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Submission + - Xbox One launch delayed in 8 countries (xbox.com)

Submitted by UnknowingFool
UnknowingFool writes: At E3, Microsoft announced plans to launch the Xbox One in 21 countries in November. Now MS has announced that launch in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland will be delayed to 2014. Countries that are still scheduled for November release are Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Spain, United Kingdom, United States and New Zealand. MS has not announced a new launch date only that it would be available "as soon as possible". It seems to me that consumers in Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, and Switzerland can just cross the border into a neighboring country and get the Xbox One if they wanted.

Submission + - Home Depot's "Bee-Friendly Plants" are Actually Toxic

Submitted by Taffykay
Taffykay writes: Home Depot and other big box stores market "bee-friendly" flowers and vegetable plants that are actually toxic to the pollinators. Friends of the Earth teamed up with the Pesticide Research Institute to survey stores throughout Washington D.C., Minneapolis and the San Francisco Bay area and discovered that not only are these plants laced with neonicotinoids — pesticides known to be harmful to bees — but they contained concentrations up to 200 times higher than agricultural crops.

Submission + - Moser Lamps Illuminate Homes Without Using Electricity

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Gibby Zobel reports at BBC on Alfredo Moser, a Brazilian mechanic, whose invention illuminates over one million homes during the day without electricity — using nothing more than plastic bottles filled with water and a tiny bit of bleach. So how does it work? Simple refraction of sunlight, explains Moser, as he fills an empty two-liter plastic bottle. "Add two capfuls of bleach to protect the water so it doesn't turn green [with algae]. The cleaner the bottle, the better," Moser adds. "You fix the bottle in with polyester resin. Even when it rains, the roof never leaks — not one drop." While A 50 Watt light bulb running for 14 hours a day for a year has a carbon footprint of nearly 200kg CO2, Moser lamps emit no CO2 and the plastic bottles are up-cycled in the local community, so no energy is needed to gather, shred, manufacture and ship new bottles. Following the Moser method, MyShelter started making the lamps in June 2011. They now train people to create and install the bottles, in order to earn a small income. The idea has really taken off in the Philippines, where a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line, and electricity is unusually expensive, with 140,000 homes now fitted with Moser lamps. The idea has also caught on in about 15 other countries, from India and Bangladesh, to Tanzania, Argentina and Fiji. "Alfredo Moser has changed the lives of a tremendous number of people, I think forever," says Illac Angelo Diaz. "Whether or not he gets the Nobel Prize, we want him to know that there are a great number of people who admire what he is doing."

Submission + - US Horse Registry Forced to Accept Cloned Horses by Judge (reuters.com)

Submitted by kdryer39
kdryer39 writes: U.S. District Court Judge Mary Lou Robinson said she will sign an order requiring the American Quarter Horse Association to begin allowing cloned animals to be placed on its registry, according to the organization. A jury last month ruled that the horse association violated anti-monopoly laws by banning cloned animals. The quarter horse association issues and maintains a pedigree registry of American quarter horses, a popular breed associated with cowboys riding on the range in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Submission + - NASA tests software algorithm that could precisely land future spacecraft (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: magine if you had developed, built and flown a spacecraft that successfully traversed the cosmos but upon landing, spun out of control or hit something that destroyed the ship. Such nightmare scenarios are exactly what NASA engineers are developing sophisticated software technology to avoid. NASA is currently testing one of the more important components of such software — the algorithms that incorporate the spacecraft's trajectory, speed and landing information to guide a ship to a safe arrival. The latest algorithm, known as Fuel Optimal Large Divert Guidance algorithm (G-FOLD) is being flight-tested in conjunction with Masten Space Systems at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California.

Submission + - Google Multiplies Bug Bounties By Factor of Five

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Google’s bug bounty program has been one of the more successful reward systems of its kind, and the company has regularly modified and expanded the program over the years to keep pace with what’s going on in the industry. Google also has increased the rewards it offers for certain kinds of vulnerabilities several times, and the company is doing it again, raising the lower reward level from $1,000 to $5,000.

This is the second major increase in rewards for vulnerability researchers from Google in the last couple of months. In June the company jacked up the amount of money that it pays for cross-site scripting vulnerabilities in Google Web properties to $7,500 and also raised the reward for authentication bypasses to that same level. Now, Google is giving researchers more incentive to find significant vulnerabilities in its Chrome browser.

Submission + - Our New News Overlords: RT - Vladimir Putin's Weapon In "The War Of Images" (spiegel.de)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: A photo of Edward Snowden, the whistleblower the United States wants to bring home to face charges, is projected onto the studio wall. Then there is a report on the detention camp at Guantanamo, which has hurt America's reputation. Russia Today uses the source material America supplies to its rivals untiringly and with relish. Even Washington's relatively minor peccadilloes don't escape notice. For instance, the show also includes a story about Gabonese dictator Ali Bongo Ondimba, whom US President Barack Obama supports. Many in the West are also interested in seeing critical coverage of the self-proclaimed top world power. Russia Today is already more successful than all other foreign broadcast stations available in major US cities, such as San Francisco, Chicago and New York. In Washington, 13 times as many people watch the Russian program as those that tune into Deutsche Welle, Germany's public international broadcaster. Two million Britons watch the Kremlin channel regularly. Its online presence is also more successful than those of all its competitors. What's more, in June, Russia Today broke a YouTube record by being the first TV station to get a billion views of its videos. Since 2005, the Russian government has increased the channel's annual budget more than tenfold, from $30 million (€22.6 million) to over $300 million. Russia Today's budget covers the salaries of 2,500 employees and contractors worldwide, 100 in Washington alone. And the channel has no budget cuts to fear now that Putin has issued a decree forbidding his finance minister from taking any such steps.

