Iran Nearly Finished Decoding U.S. Drone, Tehran Claims

AP Photo/Sepahnews

Dec. 8, 2011: A photo by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards purportedly shows a U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel drone that Tehran says its forces downed earlier in the week, as the chief of the aerospace division of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, right, listens to an unidentified colonel.

TEHRAN, Iran –  Iranian experts are in the final stages of recovering data from the U.S. surveillance drone captured by the country's armed forces, state TV reported Monday.

Tehran has flaunted the capture of the RQ-170 Sentinel, a top-secret aircraft with stealth technology, as a victory for Iran and a defeat for the United States in a complicated intelligence and technological battle.

President Barack Obama said Monday that the U.S. was pressing Iran to return the aircraft, which U.S. officials say malfunctioned and was not brought down by Iran. But a senior commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard said on Sunday that the country would not send it back, adding that "no one returns the symbol of aggression."

Iranian lawmaker Parviz Sorouri, a member of the parliament's national security and foreign policy committee, said Monday the extracted information will be used to file a lawsuit against the United States for what he called the "invasion" by the unmanned aircraft.

Sorouri also claimed that Iran has the capability to reproduce the drone through reverse engineering, but he did not elaborate.

State TV broadcast images Thursday of Iranian military officials inspecting what it identified as the drone. Iranian state media have said the unmanned spy aircraft was detected and brought down over the country's east, near the border with Afghanistan.

Officers in the Revolutionary Guard, Iran's most powerful military force, have claimed the country's armed forces brought down the surveillance aircraft with an electronic ambush, causing minimum damage to the drone.

American officials have said that U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that Iran neither shot the drone down, nor used electronic or cybertechnology to force it from the sky. They contend the drone malfunctioned. The officials spoke anonymously in order to discuss the classified program.

U.S. officials are concerned others may be able to reverse engineer the chemical composition of the drone's radar-deflecting paint or the aircraft's sophisticated optics technology that allows operators to positively identify terror suspects from tens of thousands of feet in the air.

They are also worried adversaries may be able to hack into the drone's database, although it is not clear whether any data could be recovered. Some surveillance technologies allow video to stream through to operators on the ground but do not store much collected data. If they do, it is encrypted.

Separately, in comments to the semi-official ISNA news agency, Sorouri said Iran would soon hold a navy drill to practice the closure of the strategic Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, which is the passageway for about 40 percent of the world's oil tanker traffic.

Despite Sorouri's comments and past threats that Iran could seal off the waterway if the U.S. or Israel moved against Iranian nuclear facilities, no such exercise has been officially announced.

"Iran will make the world unsafe" if the world attacks Iran, Sorouri said.

Both the U.S. and Israel have not rule out military option against Iran's controversial nuclear program, which the West suspects is aimed at making atomic weapons. Iran denies the charge, saying its nuclear activities are geared toward peaceful purposes like power generation.

In another sign of the increasing tensions between Iran and the U.S., Tehran said Monday it has asked Interpol to help seek the arrest of two former U.S. officials it accuses of supporting the assassinations of Iranian officials.

Iran's state prosecutor, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehei, told reporters that Iran has filed charges against retired U.S. Army Gen. Jack Keane and former CIA agent Reuel Marc Gerecht.

Ejehei said Iran sent a request to Interpol in Paris to help pursue the two Americans through its office in Washington.

Iran says the two men urged the Obama administration to use covert action against Iran and kill some of its top officials, including Brig. Gen. Ghassem Soleimani commander of the Quds Force, the special foreign operations unit of the Revolutionary Guard.

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12 Chinese Hacker Teams Responsible for Most U.S. Cybertheft

Chinese Web surfers browse the Internet in a local cybercafe. (AP Photo)

WASHINGTON –  As few as 12 different Chinese groups, largely backed or directed by the government there, do the bulk of the China-based cyberattacks stealing critical data from U.S. companies and government agencies, according to U.S. cybersecurity analysts and experts.

The aggressive, but stealthy attacks, which steal billions of dollars in intellectual property and data, often carry distinct signatures allowing U.S. officials to link them to certain hacker teams. And, analysts say the U.S. often gives the attackers unique names or numbers, and at times can tell where the hackers are and even who they may be.

Sketched out by analysts who have worked with U.S. companies and the government on computer intrusions, the details illuminate recent claims by American intelligence officials about the escalating cyber threat emanating from China. And the widening expanse of targets, coupled with the expensive and sensitive technologies they are losing, is putting increased pressure on the U.S. to take a much harder stand against the communist giant.

It is largely impossible for the U.S. to prosecute hackers in China, since it requires reciprocal agreements between the two countries, and it is always difficult to provide ironclad proof that the hacking came from specific people.

Several analysts described the Chinese attacks, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigations and to protect the privacy of clients. China has routinely rejected allegations of cyberspying and says it also is a target.

"Industry is already feeling that they are at war," said James Cartwright, a retired Marine general and former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

A recognized expert on cyber issues, Cartwright has come out strongly in favor of increased U.S. efforts to hold China and other countries accountable for the cyberattacks that come from within their borders.

"Right now we have the worst of worlds," said Cartwright. "If you want to attack me you can do it all you want, because I can't do anything about it. It's risk free, and you're willing to take almost any risk to come after me."

