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Stories · 15
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Modern Warfare 3 Details Leak
fysdt writes "Details on the next Call of Duty game, Modern Warfare 3, have not simply leaked onto the internet; they have flooded. Among other details, a November 8 release date was mentioned. According to a report coming from Kotaku, what was just a month ago among the best kept secrets of the gaming industry — information on the next Call of Duty game — has now become anything but." -
Engineers Find Nuclear Meltdown At Fukushima Plant
fysdt writes "Engineers from the Tokyo Electric Power company (Tepco) entered the No.1 reactor at the end of last week for the first time and saw the top five feet or so of the core's 13ft-long fuel rods had been exposed to the air and melted down. Previously, Tepco believed that the core of the reactor was submerged in enough water to keep it stable and that only 55 per cent of the core had been damaged." -
Apple Patents Keyboard That Knows What You'll Type
fysdt writes "Another day, another patent, this one from Apple for a very curious sort of keyboard that might be easier to type on because it'll know in advance which keys your fingertips want to hit. No, not a device built by Emmett 'Doc' Brown (as far as we know, anyway), or pulled back through time in a TARDIS—just a very special type of board with tiny inbuilt tactile sensors capable of detecting what your spider-formation fingers are about to tap before they actually do." -
Ugly Truth of Space Junk
fysdt writes "Dealing with the decades of detritus from using outer space — human-made orbital debris — is a global concern, but some experts are now questioning the feasibility of the wide range of 'solutions' sketched out to grapple with high-speed space litter. What may be shaping up is an 'abandon in place' posture for certain orbital altitudes — an outlook that flags the messy message resulting from countless bits of orbital refuse. US General William Shelton, commander of Air Force Space Command, underscored the worrisome issue of orbital debris during a presentation at the National Space Symposium on April 12, 2011. In a recent conference here, Gen. William Shelton, commander of the US Air Force Space Command, relayed his worries about rising amounts of human-made space junk." -
Facebook Caught Exposing Millions of Credentials
fysdt writes "Facebook has leaked photographs, profiles and other personal information for millions of its users because of a years-old bug that overrides individual privacy settings, researchers from Symantec said. The flaw, which the researchers estimate has affected hundreds of thousands of applications, exposed user access tokens to advertisers and others. The tokens serve as a spare set of keys that Facebook apps use to perform certain actions on behalf of the user, such as posting messages to a Facebook wall or sending RSVP replies to invitations. For years, many apps that rely on an older form of user authentication turned over these keys to third parties, giving them the ability to access information users specifically designated as off limits." -
Google Launching Music Service Without Labels
fysdt writes "Google Inc is set to launch an online music locker service to allow users to store and access their songs wherever they are, similar to one launched by Amazon.com Inc in March. And like the Amazon Cloud Drive player, Google music service is being introduced on Tuesday without any prior licensing deals with major music labels, following months of fruitless negotiations." -
Battle Brews Over FBI's Warrantless GPS Tracking
fysdt writes "The FBI's use of GPS vehicle tracking devices is becoming a contentious privacy issue in the courts, with the Obama administration seeking Supreme Court approval for its use of the devices without a warrant, and a federal civil rights lawsuit targeting the Justice Department for tracking the movements of an Arab-American student. In the midst of this legal controversy, Threat Level decided to take a look at the inside of one of the devices, with the help of the teardown artists at iFixit." -
Easily Distracted People May Have 'Too Much Brain'
fysdt writes with this excerpt from New Scientist: "Those who are easily distracted from the task in hand may have 'too much brain.' So says Ryota Kanai and his colleagues at University College London, who found larger than average volumes of grey matter in certain brain regions in those whose attention is readily diverted. To investigate distractibility, the team compared the brains of easy and difficult-to-distract individuals. [Abstract] They assessed each person's distractibility by quizzing them about how often they fail to notice road signs, or go into a supermarket and become sidetracked to the point that they forget what they came in to buy. The most distractible individuals received the highest score." -
Idle: Four Injured In iPad Fight At Beijing Apple Store
fysdt writes "Four people were taken to hospital and a glass door smashed as a near-riot broke out at Beijing's top Apple store among crowds rushing to snap up the popular iPad 2 tablet computer, state press said Sunday. Angry consumers began rushing the store on Saturday afternoon after a 'foreign' Apple employee allegedly stepped into the crowd to push and beat people suspected of queue jumping, the Beijing News said." -
Crowdsourcing Radiation Monitoring In Japan
fysdt writes "A new open- and crowdsourced initiative to deploy more geiger counters all over Japan looks to be a go. Safecast, formerly RDTN.org, recently met and exceeded its $33,000 fund-raising goal on Kickstarter, which should help Safecast send between 100 and 600 geiger counters to the catastrophe-struck country. The data captured from the geiger counters will be fed into Safecast.org, which aggregates radiation readings from government, nonprofit, and other sources, as well as into Pachube, a global open-source network of sensors." -
Rocket Blasts Off With Missile-Warning Satellite
fysdt sends this quote from a Reuters report: "An unmanned Atlas 5 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Saturday to put the first satellite of the Defense Department's new missile-warning system into orbit. Tucked inside the rocket's nosecone was the $1.3 billion Space-Based Infrared Systems (SBIRS) Geo-1 spacecraft, built by Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. The satellite, the first of four scheduled for launch over the next five years, is intended to provide the US military with early notice of missile launches and other reconnaissance services. The $17.6 billion SBIRS constellation, which includes sensors on host satellites, will augment and eventually replace the military's Defense Support Program satellites, which have been operating since 1970. The satellites scour the planet for heat trails produced by flying rockets and missiles." -
Developers: MS Hopes To Lure iOS Apps With API Mapping Tool
Microsoft isn't standing idly by while Appple's app store fills with software; fysdt writes "A newly-announced service called the iOS to Windows Phone 7 API mapping tool acts as an interchange for developers to take applications they've already written for Apple's platform, and figure out ways to get the code work with Microsoft's standards." -
Steve Jobs: 'We Don't Track Anyone'
fysdt writes "There has obviously been a lot of discussion about last week's disclosure that iOS devices are maintaining an easily-accessible database tracking the movements of users dating back to the introduction of iOS 4 a year ago. The issue has garnered the attention of US elected officials and has played fairly heavily in the mainstream press. One MacRumors reader emailed Apple CEO Steve Jobs asking for clarification on the issue while hinting about a switch to Android if adequate explanations are not forthcoming. Jobs reportedly responded, turning the tables by claiming both that Apple does not track users and that Android does, while referring to the information about iOS shared in the media as 'false.'" Apple has now been hit with a class-action lawsuit over the location-tracking issue. -
Iran Says It Has Detected Second Cyber Attack
fysdt writes "Iran has been targeted by a second computer virus in a 'cyber war' waged by its enemies, its commander of civil defense said on Monday. Gholamreza Jalali told the semi-official Mehr news agency that the new virus, called 'Stars,' was being investigated by experts." -
Wal-Mart Tests Online Grocery Delivery
fysdt writes "The world's biggest retailer had been rumored to be considering dipping its toe into online grocery delivery for the past few years. The 'Walmart To Go' test allows customers to visit Walmart.com to order groceries and consumables found in a Walmart store and have them delivered to their homes, the spokesman said. Products include fresh produce, meat and seafood, frozen, bakery, baby, over-the-counter pharmacy, household supplies and health and beauty items."