Notre Dame heralds paint-on solar cells, wants to smear your home with its goop (video)

Leave it to the Fighting Irish to take a stab at solving the world’s energy woes. Notre Dame researchers have successfully developed solar cells that can be easily painted on to any conductive surface. Imagine, for a moment, applying this solution to your home rather than attaching solar panels to the roof. The paint mixture incorporates quantum dots of titanium dioxide, which is then coated with either cadmium sulfide or cadmium selenide, and is then suspended in mixture of water and alcohol to create a spreadable compound that’s capable of generating electricity. While its efficiency isn’t currently much to crow home about — which hovers around one-percent — scientists are now actively pursuing ways to improve this aspect while making a more stable compound. Most importantly, the paint can be made cheaply and in large quantities, which suggests that even if efficiency remains in the doldrums, it may be a very worthwhile pursuit. Touchdown Jesus is already watching the video after the break.

Continue reading Notre Dame heralds paint-on solar cells, wants to smear your home with its goop (video)

Notre Dame heralds paint-on solar cells, wants to smear your home with its goop (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 25 Dec 2011 14:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Notre Dame heralds paint-on solar cells, wants to smear your home with its goop (video)

IMEC working with holograms, mirrored pixels to prevent 3D movie headaches

Let’s face it, 3D movies are amazing but there are times when you’ll walk away with a killer headache. A group of researchers at IMEC believes that holographic video might be the best way around this problem and has been working on a means of constructing holographic displays by shining lasers on microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) platforms capable of moving up and down like small, reflective pistons. Here’s the cool part: each pixel would have a spring-like mechanism attached to it that could be moved by applying voltage to it. In the first stage of the technology, a laser is bounced off a MEMS-less chip containing an image, the diffracted light interfering to create a 3D picture. From here, the team can adjust the image by replacing pixels with small, mirrored platforms that can alternate their direction to create a moving projection. It gets technical after this, but you can take a gander at the video after the break for a full demo and explanation.

Continue reading IMEC working with holograms, mirrored pixels to prevent 3D movie headaches

IMEC working with holograms, mirrored pixels to prevent 3D movie headaches originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 25 Dec 2011 18:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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IMEC working with holograms, mirrored pixels to prevent 3D movie headaches

Cyber Insurance Industry Expected To Boom


An anonymous reader writes “The high profile hacks to Sony’s systems this year were quite costly — Sony estimated losses at around $200 million. Their insurance company was quick to point out that they don’t own a cyber insurance policy, so the losses won’t be mitigated at all. Because of that and all the other notable hacking incidents recently, analysts expect the cyber insurance industry to take off in the coming year. ‘Last October, the S.E.C. issued a new guidance requiring that companies disclose “material” cyber attacks and their costs to shareholders. The guidance specifically requires companies to disclose a “description of relevant insurance coverage.” That one S.E.C. bullet point could be a boon to the cyber insurance industry. Cyber insurance has been around since the Clinton administration, but most companies tended to “self insure” against cyber attacks.'”

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Cyber Insurance Industry Expected To Boom

U.S. Congress Authorizes Offensive Use of Cyberwarfare


smitty777 writes “Congress has recently authorized the use of offensive military action in cyberspace. From the December 12th conference on the National Defense Authorization Act, it states, ‘Congress affirms that the Department of Defense has the capability, and upon direction by the President may conduct offensive operations in cyberspace to defend our Nation, Allies and interests, subject to: (1) the policy principles and legal regimes that the Department follows for kinetic capabilities, including the law of armed conflict; and (2) the War Powers Resolution.’ According to the FAS, ‘Debate continues on whether using the War Powers Resolution is effective as a means of assuring congressional participation in decisions that might get the United States involved in a significant military conflict.'”

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U.S. Congress Authorizes Offensive Use of Cyberwarfare

Volkswagen Turns Off E-mail After Work-Hours

wired_parrot writes “Responding to complaints from employees that email outside of working hours was disrupting their lives, Volkswagen has taken the step of shutting their email servers outside work-hours. Other companies have taken similar steps, with at least one taking the extraordinary step of banning internal e-mail altogether. Is this new awareness of the disruption work email brings on employee’s personal life a trend?”

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Volkswagen Turns Off E-mail After Work-Hours

Trion Worlds’ Rift Account Database Compromised


New submitter Etrahkad writes “Trion Worlds, publisher of MMORPG Rift, has announced that somebody broke into one of their databases and gained access to user information. First Sony and now Rift… my identity has probably been stolen several times over, now. From the e-mail: ‘We recently discovered that unauthorized intruders gained access to a Trion Worlds account database. The database in question contained information including user names, encrypted passwords, dates of birth, email addresses, billing addresses, and the first and last four digits and expiration dates of customer credit cards. … there is no evidence, and we have no reason to believe, that full credit card information was accessed or compromised in any way.” Are game companies not concerned with preventing these attacks?”

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Trion Worlds’ Rift Account Database Compromised

MediaPortal 1.2.2 RELEASED!

1.2.2 is the first MediaPortal release which was developed using GIT. The learning curve is very steep, but the benefits are great!

We are very happy to present you this new release which focus is to increase the stability of MediaPortal 1.2.

Partial Changelog:

  • 3772 Weather plugin unable to get data
    Sadly the Weather Channel disabled the free access to their API. This means that MediaPortal (among many other free applications) is no longer able to get data. Unfortunately there is no quick fix for this problem which we could add into an 1.2.x hotfix. A complete rework of the weather plugin is planned for 1.3.0.
    In the meantime, there are other weather plugins available in our Repository. World Weather and BBC Weather seem to be good choices.
  • 3746 DaemonTools won’t unmount an iso file and crash MediaPortal
  • 3760 Playback of Multi File Cue Sheets starts at wrong position
  • 3740 #play.next.duration in wrong format
  • 3775 WindowPluginBase incorrectly sets GuiProperties when it is not the ActiveWindow
  • 3752 Cyberlink PDVD (DXVA/HAM/SW) codec version 10/11 are not available in codec configuration
  • Continue Reading

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MediaPortal 1.2.2 RELEASED!

FCC approves AT&T's $1.9b purchase of Qualcomm's 700MHz spectrum (update)

Christmas has come early to the execs at AT&T, who are likely celebrating the FCC’s 3-1 approval to purchase Qualcomm’s block of the 700MHz spectrum for $1.9 billion. The news comes as a bittersweet victory for Ma Bell, whose efforts to acquire T-Mobile turned sour earlier this year. Qualcomm’s block of the airwaves, once used to facilitate FLO TV, now sits unused. Once the acquisition is complete, AT&T will use the new share of spectrum to increase download capacity for its burgeoning LTE network.

For the FCC’s part, it has approved the deal with only a few stipulations: AT&T will be required to satisfy interference requirements and must offer data roaming to its competitors on the spectrum. That’s not to suggest everyone’s pleased, however. Rural cellular providers asked that, as part of the deal, AT&T must ensure that its LTE network is interoperable with the bands used by smaller networks. Sadly, the FCC has denied this request, ostensibly limiting the little guy from receiving Ma Bell’s hand-me-downs.

Update: AT&T has gone ahead and released a wee bit of celebratory PR, which we’re including after the break. Most importantly, it expects to wrap up the finer details in the next few days.

Continue reading FCC approves AT&T’s $1.9b purchase of Qualcomm’s 700MHz spectrum (update)

FCC approves AT&T’s $1.9b purchase of Qualcomm’s 700MHz spectrum (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 22 Dec 2011 21:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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FCC approves AT&T's $1.9b purchase of Qualcomm's 700MHz spectrum (update)