Patchw0rk F0g writes "Canada's outgoing CRTC head, Konrad von Finckenstein, has some choice words for his successor: Internet and wireless technology has disarmed federal regulators of their weapons to protect cultural identity. The retiring Finckenstein cites over-the-top broadcasting, new Internet technologies and (perhaps most importantly) the fact that the CRTC is antiquated and can't keep up with these emerging technologies as factors in the (still)-growing culture-loss of Canada to the U.S. 'We have now moved into an era where the consumer is in control, and where thanks to the Internet and mobile devices, you cannot control access any more,' he said in one of his last interviews."

flergum writes "Leonid Ksanfomaliti, an astronomer based at the Space Research Institute of Russia's Academy of Sciences, analyzed photographs taken by a Russian landing probe during 1982 and claims to have found signs of life. Ksanfomaliti says the Russian photographs depict objects resembling a 'disk,' a 'black flap' and a 'scorpion.'"

MrSeb writes "Researchers from Imperial College London and A*STAR in Singapore have shown off a terahertz antenna that's just 100 nanometers across — about 30,000 times smaller than existing terahertz antennae — and two orders of magnitude stronger than other T-ray beam-forming techniques. T-rays are a lot like EHF (extremely high frequency), which is used by millimeter wave scanners in airports, medical imaging, and emerging wireless networking standards like WiGig — but stronger, faster, and more detailed. Where EHF radiation can see through your clothes, T-rays can penetrate a few millimeters of skin. Furthermore, because atoms and molecules have a unique terahertz-range signature, T-ray scanners can detect toxic substances, bombs, drugs — or even cancerous tumors under your skin. Most importantly, though, due to the nano scale of these antennae, it's possible to create huge antennae arrays on a single silicon chip, meaning hand-held T-ray scanners are now a possibility. In the not so distant future, every household might have a Star Trek-like tricorder capable of detecting cancer or other diseases."

Last week Timothy Lord looked at the Tesla Model S. He also took a quick look at the CODA electric car. Like Tesla, CODA is based in California. Like Tesla, CODA is building purely electric, "plug-in" cars. But unlike Tesla, CODA is making a bland but practical sedan that can go up to 150 miles on a charge and costs about $37,000. That's not exactly a Kia-competitive price, even though Tim says it looks kind of like a Kia. But it's 100% electric and costs less than a Tesla -- really, hardly more than a Nissan Leaf. And it has a fully-usable back seat and a decent-sized trunk. And unlike the Nissan Leaf, it's made right here in the good old USA.

hypnosec writes "Google has decided to take punitive actions against those websites that flood the top of their web pages with ads due to which the visitors have to scroll down to finally view the relevant contents on the page. According to Google, this type of layouts annoys the users and thus the web search company will be penalizing those websites through search results. The company disclosed this on its blog. According to Google over the top ads is not good for user experience and thus such websites might not get high ranking on Google web search."

MojoKid writes "CPU design firm Venray Technology announced a new product design this week that it claims can deliver enormous performance benefits by combining CPU and DRAM on to a single piece of silicon. Venray's TOMI (Thread Optimized Multiprocessor) attempts to redefine the problem by building a very different type of microprocessor. The TOMI Borealis is built using the same transistor structures as conventional DRAM; the chip trades clock speed and performance for ultra-low low leakage. Its design is, by necessity, extremely simple. Not counting the cache, TOMI is a 22,000 transistor design. Instead of surrounding a CPU core with L2 and L3 cache, Venray inserted a CPU core directly into a DRAM design. A TOMI Borealis core connects eight TOMI cores to a 1Gbit DRAM with a total of 16 ICs per 2GB DIMM. This works out to a total of 128 processor cores per DIMM. That said, when your CPU has fewer transistors than an architecture that debuted in 1986, there is a good chance that you left a few things out--like an FPU, branch prediction, pipelining, or any form of speculative execution. Venray may have created a chip with power consumption an order of magnitude lower than anything ARM builds and more memory bandwidth than Intel's highest-end Xeons, but it's an ultra-specialized, ultra-lightweight core that trades 25 years of flexibility and performance for scads of memory bandwidth."

