News Bytes for 1/25/2009

January 25th, 2010

FOLLOW-UP: AT&T fixes bug that logged mobile users into random Facebook accounts

Independent hacker produces anonymization service for Google users

How Lala fits into Apple’s “secret” music-in-the-cloud strategy

US broadband’s average (download) speed: 3.9Mbps

Gene variant prolongs anxiety reactions in mice and men

Nano-scale robot arm moves single atoms with 100% accuracy

Skype is now the largest provider of cross-border communications– 54 billion minutes total in the last year (projected)

Windows plagued by 17-year-old privilege escalation bug

Amazon hikes Kindle e-book royalties to 70% for authors, with a catch

Analysis of 32 million passwords shows most users careless about security

Better computer networks, the slime mold way

Oil droplets can run mazes now

Fujifilm and IBM claim new data density record for magnetic tape– 35 terabytes on a single cassette

Prolonged video gaming blamed for rise in rickets cases

Dutch engineers shrink heat engines by seven orders of magnitude

Neuroscientists can spot PTSD in brain scans

New catalyst turns atmospheric CO2 into useful industrial chemical

Human brain uses a grid to represent space

New set of vulnerabilities found in Internet Explorer, only days after Microsoft patches hole used in Google cyberattacks

PayPal freezes assets of Wikileaks.org

Inventor of electronic dowsing rod used for bomb detection in Iraq arrested and charged with fraud, after selling $85 million worth of merchandise

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News Bytes for 1/18/2010

January 18th, 2010

Technology reporters evaluate Chevy Volt’s shifting from battery-electric to gas-electric– car gets good marks

Colorado Attorney General unveils new online safety program for kids

Comcast expands rollout of customer-viewable broadband meter to Washington state

Mac OS Leopard and Snow Leopard flaw exploited in the lab; real-world malware could come soon

US Department of Justice settlement puts on-campus deployments of Amazon Kindle on hold

Google files patent on Streetview billboard ad replacer

Nanowires can inject molecules into living cells

Researchers build OLED panels that can mimic sunlight

Pedro Matias sets new cell phone texting record at Mobile World Cup

Tynt Insight is watching you cut and paste

US design firm comes up with new puctuation mark: the SarcMark (to indicate sarcasm)

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News Bytes for 1/11/2010

January 11th, 2010

Missouri Court of Appeals upholds previous ruling, that a web site’s terms of service are still enforceable even if users never read them

At the rate they’re being used, only a few years of IPv4 address space remains

Social network Beautiful People removes 5,000 users for putting on weight during the holidays

Canadian government temporarily wiped out 4,500 personal and small business web sites in response to Yes Men hoax

Google wants to buy and sell electricity in the US

L.A. Apple Store shoppers targeted by thieves

Golden ratio discovered in quantum world; hidden symmetry observed for the first time in solid state matter

Malicious app is peddled on Android Market, phishing for credit card and bank info

Blizzard offline “authenticators” may become mandatory for World of Warcraft

Facebook launches fellowship program to promote social computing research

Fix finalized for SSL protocol hole

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News Bytes for 1/4/2010

January 3rd, 2010

LOCAL: Dean of Stephens College invites students to power down and contemplate in a return to campus vespers services

Programmer conned CIA and the Pentagon into buying bogus anti-terror code

US Air Force says video feeds from drones can’t be properly encrypted until 2014

Attack of the RAM scrapers: beware of malware aimed at grabbing point-of-sale data

Has humanity reached a tipping point with space debris?

Malware authors and botnet masters are starting their own ISPs

The Chinese government is attempting a porn-free web

Are HP webcams racist?

The creators of VLC are going to release a video editor

Coronary artery drill gets cleared for use, sensor distinguishes between various kinds of plaque

‘Bumpy’ whale fins set to spark a revolution in aerodynamics

Researchers develop tiny, autonomous piezoelectric energy harvester

This just in: ‘lifeless’ prion proteins are ‘capable of evolution’

Underground, web-based services allow virus writers to ‘check their work’

Stem cell therapy restores British man’s eyesight

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News Bytes for 12/14/2009

December 13th, 2009

Dark Matter particle may have been discovered, using an underground mine physics experiment in Minnesota

Apple expels group of iPhone developers and their 1000 apps from the App Store after reviews scam

DARPA awards project to Texas A&M to study “temporary hibernation” treatment on pigs, for use on future injured soldiers on the battlefield

Russian cybercrook gets 18 months for IRS e-filing scam

TJX card hacker pleads guilty to Heartland Payment Systems breach

LCD maker pleads guilty to price fixing

AT&T promises network improvements, hints at 3G data caps in large cities

Google CEO says privacy doesn’t matter: If you want to keep something private, “maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” This after Google blacklists CNet for violating their CEO’s privacy.

