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MasterCard’s QkR mobile payment system enters trial in Australia
By admin at 27 January, 2012, 6:20 pm
MasterCard is all over the map when it comes to mobile payments. The credit company will partner with anyone, anywhere, anytime if it means getting new customers and making a buck on the deal. Its latest offering is called QkR, an Australian effort with support from the Hoyts chain of movie theaters and Commonwealth Bank. [...]
Read More >>How Allan Scherr Hacked Around the First Computer Password
By admin at 27 January, 2012, 6:20 pm
New submitter MikeatWired writes “If you’re like most people, you’re annoyed by passwords. So who’s to blame? Who invented the computer password? They probably arrived at MIT in the mid-1960s, when researchers built a massive time-sharing computer called CTSS. Technology changes. But, then again, it doesn’t, writes Bob McMillan. Twenty-five years after the fact, Allan [...]
Read More >>January 28 is Data Privacy Day
By admin at 27 January, 2012, 5:20 pm
An anonymous reader writes “A bit early, but just a reminder that January 28 is international Data Privacy Day in the U.S., Canada, and many European countries. Various events are being held around the globe: the head of the FTC opened a weekend forum on the topic by calling out Facebook and Google, the Ontario [...]
Read More >>Israel announces plans to build national broadband network, increases fiber intake
By admin at 27 January, 2012, 4:40 pm
Israel is home to a burgeoning tech industry, but the country’s broadband infrastructure hasn’t really been able to keep pace. In terms of broadband penetration, in fact, Israel ranks just 21st out of 34 developed nations, according to statistics gathered by the OECD. All this may be changing, however, now that the country’s state-run electric [...]
Read More >>Mars-Bound Probe Serves As Radiation Guinea Pig
By admin at 27 January, 2012, 4:20 pm
sighted writes “This week’s huge solar storm will benefit future astronauts, thanks to the rover Curiosity, now on its way to Mars. The rover is equipped with an instrument that measures the radiation exposure that could affect a human astronaut en route to the Red Planet. Scientists are just starting to pore over the data [...]
Read More >>USPTO Declares Invalid Third of Three Critical Rambus Patents
By admin at 27 January, 2012, 4:00 pm
slew writes “This is a followup to this earlier story about 2 of 3 of Rambus’s ‘critical’ patents being invalidated. Apparently now it’s a hat-trick.” There’s something that seems unsavory and wasteful about a business environment in which a company’s stock value “fluctuates sharply on its successes and failures in patent litigation and licensing.” The [...]
Read More >>White House Chief Technology Officer Steps Down
By admin at 27 January, 2012, 4:00 pm
New submitter Krazy Kanuck writes “The White House is running a story on their OSTP blog that Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra is stepping down after being appointed to the post by President Obama in 2009. There is some mention of him returning to his home state of Virginia, and the Washington Post suggests a [...]
Read More >>White House Chief Technology Officer Steps Down
By admin at 27 January, 2012, 3:40 pm
New submitter Krazy Kanuck writes “The White House is running a story on their OSTP blog that Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra is stepping down after being appointed to the post by President Obama in 2009. There is some mention of him returning to his home state of Virginia, and the Washington Post suggests a [...]
Read More >>FCC Fridays: January 27, 2012
By admin at 27 January, 2012, 3:20 pm
We here at Engadget tend to spend a lot of way too much time poring over the latest FCC filings, be it on the net or directly on the ol’ Federal Communications Commission’s site. Since we couldn’t possibly (want to) cover all the stuff that goes down there, we’ve gathered up an exhaustive listing of [...]
Read More >>DARPA Funding a $50 Drone-Droppable Spy Computer
By admin at 27 January, 2012, 3:00 pm
Sparrowvsrevolution writes “At the Shmoocon security conference, researcher Brendan O’Connor plans to present the F-BOMB, or Falling or Ballistically-launched Object that Makes Backdoors. Built from just the disassembled hardware in a commercially-available PogoPlug mini-computer, a few tiny antennae, eight gigabytes of flash memory and some 3D-printed plastic casing, the F-BOMB serves as 3.5″-by-4″-by-1″ spy computer. [...]
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