Spotify wants to help musicians sell stuff directly to fans

It’s no secret that some musicians aren’t the biggest fans of Spotify — or, in general, any music streaming service. Still, there’s also no denying that Spotify is often trying to find ways to put more money in artists’ pockets. Today, in partnership with BandPage, a startup which allows musicians to create customized fan pages, Spotify revealed it’s going to give music makers “powerful new ways” to offer all kinds of stuff to the people who love them the most. For example, thanks to this new BandPage integration, musicians can now sell things like VIP access, secret shows and more to Spotify listeners — something similar to what Beats Music is trying to do. The announcement comes as, earlier in 2014, Spotify opened up a merchandise store within its service, so this should certainly help act as yet another form of revenue stream for every artist.

Filed under: Misc, Internet

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Source: BusinessWire

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Scientists turn to hemp for cheap, fast-charging batteries

Forget lab-made materials like graphene — natural, old-fashioned hemp may be the ticket to our energy future. Researchers have demonstrated that you can make very efficient carbon electrodes simply by heating hemp bast fibers in a two-stage process. The resulting substance holds as much energy as graphene, but is much cheaper to make. You’re just using biological leftovers, after all. It’s much more tolerant of temperature extremes, too, and can survive anything from freezing conditions to a scorching 200F. And before you ask — this is hemp, not pot, so you’re not going to get a contact high just by using a battery.

It’s easy to see the potential impact. Graphene is already being tested for both regular batteries and supercapacitors, which charge up almost instantly and don’t degrade; it’s feasible that future electric cars and mobile devices could have affordable, hemp-based energy packs that top up within seconds. The technology might also be useful as a graphene substitute in other areas, such as solar cells and touchscreens. It’s not just a proof of concept, either — a small Canadian firm is working on scaling hemp electrode production, and US production is increasingly realistic as legal hemp production expands. If all goes well, you may eventually carry a phone powered by the same plant used to make your handbag.

[Image credit: AP Photo/P. Solomon Banda]

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Source: American Chemical Society

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Measure gas, light, humidity, and more with Sensordrone Bluetooth Sensor [DEAL OF DAY]

Today’s deal of the day is the Sensordrone, a portable Bluetooth device that can programmed to turn your smartphone into a gas leak detector, carbon monoxide detector, and more. Small enough to hook to your keys, there are nearly a dozen sensors inside. What’s more, it is also an open platform for other Bluetooth devices… Read more »

The post Measure gas, light, humidity, and more with Sensordrone Bluetooth Sensor [DEAL OF DAY] appeared first on AndroidGuys.

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Snowden: The NSA’s building Skynet to fight wars online

More than a year after Edward Snowden first spilled the beans on the NSA’s digital surveillance practices, you wouldn’t think that he had much left to reveal. In an interview with Wired, however, the former spy has revealed that the agency is building an autonomous online defense system that will, not only crush digital attacks on the US, but could also launch digital retaliations in the blink of an eye. The in-no-way-ominously-named MonsterMind is designed to scour metadata databases, analyzing the traffic patterns in a way that’d make malicious traffic stand out. Foreign attackers launching DDoS or malware attacks against financial institutions, infrastructure or government systems could then be identified, and blocked.

Snowden doesn’t know much beyond that — after all, it has been more than a year since he fled the US — but Wired raises the point that the only way to spot these spikes in anomalous traffic would be to scan the whole internet. That practice, however, would be in direct contravention of both the fourth amendment and the recent oversight report that Judge John Bates carried out about the NSA’s respect of privacy and civil liberties. We’d also like to wonder, that if MonsterMind is automatically launching online attacks against foreign powers, then surely it’d be violating the rule that only Congress can make a formal declaration of war. Still, the notion of a digital system that was clever enough to deliver a fast, efficient response to enemy attack… wait, have these guys not seen The Terminator?

Filed under: Internet

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Source: Wired

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Edward Snowden left behind clues so the NSA would understand his motives

So much for trying to dodge unwanted attention. In a wide-ranging interview with Wired, the enigmatic Edward Snowden claimed that he wanted the US government to know what he was up to when he started collecting all that sensitive information to release unto the world. His plan? To leave behind a trail of clues behind for NSA investigators so they’d be able to suss out the rationale behind his actions.

At first blush, the whole plan sounds a little crazy — if your intent is to pull back the curtain one on of the most pervasive surveillance operations in history, it seems just a bit naive to assume that the government being affected would be inclined to cut you some slack. Still, that’s exactly what Snowden went for. He hoped that by thoughtfully making off with some files and only “touching” others, investigators would be able to tell that he wasn’t a foreign spy poking around for sensitive data. Instead, he wanted to portray himself the same way he did after he first unleashed that load of information: as a whistleblower who only wanted to shine light on improper government practices.

Turns out, his moves weren’t just meant to cover himself; he also intended those bread crumbs to give the NSA a shot at rebuilding its security and changing codenames to minimize damage from his leaks. That, obviously, didn’t pan out. Those who were on his trail didn’t managed to pick up on his plan and instead announced to the masses that Snowden accessed 1.7 million files in total, a figure that he (and his lawyer) think is way overblown.

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Source: Wired (1), (2)

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