Intel Skull Canyon NUC mini-PC up for pre-order

Intel Skull Canyon NUC mini-PC up for pre-order

Intel’s “Skull Canyon” NUC is the most powerful mini-desktop computer from the company to date. It features a Core i7-6770HQ quad-core processor, Intel Iris Pro 580 graphics, and a bunch of other premium features… which may help explain the premium price tag. When Intel introduced the Skull Canyon NUC, the company said it would be available […]

Intel Skull Canyon NUC mini-PC up for pre-order is a post from: Liliputing

Intel Skull Canyon NUC mini-PC up for pre-order

Intel’s “Skull Canyon” NUC is the most powerful mini-desktop computer from the company to date. It features a Core i7-6770HQ quad-core processor, Intel Iris Pro 580 graphics, and a bunch of other premium features… which may help explain the premium price tag. When Intel introduced the Skull Canyon NUC, the company said it would be available […]

Intel Skull Canyon NUC mini-PC up for pre-order is a post from: Liliputing

TSA spent $47,000 on an app that just randomly picks lanes for passengers

TSA discontinued the app last year.

According to Mashable, the Transportation Security Administration apparently spent $47,000 on an app that is essentially a random number generator—it was briefly used to assign travelers to left or right lanes at airports.

As the website reported: “The app was used by TSA agents to randomly assign passengers to different pre-check lines as part of a now-discontinued program called ‘managed inclusion.’”

Such an app is widely viewed to be an extremely simple program to write. Many are questioning why a government agency overpaid for the app.

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Thanks to math, we can calculate the benefits of human sacrifice

Complex society may depend on occasionally murdering innocent people.

A group of researchers ran statistical analyses on human sacrifice data gathered from 93 groups in the Pacific Island region. (credit: Jacques Arago)

Most of us would agree that human sacrifice is a bad idea. Yet many ancient civilizations (and some more modern ones) engaged in religious rituals that involved sacrificing people. Why do so many societies evolve a system of human sacrifice, despite the obvious moral drawbacks? A group of social scientists has just published a statistical analysis in Nature that reveals how this grisly practice has fairly predictable results, which benefit elites in socially stratified cultures.

The group examined 93 Austronesian cultures in the Pacific Islands, drawing information from the Pulotu Database of Pacific Religions to determine which groups had human sacrifice and when. Previous analysts have suggested that human sacrifice helps to maintain social stratification. In this new study, the researchers wanted to understand the relationship between human sacrifice and social stratification over time.

To do that, they created statistical models using Bayesian methods, testing to see how human sacrifice affected societies that fit into three buckets: egalitarian, moderately stratified, and highly stratified. They write:

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Government-funded free Wi-Fi project isn’t providing much Wi-Fi

California grant to nonprofit was supposed to bring poor people online.

(credit: Erin Pettigrew)

A project to bring free wireless Internet to poor people in California is only providing a fraction of the promised Wi-Fi hotspots, according to multiple reports.

With a state grant issued in 2012, a nonprofit called Manchester Community Technologies was supposed to "install free wireless Internet along busy boulevards in low-income neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles County," said a report last week by the Los Angeles Daily News. The organization reported success to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in March 2015, saying it had connected more than 100,000 people to the Internet.

But today, few of the sites actually have Internet access. The Los Angeles Times visited the hotspot locations and reported that hardly any had Wi-Fi signals. CPUC staff visited the Wi-Fi hotspot sites in January in response to the Times' investigation, finding Internet connectivity at just two of 25 locations. CPUC says it is now planning an audit.

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EA trumps Trump ad, takes down supporter’s retweeted Mass Effect video

“We do not support our assets being used in political campaigns,” pub says.

I probably could have made this up if I tried, but you wouldn't believe it if I did. (credit: Trump Effect)

In a US presidential campaign season full of unexpected moments and petty squabbles between candidates and public figures of all stripes, today's interaction between Donald Trump and Electronic Arts still ranks as one of the oddest. This afternoon, the publisher issued a YouTube takedown notice for a video supporting Donald Trump that uses voices and music from 2010's Mass Effect 2, after the candidate himself tweeted the video approvingly to nearly 7.5 million followers earlier in the morning.

The ad, which appears to have been created by an individual fan with no official connection to the Trump campaign, draws directly from Mass Effect 2's launch trailer, overlaying a speech from Martin Sheen's Illusive Man character with videos and photos from modern America. "We're at war," Sheen intones over scenes of generalized and specifically Trump-related chaos. "No one wants to admit it, but humanity is under attack. One very specific man might be the only thing that stands between humanity and the greatest threat of our brief existence."

The Mass Effect content is roughly intercut with images and messages from Trump supporters, as well as lines from Trump's stump speech about making America great again. It ends with the message that "the American people are DONE with career politicians" and an entreaty to "GO OUT & Vote for Trump." Yet there are some signs the video could be an elaborate, trollish joke against Trump, including an image with the non sequitur purported Trump quote, "No more oreos!"

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Amazon Fire TV software update makes finding your apps easier (even sideloaded ones)

Amazon Fire TV software update makes finding your apps easier (even sideloaded ones)

Amazon is rolling out a software update for its Fire TV and Fire TV Stick devices, and while most of the changes in software version 5.0.5.1 are bug fixes, there is one new feature designed to help you get to your apps more quickly. The new software lets you jump straight to the My Apps […]

Amazon Fire TV software update makes finding your apps easier (even sideloaded ones) is a post from: Liliputing

Amazon Fire TV software update makes finding your apps easier (even sideloaded ones)

Amazon is rolling out a software update for its Fire TV and Fire TV Stick devices, and while most of the changes in software version 5.0.5.1 are bug fixes, there is one new feature designed to help you get to your apps more quickly. The new software lets you jump straight to the My Apps […]

Amazon Fire TV software update makes finding your apps easier (even sideloaded ones) is a post from: Liliputing

Amazon will unveil an “all-new, top of the line Kindle” reader next week

New e-reader will presumably replace the $200 Kindle Voyage.

