MrSeb writes with a bit from Extreme Tech: "After a lot of theorizing, posturing, and non-human trials, it looks like bionic eye implants are finally hitting the market — first in Europe, and hopefully soon in the U.S. These implants can restore sight to completely blind patients — though only if the blindness is caused by a faulty retina, as in macular degeneration (which millions of old people suffer from), diabetic retinopathy, or other degenerative eye diseases. ... The Bio-Retina developed by Nano Retina, is a whole lot more exciting. The Bio-Retina costs ... around the $60,000 ... and ... the 576-pixel vision-restoring sensor is actually placed inside the eye, on top of the retina. The operation only takes 30 minutes and can be performed under local anesthetic. Once installed, 576 electrodes on the back of the sensor implant themselves into your optic nerve. The best bit, though, is how the the sensor is powered: The Bio-Retina system comes with a standard pair of corrective lenses that are modified so that they can fire a near-infrared laser beam through your iris to the sensor at the back of your eye. On the sensor there is a photovoltaic cell that produces up to three milliwatts — not a lot, but more than enough."
judgecorp writes "Mozilla's mobile operating system Firefox OS will win overwhelming support from developers because it dropped XUL in favour of HTML5, says the head of Mozilla Europe in an interview. Firefox OS is more open than iOS and Android, and 75 percent of apps are already written in HTML5."
zacharye writes "Oh, the irony. A musicians' rights group in the Netherlands was fined this week for stealing music from a client, using it without his permission and failing to pay royalties. Music royalty collection agency Buma/Stemra approached Dutch musician Melchior Rietveldt in 2006 and asked him to create a composition that would be used in an anti-piracy advertisement, which the group said would be shown exclusively at a local film festival. One year later, Rietveldt purchased a Harry Potter DVD only to find that his piece was being used on DVDs around the world without his permission..."
TheNextCorner writes with news on where CmdrTaco has been hiding. Quoting Malda's IamA blurb over at that Reddit thing: "In 1997 I started Slashdot.org. For several years, we pioneered news aggregation and on-line communities while exploring our niche of the 'net under the slogan, 'News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters.' Our work was later expanded upon at countless other more successful sites including Reddit and the Huffington Post. I left Slashdot last year, took a long time off, and then started work at the Washington Post Co's WaPo Labs their digital media R&D skunkworks group. I work as their Chief Strategist and Editor-at-Large, contributing what I can to a variety of projects ranging from their Social Reader, to some projects under development. From here I am able to continue to explore my interests in news, journalism, technology, and communities. ... I'll hopefully be answering from 2pm-5pm ET"
The idea behind the United States Space Camp is to give kids (and some adults) a chance to do astronaut training-type things that will get them jazzed on science and technology, in addition to getting away from home for a while. Security Camp is sort of like that that, says instigator Mark Tobias, but is about security stuff rather than space, and somehow interviewer Timothy Lord didn't ask Tobias about plans to teach security, computer or otherwise, for space travelers, when he talked with Tobias at HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) in New York. Since Tobias is an expert in physical security (locks), and locksmithing is going to be taught at Security Camp along with electronic/hacking-type security skills, it's a good thing all participants will be checked for criminal records and tendencies before they're allowed to participate. If there are plans to make a movie about Security Camp, which Tobias didn't mention one way or the other during this interview, we hope it's better than the 1986 movie, Space Camp.
New submitter wrekkuh writes "The Daily News is reporting that if aides of New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo cannot speak in person or by telephone with the Governor, they are told to use BlackBerry's PIN-to-PIN messaging system — a function that leaves no lasting trail because it bypasses data-saving email servers. Consequently, a Freedom of Information request for all e-mails to and from Governor Cuomo's office resulted in an empty reply from the Records Access Officer: 'Please be advised that the New York State Executive Chamber has conducted a diligent search, but does not possess records responsive to your request.'"
DavidGilbert99 writes "Following the discovery of the highly-complex Flame virus in May, two security companies (Seculert and Kaspersky Lab) have uncovered a new cyber-espionage threat against the Middle East. Madi, or Madhi, is an information-stealing trojan which is technically a lot simpler than Flame or Stuxnet but is specifically targeting people in critical infrastructure companies, financial services and government embassies, which are mainly located in Iran, Israel and Afghanistan. The Madi creators use social engineering techniques to spread, embedding the malware in various documents including text files and PowerPoint presentations. It is unclear if the malware is state-sponsored or not, but it has already stolen several gigabytes of information and is still active."
kierny writes "Hackers/crackers who get arrested are typically male and young adults — if not minors. Why is that? According to research by online psychology expert Grainne Kirwan, it's because the typical hacker 'ages out' once they get a girlfriend, job, kids, and other responsibilities that make it difficult to maintain their hacking/cracking/hacktivist lifecycle. Could that finding offer a way to help keep more young hacking enthusiasts out of jail?"
