Cooln.es(s)

U.S. government invalidates potent Rambus patent

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, who spearheaded efforts to block anti-piracy legislation SOPA in the U. S. , says free expression on the Internet will continue to roil authoritarian regimes and efforts at censorship

Welfare Drug Testing Bill Withdrawn After Amended To Include Testing Lawmakers

A Republican member of the Indiana General Assembly withdrew his bill to create a pilot program for drug testing welfare applicants Friday after one of his Democratic colleagues amended the measure to require drug testing for lawmakers "There was an amendment offered today that  …

Fixing Student Loans: Let’s Give Colleges Some ‘Skin in the Game’

By Alex J. Pollock Thursday, January 26, 2012 Filed under: Economic Policy , Government & Politics There are provocative parallels between student loans and the mortgages that created the disastrous housing bubble. In both cases, the government promoted plausible goals— higher education and home ownership—to excess, through the overexpansion of debt to levels beyond the repayment ability of a large percentage of borrowers

US CTO Aneesh Chopra stepping down

Top Blogs Top Blogs Top Blogs Top Blogs Top Blogs Top Blogs Top Blogs Featured Blogs & Columns News and conversation about the 2012 elections. The truth behind the rhetoric Dan Balz on politics WP Social Reader Hide this Most Popular Right Now Your Friends’ Most Recent Activity View More Activity The Post Most: Politics Most-viewed stories, videos and galleries int he past two hours Fact or Fiction? Track all the Campaign 2012 fact checks Campai

The Smartphone Wars: Mystery of the Android tablets

Natural laws have no pity. laz_quote #46 —Lazarus Long Some new market research says Android tablets have now taken 39% of global market share. There are reasons to suspect that Nook and Fire tablets account for a bit more than half of that, but we’re still left with something of a mystery to explain

Android Malware May Have Infected 5 Million Users

"A massive Android malware campaign may be responsible for duping as many as 5 million users into downloading the Android.Counterclan infection from the Google Android Market. The trojan collects the user's personal information, modifies the home page, and displays unwanted advertisements. It is packaged in 13 different applications, some of which have been on the store for at least a month. Several of the malicious apps are still available on th

Chapter 6 of the Rails Tutorial, 2nd Edition is out ("Modeling users")

« Back to blog This is an update on the progress of the Ruby on Rails Tutorial, 2nd Edition . A draft of Chapter 6 , " Modeling users ", is now available. It covers the creation of a full User model, including secure passwords via the awesome has_secure_password method (new as of Rails 3

Jekyll Bootstrap: The Quickest Way to Blog with Jekyll

New to blogging with Jekyll? Read the introduction . Convenient Blogging Without Jekyll-Bootstrap, you’d have to configure every single page of your blog. Jekyll-bootstrap takes you from 0 to hosted blog in 3 minutes, really! Free and Easy Hosting via GitHub Pages Jekyll-bootstrap is 100% compatible with deploying to GitHub

Obama Depicted as the Captain of a Ship of Slave Children in GOP Ad

Portraying our first African-American president as the captain of a slave ship in a political ad probably isn't the world's best idea. Mark Oxner, a Republican running for Congress in the Orlando area, did just that.

The problem with startups is that they can’t solve the big problems.

27 Friday Jan 2012 Posted by Justin Krause in Startups ≈ 17 Comments Big problems are problems for a reason – they are problems that are hard to solve. If there was an easy solution, one of the thousands of ambitious, smart engineers out there would have solved them by now. So instead of solving big problems, the smartest, most creative brains in Silicon Valley are building apps to help us organize group lunches, share funny photos, or aggregat

Show HN: I made a site that rings a bell every time you have a new customer

How Allan Scherr Hacked Around the First Computer Password

"If you're like most people, you're annoyed by passwords. So who's to blame? Who invented the computer password? They probably arrived at MIT in the mid-1960s, when researchers built a massive time-sharing computer called CTSS. Technology changes. But, then again, it doesn't, writes Bob McMillan. Twenty-five years after the fact, Allan Scherr, a Ph.D. researcher at MIT in the early '60s, came clean about the earliest documented case of password t

Fixes: Soap Operas With a Social Message

In countries around the world, TV serials are being used to deliver important social messages to millions of viewers.

Editorial: Voting and Racial History

An Alabama case shows why federal enforcement of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is still needed today.

Miliband: The Future of Capitalism

At Davos, some still want governments to just get out of the way. Others see the real need for governments to set the right rules.

Does California Need High-Speed Rail?

Some say the state can’t afford to build a rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco. But maybe it can’t afford not to.

Amazing Child, Typical Grown-Ups

Among the feature films presented at the somewhat lower-key 28th Sundance Film Festival, there was “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” and there was everything else.

Bloomberg Ex-C.E.O. May Lead Dow Jones

List of Pardons Included Many Tied to Power

Personal appeals from friends of Gov. Haley Barbour and Republican donors were common in the clemency applications of the felons who were pardoned in Mississippi.

N.Y. Airports Account for Half of All Flight Delays

Flight delays last year in the New York area were as bad as ever, and they rippled across the country.

Obama Cites Unlikely Book in Case for U.S. Renewal

Written by an adviser to Mitt Romney, “The World America Made” argues that the nation’s decline is a myth.

For a Moon Colony, Technology Is the Easy Part

Could America build a lunar base during an eight-year Newt Gingrich presidency, as Mr. Gingrich promised this week? The obstacles would lie in money and politics.

Five Years Later, a New Reality

In new photographs of the Lams, a Manhattan family he documented starting in 2003, Thomas Holton found a harder, lonelier and more cramped life on Ludlow Street.

Bits: Faking It to Make It: A Beautiful Try