Amazon has been focusing its efforts on the tablet, TV, phone, and digital personal assistant markets for the last few years, but the company has never forgotten its quietly competent lineup of dedicated Kindle e-readers. Today, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos took some time off from running his newspaper and shooting things into space to announce that there will be an "all-new, top of the line" eighth-generation Kindle announced next week. Consider this an announcement of the announcement.

Amazon's current flagship Kindle is the Kindle Voyage, a very nice but very expensive $200 gadget with an auto-brightness sensor and a tablet-y design. The new model will presumably replace the Voyage instead of the more sensible $120 Kindle Paperwhite, but we'll have to wait until next week to hear more details and news about pricing and availability.

If you want a good dedicated e-reader and don't really care about having the latest and greatest features, Amazon is currently offering big discounts on current-generation Kindles for Amazon Prime members. The $200 Voyage is being offered for $150, the $120 Paperwhite is being sold for $90, and the $80 standard Kindle is being sold for $50.

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Frontier customers still have problems three days after Verizon changeover

Internet outages, account trouble, and video problems hit former Verizon users.

Former Verizon customers who were switched over to Frontier Communications on Friday are still reporting outages and other problems today.

Verizon sold its FiOS and DSL networks in California, Florida, and Texas to Frontier, but the transition has not been smooth. On Friday, Frontier acknowledged a "technical issue" involving the integration of systems, but the company said it had been fixed by 9:30am ET that morning.

That assurance seems to have been premature, with customers still reporting problems on DownDetector and Twitter throughout the weekend and today. "Onto the 4th day without Internet or any working account...any timeframe guys? This is getting really crazy!" one California customer complained today.

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Movie Studios Want to Copy Megaupload’s Servers

Hollywood’s major movie studios are protesting a request from Megaupload’s legal team to put their civil lawsuit on hold for another six months. The movie studios will only agree to the request if they can get copies of the Megaupload servers stored at Cogent, something the defunct cloud-hosting service fiercely objects to.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

megaupload-logoWell over four years have passed since Megaupload was shutdown, but aside from Andrus Nomm’s plea deal there has been little progress in U.S. proceedings.

Last December a New Zealand District Court judge ruled that Kim Dotcom and his colleagues can be extradited to the United States to face criminal charges.

This decision was quickly appealed by the defense and will be heard in August, so until then not much is expected to happen.

But there’s more legal trouble for the defunct file-hosting service. In addition to the criminal case, Megaupload and Kim Dotcom are also battling civil lawsuits against the major record labels and Hollywood’s top movie studios.

Fearing that they might influence criminal proceedings, Megaupload’s legal team previously managed to put these cases on hold, with permission from the copyright holders. However, when Megaupload’s counsel recently opted for another stay pending the extradition appeal, the movie studios objected.

In a new motion filed at a federal court in Virginia, Megaupload’s lawyers inform the court that the studios will only agree to the stay if they can get a copy of Megaupload’s data at Cogent Communications.

“Plaintiffs indicated they would not consent unless Defendants agreed to allow Plaintiffs to immediately serve a subpoena on a third-party, Cogent Communications, to obtain a mirrored copy of Megaupload’s users’ data cached on servers Megaupload had leased from Cogent,” they write (pdf).

Cogent was one of the companies where Megaupload stored its servers. While the original machines are no longer intact, the company has backed up all data which it will keep in storage pending the various lawsuits.

The Hollywood studios now argue that they “would prefer” to have a copy of the cached data as well, but this is something Megaupload has strong legal objections to.

“The cached data belongs to Megaupload’s users. Megaupload was an ISP to its users, who entrusted it with their data, and, by federal statute, Megaupload has certain legal obligations to its users, including confidentiality and privacy,” Megaupload’s legal team writes.

“As Megaupload explained to Plaintiffs in a lengthy meet-and-confer email, that there are numerous issues and legal risks implicated by Plaintiffs’ proposal to serve a subpoena on Cogent to obtain a mirrored copy of the cached user data,” they add.

Both sides discussed the matter in detail but were unable to come to an agreement they would feel comfortable with. Megaupload nonetheless, asks the court to freeze the case for another six-months.

If the court would find it appropriate that someone else other than Cogent gets access to the data, they believe that Megaupload would be the best suited party for this.

The movie studios are expected to submit their objection to the request and ask for a subpoena to copy Megaupload’s data at Cogent. A hearing on the renewed request for a stay is scheduled for later this month.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

The post-Model 3 reveal reveals: What we know about the new Tesla four days out

An all-wheel drive option will be available, and the interior design could be in flux.

The rear window. (credit: Megan Geuss)

When Elon Musk took the stage Thursday night at his Hawthorne design facility, the CEO of Tesla revealed a pre-production prototype of the Model 3, the company’s highly anticipated $35,000 car. The presentation was short and included a summary of Tesla’s history, a status update on the Gigafactory, and a look at how Tesla plans to expand its supercharger stations.

Actual details about the Model 3's specifications were slim. We learned that it will come with top-rated safety features and supercharging, even for the basic version of the car. We learned that all the Model 3s will come with the hardware necessary for autopilot features. (Although certain autonomous functions will require the customer to buy an upgrade.) And we learned the car will go 215 miles on a single charge at a minimum, and it will get from zero to 60 in “less than six seconds.”

Before the event, Musk called Thursday night’s event "Part 1" of the Model 3's debut, later adding that “Part 2 is super next level, but that’s for later…” The Model 3 isn’t due out of production until the end of 2017.

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