scibri writes "Omid Kokabee, a laser physics graduate student from the University of Texas who has been imprisoned in Tehran for the past 15 months, was sentenced to 10 years in jail on Sunday for allegedly conspiring with foreign countries against Iran. Kokabee was arrested in February 2011 while on a trip home, and charged with 'communicating with a hostile government' (i.e. Israel) and 'illegal earnings.' He has consistently denied the charges, and refused to speak at his trial, where no evidence against him was presented. Several international science groups, including the American Physical Society, have spoken up in his defense, and an online petition has been set up in support."
MojoKid writes "AMD lifted the veil on their new Trinity A-Series mobile processor architecture today. Trinity has been reported as offering much-needed CPU performance enhancements in IPC (Instructions Per Cycle) but also more of AMD's strength in gaming and multimedia horsepower, with an enhanced second generation integrated Radeon HD graphics engine. AMD's A10-4600M quad-core chip is comprised of 1.3B transistors with a CPU base core clock of 2.3GHz and Turbo Core speeds of up to 3.2GHz. The on-board Radeon HD 7660G graphics core is comprised of 384 Radeon Stream Processor cores clocked at 497MHz base and 686Mhz Turbo. In the benchmarks, AMD's new Trinity A10 chip outpaces Intel's Ivy Bridge for gaming but can't hold a candle to it for standard compute workloads or video transcoding."
New submitter davegravy writes "Byron Sonne, the Toronto-based security consultant, chemistry hobbyist, and geek who was arrested leading up to the Toronto G-20 for alleged plans to bomb the event, has been found not guilty of all charges. Sonne was held in prison for 11 months without receiving bail, and the ruling comes two years after his arrest. Sonne is considered by many in the Toronto security community as a champion of civil rights and a sharp critic of security theatre."
Almost 12 years after the launch of its predecessor, Diablo III has now been released. The game went live last night with over 8,000 midnight launch parties across the world. 2,000,000 players showed up for the beta test prior to launch, including 300,000 concurrently during an open beta weekend, but even so, the login servers struggled for the first few hours after launch. Diablo III had been in the works for quite some time — another example of Blizzard's notoriously long development cycle — and game director Jay Wilson said it was in "polish mode" for the past two years. "One of our sayings internally is 'polish as you go.' We have a belief that when you put a feature in, you should prototype, but then after you prototype you should do the real thing, and you should polish it to shipping quality." For those of you who are familiar with this type of game, there's an official game guide in which you can browse class skills, items, and other game information. There are also YouTube videos showing how each of the classes work.
CWmike writes "The four-year-old saga of Psystar, a Florida Mac clone maker that was crushed by Apple, ended Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear its appeal of a lower court ruling. The decision to not consider the case (download PDF) upheld a ruling last September by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. That ruling confirmed a permanent injunction against Psystar that prevented the company from copying, using or selling OS X, and blocked it from selling machines with Apple's operating system preinstalled. 'We are sad,' said K.A.D. Camera of the Houston firm Camera & Sibley LLP, in an email reply today to a request for comment. Camera represented Psystar in its bid to get its appeal heard. 'I expect the Supreme Court will eventually take a case on this important issue.' Last year, Camera had said, 'This is far from over,' after the Ninth Circuit's decision. Apparently, it is."
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers Jon Moeller, Andruid Kerne, and a team from the Interface Ecology Lab at Texas A&M University showcased the latest ZeroTouch multi-finger sensing technology at ACM CHI, in Austin. ZeroTouch is a new spin on infrared sensing technology, which optimizes the sensor readout cycle for a linear array of modulated infrared light receivers. ZeroTouch also constitutes a precise free-air sensing technology (Kinect can be used as a complementary technology to sense depth). Researcher Bill Hamilton uses ZeroTouch integrated with Wacom Cintiq to showcase new embodied eSports interaction (video) for the open source Zero-K real time strategy game."
