#The Obama administration just effectively ended one of the NSA's most controversial programs Starting at 5 p m. ET on June 1,
the bulk collection of American phone records by the National security agency will no longer be permitted legally, Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian reports.
since October 2001 that US phone calls weren't collected en masse from America's three largest telecommunications providers.
for another 90-day extension of the order needed to continue the collection of domestic phone records. e did not file an application for reauthorization,
will reportedly continue to work to keep the program and other elements of the Patriot act intact.
which would ban bulk collection of data by the NSA but renew an expiring provision permitting the FBI to access business records
The section, known as the business-records provision, gave intelligence agencies authorization to seek communications data if he records are relevant to an ongoing foreign intelligence investigation. n appeals court ruled earlier this month that most of the NSA surveillance
S. House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority leader Mitch Mcconnell (R-KY)( R) address a news conference in Washington, on July 30, 2011.
Mcconnell, whose bill would continue all phone-records collection by the FBI and NSA, and the rest of the Senate will meet again on May 31.
print shop frequented by lawyers, banks, and real estate firms. Their speciality was in helping lawyers with what legal types call"discovery,
At that point, discovery was done by literally printing out every possible relevant e-mail for attorneys to sift through.
That print shop got tapped to print the emails for the landmark 2001 Microsoft antitrust case. Wilson recalls printing out piles and piles of Bill gates'and Steve Ballmer's emails
boxing them up, putting them on trucks, and delivering them to the courthouse, where as many as 300 attorneys would be searching them for anything relevant to the case."
"This is ridiculous,"Wilson recalls saying to Yang not long after.""Let's start a company.""The result was Logikcull,
000 per gigabyte.""ediscovery sucks, "says Wilson.""It's an insanely inefficient process that would drive any normal human insane."
"The way you pay for ediscovery software from legacy vendors like HP Autonomy and Symantec involves a lot of nickel-and-diming, according to Wilson.
First, you pay for the ediscovery software itself. Then, you pay for having your data processed. Then, you pay to keep your files in the system until the case is resolved
which can take a while, since some lawsuits can take years. Even once those documents are in the ediscovery software,
it usually goes into"really s---y databases, "Wilson says. You can search by keyword,
or by column heading, but you can't do a lot of deep searching. And usually you could only access the database from a Windows computer running an outdated version of Internet explorer,
if you could get to it from the browser at all. Logikcull pricing starts at a flat $2, 000 monthly fee for four cases,
with 50 gigabytes of uploading per month included and $30/GB after that. That may seem expensive,
but remember that it's still a lot less than that $18, 000-per-gigabyte average from other vendors.
Wilson says it can save law firms as much as 80%on their litigation costs. And the e-mails themselves get tagged
Wikimedia Commonsbill Gates gives his deposition during the landmark United states v. Microsoft case. Logikcull got its start as Logik. com,
Logik. com found itself tapped for cases ranging from the sub-prime mortgage crisis to white-collar crime.
Charging $2, 500 per gigabyte, Logik. com took in $4. 5 million in revenue and $3 million in profit every year between 2004 and 2009 with only seven employees.
When the Great Recession hit Logik. com found that a lot of its business dried up. And so, Wilson and team reinvested most of that profit in a second version of the product, without the need for venture financing:
Logikcull, released in 2013. Even without outside investment, Logikcull was able to hire the experts it needed to develop a browser-based, computer-plus-smartphone software solution,
and was able to build its own data center to support it. Two months ago, in March 2015, Logikcull took in its first-ever round of venture capital financing:
A $4. 5 million seed round led by Storm Ventures. Logikcull was making money, Wilson says,
but wanted the invesment so it could afford to take more risks with the business.
Today, Logikcull has just over 20 employees.""You go from survivor mode to growth mode,
what it will be like to use the iphone as a remote control for your entire home (AAPL) The first home appliances that will work with Homekit, Apple's platform for connecting all of the devices in your home,
Now that people can actually buy Homekit-certified smart light bulbs and door locks that you can control with your iphone,
Apple has added a new support page with a few new details about what you can do with Homekit
including what role the Apple TV will play in it. Here are a few interesting things we learned:
-You'll need an Apple TV if you want to control your home appliances when you're not at home.
Apple's support page says you'll need a third-generation or later Apple TV running software 7. 0 or after.
As long as you're signed into the same Apple ID account on your iphone and Apple TV,
If you want to be able to turn on all of the Homekit devices in a given room,
There's an option to group together gadgets in some third party apps for certain Homekit accessories. It's important to remember that this option might not be available for all Homekit devices, though.
