Prosectors are shifting their focus to warrantless cell-tower locational tracking of suspects in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling that law enforcement should acquire probable-cause warrants from judges to affix GPS devices to vehicles and monitor their every move.
Apple says that a biogas-powered fuel cell system that will help power its Maiden, North Carolina, data center could be up and running as early as June, much earlier than previously expected.
Google's daily brainteaser helps hone your search skills.
Few television shows ignite the geekosystem like novels. With Season 2 of the series premiering Sunday, here's what fans of Martin's books want to know.
An Ohio man is asking a Virginia federal judge to preserve data on the 66.6 million users of Megaupload, the file-sharing service that was shuttered in January due to federal criminal copyright infringement indictments targeting its operators.
The big changes headed to Foxconn's factories have sparked concern and confusion among a number of parties. But if Foxconn stays true to its agreements, the industry may see some improvement.
Google is reportedly going to enter the ecommerce space with tablets.
Oakley's badass Factory Pilot gloves offer carbon-fiber protection.
On this episode of the Game|Life podcast, we discuss a pair of stories that point towards the brave new world of selling videogames.
The dream of sailors, nerds and sailor-nerds everywhere is on the verge of coming true, senior Navy technologists swear.? Within four years, they claim they'll have a working prototype of a laser cannon, ready to place aboard a ship. And they're just months away from inviting defense contractors to bid on a contract to build it for them.
The March Wired featured a Play section introduction of a piratical nature, with a hidden puzzle on it. The map below reveals the journey of the scurvy scalawags from island to island. At what island will these rascals end up?
Facebook's Timeline is here. Whether you like it or not.
The few studies that have followed victims of foodborne illness for years show that later in life, they suffer higher-than-usual rates not only of digestive trouble, but of arthritis and kidney problems, as well as greater risk of heart attack and stroke. Superbug author and blogger Maryn McKenna reports.
Global Payments Inc, an Atlanta-based processor, has been breached by hackers, leaving more than 50,000 card accounts potentially compromised.
Google Drive rumors have been piling up lately, with the service reportedly on the verge of launching in the first or second week of April. Now one site says it has unearthed screenshots from a Google source that show up to 5GB of free storage for each user.
Yes, we should study the risks of a cloud meltdown. But that doesn't mean we can't engage with the cloud while doing so. It isn't an all-or-none proposition, writes Jon Udell.
Dutch impressionist Vincent van Gogh obsessed himself with sunflowers until his death in 1890, later earning avid collectors tens of millions of dollars for single paintings. These days researchers have developed their own sunflower obsession: Solving the genetic origin of mutant "teddy bear" sunflowers depicted in van Gogh's ochre-splashed canvases.
Amazon EC2 is a veritable Wal-Mart of cloud computing, offering low, low prices and service targeted at mainstream tech. It works for most people most of the time. But in going broad, Amazon has ignored customers who need more than just the basics, writes Alexander Haislip.
Drones of the future won't just fly alongside birds. They'll actually fly a lot like them, thanks to a new Army program that's looking to mimic avian flight in the development of new unmanned vehicles.
This summer, Yahoo will start offering visitors an easier way to protect their privacy. Using tools available in most major web browsers, visitors will be able to simply and easily opt out of Yahoo's online tracking system.
The most striking feature of the human brain is its squiggly pattern of bumps and grooves, but within those curves is a lattice of nerve fibers that cross each other at roughly right angles. A new map shows off these structures in a rainbow of colors.
There was no blood or death at Portland's inaugural Pudding Wrestling Massacre. Just lots of laughter. And pudding. So much pudding...
J.R. Rivers is one of the Google engineers who secretly designed a new breed of networking hardware for the data centers underpinning the company's massively popular search engine and the rest of its web services. Rather than buy from traditional networking vendors such as Cisco and Juniper, Google worked in tandem with manufacturers in China and Taiwan to acquire networking gear on the cheap, and now, Rivers is helping the rest of the big web players -- and other companies -- do much the same thing. It's the beginning of a major in the hardware market, where more and more companies are cutting out middlemen such as Cisco, HP, and Dell.
He's alleged to have committed the most atrocious war crime of the Afghan conflict, arrested and charged with 17 murders. Now, the lawyers representing Staff Sgt. Robert Bales need to come up with a strategy to defend their client -- currently being held at Fort Leavenworth -- from a sentence that threatens to be as severe as the death penalty.
Post-apocalyptic hellscapes, futuristic hot rods and insectoid space probes vie for attention in , a new exhibit at Los Angeles' Gnomon Gallery.
A new exhibition on the art form known as videogames at the Smithsonian Institution is a big leap forward -- for the museum.
Chinese astronomers observe a new broom-shaped ?star? in the sky. It?s the first confirmed sighting of Halley?s Comet.
Having already pushed the envelope with violent content in previous . But the outlaw developer had a problem: The videogame ratings boards around the world all had vastly different standards for what was and was not acceptable.
lightbox32 writes "Samsung has finally responded to an article recently published by HD Guru titled 'Is your TV watching you?' [See this related Slashdot post] which discussed the fact that new features in Samsung's top 2012 models — including built-in microphones, HDTV camera, wireless and wired Internet connection, built-in browser with voice to text conversion, face recognition and more — could be used to collect unprecedented personal information and invade our privacy. Samsung has now provided their privacy policy, which may or may not lay the issue to rest." I vote for "not" — conspiracy theories about mandatory (or just secret) surveillance equipment in consumer electronics is just too persistent, even when the technical capabilities turn out to be a hoax; when the equipment is actually all in place and the user is protected only by a corporate honor policy, it's hard to be sanguine. (I recall there was a much rumored secret capability for law enforcement agencies to secretly and remotely turn on the internal microphones in PCs meeting the PC 97 spec, and this was an integral part of the plan. Since the government insists that telecom equipment have built-in backdoors, why should that sound all that crazy?)
judgecorp writes "The decision on the next generation of even-smaller SIM cards for phones and other devices has been delayed by standards body ETSI, and the issue (which should have been settled this week) is nowhere near resolution. Apple wants to trim the existing micro-SIM further, Nokia wants to move to something like a micro-SD card which may involve patents. Meanwhile RIM has complained about Apple's approach."
