alphadogg writes “A Japanese bank this week said it will introduce ATMs that use palm scanners in place of cash cards. Ogaki Kyoristu Bank said the new machines will allow customers to withdraw or deposit cash and check their balances by placing their hand on a scanner and entering their birthday plus a pin number. The ATMs will initially be installed at 10 banks, as well as a drive-through ATM and two mobile banks. Ogaiki announced the new ATMs with the slogan ‘You are your cash card.'”

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Japanese ATMs To Use Palm Readers In Place of Cash Cards

The US Department of Justice has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple and six e-book publishers over alleged collusion to fix e-book prices. The antitrust suit was filed in US District Court in New York on Wednesday morning against Apple, Hachette, Harper Collins, Macmillan, Penguin, Pearson, and Simon & Schuster, according to Bloomberg.

The European Commission began investigating Apple and the book publishers in December for allegedly trying to fix the prices of e-books in an attempt to cripple Amazon’s then-popular $9.99 e-book model. The EU was quickly followed by the US, and in late March, the EU and the US DoJ announced they were working together to pursue the case.

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DoJ files antitrust suit against Apple, publishers over e-book prices (Updated)

Continue reading Gaikai brings its cloud gaming to Facebook, launches beta application

Gaikai brings its cloud gaming to Facebook, launches beta application originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 Apr 2012 10:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gaikai brings its cloud gaming to Facebook, launches beta application

This morning I came across a news post announcing work by an industrial designer named “Ross Ludgrove.” Given Ross Lovegrove’s prominence, I figured Mr. Ludgrove must lead a tortured existence, constantly having to clarify his name on the phone.

Then I saw the project in question, pictured above. That’s the Solar Tree produced by Italian lighting manufacturer Artemide and designed as a research concept by yes, Ross Lovegrove, back in 2007. Originally debuted at Vienna’s MAK Museum, the steel structure supports 38 solar cells, a battery system and LED arrays in the “fronds;” sunlight is soaked up during the day, and the Tree uses that energy to output light overnight.

So why is a four-year-old design back in the news? Because next month it’s seeing (and storing) the light of day again, going up in London’s St. John’s Square as part of Clerkenwell Design Week.

It bums me out that although Lovegrove is famous to us, he’s unknown enough to the non-design-world that it’s possible to screw his name up. (Not a typo or a misprint, as the name was used that way more than once in the article.) We’d never see the Tree of Life star listed as Vlad Pitt, but either way, we’re happy to see this Tree getting more visibility.

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Solar Tree Scheduled to Sprout in London for Clerkenwell

This lecture may be from 1991, but the topic is timeless, the discussion is lucid, and it’s all delivered by Basil Fawlty himself. Here’s 36 minutes of John Cleese discussing the psychology of being creative. Listen to one of the funniest fellows alive talk seriously about how to become more creative, how to spitball ideas with others, and the benefits of building a “space-time oasis.” Comedy sketches about dead parrots don’t grow on trees, after all. More »

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And now, Monty Python’s John Cleese on the origins of creativity [Video]

judgecorp writes “Intel security subsidiary McAfee has claimed a successful wireless attack on insulin pumps that diabetics rely on to control blood sugar. While previous attempts to attack insulin pumps have met with mixed success, McAfee’s Barnaby Jack says he has persuaded an insulin pump to deliver 45 days worth of insulin in one go, without triggering the pump’s vibrating alert safety feature. All security experts still say that surgical implants are a benefit overall.”

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McAfee Claims Successful Insulin Pump Attack

You know the score. You’ve stepped away from your desktop, and then you think to yourself, “Damn. If only I could remember that website I’d just visited.” Now, users of Google Chrome’s latest beta will no longer have that worry. The latest incarnation of Google’s web browser gives users immediate access to all of their tabs, across all devices, which can be found within the new tab window. Here, users will discover an “Other devices” menu that gives quick and easy access to all those sites you just visited — yet for the life of you, can’t seem to remember. According to Google, beta users will see this feature gradually roll out over the coming week. Not a moment too soon, either.

