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Submission + - DARPA Pays $3.5 Million For New TechShops and Secret Reconfigurable Factories (businessweek.com)

Submitted by pacopico
pacopico writes: Bloomberg Businessweek reports that DARPA will pay for the creation of two new TechShops in Washington D.C. and Pittsburgh. The $3.5 million deal includes 2,000 TechShop memberships for military veterans and will have DARPA employees performing top secret work at night. They're part of the iFab team, trying to make factories that can be reconfigured on-the-fly through software. Maker mayhem.
Java

Submission + - Say Goodbye to Browser Choice? (cnet.com)

Submitted by plawson
plawson writes: c|net offers an in-depth discussion of the browser's future, making the case that "new mobile devices threaten to stifle the competitive vigor of the market for Web browsers on PCs." Given the vertical integration of many mobile systems, the article predicts that "... the only opportunity you'll get to truly change browsers is when your two-year smartphone contract expires..." The trade offs are security and performance. Web pages that rely on JavaScript and JIT will be big losers. How important is browser choice on a smartphone or tablet compared with a PC?
Science

Submission + - MIT creates superhydrophobic condiment bottles (geek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: First we had a superhydrophobic spray that meant no dirt or sweat could stick to your clothes. Then the same coating was applied to circuit boards to make them water resistent. Now MIT has gone a step further and solved one of the ongoing problems of using condiments: they've figured out how to make a food-safe superhydrophobic coating for food packaging. It means ketchup and mayonnaise will no longer be stuck to the insides of the bottle, and therefore there will no longer be any waste.

What's amusing is this seems to be a happy accident. The MIT team was actually investigating slippery coatings to stop gas and oil lines clogging as well as how to stop a surface from having ice form on it. Now their lab is filled with condiments for continued testing of their food-safe version.

Submission + - Know What Time It Is? Your Medical Device Doesn't (economist.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A man with one clock knows what time it is, goes the old saw, a man with two is never sure. Imagine the confusion, then, experienced by a doctor with dozens. Julian Goldman is an anaesthetist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. After beginning to administer blood-thinning medication during an urgent neurological procedure in 2005, Mr Goldman noticed that the EMR had recorded him checking the level of clotting 22 minutes earlier. As a result, four hospitals in the northeast had their medical devices checked, and found that on average they were off by 24 minutes. The easy solution that devices could have used since 1985? NTP.
Facebook

Submission + - Facebook, Zuckerberg sued over IPO (cnet.com)

Submitted by mrquagmire
mrquagmire writes: Facebook shareholders have sued the social network, CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and a number of banks, alleging that crucial information was concealed ahead of Facebook's IPO.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan this morning, charges the defendants with failing to disclose in the critical days leading up to Friday's initial public offering "a severe and pronounced reduction" in forecasts for Facebook's revenue growth, as users more and more access Facebook through mobile devices, according to Reuters, which cited a law firm for the plaintiffs.

Submission + - Seagate to Buy External Drive Maker LaCie (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: Hard drive maker Seagate today announced an exclusive agreement to acquire a controlling interest in external drive maker LaCie. The all-cash transaction would be worth about $186 million, or $5.17 a share. LaCie Chairman and CEO Philippe Spruch is expected to join Seagate to run its consumer storage products organization. Seagate Chairman Steve Luczo said LaCie's products would compliment Seagate's own drive products and allow it to expand its line by adding a "premium-branded" direct-attached storage (DAS) line. The move will also help Seagate develop better software.
Databases

Submission + - New MinuteSort Record Set by Microsoft Research (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: A team from Microsoft Research has taken the lead in the MinuteSort data sorting test using a specially-devised technology, Flat DataCenter Storage. The figures are impressive — 1401 gigabytes in the 60 seconds, using 1033 disks across 250 machines. This is not only three times as much as the previous record, but also, uses only one sixth of the hardware resources, according to a blog post about the test from Microsoft. One thing that’s interesting about the success is the technology used. While solutions such as Hadoop and MapReduce are traditionally used for working with large data sets, Microsoft Research created its own technology called the “Flat Datacenter Storage,” or FDS for short. This isn’t just academic research, of course. The team from Microsoft Research has already been working with the Bing team to help Bing accelerate its search results, and there are plans to use it in other Microsoft technologies.
Biotech