New submitter mmmmdave writes "My parents love to Skype with my kid. My kid loves to mash laptop buttons and drool on the screen. And because we don't want to spend forty minutes every night holding the laptop outside of baby arms' length, we're looking to build some sort of wall-mounted monitor + webcam thingy. I'm sure there's a much cheaper option than sticking an iPad on the wall; what's more, non-touchscreen is probably better, so my daughter can't hang up the calls. Any ideas?"
lukehopewell1 writes "A Penn State robotics student has gone to the effort of building a working, automated turret from the video game series Portal. Powered by a webcam, Arduino boards and hacked up USB-missile launchers, this is one serious piece of kit that is just as adorable as its in-game counterpart. "
Mrs. Grundy writes "CGI software, even open-source software like Blender, continues to improve in quality, speed and ease-of-use. Photographer Mark Meyer wonders how long it will be before large segments of the photography industry are replaced by software and become the latest casualty to fall to outsourcing. Some imagery once the domain of photographers has already moved to CGI. Is any segment of the photography market safe? Will we soon accept digital renderings in places where we used to expect photographs?"
New submitter Adesso writes "Anti-virus vendor Avira is having difficulty with an update of all their Premium customers. An update that has been downloaded over 70 million times is causing the 32-bit version of Windows to block almost all critical applications. Avira has responded promptly with an interim solution for this problem. In most cases this causes Windows to not boot properly."
CowboyRobot writes "Two researchers have created a system that aggregates thousands of photos from around the Web and integrates them into single images. One application is creating maps by taking the GPS coordinates of photos taken from a collection. Another is creating 3D models of historical buildings by automatically pasting together tourists' photos taken from different angles. 'The challenge is that online data sets are largely unstructured and thus require sophisticated algorithms that can organize and extract meaning from noisy data. In our case, this involves developing automated techniques that can find patterns across millions of images.'"
darthcamaro writes "Guess What? Linux is not a primary platform for Mozilla. For Mozilla's upcoming Web Apps marketplace, Linux support is not part of the initial release. Some Mozilla developers simply are shrugging this off as Windows and Mac dominate the Mozilla user landscape today."
New submitter _0x783czar writes "Microsoft haters gleefully have latched on to the latest scoop that a Forbes columnist has named Steve Ballmer the worst CEO. It seems that the article has leveled some strong accusations of irresponsible and ineffective business practices; claiming that Microsoft has not progressed over the last 12 years of Ballmer's leadership. (Full disclosure: I'm not a Microsoft fan myself and tend to agree with this piece.)"
The latest stable release of Google Chrome automatically syncs your open tabs.
Dell Online is selling its Inspiron 14z laptop for $480--and throwing in Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premiere for free.
Mozilla's new beta version of Firefox for Android supports over 70 smartphones.
Four challenges Facebook will have to consider after it goes public.
A new variant of the Zeus trojan tricks users into exposing their debit card details by displaying rogue offers when they visit Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo and...
Finally, technology could help people learn sign language effectively, thanks to a glove covered in sensors.
The next major release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), version 7, is targeted for release in the second half of 2013, Red Hat said on Tuesday, as it also...
Nvidia on Tuesday announced technologies that could make its upcoming Tesla graphics processors more accessible to cloud deployments in enterprises, while also...
Voyager Mobile, a startup promising cheap, unlimited mobile service around the U.S., has postponed the launch it planned for Tuesday, saying a malicious attack...
Rogue browser extensions might inject commercial ads into Wikipedia pages, Wikimedia Foundation said
The newest game from Blizzard is finally here and we've got the inside track on what you should play.
Social network aggregation service adds Chrome Gmail integration and the ability to follow friends' public discussions across multiple services.
One Kickstarter project aims to significantly reduce the cost of table computers with an open-source, open-hardware design.
The complaint says that Jobs was enlisted to sell high-ranking officials in the publisher’s parent company on the wisdom of the proposed pricing scheme.
NetSuite is going up against vendors such as Demandware and Venda in the market for cloud-based e-commerce platforms, announcing a new product, SuiteCommerce...
