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Transportation

Submission + - Another Elon Musk Bet: Half Of All Cars Built In 2032 Will Be Electric (greencarreports.com)

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes: Ears perked up when Elon Musk made another bold statement he'd be "willing to bet on. " This time: That in 20 years, half of all new cars sold would be plug-in electric cars.

Believe him? The math looks a little fuzzy, and one research analyst is willing to take Musk up on on the bet. Winner, winner, chicken dinner?
EU

Submission + - Microsoft faces $7bn fine for violating EU deal (gigaom.com)

Submitted by
vu1986
vu1986 writes: "Microsoft has confessed to violating its browser choice agreement with European antitrust regulators, after they opened up a fresh investigation into the company’s behavior.

This is a big deal, not least because it means that the company could now face a fine of up to 10 percent of its annual turnover — $7 billion at last count.
http://gigaom.com/europe/microsoft-faces-7bn-fine-for-violating-eu-deal/"
XBox (Games)

Submission + - Microsoft Plans a Virtual Controller for Tablets and Smartphones (techpp.com)

Submitted by
SmartAboutThings
SmartAboutThings writes: "A new discovered patent shows that Microsoft might be interested in developing virtual controllers for tablets and smartphones. A while ago, it didn’t quite make sense why would Microsoft need such a piece of technology, but with the announcement of their Surface tablet, suddenly, things take a new perspective."
Botnet

Submission + - Dutch Police Takedown C&Cs Used by Grum Botnet (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: Dutch authorities have pulled the plug on two secondary servers used by the Grum botnet, a large botnet said to produce about 17% of the world's spam. According to researchers from FireEye, the backup C&C servers were located in the Netherlands, and once word of their existence was released, Dutch authorities quickly seized them.

While any C&C server takedown is a win, the impact may be minimal, as the two primary servers are fully active, and the datacenters hosting them are unresponsive to fully documented abuse reports.

That being said, FireEye's Atif Mushtaq noted that the botnet does has some weak spots, including the fact that Grum has no failback mechanism, has just a few IPs hardcoded into the binaries, and the botnet is divided into small segments, so even if some C&Cs are not taken down, part of botnet can still remain offline.

The removal of the C&C servers shines light on how quickly some law enforcement agencies work, given that proof of their existence is just over a week old.
Medicine

Submission + - The laser-powered bionic eye that gives 576-pixel grayscale vision to the blind (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "After a lot of theorizing, posturing, and non-human trials, it looks like bionic eye implants are finally hitting the market — first in Europe, and hopefully soon in the US. These implants can restore sight to completely blind patients — though only if the blindness is caused by a faulty retina, as in macular degeneration (which millions of old people suffer from), diabetic retinopathy, or other degenerative eye diseases. The first of these implants, Argus II developed by Second Sight, is already available in Europe. For around $115,000, you get a 4-hour operation to install an antenna behind your eye, and a special pair of camera-equipped glasses that send signals to the antenna. The second bionic eye implant, the Bio-Retina developed by Nano Retina, is a whole lot more exciting. The Bio-Retina costs less — around the $60,000 mark — and instead of an external camera, the 576-pixel vision-restoring sensor is actually placed inside the eye, on top of the retina. The operation only takes 30 minutes and can be performed under local anesthetic. Once installed, 576 electrodes on the back of the sensor implant themselves into your optic nerve. The best bit, though, is how the the sensor is powered: The Bio-Retina system comes with a standard pair of corrective lenses that are modified so that they can fire a near-infrared laser beam through your iris to the sensor at the back of your eye. On the sensor there is a photovoltaic cell that produces up to three milliwatts — not a lot, but more than enough."
Security

Submission + - 'Madi' Cyber Espionage Campaign in Middle East Uncovered (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by
DavidGilbert99
DavidGilbert99 writes: "Following the discovery of the highly-complex Flame virus in May, two security companies (Seculert and Kaspersky Lab) have uncovered a new cyber-espionage threat against the Middle East.

Madi, or Madhi, is an information-stealing trojan which is technically a lot simpler than Flame or Stuxnet but is specifically targeting people in critical infrastructure companies, financial services and government embassies, which are mainly located in Iran, Israel and Afghanistan.

The Madi creators use social engineering techniques to spread, embedding the malware in various documents including text files and PowerPoint presentations. It is unclear if the malware is state-sponsored or not, but it has already stolen several gigabytes of information and is still active."
Hardware

Submission + - Sony's thermal sheet good as paste for CPU cooling (geek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Sony has demonstrated a thermal sheet that it claims matches thermal paste in terms of cooling ability while beating it on life span. The key to the sheet is a combination of silicon and carbon fibers, to produce a thermal conductive layer that’s between 0.3 and 2mm thick.

In the demonstration, the same CPU was cooled by thermal paste and the thermal sheet side-by-side, with the paste keeping the processor at a steady 53 degrees Celsius. The sheet achieved a slightly better 50 degrees Celsius. The actual CPU used in the demonstration wasn’t identified.

