General Gaming Article

Dutch Man Using NFC Tag Implanted in His Hand for Storing Bitcoins
Mozilla in Talks with Google to Renew Lucrative Search Deal
Windows 10’s OneDrive Changes Draw User Ire

Dutch Man Using NFC Tag Implanted in His Hand for Storing Bitcoins

Posted: 16 Nov 2014 07:31 PM PST

The NFC Type 2 implant can hold 880 bytes of data

When Apple recently embraced NFC (Near Field Communication), the move was seen as a major shot in the arm for the short-range wireless communication technology where mobile payments are concerned. That was, of course, a proverbial shot in an equally notional arm, but there are real people out there who are injecting their flesh-and-blood selves with actual NFC implants.

Heavily mustachioed Dutch Bitcoin entrepreneur Martijn Wismeijer is one such man. Around 10 days back, he had himself injected with with a couple of $99 implantable NFC chips — one for each hand. While one of the chips is being used for such prosaic tasks as sharing his contact details with others, he is using the other for "cold" storage of Bitcoins. The idea is that when stored somewhere safe offline, Bitcoins are less likely to get stolen. And what could be safer than the flesh between the index finger and thumb on one's hands?

Per its description on DangerousThings.com, where it is currently available for sale, the NTAG216 NFC tag currently lodged in Wismeijer's hands comes encased in a bioglass capsule, with the whole thing being shipped "pre-loaded in an EO gas sterilized injector assembly." However, this is definitely not for faint-hearted dilettantes, having never been tested or approved for implantation by any regulatory authority.

Image Credit: Amal Graafstra via Ars Technica

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Mozilla in Talks with Google to Renew Lucrative Search Deal

Posted: 16 Nov 2014 05:29 PM PST

Existing agreement expires later this month

They may be competitors in the browser market, but that hasn't stopped Google from being directly responsible for almost all of Mozilla's revenues — over 90 percent as of 2012 — for almost the entirety of the latter's existence. Mozilla lassoed this cash cow back in 2004 and has been busy milking it for tens to hundreds of millions of dollars annually in exchange for a wholesome feed of search engine-bound traffic originating from within Firefox. But with the all-important deal that makes Google the default search engine in Firefox and guarantees Mozilla steady stream of revenue set to expire later this month, the browser outfit must be a tad nervous.

However, this is definitely no time for jangly nerves as there is a new search deal to negotiate. According to The Register, the browser vendor is currently negotiating a fresh extension of the longstanding search relationship between the two companies, which they last renewed in 2011 with a three-year agreement worth $300 million annually. While a Mozilla spokesperson did confirm the negotiations, they refused to give the site any details, citing "confidentiality requirements."

Meanwhile, Mozilla chief technology officer Andreas Gal underlined the fact that this is just a business transaction. "This [search deal] doesn't couple us very closely to Google," Gal said. "Even though we have a business relationship with Google and friendly relationships on standards with Microsoft and Apple etc, you have to work with competitors and then compete with them. There's no conflict in our mind."

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Windows 10’s OneDrive Changes Draw User Ire

Posted: 16 Nov 2014 05:05 PM PST

Latest technical preview build changes the way OneDrive files get synced

The latest Windows 10 technical preview build rolled out this past Wednesday with a number of changes supposedly inspired by user feedback (or, as the the company put it on the Windows Blog, by user "awesomeness"). User feedback may very well have inspired most of the changes contained in Build 9879, but the removal of the "smart files" feature from OneDrive does not appear to be one of them, at least going by the amount of flak it has drawn over the past few days from Windows Insider Program members.

Introduced as part of Windows 8.1 when OneDrive was still called SkyDrive, smart files are placeholders that contain thumbnails and metadata of OnDrive files not available locally. This gives the user a panoptic view of their OneDrive file system, with all OneDrive files and folders, including even those with no local copies, being visible offline.

Despite its all too obvious usefulness, the feature has fallen out of favor with the Windows 10 development team and is nowhere to be found in the latest test build of the upcoming operating system. However, the move hasn't gone down too well with many Windows 10 Technical Preview users who want the company to bring the feature back post-haste.

In its defense, Microsoft says it was never "happy with how we built placeholders, and we got clear feedback that some customers were confused (for example, with files not being available when offline), and that some applications didn't work well with placeholders and that sync reliability was not where we needed it to be."

"The changes we made [in Windows 10 build 9879] are significant. We didn't just "turn off" placeholders – we're making fundamental improvements to how Sync works, focusing on reliability in all scenarios, bringing together OneDrive and OneDrive for Business in one sync engine, and making sure we have a model that can scale to unlimited storage," the company said in response to growing calls for placeholders to be returned, adding that this move is part of a lengthy improvement process that could eventually see the company bring back "key features of placeholders."

Image Credit: Windows Blog

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