Google Chrome 19 beta brings live tab synching to the fold originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Apr 2012 15:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google Chrome 19 beta brings live tab synching to the fold

Iran topped a recent list of repressive regimes that most aggressively restrict Internet freedom. The list, published by Reporters Without Borders, is a part of the 2012 edition of the organization’s Enemies of the Internet report. One of the details addressed in that report is the Iranian government’s bizarre plan to create its own “clean” Internet. The proposed system, an insular nationwide intranet that is reportedly isolated from the regular Internet, would be heavily regulated by the government.

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Iran moving ahead with plans for national intranet

Kingston’s new HyperX 3K SSD has appeared, powered by a second-generation SandForce SF-2281 processor. Sizes ranging from 90GB to 480GB and are appropriately priced between $140 to $700 — depending on your storage tastes. With a SATA 6Gb/s interface wrapped in a black and aluminum casing, the HyperX 3K looks ready to spar with Intel’s similarly SandForce-powered SSDs. Kingston’s 2.5-inch drives have also finished the review party circuit, picking up some pretty positive responses. According to Anandtech‘s testing, the HyperX 3K performs almost as well as its 5K predecessor, landing just behind it for light workload tests (309.4 MB/s on average) and a heavy workload performance (225.8 MB/s) that netted it second place. Overall, they reckon the HyperX 3K is a “no-brainer,” offering great performance for less of those hard-earned dollars.

The relatively rugged design was the first thing that caught Storage Review’s eye, due to Kingston’s (presumably necessary) thermal armor. The site was suitably impressed by read rates, which were comparable to the original HyperX SSD. Write performance didn’t hold up quite as well during tests and due to the reduced quality of the NAND memory used, you will see a drop on total write cycles possible — something that mainstream users probably won’t lose much sleep over. Storage Review maintains that when it comes to both performance and pricing, Kingston’s latest “delivers on both fronts.” You can take a closer look at what both reviews have to say — and a whole load of tests — at the sources below.

Kingston HyperX 3K SSD review round-up: Cheaper than its predecessor and almost as good originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Apr 2012 10:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Kingston HyperX 3K SSD review round-up: Cheaper than its predecessor and almost as good

Panos Ipeirotis, who writes the aptly named “A Computer Scientist in a Business School” blog, describes how he made national news by unraveling a multimillion-dollar “clickfraud” enterprise that used hidden frames, pornographic traffic brokerages, clever misdirection and obfuscation techniques, traffic laundering, skimmed traffic, and other techniques from the shadier side of the Internet’s ad-supported ecosystem to extract anywhere from $400K to $5M to date. The monetary losers were pornographic sites, but a number of high-profile “legit” sites were implicated, unwittingly used as “laundries” for the traffic. The scheme itself is awfully baroque, and Ipeirotis does an admirable job of laying it out, while introducing all these marvelously weird terms describing the modern practices of Internet grifters.

At this point, we now know how this person makes money. Clearly, there is click-fraud: the scammer is employing click-fraud services to click on the pay-per-click ads “displayed” in his parked domains. If some of the ads are also pay-per-impression, he may also get paid for these invisible impressions that happen within the 0x0 iframe.

Why the parked domains though? Why not doing the same directly within the porn site? The answer is simple: Traffic laundering.

What do I mean by “traffic laundering”? First, the ad networks are unlikely to place many ads within a porn site. On the other hand, they have ad-placement services for parked domains. Second, the publishers that get the traffic from the parked domains see in the referral URLs some legitimately-sounding domain names, not a porn site. Even if they go and check the site, they will only see an empty site full of ads. Nothing too suspicious. Hats off to the scammer. Clever scheme.

You think we are done? No. There is one more piece in the puzzle. How does the scammer attract visitors to the porn site?

The other interesting part: The porn website does not really contain porn! There are a few images but most of the links are to other porn website that actually host the video. In other words, the scammer does not even pay the cost of hosting porn!

Uncovering an advertising fraud scheme. Or “the Internet is for porn” (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

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Unraveling a baroque, snarled, multimillion-dollar porn-ad clickfraud scam