hype7 writes "The Harvard Business Review is running an article on Siri, the speech recognition technology inside the new iPhone. They make the case that Siri's use of artificial intelligence and speech recognition is going to change the way we interact with machines. From the article: 'The advantage of using speech over other interaction paradigms is that we have honed its use over thousands of years. It is entirely natural for us to talk to one another. Talking is one of the first things we learn how to do as children. It's second nature for us to ask a colleague or a friend a question and for them to answer the same way. Being able to talk to a phone like it's a personal assistant is something that people are going to get very used to, very quickly. It's a much more natural approach than using a mouse on a desktop. And I highly doubt the impact is going to stop at phones.'"

It comes as no surprise that Margie Phelps of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church has already declared the church's intention to picket Steve Jobs's funeral. What is interesting, is that she did so using an iPhone. The 142 characters of wrath read: "Westboro will picket his funeral.He[sic] had a huge platform; gave God no glory & taught sin. MT @AP: Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has died at 56."

10 years ago today, coordinated terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. killed nearly 3,000 people. It wasn't the first terrorist attack directed against the U.S., or even on U.S. soil, but it was the deadliest, and came at a time of relative peace. Probably most people reading this remember where and how they heard the news. We've often discussed the consequences of the attack: security cordons, ID checks and metal detectors where none existed before, a reexamination of how U.S. policy affects international perception and attitudes, and the encroachment of surveillance policies and technology, to name a few. Today, we don’t want to inundate you with links to tributes and retrospectives, so we’ll offer the only thing we can: a look back at how the day unfolded here. Our thoughts are with everyone who lost friends and family members.

An anonymous reader writes "The founders of The Pirate Bay, possibly the best-known BitTorrent tracking service in existence, are going legit with a new file-sharing site which they claim will adhere to all copyright rules and takedown requests. BayFiles, as the new service is named, isn't BitTorrent powered. Instead, the site borrows its method of operation from the likes of Megaupload and RapidShare: a user selects a file and uploads it to the site via their web browser, after which it becomes available for anyone to download, assuming they have the link."

s31523 writes "When the residents of the Alaskan village of Kivalina woke up last week, the unexpected sight of an orange goo covering the surface of the water was quite alarming. Suspecting a oil spill or some other man-made disaster, the residents worried about the toxicity of the substance. After NOAA investigated, it was found the that goo is an unknown type of microscopic eggs. According to NOAA scientist Keep Rice, 'We now think these are some sort of small crustacean egg or embryo, with a lipid oil droplet in the middle causing the orange color.' More work is needed to identify what the eggs are and what caused them to show up."

alphadogg writes "Software that lets drivers unlock car doors and even start their vehicles using a mobile phone could let car thieves do the very same things, according to computer security researchers at iSec Partners. Don Bailey and fellow iSec researcher Mathew Solnik say they've figured out the protocols that some of these software makers use to remote control the cars, and they've produced a video showing how they can unlock a car and turn the engine on via a laptop. According to Bailey, it took them about two hours to figure out how to intercept wireless messages between the car and the network and then recreate them from his laptop. Bailey will discuss the research at next week's Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, but he isn't going to name the products they've hacked — they've looked at two so far — or provide full technical details of their work until the software makers can patch them."

sexybomber writes "The Springfield (MA) Republican reports two men accused of illegally filming the process as they bailed friends out of jail that last summer, were acquitted of all charges Tuesday. Pete Eyre and Adam Mueller initially were granted permission to film the bail process, but later were forbidden by jail officials from recording the procedure. When they continued to digitally recording their encounter with jail officials, they were arrested by police. Eyre and Mueller testified that they never attempted to hide the fact that they were recording at the jail. Not only did they ask permission to film the bail-out process — which initially was granted — but their recording devices were 'out in the open,' Eyre said. The Jury found the defendants not guilty of three criminal counts: Each was acquitted of unlawful wiretapping, while Mueller also was acquitted of a charge of resisting arrest."

An anonymous reader writes "The Debian Project is pleased to announce the availability of the Community Distribution Patent Policy FAQ, a document meant to educate Free Software developers, and especially distribution editors, about software patent risks. The FAQ has been prepared by lawyers at Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) at the request of and with input from the Debian Project. While the document does not constitute legal advice, it provides insights on dealing with software patents, which might be applicable to other community-driven Free Software distributions. The Debian Project maintains a critical stance towards software patents: we consider software patents a threat to Free Software and we believe they provide no advantages in promoting software innovation."

mdrejhon writes "Geeks who miss the UNIX 'talk' days, have a new modern savior: XMPP.org has published the new XEP-0301 Real-Time Text standard, which allows streaming text that is continuously transmitted as it is typed or otherwise composed. It allows conversational use of text, where people interactively converse with each other."

athe!st writes "A new anti-microbial treatment that can make clothing — including smelly socks — permanently germ-free has been developed by US scientists. In a paper published in the American Chemical Society journal Applied Materials and Interfaces, Dr Jason Locklin and his colleagues state that the treatment kills a wide range of dangerous pathogens, including staph, strep, E. coli, pseudomonas and acinetobacter."

An anonymous reader writes "Phillip Elmer-Dewitt draws on several sources to argue that 'Apple has become not a monopoly (a single seller), but a monopsony — the one buyer that can control an entire market.' According to Dewitt, Apple uses its $70 billion cash hoard to 'pay for the construction cost (or a significant fraction of it) of [tech factories] in exchange for exclusive rights to the output production of the factory for a set period of time...' This gives Apple 'access to new component technology months or years before its rivals and allows it to release groundbreaking products that are actually impossible to duplicate.'"

mdsolar writes "Renewable energy production has surpassed nuclear energy production in the U.S. according to the latest issue of Monthly Energy Review (PDF) published by the Energy Information Administration. ... During the first three months of 2011, energy produced from renewable energy sources (biomass/biofuels, geothermal, solar, hydro, wind) generated 2.245 quadrillion Btus of energy equating to 11.73 percent of U.S. energy production. During this same time period, renewable energy production surpassed nuclear energy power by 5.65 percent. In total, energy produced from renewables is 77.15 percent of that from domestic crude oil production."

garymortimer writes "Researchers at The Flying Machine Arena in the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control ETH Zurich control a multicopter drone with gesture based commands. The designers say they are 'looking for ways to make interaction with our vehicles natural and intuitive.'"

Following up on news from earlier this week that Valve made Team Fortress 2 free-to-play, we now get word that the Source engine SDK will be free to all as well. Quoting Rock, Paper, Shotgun: "The Source Software Development Kit, for those of you who've never clicked the Tools tab in Steam, contains everything you'd need to make a mod, except for personal ambition. It has everything from the infamous Valve Hammer Editor to Face Posers and Model Viewers. At the moment, to gain access to the Source SDK you have to purchase a Source based game such as Half Life 2, or as the official website states, Team Fortress 2. Which is of course now free. [Valve's Robin Walker said], 'We are in the process of getting it all done. It’s a bit messy because we have multiple versions of the SDK, and there’s some dependencies we need to shake out. But yes, the gist of it is that we’re just going to go ahead and make the Source SDK freely available.'"