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+ - UK Shopping Centre Launches First Bluetooth Beacon Mobile Loyalty Technology ->

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes "The Swan Centre in Eastleigh becomes first UK shopping centre to launch Bluetooth-based beacon technology to connect retailers directly with consumers through their smartphones.

From today shoppers entering the Swan Centre will be able to receive offers and discounts directly on their smartphones from retailers throughout the shopping centre — as long as they download a SmartRewards app first.

As they wander through the shopping centre, tiny devices called TagBeacons send targeted ads and discounts directly to their smartphones using low-energy Bluetooth technology, which enables information to be sent to devices that are up to 50 metres away.

Over time, as the data collected builds up, users will begin to receive more targeted offers, and there will also be the option for retailers and shopping centres to monitor customer behaviour."

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+ - Could EU's Ruling on Common Charger Standard Force Apple to Change iPhone? ->

Submitted by DavidGilbert99
DavidGilbert99 writes "MEPs in the European Parliament have passed legislation which will force smartphone and tablet manufacturers to conform to using a single type of charger by 2017. And as this is likely to be the microUSB standard, it could signal the end of Apple's use of its proprietary 30-pin and lightning connectors on its iPhone, iPad and iPods. But will Apple change or will it just give customers an adaptor?"
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+ - Spain's Government Limits Crowdfunding->

Submitted by Eric Eikrem
Eric Eikrem writes "As crowdfunding is threatening to crowd out traditional banks, the Spanish government has taken steps to protect their friends in the large Spanish banks. It plans to restrict total funding to €1 million per project and iIndividual contributions will be limited to €3,000, with a €6,000 cap on the amount donated to the same platform.

These haphazard limits are introduced at a time when banks offer practically no financing to SMEs and startups. Getting a startup off the ground in Spain has never been easy and these steps will make it even worse, but the Spanish government seems to be willing to do whatever it takes to protect their friends, consistently looking out for the interests of a very few well-connected persons."

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Comment: Re:changed my view of it for the better (Score 1) 123

by Zocalo (#46480719) Attached to: Recent news events re: Bitcoin ...
It's not negative, the older generation is just more jaded and has seen too many things like this turn into a fad to risk any significant amount of tangible worth on it. There is also the risk of association given the close links between BC and the digital underworld to consider, particularly when dealing with laypersons (many of whom might be in senior management); "You use Bit Coin? Isn't that used to buy drugs and stuff?" It's not some toy like a new programming language, Seti@Home, or an Arduino that you can hack around with and the only real risk is a bit of time and CPU cycles; you've got to put actual money on the line, and quite a bit of it if you want to mine productively. Those "flaws and nitpicks" that you mention are resulting in far too much of that money getting ganked, although admittedly, that's often the fault of the original owner failing to do their homework and making a silly mistake like trusting their BC to a third party that isn't deserving of that trust.

In my view, crypto currencies are still at v1.0, and we all should know the rule about ".0" releases, let alone "1.0" releases. As such, I find that it's an interesting notion but almost certainly doomed to be replaced by something new and improved once all the teething troubles and peripheral issues that we are currently seeing get addressed. I'm not really expecting the tech masses (including the jaded grey beards) to really embrace it until we start seeing the next generation of currencies and have some kind of framework in place to prevent most of those "flaws and nitpicks" without having to RTFM. Any possible mainstream public acceptance is probably only going to come once there are far more legitimate uses than illegitimate ones and it's generally seen as a safe and convenient thing to do, even for a complete n00b that's likely to click on a link to a file called "rootkit.exe", cancel the AV warnings and run it anyway.

+ - Russia Blocks Internet Sites Of Putin Critics->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Reuters reports, "Russia blocked access to the internet sites of prominent Kremlin foes Alexei Navalny and Garry Kasparov on Thursday under a new law critics say is designed to silence dissent in President Vladimir Putin's third term. The prosecutor general's office ordered Russian internet providers to block Navalny's blog, chess champion and Putin critic Kasparov's internet newspaper and two other sites, grani.ru and ej.ru, state regulator Roskomnadzor said. The move was the latest evidence of what government opponents see as a crackdown on independent media and particularly the internet, a platform for dissenting views in a nation where state channels dominate the airwaves. Ej.ru editor Alexander Ryklin called it "monstrous" and a "direct violation of all the principles of freedom of speech,"..." — More at EFF, and in earlier stories at the The Huffington Post , and Deutsche Welle, which notes, "This year's report by Reporters Without Borders on World Day against Cyber Censorship condemns Russia as one of the " Enemies of the Internet." "Russia has adopted dangerous legislation governing the flow of news and information and freedom of expression online," it concludes.""
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+ - Ubuntu's Mir Gets Delayed Again

Submitted by jones_supa

+ - VLC Finally Launches App for Windows 8

Submitted by SmartAboutThings
SmartAboutThings writes "After a long journey of more than one year, which included even a successfully ended Kickstarter campaign, the VLC app for Windows 8 is officially here. VLC for Windows 8 is currently in beta, and it lacks some important features, such as the ability to open music files or support for Windows RT devices. On the good side, VLC for Windows 8 supports the same codecs as the VLC application for desktop, from MPEG-1 to H.265, through WMV3 and VC-1; it also supports multiple-audio tracks selection, embedded subtitles, background audio playback, Live Tiles, removable storage and DLNA servers."

