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Always-on voice search from your desktop: “Ok Google” comes to Google.com

Google Smartphones have changed the computing landscape quite a bit, and it often seems like desktop computers and laptops get left behind. “Always-on” voice search is going to completely change the way we interact with computers, but, until now, it has been strictly-mobile only. Today, Google released a Chrome extension that enables always-on voice search from a desktop. With the extension installed, voice search works just like it does on the Nexus 5. When Google.com is open, just say “Ok Google” and then your search term. This happens when you say “Ok Google” from the search results. Google The hotword even works when you’re already on a search page. You can just say “Ok Google” again and search for something else. It all feels like a step closer to the Star Trek future Google keeps promising us . Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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Always-on voice search from your desktop: “Ok Google” comes to Google.com

Report: Amazon’s next Kindle Paperwhite will pick up a 300 PPI screen

The original Kindle Paperwhite. Cesar Torres Amazon’s Kindle Fire HDX tablets have already broken the 300 PPI barrier, but the sharpest of its E Ink readers sits at a much lower 212 PPI. According to a report from TechCrunch’s Matthew Panzarino, that may be about to change—Amazon is apparently working on a new version of its backlit Kindle Paperwhite with a 300 PPI display of an unspecified size and resolution. Since E Ink screens are meant to mimic the printed page, a sharper screen would bring the e-reader that much closer to the experience of reading an actual book. While the new e-reader is still apparently “several months away,” we know a little more about its other planned features. On the hardware side, Amazon will reportedly be adding an ambient light sensor to adjust the device’s backlight based on the light in the room you’re in, and hardware buttons for page turning will be making a return (the current Paperwhite relies on touch input for page turning). On the software side, the device’s UI will of course be upscaled to take advantage of the high-density screen, and Amazon will be introducing some new fonts and other tweaks to improve the Kindle’s typography. Finally, the new Paperwhite’s design will be tweaked to bring it more in line with that of the newest Fire tablets. Amazon isn’t the first to bring a high-density e-reader to market. Kobo’s Aura HD has a 265 PPI, 6.8-inch screen and has been out since May, though Kobo is a bigger presence in its home country of Canada than it is in the US. (The Aura HD was supposedly a limited-edition product, but it’s still on sale for $170 six months later so it’s clearly not  that limited.) The newest Paperwhite  will however be the first E Ink reader with access to Amazon’s gigantic e-book library and the Kindle brand, two potent weapons in the battle for e-book market supremacy. Read on Ars Technica | Comments        

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Report: Amazon’s next Kindle Paperwhite will pick up a 300 PPI screen

Google launches Play Newsstand: a hybrid magazine store and RSS reader

The long-rumored Google Play Newsstand for Android has finally launched , and it’s not at all what we were expecting. Early reporting and investigation pinned it as a newspaper section of the Play Store, but it’s much more than that. Google is selling newspapers and magazines under a single banner, and  there’s a visual-heavy RSS reader, sort of like Flipboard. This means Newsstand is replacing two of Google’s existing apps: Google Play Magazines and Google Currents. Google is pitching it as “all your subscriptions in one place.” Like most things “Google” these days, calling it an “app” isn’t really the whole story. There’s also a new section of the desktop Play Store, and some magazines and newspapers are even viewable in the browser. RSS is strictly confined to the app, though. Just like the old Play Magazines, paid content is available as a subscription or on a per-issue basis, and 30-day trials are available for some premium content. RSS feeds, magazines, and newspaper can be downloaded for offline reading later, and there’s also a bookmark function. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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Google launches Play Newsstand: a hybrid magazine store and RSS reader

Hack of Cupid Media dating website exposes 42 million plaintext passwords

A hack on niche online dating service Cupid Media earlier this year has exposed names, e-mail addresses and—most notably—plain-text passwords for 42 million accounts, according to a published report. The cache of personal information was found on the same servers that housed tens of millions of records stolen in separate hacks on sites including Adobe , PR Newswire , and the National White Collar Crime Center, KrebsonSecurity journalist Brian Krebs reported Tuesday night . An official with Southport, Australia-based Cupid Media told Krebs that user credentials appeared to be connected to “suspicious activity” that was detected in January. Officials believed they had notified all affected users, but they are in the process of double-checking that all affected accounts have had their passwords reset in light of Krebs’s discovery. The compromise of 42 million passwords makes the episode one of the biggest passcode breaches on record. Adding to the magnitude is the revelation the data was in plain-text, instead of a cryptographically hashed format that requires an investment of time, skill, and computing power to crack. As Krebs noted: Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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Hack of Cupid Media dating website exposes 42 million plaintext passwords