The U.S., he said, "needs to say, if you come after me, I'm going to find you, I'm going to do something about it. It will be proportional, but I'm going to do something ... and if you're hiding in a third country, I'm going to tell that country you're there, if they don't stop you from doing it, I'm going to come and get you."

Cyber experts agree, and say that companies are frustrated that the government isn't doing enough to pressure China to stop the attacks or go after hackers in that country.

Much like during the Cold War with Russia, officials say the U.S. needs to make it clear that there will be repercussions for cyberattacks.

The government "needs to do more to increase the risk," said Jon Ramsey, head of the counter threat unit at the Atlanta-based Dell SecureWorks, a computer security consulting company. "In the private sector we're always on defense. We can't do something about it, but someone has to. There is no deterrent not to attack the U.S."

Cyberattacks originating in China have been a problem for years, but until a decade or so ago analysts said the probes focused mainly on the U.S. government -- a generally acknowledged intelligence gathering activity similar to Americans and Russians spying on each other during the Cold War.

But in the last 10 to 15 years, the attacks have gradually broadened to target defense companies, and then other critical industries including those in energy, finance and other sectors.

According to Ramsey and other cyber analysts, hackers in China have different digital fingerprints, often visible through the computer code they use, or the command and control computers that they use to route their malicious software through.

U.S. government officials have been reluctant to tie the attacks directly back to the Chinese government, but analysts and officials quietly say that they have tracked enough intrusions to specific locations to be confident they are linked to Beijing -- either the government or the military. And, they add that they can sometimes glean who benefited from a particular stolen technology.

One of the analysts said investigations show that the dozen or so Chinese teams appear to get "taskings," or orders, to go after specific technologies or companies within a particular industry. At times, two or more of the teams appear to get the same shopping list, and compete to be the first to get it, or the one with the greatest haul.

Analysts and U.S. officials agree that a majority of the cyberattacks seeking intellectual property or other sensitive or classified data are done by China-based hackers. While much of the cyberattacks stealing credit card or financial information come from Eastern Europe or Russia.

According to experts, the malicious software or high-tech tools used by the Chinese haven't gotten much more sophisticated in recent years. But the threat is persistent, often burying malware deep in computer networks so it can be used again and again over the course of several months or even years.

The tools include malware that can record keystrokes, steal and decrypt passwords, and copy and compress data so it can be transferred back to the attacker's computer. The malware can then delete itself or disappear until needed again.

Several specific attacks linked to China include:

-- Two sophisticated attacks against Google's systems that stole some of the Internet giant's intellectual property and broke into the Gmail accounts of several hundred people, including senior U.S. government officials, military personnel and political activists.

-- Last year computer security firm Mandiant reported that data was stolen from a Fortune 500 manufacturing company during business negotiations when the company was trying to buy a Chinese company.

-- Earlier this year, McAfee traced an intrusion to an Internet protocol address in China and said intruders took data from global oil, energy and petrochemical companies.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Liu Weimin, did not respond Monday to the specific allegations about government-supported cyber-attacks but said Internet security is an issue the world needs to address collectively. The international community should "prevent the Internet from becoming a new battlefield," Liu said at a daily media briefing in Beijing.

For the first time, U.S. intelligence officials called out China and Russia last month, saying they are systematically stealing American high-tech data for their own economic gain. The unusually forceful public report seemed to signal a new, more vocal U.S. government campaign against the cyberattacks.

The next step, said Cartwright, must be a full-throated U.S. policy that makes it clear how the U.S. will deal with cyberattacks, including the attackers as well as the nations the attacks are routed through. Once an attack is detected, he said the U.S. should first go through the State Department to ask the country to stop the attack. If the country refuses, he said, the U.S. will have the right to stop the computer server from sending the attack by whatever means possible while still avoiding any collateral damage.

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Russian Scientist Apologizes for Failed Mars Moon Mission

ROSCOSMOS

An artist's impression of Phobos-Grunt in Mars orbit.

PARIS –  A prominent Russian scientist lamented the failure of the country's Phobos-Grunt spacecraft in an open letter Thursday, Dec. 8. The mission was meant to collect samples from Mars' moon Phobos, but instead is languishing in Earth orbit.

"We are deeply sorry about the failure" of Phobos-Grunt, wrote Lev Zelenyi, director of the Space Research Institute and Chair of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Solar System Exploration Board, in a letter to fellow scientists and mission team members. "We hope in

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Japan Launches Second Spy Satellite This Year

AP Photo/Kyodo News

Dec. 12, 2011: An H-2A rocket carrying a radar satellite lifts off from the Tanegashima Space Center in Tanegashima, Kagoshima Prefecture, southwestern Japan. Japan has successfully launched the intelligence-gathering satellite, its second this year.

TOKYO –  Japan successfully put a spy satellite into orbit on Monday and expects to complete its network of intelligence-gathering satellites with another launch next year.

Japan's space agency, JAXA, said the launch from the remote southern island of Tanegashima went off without a hitch and the radar-equipped satellite is functioning properly. It was the second launch of the year, following a successful liftoff in September.

Officials refused to provide details of the satellite's capabilities.

Japanese media reports say it will augment the optical satellites Japan has already launched by providing data of what is happening on the ground at night or through cloud cover.

