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Submission + - Yahoo (yes, Yahoo) releases a new iOS browser

Submitted by markjhood2003
markjhood2003 writes: Fresh on the heels of Slashdot's discussion of the lack of browser choice on mobile devices comes the announcement of Yahoo's new web browser Axis. According to VentureBeat, the browser runs on iPad and iPhone as a separate standalone browser and as an extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, with support for Android and Windows Phone coming soon. It actually appears to bring some innovation to mobile search, displaying results and queries on the same page for more productive navigation between the two.
Facebook

Submission + - Inside a Facebook Botnet (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Curious about how some unlikely pages were rapidly racking up thousands of new followers, Dan Tynan set out to find out how easy it was to get a botnet to do his bidding. He bought 100 fake Facebook accounts for $20. Then, with a $50 piece of software called Codename:Like, he quickly added some new likers to his Facebook Fan page. One of the companies that caught Tynan's attention for getting over 7,000 followers in 2 days was Hey Dude Skin Care, which told Tynan that it 'fell victim to an outside social media agency. Hey Dude's expectation was that said agency would identify new and relevant followers for the brand.'"

Submission + - Autonomous Sound Responsive High Brightness LED Modules (saikoled.com)

Submitted by
Gibbs-Duhem
Gibbs-Duhem writes: "This is a cool little art project on Kickstarter where a bunch of individual high power LED lights are souped up with built in audio analysis hardware and an onboard microphone. At scale, these modules put out over 250 lumens a piece, and can be assembled into enormous arrays in any shape or size for under $50 per module for a modern version of the color organs built in analog back in the day. By the same artists who put together quite a few other cool audio oriented high power LED lighting systems, and other sophisticated lights for use with artwork previously covered on Slashdot. As usual, schematics, design information, and board layouts are available for the project."
Botnet

Submission + - Four years' jail for Bredolab botnet author (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes: "The creator of the Bredolab malware has received a four-year prison sentence in Armenia for using his botnet to launch DDoS attacks that damaged multiple computer systems owned by private individuals and organizations. G. Avanesov was sentenced by the Court of First Instance of Armenia's Arabkir and Kanaker-Zeytun administrative districts for offenses under Part 3 of the Article 253 of the country's Criminal Code — intentionally causing damage to a computer system with severe consequences."
Government

Submission + - Obama To Agencies: Optimize Web Content For Mobile (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
CWmike
CWmike writes: "President Barack Obama has ordered all major government agencies to make two key services available on mobile phones within a year, in an effort to embrace a growing trend toward Web surfing on mobile devices. Obama, in a directive issued Wednesday, also ordered federal agencies to create websites to report on their mobile progress. The websites are due within 90 days. Innovators in the private sector and the government have used the Internet and powerful computers to improve customer service, but 'it is time for the federal government to do more,' Obama said in the memo. 'For far too long, the American people have been forced to navigate a labyrinth of information across different government programs in order to find the services they need.'"
Patents

Submission + - Apple and Samsung ordered talks fail - Trial date set (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
Fluffeh
Fluffeh writes: "Apple and Samsung just can't come to an agreement, even when the two CEO's are court ordered to hash it out over a two day period. US Judge Judy Koh had ordered the sit down prior to court proceedings between the two giants, but the talks resulted in nothing more than each side confirming it's position. Although Apple CEO Tim Cook said "I've always hated litigation and I continue to hate it" he also said "if we could get to some kind of arrangement where we'd be assured [they are inventing their own products] and get a fair settlement on the stuff that's occurred." Perhaps Tim is worried that Samsung is still the primary component supplier for mobile products, including the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch or perhaps Apple has bitten off more than it really wants to chew with the litigation between the two getting to truly epic and global proportions."
Medicine

Submission + - Supreme Court Orders Do-Over on Key Software Patents (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
Fluffeh
Fluffeh writes: "It seems that the US Supreme Court has an itch it just can't scratch. A patent granted to the Ultramercial company covers the concept of allowing users to watch a pre-roll advertisement as an alternative to paying for premium content and the company is demanding fees from the likes of Hulu and YouTube. Another company called WildTangent is however is challenging Ultramercial's "invention" as merely an abstract idea not eligible for patent protection. Add to this a recent ruling by the Supreme Court restricting patents — albeit on medical diagnostic techniques and you get into a bit of a pickle. The Supreme Court is now sending the Ultramercial case back to the lower courts for another round, which doesn't mean that the court disagrees with the original ruling, but rather that it thinks it is a patent case that is relevant to the situation and they want to re-examine it under this new light."
Moon

