Between now and 2020, the greatest increases in population growth in the United States are projected to happen in the places that have the biggest problems with fresh water availability. This isn’t just a drinking water problem, or even an agriculture problem. It’s an energy issue, too. Most of our electricity is made by finding various ways to boil water, producing steam that turns a turbine in an electric generator. In 2000, we used as much fresh water to produce electricity as we used for irrigation—each sector represented 39% of our total water use. (From a poster at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.)

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Why water supply affects your computer

Google has been caught hosting more than a dozen malicious titles in its official Android app market. Some had been downloaded tens of thousands of times and turn smartphones into zombies that await commands from their attacker overlords, security researchers said.

A stash of 17 malicious apps remained freely available in the Google Play store, according to a blog post published Thursday by researchers from antivirus provider Trend Micro. Six of those titles contained a highly stealthy code dubbed Plankton, which causes Android-based phones to connect to command and control servers and wait for commands. At least 10 Plankton-based apps found last year in the Android market collected users’ browsing history, bookmarks, and device information and sent them to servers under the control of the attackers.

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Malicious apps hosted in Google store turn Android phones into zombies

milbournosphere writes “New York Judge Gary Brown has found that IP addresses don’t provide enough evidence to identify pirates, and wrote an extensive argument explaining his reasoning. A quote from the judge’s order: ‘While a decade ago, home wireless networks were nearly non-existent, 61% of U.S. homes now have wireless access. As a result, a single IP address usually supports multiple computer devices – which unlike traditional telephones can be operated simultaneously by different individuals. Different family members, or even visitors, could have performed the alleged downloads. Unless the wireless router has been appropriately secured (and in some cases, even if it has been secured), neighbors or passersby could access the Internet using the IP address assigned to a particular subscriber and download the plaintiff’s film.’ Perhaps this will help to stem the tide of frivolous mass lawsuits being brought by the RIAA and other rights-holders where IP addresses are the bulk of the ‘evidence’ suggested.”

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NY Judge Rules IP Addresses Insufficient To Identify Pirates

An anonymous reader writes “Today Bethesda announced that their popular Elder Scrolls series of video games will be getting its own MMORPG. It’s planned for 2013, and will be available for PCs and Macs. ‘Players will discover an entirely new chapter of Elder Scrolls history in this ambitious world, set a millennium before the events of Skyrim as the daedric prince Molag Bal tries to pull all of Tamriel into his demonic realm. “It will be extremely rewarding finally to unveil what we have been developing the last several years,” said game director and MMO veteran Matt Firor, whose previous work includes Mythic’s well-received Dark Age of Camelot. “The entire team is committed to creating the best MMO ever made – and one that is worthy of The Elder Scrolls franchise.”‘”

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Bethesda Announces Elder Scrolls MMO

Two nano PCs, actually, and both expected to be announced officially this week according to FanlessTech. The first is the Foxconn AT-5300, running off a 2.13GHz dual-core Cedar Trail D2700, while the second — the AT-5600 — is powered by AMD’s popular (but last-gen) 1.65GHz E450 APU. Each one consumes around 15W idle and 24W under load, which is the equivalent of somewhere between an Ultrabook and a regular laptop and low enough to be passively cooled. What’s distinctly unlaptop-like, though, is the 190 x 135 x 38mm form factor, which should sit discreetly on your desk, below your TV or on a VESA mount, and also the price, which is expected to be under $200 with worldwide availability. As with similar mini-ATX budget barebones, you’ll need to add your own HDD (or maybe a hybrid) to that, but you do get a pair of USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit LAN, a multilingual card reader and built-in 802.11n WiFi. The only thing missing? You guessed it.