Japan launched its first pair of spy satellites in 2003, prompted by concerns over North Korea's missile program. It currently has four optical information-gathering satellites in orbit, though the latest of those is not fully operational yet.

It previously launched two radar intelligence satellites, but both malfunctioned.

The satellite launched Monday is expected to begin gathering intelligence in a few months, an official with the Cabinet Satellite Information Center told The Associated Press. He requested anonymity because details of the program are classified.

Another radar satellite launch is planned net year, the official said.

That would give Japan the combination of two optical and two radar satellites that it wants to complete its network. Tokyo is seeking to use the satellites to provide information on any given spot on the planet at least once a day.

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Holiday Gift Guide: 5 Best Tech Gifts for Moms

Looking for a gift for the mom in your life and want to get a little fancier than a scarf? How about some high-tech toys that will help make her life a little easier?

Below are a few gadgets that the moms I know would be thrilled to find under their trees this year.

Amazon Kindle
Amazon's new lineup of Kindle eReaders are sure to impress. Whether mom is a news junkie or enjoys her alone time with bodice ripping romance novels, she'll love having an eReader that's easy to use and light enough to fit in a purse or coat pocket. Prices start at $79.

Tag by Cobra
I don't want to insinuate that Moms lose their keys more than Dads -- but that's sure true in my house. My wife's keys are forever getting lost in the black hole that is the diaper bag. With the Cobra Tag, you can find your keys with a small keychain tag that pairs with a BlackBerry or Android phone. When the keys go missing, use the app on the phone to signal to them. When the phone goes missing, the keychain tag can signal to the phone to help you find it too. If they both go missing, of course, you're really out of luck.

Dyson Hot
For the woman who is always cold, consider this portable heater with a lot of panache. It's a bladeless heating fan that can turn itself off and on to keep any room at your desired temperature. It's portable and handy with its remote control. It is also safe to use around children and pets.

Brookstone Body Bean
This is the modern day equivalent to the hot water bottle or electric heating pad -- only much safer. Plug the Body Bean in for 15 minutes and it stays warm for up to four hours! It is small and compact and would make a great stocking stuffer.

iRobot Roomba 700 Series
Want to help mom clean the house? You can weather vacuum the floor yourself -- or buy her a robot to do it more regularly (and with less complaining than you would offer). The Roomba vacuums every part of a room multiple times and can run on your schedule with its timer mode. It cleans carpet, tile, or hardwood floors and is a great gift for the mom who deserves a break from housework. And who doesn't?

Click here for more Holiday Gift Guides

Clayton Morris is a Fox and Friends host. Follow Clayton's adventures online on Twitter

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'Elvis' Monkey and Psychedelic Gecko Among New Species Discovered in Southeast Asia

AP Photo/Fauna & Flora International, Martin Aveling

In this undated image provided by Fauna & Flora International, a monkey with an "Elvis" hairdo is seen. It was discovered in Myanmar in 2010.

A psychedelic gecko and a monkey with an "Elvis" hairdo are among 208 new species described last year by scientists in the Mekong River region of Southeast Asia, a conservation group announced Monday.

The animals were discovered in a biodiverse region that is threatened by habitat loss, deforestation, climate change and overdevelopment, the WWF said in a report.

The newly described species include a "psychedelic gecko" in southern Vietnam and a nose-less monkey in a remote province of Myanmar that looks like it wears a pompadour.

"While this species, sporting an Elvis-like hairstyle, is new to science, the local people of Myanmar know it well," the Switzerland-based group said in its report.

The region is home to some of the world's most endangered species, including tigers, Asian elephants, Mekong dolphins and Mekong giant catfish, the group said.

"This is a region of extraordinary richness in terms of biodiversity but also one that is extremely fragile," said Sarah Bladen, communications director for WWF Greater Mekong. "It's losing biodiversity at a tragic rate."

The Mekong flows through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

In October, WWF announced Vietnam has lost its last Javan rhinoceros, making the 40 to 60 Javan rhinos living in Indonesia the last remaining members of their species.

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Will the Great Pyramid's Secret Doors Be Opened?

The Great Pyramids of Egypt

Will the mystery over the Great Pyramid's secret doors be solved in 2012?

I dare say yes. After almost two decades of failed attempts, chances are now strong that researchers will reveal next year what lies behind the secret doors at the heart of Egypt's most magnificent pyramid.

New revelations on the enduring mystery were already expected this year, following a robot exploration of the 4,500-year-old pharaonic mausoleum.

But unrest in Egypt froze the project at its most promising stage, after it produced the first ever images behind one of the Great Pyramid's mysterious doors.

Now the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), once led by the controversial yet charismatic Zahi Hawass, is slowly returning to granting permits for excavations and archaeological research.

NEWS: Giza Pyramids Align Toward City of Sun God

"As with other missions, we have had to resubmit our application to be allowed to continue. We are currently waiting for the various committees to formalize the approval," project mission manager Shaun Whitehead, of the exploration company Scoutek UK, told Discovery News.

"Once we're allowed to continue, I have no doubt that we can complete our work in 2012," he added.

Built for the pharaoh Cheops, also known as Khufu, the Great Pyramid is the last remaining wonder of the ancient world.

