gspec writes "I read less and less nowadays, but I realize I need to get back into my old reading habit. Would getting an ebook reader or a tablet help me to enjoy reading more? Would you recommend one over the other? A little relevant background about me: I probably can spare two hours a day to read. I do not travel a lot. I am not a fast reader; if I force myself, I could probably finish a standard length novel in a week. English is my second language, so a built-in dictionary would be nice. I enjoy Netflix, and I have bought many computer/technical eBooks from O'Reilly for reference. I have many technical reference PDFs. I have 300-400 bucks to spare for this. I'd like to hear opinions based on your knowledge and experience on reading using ebook readers/tablets."
New submitter wreakyhavoc writes "Nicholas Carlson at Business Insider maintains that Amazon's reviews and One-Click ordering will undercut Google's shopping ad revenue, and that Google is 'terrified.' From the article: 'Google is a search company, but the searches that it actually makes money from are the searches people do before they are about to buy something online. These commercial searches make up about 20 percent of total Google searches. Those searches are where the ads are. What Googlers worry about in private is a growing trend among consumers to skip Google altogether, and to just go ahead and search for the product they would like to buy on Amazon.com, or, on mobile in an Amazon app. There's data to prove this trend is real. According to ComScore, Amazon search queries are up 73 percent in the last year. How could Google fight this possible threat? Perhaps they could expose the astroturfing of Amazon reviews. Of course, this could backfire, as it would also draw attention to the astroturfing, link farming, and SEO games in Google's search results."
Freddybear writes "A recent report from the U.S. Energy Information Agency says that U.S. carbon emissions are the lowest they have been in 20 years, and attributes the decline to the increasing use of cheap natural gas obtained from fracking wells. Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, said the shift away from coal is reason for 'cautious optimism' about potential ways to deal with climate change. He said it demonstrates that 'ultimately people follow their wallets' on global warming. 'There's a very clear lesson here. What it shows is that if you make a cleaner energy source cheaper, you will displace dirtier sources,' said Roger Pielke Jr., a climate expert at the University of Colorado."
John Wagger writes "One of the world's largest gaming publishers and developers Electronic Arts has quietly put itself up for sale. While there have already been talks with private equity companies, the talks have not resulted in anything concrete. One of the sources is saying that EA would do the deal for $20 per share (currently at $14.02). Over the past year, EA's stock price has fallen 37 percent. Like other major game publishers, EA has been struggling against growing trend of social and mobile gaming."
sciencehabit writes "One of the biggest question marks hanging over the ITER fusion reactor project — a giant international collaboration currently under construction in France — is over what material to use for coating its interior wall. After all, the reactor has to withstand temperatures of 100,000C and an intense particle bombardment. Researchers have now answered that question by refitting the current world's largest fusion device, the Joint European Torus (JET) near Oxford, U.K., with a lining akin to the one planned for ITER. JET's new 'ITER-like wall,' a combination of tungsten and beryllium, is eroding more slowly (PDF) and retaining less of the fuel than the lining used on earlier fusion reactors, the team reports."
derekmead writes "A new report by the Enough Project, an arm of the Center for American Progress, shows that companies like Intel, Apple and Microsoft have been successfully scaling back their use of conflict minerals in their products. Other companies have been less helpful. Out of the 24 companies surveyed and ranked based on their use of conflict minerals, Nintendo came in dead last, having made no effort to ensure that its products weren't funding guerrilla warfare in Africa. 'Nintendo is, I believe, the only company that has basically refused to acknowledge the issue or demonstrate they are making any sort of effort on it,' said Sasha Lezhnev from the Enough Project. 'And this is despite a good two years of trying to get in contact with them.'"
littlesparkvt writes "NASA has announced the first destination for the Curiosity Rover. They're sending it to 'Glenelg,' a natural intersection of three kinds of terrain. 'The trek to Glenelg will send the rover 1,300 feet (400 meters) east-southeast of its landing site. One of the three types of terrain intersecting at Glenelg is layered bedrock, which is attractive as the first drilling target. "We're about ready to load our new destination into our GPS and head out onto the open road," Grotzinger said. "Our challenge is there is no GPS on Mars, so we have a roomful of rover-driver engineers providing our turn-by-turn navigation for us." Prior to the rover's trip to Glenelg, the team in charge of Curiosity's Chemistry and Camera instrument, or ChemCam, is planning to give their mast-mounted, rock-zapping laser and telescope combination a thorough checkout. On Saturday night, Aug. 18, ChemCam is expected to "zap" its first rock in the name of planetary science. It will be the first time such a powerful laser has been used on the surface of another world.'"
Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that Oxford Professor Julian Savulescu, an expert in practical ethics, says that creating so-called designer babies could be considered a 'moral obligation' as it makes them grow up into 'ethically better children' and that we should actively give parents the choice to screen out personality flaws in their children such as potential alcoholism, psychopathy and disposition to violence as it means they will then be less likely to harm themselves and others. 'Surely trying to ensure that your children have the best, or a good enough, opportunity for a great life is responsible parenting?' writes Savulescu, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics. 'So where genetic selection aims to bring out a trait that clearly benefits an individual and society, we should allow parents the choice. To do otherwise is to consign those who come after us to the ball and chain of our squeamishness and irrationality.' Savulescu says that we already routinely screen embryos and fetuses for conditions such as cystic fibrosis and Down's syndrome and couples can test embryos for inherited bowel and breast cancer genes. 'Whether we like it or not, the future of humanity is in our hands now. Rather than fearing genetics, we should embrace it. We can do better than chance.'"
theodp writes "Following up on an announcement that it would rid itself of 4,000 employees world-wide and renege on a deal with the State of Illinois, Google's Motorola Mobility unit said it has filed a new patent-infringement case against Apple, which seeks a ban on U.S. imports of devices including the iPhone, iPad and Mac computers. 'Apple's unwillingness to work out a license leaves us little choice but to defend ourselves and our engineers' innovations,' Motorola Mobility said in an e-mailed statement."
saiful76 writes "Following mass exodus of people belonging to north-east states India from southern states of India, specially Bangalore, allegedly due to the threatening messages, the government has asked relevant agencies to scan all social media platforms to check for inflammatory and offensive content, following which, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DIT) has issued an advisory to all intermediaries in terms of provisions of IT Act and Rules to take action for disabling all such content on priority. Cellphone operators have been told to block all bulk SMSs and videos — so nobody can send a message to more than five people at a time."
mpol writes "Sergei from MariaDB speculated on some changes within MySQL 5.5.27. It seems new testcases aren't included with MySQL any more, which leaves developers depending on it in the cold. 'Does this mean that test cases are no longer open source? Oracle did not reply to my question. But indeed, there is evidence that this guess is true. For example, this commit mail shows that new test cases, indeed, go in this "internal" directory, which is not included in the MySQL source distribution.' On a similar note, updates for the version history on Launchpad are not being updated anymore. What is Oracle's plan here? And is alienating the developer community just not seen as a problem at Oracle?"
New submitter technonono writes "MplayerX, a popular and free video player app on Mac OSX, is now leaving Mac App Store 'after arguing with Apple for three months.' The developer claims that Apple's sandboxing policies would strip the app into 'another lame Quicktime X,' which is unacceptable. The app is releasing updates on its own site, where users who bought it from the App Store would most likely never notice them. The situation was 'foretold' by Marco Arment, at least for one app."
New submitter perdelucena writes "Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov was arrested outside a Moscow court, where the verdict in the trial of the Pussy Riot group members was being announced on Friday, Russian police said." Update: 08/18 01:14 GMT by T : Kasparov has written an account of the arrest.
$2 million in rewards are offered to the finders of major vulnerabilities in the Chrome browser and other applications at annual hacking events.
The company will continue to operate its OnLive Game and Desktop services during the transition.
Google-owned Motorola Mobility has filed yet another claim against Apple with the U.S. International Trade Commission, this time asserting that devices including...
Samsung argues Apple should pay $421.8 million to Samsung for infringing on its patents, while Apple is seeking $2.75 billion from Samsung in the case.
'It Can Wait' launches in September to warn teens and others about the dangers of distracted driving, especially involving mobile devices.
Sit back and relax while you control the lights on your ceiling at the slide of a finger with the Bluetooth Bulb.
Despite some online skirmishing and being dropped from Microsoft's partner list, Acer says it still expects to ship Windows RT devices.
Gartner analysts report a second-quarter shuffle in the smartphone market, with declines by Nokia, LG, and RIM.
The final code shows how Microsoft is implementing the 'Do Not Track' privacy setting for Internet Explorer 10.
ChemCam can look at rocks and soils from a distance, fire a laser to vaporize the materials, and analyze them with an on-board spectrograph that measures the composition of the resulting plasma.
