Month: December 2011

A Self-Balancing Motorized Unicycle

Who wouldn’t want a self-balancing, motorized unicycle of their very own? Riding around on this unicycle means flaunting your unconventional nature, while being practical about how much dedication you have towards mastering single wheel locomotion.

You don’t have to work hard and practice in order to stay up, on this mechanical marvel created by MIT student Stephen Boyer you can just go, leaving your mind open to other activities, like juggling bowling pins, or calculating the proper speed and angle needed to survive jumping through a flaming hoop. Unicycle stocks are about to go through the roof!

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A Self-Balancing Motorized Unicycle

Passive Optical Diode Created At Purdue University


wbr1 writes “Researchers at Purdue University have managed to create a silicon device that acts as a passive diode for infrared optical signals. From the Purdue news release: ‘The diode is capable of “nonreciprocal transmission,” meaning it transmits signals in only one direction, making it capable of information processing, said Minghao Qi (pronounced Chee), an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University. “This one-way transmission is the most fundamental part of a logic circuit, so our diodes open the door to optical information processing,” said Qi.’ One of the same researchers had already (using similar technology) created a way to convert laser pulses to RF.”

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Passive Optical Diode Created At Purdue University

XBMC Eden finally makes it to beta, promises HTPC superpowers

Remember that big XBMC update teased back in October? Well, v11.0’s multifarious additions are finally ready for a spot of beta testing. These include all-round speed increases, a “vastly improved” default skin, the ability to rollback unpleasant add-on updates, and better hardware support for iOS devices, plus a host of other new features that can only be listed in full at the source link.

XBMC Eden finally makes it to beta, promises HTPC superpowers originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Dec 2011 03:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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XBMC Eden finally makes it to beta, promises HTPC superpowers

New WiFi Setup Flaw Allows Easy Router PIN Guessing


Trailrunner7 writes “There is a newly discovered vulnerability in the WiFi Protected Setup standard that reduces the number of attempts it would take an attacker to brute-force the PIN for a wireless router’s setup process. The flaw results in too much information about the PIN being returned to an attacker and makes the PIN quite weak, affecting the security of millions of WiFi routers and access points. Security researcher Stefan Viehbock discovered the vulnerability (PDF) and reported it to US-CERT. The problem affects a number of vendors’ products, including D-Link, Netgear, Linksys and Buffalo. ‘I noticed a few really bad design decisions which enable an efficient brute force attack, thus effectively breaking the security of pretty much all WPS-enabled Wi-Fi routers. As all of the of the more recent router models come with WPS enabled by default, this affects millions of devices worldwide,’ Viehbock said.”

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New WiFi Setup Flaw Allows Easy Router PIN Guessing

Apple fined $1.2 million for misleading Italian consumers on AppleCare



Apple has been fined $1.2 million by Italy’s Antitrust Authority for misleading consumers about their rights to product warranties, according to the BBC. Italian law guarantees consumers a two-year warranty on all products they purchase, but Apple had only been offering its standard one year of support and was inducing customers to purchase AppleCare Protection Plans for longer-term coverage.

Italy’s Consumer Code, enacted in 2005, considers sellers liable for defective products for two years after the time of sale. Apple’s default warranty in Italy and elsewhere covers its products for only one year, and covers them for an extra two years when customers purchase an AppleCare Protection Plan.

Italian authorities have determined Apple violates the Consumer Code with its one-year warranty, resulting in a fine of €400,000 (US$522,860). Apple also must pay a €500,000 (US$653,575) fine for leading customers to believe they needed to purchase protection plans to extend their warranties beyond a year. (Apple did not respond to our requests for comment.)

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Apple fined $1.2 million for misleading Italian consumers on AppleCare