pigrabbitbear writes with this rant from Motherboard.com: "The Internet and the World Wide Web are not the same thing. They're not synonyms. They don't even serve the same function. And, just like how England is in the United Kingdom, but the United Kingdom isn't England, getting the distinction wrong means you can inadvertently sound like a dummy. Most of the time they can be used synonymously and no one will care, but if you're talking about history or technical stuff and you want to be accurate or a know-it-all or beat a computer at Jeopardy, you should know the difference. The Web was born at CERN in 1990, as a specific, visual protocol on the Internet, the global network of computers that began two decades earlier."
wiredmikey writes "Dutch authorities have pulled the plug on two secondary servers used by the Grum botnet, a large botnet said to produce about 17% of the world's spam. According to researchers from FireEye, the backup C&C servers were located in the Netherlands, and once word of their existence was released, Dutch authorities quickly seized them. While any C&C server takedown is a win, the impact may be minimal, as the two primary servers are fully active, and the datacenters hosting them are unresponsive to fully documented abuse reports. That being said, FireEye's Atif Mushtaq noted that the botnet does has some weak spots, including the fact that Grum has no failback mechanism, has just a few IPs hardcoded into the binaries, and the botnet is divided into small segments, so even if some C&Cs are not taken down, part of botnet can still remain offline. The removal of the C&C servers shines light on how quickly some law enforcement agencies work, given that proof of their existence is just over a week old."
An anonymous reader writes "Sony has demonstrated a thermal sheet that it claims matches thermal paste in terms of cooling ability while beating it on life span. The key to the sheet is a combination of silicon and carbon fibers, to produce a thermal conductive layer that's between 0.3 and 2mm thick. In the demonstration, the same CPU was cooled by thermal paste and the thermal sheet side-by-side, with the paste keeping the processor at a steady 53 degrees Celsius. The sheet achieved a slightly better 50 degrees Celsius. The actual CPU used in the demonstration wasn't identified. Sony wants to get the thermal sheet used in servers and for projection units, but I can definitely see this being an option for typical PC builds, too. It's certainly going to be less messy and probably a lot cheaper than buying a tube of thermal paste."
yahoi writes "AT&T has teamed up with an 11-year-old hacker and DefCon Kids to host a hacking contest during the second annual conference that runs in conjunction with the adult Def Con hacker show later this month in Las Vegas. The kid who finds the most zero-day bugs in mobile apps wins $1,000 and an IPad, courtesy of DefCon Kids. The contest was inspired by the mini-hacker's discovery last year of a whole new class of mobile app vulnerabilities."
ananyo writes "The species of alga that causes 'brown tides' in the United States and South Africa is also to blame for massive blooms along China's east coast on the Bohai Sea, researchers have found. The finding could be the first step to tackling the problem. It is the fourth consecutive year the country has been hit by the bloom (Slashdot's story on the 2010 bloom), with the situation worsening each time the bloom returns."
The Los Angeles Times reports that the world of micro-rentals just got a whole lot more crowded, with the introduction of a nationwide partnership between GM and ride-sharing company RelayRides. RelayRides has been arranging short-term car sharing in just a few cities for several years; car owners can sign up to make their own cars available for short-term rentals to others, so their expensive investment (especially in cities where parking is like a second apartment's rent) isn't sitting idle. Now, the two companies are rolling out that system in a much larger market: the rest of the U.S. Owners of GM cars new enough to be equipped with OnStar monitoring systems will be able to sign up to take part with the OnStar system providing the ability to unlock and track those cars remotely, which might make the bargain more attractive to many owners who'd like to earn money from their cars (and reduce the total number of cars needed in a given area), but reluctant to hand the keys to a stranger. (Cars without the system can still be enrolled, but will require a key hand-off.)
A federal judge in California dismissed a privacy class-action lawsuit against LinkedIn that alleged the social media network violated provisions of the Stored Communications Act (SCA) when it disclosed the IDs and browsing histories of LinkedIn users to advertising companies.
Marissa Meyer has her work cut out for her at Yahoo. The fading Internet star reported its second-quarter financial results Tuesday, in which revenue and profit...
Panoramic images from Google/University of Minnesota highlight Shackleton's hut and other historic and educational sites on Antarctica.
Companies are still only ramping up "bring your own device" policies that let employees use their own smartphones and tablets for business, but in many instances, they're finding BYOD is pricier than just issuing devices themselves.
Megaupload cannot avoid prosecution in the U.S. simply because it had no physical presence in the country, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a colorfully...
Intel warned Tuesday that it expects to see lower-than-anticipated growth for 2012. The news came as the company posted mixed results for the second quarter of...
To root or not to root? This is a question that obsesses many Android phone owners.
Facebook users may be unsatisfied, but that doesn't mean a social media takeover is imminent.
