Technology archive for 2011-07-11

Sam Biddle / Gizmodo:Anonymous Leaks 90,000 Military Email Accounts in Latest #AntiSec Attack  —  Booz Allen Hamilton is a massive American consulting firm that does a substantial amount of work for the Pentagon.  This means they've got a lot of military business on their servers—which Anonymous hacked.

Twitter has hit a major benchmark as the micro-blogging site now boasts at least one million registered applications - up from just 150,000 at this time last year.

suraj.sun tips a story at Wired that takes an in-depth look into how security researchers tracked down and worked to understand the infamous Stuxnet worm. The article begins:"It was January 2010, and investigators with the International Atomic Energy Agency had just completed an inspection at the uranium enrichment plant outside Natanz in central Iran, when they realized that something was off within the cascade rooms where thousands of centrifuges were enriching uranium. But when the IAEA later reviewed footage from surveillance cameras installed outside the cascade rooms to monitor Iran's enrichment program, they were stunned as they counted the numbers. The workers had been replacing the units at an incredible rate — later estimates would indicate between 1,000 and 2,000 centrifuges were swapped out over a few months. The question was, why?" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:Exclusive: Facebook Hires New Director of Product, Tom Stocky, From Google  —  Longtime Googler Tom Stocky is Facebook's newest director of product, AllThingsD has learned.  —  Stocky posted about the move on his online profiles and Facebook confirmed he'd been hired.

Lisa Stark on a new study that shows consequences are changing behavior.

The buzz is all about Bentley, but 'The Bachelorette' hold lessons for online daters. Read cybersecurity expert Hemu Nigam's analysis.

Becky Worley explains when it is smart to scrap the appliance for something new.

Ryan Owens finds some inappropriate moments when phones weren't silenced.

2006: Astronaut Andy Thomas takes us from launch pad to outerspace.

A by the numbers look at the final shuttle launch.

When I was down in Florida to cover the launch of the shuttle Endeavour in May, I ran into an old NASA friend who joked about the agency's knack for timing. The schedule for this month's final flight by Atlantis...

Good niches don't come cheap, but while $350 isn't exactly a steal, Acer's new AC700 will, at the very least, get you into the wonderful cloud-based world of Chrome OS for a good deal less than, say, Samsung's Series 5. Of course, there are certain sacrifices to be made for the sake of affordability, namely the fact that the current version of Acer's entry into the space is WiFi-only -- a 3G version is set to hit later this summer for, one assumes, a noticeable price bump. The AC700 has an Atom N570 processor, 16GB of storage, and 2GB of RAM, and best of all, is available right this very moment.Acer AC700 WiFi goes on sale, is your $350 ticket to the Chromebook club originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Jul 2011 17:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink Netbook News  |  Amazon  | Email this | Comments

Nokia might not be doing well as of now but given their three services around location, mobile commerce and coupons, the OEM can make a come back with an ecosystem of services around mobile for...

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:New Mac Pros and MacBook Airs to launch this week with OS X Lion  —  We have been expecting new MacBook Airs this week and now it appears that the ultra-thin notebooks won't be the only new Macs this week.  According to our source Mr. X, part numbers for an upgraded Mac Pro line have appeared …

The HTC status, AT&T's first device with a dedicated Facebook share button, is now available for preorder and will be launching on July 17, 2011.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer used the keynote speech at the 2011 Worldwide Partner Conference to admit that Windows Phone 7 is still "very small."

The forthcoming update to Android Honeycomb helps apps display properly on tablet devices

The catalog of registered Twitter applications recently reached the 1 million mark, an increase of about 850,000 applications in the past year, the company said Monday.

A U.S. nonprofit consortium is hoping the prospect of a US$20,000 cash prize will help spur the creation of open-source software tools companies can use to work with the XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) standard for financial reporting.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Monday issued draft rules for how states should establish affordable health insurance exchanges, which will create marketplaces where individuals and businesses can compare private insurance plans.

Security researchers have found more malicious Android apps on Google's official download site and being spread through Chinese app stores.

Industries that rely on fair use exceptions to U.S. copyright law have weathered the recent slow economy better than other businesses, according to a new study released by a tech trade group.

U.S. and Canadian courts have approved the sale of thousands of patents from bankrupt Nortel Networks to a consortium including Apple and Microsoft for about US$4.5 billion.

astroengine writes "Great news for astronaut red wine aficionados: the alcoholic beverage can counteract some of the most troublesome physiological effects of microgravity. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on whether or not you have to pilot a spaceship), you have to drink a lot of wine to reap any benefit. These findings are fresh from the labs of French researchers (abstract) who found that by dosing unfortunate rats — hung by their tails to simulate microgravity — with resveratrol (a compound found in red wine), they could help stave off bone density loss and muscle atrophy. Does this mean resveratrol is an astronaut's best friend? Possibly, but judging by the quantities that are needed, it would most likely come in supplement form, rather than 750 ml bottles." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Okay, so maybe it's not the only reason that Chatroulette is due for a revival, but it certainly won't hurt matters. SRI Technology has just announced that it'll be providing image stabilization software to take the jiggles from your future Google Talk videocalls. 'Course, you'll need an Android 3.0+ device in order to take advantage, but the general consensus here seems fairly positive. SRI's press release (embedded after the break) isn't exactly laced with details, but GigaOM is reporting that this could also improve battery life, but only the heaviest of video chatters are apt to notice the difference. Looks like distracting yourself just got a whole lot less distracting.Continue reading Google Talk to use SRI technology for stabilizing video chats, revive ChatrouletteGoogle Talk to use SRI technology for stabilizing video chats, revive Chatroulette originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Jul 2011 17:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink MobileBurn  |  SRI Technology  | Email this | Comments

