Gigapixel cameras aren’t exactly hot-off-the-presses, but a few wizards at Duke and the University of Arizona may be close to getting that sort of technology into your future point-and-shoot. Reportedly, electrical engineers with gobs of free time and an imagination the size of Coach K’s ego have managed to synchronize 98 minuscule cameras in a single device, creating a prototype 50 gigapixel monster. The real kicker here is the hope for the future: these same researchers feel that “within five years, as the electronic components of the cameras become miniaturized and more efficient, the next generation of gigapixel cameras should be available to the general public.” The prototype itself measures a whopping 2.5-feet square and 20 inches deep, but only around 3 percent of it is made of optical elements; the vast majority is circuitry needed to calculate the stupefying amount of information captured in 50,000 megapixels.

University researchers develop 50 gigapixel camera, hope it hits the mainstream in five years originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Jun 2012 15:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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University researchers develop 50 gigapixel camera, hope it hits the mainstream in five years

First time accepted submitter Burdell writes “A new startup has technology to read fingerprints from up to 6 meters away. IDair currently sells to the military, but they are beta testing it with a chain of 24-hour fitness centers that want to restrict sharing of access cards. IDair also wants to sell this to retail stores and credit card companies as a replacement for physical cards. Lee Tien from the EFF notes that the security of such fingerprint databases is a privacy concern.”

Since the last time this technology was mentioned more than a year ago, it seems that the claimed range for reading has tripled, and the fingerprint reader business has been spun off from the company at which development started.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Have Your Fingerprints Read From 6 Meters Away

In what’s sure to piss off most news readers and general web-perusing enthusiasts, Twitter has gone down. We’ve heard reports that it’s been down for the last fifteen minutes, and without access to Twitter, it’s tough to say whether or not the company has given any updates.

A quick visit to DownForEveryoneOrJustMe.com shows that the site is down across the boards, and of course visiting Twitter.com offers up the same results.

What’s strange is that the usual Fail Whale is missing.

We’ve checked in on Twitter’s blog site and found that they’ve made no mention of the matter yet, but we did see this:

We’re reaching out now to see what exactly the problem is.

The good news is that Twitter’s Mobile site seems to be up and running, so if you’re really desperate to get your Tweet on, get it done on your phone. On the other hand, the iOS app is offering up no joy at the moment.

We’ll keep you updated as we go.

Update: 1:00 EDT — And she’s back.

Update 2: 1:49 EDT — Back down.

Update 3: 3:00 EDT — She’s up again, but there’s no telling how long it’ll last. We’ve been on a roller coaster ride.

Update 4: 3:20 EDT — Twitter has made the following statement regarding what is going on with this massive service disruption. Check it out:

Today’s outage is due to a cascaded bug in one of our infrastructure components. We’ll provide updated information soon.

— Twitter Comms (@twittercomms) June 21, 2012

Update 5: 4:15 EDT — Twitter has “clarified” what a cascaded bug is, and done so in 140 characters or less:

A cascaded bug has an effect that isn’t confined to a particular software element; its effect “cascades” into other elements as well.

— Twitter Comms (@twittercomms) June 21, 2012

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It’s been about three hours since the site formerly known as Twitter went down completely. This is a full-scale outage, people. No fail whale, no cutesy message about how awesome Twitter’s traffic is at the moment, just an error page.

I’ve been refreshing Twitter’s developer site, and it looks like Status and Timeline updates have been going back and forth between “Performance Issues” status (yellow) and “Service Disruption” status (red).

Tweeters seem to be going through a bit of withdrawal, with many wanting desperately to tweet about how Twitter is down. Irony is fun.

In other news, Facebook is probably having a great day.

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Twitter’s Fail Whale Of A Day: Mostly Down Since 12:35 EDT

An anonymous reader writes “Sony has used the SID 2012 conference to demonstrate a brand new combination of conductive film and low-reflection film that promises to render screen reflection almost non-existent in devices like smartphones and tablets. Sony achieved such low reflections by combining its new conductive film with a moth-eye low reflection film. The key to the low reflectance is the formation of an uneven surface, which consists of both concave and convex structures (tiny bumps) that cover the entire film. The uneven surface means that light won’t just bounce back off the screen creating a reflection, and therefore making the screen usable in a wider range of lighting conditions.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New Film Renders Screen Reflection Almost Non-Existent

(Video Link)

To promote Futurama, Comedy Central made this live action version of the show’s opening. The video notes say that it was “made entirely by hand (and tentacle),” so presumably Dr. Zoidberg’s considerable cinematic talents were left unused.

-via Geekologie

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Live-Action Futurama Opening

snydeq writes “Hacker group Rex Mundi has made good on its promise to publish thousands of loan-applicant records it swiped from AmeriCash Advance after the payday lender refused to fork over between $15,000 and $20,000 as an extortion fee — or, in Rex Mundi’s terms, an ‘idiot tax.’ The group announced on June 15 that it was able to steal AmeriCash’s customer data because the company had left a confidential page unsecured on one of its servers. ‘This page allows its affiliates to see how many loan applicants they recruited and how much money they made,’ according to the group’s post on dpaste.com. ‘Not only was this page unsecured, it was actually referenced in their robots.txt file.'”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hacker Group Demands "Idiot Tax" From Payday Lender

The web is a busy place, and to tell us exactly how busy, Josh James
of Domo shows us this infographic of how much data is created every minute
on the Interweb: Link

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How Much Data is Created Every Minute

Although the form factor and actual size are still unknown, TechCrunch has independently verified that Apple is working on adding a 19-pin port, replacing the current 30-pin port, to the new iPhone. It is a move that will surely send shocks through the iPhone accessory ecosystem.

The new port, partially shown in this Mobilefun post as well as in this video, is similar in size to the Thunderbolt port available on many MacBook devices but I’ve been told by three independent manufacturers that the pin-out will be different.

Apple’s 30-pin ports have been the standard since Apple released the third generation iPod. The connectors offered structural stability when connecting to most accessories but it’s clear – especially with the introduction of the MagSafe 2 port – Apple is more concerned with space savings inside each device.

Three independent manufacturers all agreed that the 19-pin dock port is in the works and many accessory manufacturers are facing an uneasy few months as they wait for official news of the standard to be announced.

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Confirmed: The New iPhone Will Have A 19-Pin “Mini” Connector

Something’s afoot at Apple’s massive North Carolina data center — or perhaps just on the various pipes and tubes leading to it. We’ve received many reports of iCloud and iMessage problems and, looking online, plenty of other folks are issuing the same complaints. Seeing something amiss on your end? Add your experiences in comments below — while you still can.

Update: Luke wrote in to let us know that Apple has acknowledged the issue. “Normal service will be restored ASAP.”

Update 2: “All services are online.” That’s as of 4:06 ET.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

iCloud down for many, iMessages not going through (update: back online!) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jun 2012 14:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iCloud down for many, iMessages not going through (update: back online!)

Well, Microsoft has officially left Apple as the only player in the Mobile field to not support real multitasking. With the next version of Windows Phone, background multitasking will be opened up to all devs, thanks to libraries provided directly by Redmond. During today’s presentation two different background tasks were demoed, VoIP and location. The VoIP integration allows users to have calls come in, preferably via Skype if Microsoft has its way, without having the app running in the foreground and have them appear the same as a standard phone call. While watching for incoming calls is nice, a more commonly used feature is location monitoring. Now apps will be able to monitor location in the background while you perform other tasks. One by one, Microsoft is checking off boxes on our list of complaints about Windows Phone.

Microsoft brings true, background multitasking to Windows Phone 8 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jun 2012 13:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft brings true, background multitasking to Windows Phone 8