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Intel

Submission + - Silicon odometer might soon boost your CPU (extremetech.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Manufacturers like Intel and AMD criminally underclock their processors because they lack a way to accurately measure the aging of MOSFET transistors. A new silicon odometer, which uses a pair of ring oscillators to measure the "beat" of transistors, should enables on-die monitoring of transistor aging, and thus allows for much higher clock speeds.

Submission + - Controlling Light with an Optical Event Horizon (aps.org)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "Two German scientists have developed the theory for an all-optical transistor. In their words: 'This concept relies on cross-phase modulation between a signal and a control pulse. Other than previous approaches, the interaction length is extended by temporally locking control and the signal pulse in an optical event horizon, enabling continuous modification of the central wavelength, energy, and duration of a signal pulse by an up to sevenfold weaker control pulse.'"
Space

Submission + - The Densest Planet In The Universe (So Far) (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by RedEaredSlider
RedEaredSlider writes: Astronomers have found what may be the biggest rocky planet in the neighborhood.

The planet is called 55 Cancri e. It is 60 percent larger than the Earth, eight times as massive and orbits its star so fast that an entire year passes in less than a day.

It is about 8.57 times the mass of Earth, plus or minus about 0.64 Earth masses. That gives a density of about 10.9 grams per cubic centimeter, twice that of Earth, which averages about 5.5 grams. The surface gravity would be about 2.7 times that of Earth, comparable to what one would feel at the cloud tops of Jupiter.
Privacy

Submission + - Yankees Leak Info of Over 20K Season Tix Holders (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: An off-field error by a Yankees season ticket representative lead to a spreadsheet containing the personal information on more than 20,000 New York Yankees season ticket holders being sent out to several thousand Yankees season ticket licensees.

The file contains information on season ticket accounts including, account numbers, names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. As a result, Yankees' fans may very well see an increase in spam and targeted phishing attacks, and possibly an increase in harassing emails from Boston Red Sox fans.
The Military

Submission + - Robo-gunsight system makes sniper's life easier (scienceblog.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Military and police marksmen could see their rifle sights catch up with the 21st century with a fiber-optic laser-based sensor system that automatically corrects for even tiny barrel disruptions. Factors such as heat generated by previously fired shots, to a simple bump against the ground can affect the trueness a rifle barrel. The new system precisely measures the deflection of the barrel relative to the sight and then electronically makes the necessary corrections. With modern high-caliber rifles boasting ranges of up to two miles, even very small barrel disruptions can cause a shooter to miss by a wide margin.
Mozilla

Submission + - Mozilla patches Firefox 4, fixes coding bungle (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
CWmike
CWmike writes: "Mozilla patched Firefox 4 for the first time on Thursday, fixing eight flaws, including a major programming oversight that left the browser as vulnerable to attack on Windows 7 as on the 10-year-old Windows XP.The company also plugged 15 holes in the still-supported Firefox 3.6, and issued its last security update for Firefox 3, which debuted in mid-2008. The most important of the bugs: a programming lapse that left Firefox 4 open to less-sophisticated attacks. 'The WebGLES libraries in the Windows version of Firefox were compiled without ASLR protection,' stated the advisory labeled MSFA 2011-17. 'An attacker who found an exploitable memory corruption flaw could then use these libraries to bypass ASLR on Windows Vista and Windows 7, making the flaw as exploitable on those platforms as it would be on Windows XP or other platforms.'"

Submission + - 80% improvement in solar cell efficiency (scienceblog.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Chemistry researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory say they've improved the efficiency of typical solar cells by a whopping 80% by creating a 3-D nanocone-based solar cell platform. The technology tackles the problem of poor transport of charges generated by solar photons. These charges --" negative electrons and positive holes --" typically become trapped by defects in bulk materials and degrade performance. "We designed the three-dimensional structure to provide an intrinsic electric field distribution that promotes efficient charge transport and high efficiency in converting energy from sunlight into electricity." Bottom line, they say, is they've boosted the light-to-power conversion efficiency of photovoltaics by 80 percent.
AI

Submission + - Ball catching robot,80% accuracy in 5 milliseconds (physorg.com)

