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Displays

Oculus Rift: 2015 Launch Unlikely, But Not Impossible 74

Posted by Soulskill from the is-the-future-here-yet dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Earlier this week during Facebook's 2015 Q1 earnings call, the company seemed to suggest that a 2015 Oculus Rift release date was unlikely. At least, that's what a report about the call from Gamasutra indicated, saying, "It doesn't sound like Oculus will ship the consumer version of its Oculus Rift VR headset this year, or at least not in very large quantities." However, an equity analyst has chimed in to say that the language used during the call shouldn't be interpreted colloquially, concluding that "...there is no information here that rules out Oculus shipping in 2015."
Science

Liquid Mercury Found Under Mexican Pyramid 133

Posted by Soulskill from the where-else-would-you-hide-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes: An archaeologist has discovered liquid mercury at the end of a tunnel beneath a Mexican pyramid, a finding that could suggest the existence of a king's tomb or a ritual chamber far below one of the most ancient cities of the Americas. Mexican researcher Sergio Gómez ... has spent six years slowly excavating the tunnel, which was unsealed in 2003 after 1,800 years. Last November, Gómez and a team announced they had found three chambers at the tunnel’s 300ft end, almost 60ft below the the temple. Near the entrance of the chambers, they a found trove of strange artifacts: jade statues, jaguar remains, a box filled with carved shells and rubber balls.
Patents

Vizio, Destroyer of Patent Trolls 104

Posted by Soulskill from the best-defense-is-a-strong-offense dept.
An anonymous reader writes: We read about a lot of patent troll cases. Some are successful and some are not, but many such cases are decided before ever going to court. It's how the patent troll operates — they know exactly how high litigation costs are. Even without a legal leg to stand on, they can ask for settlements that make better financial sense for the target to accept, rather than dumping just as much money into attorney's fees for an uncertain outcome. Fortunately, some companies fight back. TV-maker Vizio is one of these, and they've successfully defended against 16 different patent trolls, some with multiple claims. In addition, they're going on the offensive, trying to wrest legal fees from the plaintiffs for their spurious claims. "For the first time, it stands a real chance, in a case where it spent more than $1 million to win. Two recent Supreme Court decisions make it easier for victorious defendants to collect fees in patent cases. The TV maker is up against a storied patent plaintiffs' firm, Chicago-based Niro, Haller & Niro, that has fought for Oplus tooth and nail. ... For Vizio, the company feels that it's on the verge of getting vindication for a long-standing policy of not backing down to patent trolls."
Power

Tesla To Announce Battery-Based Energy Storage For Homes 299

Posted by timothy from the but-in-the-meantime-here's-this-preemptive-announcement dept.
Okian Warrior writes: Billionaire Elon Musk will announce next week that Tesla will begin offering battery-based energy storage for residential and commercial customers. The batteries power up overnight when energy companies typically charge less for electricity, then are used during the day to power a home. In a pilot project, Tesla has already begun offering home batteries to SolarCity (SCTY) customers, a solar power company for which Musk serves as chairman. Currently 330 U.S. households are running on Tesla's batteries in California. The batteries start at about $13,000, though California's Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PCG) offers customers a 50% rebate. The batteries are three-feet high by 2.5-feet wide, and need to be installed at least a foot and a half off the ground. They can be controlled with a Web app and a smartphone app.

Submission + - Tiredness enhances the brain's creativity

Submitted by monkeyzoo
monkeyzoo writes: Research has found that people perform better on creative tasks when they are a bit tired than when they are fully awake. One study published in Thinking and Reason divided people into two groups (night owls and morning people) according to their answers to a questionnaire and then asked them to solve two types of problems: "analytical" math-based problems and "insight" problems that require creative thinking. Both groups of subjects did consistently better on the insight problems during their sleepier time of day. The explanation offered is that creative problem solving requires seeing things from a new point of view, and during your most productive hours of the day, your ability to focus and block out distracting thoughts is higher. When you are a bit groggy, the brain is more prone to random, passing thoughts, and these can lead to a breakthrough in solving a challenging problem.
Space

Mystery of the Coldest Spot In the CMB Solved 45

Posted by timothy from the also-known-as-the-wet-spot dept.
StartsWithABang writes: The cosmic microwave background is a thing of beauty, as not only does its uniform, cold temperature reveal a hot, dense past that began with the hot Big Bang, but its fluctuations reveal a pattern of overdensities and underdensities in the very early stages of the Universe. It's fluctuations just like these that give rise to the stars, galaxies, groups and clusters that exist today, as well as the voids in the vast cosmic web. But effects at the surface of last scattering are not the only ones that affect the CMB's temperature; if we want to make sure we've got an accurate map of what the Universe was born with, we have to take everything into account, including the effects of matter as it gravitationally grows and shrinks. As we do exactly this, we find ourselves discovering the causes behind the biggest anomalies in the sky, and it turns out that the standard cosmological model can explain it all.

