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Submission + - Big Brother is Watching You in 360-degree HD (veracium.com)

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "DHS plans to discreetly deploy millions of basketball-sized 360 HD video surveillance systems in public venues and urban areas. They have installed a prototype Imaging System for Immersive Surveillance (ISIS) unit, which uses image stitching technology to provide perfect 360 degree edge-to-edge HD video, and enables forensic analysts to zoom and pan different areas without disrupting the ongoing coverage, at Boston Logan International Airport. The system automatically detects abnormal events and helps operators identify suspicious incidents in large, open areas with a resolution equivalent to dozens of HD television monitors.

“We've seen that terrorists are determined to do us harm, and ISIS is a great example of one way we can improve our security by leveraging our strengths," Dr. John Fortune, the main DHS man behind the project said."
Power

Submission + - From defibrillator batteries to a green revolution (buffalo.edu)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This month is the 50th anniversary of the first US cardiac pacemaker implantation in a patient (in Buffalo NY at the VA Hospital). The company that made the batteries for the pacemaker, Greatbatch Inc., also Buffalo-based, later went on to hire Esther Takeuchi, who in turn made the cardiac defibrillator possible by developing its tiny but powerful battery.

Now, Esther Takeuchi is seeking a green breakthrough. As a SUNY Distinguished Professor at the University at Buffalo, (btw, she has more patents than any other woman in the US and is a recent winner of the National Medal for Technology and Innovation) she is applying her expertise in battery breakthroughs to environmental technologies like electric cars and wind turbines.

UB's story and video about her (link is in story) are here: http://www.buffalo.edu/news/11424
Censorship

Submission + - Turkey has imposed an indefinite ban on Google

Submitted by oxide7
oxide7 writes: Turkey’s Telecommunications Presidency said it has banned access to many of Google IP addresses without assigning clear reasons. The statement did not confirm if the ban is temporary or permanent. Google’s translation and document sharing sites have also been banned indefinitely along with YouTube and Facebook in the country. Other services such as AppEngine, FeedBurner, Analytics etc have also been reportedly banned.
Medicine

Submission + - Germany's Artificial Cornea Restores Sight (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by kkleiner
kkleiner writes: A German lead team of researchers have developed a new version of an opthalmological polymer which the eye will bond to and still allow to function properly. The new polymer could help restore sight to thousands waiting for corneal transplants around the world. The artificial cornea has passed clinical trials and is ready to see expanded use in patients this year.
Security

Submission + - Botnets Using Ubiquity as Security (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: As major botnet operators have moved from top-down C&C infrastructures, like those employed throughout the 1990s and most of the last decade, to more flexible peer-to-peer designs, they also have found it much easier to keep their networks up and running once they're discovered. When an attacker at just one, or at most, two, C&C servers doling out commands to compromised machines, evading detection and keeping the command server online were vitally important. But that's all changed now. With many botnet operators maintaining dozens or sometimes hundreds of C&C servers around the world at any one time, the effect of taking a handful of them offline is negligible, experts say, making takedown operations increasingly complicated and time-consuming.

It's security through ubiquity.

Security researchers say this change, which has been occurring gradually in the last couple of years, has made life much more difficult for them. While it's a simpler task to find a C&C server when it's one of a hundred or so, taking the server offline if much less effective than it used to be. Researchers in recent months have identified and cleaned hundreds of domains being used by the Gumblar botnet, but that's had little effect on the botnet's overall operation.

Submission + - Man Arrested For Giving Wikileaks Classified Data (wired.com) 1

Submitted by
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "Wired is reporting that SPC Bradley Manning has been arrested for allegedly supplying Wikileaks with classified data. He might have gotten away with it, too, if he hadn't bragged to Adrian Lamo that he had been leaking tons of classified data. In particular, he is reported to have leaked the encrypted footage of the 2009 Garani air strike in Afghanistan which killed several civilians, including two Reuters employees, the document calling Wikileaks a security threat, and about 260,000 US diplomatic cables, which contain 'almost criminal political back dealings.' That last leak, which has not been made public by Wikileaks (except perhaps for a single cable about a U.S. embassy meeting with the government of Iceland), is the one that worried Lamo enough to turn his conversations with Manning over to the authorities. Manning allegedly made one other interesting claim, as well: that the 500,000 leaked pager messages from 9-11 were originally in an NSA database and seeing those leaked without someone being caught gave him the courage to start leaking things himself."

Submission + - Why cyberwarfare is just fiction (blogspot.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In response to calls by Russia and the UN for a "cyberwarfare arms limitation treat", this article explains

"Cyberwar" and "cyberweapons" are fiction. The conflicts between nation states in cyberspace are nothing like warfare, and the tools hackers use are nothing like weapons. Putting "cyber" in front a something is just way for people to grasp technical concepts, the analogies quickly break down, and are useless when taken too far (such as a "cyber disarmament treaty").
The Internet

Submission + - Europe MEPs Seek to Monitor All Internet Searches (ispreview.co.uk)

Submitted by Mark.JUK
Mark.JUK writes: 324 Members of the European Parliament have signed a declaration (download PDF) that aims to extend existing EU data retention rules to all internet search engines "in order to tackle online child pornography and sex offending rapidly and effectively" as part of a new European Early Warning System (EWS). Just 369 signatures are needed to carry it forward. However some MEPs are concerned that this would lead to an extreme invasion of personal privacy.

