eldavojohn writes "The title of this hard-hitting piece of journalism reads 'Powerful 'Flame' cyberweapon tied to popular Angry Birds game,' and opens with, 'The most sophisticated and powerful cyberweapon uncovered to date was written in the LUA computer language, cyber security experts tell Fox News — the same one used to make the incredibly popular Angry Birds game.' The rest of the details that are actually pertinent to the story follow that important message. The graphic for this story? Perhaps a map of Iran, or the LUA logo, or maybe the stereotyped evil hacker in a ski mask? Nope, all Angry Birds. Describing LUA as 'Gamer Code,' Fox for some reason (popularity?) selects Angry Birds from an insanely long list in their article implying guilt-by-shared-development-language. I'm not sure if explaining machine language to them would alleviate the perceived problem or cause them to burn their desktops in the streets and launch a new crusade to protect the children."
gambit3 writes "In a move to squeeze more cash out of its lucrative Web-search engine, Google is converting its free product-search service into a paid one. Online retailers will now have to bid to display their products on Google's Shopping site. Currently, retailers include their products for free by providing Google with certain data about the products. Google then ranks those products, such as cameras, by popularity and price. 'We believe that having a commercial relationship with merchants will encourage them to keep their product information fresh and up to date. Higher quality data—whether it’s accurate prices, the latest offers or product availability—should mean better shopping results for users, which in turn should create higher quality traffic for merchants.'"
Bob the Super Hamste writes "The BBC is reporting on a new law in Venezuela that effectively bans the commercial sale of firearms and ammunition to private citizens. Previously anyone with a permit could purchase a firearm from any commercial vendor but now only the police, military, and security firms will be able to purchase firearms or ammunition from only state-owned manufactures or importers. Hugo Chavez's government states that the goal is to eventually disarm the citizenry. The law, which went into effect today, was passed on February 29th, and up to this point the government has been running an amnesty program allowing citizens to turn in their illegal firearms. Since the law was first passed, 805,000 rounds of ammunition have been recovered from gun dealers. The measure is intended to curb violent crime in Venezuela, where 78% of homicides are linked to firearms."
blackbearnh writes "Everyone these days knows that you have to double- and triple-check your code for security vulnerabilities, and make sure your servers are locked down as tight as you can. But why? Because our underlying operating systems, languages, and platforms do such a crappy job of protecting us from ourselves. The inevitable result of clamoring for new features, rather than demanding rock-solid infrastructure, is that the developer community wastes huge amounts of time protecting their applications from exploits that should never be possible in the first place. The next time you hear about a site that gets pwned by a buffer overrun exploit, don't think 'stupid developers!', think 'stupid industry!'"
New submitter mk1004 writes "ETSI members have approved a new, smaller SIM format. 'The fourth form factor (4FF) card will be 40% smaller than the current smallest SIM card design, at 12.3mm wide by 8.8mm high, and 0.67mm thick. It can be packaged and distributed in a way that is backwards compatible with existing SIM card designs. The new design will offer the same functionality as all current SIM cards.' Nokia is not happy about the decision, as they believe their version was superior, but they say they're prepared to license the patents essential to the standard."
An anonymous reader writes "The latest Gallup poll is out, and it finds that 46% of Americans hold the view that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years. According to Gallup, the percentage who hold this view has remained unchanged since 1982, when they first started asking the question. Roughly 33% of Americans believe in divinely guided evolution, and 15% believe that humans evolved without any supernatural help."
Hugh Pickens writes "Rebecca Rosen writes that if you've recently opened up — or, more specifically, tried to open up — a CFL light bulb, you can sympathize with the question posted on Quora last year, 'What is the worst piece of design ever done?' The site's users have given resounding support to one answer: plastic clamshell packaging. 'Design should help solve problems' — clamshells are supposed to make it harder to steal small products and easier for employees to arrange on display — but this packaging, says Anita Schillhorn, makes new ones, such as time wasted, frustration, and the little nicks and scrapes people incur as they just try to get their damn lightbulb out. The problem is so pervasive there is even a Wikipedia page devoted to 'wrap rage,' 'the common name for heightened levels of anger and frustration resulting from the inability to open hard-to-remove packaging.' Amazon and Wal-Mart are prodding more manufacturers to change their packaging to cut waste. 'We've gotten e-mails from customers who've purchased scissors in a clamshell, which would require another pair of scissors to open the package,' says Nadia Shouraboura, Amazon's vice president of global fulfillment. Other worthy answers to the Quora question include the interfaces on most microwaves, TV remotes, New York City's parking signs, and pull-handles on push-only doors, but none gained even close to the level of popular repudiation that clamshells received."