An anonymous reader writes "After two decades of leading the BlackBerry maker, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balisillie are stepping down from their roles as Co-CEOs at Canada's Research In Motion Limited. Thorsten Heins will now lead RIM as it attempts to beat the likes of Apple and Google."

Ihmhi writes "In the wake of the Megaupload takedown, Filesonic has elected to take preventative measures against a similar fate. The front page and all files now carry the following message: 'All sharing functionality on FileSonic is now disabled. Our service can only be used to upload and retrieve files that you have uploaded personally.' Whether or not this will actually deter the U.S. government from taking action remains to be seen."

angry tapir writes "A Virginia judge has sentenced Matthew David Howard Smith, a founder of the NinjaVideo.net website, to 14 months in prison, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday. Smith was indicted along with four others late last year. The DOJ charged that they illegally provided copyright-protected movies and TV programs for download from the NinjaVideo.net website. The site operated from February 2008 until authorities shut it down in June 2010."

First time accepted submitter QQBoss writes "The Air Force is not saying what caused the RQ-170 UAV to crash in Iran, but that Iran's claim to have forced it down is erroneous. The drone didn't come down and land gently as Iran had suggested it did. At least Iran got a good photo op, though the more interesting question is what technology will they be able to glean from what they did capture."

bs0d3 writes "Not so long ago, a legal video was taken down by repetitive DMCA requests to YouTube. In response, Megaupload filed a lawsuit against Universal Music. This past week, Megaupload was raided by U.S. authorities and forced offline, which is costing Megaupload millions of dollars in damage. Today; while employees are in U.S. custody, Megaupload has mysteriously dropped their lawsuit against Universal Music."

Walkingshark writes "Chris Dodd's recent statements complaining that congressmen who receive donations from the RIAA and MPAA should toe the line has spawned a firestorm of anger on the internet. Among the bits of fallout: a petition on the White Houses "We the People" site to investigate him, the RIAA, and the MPAA for bribery! This petition gained more than 5000 signatures in 24 hours and is still growing. When the petition reaches 25,000 signatures the White House is obligated to respond to it in an official capacity."

Hugh Pickens writes "A new startup is revolutionizing the way financial service companies meet the needs of an estimated 2.7 billion people worldwide with a mobile phone but no access to formal financial services by developing sophisticated modeling software that can look at usage data from consumers' mobile phones and make predictions about credit risk. 'There's a vast market of consumers in countries like Brazil, China, India, and the Philippines who want access to financial services like credit cards, loans, or insurance,' says Jonathan Hakim, chief executive of Cignifi. 'But while they may have jobs, and some have bank accounts, there really is no credit history for them.' The way you use your phone is a proxy for your lifestyle say the developers. 'We're looking at things like the length of calls, the time of day, and the location you make them from. Also things like whether you top up [a pre-paid SIM card] regularly. We want to see how stable the patterns are. When you look at that, you can create these behavioral clusters that give you information about users' appetite for new [financial] products, and their ability to repay a debt.' Currently operating in Brazil, Cignifi doesn't plan to deploy the technology in the US. in the near-term. 'The business opportunity is so much bigger in Brazil, India, China, and Mexico, where you have around half a billion people in those four markets alone who have a mobile phone but no banking relationship.'"

An anonymous reader writes "31-year-old Alexander Aan faces a maximum prison sentence of five years for posting 'God does not exist' on Facebook. The civil servant was attacked and beaten by an angry mob of dozens who entered his government office at the Dharmasraya Development Planning Board on Wednesday. The Indonesian man was taken into protective police custody Friday since he was afraid of further physical assault."

1sockchuck writes "A luxury homebuilder in Minnesota wants to build a data center that looks like a mansion, allowing the commercial building to fit into a residential neighborhood. The 'community-based data center' designed for FiberPop features a stone facade and sloped roof with dormers, along with an underground data hall."