Foxconn builds a fanless nano PC, forgets to put someone else’s name on it originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 May 2012 11:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Foxconn builds a fanless nano PC, forgets to put someone else’s name on it

If you’ve ever wondered why people write malware, it’s just like anything else – it’s all about the money. Symantec has worked out that the evil-doing bottom-feeders behind that nasty Flashback Trojan, which caught the Mac world with its pants down, were raking in around $10,000 a day. More »

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The Flashback Trojan Made Its Makers $10,000 a Day [Factoid]

Windows/Mac: If you have more than one computer at your workspace, ShareMouse will let you control them all with a single keyboard and mouse, as well as copy and paste text between them and drag files back and forth. More »

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ShareMouse Controls Multiple Computers with a Single Keyboard and Mouse, No Setup Required [Video]

As more and more traffic moves from the desktop to mobile devices, malware has closely followed it. Now, an Internet security firm has discovered the first websites designed specifically to infect Android devices that visit the page with malware. More »

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First Drive-By Malware Sites Discovered for Android [Malware]

Google announced a slew of new features this afternoon for its Google Docs suite, hailing the addition of 450 new fonts for creating pamphlets and invitations in Docs, but also mentioning some new features for its application scripting language that will allow developers to build some interesting programs on top of the cloud service.

Google introduced a scripting language for Google Docs, Google Apps Script, in early 2010 so users could automate certain tasks in spreadsheets. Apps Scripts also permitted users to mesh certain third-party services with Google products to make sending e-mails and posting dates on a Google calendar automatic. Scripting is something that few other cloud services offer, and it puts Google ahead of the game in that respect.

Google’s latest edition to Apps Script, called ScriptService, allows scripts to be published as a service program and provides control over when scripts run via timers and other “trigger” events—permitting Docs to perform automated functions. Another new feature of Apps Script integrates with Google Drive, allowing your script to find the root folder of someone else’s Google Drive account so that published scripts can create and manipulate files in them. Finally, the revamped scripts now permit e-mail attachments of 25 MB (up from 5 MB), and can create docs up to 50 MB (up from a 2 MB limit).

Google has been aggressive in building out Apps Script’s functionality—in early April, the company announced the ability to add HTML to a script’s dialogue, and to program sheet protection in spreadsheets so a manager could control which collaborators see what.

Along with the font and scripting announcements, Google also said its service will allow importing photos into docs from Google Drive, and show bidirectional controls for people typing in right-to-left languages. Google Docs also has 60 new document templates in the template gallery.

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Google beefs up Apps Scripts for Docs

The Windows Live branding that Microsoft has used since 2005 for its range of consumer-oriented cloud services will fade away over the next few months, as the company positions the online services as an integral, integrated part of the Windows experience.

This integration includes the ability to log on to Windows using a Microsoft Account (formerly known as a Windows Live ID), and the automatic configuration of the mail, messaging, and contact applications using information from the Microsoft Account.

“Windows Live” is currently used both for the services themselves, and the corresponding desktop applications that access them. Microsoft has historically gone back and forth on how this branding is used; Hotmail, for example, has had its name changed from Hotmail to Windows Live Hotmail, then back to Hotmail again; its desktop application counterpart is Windows Live Mail. Even the domain names used by the services show this same inconsistency: logging on at hotmail.com will take you to a mail.live.com domain.

The new branding will introduce uniformity; although many of the services will continue to use live.com domains, their names will exclude any hint of the Live branding.

With this change, the Windows Live Essentials application bundle will go away. Microsoft first announced Windows Live Essentials in 2008, with the first release coming alongside Windows 7. The intent was to decouple the applications—including Mail, Messenger, Movie Maker, and Photo Gallery—from Windows itself, so that they could be regularly updated on their own timetable.

Most of the applications themselves will live on, but in Windows 8 (and Windows Phone) they are pre-installed apps, rather than a separate package. The Windows Live Writer blogging software, however, was not mentioned. Though never wildly popular, it remains much loved by its users. It is, however, something of an anomaly, as it no longer has a corresponding online service: Microsoft closed down its blogging platform, Windows Live Spaces, last year.

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Windows 8 to integrate cloud services, ditch Windows Live branding