Feds arrest ATM thieves after discovering $800,000 stuffed in a suitcase

Noah Coffey Federal authorities have arrested five more men accused of taking part in a 21st-century bank heist that siphoned a whopping $45 million out of ATMs around the world in a matter of hours. Prosecutors said the men charged on Monday were members of the New York-based cell of a global operation and contributed to the $45 million theft by illegally withdrawing $2.8 million from 140 different ATMs in that city. The arrests came after the defendants sent $800,000 in cash proceeds in a suitcase transported by bus to a syndicate kingpin located in Florida, US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Loretta E. Lynch said . Photos seized from one defendant’s iPhone showed huge amounts of cash piled on a hotel bed and being stuffed into luggage, she said. The heists took place during two dates in December 2012 and targeted payment cards issued by the National Bank of Ras Al-Khaimah PSC in the United Arab Emirates and the Bank of Muscat in Oman respectively. Prosecutors dubbed the heists “unlimited” operations because they systematically removed the withdrawal limits normally placed on debit card accounts. These restrictions work as a safety mechanism that caps the amount of loss that banks normally face when something goes wrong. The operation removed the limits by hacking into two companies that processed online payments for the two targeted banks, prosecutors alleged in earlier indictments. Prosecutors didn’t identify the payment processors except to say that one was in India and the other was in the United States. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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Feds arrest ATM thieves after discovering $800,000 stuffed in a suitcase

In 6 months, US law enforcement asked Google for data on 21,000 users

Google Google and other tech companies have been actively fighting at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in an attempt to tell the public more about the types of US law enforcement orders that they must comply with. While that case continues, Google announced on Thursday that US government (local, state, federal) requests for data has reached 21,683 users between January through June 2013. By comparison, the company’s previous reporting period (July through December 2012) saw 8,438 user data requests from US authorities—a jump of about 32 percent. Again, the United States remains at the top of this list by a wide margin. India, Germany, France and the United Kingdom round out the next four positions, respectively. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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In 6 months, US law enforcement asked Google for data on 21,000 users

Google Books ruled legal in massive win for fair use

Moyan Brenn A long-running copyright lawsuit between the Authors’ Guild and Google over its book-scanning project is over, and Google has won on the grounds that its scanning was “fair use.” In other words, the snippets of books that Google shows for free don’t break copyright, and it doesn’t need the authors’ permission to engage in the scanning and display of short bits of books. On the fair use factor that’s often the most important—whether or not the fair use of a work hurts the market for the original work—US District Judge Denny Chin seemed to find the plaintiffs’ ideas both nonsensical and ignorant of the limits on the Google Books software: Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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Google Books ruled legal in massive win for fair use

Android 4.4 KitKat, thoroughly reviewed

After three Jelly Bean releases in a row, Google has unleashed a major revision to the world’s most widely used operating system. With the  Nexus 5  comes Android 4.4 “KitKat.” KitKat brings a ton of enhancements: support for hidden system and status bars, printer support, and lower memory usage. It also has a number of user-level improvements, including a new dialer, a Google-infused home screen, and a whole pile of UI refinements. The lower memory usage is particularly important because Google hopes this is the feature that will finally kill Gingerbread and other older versions of Android. Ice Cream Sandwich raised the system requirements for Android quite a bit, and to this day you still see lower-end phones shipping with Gingerbread because of the lower barrier to entry. Unfortunately, the only device that currently runs KitKat is the Nexus 5, which has a whopping 2GB of RAM, so there isn’t much memory testing that we can do right now. We’ll have to wait for actual low-memory hardware running KitKat to evaluate any of the low-memory requirement claims. We  can   take a look at just about everything else, though. We believe KitKat is the biggest Android release since Ice Cream Sandwich. Google has touched nearly every part of the OS in some way, so there’s a lot to cover. Read 47 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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Android 4.4 KitKat, thoroughly reviewed

Meteorite impacts capture time capsules of the ecosystems they destroy

Sites like this can be searched for glass beads that reveal the past. rickmach Meteorite impacts can be very destructive. A meteorite that fell in Mexico around 66 million years ago created a 180 km crater and caused the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs while spewing debris and molten rock into the air. Now, in what is a fascinating tale of serendipity, researchers have found that these events don’t entirely destroy all traces of life at the site of impact. Molten rocks can capture and preserve organic matter as they cool down to form glass beads. When a meteor enters Earth’s atmosphere, the friction causes it to heat up, scorching everything in its path. Most of the time that’s where the story ends, as the meteor burns up in the sky as a “shooting star.” But sometimes it’s big enough to reach all the way to the surface and transfer its remaining energy to the ground. This energy is dissipated as mild earthquakes and sound shockwaves—but mostly as heat. The heat energy can be so great that it melts rocks on the surface and hurls them up in the atmosphere. Anything that comes in contact with this molten rock would presumably get burnt, leaving nothing but rocky material that cools down in the atmosphere, forming glass beads and tektites (gravel-sized natural glass). This is what City University of New York researcher Kieren Howard assumed, but he was able to show that his assumptions were wrong. Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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Meteorite impacts capture time capsules of the ecosystems they destroy

Hack of MacRumors forums exposes password data for 860,000 users

MacRumors MacRumors user forums have been breached by hackers who may have acquired cryptographically protected passwords belonging to all 860,000 users, one of the top editors of the news website said Tuesday evening. “In situations like this, it’s best to assume that your MacRumors Forum username, e-mail address and (hashed) password is now known,” Editorial Director Arnold Kim wrote in a short advisory . He went on to advise users to change their passwords for their MacRumors accounts and any other website accounts that were protected by the same passcode. The MacRumors intrusion involved “a moderator account being logged into by the hacker who then was able to escalate their privileges with the goals of stealing user login credentials,” Kim said. The company is still investigating how the attacker managed to compromise the privileged account. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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Hack of MacRumors forums exposes password data for 860,000 users