SCIENCE CHANNEL VIDEO: Pyramid Fail

The monument is the largest of a family of three pyramids on the Giza plateau, on the outskirts of Cairo, and has long been rumored to have hidden passageways leading to secret chambers.

Archaeologists have long puzzled over the purpose of four narrow shafts deep inside the pyramid since they were first discovered in 1872.

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Newton’s Handwritten Notes on Laws of Motion Published Online for First Time

Sir Godfrey Kneller

Cambridge University put 4,000 pages of Newton's most important scientific works on the internet for the public to access for free.

Original handwritten manuscripts by Sir Isaac Newton -- including the great scientist's famous laws of motion -- were published online Monday for the first time.

Cambridge University put 4,000 pages of Newton's most important scientific works, including an annotated copy of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, on the internet for the public to access for free.

Grant Young, Digitization Manager at the Library, said, "Anyone, wherever they are, can see at the click of a mouse how Newton worked and how he went about developing his theories and experiments. Newton's copy of his Principia shows how methodically he worked through his text; marking alterations, crossing out and annotating his work in preparation for the second edition."

The online collection also includes Newton's "Waste Book" -- a large notebook the scientist inherited from his stepfather that he used to make notes and calculations when he was forced to leave his studies in Cambridge during the Great Plague.

It was in Principia Mathematica, first published in July 1687, that Newton expressed his theories on the laws of motion and universal gravitation. It is seen as one of the most significant scientific breakthroughs ever made.

The university plans to upload thousands more pages of Newton's work in the coming months, and will later add the archive of the celebrated Board of Longitude and the papers of Charles Darwin.

The manuscripts are available at the Cambridge Digital Library.

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What If You Could 'Download' New Skills? Scientists Say It's Possible

Warner Brothers

What if you could become a kung-fu master by just downloading the skills required?

In the future, people may be able to plug in and "download" new skills like characters in The Matrix, scientists say.

Scientists from Boston University and ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, have used a functional magnetic resonance machine (fMRI) to decode the process of learning.

The procedure - known as Decoded Neurofeedback or

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Apple iPad 3 to Launch in March or April, Report Says

BGR

Apple ipad 2

Apple’s next-generation iPad tablet will reportedly launch between mid-March and mid-April of 2012, according to a new report. 

Citing anonymous sources in Apple’s component supply chain, DigiTimes reports that Apple’s iPad 3 will launch in the next three to four months. The sources claim iPad 2 production remains high, likely in the 14- to 15-million unit range during the fourth quarter of this year, but Apple will decrease iPad 2 orders to between 4 and 5 million units in the first quarter of 2012. 

Foxconn will build between 9.5 and 9.7 million third-generation iPad units in the first quarter according to the report, with production ramping up in February. 

Apple’s iPad 3 is expected to be slightly thicker than the second-generation model, seemingly to make room for a high-resolution Retina Display. Earlier reports from an analyst suggested that the iPad 3 would launch in February, but this new report better-aligns with BGR’s exclusive report last week stating that Samsung will unveil a new tablet with a Retina-topping display resolution at Mobile World Congress in February. 

Samsung is expected to beat Apple’s iPad 3 to market with a launch soon after the new tablet’s unveiling.

This content was originally published on BGR.com

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Has the 'God Particle' Been Found? Major Announcement Expected Tuesday

CERN

A proton-proton collision at the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator at CERN laboratory in Geneva that produced more than 100 charged particles.

The world of physics is abuzz with speculation over an announcement expected Tuesday, Dec. 13, from the CERN laboratory in Geneva -- home of the world's largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The announcement, planned for 8 a.m. EST (2 p.m. CET), will address the status of the search for the elusive Higgs boson particle, sometimes called the "God Particle" because of its importance to science.

This particle, which has long been theorized but never detected, is thought to give all other particles mass. Scientists at the LHC have been hoping that when protons inside the machine collide together at extremely high speeds, the energetic explosions that result will create the Higgs.

Researchers on two of the LHC's experiments, called ATLAS and CMS, will present the status of their search for the Higgs at a public seminar tomorrow.

"These results will be based on the analysis of considerably more data than those presented at the summer conferences, sufficient to make significant progress in the search for the Higgs boson, but not enough to make any conclusive statement on the existence or non-existence of the Higgs," CERN scientists said in a statement.

At that time, while the atom smasher was churning out lots of data from colliding particles, researchers had yet to see any conclusive evidence of the Higgs.

If scientists have found an indication of the Higgs, it could have far-reaching consequences in physics. It is the only particle predicted by the reigning theory of particle physics that has not yet been observed experimentally. Its discovery would help validate this theory, called the Standard Model, and fill in some of the remaining gaps in physicists' understanding of the smallest pieces of the universe.

The Large Hadron Collider, a circular ring 17 miles (27 kilometers) around that's buried beneath Switzerland, is thought to be scientists' best chance of finding the Higgs, because the explosions it creates pack more energy than anything else on Earth. This energy, when converted to mass, should be enough to produce many of the most exotic particles in nature, including the Higgs.

  

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A Glimpse Inside the 'Big Bang' Machine

Skip to main content: Latino/SBC/Fox Business (Home/Slideshow/Interactive: Fox News/SBC/Latino/Fox Business) Skip to main content: Fox News/Fox Business (Article Page: Fox News/SBC/Latino/Fox Business) Fox News Digital Network   Fox News   Fox Business  Small Business Center  Fox News Radio  Fox News Latino   Fox Nation   Fox News Insider Register Login

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Facebook Aims to Help Prevent Suicide

Facebook

MENLO PARK, Calif. –  Facebook is making it easier for people who express suicidal thoughts on the social networking site to get help.