Submission + - First autonomous rover on the moon by Part-Time Scientists (scientificamerican.com)

Submitted by ziegenberg
ziegenberg writes: The lunar rover "Asimov" developed by the Part-Time Scientists (http://ptscientists.com), due to land in 2014, will be the first autonomously navigated rover on the Moon. It's autonomous navigation system is a major technological leap. While the Russian Moon rovers Lunokhod 1 and 2 in the early 70s were fully controlled from Earth, today’s Mars rovers like NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover "Opportunity", which has been tirelessly exploring the Red Planet since 2004, are autonomous. However, Opportunity requires nearly three minutes to process a pair of images — a delay that causes it to move at an average speed of just 1 cm/sec or less. New developments by the technology partnership between the DLR Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics (http://www.dlr.de/rm/en/) and the PTS have created, for the first time, an autonomous navigation system for a rover that has the capacity to process multiple images per second. The technology boosts a stereo camera that Asimov will use to calculate its own motion, generate a 2.5-dimensional environmental model, evaluate the site and determine a collision-free path — all in real time.

Submission + - RIAA Claims Losses In Excess Of World's Wealth (businessinsider.com) 6

Submitted by bonch
bonch writes: Prior to setting with Limewire earlier this month, the RIAA had pressed for a $72 trillion verdict, greater than the $60 trillion of combined wealth on Earth. The RIAA arrived at the figure by multiplying $150,000 for each download of 11,000 songs, a figure federal Judge Kimba Wood called "absurd". No word on how much of the money would have gone back to the artists.
Technology

Submission + - Nanotech Solar Cell Minimizes Cost, Toxic Impact (phys.org)

Submitted by bonch
bonch writes: Researches at Northwestern University have developed an inexpensive solar cell intended to solve the problems of current solar cell designs, such as high cost, low efficiency, and toxic production materials. Based on the Grätzel cell, the new cell uses millions of light-absorbing nanoparticles and delivers the highest conversion efficiency reported for a dye-sensitized solar cell.
Your Rights Online

Submission + - RIAA claims it is owed $72 trillion dollars by LimeWire (nme.com)

Submitted by internerdj
internerdj writes: "The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) estimates that filesharing website LimeWire owes it over $72 trillion dollars (£46 trillion) in damages." NME reports this is 120% of the combined estimated wealth of the entire planet.
 
Cellphones

Submission + - How Accelerometers Work In Smartphones (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by
redletterdave
redletterdave writes: "Despite the accelerometer's regular use for games, videos, and other smartphone activities, few people know how the gadget actually works, or how engineers were able to cramp such a small but important piece of technology, which can detect motion in three directions, into a millimeters-thick smartphone. That's where Bill Hammack comes in. Hammack, a.k.a. "The Engineer Guy," is a professor at the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, but the 50-year-old college professor also has a second life on YouTube, breaking down how various components of everyday technology work, from digital cameras to fiber optic cables. On Tuesday, Hammack released his newest video, which describes not only how accelerometers work, but also how engineers translate the three-dimensional technology to work inside a tiny chip."
Crime

Submission + - Ten Cops Can't Recover Police Chief's Son's iPhone 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The Oakland Tribune reports that when Berkeley police Chief Michael Meehan's son's cell phone was stolen from a school locker in January, ten police officers were sent to track down the stolen iPhone, with some working overtime at taxpayer expense. "If your cell phone was stolen or my cell phone was stolen, I don't think any officer would be investigating it," says Michael Sherman, vice chairman of the Berkeley Police Review Commission, a city watchdog group. "They have more important things to do. We have crime in the streets." But the kicker is that even with all those cops swarming around looking for an iphone equipped with the Find My iPhone tracking software, police were not able to locate the phone. "If 10 cops who know a neighborhood can't find an iPhone that's broadcasting its location, that shouldn't give you a lot of confidence in your own vigilante recovery of a stolen iProduct," writes Alexis Madrigal. "Just saying. Consider this a PSA: just buy a new phone.""
Linux

Submission + - Linux Mint 13 (Maya) Has Arrived (linuxmint.com)

Submitted by OceanMan7
OceanMan7 writes: Linux Mint 13 (Maya) has just ben released. DVDs come in 4 flavors — MATE with and without* codecs and Cinnamon with and without* codecs. MATE 1.2 is LinuxMint's community-powered extension of Gnome 2. Cinnamon 1.4 is built upon Gnome 3 but has a more traditional look and feel. As with Ubuntu 12.04, upon which LinuxMint draws, all editions come with Long-term support (LTS) until April, 2017. Maya is available from all the usual sites: as well as by torrent. (* codec-free versions comply with U.S. and Japanese IP regulations.)
Medicine

Submission + - Skin Cells Turned into Heart Muscle for First Time

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: By taking skin cells and turning them into stem cells, a technique that is already well known, researchers were able to generate beating heart cells — a medical first.

