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New ARM-powered chip aims for battery life measured in decades

The number of things getting plugged into the “Internet of Things” has already reached the point of satire . But there’s a new, extremely low power technology that’s being prepared for market that could put computing power and network access into a whole new class of sensors, wearables, and practically disposable devices. That’s because it can run off a battery charge for over over 10 years. Atmel, the San Jose-based microcontroller maker, today released samples of a new type of ultra-low power, ARM based microcontroller that could radically extend the battery life of small low-power intelligent devices. The new SAM L21 32-bit ARM family of microcontroller (MCUs) consume less than 35 milliamps of power per megahertz of processing speed while active, and less than 200 nanoamps of power overall when in deep sleep mode—with varying states in between. The chip is so low power that it can be powered off energy capture from the body, as Andreas Eieland, Atmel’s Director of Product Marketing for low-power products, demonstrated at CES earlier this year. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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New ARM-powered chip aims for battery life measured in decades

Mini-review: Intel’s powered-up Core i7 Broadwell mini PC

Earlier this week, Intel sent us its latest variation of its growing line of NUC mini PCs. This is Intel’s first NUC to ship with one of its top-end Core i7 chips inside—it’s not the fastest desktop like this you can buy (that’s probably still Gigabyte’s quad-core Haswell Brix Pro), but it’s the fastest one you can get with Intel’s solid driver support and three-year warranty. If you read our review of the Core i5 Broadwell NUC, you already know a lot of what there is to know about this box. The primary difference is the faster CPU and GPU and an extra $100 or so—Intel says the street price should be around $500, compared to the $400-ish that the i5 version costs. We took the newest NUC and ran it through our standard tests to get an idea of how it stacks up. If you spend the extra money, here’s what you get. Read 17 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Mini-review: Intel’s powered-up Core i7 Broadwell mini PC

Zynga investors can sue FarmVille creator for alleged IPO fraud, judge says

Earlier this week, a judge ruled (PDF) that Zynga would have to face a revised lawsuit over allegations that it defrauded investors by offering overly-zealous news about the company’s future at the time of its Initial Public Offering (IPO). The investors allege that Zynga knew that an upcoming platform change at Facebook would decrease the company’s ability to rake in revenue, but executives concealed that information. After the successful IPO, the complaint says, the executives sold off their Zynga shares before the stock price collapsed . The investors applied for a class-action lawsuit in July 2012 , just after Zynga shares tumbled to $3 per share from a price peak of $15.91 per share. US District Judge Jeffrey White dismissed an earlier version of the lawsuit a year ago, but ruled that the game company would have to face a revised complaint from the same investors. Although Zynga denies the investors’ claims, the plaintiffs say they have at least six confidential witnesses who had access to daily reports on Zynga’s bookings before the IPO. Those witnesses say the company was in decline before the IPO. “Although the company may have reported large bookings after the fact,” the judge’s order writes, “Plaintiff contends that the bookings declined significantly during the class period and yet Defendants continued to represent to the public that the bookings were strong.” Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Zynga investors can sue FarmVille creator for alleged IPO fraud, judge says

Commercial Flamethrower Successfully Crowdfunded

ColdWetDog writes: You’ve always wanted one, of course. Zombies, the occasional alien infestation. The neighbor’s smelly roses. You just need to be prepared for things. You can get freeze dried food, AR15’s, enough ammo to start a small police action (at least here in the U.S. — YMMV), but it has been difficult to get a modern, portable flamethrower until now. CNET has a brief explanation on the XM42, which doubled its Indiegogo funding target in just a few days. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Commercial Flamethrower Successfully Crowdfunded

AT&T’s plan to watch your Web browsing—and what you can do about it

If you have AT&T’s gigabit Internet service and wonder why it seems so affordable, here’s the reason—AT&T is boosting profits by rerouting all your Web browsing to an in-house traffic scanning platform, analyzing your Internet habits, then using the results to deliver personalized ads to the websites you visit, e-mail to your inbox, and junk mail to your front door. In a few select areas including Austin, Texas, and Kansas City, Missouri—places where AT&T competes against the $70-per-month Google Fiber—Ma Bell offers its own $70-per-month ” GigaPower ” fiber-to-the-home Internet access. But signing up for the deal also opts customers in to AT&T’s “Internet Preferences” program, which gives the company permission to examine each customer’s Web traffic in exchange for a price that matches Google’s. AT&T charges at least another $29 a month ($99 total) to provide standalone Internet service that doesn’t perform this extra scanning of your Web traffic. The privacy fee can balloon to more than $60 for bundles including TV or phone service. Certain modem rental and installation fees also apply only to service plans without Internet Preferences. Read 67 remaining paragraphs | Comments

