nerdyH writes with the news that Intel has acquired OpenedHand, the developer of ‘Poky Linux’ and Matchbox. “The UK-based embedded Linux services team will join the Intel Open Source Technology Center, and will focus on Moblin development for mobile Internet devices and other mobile devices.” The article notes that Intel’s Moblin initiative had “failed to generate much interest” among developers when first announced earlier this year; this acquisition might help it catch the attention of more Linux developers.

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theodp writes “A few months ago, the NY Times’ Ron Lieber extolled the virtues of allowing utilities, phone, and credit card companies to pull whatever you owe from your bank account. Big mistake. Lieber’s readers fired back, telling him he was out of his mind for suggesting that they give billers unfettered access to their credit cards and bank accounts. Now Lieber goes through five of the glitches that can occur with any of the various methods of setting up automatic payments: ‘You can give each biller permission to pull the full amount from your bank account. You can use the online bill system at your bank to push payments out automatically each month. Or you can charge every bill to your credit card and give only that card company permission to pull money from your bank account when the credit card bill is due. Each of these methods has its potential shortcomings…’” What kind of payment automation do you use, and why?

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An anonymous reader writes “I am a American citizen with a masters in Computer Science from a 3rd tier college and 4 years of work experience under my belt. I would like to work somewhere abroad in Europe for a couple years before I get too settled in life but have no clue where to start. I only speak English but would love to learn a second language. What sort of opportunities are there for American citizens to work abroad? What countries offer the best opportunity to balance a challenging work environment with enough vacation to explore the rest of Europe in my free time? Any hassles I should know about?”

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Dynamoo writes “Legendary comedy writer and producer Geoffrey Perkins has died in a road accident in London. Perkins was until recently the head of comedy for BBC TV. Earlier in his career he produced the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy radio series, and was a writer, director, and producer of many comedy shows including Spitting Image, The Fast Show, and several others. He also invented the game of Mornington Crescent. The world will be a less joyful place without him.”

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fahrbot-bot tips a story of mad cow disease, a private meat packer that wants to test all of its beef for the disease, and the USDA, which controls access to the test kits and just won an appeals court ruling that the government has the authority to block testing above and beyond the 1% the agency performs. Creekstone Farms Premium Beef sought to test 100% of its beef, in order to reassure its export markets, especially Japan and South Korea, that its beef is safe. Large meat packers opposed any such private testing, because they feared they would be forced into 100% testing and would have to raise prices. The appeals court ruled, 2 to 1, that under a 1913 law, test kits that are used only after an animal is killed still constitute “diagnosis” and “treatment” — this for a disease that has no treatment and is 100% fatal — and therefore fall under the USDA’s authority to regulate.

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mathfeel passes along a video in which Mythbusters co-host Adam Savage recounts how credit card companies lawyered up to make sure the Discovery channel never, ever airs a segment on the flaws in RFID security. “Texas Instruments comes on [a scheduled conference call] along with chief legal counsel for American Express, Visa, Discover, and everybody else… They [Mythbusters producers] were way, way outgunned and they [lawyers] absolutely made it really clear to Discovery that they were not going to air this episode talking about how hackable this stuff was, and Discovery backed way down being a large corporation that depends upon the revenue of the advertisers. Now it’s on Discovery’s radar and they won’t let us go near it.”

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Anti-Globalism points out a story at the German magazine Spiegel profiling two small US companies that monitor terrorist networks online — IntelCenter and SITE Intelgroup. “[Founders of the two companies] Venzke and Devon are two of the most prominent ‘terror trackers’ worldwide. In the United States, and increasingly in other countries, the term refers to a community of people who spend their days analyzing traces that al-Qaida and affiliated organizations leave behind, especially on the Internet. The two Americans are essentially digital trackers in the age of globalized terrorism. IntelCenter and SITE Intelgroup are the companies that Venzke and Devon, respectively, have founded. They enjoy a strong reputation within the relatively small community of terrorism experts. Beyond that, though, they are virtually unknown…”

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JimLane writes “The Washington Post reports on the findings of Cyveillance, a company that ‘normally trawls the Internet for data on behalf of clients seeking open source information in advance of a corporate acquisition, an important executive hire, or brand awareness.’ Cyveillance decided ‘on a lark’ to test its methods by monitoring the Wikipedia biographies of Vice-Presidential prospects. The conclusion? If you’d been watching Wikipedia you might have gotten an advance tipoff of Friday’s announcement that McCain was selecting Sarah Palin. ‘At approximately 5 p.m. ET (Thursday), the company’s analysts noticed a spike in the editing traffic to Palin’s Wiki page, and that some of the same Wiki users appeared to be making changes to McCain’s page.’” The article goes on to say that watching Wikipedia pages for the Democratic VP hopefuls would have tipped Obama’s choice of Biden, as well. NPR also has coverage (audio).

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rjwoodhead writes “This past weekend, my entire family learned what it’s like to float in freefall aboard G-Force One (recently featured on the Mythbusters’ Moon Hoax show). Being science-lovers, we wanted to do some kind of original experiment. So we decided to test whether the Diet Coke & Mentos reaction was affected by the lack of bubble convection in microgravity. At the lnk you can find the story of how the experiment evolved and how we talked Space Adventures into letting us fool around with sticky and corrosive cola and candy inside their nice clean airplane, as well as high-speed video of the results.”

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Anti-Globalism suggests an article at Science News on the passing of Henri Cartan, one of the founding members of a strange and influential group of French mathematicians in the twentieth century. “In the 1930s, a group of young French mathematicians led an uprising that revolutionized mathematics. France had lost most of a generation in the First World War, so the emerging hotshots in mathematics had few elders to look up to. And when these radicals did look up, they didn’t like what they saw. The practice of mathematics at the time was dry, scattered and muddled, they believed, in need of reinvention and invigoration… Using the nom de plume Nicolas Bourbaki (after a dead Napoleonic general), they wrote a series of textbooks laying out mathematics the right way. Though the young mathematicians started out only intending to write a good textbook for analysis…, they ended up creating dozens of volumes which formed a manifesto for a new philosophy of mathematics. The last of the founders of Bourbaki, Henri Cartan, died August 13 at age 104… Two of his students won the Fields medal…, one won the Nobel Prize in physics and another won the economics Nobel.”

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