Hasta La Gadget!

Looking for some entertainment on an upcoming cross-country flight? That might just be the only reasonable excuse for sitting through all 3 hours, 51 minutes and 25 seconds of Google’s recorded keynote. The I/O presentation, now available for playback on YouTube, covers many of the company’s announcements from yesterday, including All Access, Hangouts, a bounty of developer tools and that Galaxy S 4 running stock Jelly Bean that we weren’t expecting to see. All that and more can be yours if you click past the break.

Filed under: Internet, Google

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For years now, law enforcement has utilized social networks – Facebook in particular – as part of their evidence-gathering efforts, in some instances finding cause to arrest or ticket individuals who incriminate themselves with status updates. Such was perhaps the inspiration for Amnesty International’s “Trial by Timeline” app, which searches your Facebook accounts and shows you the various ways you’ve incriminated yourself and the punishments you would receive in different locations around the world.

The app was created by the New Zealand Amnesty International, and takes place outside of Facebook on its own website. After a brief introduction detailing the freedoms many of us enjoy and the lack of said freedoms in many places across this world, the app then requests permission to access your Facebook. After granting it, your social account will be analyzed, with your friends being “interrogated” and the things you’ve said in statuses, have liked, participated in, and listed potentially being used against you.

Once the “investigation” is over, a list of your crimes begin to scroll across the screen, followed by a list of your punishment and the various countries where you would be guilty. This is done alongside eye-catching graphics and a slowly scrolling animation. At the end of it all, you’re presented with a map of your sentencing, which displays in graph form the different types of punishments you would have received and for which statuses.

For example, I was personally found guilty – based on my Facebook information – of 4 crimes totaling 85 convictions in 67 different countries. For my crimes, my punishment graph shows 44 beatings, 24 instances of imprisonment, one lashing, a couple dozen spats of torture, and being killed nine times over again by extremists.

The purpose of the app is to draw attention to human rights issues across the world and bring attention to the lack of freedom in many locations (let’s hope you didn’t pop up with a violation or two in your own country). It has the added effect of bringing the dose of perspective we all need at times about the things we take for granted, and perhaps a small reminder to be careful what we post for the world the see.

Note: The app fails partway through when using Google Chrome, but is tested as working with Internet Explorer and Firefox.

SOURCE: Trial by Timeline

Facebook “Trial by Timeline” app shows instances of self-incrimination is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Sure, Mountain View may be bolstering its gaming efforts on mobile platforms and the web, but it’s seen fit to give Google+ Games the pink slip. After June 30th, the game section on the titan’s social network will go dark, but Page & Co. note that some titles will still be playable on other sites. Depending on developer support, folks who’ve turned hard-earned cash into in-game credits may still be able to spend unused coin during a grace period or when playing the same games through other websites. It’s not entirely clear why Google is sunsetting the portal, but it could certainly be part of its grand plan to focus on fewer things.

Filed under: Gaming, Internet, Google

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Source: Google

Media companies of all sorts enjoy tips from readers and others, some of them being small snippets of information that are more or less without consequence, and with others putting the tipster’s job – or worse – at stake. As such, privacy and anonymity are of the utmost importance, and conventional messaging methods often fall short of providing it. Because of this, The New Yorker has implemented StrongBox.

Strongbox was created by Kevin Poulsen and the late Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide earlier this year after intense legal pressure following his JSTOR hacking debacle. It is an extension of DeadDrop, the code of which will be made open source and released for other companies and individuals to use. Unlike traditional methods for submitting tips and information, Strongbox aims to keep the tipster anonymous, and makes it so the recipient won’t be able to determine from where the information comes.

The Strongbox system is both fairly simple and quite involved, with several steps happening between the sharing of the tip and access of the information on the receiving end. Tipsters have to access Tor in order to upload a file or message (which are encrypted using PGP), and will receive a randomly generated alias. The files are then shuttled off to a server that is isolated from the recipient’s network and checked regularly by those with access.

If information has been received, the recipient downloads it via a VPN-connected laptop onto a flash drive, then decrypts the files on a secondary laptop running a live CD that is wiped with every restart using a second thumb drive containing the decryption keys. From there, the recipient can then return a message if desired via Strongbox, and the tipster can receive it by accessing the system using the randomly-generated alias that was assigned.

Poulsen talks about the project in his own write up, detailing how it was initiated and the work that went into it, mixed it with a personal perspective on the man himself and the weeks leading up to his untimely passing days after a launch date for the project had been set.

SOURCE: The New Yorker

The New Yorker unveils Strongbox for anonymous tip sharing is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google’s new, unified Hangouts platform focuses heavily on its mobile apps, which give Android and iOS users a common platform for text and video chats. In theory, they’re the cure for the consistency problems Google’s messaging systems have faced for years. But are they the fixes we’ve all been waiting for, the all-encompassing solutions that have us dropping the likes of Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp? We gave Hangouts a test on both Android and iOS to find out — check our impressions after the break.

Filed under: Internet, Mobile, Google

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