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Submission + - John Carmack's Brilliant Oculus Connect Keynote Probably Had Samsung Cringing (roadtovr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: John Carmack, famed keystone developer of 3D networked gaming, has now been working with virtual reality company Oculus for over a year. Much of that time has been spent collaborating with Samsung on the forthcoming Gear VR headset. At his keynote presentation during Oculus Connect, Carmack took to the stage with 90 unscripted minutes of no holds barred discussion of the last 12 months in VR. "I believe pretty strongly in being very frank and open about flaws and limitations so this is kind of where I go off message a little bit from the standard PR plan and talk very frankly about things," he said to applause from the audience.

Submission + - Virgin Galactic Accepts Bitcoin Payments for Space Flights (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic accepts bitcoins as payment for $250,000 space flights, as the decentralised virtual currency moves ever-further into the media spotlight.

Branson himself says he has invested in bitcoin, and believes it and other forms of payment like Square can seriously rival the traditional banking system.

Submission + - Samsung Ordered To Pay Apple $290M In Patent Case (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: After 3 days of deliberations, a jury has ordered Samsung to pay $290 million to Apple for infringement of several of its patents in multiple Samsung smartphones and tablets. The verdict is the second victory for Apple in its multiyear patent fight against Samsung in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Last year a jury in the same San Jose courtroom ruled Samsung should pay just over $1 billion for infringement of five Apple patents in multiple Samsung phones and tablets. But afterward, Judge Lucy Koh ordered a new trial to reconsider $450 million of the damages after finding the previous jury had applied an "impermissible legal theory" to its calculations. Thursday's verdict is the result of that new trial.

Submission + - ISS Astronauts Fire-Up Awesome 'Cubesat Cannon' (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: As if the International Space Station couldn’t get any cooler, the Japanese segment of the orbiting outpost has launched a barrage of small satellites — known as “cubesats” — from their very own Cubesat Cannon! Of course, the real name of the cubesat deployment system isn’t quite as dramatic, but the JEM Small Satellite Orbital Deployer (J-SSOD) adds a certain sci-fi flair to space station science.

Submission + - Detecting Chemicals Through Bone (acs.org)

Submitted by MTorrice
MTorrice writes: To understand the brain and its chemical complexities, researchers would like to peer inside the skull and measure neurotransmitters levels as the brain at work. Unfortunately, research methods to measure levels of chemicals in the brain require drilling holes in the skull, and noninvasive imaging techniques, such as MRI, can’t detect specific molecules. Now, as a first step toward a new imaging tool, chemists report they can detect molecules hidden behind 3- to 8-mm-thick bone.

Submission + - Imagining the Post-Antibiotic Future

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Health authorities have been struggling to convince the public that the threat of totally drug-resistant bacteria is a crisis. Earlier this year, British chief medical officer Sally Davies described resistance to antibiotics as a "catastrophic global threat" that should be ranked alongside terrorism. In September, Dr. Thomas Frieden, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, issued a blunt warning: “If we’re not careful, we will soon be in a post-antibiotic era. For some patients and some microbes, we are already there.” Now Maryn McKenna writes that we are on the verge of entering a new era in history and asks us to imagine what our lives would be like if we really lost antibiotics to advancing drug resistance. We'll not just lose the ability to treat infectious disease; that’s obvious. But also: The ability to treat cancer, and to transplant organs, because doing those successfully relies on suppressing the immune system and willingly making ourselves vulnerable to infection. We'll lose any treatment that relies on a permanent port into the bloodstream — for instance, kidney dialysis. We'd lose any major open-cavity surgery, on the heart, the lungs, the abdomen. We'd lose implantable devices: new hips, new knees, new heart valves. We’d lose the ability to treat people after traumatic accidents, as major as crashing your car and as minor as your kid falling out of a tree. We’d lose the safety of modern childbirth. We’d lose a good portion of our cheap modern food supply because most of the meat we eat in the industrialized world is raised with the routine use of antibiotics, to fatten livestock and protect them from the conditions in which the animals are raised. "And it wouldn’t be just meat. Antibiotics are used in plant agriculture as well, especially on fruit. Right now, a drug-resistant version of the bacterial disease fire blight is attacking American apple crops," writes McKenna. "There’s currently one drug left to fight it."

Submission + - Microsoft Customers Hit With New Wave Of Fake Tech Support Calls

Submitted by rjmarvin
rjmarvin writes: A new surge of callers posing predominately as Microsoft technicians are attempting and sometimes succeeding in scamming customers http://sdt.bz/66400, convincing them their PCs are infected and directing them to install malware-ridden software or give the callers remote access to the computer. The fraudsters also solicit payment for the fake services rendered. This comes only a year after the FTC cracked down on fake tech support calls, charging six scam operators last October http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2012/10/pecon.shtm.

Submission + - Mars Rock Older Than Thought (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: The BBC reports on a finding, reported in Nature, (abstract, here), that the so-called "Black Beauty" rock, discovered in the Sahara, is over twice as old as previously thought. The meteorite is now thought to be 4.4 billion years old, dating from a time in a nascent Mars' history that scientists are eager to know more about.

Submission + - Paypal Rolls Out Photo Verification Trial in UK (sky.com)

Submitted by kdryer39
kdryer39 writes: Retailers in Richmond upon Thames are among the first to allow shoppers to leave their wallets at home and pay for items using just the PayPal app and their profile picture. The app for iOS, Windows OS and Android phones highlights nearby shops and restaurants that accept PayPal before the customer checks in by clicking on the required retailer and sliding an animated pin down on their screen. At present, only 12 merchants are using the system but it expects more than 2,000 locations will have the ability to use the app by the end of 2013.

Submission + - Bill Gates Promotes Vaccine Projects, Swipes at Google (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: In a new interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Bill Gates discussed his Foundation’s work to eradicate polio and malaria, while suggesting that vaccine programs and similar initiatives to fight disease and poverty will ultimately do much more for the world than technology projects devoted to connecting everybody to the Internet. While Gates professes his belief in the so-called digital revolution, he doesn’t think projects such as Google’s Internet blimps (designed to transmit WiFi signals over hundreds of miles, bringing Internet to underserved areas in the process) will do the third world nearly as much as good as basic healthcare. “When you’re dying of malaria, I suppose you’ll look up and see that [Internet] balloon, and I’m not sure how it’ll help you,” he said. “When a kid gets diarrhea, no, there’s no website that relieves that.” Gates then sharpened his attack on the search-engine giant: “Google started out saying they were going to do a broad set of things. They hired Larry Brilliant, and they got fantastic publicity. And then they shut it all down.” Google focusing on its core mission is fine, he added, “but the actors who just do their core thing are not going to uplift the poor.” The Microsoft co-founder also has no intention of following Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and other tech entrepreneurs into the realm of space exploration. “I guess it’s fun, because you shoot rockets up in the air,” he said. “But it’s not an area that I’ll be putting money into.”

Submission + - Competition Tests Student-Built Aerial Espionage Robots (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: Some of the most advanced work in autonomous aerial robotics is not done by DARPA, or by massive corporations. Rather, it is accomplished by teams of university students who participate in the International Aerial Robotics Competition (IARC). For the past 23 years, the IARC has challenged college teams with missions requiring complex autonomous robotic behaviors that are often beyond the capabilities of even the most sophisticated military robots. This year's competition, which was held in China and the United States over the past week, saw the team from Tsinghua University in Beijing successfully complete the current mission – an elaborate espionage operation known as Mission Six.

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