As developers for tablets and smartphones we like to keep abreast of the latest mobile technology developments . This is a daily digest of mobile development and related technology news gathered from the BBC, the New York Times, New Scientist and the Globe and Mail to name a few. We scour the web for articles concerning, iPhone, iPad and android development, iOS and android operating systems as well as general articles on advances in mobile technology. We hope you find this useful and that it helps to keep you up to date with the latest technology developments.
How To Enable Dark Mode in OS X Yosemite Beta
There has been a lot of talk since WWDC 2014 about Dark Mode in OS X Yosemite. Dark Mode, for those who are not sure, allows you to turn the translucent menus, toolbars and window headers dark instead of the standard translucent look that is dominating the new look of OS X Yosemite. Why would […]
The post How To Enable Dark Mode in OS X Yosemite Beta appeared first on AlliOSNews.
Take Our Poll – Have You Installed OS X Yosemite Beta Yet?
[Editors Note: This post will remain at the top of AlliOSNews through 31 July. Newer news items will be directly below this post] Last Friday Apple released the public beta of OS X Yosemite, the upcoming version of their desktop Operating System which is due for general availability in September of this year. The Yosemite beta, […]
The post Take Our Poll – Have You Installed OS X Yosemite Beta Yet? appeared first on AlliOSNews.
Religion On Wikipedia Is A Recipe For Controversy As 'Edit Wars' Rage On
(RNS) When he was a student at Brigham Young University three years ago, Anthony Willey came across a Wikipedia page on Mormons. What he read filled him with frustration.
The article focused on polygamy, which seemed odd since Mormons officially outlawed the practice in 1890. “It didn’t say what Mormons believe or what made them unique,” Willey said. “I had the thought, ‘Who’s editing this stuff?’ and that got me hooked.”
Since editing that page and adding 50 percent to the content, Willey has made more than 8,000 edits to the editable online encyclopedia, mostly on articles related to Mormonism. His top edited pages include entries on Joseph Smith, Mormons, Mormonism, and Black people and Mormonism.
The problem confronting many Wikipedia editors is that religion elicits passion — and often, more than a little vitriol as believers and critics spar over facts, sources and context. For “Wikipedians” like Willey, trying to put a lid on the online hate speech that can be endemic to Wikipedia entries is a key part of their job.
Religion is among several of the top 100 altered topics on Wikipedia, according to a recent list published by Five Thirty Eight. Former President George W. Bush is the most contested entry, but Jesus (No. 5) and the Catholic Church (No. 7) fall closely behind.
Islam’s Prophet Muhammad (No. 35) and Pope John Paul II (No. 82) are included, as well as all manner of religions, like Jehovah’s Witnesses, Islam, Christianity and Scientology. And countries and topics with religious sensitivities are also controversial, including global warming and Israel.
Wikipedia is the fifth most-trafficked website on the Internet and its complex policies and regulations for editing — more than 50 of them — for editing the open-source site total nearly 150,000 words (thick enough for a book).
Any registered user can create an entry on Wikipedia, a collaboratively edited encyclopedia. Volunteers write Wikipedia’s 30 million articles in 287 languages.
Willey, 29, is now a Wikipedia administrator, which gives him more administrative privileges within the volunteer-driven website. The physics graduate is looking for full-time work, so his editing is only an occasional side project. And it’s only partly driven by his faith.
“I don’t edit as an agent of my religion,” Willey said. “I’m not going out of my way to promote a certain point of view. I am motivated by when people say things that aren’t true.”
It could be tempting for Wikipedia editors to portray their own faiths in the best light, or for people outside of the faith to paint a negative picture. In 2009, Wikipedia banned people using the Church of Scientology’s computers and some of Scientology’s critics from changing Wikipedia articles about Scientology. Wikipedia said members of the church and some critics engaged in “edit wars” by adding or removing complimentary or disparaging material.
“The worst casualties have been biographies of living people, where attempts have been repeatedly made to slant the article either towards or against the subject, depending on the point of view of the contributing editor,” a committee wrote in its decision to ban users.