Submission + - Bodyprint turns your smartphone's touchscreen display into a biometric scanner

Submitted by jan_jes
jan_jes writes: Recent mobile phones integrate fingerprint scanners to authenticate users biometrically and replace passwords, making authentication more convenient for users. Researchers at Yahoo Labs have created a new technology called ‘Bodyprint’ that turns your smartphone’s touchscreen display into a biometric scanner. It allows the touch sensor to scan users body parts such as ears, fingers, fists, and palms by pressing them against the display. Bodyprint implements the four-eye principle for locking sensitive documents; accessing the document requires the presence of the people involved, it may 2 or more. Another application is "it authenticates the user
by their ear for an incoming call".

Submission + - Tesla to announce home battery-based energy storage (latimes.com)

Submitted by Okian Warrior
Okian Warrior writes: Billionaire Elon Musk will announce next week that Tesla will begin offering battery-based energy storage for residential and commercial customers.

The batteries power up overnight when energy companies typically charge less for electricity, then are used during the day to power a home.

In a pilot project, Tesla has already begun offering home batteries to SolarCity (SCTY) customers, a solar power company for which Musk serves as chairman. Currently 330 U.S. households are running on Tesla's batteries in California.

The batteries start at about $13,000, though California's Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PCG) offers customers a 50% rebate. The batteries are three-feet high by 2.5-feet wide, and need to be installed at least a foot and a half off the ground. They can be controlled with a Web app and a smartphone app.

Submission + - Privileged malware coming to a CPU near you? (virusbtn.com)

Submitted by ArmoredDragon
ArmoredDragon writes: For the past few years, Intel has been developing a new technology called Software Guard Extensions. The gist of it is that software can be protected from snooping or manipulation from untrusted higher privileged processes, or even from processes running outside of a VM. This sounds good in principle because it could protect your trusted software from malware, especially for cloud environments where IT security is paramount. The problem however is that it is very much a double edged sword. Malware, such as that found in a botnet, could easily hide itself from any kind of scanning software, or even a white-hat hacker trying to debug it. Or even worse, entities like the NSA could potentially issue an NSL to give themselves authority to create trusted applications that are allowed to spy on protected processes, while everybody who isn't whitelisted by Intel would be placed at a major disadvantage if they ever wanted to audit such software.

Submission + - Teachers Might Profit From Watching This Teen Game Developer Learn (xconomy.com)

Submitted by Xconomy'sBT
Xconomy'sBT writes: As I interviewed this teenager who first got hooked on first-person-shooter games when he was 12, I saw lessons for teachers and educational technology companies. The pursuit of fun led Harrison Yuan to teach himself computer programming and earn $thousands on the game design site ROBLOX. He's 18 now, and headed for UCLA soon to study engineering.
Piracy

Pirate Bay Blockade Censors CloudFlare Customers 160

Posted by timothy from the broad-brush-swung-wildly dept.
An anonymous reader writes: The blockade of the Pirate Bay by UK ISPs is causing trouble for CloudFlare customers. Several websites have been inadvertently blocked by Sky because a Pirate Bay proxy is hosted behind the same IP-addresses. In a response, CloudFlare threatened to disconnect the proxy site from its network. Like any form of censorship web blockades can sometime lead to overblocking, targeting perfectly legitimate websites by mistake. This is also happening in the UK where Sky's blocking technology is inadvertently blocking sites that have nothing to do with piracy.
Security

Microsoft Opens Vulnerability Bounty Program For Spartan Browser 53

Posted by timothy from the why-not-leave-the-code-to-survive-infancy-alone? dept.
jones_supa writes: As it did in the past when it tried to make Internet Explorer more secure, Microsoft has launched a new bug bounty program for Spartan browser, the default application of Windows 10 for surfing the information highway. A typical remote code execution flaw can bring between $1,500 and $15,000, and for the top payment you also need to provide a functioning exploit. The company says that it could pay even more than that, if you convince the jury on the entry quality and complexity. Sandbox escape vulnerabilities with Enhanced Protected Mode enabled, important or higher severity vulnerabilities in Spartan or its engine, and ASLR info disclosure vulnerabilities are also eligible. If you want to accept the challenge, Microsoft provides more information on how to participate.

Submission + - Mystery of the coldest spot in the CMB solved

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: The cosmic microwave background is a thing of beauty, as not only does its uniform, cold temperature reveal a hot, dense past that began with the hot Big Bang, but its fluctuations reveal a pattern of overdensities and underdensities in the very early stages of the Universe. It’s fluctuations just like these that give rise to the stars, galaxies, groups and clusters that exist today, as well as the voids in the vast cosmic web. But effects at the surface of last scattering are not the only ones that affect the CMB’s temperature; if we want to make sure we’ve got an accurate map of what the Universe was born with, we have to take everything into account, including the effects of matter as it gravitationally grows and shrinks. As we do exactly this, we find ourselves discovering the causes behind the biggest anomalies in the sky, and it turns out that the standard cosmological model can explain it all.

Feed Engadget: Portland unbans UberX (engadget.com)

From feed by feedfeeder
Citing violations of its hired transportation rules, the city of Portland, OR sued Uber last December and temporarily halted the ridesharing company's operations within city limits. Now, after months of haggling with civic and community leaders, Uber...

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