#This US military-funded security company can tell who you are just from the way you touch your phone Passwords could soon be going the way of the dodo as digital security gets more sophisticated.
The company provides a layer of so-called biometric security that lets banks tell who you are just from the way you type,
move your mouse or touch your phone screen. Behaviosec tracks these movements and maps them against past interactions to see
or pressing a phone screen harder the company will let the bank know it thinks someone else is trying to get into your bank account.
such as mobile bank transfers. CEO Neil Costigan told Business Insider:""You're quite consistent in reflex stuff.
"Behaviosec's tech plugs directly into banks apps and websites, so even if you've never downloaded it you may have used it.
Costigan says it's"very similar to a credit card. You're off at your local Tesco
and trying to buy a Rolls-royce. It just looks a bit dodgy.""The eight year old Swedish company grew out of a piece of university research
and was funded initially by DARPA, the US defence programme that funds technology with potential military use.
Behaviosec is used now by"pretty much all"the banks in the Nordics, according to Costigan, with millions of customers using it.
Behaviosec recently raised#5 million (£3. 65 million/$5. 5 million) from investors including UK fund Octopus Ventures
It has signed also a deal with A high Street bank""although Costigan won't say who. While it is focusing on the finance sector for now,
Behaviosec is hoping its smart tech will be adopted in other industries eventually. Costigan says it would help with things like paywalling
and software licensing as people wouldn't be able to share passwords a
#All of Germany just signed up to this micropayment app that people think is the future of news on the web Blendle,
the Dutch startup that allows users to pay small micropayments for individual newspaper and magazine articles rather than having to sign up to digital subscriptions,
has signed just up all the major German national newspapers to its service. Not just some of them all of them.
Blendle users register and enter their credit-card details just once. The service creates a type of digital newsstand that serves a feed of stories about the topics users are interested in,
trending stories, and those that have been curated by their friends or celebrities and public figures.
When users click on a headline, the app or website takes a small payment, with revenue split roughly 30/70 between Blendle and the publisher.
And if readers don't like an article they can get an instant refund if they provide feedback on what wasn't to their liking.
The pricing is set by the individual publisher, but articles cost 20 cents each on average.
Blendle tells us publishers will be adding its micropayments service on top of their existing digital paywall strategies, giving readers choice on
and Alexander Klöpping says it has attracted more than 300,000 users to date. It says Blendle has generated more revenue for Dutch publishers where most of its users are based than Apple.
Back in March The New york times (which is also an investor in Blendle, alongside the German publisher Axel Springer), The Washington post,
and The Wall street journal signed up to experiment using the platform. All signs are pointing toward Blendle's expansion.
With the ubiquity of free content online, publishers have been experimenting with different ways to make money from their online properties.
and make more money through advertising revenue share deals. On Monday, Apple introduced a News app that competes with the likes of Flipboard
"In May, Facebook partnered with nine major news publishers to launch Facebook Instant, a feature that allows the publishers to publish directly to Facebook's mobile app.
And in April Google created a#150 million fund for journalism in Europe, partnering with eight European publishers to invest in training
and research n
#Intel is spending $125 million to solve one of the biggest problems in Silicon valley (INTC) Intel is opening its wallet to solve one of the biggest problems in Silicon valley:
gender and racial imbalance in the workforce. On Tuesday, Intel's investment arm, Intel Capital, launched a new $125 million fund intended to boost women and minority representation in tech.
The fund, called Intel Diversity Fund, will invest in startups run by women and underrepresented minorities.
At launch, it's already committed to invest in and share its network and expertise with four startups, including Brit+Co, Carecloud, Mark One,
and Venali. ur goal with this new fund is to meaningfully support a technology startup workforce more reflective of society,
and ultimately to benefit Intel and the broader economy through its success,""Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said in a statement.
Today's announcement is part of a bigger plan by Intel, revealed in January called Diversity in Technology initiative.
The plan is to spend $300 million to help train more female engineers and computer scientists,
and to achieve full representation of women and underrepresented minorities in the US workforce by 2020.
Most notably, Ellen Pao had accused her former employer, the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, of gender discrimination, a case
According to a Babson College report, only 15%of VC-funded companies in the US have a female executive,
while a mere 3%of total VC money goes to companies with a woman CEO.