Dow Jones:U.S. Venture Fund-Raising Shines for Some, European Funds Still Struggle  —  Dow Jones LP Source: U.S. VC Fund-Raising Rose 19% in First Half; European Fund-Raising Dropped 45%; Early-Stage Funds Lagged as Late-Stage Commitments Picked Up  —  In the U.S., brand name venture firms raising anything …

The International Space Station got a year's worth of groceries in a giant shopping cart on Monday, courtesy of the astronauts on NASA's final shuttle flight.

There's some websites out there that offer free books, everything from the classics to the latest best-sellers. Here are the places I always check before I buy.

If you see this on Facebook: "Breaking news — Leaked video of Casey Anthony CONFESSING to lawyer!" — don't click on it. It's fake. It isn't malware that can harm your computer, but it is annoyingware that could irritate your friends.

Hacking group Anonymous said Monday it infiltrated a server belonging to military consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton and made available approximately 90,000 military e-mail addresses online.

If ever there was a video game that begged to be made into a movie it's ... "Space Invaders." Or at least, that's what some people in Hollywood think.

Microsoft disabled the search function on its Safety and Security Center this past weekend after scammers hijacked it to redirect queries to porn sites.

A piece of space junk from an old Soviet satellite will pose no danger to the International Space Station and the attached shuttle Atlantis, thanks in large part to the weekend docking of the two spacecraft, NASA officials said Monday.

Here's what's worth considering today: "Alien" on Blu-ray for $12, discounted Asus laptops, free iOS apps, and more.

Rumor is that Mac OS X Lion — the latest version of Apple's popular operating system — will become available in a few days. While you're waiting for the software to be released, you can get your computer ready.

She posted her picture on Facebook using the "Hot or Not" app. He saw it and was smitten. Now the couple is married and grateful they found each other, no matter the means.

As more of us gravitate to smartphones, we're relying on them for more of our Web surfing; 25 percent of Americans say they're now doing most of their Internet browsing on their phones instead of a computer, says a new report.

A trove of old photographs, including images of a traditional English pancake race and snaps of Abe Lincoln's inauguration, has been taggd by location on Google Maps thanks to a website called Historypin.

The HTC Status, the first U.S. cellphone with a dedicated hard-key button for Facebook on it, will cost $49.99 with a two-year contract, minimum $15/month data plan and be sold in AT&T stores starting July 17.

This week's installment of the Fine Brothers' "Kids React to YouTube Stars," features the wee ones' honest evaluations of "Epic Meal Time."

What does it take to survive a catastrophic meteor impact? The tough turtles of the Cretaceous know a bit about that; they seem to have survived the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs because of their slow metabolisms and aquatic lifestyles, researchers now say.

Did you just hear a horrifying noise? That was the sound of Rebecca Black fans screaming in joy as their parents — and the rest of the Internet — groaned in agony. The cause of this peculiar reaction? News that the 14-year-old singer has a new song coming out soon.

Blinging out your grill is old and tired. Nerds are the new hotness, and we're sure the trend will be getting your '$4' money key replaced with a version made from gold-plated silver.

Will iRiver Story HD give Amazon’s Kindle a run for its money? Probably not, at least not on its own, but it’s a notable step for Google’s digital books initiative, as the first dedicated device with the search company’s eBooks platform integrated into it right out of the box.

Kelp and other seaweed could be biofuels of the future, avoiding competition with food crops for land and scarce freshwater resources — limitations that plague land-based biofuel prospects.

Buried deep beneath the sediment of the North Atlantic Ocean lies an ancient, lost landscape with furrows cut by rivers and peaks that once belonged to mountains. Geologists recently discovered this roughly 56 million-year-old landscape using data gathered for oil companies.

This weekend there was an 80-minute time period during which Google+ users were hit by an odd spam attack. They weren't simply annoyed by junk emails, but instead smothered by a pile of duplicate Google+ notifications. What went wrong?

There are iPhone apps which monitor your child's pooping habits, so it's only natural that there are some that'll track the more pleasant aspects of raising a kid. One such app will help you keep an eye on your precious angel's growth and development.

Google's Science Fair came to a close today with participants from three age groups (all in their teens) flown in from all over the world. Here's a look at the top 15 entries this year.

HP will install Stephen DeWitt as general manager of its webOS unit. Jon Rubinstein, who led webOS at Palm and HP, will take "a product innovation role" at HP's PC unit.