Submission + - Scientists Turn Skin Cells Into Beating Heart Muscle (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by
redletterdave
redletterdave writes: "Scientists have for the first time succeeded in taking skin cells from patients with heart failure and transforming them into healthy, beating heart tissue that could one day be used to treat the condition. The researchers based in Haifa, Israel, had their study published in the European Heart Journal on Wednesday, and said clinical trials of the technique could begin within 10 years. But even with more testing to go, the results meant they might eventually be able to reprogram patients' cells to repair their own damaged hearts."
Space

Submission + - SETI pioneer Jill Tarter retires (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: After 35 years, astronomer Jill Tarter is retiring from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) — a field she helped pioneer and popularize, most recently at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. Tarter, who inspired the late Carl Sagan to create the fictional character Ellie Arroway, heroine of the book and movie ‘Contact’, says she will instead focus her efforts on what she calls “the search for intelligent funding.”
Your Rights Online

Submission + - Oil Company Neste Tries to Shut Down Parody Site (greenpeace.org)

Submitted by
emakinen
emakinen writes: "Environmental NGO Greenpeace has been campaiging against Finnish oil company Neste Oil. Recently, they published a parody site www.nestespoil.com about Neste biofuel impact on rain forests. Neste is now trying to shut the parody site down using a trademark complaint to WIPO. Furthermore, the Swedish ISP for Greenpeace, Loopia, has today shut down the original site, according to a newspaper Helsingin Sanomat (in Finnish). In a game of cat and mouse, Greenpeace has already opened a mirror site."
Moon

Submission + - Russia to establish bases on the Moon (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: Vladimir Popovkin, the head of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, has said that Russia will pursue extensive, long-lived operations at the Moon’s surface. "We’re not talking about repeating what mankind achieved 40 years ago,” Popovkin said, through a translator at the Global Space Exploration Conference in Washington DC. “We’re talking about establishing permanent bases.”
The heads of the space agencies for Europe, Canada and Russia, along with senior representatives from the space agencies of India and Japan were in Washington DC talking about the benefits of international collaboration. JAXA, the Japanese Space Agency, also issued a clear pronouncement about targeting the Moon.
Microsoft

Submission + - ITC judge calls for US XBox ban in Motorola patent battle (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by symbolset
symbolset writes: In the long running complaint between Motorola and Microsoft, Judge David Shaw of the ITC recommended Monday a ban on XBox consoles, as they are found to infringe Motorola's patents. The judge also ordered Microsoft post a bond of 7 percent of the retail price of all unsold US XBox inventory. The decision will go to the ITC’s board of commissioners who will either uphold the recommendation or overturn it.
The Internet

Submission + - FCC boss wants to meter the internet (msn.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: FCC Commissioner Julius Genachowski has publicly backed usage-based pricing for wired Internet access at the cable industry's annual NCTA Show. He makes the claim that it would drive network efficiency. Currently most Internet service providers charge a flat fee and price their packages based on the speed of the service, while Cellphone providers are reaping record profits by charging based on usage, similar to the way utilities charge for electricity. By switching to this model the Cable companies can increase their profitibility while at the same time blocking consumers from cutting the cord and getting their TV services online. A petition has been created calling for his resignation
Microsoft

Submission + - Nortel patents are being used to arm a patent troll

Submitted by wannabgeek
wannabgeek writes: Microsoft, Apple, RIM and a few other companies formed a consortium to bid for patents of the dying telecom company Nortel and won. Now, these patents are being used to feed a patent troll called Rockstar and it has employees dedicated to investigate and find infringements and pursue litigation. Is anyone surprised?
Businesses

Submission + - SEC calls for review of Facebook IPO (theage.com.au)

Submitted by beaverdownunder
beaverdownunder writes: After losing another 8.9% of it's IPO value in its third day of trading, SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro has called for a review of the circumstances surrounding Facebook's IPO on the NASDAQ late last week.

Unable to sell Facebook short, investors have instead taken to short-selling funds that owned pre-IPO shares as revelations come out that the underwriters involved revised their Facebook profit forecasts downward in the days before the offering without similarly revising the opening share price.

Meanwhile, Thomson Reuters Starmine has come out with a post-party Facebook estimate of a meagre 10.8 per cent annual growth rate, valuing the stock at a paltry $US9.59 a share, a 72 per cent discount on its IPO price, signalling that the battered stock may not have found the bottom yet.

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