Submission + - Prop 16 Opponents’ Accounts Hacked as Vote N (beyondchron.org)

Submitted by
Paul Hogarth
Paul Hogarth writes: "Several weeks ago, I noticed that one of my friends on Facebook was a “fan” of Proposition 16 — PG&E’s Monopoly Protection Act that is easily the worst measure on the June ballot. After I chewed him out for it, he expressed shock to even be on that page. Apparently, PG&E had added him on as a supporter without his consent. Today, just as the Prop 16 campaign boasted that it now has 50,000 “fans” on Facebook, I received a press release from the Sunrise Center in Marin County — who complained that some of their own staffers (who are working hard to defeat Prop 16) have also been added as “fans.” Besides exposing a serious loophole in Facebook’s privacy features, it also proves that PG&E’s $40 million+ campaign to pass Prop 16 includes committing identity theft.

Christy Michaels, the Corte Madera-based Sunrise Center office manager, said she was surprised to hear from a friend that an ad showed up on her friend’s Facebook page claiming, “Christy Michaels likes Prop 16.” When Christy went online she found she was named as a supporter of PG&E-funded Prop 16 on the Sunrise Center Facebook page and her personal page.

Women’s Energy Matters (WEM) is reporting these incidents to the Secretary of State, Attorney General, California Public Utilities Commission and State Senator Mark Leno, asking for immediate investigations and injunctions against PG&E and Facebook. WEM, Christy, and Kiki are advocates for Marin Clean Energy, the community-run alternative to PG&E that launched May 7th and provides local residents and businesses twice the renewable energy as PG&E at the same cost. If Prop 16 passes, local communities would require a two-thirds vote to create a similar “public option” to PG&E — which scares the giant utility company because they would have to face competition.

Barbara George, Executive Director of WEM commented, “The whole point of Facebook is to be in touch with people you know and trust, so for PG&E’s campaign to misappropriate Facebook identities and friends lists in order to falsely claim that people ‘like’ Prop 16 is an intolerable invasion of privacy and subversion of democracy. The June 8 election on this measure has been tainted by massive false advertising and dirty tricks, and Facebook identity theft is a new low. PG&E is already spending $46 million on TV and print ads promoting Proposition 16 which, if it passes, would make it virtually impossible for communities to follow Marin’s lead to provide cleaner cheaper power for their residents and businesses.”

Attorney General Jerry Brown should consider pressing criminal charges against PG&E, who appears to have committed identity theft. Ironically, Facebook’s former Chief Privacy Officer — Chris Kelly — is running to replace Brown in next week’s election."
Apple

Submission + - How to Get Rejected From the App Store (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister catalogs 12 sure-fire ways to get your app rejected from Apple's notoriously fickle App Store. From executing interpreted code, to using Apple's APIs without permission, to designing your UI, each transgression has been abstracted from real-life rejections — for the most part because Apple seems to be making up the rules as it goes along. 'It'd be nice for Apple to make conditions for rejection clear,' McAllister writes. 'Apple has been tinkering with the language of its iPhone SDK license agreement lately, but that hasn't done much to clarify the rules — unless you're Adobe. For everyone else, the App Store's requirements seem as vague and capricious as ever.'"

Submission + - EFF:Quash Subpoena in Mass Filesharing Suit (blogspot.com)

Submitted by NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: In the new mass filesharing suit brought in Washington DC on behalf of a filmmaker, Achte/Neunte v Does 1-2094, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Citizen, and two ACLU organizations have filed an amicus curiae brief supporting a motion by Time Warner to quash the subpoena. The brief (PDF) further argues that the case be dismissed against all but one 'John Doe', and that in any subsequent lawsuits, the plaintiffs be required to establish a jurisdictional basis for bringing the action in that court, that they be enjoined not to engage in improper joinder, and that they be required to establish to some extent the merits of their claim. EFF commented: 'We've long been concerned that some attorneys would attempt to create a business by cutting corners in mass copyright lawsuits against fans, shaking settlements out of people who aren't in a position to raise legitimate defenses and becoming a category of 'copyright trolls' to rival those seen in patent law'.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft launches Win7 for ARM compacts (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by Johnson
Johnson writes: Microsoft yesterday launched its latest incarnation of Windows Embedded operating system aimed at tablet, media and portable PC's — Windows Embedded Compact 7. Windows Embedded CE is an operating system for Tablet PC's and other media/portable devices, that aren't suited to fully fledged PC's which often consume more resources and/or require high-powered processors.

Submission + - Part-Human, Part-Machine Transistor Devised (discovery.com)

Submitted by asukasoryu
asukasoryu writes: Man and machine can now be linked more intimately than ever, according to a new article in the journal ACS Nano Letters. Scientists have embedded a nano-sized transistor inside a cell-like membrane and powered it using the cell's own fuel.
To create the implanted circuit, the UC scientists combined a carbon nanotube transitor, lipid bilayer coating, ion pump and ATP. The ion pump changes the electrical charge inside the cell, which then changes the electrical charge going through the transistor, which the scientists could measure and monitor.

Submission + - Concealed lenses Illegal? (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Interesting scoop on gizmodo about law enforcement efforts to make it illegal to photograph or record police on duty; even where they have been involved in clearly unlawful acts.
AMD

Submission + - AMD’s Fusion Combines The CPU And GPU (gizmag.com)

Submitted by ElectricSteve
ElectricSteve writes: At Computex 2010 AMD gave the first public demonstration of its Fusion processor that combines the Central Processing Unit (CPU) and Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) on a single chip. The AMD Fusion family of Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) not only adds another acronym to the computer lexicon, but ushers is what AMD says is a significant shift in processor architecture and capabilities. Many of the improvements stem from eliminating the chip-to-chip linkage that adds latency to memory operations and consumes power — moving electrons across a chip takes less energy than moving these same electrons between two chips. The co-location of all key elements on one chip also allows a holistic approach to power management of the APU. Various parts of the chip can be powered up or down depending on workloads.

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