Jul 31 2010
China Pushes Real Name System For Online Games PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 31 July 2010
oxide7 writes "Starting from August 1, internet users will have to register using their real names for playing online games, China Daily reported on Saturday. The regulation, issued by the Ministry of Culture on June 22, is said to be part of a nationwide campaign to improve management of the virtual gaming industry and protect the minor from unwholesome content. It applies to all multiplayer role-playing and social networking games."

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Jul 31 2010
Build The Cadillac of DIY Flower Pot Smokers to BBQ in Style [Cooking] PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 31 July 2010
Commercial egg-style smokers are extremely expensive. Put off by the high price one resourceful DIYer made an absolutely beautiful homemade smoker complete with stand, chimney, inlet damper, and other polished features. More »


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Jul 31 2010
'I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up!' v2.0 PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 31 July 2010
theodp writes "Remember those old Lifecall commercials? Well, you've come a long way, Grandma! The NY Times reports on a raft of new technology that's making it possible for adult children to remotely monitor to a stunningly precise degree the daily movements and habits of their aging parents. The purpose is to provide enough supervision to allow elderly people to stay in their homes rather than move to an assisted-living facility or nursing home. Systems like GrandCare, BeClose, QuietCare, and MedMinder allow families to keep tabs on Mom and Dad's whereabouts, and make sure they take their meds. Perhaps Zynga can make a game out of all this — GeriatricVille?"

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Jul 31 2010
Microsoft Tech Can Deblur Images Automatically PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 31 July 2010
An anonymous reader writes "At the annual SIGGRAPH show, Microsoft Research showed new technology that can remove the blur from images on your camera or phone using on-board sensors — the same sensors currently added to the iPhone 4. No more blurry low light photos!"

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Jul 31 2010
Raptr Is a Gaming Social Network, Messaging Client, and Organizer Rolled Into One [Gaming] PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 31 July 2010
Windows: Raptr is an impressive social networking tool designed to replace and enhance the lackluster tools included in many games. Connect with your gamer friends more effectively and with clearer information on who is playing what and when. More »


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Jul 31 2010
Antarctic Experiment Finds Puzzling Distribution of Cosmic Rays PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 31 July 2010
pitchpipe writes "A puzzling pattern in the cosmic rays bombarding Earth from space has been discovered by an experiment buried deep under the ice of Antarctica. ... It turns out these particles are not arriving uniformly from all directions. The new study detected an overabundance of cosmic rays coming from one part of the sky, and a lack of cosmic rays coming from another." The map of this uneven distribution comes from the IceCube neutrino observatory last mentioned several days ago.

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Jul 31 2010
DIY iMac-like iPad Stand [DIY] PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 31 July 2010
You may think the world doesn't need yet another iPad stand, but this mod puts the others to shame. Those times where you have to have a full keyboard for typing, an old iMac stand makes a clever DIY mount. More »


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Jul 31 2010
Broadway Musicians Replaced With Synthesizers PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 31 July 2010
wooferhound writes "Sophisticated synthesizers and computer-manipulated recordings are increasingly taking over orchestras. Sounding almost like real players, while costing much less, they're especially popular with provincial or touring companies. But until mid-July — when 'West Side Story's' producers announced that a synthesizer was replacing three live violinists and two cellists, or half the orchestra's string section — staff violinist Paul Woodiel thought that at least the classics would be immune to the trend. There are computer programs able to read and play back music scores — a boon to composers who can now hear their work as they write — and software allowing conductors to control the tempo of the machine, in the same way that they direct live players."

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Jul 31 2010
Learn the Art of Whole Animal Buying to Save Money and Support Local Food [Food] PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 31 July 2010
One great way to support the local food market, reduce environmental waste, and save money is to buy whole animals instead of single cuts of meat. Iowa State University has created a guide to help you do so at home. More »


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Jul 31 2010
DIY Circuit Board Table [DIY] PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 31 July 2010
If you've built your fair share of custom PCs over the years, you've probably got more than a few circuit boards stashed away. Here's how to turn them into a cool coffee table. More »


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Jul 31 2010
Budapest Panorama, at 70GP, Now the World's Largest Digital Photo PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 31 July 2010
hasanabbas1987 writes "It's just been a few months since a 45-gigapixel panorama of Dubai claimed the title of world's largest digital photograph, but it's now already been well and truly ousted — the new king in town is this 70-gigapixel, 360-degree panorama of Budapest. As with other multi-gigapixel images, this one was no easy feat, and involved two 25-megapixel Sony A900 cameras fitted with 400mm Minolta lenses and 1.4X teleconverters, a robotic camera mount from 360world that got the shooting done over the course of two days, and two solid days of post-processing that resulted in a single 200GB file — not to mention a 15-meter-long printed copy of the photograph for good measure. Of course, what's most impressive is the photo itself [Note: requires Silverlight]."