'Israel unleashed one of the world's most sophisticated cyber weapons on the Iran talks The computers in three luxury hotels that hosted high-stakes negotiations on Iran's nuclear program were infected with an improved version of one
and borrowed so heavily from Duqu that it'could not have been created by anyone without access to the original Duqu source code,"according to the Journal and Kaspersky's report.
extract files, track any activity that occurs on the infected Windows PC or laptop,"Jeff Bardin,
"This includes the capturing of user ids, passwords, and sensitive files.""Bardian added:""Once the code is installed,
Duqu allows for the complete takeover of the target Windows devices.""In 2012, Kasperskpy told The New york times that that it believed that Duqu was created by the same state-sponsored program as the Stuxnet and Flame viruses,
Flame is a massive program that leaves a back door (i e.,, Trojan) on computers through which it sucks information from networks by actions Bardin described as functions of Duqu.
Chris Weber, cofounder of Casaba Security told Business Insider that the improved version of Duqu,
Nuclear talks were held at the Beau-Rivage Palace in Lausanne, Switzerland, the Intercontinental in Geneva, the Palais Coburg in Vienna, the Hotel President Wilson in Geneva, the Hotel Bayerischer Hof in Munich
#It's no longer all about ads ere's how publishers, streaming sites, and apps are using subscriptions to boost revenues
While ads account for the bulk of revenue at most publishers, music streaming sites, and on apps, the subscription model is gaining traction.
The business model allows digital media companies to provide a premium experience that offers more than the basic, often ad-supported service level.
Subscriptions are enjoying a new prominence as a revenue model for digital content and apps.
Internet companies are exploiting the opportunity to boost ARPU (average revenue per user), helped along by recurring payments from a subscriber base.
In this new and exclusive report from BI Intelligence we look at how prominent players in five separate categories have tried to build a subscription-based revenue stream alongside ad-based businesses:
the categories are video, music, news publishing, social networks/messaging, and dating apps. Access The Full Report And Data sets By Signing Up For A Trial Membership Here are some of the key takeaways:
Most companies operate on a"freemium model.""Subscriptions typically operate alongside an advertising business. Success in freemium boils down to offering a core audience exclusive value that can only be accessed beyond a paywall.
The key is to target the most loyal audiences, and sell them on an expanded offering bundles of features
The proportion of paying subscribers within the total user base varies considerably across digital media industries.
and opportunities in dialing up the percentage of subscribers and subscription revenue. Here are some of the proportions of subscribers in apps'user bases:
Spotify (25%),Whatsapp (21%),Pandora (5%),Match Group (5%),The New york times (3), %and Linkedin (2%).The report is full of charts, data,
and case studies that can easily be downloaded and put to use. In full, the report: Analyzes the most common subscription-based digital media revenue models Explores the drivers that allows some subscription
or freemium business models to succeed Explains the revenue mix and business opportunities in several key digital media industries Outlines companies that have succeeded with subscription-based business model n
#Dropbox found a brilliant way to add a lot of new users by killing email attachments On Wednesday,
Dropbox released a new feature called ile requests, allowing users to request and receive files from non-Dropbox users.
The goal is to make sharing big files even easier, and possibly replace email attachments.
But the service is designed cleverly in a way that also introduce Dropbox to a ton of new users.
The way it works is pretty simple: users send out file requests by email, and the recipient can upload files up to 2gb in size to a designated Dropbox folder,
without having to log in. For example, teachers can collect homework assignments all in one go in a single folder,
from both existing and non-Dropbox users, forgoing the need to go through multiple email attachments or physical copies.
This could potentially replace email attachments, as it offers bigger file limits and a more convenient way to upload files.
But the bigger play here is to introduce Dropbox to a much larger set of people.
Through one person file request multiple people, some of whom may not be Dropbox users yet,
will get to try Dropbox. Dropbox calls it a any-to-onesharing model, where a single file request attracts a group users.
That means the new file request feature could play an even bigger role for Dropbox once it becomes available for Dropbox for Business in the next few weeks.
It available for Dropbox Basic and Pro users from today. Dropbox is counting on Dropbox for Business,
its premier service targeting business organizations, to drive major growth. Considering file uploads and sharing is far more common among business users than consumers,
Dropbox could tap into a huge untapped market whol get introduced to its service for the first time through a simple file request.
Dropbox is by far the most popular file sync and sharing service, with over 300 million users worldwide.
It has over 100,000 business users, including MIT, Under Armour, and Hyatt
#Scientists made a major breakthrough in 3d printed electronics that will keep you from ever drinking spoiled milk again Researchers have used 3d printing to develop a sensor that can be placed inside a carton of milk to detect
if the milk is fit for drinking and to alert if the milk has gone off."
