When you’re shopping at your local grocery store and the all the food claims to be from sustainable, animal-friendly farms, how much can you trust it? What qualifies as “organic” and does it matter? Here to help are the folks behind HowGood, who research and recommend food based on the legitimacy of their claims.
Source: LifeHacker – Ask an Expert: All About Sustainable Food and Honest Labeling
Today, the Entertainment Software Association, which represents the U.S. gaming industry, released a measured and somewhat tepid statement on the recent Muslim ban instated by Donald Trump. In it, they ask the White House for “caution.”
Source: Kotaku – Video Game Lobby Group Gives Measured Statement On Trump Immigrant Ban
The first season of the Studio Ghibli-produced show Ronja the Robber’s Daughter arrived on Amazon Prime last week, marking the first time the show has been available in English in the U.S. It’s a kid-friendly tale of a young girl raised by robbers who meets a young boy raised by rival robbers, and how their friendship…
Source: io9 – Studio Ghibli’s New TV Series Is Pretty, Pleasant, and Punishingly Slow
iPhone: If you want to get any information about the Wi-Fi network you’re connected to on your iPhone, you’d usually have to jump into the Settings. Wi-Fi Widget puts that info on the widgets screen.
Source: LifeHacker – Wi-Fi Widget for iPhone Gives You Quick Access to Wi-Fi Router Info and Passwords
Here’s a joke for you: What has one horrible mouth and no butt? Your great-great-great-great-great-(etc.) grandpa, probably.
Source: Gizmodo – You Are Related to a Horrible Assless Creature
Oracle has changed the way it charges users to run its software in Amazon Web Services, effectively doubling the cost along the way. From a report: Big Red’s previous licensing regime recognised that AWS’s virtual CPUs were a single thread of a core that runs two threads. Each virtual CPU therefore counted as half a core. That’s changed: Oracle’s new cloud licensing policy says an AWS vCPU is now treated as a full core if hyperthreading is not enabled. A user hiring two AWS vCPUS therefore needs to pay full freight for both, effectively doubling the number of Oracle licences required to run Big Red inside AWS. And therefore doubling the cost as well. The new policy also says: “When counting Oracle Processor license requirements in Authorized Cloud Environments, the Oracle Processor Core Factor Table is not applicable.” That table says Xeons cores count as half a licence. Making the Table inapplicable to the cloud again doubles the licence count required.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Oracle Effectively Doubles Licence Fees To Run Its Stuff in AWS
(credit: ogglog)
Networked digital video recorders have been harnessed for all sorts of ill intent over the past few months, including use in a botnet that disrupted large swaths of the Internet. But a different sort of malware hit the DVRs used by the District of Columbia’s closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance system just one week before Inauguration Day. The Washington Post reports that 70 percent of the DVR systems used by the surveillance network were infected with ransomware, rendering them inoperable for four days and crippling the city’s ability to monitor public spaces.
The CCTV system, operated by the District’s Metropolitan Police Department and supported by the DC Office of the Technology Officer (OCTO), began to be affected on January 12. Police noticed they could not access video from four DVRs. Washington DC Chief Technology Officer Archana Vemulapalli told the Post that two forms of malware were found on the four systems, and a system-wide sweep discovered additional DVR clusters that were infected.
The infections were limited to the local networks that the DVRs ran on, and this ransomware did not extend to the District’s internal networks. While the investigation is ongoing, the malware likely was able to take over the systems because each site was connected to the public Internet for remote access. Vemulapalli told the paper no ransom was paid and the system was restored to full functionality before Inauguration Day.
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Source: Ars Technica – DC police surveillance cameras were infected with ransomware before inauguration
If it wasn’t already clear that the tech industry is opposed to President Trump’s immigration restrictions, it is now. Hundreds of New York City tech luminaries have signed a letter that urges Trump to change his mind on the policies, many of whom a…
Source: Engadget – New York City tech leaders object to Trump immigration ban
As Prince Charles understands, a towel has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can bring a stack of your own to Leicestershire’s…
Source: io9 – Prince Charles Knows a Towel Is the Most Massively Useful Thing an Interstellar Hitchhiker Can Have
Designed around “open building” principles, you can do what you want with it.
Source: TreeHugger – Tallest wood-framed building in the Netherlands wins a WAN award
VLC player is a very popular video playback application that has been downloaded over 2 billion times. Torrent website Torrent 9 linked to the program in their help section to make playback of videos easier for their customers. The French Tax Authority took this endorsement of VLC Player to mean that the torrent website and VLC Player’s parent company; VLAN, were doing business together. The French Tax Authority started asking VLAN for personal and financial information related to Torrent 9’s business and customer’s personal data which they of course knew nothing about. After the story broke it caused quite a stir, and the Tax Authority backed down as they realized their mistake as an “error of judgement.”