Malvineous writes "Don't have $1500 to drop on a USRP? A Linux kernel developer has discovered that a Realtek digital TV tuner chip has an undocumented mode that turns it into a software-defined radio, with a frequency range of 64-1700MHz. The going rate for one of these USB devices can be as low as US$11. If you're unfamiliar with software-defined radio and have 20 minutes to spare, Balint Seeber has a great video introduction."
shreshtha writes with this intriguing bit from The Daily Mail: "A tiny satellite thruster which can journey to the Moon on just a tenth of a litre of fuel could usher in a new low-cost space age, its creators hope. The mini-motor weights just a few hundred grams and runs on an ionic chemical compound, using electricity to expel ions and generate thrust. The tiny motor isn't built to blast satellites into orbit — instead, it's to help spacecraft manouevre once they're in space, which previously required bulky, expensive engines."
theodp writes "Engadget reports that Google wants a patent on its System and Method for Generating a Ghost Profile for a Social Network. The brainchild of five Googlers, the invention is designed to convert anti-social-networking types to the joys of Google+ and its ilk. From the patent: 'A problem arises when users of social networks are friends with people that are opposed to social networks. The second group misses out on an important social component. For example, many users only share their photos on a social networking site. As a result, users that do not want to join the social network are forced to either join with reservations or miss out on the social component, such as viewing pictures.' By generating an unsearchable 'ghost profile' when a member of the social network invites a Google+ adverse friend to join, Google explains, non-believers get to participate in social networking activities without providing user information."
MrSeb writes "Today is World Backup Day! The premise is that you back up your computers on March 31, so that you're not an April Fool if your hard drive crashes tomorrow. How do Slashdot users back up? RAID? Multiple RAIDs? If you're in LA, on a fault line, do you keep a redundant copy of your data in another geographic region?"
dartttt writes "Adobe has released Flash Player version 11.2 with many new features. This is the final Flash Player release for Linux platform and now onward there will be only security and bug fix updates. Last month Adobe announced that it is withdrawing Flash Player support for Linux platform. All the future newer Flash releases will be bundled with Google Chrome using its Pepper API and for everything else, 11.2 will be the last release."
First time accepted submitter bheading writes "Following years under controversial leadership which, among other things, led to a fork (which was in turn adopted by some of the major distributions) the glibc development process has been reinvented to follow a slightly more informal, community-based model. Here's hoping glibc benefits from a welcome dose of pragmatism."
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Talk about visualizations. Ever wondered what the wind would look like if you could see it in action from above? A new project posted online by a pair of Google computer scientists, called simply Wind Map, has to be seen to be believed. "It can be quite hypnotizing to watch the gusty trails blast across the American continent, skitter over the Sierras, get roughed up by the Rockies, and whoosh over the great plains on its way to Canada," writes Chris Taylor. Wind Map is the brainchild of Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg, the co-leaders of Google's 'Big Picture' visualization research group in Cambridge, Mass. Wind patterns are constantly changing, of course, which is why the Wind Map designers have also given us a moving-image gallery of previous blustery days."
First time accepted submitter constpointertoconst writes "If you use Google Maps to calculate directions, you may now notice (if your route is covered by their traffic data) an "in current traffic" travel estimate for current route. Some may recall that Google Maps had a similar estimate in the past, but it was removed last year due to poor accuracy."
First time accepted submitter rover42 writes "Major Chinese sites Sina and Webo 'have been legally punished for permitting the spread of unfounded rumors. Specifically, the report cites unfounded rumors that were spreading like wildfire on Sina Weibo of an attempted coup d'etat happening in Beijing.' The source is the state-run Xinhua." Sadly for the people of China (even if they like it this way), this seems to be in line with the Chinese government's general attitude toward the Internet.
New submitter Ben_R_R writes "The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency has created a camera that can 'see' radioactive contamination by detecting gamma rays emitted by radioactive cesium and other substances. The camera has been tested in the disaster evacuation zone around Fukushima. The image captures levels of radiation in six different colors and overlays the result over an image captured with a wide angle lens."
New submitter loosescrews writes "Online file locker Rapidshare is legal in Germany, but has to adjust its policy regarding infringing content, the Higher Regional Court in Hamburg has ruled. Rapidshare plans to appeal. Rapidshare was sued by the German copyright organization Gema which represents 64.000 copyright holders. After reading the verdict, both parties claim they are victorious."
jfruh writes "When tech geeks debate the state of the smartphone world, they usually focus on the iPhone and its high-end Android rivals from the major carriers. But Android is rapidly entering the lower-end world of contractless prepaid phones that you can buy at 7-11 or Wal-Mart. 63 percent of prepaid phones sold in 2011 were smartphones, and while they might not offer cutting-edge hardware or easy customization, they do provide a smartphone experience without an onerous contract."
zacharye writes "Using nothing more than a few common tools, hackers can reportedly recover credit card numbers and other personal information from used Xbox 360 consoles even after they have been restored to factory settings. Researchers at Drexel University say they have successfully recovered sensitive personal data from a used Xbox console, and they claim Microsoft is doing a disservice to users by not taking precautions to secure their data. 'Microsoft does a great job of protecting their proprietary information,' researcher Ashley Podhradsky said."