify its use.

Widney Brown, Amnesty International's senior director of international law and policy, said Miranda's detention was "unlawful and inexcusable".

"The only possible intent behind this detention was to harass [Greenwald] and his partner,  for his role in analysing the data released by Edward Snowden," Brown said. 

Facebook denies hacker $500 exploit reward

Posted: 19 Aug 2013 03:40 AM PDT

Idiots at Facebook were humiliated by a hacker after they tried spin out the news the software was flawed.

Facebook has a policy that it will pay a minimum $500 bounty for any security flaws that a hacker finds.

Khalil, a systems information expert from Palestine, found a vulnerability that allows anyone to post to another user's timeline whether they're friends or not. He tried to report it to Facebook's security team twice.

He even warned them that he could post to Zuckerberg's wall, but they told him that it was not a bug and to go away.

So Khalil posted an Enrique Iglesias video to Sarah Goodin's wall. Goodin was a woman that Zuckerberg went to college with.

The security team still claimed that since you can't see that post unless you're a friend of sarah, it is not a bug.

So he posted onto Mark Zuckerberg's wall details of the security hole. Khalil was very nice about it and said he was sorry for violating his privacy.

In less than a minute his Facebook account was suspended and he was contacted by a Facebook engineer requesting all the details of the exploit.

They claimed that he had not given enough technical information for them to take action on it. Why do we have the impression that this one was bumped up to someone's supervisor?

However, they said that by proving to them the hack existed, Facebook could not pay him for the vulnerability because his actions violated Facebook's Terms of Service.

Of course, it's all his fault, the security team couldn't have said, "Yeah we see what you're talking about we need some more technical information." Khalil tried at least two times to contact them and both times they told them to go forth and multiply. So in other words the guy finding the exploit loses out by forcing someone at Facebook to realise it was a flaw.

In effect, the hacker was punished for his good faith - when it could have been possible to sell it on to a third party and make more cash that way.
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