Hasta La Gadget!

Marlene Pinnock, the 51-year-old great-grandmother seen in a video being punched by a California Highway Patrol officer, has settled her case against the agency.

Pinnock will receive $1.5 million, according to KTLA. In addition, the Associated Press reports that Officer Daniel Andrew will resign.

The July 1 video recorded by a passerby along the I-10 on-ramp near La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles shows Pinnock attempting to walk away from Andrew.

“He grabbed me, he threw me down, he started beating me, he beat me,” Pinnock said when when later describing the incident to the AP. “I felt like he was trying to kill me, beat me to death.”

Earlier this month, a CHP investigator said that Pinnock resisted arrest by pushing Andrew, who was trying to keep her away from oncoming traffic.

“When this incident occurred, I promised that I would look into it and vowed a swift resolution,” CHP Commissioner Joe Farrow said in a statement cited by KTLA. “Today, we have worked constructively to reach a settlement agreement that is satisfactory to all parties involved.”

Farrow added that the agreement “establishes a special needs trust for Ms. Pinnock to provide a mechanism for her long-term care.”

Went ahead and downloaded the newest, freshest version of iOS for that new iPhone 6? Then immediately regret doing so? Apple’s released a statement saying that users who have lost carrier service or Touch ID functionality should reinstall the initial…

More (slightly) bad security news for Apple, on what’s already been a pretty bad day for iOS: Craig Hockenberry, one of the devs behind Twitterific, has revealed in a blog post that in-app browsers are capable of logging your keyboard.

Read more…

Some time last week, we did mention the very real possibility of seeing Final Fantasy IV released on the PC platform, and here we are one week later with the answer to that question. Final Fantasy IV has indeed been released for the PC via Steam, and Square Enix wants to trumpet the fact that this particular version will be accompanied by full Steam Trading Card and Achievements support, which ought to make fans carve open a wide smile.

For those who can remember playing Final Fantasy IV on the SNES in the early 1990s, having seen the pioneering of the Active Time Battle System, surely a walk down memory lane is a more than welcome experience. One would be able to check out the memorable cast which comprises of Cecil, Kain Highwind and Rosa.

This Steam version will feature platform-specific features that does not feature in the 2006 re-release, and for $15.99 a pop, you will be able to enjoy a visual feast in the opening cinematics thanks to the folks over at Visual Works, quicker browsing through the monster bestiary and other game records, better looking graphics, achievements and of course, Steam Trading Cards. Looks like Final Fantasy fans will be canceling their weekend outings and appointments with this release on Steam.

Final Fantasy IV Now On Steam

, original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

“There’s an app for that”, and this is the mantra that modern day smartphone and tablet proponents continue to tout. However, what if there was an app out there which would be able to inform would-be thieves of the best places when it comes to stealing? That might sound out of this world, but apparently it is not too difficult to pull off, where one would need to gather publicly available data based on disposable income, crime levels and problems that are reported in a district. This points to the optimum place that one can head to, where you target an area of high income, low reported crime and broken streetlights. Thankfully, the existence of this app is for a good reason, as it picked up top spot in the “safety” category at an Amsterdam hackathon some years ago.

The app, known as Makkie Klauwe (which is “easy pickings” in Amsterdam slang) was the brainchild of Bram Fritz, who was a student who had a mind to “provoke discussion on the role of open data in our society”. Thankfully, this app was never released on a large scale, but it pointed to the very real fact that data is a double edged sword, and depending on the motives of the person, it could be used for good as well as bad.

Do you think that companies should be collecting and converging various information together for a good cause? One thing’s for sure, we would still have a mind in making sure that security of the collected data is paramount – at least from the user’s point of view.

Collected Data Is A Double Edged Sword

, original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.