A program launching Tuesday enables users to instantly connect with a crisis counselor through Facebook's "chat" messaging system.

The service is the latest tool from Facebook aimed at improving safety on its site, which has more than 800 million users. Earlier this year, Facebook announced changes to how users report bullying, offensive content and fake profiles.
"One of the big goals here is to get the person in distress into the right help as soon as possible," Fred Wolens, public policy manager at Facebook, told The Associated Press.

Google and Yahoo have long provided the phone number to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline as the first result when someone searches for "suicide" using their sites. Through email, Facebook also directed users to the hotline or encouraged friends to call law enforcement if they perceived someone was about to do harm.

The new service goes a step further by enabling an instant chat session that experts say can make all the difference with someone seeking help.

"The science shows that people experience reductions in suicidal thinking when there is quick intervention," said Lidia Bernik, associate project director of Lifeline. "We've heard from many people who say they want to talk to someone but don't want to call. Instant message is perfect for that."

How the service works is if a friend spots a suicidal thought on someone's page, he can report it to Facebook by clicking a link next to the comment. Facebook then sends an email to the person who posted the suicidal comment encouraging them to call the hotline or click on a link to begin a confidential chat.

Facebook on its own doesn't troll the site for suicidal expressions, Wolens said. Logistically it would be far too difficult with so many users and so many comments that could be misinterpreted by a computer algorithm.

"The only people who will have a really good idea of what's going on is your friends so we're encouraging them to speak up and giving them an easy and quick way to get help," Wolens said.

There have been high profile incidents of suicidal expressions on Facebook.

Last month, authorities in Pittsburg, Calif., said a man posted a suicide note on Facebook before he killed his wife and in-laws then himself.

In July, police in Pennsylvania said they believed they were able to help prevent a man's suicide after the man's friend in California alerted police about a distraught Facebook posting. Police met with the man, who was committed to a hospital.
Nearly 100 Americans die by suicide every day, and 36,035 a year, according to U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin's office.

"We have effective treatments to help suicidal individuals regain hope and a desire to live and we know how powerful personal connections and support can be," Benjamin said in a statement. "Facebook and the Lifeline are to be commended for addressing one of this nation's most tragic public health problems."

The Lifeline currently responds to dozens of users on Facebook each day. Crisis center workers will be available 24 hours a day to respond to users selecting the chat option.

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Amidst User Complaints, Amazon Plans Fix for Kindle Fire

AP Photo/Mark Lennihan

Sept. 28, 2011: The Kindle Fire is shown at a news conference in New York. The e-reader and tablet has a 7-inch multicolor touchscreen and sells for $199.

Kindle Fire owners frustrated with the device's many software flaws, should receive some relief in the next few weeks. Amazon is expected to release an over-the-air update for the tablet that will reportedly improve its much maligned interface and web browsing speeds, according to The New York Times.

Last month, Laptopmag.com reported that the Fire's Silk web browser, which is partially powered by Amazon's EC2 cloud computing cluster, was 25 percent slower when its web acceleration feature was turned on. Now it appears as though Amazon is indirectly copping to that fact through its impending update. 

Also expected to be addressed through the update are the Fire's privacy issues. The tablet currently displays the last website you visited on its homescreen, giving other users easy accesses to your surfing habits.

Even more concerning is the fact that users do not have to log in to Amazon's media stores to purchase music, movies, books, or apps. As a result, a user's child could pick up the device and order hundreds of dollars worth of content without having to enter a confirmation code. And while there have been no reports of this in the media, the fact that it could happen is alarming enough for consumers to take notice.

According to the Times' report, the update, which is expected to go out in the next two to three weeks (just in time for the holidays), will improve the responsiveness of the Fire's user interface, speed up webpage load times, and allow users to edit their list of recently viewed items.

If you'd rather not wait two weeks for the update, Laptopmag.com have complete instructions for hiding your your browsing habits and disabling the Fire's web acceleration, which our tests have shown improves webpage load times. If Amazon manages to make the needed improvements that users are seeking, it may be able to salvage the Fire's image. If not, the tablet's problems could become an albatross around the company's neck.

  

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Girls are Just as Good at Math, Study in 86 Countries Suggests

Many explanations for the gender gap in math skills don't hold up, suggests new research on math skills and gender in 86 countries.

Math has traditionally been seen as a man's game, and the statistics often indicate that there are differences between males and females in their math skills, participation in math activities and performance on tests

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Scientists Close in on 'God Particle'

CERN

Dec. 10, 2011: Two high-energy photons shown as red towers are smashed together in the LHC. The yellow lines are the measured tracks of other particles produced in the collision -- possible evidence in the hunt for the Higgs Boson.

Researchers working at the world's largest atom smasher in Geneva have found tantalizing hints of the tiny, elemental bit of matter that has been labeled "the brick that built the universe" and "the god particle" -- but stopped short of announcing the discovery of the tiny particle.

