Bitcoin Blows Up, Exchange Rate Jumps Ten-Fold in Recent Weeks Are we witnessing the birth pangs of a new decentralized global currency? Or is Bitcoin merely an age-old investment mania repackaged for the digital age? Recent headlines are humming over the booming digital currency Bitcoin—it’s either the next big thing or the digital equivalent of Tulipomania. Either way, there’s no debating the fact Bitcoin’s on a wild ride. Bitcoin dates back to 2009, but it was the 2011 Bitcoin bubble that brought the cryptocurrency mainstream. Since January, the market’s been on a rocket ride. Bitcoin market price in USD as of 4/9/2013. What exactly are Bitcoins? A little perspective is key. Bitcoin’s diminutive size contributes directly to its massive volatility, which is problematic for a medium of exchange. As for whether Bitcoin will one day become a full-fledged currency, there’s no particular reason it couldn’t. But building confidence is itself a complicated algorithm, and the crowd a fickle thing. Image Credit: Steve Jurvetson/Flickr, Glen Cooper/Flickr
EU Commissioner Reveals He Will Simply Ignore Any Rejection Of ACTA By European Parliament Next Week The day before the EU's International Trade committee (INTA) recommended that the European Parliament should reject ACTA, the EU commissioner with responsibility for the treaty, Karel De Gucht, had given a speech to its members, trying to win them over. Although it was short, it turns out to be highly revealing about the European Commission's future ACTA strategy. Here's what he said: If you decide for a negative vote before the European Court rules, let me tell you that the Commission will nonetheless continue to pursue the current procedure before the Court, as we are entitled to do. A negative vote will not stop the proceedings before the Court of Justice. That is, whatever happens next week, the European Commission will wait for the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to rule on whether ACTA is compatible with EU law. If the Court questions the conformity of the agreement with the Treaties we will assess at that stage how this can be addressed. This is an extraordinary admission.
Astuce : Comment ne plus voir les vidéos publicitaires sur Youtube? {*style:<b>Nous nous sommes déjà tous posé la question. Mais comment supprimer définitivement ces vidéos publicitaires si perturbantes qui encombrent le début de nos vidéos sur Youtube? Dans cet article, nous vous expliquons la solution que nous avons testé et qui fonctionne redoutablement bien. </b>*} Après de nombreuses recherches et de nombreux tests d'applications, d'extensions et autres logiciels, nous nous sommes arrêtés sur un site internet relativement récent. Entrons donc dans le vif du sujet. , il vous suffit d'installer en 2 clics l'extension pubCatcher pour votre navigateur. Pour ce faire, il vous suffit de vous rendre sur C'est gratuit et ça fonctionne! Une fois sur pubcatcher.fr, le site detecte quel est votre navigateur. se présente via cette interface : Une fois que vous avez lancé le téléchargement, il ne vous reste plus qu'à installer l'extension et le tour est joué! Au revoir les pubs :)
Gotcha Turns Captcha Into Branded Pictures, Lets Website Owners Monetize Blocking Spammers Though very simple, ‘captcha’ technology has been very important for netizens to filter out spammers. Now an Indonesian startup called Gotcha.in is looking to jump into the market with its own version of captcha, which no longer requires site visitors to type given words, and giving website owners a way to make money in the process. Gotcha lets you verify yourself as a human by dragging and dropping pictures according to the given question (pictured below): How does Gotcha make its money? Co-founder Aditya Putra explains that the cost per click (CPC) and cost per thousand (CPM) ad process lets advertisers adjust their campaign products, while website owners will get commission from each ad impression. The idea for Aditya to develop his own version of captcha came when he was having spam problems when moderating his high school alumni website even after using a text-based captcha system. He argues that his gesture-based captcha can work better than the regular one.
European Parliament / The President : ACTA wrong solution to protect intellectual property Press Release Strasbourg - European Parliament President Martin Schulz made the following statement after the vote by the European Parliament to reject the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA): "The decision to reject ACTA was not taken lightly. It followed an intensive, inclusive and transparent debate with civil society, business organisations, national parliaments and many other stakeholders. The vote against ACTA was not one against the protection of intellectual property. The majority in the European Parliament is of the opinion that ACTA is a wrong solution, a sentiment shared by millions of citizens. ACTA was negotiated by a group of industrialised countries in a process that provoked complaints for its lack of transparency. The debate on ACTA demonstrated the existence of European public opinion that transcends national borders. For further information: europarl.president.press@europarl.europa.eu
Facebook : Comment se protéger des recruteurs ? 26 sept 2012 Sécuriser son compte Facebook devient de plus en plus difficile. Une situation à risque, surtout si un possible recruteur tombe sur une de vos photos de soirées un peu trop arrosée. Toujours soucieux de votre image de marque, Jobintree vous donne les bons plans pour écarter ces recruteurs trop curieux ! Me trouver sur Google ? Essaye toujours ! Créer un profil Facebook entrainera automatiquement son indexation sur Google. - En haut à droite sur votre page Facebook, cliquez sur l'onglet puis sur « Paramètres de confidentialité » - A côté de l’onglet « Publicités, applications et sites web », cliquez sur « Modifier les paramètres » - A côté de l’onglet « recherche publique », cliquez sur « Modifier les paramètres » - Décochez "Activer la recherche publique" Si tu n’es pas mon ami, tu ne verras rien ! Pour cela toujours dans les paramètres de confidentialité : - Sélectionnez "Amis" permet de limiter l'ensemble de vos status et photos publiés à votre entourage proche.