Sony wants to get the thermal sheet used in servers and for projection units, but I can definitely see this being an option for typical PC builds, too. It's certainly going to be less messy and probably a lot cheaper than buying a tube of thermal paste.

Submission + - Samsung buys CSR mobile tech (bbc.com)

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: As the BBC and other outlets are reporting, Samsung has purchased prime bluetooth, wi-fi and GPRS location technology from the British firm, Cambridge Silicon Radio. This will give Samsung ownership of technology useful both in its products and its litigation.
Censorship

Submission + - NSA Whistleblower Drake: You're automatically suspicious until proven otherwise (networkworld.com)

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: RT had a very interesting interview with former NSA official turned whistleblower Thomas A. Drake, who said, "Security has effectively become the State religion; you don't question it. And if you question it, then your loyalty is questioned."

"Speaking truth of power is very dangerous in today's world," he added. The interviewer pointed out that investigative journalists are labeled as "terrorist helpers" for trying to reveal the truth, to which Drake said the government's take is "you go after the messenger because the last thing you want to do is deal with the message." The NSA, the government, "They object" to anyone who dares to "air dirty laundry" or show the skeletons in the closet. "Not only do they object to it, they decide to turn it into criminal activity."

Drake added, "Most people don't stand up to power because power wields a lot of power and power can do you in, or make life very difficult."
Security

Submission + - Modest Proposal For Stopping Hackers: Get Them Girlfriends (informationweek.com) 1

Submitted by kierny
kierny writes: Hackers/crackers who get arrested are typically male and young adults--if not minors. Why is that? According to research by online psychology expert Grainne Kirwan, it's because the typical hacker "ages out" once they get a girlfriend, job, kids, and other responsibilities that make it difficult to maintain their hacking/cracking/hacktivist lifecycle. Could that finding offer a way to help keep more young hacking enthusiasts out of jail?
Music

Submission + - Anti-piracy group fined for stealing music (bgr.com)

Submitted by zacharye
zacharye writes: Oh, the irony. A musicians’ rights group in the Netherlands was fined this week for stealing music from a client, using it without his permission and failing to pay royalties. Music royalty collection agency Buma/Stemra approached Dutch musician Melchior Rietveldt in 2006 and asked him to create a composition that would be used in an anti-piracy advertisement, which the group said would be shown exclusively at a local film festival. One year later, Rietveldt purchased a Harry Potter DVD only to find that his piece was being used on DVDs around the world without his permission...
Security

Submission + - AT&T Sponsors Zero-Day Hacking Contest For Kids (darkreading.com)

Submitted by yahoi
yahoi writes: AT&T has teamed up with an 11-year-old hacker and DefCon Kids to host a hacking contest during the second annual conference that runs in conjunction with the adult Def Con hacker show later this month in Las Vegas. The kid who finds the most zero-day bugs in mobile apps wins $1,000 and an IPad, courtesy of DefCon Kids. The contest was inspired by the mini-hacker's discovery last year of a whole new class of mobile app vulnerabilities.
China

Submission + - China third country to be hit by 'brown tide' (nature.com)

Submitted by
ananyo
ananyo writes: "The species of alga that causes 'brown tides' in the United States and South Africa is also to blame for massive blooms along China’s east coast on the Bohai Sea, researchers have found. The finding could be the first step to tackling the problem.
It is the fourth consecutive year the country has been hit by the bloom (Slashdot's story on the 2010 bloom here), with the situation worsening each time the bloom returns."
Linux

Submission + - Valve to Port Steam Games Service to Linux (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by asavin
asavin writes: Games developer Valve has started a Linux blog, in order to publicise work on an open source version of the Steam online game service.

"For some time, Gabe has been interested in the possibility of moving Steam and the Source game engine to Linux," the first blog post reads, explaining that Valve already used Linux on several of its servers and was used to supporting it.

"In 2011, based on the success of those efforts and conversations in the hallway, we decided to take the next step and form a new team."

Valve has chosen Ubuntu over other forms of Linux, so it can concentrate on one version of the operating system.
Space

Submission + - SkyCube: the world's first social space mission (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: Southern Stars Group LLC, the company responsible for the popular SkySafari apps for iOS, Android and Mac OS X, is thinking a little bigger with its next project. The publicly funded SkyCube is a miniature CubeSat satellite that will orbit the planet, transmitting low-resolution images of the Earth while broadcasting short messages from sponsors in the form of data pings. In short, it's the world's first social space mission.
The Internet

Submission + - The Is The First Ever Photo To Be Uploaded Online (gizmocrazed.com)

Submitted by Diggester
Diggester writes: You may thank Tim Berners-Lee for this picture, which has graced the walls of the internet for 20 years now, and, for those of you who don't know their tech history, Mr. Berners-Lee is better known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. The lovely group of ladies in the legendary photo are a comedy band with physics theme and supposedly great entertainment to Berners-Lee and his co-workers at CERN.

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