+ - Microsoft Dumping License Fees for Windows Phone?->

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
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+ - Mt. Gox knew it was selling phantom bitcoin two weeks before its collapse->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles wrote in a sworn declaration in the company's U.S. bankruptcy filing he suspected hundreds of thousands of bitcoins were missing on Feb. 7, more than two weeks before it finally halted trading. That means Mt. Gox allowed its customers to continue trading, knowing that its bitcoin stash was wiped out and collecting as much as US$900,000 in trading fees. Since Mt. Gox said it was also missing $27.3 million in cash from customer deposits, it raises the possibility that customers — despite seeing a cash balance displayed in their account — might have actually been buying bitcoins that did not exist, with cash that was already long gone."
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Comment: Re: Where do OpenID endpoints come from, the stork (Score 1) 162

by brunes69 (#46475551) Attached to: Top E-commerce Sites Fail To Protect Users From Stupid Passwords

Facebook Google Twitter Yahoo all provide them already. So does ident.ca and OpenID.ogr and DOZENS of others. And if you wear a tinfoil hat 24*7 then you can run your own trivially. And finally, your ISP should provide one with your account as well.

+ - 1GB of Google Drive Storage Now Costs Only $0.02 per Month

Submitted by SmartAboutThings
SmartAboutThings writes "Up until today, I always had the impression that cloud storage was pretty expensive and I’m sure that many will agree with me. It’s a good thing that some bright minds over at Google have the same impressions as they now have drastically discounted the monthly storage plans on Google Drive. The new monthly storage plans and their previous prices are as follows: $1.99 for 100GB (previously $4.99), $9.99 for 1TB (previously $49.99), and $99.99 for 10TB.The 2 dollar plan per month means that the price for a gigabyte gets down to an incredibly low price of only two cents per month."

Comment: $50 billion seems quite cheap (Score 1) 707


I think I'll just chalk this up as another ill thought out scheme that'll never work.

Comment: Re:Hard drives + Robocopy (Score 1) 962

by Zocalo (#46463021) Attached to: How Do You Backup 20TB of Data?
It's really either this or tape. Just be sure to verify your backups, make sure that you can actually restore, and keep a copy off the data off site at a suitably remote family member/friend's place. Personally, I use external USB3 disks as they are cheap and can be left copying data overnight, especially so if you structure the data so that it's easy to segment data on the RAID across multiple external drives, and replace them long before any MTBF kicks in. Also unlike some tape systems, don't require particular software to backup/restore - any directory copy/sync tool of choice will do, and for restoring specific files you can even use a file manager or command line copy.

Comment: Re:Someone please explain (Score 1) 240

by brunes69 (#46461527) Attached to: Google To Replace GTK+ With Its Own Aura In Chrome

"Looks like shit" is subjective. Personally I feel like Chrome "looks like shit" on Linux compared to Windows and Mac OSX where it has a consistent look. I am looking very much forward to this move. Like many nowadays I live in the browser and spend 95% of my time there. The more it is consistent across platforms the better. It doesn't matter nearly as much that my browser on Linux looks like my Eclipse as it does that my browser on Linux looks and behaves like my browser on Android or Windows or Mac.

Comment: The problem is not passwords it is identity. (Score 1) 162

by brunes69 (#46459889) Attached to: Top E-commerce Sites Fail To Protect Users From Stupid Passwords

Repeat after me.

The problem IS NOT PASSWORDS. Fighting for "better passwords" is a never-ending, stupid, foolish waste of time.

What is the point of a password? It is to prove who you are. Nothing more, nothing less. A password is not used as a key to look up information for a retailer, or blog, or anything else - that is keyed off your user name. All a password is is an identifier showing WHO YOU ARE.

It is unrealistic to expect a human to remember dozens of complex passwords and change them monthly. It is also unrealistic to preach "password managers" as a solution because they don't work in all situations and on the go.

So then, why is it then that I need a username and password FOR EVERY OF Amazon, Tesco, Virgin, and every other company listed in the OP, and Facebook, and Yahoo, and Google, and Slashdot, and every other site? Why can't I just have ONE complex, known, secure identification mechanism?

And even more pointedly - WHY IS IT that the technology ALREADY EXISTS to answer every point I raised - namely, the combination OpenID and OAuth - to solve this problem?

If every webmaster would stop thinking they live in their own universe, and SIMPLY STOP storing their own passwords and instead REQUIRE AND ONLY SUPPORT OpenID and OAuth authentication, this whole problem would be nearly entirely eliminated from the internet. People would have ONLY ONE password to remember, for all sites. They could be FORCED to change it monthly, and it would not be a huge burden since it is their ONLY password.

But no, every site in existence thinks they are THE ONE and should be able to exist in their own walled garden independent of everyone else.