"We have shown that it's possible to take skin cells from an elderly patient with advanced heart failure and end up with his own beating cells in a laboratory dish that are healthy and young — the equivalent to the stage of his heart cells when he was just born," Lior Gepstein, study author and professor of medicine at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Israel.
Government

Submission + - Anonymous releases 1.7GB of hacked DOJ emails (anonnews.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Today we are releaseing 1.7GB of data that used to belong to the United States Bureau of Justice, until now. Within the booty you may find lots of shiny things such as internal emails, and the entire database dump. We Lulzed as they took the website down after being owned, clearly showing they were scared of what inevitably happened.
Networking

Submission + - Groups launch $200M gigabit-per-second broadband project (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: An Ohio startup company has raised $200 million to fund gigabit-per-second broadband projects in six university communities across the U.S., the company announced Wednesday. Gigabit Squared will work with the University Community Next Generation Innovation Project (Gig.U), a coalition of 30 universities focused on improved broadband, to select six communities in which to build the ultra-fast broadband networks, they said. The two organizations will select winning communities between November and the first quarter of 2013, Mark Ansboury, president of Gigabit Squared, said. The new project comes at an important time, when many commercial broadband providers have stopped deploying next-generation networks, said Blair Levin, executive director of Gig.U and lead author of the FCC's 2010 national broadband plan.
The Military

Submission + - Interview With Bioethicist Jonathan Moreno About Military Neuroscience (vice.com)

Submitted by
pigrabbitbear
pigrabbitbear writes: "Who’s driving a lot of neuro research? The military. Much of it is health related, like figuring out how to make prosthetics work more seamlessly and helping diagnose brain injuries. But the military’s involvement highlights the basic ethical quandary of neurological development: When our brains pretty much define who we are, what happens when you start adding tech in there? And what happens when you take it away?

Jonathan Moreno is quite possibly the top bioethicist in the country, and along with Michael Tennison, recently penned a fascinating essay on the role and ethics of using neuroscience for national security. He also recently updated his book Mind Wars, a seminal look into the military’s work with the brain. In this interview he discusses brain implants, drones, and what will happen when military tech hits the civilian world."
Piracy

Submission + - Kim Dotcom Demands Access To Seized Property To Defend Himself (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by
redletterdave
redletterdave writes: "On Wednesday, Kim "Dotcom" Schmitz and his legal team visited the High Court in Auckland, New Zealand, to demand access to the data stored on his computers and hard drives that were confiscated during the police raid, and also requested a judicial review of the general legality of the search warrants police used to raid his mansion. Dotcom's lawyer, Paul Davison, argued that his client needs the data for a few reasons: To mount a "proper defense" case, to fight possibly being extradited to the U.S., and also to show that "excessive police action" was used during the raid. Dotcom could prove this in court because the entire raid was recorded by CCTV data, which is stored on Dotcom's confiscated computers. Even though the FBI demanded Dotcom turn over the passwords for Megaupload's encrypted data, he refuses to give up any passwords until he can regain access to his seized property."
Chrome

Submission + - Hackers Uses Six Separate Bugs to Break Chrome's Security Model (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Browsers are a really nice target for attackers of all stripes and skill levels. But, unless you're a savant or have just landed here from the future, you may want to take a pass on going after Google Chrome, judging by the insane level of effort and skill that an anonymous security researcher had to deploy in order to compromise Chrome during the company's Pwnium contest in March.

The researcher who received one of two $60,000 rewards handed out by Google for full sandbox escapes and compromises of Chrome during the contest used the alias Pinkie Pie. At the time that his accomplishment was announced during the CanSecWest conference in March, Google officials did not specify exactly how the researcher had been able to break Chrome's many layers of security, but just said that he had used multiple bugs to do it.

Now, Google security researchers have revealed the method and techniques that Pinkie Pie used, and if anything, the whole story is even more impressive than observers had thought at the time of the contest. Pinkie Pie used a total of six vulnerabilities in various components of Chrome, chaining them together in a long sequence that eventually enabled him to break out of the Chrome sandbox and completely compromise the browser.

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