"The idea being trialed is a"smart cap"a device to be placed inside a milk carton to sense the quality of the milk inside.
This represents a breakthrough in terms of three dimensional printing of electronic circuits. Polymers are poor conductors of electricity
and 3d printing is based primarily around a set range of plastics. To overcome this, Controlled Environments reports that the research group designed materials based around polymers and wax.
This created hollow tubes suitable for the addition of a liquid metal. For initial studies, silver was used to fill the tubes via nano-injection.
Various experiments found the shape and design of the material affected how it performed and its suitability in different applications.
For instance thin wires functioned well as resistors; whereas flat plates made for useful capacitors. The basis of this led to the production of the sensor cap for milk cartons.
The sensor functioned by detecting an increase in level of electrical signal as would be accompanied by a growth in bacterial population.
When this occurs a signal can be sent wirelessly. Sung-Yueh Wuuc Berkeley engineers created a mart capusing 3d printed plastic with embedded electronics to wirelessly monitor the freshness of milk.
The sensor was tested on various cartons of milk, some held at room temperature and some in a refrigerator.
It was found that the cartons kept at room temperature produced the electrical signal far earlier
which was consistent with bacterial growth (or the rate at which milk goes off). The potential for such technology goes beyond milk cartons.
As lead researcher Liwei Lin notes:""One day, people may simply download 3d printing files from the Internet with customized shapes and colors and print out useful devices at home."
"The study was conducted at UC Berkeley (the Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center) together with Taiwan's National Chiao tung University.
The research has been published in the journal Microsystems & Nanoengineering, in an article headed"3d printed microelectronics for integrated circuitry and passive wireless sensors. e
#Deutsche bank: the China meltdown now looks a lot like the dotcom bubble China's stock markets look like they could be heading for free fall again,
after collapsing around 30%in just four weeks starting in Mid-june. That collapse was compared to the Wall street Crash of 1929, with Bloomberg pointing out the similarity in the trajectory of the fall.
But Deutsche bank says a better analogy for China's meltdown is the bursting of the dotcom bubble in 2000.
Deutsche Bankthe bursting of the dotcom bubble in 2000 mirrors the current stock market meltdown in China.
While the fall mirrors the Wall street Crash Deutsche bank says the rise is closer to the surge of the NASDAQ in the late'90s.
And, as with the bursting of the dotcom bubble, it's the rise that's key to understanding the undoing of China's stock markets.
The Shanghai Composite rose over 150%between mid-2014 and its peak in Mid-june 2015.
The surge was down to huge numbers of ordinary Chinese people putting money into shares 66 million new retail investment accounts have been opened so far this year, according to Deutsche bank.
Many of these investors also used borrowed money for so-called"leveraged investing.""Deutsche bank say around 10%of the value of Chinese stocks are held by leveraged investors.
REUTERS/China Dailyif the stock is a dog it will eventually come back down to earth.
The flow of all this cash into stock markets pushed up prices because demand was greater than supply.
But the rising prices didn't mirror improving company performance and prices are now crashing because many businesses are overvalued.
All the borrowed money tied up in shares is exacerbating the slump. People are being forced to sell to pay back the money rather than potentially wait the meltdown out
and hope prices pick up again before cashing out. While all this may explain the initial slump
Deutsche bank's Jim Reid says separately on Tuesday that the return of nosediving stocks on Monday looks"pretty random"the mechanics of the market are screwed
so that it's hard to tell what's going on anymore. That means that while we can look to history for useful comparisons for China's meltdown,
they're unlikely to be much good in helping us predict what's going to happen next p
#A paper microscope that costs only 50 cents can detect malaria from just a drop of blood
and it could revolutionize medicine TED Conference/Flickrmanu Prakash with the Foldscope, a microscope made almost entirely of paper.
For a whole lot of people, especially those in developing countries, science and with it, medicine isn readily available to the majority of citizens.
But Manu Prakash wants to change that. Prakash, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford, is the proprietor of"frugal science,
"a term he coined to explain the movement toward building cheap versions of high tech tools.
His endeavor aims to make medical devices both affordable and available to the masses. The way Prakash sees it
labs don need the most expensive equipment out there in order to reach profound breakthroughs.""Today people look at these extraordinary labs
and forget that in the 1800s they could still do the exact same science, "he told The New york times
. So in 2014 he created a paper microscope, aptly named the Foldscope, that costs only 50 cents to produce.