silentbrad writes "The CBC reports, 'Money can't buy love — but if you want some great tunes playing at your wedding, it's going to cost you. The Copyright Board of Canada has certified new tariffs that apply to recorded music used at live events including conventions, karaoke bars, ice shows, fairs and, yes, weddings. The fees will be collected by a not-for-profit called Re:Sound. While the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (otherwise known as SOCAN) already collects money from many of these events for the songwriters, Re:Sound will represent the record labels and performers who contributed to the music. .. For weddings, receptions, conventions, assemblies and fashion shows, the fee is $9.25 per day if fewer than 100 people are present and goes up to $39.33 for crowds of more than 500 people. If there's dancing, the fees double. Karaoke bars will pay between $86.06 and $124 annually depending on how many days per week they permit the amateur crooning. And parades, meanwhile, will be charged $4.39 for each float with recorded music participating in the parade, subject to a minimum fee of $32.55 per day.'"
An anonymous reader writes "As Microsoft released the preview of the next version of its Internet Explorer browser, news that in Windows 8 the browser will be sending a 'Do Not Track' signal to Web sites by default must have shaken online advertising giants. 'Consumers can change this default setting if they choose,' Microsoft noted, but added that this decision reflects their commitment to providing Windows customers an experience that is 'private by default' in an era when so much user data is collected online.' This step will make Internet Explorer 10 the first web browser with DNT on by default. And while the websites are not required to comply with the users' do-not-track request, the DNT initiative — started by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission — is making good progress."
itwbennett writes "Responding to complaints from Chinese Googlers that the search engine is 'inconsistent and unreliable,' Google has updated its service to help users steer clear of search queries that will result in page errors. Google will now highlight characters and phrases that are likely to 'break' a user's connection. 'By prompting people to revise their queries, we hope to reduce these disruptions and improve our user experience from mainland China,' the company said in a blog post."
New submitter Splintercat writes "The Humble Indie Bundle V has just been released, featuring Psychonauts, LIMBO, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, and Bastion for Windows, OSX and Linux. Ubuntu software center support has also been added as a method of downloading."
cylonlover writes "We've heard reports that placing small, reflective particles into the upper atmosphere could actually improve crop yields, but would also significantly reduce the amount of electricity generated by solar power plants and do little to arrest the acidification of the world's oceans. Now another potential side effect has been theorized by Californian researchers, who say that solar geoengineering could lead to brighter, whiter skies, and sunsets with an afterglow (abstract)."
The large number of new characters reportedly coming to next season should give fans hope that the television series will hew more closely to its vaunted source material. Here's a breakdown of what the casting news portends.
In , Wes Anderson's latest movie, two 12-year-olds fall madly in love with each other on an island off the New England coast in the summer of 1965. Sam sports a raccoon cap, geeky glasses and a scout uniform; Suzy wears lurid blue eye makeup that never seems to come off, and earrings made of fishhooks. Their young love is doomed, of course, and so they run off into the wilderness together, drawing the ire of the adults around them.
Wired senior editors Chris Baker and Peter Rubin, Wired managing editor Marty Cortinas and I have made it our jobs to predict what we think we'll see at the E3 Expo next week.
PASADENA, California -- A federal appeals court appeared troubled Friday by the Obama administration's arguments that the government could break domestic spying laws without fear of being sued. A two-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard an hour of oral arguments here by the government and a lawyer for two attorneys whom a federal judge concluded had there telephone calls monitored illegally without warrants.
Microsoft's Bing search engine gets a makeover with social search results from Facebook stepping into the spotlight.
Ikea media centers and bookshelves have long housed our electronics, but starting this summer, Ikea will become a full-fledged electronics manufacturer. Although it initially garnered protests and confusion among gadget enthusiasts, Ikea's upcoming television is actually a smart move -- and an indicator of the television market's maturity as a whole.
The advocacy group when it comes to autonomous vehicles. The group sees The Big G's efforts less as a way to reduce crashes and save lives, and more as a ploy to mine and monetize even more personal data. And it wants to block a bill that would clear the way for Google?s self-driving cars to legally cruise California roads unless privacy protections are in place.
Lego is expanding into even more beloved nerd universes. At E3, Warner Bros. will show two major new entries in the cooperative action game franchise: .
Boeing's largest airplane began passenger service today as Lufthansa enlisted the service of the new on a flight from Frankfurt, Germany, to Washington, D.C. The newest 747 is a bigger, quieter and more efficient version of the iconic jumbo jet that first flew passengers under the Pan Am banner back in 1970. The 747-8I uses much of the same technology found on the 787 Dreamliner, along with an all-new wing and engines.
