An anonymous reader writes "Facebook plans to nearly double in size in the next year. The social network announced plans on Friday to dramatically expand its NYC operations, adding a wealth of new engineers to enhance features and write fresh code for the website that links more than 800 million users worldwide. 'We'll be adding thousands of employees in the next year,' Facebook COO Cheryl Sandberg announced from the company's New York City offices on Friday. Facebook currently has about 3,000 employees in California, Sandberg said, but just 100 in its Big Apple facility — mainly marketing staff. The company plans to expand that Madison Avenue office by opening its first East Coast engineering office."

alphadogg writes (quoting Networkworld): "Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer feels intensely fortunate that his company's $44 billion bid for Yahoo back in 2008 never materialized. 'Sometimes you're lucky,' he said with a smile at Web 2.0 Summit, responding to a question from conference co-chair John Battelle. Careful not to offend his search market partner, Ballmer put his comment in context, saying that any CEO would feel grateful for not making a major acquisition in the months prior to the global financial collapse that started in the second half of 2008."

MrSeb writes "It seems, as a culture, we have a deep-seated interest in robots and automatons, and if we can love an animal or other non-humanoid creature, what's to stop us from falling in love with a robot? Introducing Meka Robotics' S2 Humanoid Head: It has seven degrees of freedom, high-resolution FireWire cameras in each eye, zero-backlash Harmonic Drive gearing in the neck, and a ton of unnervingly-human movements and postures. She weighs 7.6kg (16.7lbs), has a pair of luminous, waggling doggy-like ears, and can be attached to a Meka torso and arm, if you prefer your robots to be slightly more corporeal. The girly, anime face is just a custom skin, incidentally: Meka will customize the shell to look like anything you desire. We're told that they value their client's confidentiality — and more importantly they don't judge. Powered by the open-source and extensible M3 control software, the S2 head (and body and arm) could be quite easily upgraded to use Hooman Samani's artificial endocrine and psychological models — and if you had the choice of falling in love with an amorphous, decidedly odd-looking furball, or a cute, perky anime girl, which would you choose?"

bdking writes "After signing off on former CEO Leo Apotheker's proposal to spin off or sell HP's personal computer unit, the company's braintrust is reassessing the wisdom of dumping a division that contributes nearly 30% of revenue and holds together a valuable supply chain." HP appears concerned not so much for the revenue generated by PC hardware, but instead by access to various distribution and supply channels. It seems that just announcing a spin-off has affected their access to retail distributors.

Facebook's recent move to scan for malicious URLs sounded like a pretty good idea, but itwbennett writes with word that it's already been bypassed.'Hatter,' a member of hacking think-tank Blackhat Academy, provided a live demonstration, which involved posting the URL to a JPEG file on a wall. Facebook crawled the URL and added a thumbnail image to the wall post, however, clicking on its corresponding link actually redirected users to YouTube. This happened because the destination page was able to identify Facebook's original request and served a JPEG file. Earlier this week, Facebook signed a partnership with Websense to use the security vendor's cloud-based, real-time Web scanner for malicious URL detection. Blackhat Academy has now provided proof-of-concept code, which, according to its advisory, can be used to bypass it."

First time accepted submitter KingofSpades writes "Samsung has announced that they will try to stop the sale of Apple Inc.'s iPhone 4S in France and Italy. Samsung believes that Apple is 'severely violating' some of their patents. From the article: 'Samsung will file motions with courts in Paris and Milan seeking the ban, each citing two patent infringements on wireless telecommunications technology, the Suwon, South Korea- based company said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. Apple unveiled the iPhone 4S in Cupertino, California this week and aims to start sales later this month.'"

SonicSpike sends word that Florida has changed how law enforcement deals with teenagers who send racy pictures to each other over their phones. Quoting CNN: "Before Saturday, a Florida teenager who sent or received nude photos or video could have been charged with a felony and forced to register as a sex offender. But a new law, recognizing the proliferation of cell phones and computers, eases the penalties for 'sexting' infractions. A first offense is punishable by eight hours of community service or a $60 fine; the second is a misdemeanor and the third is a felony. ... Under House Bill 75, teens who receive explicit images won't be charged if they took reasonable steps to report it, did not solicit the image and did not send it to someone."

coondoggie writes "With the goal of taking ideas for new robots off the drawing board and moving them into real-life situations, Carnegie Mellon University will host a series of competitions aimed at bringing new robotic technologies for manufacturing, healthcare and national security applications. Carnegie calls the competitions 'RoboBowls' and says they will feature next-generation robotics challenges 'intended to find and foster start-up and early-stage companies seeking to develop 'big idea' products and services.'

tekgoblin writes "Google plans to use data from its +1 button to re-order search results and keep spammers at bay. While this would bring Google’s search engine into the social networking era, it would also create a new avenue for blackhats to manipulate search results. From the article: '"Google will study the clicks on +1 buttons as a signal that influences the ranking and appearance of websites in search results," a spokesman wrote. "The purpose of any ranking signal is to improve overall search quality. For +1's and other social ranking signals, as with any new ranking signal, we'll be starting carefully and learning how those signals are related to quality."'"

suraj.sun and several other readers sent word that Samsung is using a clip from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey as an example of prior art in its defense against Apple's patent infringement claims. "In a clip from that film lasting about one minute, two astronauts are eating and at the same time using personal tablet computers. ... As with the design claimed by the D'889 Patent, the tablet disclosed in the clip has an overall rectangular shape with a dominant display screen, narrow borders, a predominately flat front surface, a flat back surface (which is evident because the tablets are lying flat on the table's surface), and a thin form factor." Samsung also supplied a clip from 1970s British TV series The Tomorrow People.

An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla has been constructing a new user interface for Firefox, and the layout seems to be revealed in new mockups that show the integrated Home Tab app and the streamlining of tabs and browsing buttons."

alphadogg writes "Napkins don't really stack up well against hard drives or even floppy disks for preserving data over time. But some of the technology and business world's most enduring ideas are said to have at least gotten their starts as sketches on dinner or cocktail napkins (which in fact were inspiration for the 5 ¼ floppy disk's size). Robert Metcalfe's early Ethernet diagrams from his days at Xerox PARC back in the early 1970s might be the most famous napkin sketches in the technology industry, but there are napkin stories involving Compaq, Facebook, @home and more."