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Social Networks

Submission + - Reddit user with cancer earns $15k donations in 6 hours (reddit.com)

Submitted by quintin3265
quintin3265 writes: Earlier today, a 23-year-old terminal cancer patient with less than a year to live posted a question-and-answer session about his illness, anticipating a few questions about what it was like to live with kidney cancer. One poster joked that he should travel the world and meet girls from reddit before he died.

After verification, just six hours later 400 users had donated $15,000, with donations continuing to pour in as numerous women agreed to meet poster OceanSkys — with complete strangers offering to host him and provide transportation during his trip around the world. One humble post has turned into a crusade to provide an amazing last few months to a formerly anonymous Internet user.
Displays

Submission + - Where are all the high-resolution desktop displays? (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Ever since the release of the iPhone 4 with its 326 pixels-per-inch (PPI) Retina display, people have wondered about the lack of high-PPI desktop displays. The fact is, high-resolution desktop displays do exist, but they're incredibly expensive and usually only used for medical applications. Here, ExtremeTech dives into the world of desktop displays and tries to work out why consumer-oriented desktop displays seem to be stuck at 1920x1080, and whether future technologies like IGZO and OLED might finally spur manufacturers to make reasonably-priced models with a PPI over 100."
Microsoft

Submission + - Windows 8 boots too fast: this is a bad thing? (tech-stew.com)

Submitted by
techfun89
techfun89 writes: "Microsoft claims that Windows 8 can boot in as few as seven seconds. Microsoft says this isn't necessarily a good thing, especially if you need to interrupt the boot. Apparently things boot so quickly there isn't even enough time to detect keystrokes such as F2 or F8 according to Microsoft's Chris Clark. Clark states that Microsoft will not cut the fast boot time to preserve keystrokes but has come up with some other ways to provide the same functionality.

Windows 8 now has a boot options menu that contains all of the troubleshooting tools, developer-focused options for Windows startup, methods for accessing the firmware's BIOS setup and a method for booting to other devices. This boot options menu lives in a realm that is called WinRE (Windows Recovery Environment).

There are also command line options for accessing the boot menu through shutdown.exe and an "Advanced Startup" option in general settings."
The Internet

Submission + - Sales of unused IPv4 addresses gaining steam (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
netbuzz
netbuzz writes: "A growing number of U.S. carriers and enterprises are hedging their bets on IPv6 by purchasing blocks of unused IPv4 addresses through official channels or behind-the-scenes deals. There is certainly no shortage of stock, as these address brokers have blocks available that range from 65,000 to more than a million IPv4 addresses. And it’s not just large companies and institutions benefiting, as one attorney who’s involved in the market says he represents a woman who came into possession of a block of IPv4 address in the early ‘90s and now, “She’s in her 70s, and she’s going to have a windfall.’’"
Space

Submission + - DARPA Funds "100 Year Starship" to Develop Human Interstellar Travel (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: Voyager 1, which is now in the outermost layer of the heliosphere that forms the boundary between the Solar System and interstellar space, is set to be the first man-made object to leave the Solar System. It has taken the car-sized probe over 35 years to reach its current point, but at its current speed of about 3.6 AU (334,640,905 miles) per year it would take over 75,000 years to reach our nearest star, Proxima Centauri. Despite the mind-boggling distances involved, DARPA has just awarded funding to form an organization whose aim is to make human interstellar travel a reality within the next century.
Microsoft

Submission + - Visual Studio 11 Express Is Metro Only (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: Microsoft has finally demonstrated its corporate insanity for all to see. The next version of VS Express 11 will only produce Metro and not desktop apps — and it gets worse.
The next generation of Express products will be much more limited with just three editions — Express 11, Express for Windows Phone and Express for Azure. The Express 11 IDE will support C++, C#, VB and JavaScript in one neat and easy-to-use package. This sounds great until you realize that this neat package only supports the creation of Metro applications.
There are no templates and no targets defined for the desktop.
If you want to develop a .NET app then you need to stick with Express 2010 and don't even think about going forward with new editions. To stay current you have no choice but to convert your apps to Metro. If you don't agree then you need to start looking for an alternative desktop environment — perhaps this is the opertunity Linux has been waiting for.

Submission + - Should Cable Boxes Be Put to Sleep? (electronichouse.com)

Submitted by
ElectronicHouseGrant
ElectronicHouseGrant writes: "In the brave new world of home connectivity, making a set-top box energy-efficient becomes both a challenge and a necessity, as many set-top boxes will serve as gateways into the home not just for hundreds of video channels, but for Internet services, VoIP phone and networking—all features that require more energy and 24/7 network readiness.In light of this, Broadcom’s new BCM7425VMS chip set can allow for four different power states, programmable by the cable or satellite operator or hardware vendor"
Medicine

Submission + - Skin Cells Turned into Heart Muscle for First Time

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: By taking skin cells and turning them into stem cells, a technique that is already well known, researchers were able to generate beating heart cells — a medical first.

"We have shown that it's possible to take skin cells from an elderly patient with advanced heart failure and end up with his own beating cells in a laboratory dish that are healthy and young — the equivalent to the stage of his heart cells when he was just born," Lior Gepstein, study author and professor of medicine at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Israel.
Chrome

Submission + - Hackers Uses Six Separate Bugs to Break Chrome's Security Model (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Browsers are a really nice target for attackers of all stripes and skill levels. But, unless you're a savant or have just landed here from the future, you may want to take a pass on going after Google Chrome, judging by the insane level of effort and skill that an anonymous security researcher had to deploy in order to compromise Chrome during the company's Pwnium contest in March.

The researcher who received one of two $60,000 rewards handed out by Google for full sandbox escapes and compromises of Chrome during the contest used the alias Pinkie Pie. At the time that his accomplishment was announced during the CanSecWest conference in March, Google officials did not specify exactly how the researcher had been able to break Chrome's many layers of security, but just said that he had used multiple bugs to do it.

Now, Google security researchers have revealed the method and techniques that Pinkie Pie used, and if anything, the whole story is even more impressive than observers had thought at the time of the contest. Pinkie Pie used a total of six vulnerabilities in various components of Chrome, chaining them together in a long sequence that eventually enabled him to break out of the Chrome sandbox and completely compromise the browser.

Submission + - Romanian witches used Google to tell fortune (austriantimes.at)

Submitted by Hentes
Hentes writes: The internet has made many things easier, but unfortunately this also includes crime: it seems that nowadays not even people wanting to know their future are safe from fraud. Two gipsy fortune tellers are being investigated, after the Romanian police uncovered that they have utilised some extraordinary help in their clairvoyant acts. The pair used information collected from internet search and social networks to gain the trust of their costumers, claiming that they could see their personal data through their crystal ball. In some cases, they also used high-tech surveillance techniques such as hidden cameras and phone tapping. But they didn't stop at merely spying on their victims: their most bizarre case involved a scuba diver dressed as a "Loch Ness monster".
The duo are suspected of fraud, illegal wiretapping, and also bribery of the prosecutor

Comment Re:NOOOOO! (Score 1) 282

by only_human (#39885107) Attached to: Mozilla Ponders Major Firefox UI Refresh
Well on the positive side, because they want software to run on smaller systems means they have a compelling reason to fight code bloat and feature creep. It stinks when new versions are always larger and so slow that they need a recent workstation to use.

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