Lenovo's "lightest" and "thinnest" claims for its ThinkPad X1 Carbon are correct, but you'll want to read the fine pint.
Speculation is high on what Apple will announce at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference. Here's a rundown of a few of the possibilities.
Eligible customers must purchase a new Windows 7-powered PC between June 2012 and January 2013 to get the reported deal.
From 16 May it will not be possible to ship iPads, iPhones or laptops overseas from the US using the United States Postal Service (USPS).
More than half of those surveyed said they had little to no trust that Facebook would keep their information private, and a majority said they wouldn't feel safe purchasing goods through the site.
Satisfaction with Microsoft's software slipped last year, part of an industry-wide downturn driven by U.S. consumer discontent with traditional PC programs.
Lenovo is working with chip maker Intel on a future ThinkPad tablet based on Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system, a Lenovo executive said.
Although the standard for DDR4 memory won't be finalized until summer, several companies are already preparing to ship modules that will boost performance in...
The rankings -- done by a Forbes writer -- cite the Vista and Zune failures, delayed product launches and Microsoft falling behind in mobile technology.
The security update does not patch any known vulnerabilities in the operating system.
The launch of a cut-rate unlimited $39-a-month mobile plan offered by upstart Voyager Mobile was marred Tuesday by what the company claims is "a malicious network attack to its primary website."
The digest is a change of direction for Twitter, whose main draw is its ability to relay information quickly and in real time.
Baidu, which runs China's most popular search engine, has unveiled its newest smartphone, featuring the company's own mobile platform and priced to target the...
SAP announced a broad set of plans to become a player in cloud computing, spanning from a "loosely coupled suite" of business applications to data integration...
Advanced Micro Devices hopes to provide thin-and-light laptops that are less expensive but equally speedy to Intel's ultrabooks with its new A-series chips.
Lenovo on Tuesday announced a range of new ThinkPads with Intel's latest third-generation Core processors, including a ThinkPad ultrabook that the company claims...
The Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) will provide email and collaboration applications to about 600,000 students via Microsoft's Live@EDU cloud...
Twitter will begin delivering a weekly email digest to highlight for users the tweets they are most likely to be interested in, the company said Monday.
So this Instagram camera and internal printer made not exist yet, but we sure wish it did!
Bitcoin exchange site Bitcoinica suspended its operations on Friday after hackers managed to steal 18,547 bitcoins -- valued at about US$90,000 -- from its...
Yahoo today launched Genome, a new tool that allows online advertisers take advantage of the company's extensive experience with big data analytics.
Given its very recent attempts to merge with AT&T, you would think T-Mobile wouldn't be a vocal proponent of maintaining competitive balance in the wireless industry.
SAP's Afaria mobile device management tool is now available on Amazon Web Services' cloud, offered as a way to make it easier to start using the platform, SAP...
Small and midsize businesses that actually use cloud services see them as a way to boost security and save money, according to a survey sponsored by Microsoft.
LightSquared, the startup that planned a nationwide wholesale mobile network only to be shot down by regulators because of GPS interference concerns, is declaring bankruptcy.
Facebook's head of privacy policy, Erin Egan, hinted in a Web chat on Monday that Facebook would begin serving targeted ads to users on third-party websites.
Reuters reports that a front-lit version of its Kindle eReader will launch in July 2012.
Siri flip-flops on "best smartphone" question.
A group of Japanese mecha enthusiasts band together and build a pilotable mech that you can control using a smartphone and a Kinect-based control system.
Microsoft has designed Windows 8 to make parental monitoring and control of children's computer activities simpler and more effective, the company said on...
A proposed sale of mobile spectrum from a group of cable providers to Verizon Wireless, along with accompanying marketing and research agreements, will lead to...
Current management tools ease (but certainly don't end) cloud security jitters.
The free 123D Catch app lets you assemble 3D models from snapshots using only your iPad.
Improvements in three key areas promise to make Mozilla's browser considerably faster.
A U.S. court has shut down the operations of a company that allegedly promised it would build its customers websites that would generate income of up to...