A piece of malware called Mahdi or Madi has been used to spy on hundreds of targets from Iran, Israel and a few other Middle Eastern countries during the past...
Skype says it isn't sure how many users are affected, but it estimates that the number is small. The company is working on a fix.
A large auto insurance provider has become embroiled in a court battle with Pitney Bowes, alleging that the software vendor claims a 20-year-old license...
Samsung Electronics will pay US$310 million to buy technology and patents from U.K. chip design company CSR, strengthening Samsung's chip offerings in the area...
The Google tablets on eBay sell for more than they do in the GooglePlay store, but they may arrive faster.
The USGS digitizes its collection of historic topological maps of the United States for your viewing pleasure.
MIPS, continuing its push to make a mark in low-cost tablets, is quickly trying to bring Android 4.1, also called Jellybean, to its processors.
Motorola's Xoom tablet does not infringe on some of Apple's community designs, the regional court of Düsseldorf ruled on Tuesday. Apple wanted a Europe-wide ban...
One of the world's most active spam botnets -- Grum -- was crippled after two of its command and control (CnC) servers hosted in the Netherlands were taken down...
Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory recently fired a laser capable of outputting 500 trillion watts of power. Yikes.
Office 2013 is easily the best Office yet.
Previously, extensions could be installed by any website without user intervention, an obvious boon for malicious attacks.
AT&T says it's working closely with Apple on the new developer build of iOS6 and that it'll share more information with customers as it becomes available.
Respondents in a survey blamed advertising, staleness, self-promotion and ignorance of the forums where the information originated for their skepticism.
In-cell technology integrates touch sensors inside the LCD panel, helping Apple save about 0.5mm, according to an online report.
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The European Commission has launched a formal investigation of Microsoft's compliance with commitments it made to settle a browser antitrust case.
SAP is planning to organize its analytics and BI (business intelligence) product strategy around five "pillars," or subject areas, spanning from essential...
Japanese electronics giant Fujitsu on Monday showed a new smartphone for the elderly, with a simplified Android user interface and a new touch screen designed...
China recently spent about US$160 million buying licensed software for use in its central and provincial government offices, as part of ongoing efforts to weed...
Ask any Silicon Valley entrepreneur about their startup and they'll usually tell you the sky is the limit. For some, it's not just the limit but the goal...
Yahoo's appointment of longtime Google executive Marissa Mayer as its new CEO is a bet on a strong, competent leader, though one without experience in the...
The next version of Microsoft Office, unveiled on Monday, is a dramatic departure from the software that millions of users have come to know, built for the cloud...
Based on Intel's Tianocore, a new virtual platform could give Linux distributions a better way to experiment with possible solutions.
Brandify, a new beta service from Microsoft, helps small business owners monitor, track and improve their social status score with easy-to-follow recommendations.
The Windows Surface tablets show on Amazon.de don't have pricing but there is one surprise: An unannounced version of the Surface Pro.
The US Military unleashes unmanned submarines to tackles the threat of mines.
Graphics chip manufacturer Nvidia is investigating claims that hackers have compromised its online stores as part of a larger attack that affected several of its websites.
University of Southampton researchers are fine-tuning an artificial intelligence system they say will give them a leg up in the English Fantasy Football League when the Premier League soccer season kicks off in August.
This case is probably the nicest purchase you could make to protect your PlayStation Vita.
Yahoo picks Google's Marissa Mayer as its new CEO, replacing Scott Thompson.
The stakes for Microsoft, which outlined the next version of its profitable Office suite today, are extremely high because that part of its business generates more revenue than any other, an analyst said today.
Symantec last week crippled a large number of Windows XP machines when it shipped customers a defective update to its antivirus software, the company acknowledged Friday.
A teardown of the Nexus 7 tablet reveals Google is likely to break even on the $199, 8 GB version of its tablet while earning a modest profit on the 16 GB version, priced at $249.
Sprint has become the first U.S. wireless carrier to offer an Ultrabook, which is being sold with a 3G/4G mobile hotspot device at no added cost.
Skype, a division of Microsoft, confirmed on Monday that a glitch in its software has led to instant messages being shared with unintended parties.
The United Nations' International Telecommunication Union (ITU) still isn't transparent enough, even though the organization has promised to give the public more information about a December treaty-writing meeting, representatives of two digital rights groups said Monday.
Fancy a future without corrective eyewear? If so, the guys at Tailored Displays might one day have something for you.
Microsoft launched the public beta of Office's next version on Monday, saying that from now on the suite's cloud-based edition, Office 365, will be its primary focus.
Some iPhone rumors should be taken with a grain of salt.
Intel is dishing out a total of US$29,000 in cash prizes to Android developers in an effort to encourage coders to write games for tablets and smartphones using...
Microsoft has won a motion to dismiss a seven-year-old, US$1.3 billion lawsuit from Novell charging Microsoft with illegal antitrust actions around its Windows...