Some users might go out of their way to portray a religion in a bad light. Several years ago, a user who went by the name Duke53 attempted to ensure Mormonism’s sacred undergarments got as much exposure as possible — it’s not a topic the church generally likes to discuss. He added images to as many articles as possible, including to Wikipedia articles such as “Clothing” and “Church etiquette,” regardless of whether the images were relevant.
When Willey edits an article, he says, he avoids inserting opinions and instead uses a trusted source, such as Richard Bushman, a respected emeritus historian at Columbia University.
“Even if I don’t agree with something in his book, for the purposes of editing Wikipedia, it keeps me honest,” Willey said. “It makes it very hard for people to argue with me because when it comes to editing something on Wikipedia, it all comes down to who has the best source. If I’m promoting the view of the best source, I’m always right.”
He will occasionally edit pages on other religions, such as Islam or Baha’i, or general articles on Christianity. “Nobody likes to be misrepresented,” he said.
Those who engage in outright hate speech are dealt with swiftly and blocked, but combating more subtle hate speech can be tricky.
“If somebody’s abiding by the rules, it’s hard to block a contributor who’s writing an article if they’re ambiguously promoting something,” Willey said.
Roger Nicholson was on the same path as Willey, editing Wikipedia pages related to Mormonism for two years to experience what the editing was like. His story, featured in the Deseret News, ended after he decided all the “edit wars” weren’t worth the headaches.
“It’s kind of like the Wild West of the Internet,” said Nicholson, who works with a group called FairMormon instead. “You could spend days and accomplish the change of a few sentences and that was it.”
Among the Wikipedians, a large percentage self-identify as atheists, followed by Christians, Muslims, Pastafarians (devotees of the farcical religion of the Flying Spaghetti Monster) and Jews.
Most of the edits to Wikipedia articles, especially ones on religion, are made by men, according to a 2011 study by the University of Minnesota. Women accounted for just 7 percent of the edits on religion articles.
John Carter, a 51-year-old office worker in St. Louis who is Catholic, will sometimes help edit more controversial pages, including ones on Scientology, Martin Luther and Wikipedia’s list of new religious movements.
Many of the smaller religious groups have editors who are deeply passionate about them, but some smaller religions that aren’t as appealing to Westerners (including Native American or Central Asian American traditions) are covered less well, Carter said.
“An enemy (or friend) of a ‘cult’ in Ecuador could find sources supporting their personal positions and the obscurity of the topic in English will make it hard or impossible for most of us to confirm or deny,” Carter said.
Carter, Willey and other editors discussed editing religion pages in a Q-and-A with Wikipedia last year where an editor with the user ID Sowlos said there was quite a bit of overlap between religion and mythology on the website.
“If a mythology is a sacred narrative or collection of traditional stories, then all religions include mythologies as integral constituents of what they are,” Sowlos wrote. “However, many people feel uneasy referring to stories from their respective religions as ‘mythology’ for fear that it will be interpreted as indicating a lack of factual integrity.”
Using Wikipedia’s rules, Carter says, religion can be difficult to independently verify, especially when there’s a range of opinions about what events took place and what they mean.
“No one has any real evidence that Jesus rose from the dead or not — how do you give the various opinions balanced coverage? And was he God, or a god, or something else?” Carter said. “Even nominal Christians disagree on those and several other significant topics.”
What REALLY Happens at Comic Con
San Diego’s Comic Con is the premier event for fans of all things comics and action-packed entertainment. Seeing as how there are quite a few fans of “entertaining” things, the crowds that descend on Comic Con are mammoth, creating interminable lines.
How bad are the Comic Con lines? So bad that the seasoned comic veterans DweebCast found themselves with enough time to record a surprisingly good (and hilarious) music video about “What REALLY Happens at Comic Con.”
Watch the video from DweebCast above.