Study finds Americans consume 34GB of information every day

Company trains the autistic to test software

Facebook’s new push for public data runs aground as founders’ pictures are made public and they reconsider

GAO says FCC needs better oversight of the wireless industry–42% of people who want to switch carriers don’t switch due to early-termination charges

Method to repair damaged adult nerves discovered

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News Bytes for 11/30/2009

November 30th, 2009

Apple makes nice with Rogue Amoeba software house

77 percent of Facebook fan pages have under 1,000 fans

Microsoft advice against using Nehalem Xeon processors snuffed out online

Chrome OS hacked to run on Dell’s Mini 10V, WiFi and all

Spin polarization achieved at room temperature, elusive miracles now less elusive

New banking trojan is a formidable foe

Will iconic Technics 1200 DJ turntable be discontinued?

Man pleads guilty to selling fake computer chips to US Navy

Mobile web traffic increasing rapidly for non-smartphones

Wikileaks publishes 500,000 9/11 pager messages

Programmable magnets are now a reality

Man invents electric lobster taser– a humane alternative to boiling them alive

Posted in 2009 shows, Quick Bytes | 1 Comment »

News Bytes for 11-23-2009

November 22nd, 2009

“Anonymous” newspaper web site commenter is outed, he quits his job in response

Malaria gaining resistance to best available treatment

Anti-smoking vaccine is nearing the market

Aging nuclear stockpile good for decades to come

Cyberattacks on US military jump sharply in 2009

As humans evolve, our brains are actually shrinking

Computer “glitch” grounds air traffic last week

Hacked emails fuel and confuse global warming debate

YouTube introduces automatic captions for deaf viewers

Outrage grows over India’s massive ID plan

The Illustrated Man: How LED tattoos could make your skin into a screen

Bizarre Droid phone auto-focus bug revealed

IBM makes a machine at least as smart as your cat

New study confirms exotic electric properties of graphene

Become the pied piper of mucus with an important invention of 2009, the lung flute

V-22 Osprey and new stealth jumpjet need refrigerated landing pads

Transborder immigrant tool helps Mexicans cross over safely

Posted in 2009 shows, Quick Bytes | 2 Comments »

News Bytes for 11/2/2009

November 2nd, 2009

Microsoft bails from Family Guy Windows 7 special

Microsoft to open up Outlook’s .PST data file format

The British couple captured by Somali pirates blogged their sailing trip prior to capture

IT leaders trust Microsoft more than Google, 2-to-1

Cybercrooks trick Gawker family of blogs into serving malware-laced advertisement

UN to use SMS-text-based food vouchers with Iraqi refugees

Scientists discover gene that ‘cancer-proofs’ cells naturally occurring in naked mole rats

New form of quantum entanglement plays with time and energy

Latent kill switches in military tech may have been used in Israel’s strike on Syrian radar sites in 2007

Key component in the first commercially-viable fusion reactor comes from coconut shells– The Professor approves

Ares 1-X booster rocket dented in test flight

The iPhone Apple makes for the Chinese market has no WiFi

Movie studios launch Epix high-def, 720p, on-demand movies on the FiOS network

Jet cars and secret weapons: the ‘impossible’ Emdrive

Posted in 2009 shows, Quick Bytes | 4 Comments »

The U.S. Skies are safer than they have ever been – except for that Cancer-causing X-ray part.

November 1st, 2009

Technology Review has published a spectrum analysis of the TetraHertz Microwave “frisking” scanners have concluded that DNA strands are very easily “unzipped” by these radio waves.  ”

“Alexandrov and co have created a model to investigate how THz fields interact with double-stranded DNA and what they’ve found is remarkable. They say that although the forces generated are tiny, resonant effects allow THz waves to unzip double-stranded DNA, creating bubbles in the double strand that could significantly interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication. That’s a jaw dropping conclusion. “

Summon the ROFL Copter!

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