The Higgs Boson is believe to have emerged from the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago and have brought much of the rest of the flying debris together to form galaxies, stars and planets. The element is a crucial component of the "Standard Model" -- the all-encompassing physics theory of how the cosmos as we know it works at its basic level -- one that scientists have spent decades and billions of dollars hunting for.

Yet no one has convincingly claimed to have glimpsed the Higgs Boson, let alone proved that it actually exists.

"ATLAs sees a small excess at a Higgs mass of 126 GeV

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'Walking' Fish Prompts Evolution Rethink

Air-breathing fish that can hop and walk across the floor on their fins hint that walking may have evolved underwater before such animals began migrating on to land, scientists find.

The distant ancestors of humans and all mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians and other four-limbed animals, or tetrapods, are fish that eventually developed the ability to breathe on land. One of the few living fish related to these ancient land-dwellers are air-breathers known as lungfish, which are found today in Africa, South America and Australia.

Now scientists find that an African lungfish (Protopterus annectens) can lift its body clear off the floor and propel itself forward using scrawny "limbs," abilities previously thought to have originated in early tetrapods.

"This shows us

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Rara.com: Cheering for Online Music This Christmas

Will this be the first Christmas no one gives you a CD? No remastered Pink Floyd box set, no Tom Petty live anthology? It may be an online music service-only yuletide.

Today, a new subscription service joins the ranks of nearly a dozen online offerings currently available. Rara.com starts out at just 99 cents a month for on-demand access to roughly 10 million songs. After the three month honeymoon is over, the regular subscription is $4.99 a month. Rara.com joins services such as MOG, Rdio, Slacker, Spotify, Napster, Rhapsody, Pandora, and Sony Unlimited.

Is there room for another music service? Rara.com thinks so. 

Tim Hadley, the director of the U.K.-based company says that the goal of Rara.com is to make getting online music easier for the people who have yet to try a subscription service. That includes offering curated playlists and music suggestions (like having a DJ) and signing up popular artists to suggest new music to subscribers.

Bolstering Rara.com's opinion, there's a growing sentiment that two types of online music services can co-exist.

The first is a free, radio-like service such as Pandora. It can play any commercially available music -- including the likes of Metallica, which refuses to offer digital tracks -- thanks to a streaming licensing deal in the U.S. But there are restrictions on the number of replays and there are usually ads.

The second type of service is like Rara.com, which is analogous to a personal record collection. You have to pay to play music, but you can select any track you want, whenever you want. These services generally rely on licensing music directly from the record labels, so in theory there's a lot of music they can't get -- such as Led Zeppelin hits -- but the total number of tracks they offer is greater than what many free services offer.

So is this good or bad for the music business? It depends on your perspective.

It's certainly not good for CD sales. Brick and mortar record stores have disappeared, and the meager offering of top 40 discs in Best Buy is paltry. You've got to go online to order a CD you want. Even so, album sales are expected to be brisk for the holidays, accounting for most of the music business' annual disc sales. 

The trend is away from albums in favor of individual tracks, however. That means CDs are as dead as prog rock concept albums and disco. We're more tuned in to downloading a Black Keys or Foster the People song than a dozen tracks from one artist.

Consequently, big record labels continue to struggle. Warner Music, the label behind the Red Hot Chili Peppers, recently posted $103 million loss for its latest quarter -- more than double its losses of a year ago. There were various reasons for the decline, but one of the primary causes was the move from CDs to digital track sales and subscription services.

On the other hand, some independent record labels say things may be looking up on the digital side. According to Nielsen and Billboard's Mid-Year Music Industry Report, digital track sales were up 11 percent this year, reversing a six-year decline. Tom Silverman, founder and CEO of Tommy Boy Entertainment (and a board member of non-profit rights management group SoundExchange), believes that music may be in turnaround mode, thanks in part to the recommendations of online services like Pandora, which make it easy to buy songs as well.

Whether this trend will continue or not remains to be seen. Rara.com, for example, does not offer a buy button at all. It's strictly a subscription service.

What is certain is that the days when a subscription music service meant you got a record in the mail every month are long gone. We're headed toward a digital only, in-the-cloud-not-on-the-shelf world of music. That may be more convenient for a lot of people, but it has one downside: Rdio and MOG gift cards just don't fill out a stocking like a CD does.

Follow John R. Quain on Twitter

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Next-Gen GPS Satellite Enters Testing in U.S.

NASA

30 satellites like this one make up the GPS system, which the Air Force called "the most capable in the history of the program." Some news reports have blamed GPS for the three-day stranding of a couple in Oregon.

DENVER –  A $5.5 billion upgrade to the Global Positioning System moved a step closer to launch this week when a prototype arrived at a Lockheed Martin complex in Colorado to begin months of tests.

It's the guinea pig for a new generation of GPS satellites, called Block III, that's expected to make military and civilian receivers more accurate, powerful and reliable.

They're also part of an international effort to allow civilian receivers to use signals from U.S., European, Russian and perhaps other satellite navigation systems.

GPS has become ubiquitous in American civilian and military life, with hundreds of thousands of receivers in cars and weapons systems. Financial systems use GPS receivers to get precise time stamps for transactions, relying on the atomic clocks onboard the satellites.

The Air Force Space Command oversees the U.S. GPS satellites and ground control systems from its headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo.