Though microscopes might seem like a mundane piece of equipment, they remain an integral part of detecting disease
and analyzing blood samples. Yet despite their necessity, theye expensive. A quality microscope can cost hundreds of dollars,
plus even more to keep it maintained. For labs in developing countries, these costs often lie outside their meager budgets.
Even for labs that can afford the luxury of a high-powered microscope properly trained technicians come at a steep price as well.
TEDTHE Foldscope is color-coded for easy assembly. Prakash Foldscope is made almost entirely of paper.
It color-coded and perforated to guide users in construction, but features no written instructions, making it universally understandable.
All of the microscope non-paper parts, such as its lens and battery, are built in to the sheet,
keeping assembly as simple as possible. The higher resolution version of the microscope magnifies up to 2, 100 times and costs around $1,
while the lower resolution costs around 50 cents. The entire microscope is small enough to fit in a pocket
and will still work. Practically, the Foldscope can help doctors correctly diagnose deadly diseases such as malaria, schistosomiasis,
and African sleeping sickness. In a TED Talk, Prakash explains that identifying these infections is as simple as adding dye to a single drop of blood.
With cheap, easy-to-use microscopes, any lab technician can learn to detect malaria, potentially revolutionizing healthcare in areas where these diseases run rampant.
While the generic Foldscope serves as a one-size-fits-all microscope, Prakash and his team have developed also specialized versions,
such as a malaria-centric one, that make identifying diseases even easier. TEDTHE completed Foldscope fits any standard microscrope slide.
Prakash vision of"frugal science"didn stop at the microscope, however. He built a $5 microfluidic chemistry lab that is able to test
and analyze substances, like soil or snake venom, using a hand crank in place of electricity.
Recently, Prakash also developed a computer than runs on water droplets. The droplets are suspended in a magnetic field
and move certain distances as the field rotates, effectively serving as a computer clock, an essential piece of any working computer.
More than just helping combat disease Prakash also hopes his"frugal science"movement will make science education and research accessible across the globe.
Prakash keeps an unusual map in his room to remind him of his mission. On it, Africa is almost nonexistent,
India is tiny, and China only a little larger. The map bases the size of each country on the amount of scientific research it produces, The New york times reported.
It serves as a daily reminder to Prakash of the inequality many countries face when it comes to resources and technology.
And with that kind of motivation and ingenuity there no telling how far Prakash and frugal science can reach l
which is an online biohacking store, has simplified the process of hacking the body by selling kits packed with the necessary supplies
For the last two years, Amal Graafstra, the founder and CEO of the Seattle-based company, has sold implantable devices including near-field communication (NFC) chips, radio-frequency identification chips (RFID), biomagnets,
How exactly do these implants give you more freedom? For now, these devices primarily act as identifiers,
Dangerous Things/Facebookimplanting a RFID tag only takes a few minutes and is a relatively painless procedure.
For example, Graafstra, who has an RFID chip implanted in each hand, has stopped almost completely using keys and passwords.
His chips enable him to do things like lock and unlock doors and log into his computer and password-secured websites.
He even rigged his motorcycle and car so that he could start it without a key.
If you have enabled a NFC phone like most major Android phones, you can also unlock it with an implanted device just by holding it.
Dangerous Thingsbiohacking kits range in price from about $40 to $100. This RFID kit comes with everything needed to perform an implant.
Eventually, implantable devices could even be tied to your bank account so that you can make transactions, Graafstra said.
Prices for products range from $39 for a basic RFID/NFC glass tag to $99 for a NFC injection kit and take only a few minutes to implant into the hands.
It's worth mentioning that there is no battery or power supply in these devices; they're powered by the readers you bring them close to.
While each implant comes with a manuals on how to implant the device, Graafstra recommends not performing the procedure yourself.
Dangerous Thingsthe implantable devices are typically smaller than the width of your finger. Instead, the company has partnered with professional piercers
and body modifiers across the country to create a network of individuals it recommends to use for installation.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved RFID chips for human implantation in 2004.
However, the legality of a piercer performing the procedure varies depending on your location. Some states have specific laws about
Dangerous Thingsgraafstra has a RFID tag in each of his hands. e have been picking up things like rocks
these implants are designed perfectly. They are not this obtuse, destructive, difficult thing to deal with.
and biohacking is one way to accomplish this, he said. To date, Dangerous Things has sold several thousand implants
and the client base has expanded to a much more diverse group of people, Graafstra said.
and demonstrates how the RFID tag implanted in his hand can be used to unlock a smart doorlock.
biohacking in general, because people look at the body and because we know so much more about it now,
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