Opposition to biometric ID is pretty widespread, and most of that opposition is based not on prophecy, but on concerns about privacy.
Gartner says cloud computing is moving slower than what everyone thought it would.
Starting in Mountain Lion, apps that support the new Documents in the Cloud feature make iCloud the default location for saving a new document.
In short, life for third-party Twitter app developers just got harder, and Twitter is clamping down on some of the key differentiations those apps currently offer today.
Origin initially launched to some mixed reviews, but EA has since revised its privacy agreements and seen adoption of the platform skyrocket due to wisely tethering some of its marquee games to the service.
The process of dismantling an iMac is riddled with difficult tasks from start to finish, and each step requires a fair amount of caution and precision.
With 'GNObuntu,' serious GNOME fans can now look forward to an Ubuntu flavor of their very own.
Rumors over the fate of cloud gaming service OnLive swirled on Friday afternoon after reports the company had fired most of its staff. OnLive is being coy about...
With the Mars Curiosity rover's science instruments working well, NASA engineers are getting ready for two big tests of their robotic rover.
AT&T won't charge extra to use Apple's FaceTime over cellular networks as previously reported, but there's a catch.
Hacker claims iPhone is vulnerable to spoofed text messages that could be used in phishing attacks.
Fujitsu's innovative program will recycle the media into new laptop parts, greatly reducing the company's amount of plastic used.
Tech stocks have been climbing recently as key vendors such as Cisco and Lenovo report positive quarterly earnings and the U.S. economy offers glimpses of good...
Both Google and Oracle said Friday they did not pay any journalists or bloggers for coverage or commentary of their high-profile copyright infringement battle...
New threats like Shamoon, Flame, and Stuxnet represent a concerning evolution for malware attacks.
Robotic hands are getting increasingly smart, as this self-repairing, bomb-disarming one demonstrates.
Potentially simplifying the work for Web designers, the working group behind the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Web standard is extending the language so that it...
Digital breadcrumbs left by the iMac and iPad computers were key in tracking them down after a burglary.
Scientists bring back masers, could be more awesome than laser technology. (Sadly, "freaking maser beams" doesn't sound as cool.)
Apple is supposedly working on a new set-top box that works with all your devices; here's what that setup would need to do and cost to succeed.
The malicious code -- also called Disttrack -- may be part of a directed attack at energy companies, but could take down other systems in its wake.
TiVo subscribers who want four-channel DVR but don't want to pay for a huge hard drive now have a cheaper option.
Google's Chrome security team urges caution with some PDF files.
Microsoft's ARM tablets will be priced to attract consumers, says a Lenovo executive; the expected price tag bumps Apple's iPad while pricier Intel Surface models aim for business.
Google has quietly launched delta updates for Google Play apps, offering a more economical way to refresh apps.
We outline two ways to get started using Windows 8 ahead of the October 26th launch date.
Third-party developers must rework their apps to take advantage of faster refresh -- and comply with policies restricting the number of customers.
UPDATE: The company's improper controls in the country did not prevent unauthorized side funds, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
This week’s free game will see you fighting everything from demons to the forces of nature.
Facebook users will be able to broadcast live iPhone video on their Timelines using an app that Ustream will unveil on Thursday.
Amazon Web Services has announced four new features for Amazon RDS for Oracle, including the ability to run the database in a private cloud, the company said on...
Microsoft has resumed publishing applications on Marketplace, after sorting out a problem related to the certificates used to sign apps in the store, according...
Acer's CEO suggests its plans for Windows RT devices could change because of the pricing of Microsoft's Surface tablet.
Google made its Voice Search for Android available in 13 new languages, bringing the total to 42 languages and accents in 46 countries, the company said on...
Zynga games Draw Something and Zynga Poker will be available on Nokia's Asha Touch range of phones later this year, the Finnish phone maker said in a blog post...
The U.S Department of State has withdrawn plans to place a US$16.5 million order on Amazon.com for its Kindle Touch devices along with content management, and...
Changes to Twitter's upcoming API release are aimed at restricting consumer-focused client applications in favor of business-oriented ones, according to the...
A relatively new botnet has taken up the slack left by the shutdown in July of another major spamming botnet called Grum, according to the junk mail fighting...
Lenovo said on Thursday the company was not worried about Microsoft's new Surface tablet, with its CEO stating the PC maker is confident it provides better...
Efforts by cities and transit authorities to keep bus and train passengers connected have been lackluster, but 4G may change that.