The Block III satellites are expected to allow military and civilian users to determine their position within 3 feet, compared with 10 feet with current technology, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Higher-powered signals from Block III satellites are expected to be harder for enemies to jam and easier for receivers to tune in, especially in urban canyons or under thick tree canopies.

The U.S. and other countries have agreed to make a new, common frequency available to civilians. That means civilian receivers could calculate their position from a number of different satellite navigation systems.

The Block III prototype arrived Monday at an $80 million test facility at Lockheed Martin's Waterton Canyon complex south of Denver. Workers will do final assembly work on the prototype in a cavernous clean room and then run it through a gantlet of tests.

The prototype won't be launched into space.

The first flight model is expected to arrive at Waterton Canyon next year and be launched in May 2014.

Flying versions of the satellite will go through final assembly in the same room where the prototype is assembled and tested. They'll also be subjected to extreme temperatures that mimic conditions in space.

Lockheed Martin, based in Bethesda, Md., has a $1.5 billion Air Force contract to build and test the GPS III prototype and build the first two satellites for launch. The contract includes an option for 10 more.

The company expects the Air Force to authorize construction to begin on the third and fourth flight satellites later this month.

The Pentagon expects to buy and launch a total of 32 Block III satellites. The Air Force says it will cost about $5.5 billion to design, build and launch all the satellites and upgrade the ground control systems.

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World's Biggest Aircraft Will Ferry Passengers to Space in Stratolaunch Vision

to private spaceflight --thanks to the world's biggest aircraft.

The business magnate is teaming up with Burt Rutan, the aerospace engineer that developed the original SpaceShipOne -- the first privately funded, manned rocket ship to fly beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Looking to build on that success, Stratolaunch Systems promises to bring greater safety, cost-effectiveness, and flexibility to space travel.

"For the first time since John Glenn, America can not fly its own astronauts into space," Allen said, noting the recent final flight by the space shuttle and the elimination of the Constellation program, which would have built a successor craft. "By the end of this decade, Stratolaunch will be putting spacecraft into orbit."

"We will keep America at the forefront of space exploration," he said.

The new space system will be focused on carrying commercial and government cargo into space, but Rutan and Allen hope it will eventually carry human cargo as well. The company's motto: Any orbit, any time.

"I have long dreamed about taking the next big step in private space flight after the success of SpaceShipOne -- to offer a flexible, orbital space delivery system," Allen said. "We are at the dawn of radical change in the space launch industry. Stratolaunch Systems is pioneering an innovative solution that will revolutionize space travel.

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Microsoft Kinect, Version 2.0: Dust Off Your Kinect and Start Talking to It

A big new update for the Microsoft Kinect reminds us why we were so excited about the thing in the first place By Dan Nosowitz Posted 12.05.2011 at 12:00 am 10 Comments


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Slow-Motion Video: Playing Racquetball With a Hard-Boiled Egg

The Moment of Impact Paul Adams What happens when you hit a hard-boiled egg with a racquetball racquet? The tireless minds at PopSci set out to investigate, with a Phantom super-slow-motion HD camera and the intrepid (and, we found out, remarkably graceful) Stan Horaczek.

(You may remember seeing Stan get punched in the face. All in good fun, right, Stan?)

The Phantom series of cameras, capable of even more dramatic feats than this one, continue to wow us. The new v1610, easily capable of shooting 16,000 frames per second, won a Best Of What's New award this year. Stay tuned for more delightful clips.

Previous Article: Testing the Best: The Wacom Inkling Turns Paper Into a Digital SketchpadNext Article: Controversial Tracker CarrierIQ Found on iPhone (in Limited Form) 11 Comments Link to this comment Amateur-Hour 12/06/11 at 1:49 pm

He totally missed the sweet-spot on the raquet. Man... I could go for an egg salad sandwich right about now.

Link to this comment menoc 12/06/11 at 2:21 pm

That was cool but the Phantom Flex is capable of speeds as high as 2570 fps. At those speeds you could have shown this at even slower motion and i would have liked to have seen this at really close up range to see the impact/effect of the strings on the egg . . . LOL

Link to this comment Vagabond7 12/06/11 at 2:27 pm

Besides the fun factor of the slow mo here, this video has some interesting science in it i thought (beyond the obvious egg bits as expected).

The egg swatter (Stan) goes through several psychological states in a very short amount of time. From amused to concentration to contortion? to glee. All within the second or two of time. Its amazing how fast and often people can change mental or emotional states in such short amounts of time.

Link to this comment rg-5 12/06/11 at 2:31 pm

Were's the Mayonaise? :D

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Living in the Future: Play Any Song, Anytime, Anywhere

A Blurred Road Trip Flickr user Bruce Berrien

Living in the Future is a new column about those rare moments, as we go about our daily lives, when we realize that what we're doing is amazing. These days, we have a tendency to assimilate new tech into our lives without giving it much thought, much less gratitude, as Louis C.K. reminds us. But every once in awhile, we're struck by a moment, as visceral as it is literally incredible: "Wow. I can't believe this is possible."

A few weeks ago, I went on a road trip up to the Berkshires, in western Massachusetts, near the Vermont border. The car, one of those odd little Volvo hatchbacks, was packed full of camping gear, food, beer, and four people entirely too tall to be sitting in a car the size and shape of a bathtub. We were all hungover, a necessary next-day result of meeting college friends and "showing them New York." Between the two front seats was a banjo. On every lap was a jumbo-sized Gatorade.