“Copyright troll” Perfect 10 hit with $5.6M in fees after failed Usenet assault

One of the original “copyright trolls,” a porn company called Perfect 10, has been slapped with a massive $5.6 million fee award that could finally shut down the decade-old lawsuit factory. Perfect 10’s model has been to sue third-party providers for carrying images of its porn. It hasn’t been afraid to go after big targets, either—Perfect 10 even sued Google over its image search, resulting in an appeals court case that made crystal clear that such searches are fair use . Despite that ruling, Perfect 10 went ahead and sued Microsoft on similar grounds three months later. The company also sued Giganews, a Usenet provider, in April 2011. Perfect 10 pursued claims for both indirect and direct copyright infringement, stating that Giganews employees directly uploaded infringing images onto its network. Giganews ultimately prevailed on all grounds; now, Perfect 10 has been required to pay its substantial legal bill as well. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Dark Web vendors offer up “thousands” of Uber logins starting at $1 each

Two vendors on a relatively new Dark Web marketplace are selling active Uber usernames and passwords. On Saturday, Ars verified that “Courvoisier” is claiming to sell these logins for $1 each on the AlphaBay Market, which launched in late 2014. Another vendor, “ThinkingForward,” sells the same items for $5 each. As Courvoisier writes: “The credentials provided will be a valid login for the Uber website for which you can use to order phones from completely free. (You can find the guide in our store if you’re unaware on the how-to).” Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Dark Web vendors offer up “thousands” of Uber logins starting at $1 each

NASA announces details of its asteroid redirection mission

Today, NASA held a press conference in which it described the latest developments in its plan to return an asteroid to an orbit close enough to Earth that it could easily be studied by a manned mission. Gone is the idea of returning an entire asteroid. In its place, a robotic probe will pluck a boulder from the surface of an asteroid and return that, testing our ability to redirect similar rocks if they threaten Earth. In fact, the entire mission is generally focused on technology development. Once the asteroid is placed in a cis-lunar orbit (orbiting Earth and closer than the Moon), it will be visited by a crewed Orion capsule that will allow detailed study and a return of samples to Earth. But the focus of this mission will be testing technology that will allow extended manned missions in space. The current timeline involves further studies of potential targets for extracting a boulder in the years leading up to 2019. Right now, three asteroids are on the menu: Itokawa (which was visited by the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa), Bennu (which is planned for a sample return mission called OSIRIS-REx), and 2008 EV5. In each case, the orbit and composition are well-known, making them relatively low risk. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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NASA announces details of its asteroid redirection mission

Graphene allows strange form of ice to occur at room temperature

We are all familiar with water, and we see it every day in many forms: in the bulk as a glass of water, in the crystal phase as ice, and the vapor phase as steam. While the behavior of these phases seems predictable, water is an unusual substance that behaves unlike any other small molecule we know of. This fact is particularly notable when water is viewed at small-length scales or confined to small compartments. An international team of scientists recently discovered some intriguing structural characteristics of water confined in graphene nanocapillaries. In these studies, the researchers deposited a graphene monolayer on a small grid, added a small amount of water, and then covered it with another monolayer of graphene. This sample was left overnight to allow excess water to evaporate, eventually bringing the graphene layers together so that only a small amount of adsorbed water remained between them. The water left behind showed some unusual structural properties. Structural characteristics of water are influenced by hydrogen bonding among adjacent water molecules. In the liquid state, water exhibits a partially ordered structure. In the crystal state, water molecules begin to conform to more rigid lattice structures, forming ice. As ice, the water molecules typically take on a geometry that is a three-dimensional “tetrahedral” structure, which basically looks like a square pyramid. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

New WoW item will allow players to trade gold for game time

Blizzard will soon allow World of Warcraft players to trade purchased game time for in-game gold, and vice versa, effectively putting an official, floating real-world value on the in-game currency. With yesterday’s rollout of WoW patch 6.12, Blizzard says it’s ready to introduce the ” WoW token,” a new in-game item that can be traded for 30 days of play time in the subscription-based MMO. Blizzard says the new feature will be launched in the Americas “once Patch 6.1.2 has been live for a while [to] help us ensure the foundation for the feature is solid.” Other regions will get tokens further down the line. WoW tokens will be available for purchase from the in-game shop for $20 or “the rough equivalent” in other regions. That’s somewhat more than the $14.99 maximum usually charged for a single month’s subscription fee, but the tokens differ from regular subscription game time because they can be exchanged for in-game gold through an in-game auction house. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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New WoW item will allow players to trade gold for game time

Ken May

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