With news of the latest souped-up Google Chromebooks, as well as a capitulation by Google that its cloud/web-centric Chrome OS needs to act more like a traditional OS and ditch the browser-only model, it's time to ask if we could be looking at the first post-PC era machines.
Several major PC manufacturers, including Toshiba, Acer and Asus, are set to unveil new Windows 8 tablets at next week's Computex show in Taipei, according to a report from Bloomberg.
Few artists have pushed electronic music's sonic envelope as ambitiously as cosmopolitan composer Amon Tobin. A new limited-edition box set, crammed with early audio experiments, film and television scores, dubplates, live bootleg recordings and other rarities offer an intriguing window into the musician's evolving creative methods. Hear Wired's exclusive preview of the track "Angels & Demons" now.
*That was quite clever of them. It's almost a para-mapping of their original mapping, or a meta-probe of their probe.http://yourban.no/2012/06/01/visualising-wifi-for-the-masses/(...)"We have been trying to keep track of the propagation of the film for several reasons: to keep a record of media impact, to follow its adventures across both research discourses and popular media, and ...
The humble example of a church supper -- recorded in Google Calendar or Hotmail Calendar, published on a website, and syndicated to other sites -- illustrates a general idea about personal (and organizational) clouds, writes Jon Udell.
Water is one of the chief concerns of our time: It's scarce, necessary, polluted and sacred. It's also been defined by the United Nations as a basic human right, while at the same time rapidly becoming a commodity. These tensions and contradictions form the underlying principles behind new art exhibit now showing in New York.
Despite an error in the Stuxnet worm that attacked Iran's uranium enrichment program, which caused the malware to spread wildly out of control and attack computers outside of Iran in 2010, President Barack Obama ordered U.S. officials who were behind the attack to continue the operation.
We're all embedded within social networks, and studying those networks can help researchers quantify human behavior. Mathematician and Social Dimension blogger Samuel Arbesman describes a new study that probes the limits of our finite social attention.
All antivirus companies, including F-Secure, missed detecting the Flame malware for two years, or more. That's a spectacular failure for our company, and for the antivirus industry in general, says Mikko Hypponen, chief security officer for Finnish security firm F-Secure.
Studies suggest those who graduate into depressed economies are less likely to ever find the same success as boom-time grads. So what to do? Here?s a run-through of some of the most highly rated budgeting apps to help you on your way.
As part of the Windows 8 Release Preview, Microsoft has dropped another preview version of its coming Internet Explorer 10. As rumored, this release includes support for Adobe Flash on Windows 8 tablets.
This coming Sunday, a do-it-yourself space program will test a parachute for its space capsule by strapping it to a person. Rocket Shop blogger and Copenhagen Suborbitals co-founder Kristian von Bengtson reports.
A running series in which we ask art directors to give us a list of their current obsessions
Wired takes a look at some of the strangest and most spurious legal claims on outer space.
was concocted using curious alchemy: It's a feminist retelling of one of the oldest fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm, orchestrated by a first-time director whose previous credits were in commercials. The film casts an Oscar winner as an evil queen, America's next action hero as a drunk knight-in-shining-armor type (minus the armor) and cinema's coldest vampire plaything as the titular princess.
Scandal. Political intrigue. Tricked-out assault helicopters disgorging masked Special Operations Forces. A noisy, smoky mock gunfight. These are just about the last things you'd expect to see at a trade show. But SOFIC -- that's the Special Operations Forces Industry Convention -- had all this and more.
Twin brothers Francis and Freelan Stanley are born. Their name will live on in the legendary Stanley Steamer automobile.
Audi may have been the first automaker to integrate a touch pad into its infotainment systems, allowing users to simply draw letters rather than tediously scroll through an alphanumeric list to input an address or point-of-interest search. But BMW refuses to be left behind, and in addition to a new iDrive controller with integrated touch pad, the automaker is working on new gesture-based controls that are unlike anything we've seen in a production vehicle.
*Next best thing to being there.http://urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/2012/06/01/winning-the-new-aesthetic-death-match/*You have to wonder why that's so New-Aesthetic looking. Sheer anthropomorphic render-ghost noosphericity, I reckon.
For more than a century, astronomers assumed that Venus, which on June 5/6 will cross the Sun's disk as viewed from Earth, was Earth's twin. The first successful planetary probe, Mariner II, revealed it to be hellishly hot. That put an end to thoughts of piloted Venus landings, but not to plans for piloted Venus exploration. Beyond Apollo blogger David S. F. Portree looks at one such plan -- a Venus orbiter -- that was meant to serve as a stepping stone to Mars.
Google's daily brainteaser helps hone your search skills.