While the Internet is full of links, the National Tax Investigation Branch suspected that VideoLAN was closely involved with the torrent site, asking the organization to hand over all sorts of documentation. Specifically, they requested “complete customer details,” “bank details,” “payment methods of the customer and date of last payment,” and a copy of the “referencing contract” for the Torrent9.biz and Torrent9.me domains. When confronted with the usual request by a reporter, the Ministry of Economy and Finance didn’t give in. Instead, it reportedly stated that “if they have a link to your website, it’s because you pay them: SEO is not free..,” suggesting some kind of active cooperation.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Tax Authority Grilled VLC Player Over Link From a Torrent Site
Nowhere is it more obvious that Highlander is immortal than in Hollywood. The town has been trying to remake the film for the better part of a decade and the thing just won’t die.
Source: io9 – The Eventual Highlander Remake Will Combine Stories From Across the Franchise
A new version of Link demands a new ridiculously adorable Nendoroid figure from Japan’s Big Smile Company. Breath of the Wild Link is so cute I just want to eat his face. That’s okay, he has extras.
Source: Kotaku – Breath Of The Wild Gets Its Own Big-Headed Link Figure
Payday loans are a notorious debt trap. They often prey on consumers who are vulnerable and desperate, then send them into a downward spiral of debt. Here are the issues customers complain about most, along with the five worst offenders.
Source: LifeHacker – Here Are the Payday Lenders With the Most Consumer Complaints
AirPods, Apple’s tiny wireless headphones, still aren’t in stock most places, and online orders still take six weeks to arrive, but that hasn’t stopped the third-party accessory market from piling on with unnecessary gadgets.
Source: Gizmodo – This Condom for Your AirPods is Totally Unnecessary
The Earth and the moon share more than an orbit around the Sun. Turns out that bits of atmosphere manage to travel the 240,000 miles out to our nearest celestial neighbor, and have been for more than 2 billion years, according to data gathered by Jap…
Source: Engadget – Some of Earth’s oxygen escapes to the moon every month
Dropbox today made Paper — its note-taking app that it’s emphasizing is a tool that’s built for managing workflow as well — global. In addition to the launch of Paper, the company said that users will also be able to automatically generate presentations in Keynote and other applications through the app. From a report: Dropbox’s software is similar to Google’s suite of workplace cloud apps. Paper — itself a minimal document editor and writing tool like Google Docs — is the focal point, while all of Dropbox’s other services and features now plug into and augment the experience. Paper is Dropbox’s latest attempt to court businesses away from Microsoft and Google, or at the very least to encourage companies to pay for Dropbox services on top of what they already use institutionally. It’s part of Dropbox’s ongoing shift away from consumer storage and apps and toward enterprise software that is both more lucrative and self-sustaining. The company shut down its Mailbox email app and Carousel photo storage service back in 2015. In place of its consumer focus, Dropbox has been pouring more resources into Paper and other projects that make its mobile apps and website a place to perform work, instead of a barebones destination for files.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Dropbox Finally Brings Its Google Docs Competitor Out of Beta
Tennessee, which imposes controversial restrictions on local broadband networks, may change its laws to let electric cooperatives offer Internet service. But even with the proposed expansion, Tennessee would still prevent cities and towns from offering retail broadband services outside their borders.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican, last week announced legislation that would let private, non-profit electric cooperatives provide broadband. The state has 23 electric co-ops that provide energy to 2.5 million residents, about 37 percent of the Tennessee population.
“Electric cooperatives, currently restricted from providing retail broadband services, are uniquely situated to assist in bridging the broadband accessibility gap with experience serving areas with lower population densities and providing universal service throughout their territories,” a bill summary says. The bill would still “prevent electric cooperatives from using electric system assets to subsidize broadband services.”
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Source: Ars Technica – Tennessee governor wants to let electric co-ops offer broadband
Resident Evil 7 is my current gaming obsession. I’ve been blasting the heads of monsters and bravely running away from immortal cannibals for an entire week now. But there’s one thing about Resident Evil 7 that should terrifying us all. The teeth. Good Lord, the teeth. They are perfect. They are everywhere.
Source: Kotaku – Everyone In Resident Evil 7 Has Amazing Teeth
The close confines of an extended space mission would be enough to test the patience of most people—especially when it’s a crew of just two: a marine biologist (Firefly’s Sean Maher) and a military pilot (Starship Troopers’ Casper van Dien). But in the new movie Beyond the Edge, when their relationship starts to break…
Source: io9 – Two Astronauts Grow to Hate the Shit Out of Each Other in Beyond the Edge