Frog Makes Star Trek's Voice-Controlled Computers A Reality Tea. Earl Grey. Hot. Those are iconic words to any Star Trek fan--it’s the preferred drink of Captain Picard, as ordered from the Enterprise’s always-listening computer system. They also represent a vision of voice-activated, ubiquitous computing interfaces that took hold in sci-fi books and film nearly 70 years ago. It’s taken a long time for our world to sync up to Picard’s, but with the advent of Kinect and voice recognition systems, it’s finally happening. Installed at Frog’s Austin offices, RoomE’s hardware is all off-the-shelf: two Kinects provide an array of voice and motion sensors, while a series of projectors are positioned to turn any surface into a screen. The Emotional Cost Of Personal Computing Star Trek and Doctorow aren’t the sole basis for RoomE--contemporaneously speaking, the social cost of head-down computing was also an important jumping-off point for developing a radically new interaction model. In truth, ubiquitous computing isn’t all that intuitive to humans.
Three Strikes Against ACTA In European Parliament Today Three heavyweight committees in the European Parliament gave their voting recommendations on ACTA today. All three gave the same recommendation: reject ACTA. This means that today, the European Parliament issued three very hard strikes against ACTA. What happened today was the first steps in a long chain that ends with the final vote in all of the European Parliament, which is the vote where ACTA ultimately lives or dies. The committee that “owns” the issue of ACTA, the so-called INTA committee (International Trade), is the committee giving the final recommendation to the European Parliament as a whole. They all voted to recommend rejection of ACTA, and therefore, effectively recommend that the European Parliament kill it dead. Still, it is a sign of changing times. Marielle Gallo. Amelia Andersdotter. The ACTA battle as a whole is far from over, though. Today, we had three important victories in individual skirmishes. We’re winning, but only because we’re fighting hard to win.
Big Brother cache son oeil sur le mobile Le mobile peut se retourner contre son propriétaire et devenir l’allié de voleurs technophiles. Des chercheurs du Naval Warfare Surface Center, un centre de recherche de la marine américaine, et de l’Université de l’Indiana l’ont démontré en développant un logiciel malveillant à des fins éducatives. Baptisé PlaceRaider, il permet de se faire une idée précise de l’intérieur d’une maison en prenant des clichés via un smartphone Android, à l’insu de son utilisateur, expliquent les universitaires. Le virus, qui s’installe en tâche de fond d’applications à l’apparence innocente, censées améliorer les capacités photographiques de l’appareil, éteint au passage le son du déclencheur pour plus de discrétion. Les clichés ainsi dérobés sont ensuite envoyés vers les serveurs des «pirates», où un programme se charge de modéliser en 3D l’intérieur de l’appartement de la victime. (man)
How Facebook Measured Gay Marriage Support With An Equals Sign This week, as the Supreme Court heard testimony regarding same-sex marriage, my Facebook profile was flooded with a single avatar--a pink-on-red equals sign promoted by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). Generally a curmudgeon about armchair activism, I was drawn the the strong visual (literally, as the eye is naturally drawn to red). I swapped mine out, too. But did it make a difference? Facebook’s avatar swaps by region. By comparing week-to-week trends, they saw that 120% more (or about 2.7 million) people changed their avatars than the week before. Those closest to 30 years old showed the greatest increase in updating. In other words, as a 30-year-old male, my stance was relatively predictable. Interestingly enough, Facebook figured this out without even looking at our individual avatars with some sort of picture-deducing algorithm. By pulling random HRC avatars from various profiles, Kenton Ngo was able to measure the JPEG compression of this very simple geometric image.
Open Standards consultation needs you! Do you represent an SME? Do you currently do business with government? Do you want to do business with government? On Tuesday, 24th April between 3:30pm and 5:00pm, we need you. Update Thursday 19th April: Eventbrite registration is now open On Tuesday, 24th April, between 3:30pm and 5:00pm (venue details can be found below), we are asking representatives of SMEs to come and talk to us about the Open Standards consultation. The consultation can be read in full online but we are aware that sometimes there just isn’t time to read pages of consultations. 1. A quick explanation of the key points of the consultation will be given at the beginning of the discussion so you will be equipped to contribute to the debate. If you cannot attend this event, please try to take the time to answer the most relevant questions in the online consultation as you do not have to answer all questions for your feedback to be taken into consideration.