Submitted by
fysdt
fysdt writes: "DLR, an aerospace agency based in German, has modified its flagship robot, known as the Rollin’ Justin, in order to make it into a lean, mean, catching machine. The Rollin’ Justin's modifications allow the machine to catch balls that are thrown in its direction with an accuracy rate of about 80%. The Rollin’ Justin's robots accuracy rating is better than the average uncoordinated human. It is certainly better than this reporters accuracy rate. It is not as good as say, a Major League Baseball player, but then again most of us cannot say that we are as good as the pros either. Considering they also have near unlimited stamina, at least until the battery runs out, it may be a great partner for the standard game of catch, or for the position behind the batter."
Patents

Submission + - Samsung expands patent attack against Apple (edibleapple.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Samsung recently expanded its patent attack against Apple, bringing suit in the US claiming that Apple infringes upon 10 Samsung patents relating to mobile phones and “fundamental innovations that increase mobile device reliability, efficiency, and quality, and improve user interface in mobile handsets and other products.”

Comment Re:Fear of commoditization ruined Nokia (Score 2) 179

by doomsday_device (#35972884) Attached to: Nokia Outsources Symbian OS Work

Really sad to see that Nokia didn't have the confidence in their hardware design and manufacture skill to give Android a chance.

You know, lack of confidence can be a realistic assesment.

Nokia's has been notorious for their lack of precision in gap dimensions (i'm not sure if that is the correct term as english is not my first language, and I'm not a mechanical engineer). As a result, stuff can get in front of your display and ambient humidity can get to the electronics.

It's been this way for ages.

That was maybe acceptable 10 years ago. But today, as you can buy superbly assembled phones from chinese and korean manufacturers, I think they won't be able to differentiate themselves from other android phones.

In a positive sense, at least.
Crime

Submission + - Targeted Attacks Increase, Spam Continues to Fall (net-security.org)

Submitted by Orome1
Orome1 writes: Targeted attacks intercepted by Symantec.cloud rose to 85 per day, the highest figure since March 2009 when the figure was 107 per day. Simultaneously, in the aftermath of the Rustock botnet takedown, global spam volumes continued to fall and decreased by 6.4 percentage points since March to 72.9 percent in April. The trend in targeted attacks suggests there may be a seasonal pattern as the number of targeted attacks always seems to be higher at this time of year. As the financial year draws to a close in many countries, it is also possible that the timing is perfect for cybercriminals seeking information about the financial performance of a company, and a carefully crafted attack may be just the means by which they can achieve this.

Comment Re:really? (Score 1) 192

by doomsday_device (#35877882) Attached to: Don't Expect an OpenOffice/LibreOffice Merger

Thats a dumb argument, usually names are translated. I bet they don't call it "Microsoft Office" in Germany. Also the development team is English speaking for the most part.

Nope. It's called Microsoft Office pretty much everywhere in the world. That is the trick when you want to establish a globally recognizable trademark. You find something that doesn't hurt your eyes in any of the world's most important languages.

A typical developer can imho live with just about any old product name, that is why there have been wacky code names since basically forever.

It's just that they don't change it to something useful when they release anymore.
The Internet

Submission + - Asia out of IPv4 addresses (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: The Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) has run out of all but a handful of IPv4 addresses that it is holding in reserve for start-up network operators and plans to make an announcement about it later today. APNIC is the first of the Internet's five regional Internet registries to deplete its free pool of IPv4 address space. "For anybody who hasn't figured out that it's time to do IPv6, this is another wake-up call for them," says Owen DeLong, an IPv6 evangelist at Hurricane Electric and a member of the board of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), the North American counterpart to APNIC.
Graphics

Submission + - Blender 2.5 declared stable (blender.org)

Submitted by dsavi
dsavi writes:

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.57. This is the first stable release of the Blender 2.5 series, representing the culmination of many years of redesign and development work. We name this version "Stable" not only because it's mostly feature complete, but especially thanks to the 1000s of fixes and feature updates we did since the 2.5 beta versions were published. The next 2 months we will keep working on finishing a couple of left-over 2.5 targets and we expect to get feedback and bug reports from users to handle as well. If all goes well, the 2.58 version then can be the final release of the 2.5 series, with a massive amount of new projects to be added for an exciting cycle of 2.6x versions. Target is to release updates every 2 months this year.

Blender 2.5 features (Among many, many other things) a heavily redesigned UI, a Python 3.2 API that has access to every tool and almost all the data in the scene, and a new animation system with the motto "make anything animatable".

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