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Jul 31 2010
Mars Rover Spirit May Never Wake From Deep Sleep PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 31 July 2010
astroengine writes "After repeated calls from NASA to wake up Mars Exploration Rover Spirit from its low-energy hibernation mode, mission control is beginning to realize the ill-fated robot may never wake up again. After getting stuck in a sand trap in Gusev Crater and then switching into hibernation in March, rover operators were hopeful that the beached Spirit might yet be saved. Alas, this is looking more and more unlikely. In a statement, NASA said: 'Based on models of Mars' weather and its effect on available power, mission managers believe that if Spirit responds, it most likely will be in the next few months. However, there is a very distinct possibility Spirit may never respond.'" Related xkcd strip, in case the headline wasn't anthropomorphic enough for you.

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Jul 31 2010
Silent, Easily Made Android Rootkit Released At DefCon PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 31 July 2010
An anonymous reader writes with news that security experts from Spider Labs released a kernel level rootkit for Android devices at DefCon on Friday. "As a proof of concept, it is able to send an attacker a reverse TCP over 3G/WIFI shell upon receiving an incoming call from a 'trigger number.' This ultimately results in full root access on the Android device." The rootkit was developed over a period of two weeks, and has been handed out to DefCon attendees on DVD.

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Jul 31 2010
Top 10 Tools and Tactics to Trim Your Bills [Lifehacker Top 10] PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 31 July 2010
Cutting down your cellphone, rent, credit card, and other bills is the gift that keeps on giving, all year 'round. Try these negotiation tactics, savings tips, reminder plans, and other tips to cut down your paycheck killers. More »


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Jul 31 2010
Average Cellphone Data Usage Is 145.8 MB Per Month PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 31 July 2010
destinyland writes "For the first time, the majority of cell phones are accessing data services — 53 percent, compared to only 42 percent last year, according to a new study by Validas. And each user downloads an average of 145.8 MB per month (the average was just 96.8 MB per month in 2009). The heaviest users are Verizon smartphone owners, averaging 428 MB per month (338 MB on average for iPhone users). In fact, Verizon users were twice as likely as iPhone users to exceed both 500 MB and 2 GB each month."

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Jul 31 2010
Make Edible Cups Out of Jello [Food] PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 31 July 2010
Whether you're a fan of environmental hacks or you just want a new conversation starter, these edible, naturally biodegradable cups are sure to add some fun to your summer get-togethers. More »


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Jul 31 2010
TI Calculator DRM Defeated PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 31 July 2010
josath writes "Texas Instruments' flagship calculator, the Nspire, was hacked to allow user-written programs earlier this year. Earlier this month, TI released an update to the OS that runs on the calculator, providing no new features, but only blocking the previous hack. Now, just a few weeks later, Nleash has been released, which defeats this protection. The battle rages on as users fight for the right to run their own software on their own hardware."

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Jul 31 2010
Who Is Downloading the Torrented Facebook Files? PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 31 July 2010
eldavojohn writes "Gizmodo's got an interesting scoop on a list of IPs acquired from Peer Block revealing who is downloading the Facebook user data torrented this week: Apple, the Church of Scientology, Disney, Intel, IBM and several major government contractors just to name a few. The article notes that this doesn't mean it's sanctioned by these companies or even known to be happening, but the IP addresses of requests coming to one of the users' machines match to lists of IP blocks for each company."

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Jul 31 2010
Fossil Fuel Subsidies Dwarf Support For Renewables PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 31 July 2010
TravisTR sends word of research from Bloomberg New Energy Finance which found that direct subsidies for renewable energy from governments worldwide totaled $43-46 billion in 2009, an amount vastly outstripped by the $557 billion in fossil fuel subsidies during 2008. "The BNEF preliminary analysis suggests the US is the top country, as measured in dollars deployed, in providing direct subsidies for clean energy with an estimated $18.2bn spent in total in 2009. Approximately 40% of this went toward supporting the US biofuels sector with the rest going towards renewables. The federal stimulus program played a key role; its Treasury Department grant program alone provided $3.8bn in support for clean energy projects. China, the world leader in new wind installations in 2009 with 14GW, provided approximately $2bn in direct subsidies, according to the preliminary analysis. This figure is deceptive, however, as much crucial support for clean energy in the country comes in form of low-interest loans from state-owned banks. State-run power generators and grid companies have also been strongly encouraged by the government to tap their balance sheets in support of renewables."