Malware Can Hide in the Most Obvious Places
You never know when malware will bite. Even browsing an online restaurant menu can download malicious code, put there by hackers.
Much has been said that Target’s hackers accessed the giant’s records via its heating and cooling system. They’ve even infiltrated thermostats and printers among the “Internet of Things”.
It doesn’t help that swarms of third parties are routinely given access to corporate systems. A company relies upon software to control all sorts of things like A/C, heating, billing, graphics, health insurance providers, to name a few.
If just one of these systems can be busted into, the hacker can crack ‘em all. The extent of these leaky third parties is difficult to pinpoint, namely because of the confidential nature of the breach resolution process.
A New York Times online report points out that one security expert says that third party leaks may account for 70 percent of data breaches, and from the least suspected vendors, at that.
When the corporation’s software remotely connects to all those other things like the A/C, vending machines, etc., this is practically an invitation to hackers. Hackers love this “watering hole” type crime , especially when corporations use older systems like Windows XP.
Plus, many of the additional technological systems (such as videoconference equipment) often come with switched-off security settings. Once a hacker gets in, they own the castle.
The New York Times online report adds that nobody thinks to look in these places. Who’d ever think a thermostat could be a portal to cyber crime?
Security researchers were even able to breach circuit breakers of the heating and cooling supplier for a sports arena—for the Sochi Olympics.
One way to strengthen security seems too simple: Keep the networks for vending machines, heating and cooling, printers, etc., separate from the networks leading to H.R. data, credit card information and other critical information. Access to sensitive data should require super strong passwords and be set up with a set of security protocols that can detect suspicious activity.
Robert Siciliano is an Identity Theft Expert to AllClear ID. He is the author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Identity Was Stolen See him knock’em dead in this identity theft prevention video. Disclosures.
Alien World's Size Measured With Unprecedented Accuracy
Astronomers have made the best-ever measurement to date of the radius of an alien world.
Using observations by NASA’s Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes, researchers determined that the exoplanet Kepler-93b is 1.48 times the size of Earth, confirming its status as a super-Earth — a world slightly larger than our own — and allowing scientists to conclude that the planet is very likely composed of iron and rock.
“With Kepler and Spitzer, we’ve captured the most precise measurement to date of an alien planet’s size, which is critical for understanding these far-off worlds,” lead author Sarah Ballard, of the University of Washington in Seattle, said in a statement. “The measurement is so precise that it’s literally like being able to measure the height of a six-foot-tall person to within three-quarters of an inch — if that person were standing on Jupiter.” [The Strangest Alien Planets]
Kepler-93b, which lies about 300 light-years away, orbits a star that’s about 90 percent as wide and massive as the sun. The rocky planet circles its host at only one-sixth the distance Mercury orbits the sun, resulting in a likely surface temperature of around 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit (760 degrees Celsius).
Ballard and her team used a new observing technique developed for Spitzer, combined with frequent observations from Kepler, to confirm that Kepler-93b is indeed a planet rather than a false positive.
The two telescopes noted how much the star dimmed as the planet crossed its face. In the visible-light wavelengths observed by Kepler and the infrared wavelengths captured by Spitzer, the signal remained the same.
In addition, Kepler studied the stellar dimming caused by seismic waves within the star, making it one of the lowest-mass targets of astroseismic study. These measurements allowed for a more precise computation of the star’s radius, which in turn led to a more refined solution for the planet’s width, researchers said.
The combined data reveal that Kepler-93b boasts a diameter of approximately 11,700 miles (18,800 kilometers), with an error of only about 150 miles (240 km) — the approximate distance from Washington, D.C., to Philadelphia.
Combined with Kepler-93b’s previously computed mass of approximately 3.8 times that of Earth, the refined radius allowed scientists to calcuate that the planet’s density is nearly twice that of Earth. This implies that iron and rock dominate the composition of Kepler-93b, researchers said.
The planet’s temperature and proximity to its star make it unlikely that Kepler-93b could hold on to gases at its surface. However, based on its physical measurements, Ballard and her team found a 3 percent chance that it could contain an extended atmosphere.