Submission + - LG Phone Giveaway Leaves 20 Injured (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by cstacy
cstacy writes: As a publicity stunt, LG attached vouchers for free smartphones (852$US) to 100 helium balloons for people to catch at a promotional event widely advertised on social media. Customers showed up with BB guns, knives on sticks, and other tools. With only about two dozen security guards, the frenzied crowd surged, the guns fired, the blades were wielded, and at the end of the day 20 people were injured; some had to be taken to the hospital.

A spokesman for LG was reportedly overheard to say, "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly..."

Submission + - Win XP Will Become a Big Fat Target for Hackers After End of Support

Submitted by SmartAboutThings
SmartAboutThings writes: While Microsoft tries desperately to increase the number of its Windows 8 sold copies, Windows XP still holds an impressive 37% market share of desktop operating systems. Redmond hopes that when it will stop support for Windows XP in April 2014, this will contribute to the increase of Windows 8 sales. But they might have another problem. Cybercriminals are very well-prepared for that moment, readying waves of Windows XP attacks that are bound to convert into nice amounts of money, as the average price on the black market for a Windows XP exploit is said to be from $50,000 to $150,000, according to security expert Jason Fossen. When Microsoft will no longer support Windows XP, this means that it will no longer provide security patches, thus leaving it wide open for hackers to bank bugs discovered between now and April 2014. Are you still on Windows XP?

Submission + - Helping Snowden Spill His Secrets (nytimes.com)

Submitted by mspohr
mspohr writes: Great article in the NYTimes Magazine section by Peter Maass. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-snowden.html

It goes into a lot of detail on how Snowden first attempted to contact Glenn Greenwald (who couldn't use secure communication at first) and then contacted Laura Poitras who was making a documentary about security. Lots of detail about their getting together, vetting each other, and personal threats to Greenwald and Poitras (as well as Snowden) as well as a good timeline of how events unfolded.
After reading this article I am more concerned than ever about the extent of US surveillance and the extent to which the USG will go to suppress information and intimidate whistle-blowers. Good to see that the NYTimes finally publish some real journalism on this subject.
Also... accompanying transcript of "Q&A — Edward Snowden" http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/snowden-maass-transcript.html

Submission + - Microsoft: Xbox One will no longer require Kinect to function (pcmag.com)

Submitted by UnknowingFool
UnknowingFool writes: Microsoft has reversed course on another aspect of the Xbox One. Though the console will come bundled with a Kinect sensor, the console will work without it. Critics were had suggested that an always-on video and audio sensor could be used to spy on users. This is the latest reversal from Microsoft since the E3 unveil.

Submission + - Genuine working personal "Jetpack" (sky.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A jetpack prototype developed in New Zealand can undergo manned test flights after aviation authorities gave its developers a flying permit.

Includes cool video.

Submission + - Phone Unlocking More Popular Than Ever Since Becoming Illegal (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by redletterdave
redletterdave writes: After the Copyright Office and Library of Congress removed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act exemption for unlocking cell phones in November, anyone unlocking a new cell phone or providing unlocking services after Jan. 26 could risk up to five years of jail time for each offense. And yet, in the seven months since cell phone unlocking became illegal in the U.S., thereâ(TM)s evidence that cell phone unlocking is more popular than ever among American consumers.

Submission + - Hacking a Smart Lightbulb System 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The phenomenon of the Internet of Things is positively influencing our lives by augmenting our spaces with intelligent and connected devices. Examples of these devices include lightbulbs, motion sensors, door locks, video cameras, thermostats, and power outlets. Nitesh Dhanjani conducted research on the Philips hue lighting system. Out of the box, the system comprises of wireless LED light bulbs and a wireless bridge. The light bulbs can be configured to any of 16 million colors. A vulnerability can be used by malware on an infected machine on the user's internal network to cause a sustained blackout. He released a paper that discusses top threats associated with the product in addition to a detailed analysis of how the system works.

Submission + - Obama Appoints Clapper to Lead NSA Reform Panel (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by sl4shd0rk
sl4shd0rk writes: In an inexplicably bizzare move, US President Barack Obama has appointed James Clapper to lead a promised reform panel to oversee NSA activities. Yes, this is the same Clapper who directly lied under oath when questioned about NSA data capturing on Americans. The troubling trend of appointing dubious people into high profile position seems to be a developing theme for Obama, as previously this year, he appointed former RIAA lawyers Tom Perrelli and Ian Gershengorn into Attorney General and Department of Justice positions within the US Government.

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