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Jul 31 2010
Microsoft To Issue Emergency Fix For Windows .LNK Flaw PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 31 July 2010
Trailrunner7 writes "Microsoft will issue an out-of-band patch on Monday for a critical vulnerability in all of the current versions of Windows. The company didn't identify which flaw it will be patching, but the description of the vulnerability is a close match to the LNK flaw that attackers have been exploiting for several weeks now, most notably with the Stuxnet malware. The advance notification from Microsoft on Friday said that the company is patching a critical vulnerability that is being actively exploited in the wild and affects all supported Windows platforms. The LNK flaw in the Windows shell was first identified earlier this month when researchers discovered the Stuxnet worm spreading from infected USB drives to PCs. Stuxnet has turned out to be a rather interesting piece of malware as it not only uses the LNK zero day vulnerability to spread, but it had components that were signed using a legitimate digital certificate belonging to Realtek, a Taiwanese hardware manufacturer."

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Jul 31 2010
UK Government Rejects Calls To Upgrade From IE6 PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 31 July 2010
pcardno writes "The UK government has responded to a petition encouraging government departments to move away from IE6 that had over 6,000 signatories. Their response seems to be that a fully patched IE6 is perfectly safe as long as firewalls and malware scanning tools are in place, and that mandating an upgrade away from IE6 will be too expensive. The second part is fair enough in this age of austerity (I'd rather have my taxes spent on schools and hospitals than software upgrade testing at the moment), but the whole reaction will be a disappointment to the petitioners."

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Jul 30 2010
The Canadian Who Holds the Key To the Internet PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 31 July 2010
drbutts writes "The Toronto Star has an interesting story on how they are securing DNS: It's housed in two high-security facilities separated by the North American landmass. The one authenticated map of the Internet. Were it to be lost — either through a catastrophic physical or cyber attack — it could be recreated by seven individuals spread around the globe. One of them is Ottawa's Norm Ritchie. Ritchie was recently chosen to hold one of seven smartcards that can rebuild the root key that underpins this system' called DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions). In essence, these seven can rebuild the architecture that allows users to know for certain where they are and where they are going when navigating the Web."

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Jul 30 2010
US Ability To Identify Source of Nuclear Weapons Decays PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 31 July 2010
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times covers a report released by the National Research Council, which says the ability of the US to identify the source of a nuclear weapon used in a terrorist attack is fragile and eroding. The goals of the highly specialized detective work, known as nuclear attribution, is to clarify options for retaliation and to deter terrorists by letting them know that nuclear devices have fingerprints that atomic specialists can find and trace. 'Although US nuclear forensics capabilities are substantial and can be improved, right now they are fragile, under-resourced and, in some respects, deteriorating,' the report warns. 'Without strong leadership, careful planning and additional funds, these capabilities will decline.' The report calls on the federal government to take steps to strengthen its forensic capabilities and argues for the necessity of better planning, more robust budgets, clearer lines of authority and more realistic exercises."

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Jul 30 2010
New PS3 Firmware Causing HDD Upgrade Problems? PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 31 July 2010
Channard writes "While there have been occasional reports of previous PS3 firmware upgrades causing system crashes and so forth, Sony's new firmware upgrade for the system, 3.41, is apparently stopping PS3 owners from upgrading their hard disks. This problem has been encountered by many users on Sony's forums and occurs when you try to put a new hard disk into a PS3 that already has the firmware upgrade installed. The general course of action for upgrading a PS3's drive is that you download the latest PS3 firmware onto a memory stick and, after swapping the hard drive in the PS3, plug the stick in, allowing the PS3 to properly prepare the disk for use. But as of upgrade 3.41, the PS3 fails to recognize the firmware on the stick, complaining that it can't proceed until you insert the correct firmware. Repeating the process and re-downloading the firmware does not fix the problem, as I can confirm, having encountered the problem myself. Users can put the old hard disk back in, provided they've not reformatted it for some other purpose, so all is not lost. Sony have apparently told gaming website CVG that 'The information available to our Consumer Services Department does not suggest that this is a problem PlayStation owners are likely to experience when upgrading the HDD with 3.41 update.' This seems to fly in the face of the currently available information — although whether or not this statement was issued by Kevin Butler is unclear. Either way, PS3 owners encountering this problem will likely have to wait a few days for a fix and use their old HDDs for now."

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Jul 30 2010
FCC Gives Thumbs-Up To First LTE Phone PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 31 July 2010
eagledck tips news that the FCC has "finally approved the first 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) phone for sale in the US." The Samsung device will use MetroPCS as a carrier, but tech specs, software details and a launch timetable are still uncertain. Meanwhile, Verizon is ramping up testing of their own LTE infrastructure, hoping to launch in 25 to 30 markets by the end of the year. An anonymous reader notes that LTE rollouts could be hampered by a confused and conflicted patent situation. "It is impossible to know where all the patents are but we have identified more than 60 companies holding essential patents. It is a very large landscape and fragmented. If there was one major patent pool and a handful of individual companies to deal with, that would be possible. But signing license deals with 40 plus [entities] is not. A unified patent pool is best," said a representative for one of three patent pool organizations trying to accomplish that.

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