“Ballard and her team have made a major scientific advance while demonstrating the power of Spitzer’s new approach to exoplanet observations,” said Michael Werner, Spitzer’s project scientist.
Spitzer may not be able to keep making such measurements for much longer. In May, a NASA senior review panel recommended ending the mission, which launched in 2003, unless additional funding can be found.
The research was published in the Astrophysical Journal.
Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
Gallery: A World of Kepler Planets
Gallery: The Infrared Universe Seen by Spitzer Telescope
10 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life
Copyright 2014 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Forget Selfies, Dronies Are The New Must-Take Travel Photo
Selfies are so last season.
Meet “dronies,” the cooler, more adventurous, amped-up sibling of the oft-maligned selfie.
A “dronie” is basically a selfie from the sky, taken not at arm’s length from your smartphone but from an uber-cool drone that flies above you, photographing not only your face, but your (hopefully) beautiful surroundings.
According to The Telegraph, “dronies” are best taken as short videos, rather than single images. “Dronies” are even being encouraged by the New Zealand Tourism Board, which is piloting drones on ski runs to photograph skiers and snowboarders.
The “dronies” are then sent to the skier or boarder’s phone, ready to be shared with friends, like the video below.
So yea. It’s a thing. See?
Are you ready to take a “dronie”?
New life for museum arcade machines
Arcade game enthusiasts rally round after a plea on a fans’ forum to help restore eight machines owned by the UK Computer Museum in Cambridge.
Apple May Be Spying On You Through Your iPhone
By Joseph Menn
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Personal data including text messages, contact lists and photos can be extracted from iPhones through previously unpublicized techniques by Apple Inc employees, the company acknowledged this week.
The same techniques to circumvent backup encryption could be used by law enforcement or others with access to the “trusted” computers to which the devices have been connected, according to the security expert who prompted Apple’s admission.
In a conference presentation this week, researcher Jonathan Zdziarski showed how the services take a surprising amount of data for what Apple now says are diagnostic services meant to help engineers.
Users are not notified that the services are running and cannot disable them, Zdziarski said. There is no way for iPhone users to know what computers have previously been granted trusted status via the backup process or block future connections.
“There’s no way to `unpair’ except to wipe your phone,” he said in a video demonstration he posted Friday showing what he could extract from an unlocked phone through a trusted computer.
As word spread about Zdziarski’s initial presentation at the Hackers on Planet Earth conference, some cited it as evidence of Apple collaboration with the National Security Agency.
Apple denied creating any “back doors” for intelligence agencies.
“We have designed iOS so that its diagnostic functions do not compromise user privacy and security, but still provides needed information to enterprise IT departments, developers and Apple for troubleshooting technical issues,” Apple said. “A user must have unlocked their device and agreed to trust another computer before that computer is able to access this limited diagnostic data.”
But Apple also posted its first descriptions of the tools on its own website, and Zdziarski and others who spoke with the company said they expected it to make at least some changes to the programs in the future.
Zdziarski said he did not believe that the services were aimed at spies. But he said that they extracted much more information than was needed, with too little disclosure.
Security industry analyst Rich Mogull said Zdziarski’s work was overhyped but technically accurate.
“They are collecting more than they should be, and the only way to get it is to compromise security,” said Mogull, chief executive officer of Securosis.
Mogull also agreed with Zdziarski that since the tools exist, law enforcement will use them in cases where the desktop computers of targeted individuals can be confiscated, hacked or reached via their employers.
“They’ll take advantage of every legal tool that they have and maybe more,” Mogull said of government investigators.
Asked if Apple had used the tools to fulfill law enforcement requests, Apple did not immediately respond.
For all the attention to the previously unknown tools and other occasional bugs, Apple’s phones are widely considered more secure than those using Google Inc’s rival Android operating system, in part because Google does not have the power to send software fixes directly to those devices.
(Reporting by Joseph Menn; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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