But we needed music.

The Volvo has a nice stereo, we discovered in between listening to the how-is-it-that-loud pounding in our heads. In the car were CDs left over from high school--Wilco, The Rolling Stones--but also an auxiliary-in jack, for plugging in any kind of gadget that can play music. "Dan," my roommate weakly bleated from the back seat. "Do you have that song I like?" I knew what she meant--an old Allen Toussaint song we'd listened to the night before--and in the old days (like, two years ago), I wouldn't have been able to play it. It's not in my regular rotation, and I wouldn't have taken up precious storage space on my phone for a song I listen to that rarely. But I didn't need to. I opened up the Rdio app on my phone, searched for the song, tapped Play, and we all settled back to mentally combat the nausea that the torn-to-shit Brooklyn roads only exacerbated. "Jesus Christ," I thought, through the grape-Gatorade-flavored haze. "I can't believe I can just think of a song, any song, and play it. This is like a superpower."

Rdio is one of several subscription music services that are, in broad strokes, pretty much the same. You pay a pittance a month, usually $10 for full access (which includes stuff like mobile apps and offline downloading), and then you can listen to an unlimited amount of music from a catalogue of millions upon millions of songs. Spotify, MOG, Rhapsody, Rdio--there are differences between them, but those are less important in the big picture than the fact that they exist at all.

Rdio lets you bounce around, trying new artists, in ways that have never been possible before. The artist you're listening to at that second also has a biography, a complete discography (often satisfyingly deep, especially in b-sides, live albums, and rarities collections), and a list of similar artists, artists that have been influenced by and were influences of whatever is playing at that second. You can jump from song to song, album to album, genre to genre, like you would on Wikipedia: follow the trail from The Who to Big Star to Matthew Sweet to Zumpano to the New Pornographers, and find out that the second rhythm guitarist in the New Pornographers has two great solo albums. Or use the recommendation service, or the Pandora-like "radio station." Or just look at what your friends are listening to--these services are all deeply intertwined with Facebook and Twitter, and it couldn't be easier to recommend or receive recommendations from people you actually know. For music fiends, it's like stepping through a door into a totally new world: suddenly, everything you've ever wanted to listen to is there, and you have the tools to find it.

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Camera Test: The Tiny, Amazing Sony NEX-7

Sony NEX-7 on Red Satoshi

We know how amazing Sony's tiny new 24.3-megapixel interchangeable-lens camera, the NEX-7, is--it's our camera of choice when we're taking photos for reviews. But if you need more evidence than that, check out the detailed test review our sister site, Popular Photography, just posted. They found, through much more precise means, that the NEX-7 is just about the best camera of its kind on the market. Read more at PopPhoto.

Previous Article: Microsoft Kinect, Version 2.0: Dust Off Your Kinect and Start Talking to ItNext Article: Hands-On: OnLive's Mobile App Gives Your iPad the Power of a Gaming PC 1 Comment Link to this comment famnva 12/06/11 at 5:33 pm

Link to PopPhoto does not work.

To comment, please Login. Popular TagsGadgets cellphones iPhone Apple computers Android photography cameras music Regular Features The Grouse

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Samsung Galaxy Nexus Review: This Is Android

This gets said every month, but yes, the Galaxy Nexus is the best Android phone on the market. This time it's by a long shot By Dan Nosowitz Posted 12.09.2011 at 1:30 pm 15 Comments


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Gallery: The Samsung Galaxy Nexus

IMAGE 1 OF 8 > Nexus and iPhone

Dan Nosowitz

Nexus, left. iPhone 4S, right.

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Gadgets IMAGE 1 OF 8 > Read the article: Samsung Galaxy Nexus Review: This Is Android More Photo Galleries

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HP to Make the Late, Great, WebOS Open Source

HP TouchPad HP/Palm

HP has spent the last year or so, as the new owner of the WebOS mobile operating system, alternately making arbitrary decisions about the platform's future and making sure to not release any nice hardware for it. After the company ignominiously shut down WebOS for good this summer, we thought that was it for the best smartphone platform nobody used--but today, HP surprised us with an announcement that WebOS will be going open-source.

Designed by Matias Duarte, the man largely responsible for Android's greatest achievement to date, WebOS was the ultimate fizzle: packed full of great ideas, some of which are still unparalleled and others of which are shamelessly stolen, the platform died due to unuse, misuse, and generally shoddy hardware. Eventually TouchPad tablets were jettisoned for $100 a pop and the new flagship phone, the Pre 3, was never even released Stateside. But today's announcement gives us some hope.

HP is releasing all of WebOS's underlying code to open source, meaning anyone can alter it as they choose. That could mean tons of new apps, it could mean new hardware with a newly free OS (unlikely, but possible), and it could mean a new explosion of interest in the little OS that never made it. HP will try to make this sound like a noble enterprise, helping the open-source community and whatnot, although at this point the company has absolutely nothing to lose in doing this. But we're excited that WebOS may have some life in it yet--perhaps only a kit OS, a hobby for a small community. But anyone who snatched up a $100 tablet should take another look at it--it may not be as dead as it seems.

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