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Android biometric banks more Fort Nope than Fort Knox. Four FireEye researchers have found a way to steal fingerprints from Android phones packing biometric sensors such as the Samsung Galaxy S5 and the HTC One Max.The team found a forehead-slapping flaw in HTC One Max in which fingerprints are stored as an image file (dbgraw.bmp) in a open "world readable" folder. "Any unprivileged processes or apps can steal user’s fingerprints by reading this file," the team says, adding that the images can be made into clear prints by adding some padding.It is one of four vulnerability scenarios in which biometric...

With Google creating its own parent company, Alphabet, there's a bit of moving about in the Google boardroom. Larry Page is now chief executive of Alphabet. Sergey Brin is its president. And moving up to be in charge of Google is 43-year-old Sundar Pichai. Great news for Pichai, and good news too for India - his appointment makes him the latest Indian to earn a massively high-profile job in the US technology industry. Microsoft's Satya Nadella is the other notable example. Pichai's life story is remarkable, and his rise to the top of Google is a glowing endorsement of India's...

A Navy sailor assigned to a nuclear-powered submarine has been accused of using his cellphone to snap revealing photos of the sub’s top-secret inner spaces. Prosecutors say Machinist Mate 1st Class Kristian Saucier took the photos aboard the attack submarine Alexandria, the Navy Times reported Saturday. He has been charged with unauthorized retention of defense information and destroying his laptop and a camera to thwart an FBI probe.

Later today, July 27, German scientists will present new experimental results on the controversial, "impossible" EM Drive, at the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics' Propulsion and Energy Forum in Orlando. The presentation is titled "Direct Thrust Measurements of an EmDrive and Evaluation of Possible Side-Effects." Presenter Martin Tajmar is a professor and chair for Space Systems at the Dresden University of Technology, interested in space propulsion systems and breakthrough propulsion physics. A Revolutionary Development for Space Travel The EM Drive (Electro Magnetic Drive) uses electromagnetic microwave cavities to directly convert electrical energy to thrust without the need to expel...

Ten Apple patents that may or may not see the light of day. For example this patent for a virtual reality headset capable of linking to an exterior device such as an iPhone or Mac filed in 2008. . .

[OK, I dont like government running these programs, but how about this idea?] Four Facts for Human Achievement Day By Edward Hudgins July 20 is the anniversary of one of humanity’s greatest accomplishments, the first lunar landing. We should not only give a shout out to the thousands of people who made it possible for Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to walk the surface of another world. We should each celebrate this date as Human Achievement Day, to acknowledge all achievements, especially our own. Here are four facts on which you should reflect. Fact one: Achievements are what human life...

....Google has accidentally revealed crucial data on information requests it receives from people, which includes those of a private and personal nature. The Guardian discovered the data hidden in the source code on Google’s own transparency report that reveals the scale and nature of the data requests it receives. The revealed data shows that 95 per cent of Google’s privacy requests are from the general public who want to protect personal and private information.....

As humans, we make intuitive choices every day about how to empty the bin, sort laundry or the best way to get to work.  But robots have a far more difficult time choosing from a never-ending list of possible actions.  To make robots respond in a more human-like way to tasks, researchers have developed an algorithm and are teaching machines to use it through an unlikely source - playing Minecraft. The algorithm was developed by computer scientists at Brown University.  It is designed to help robots better plan their actions in complex environments and use these skills in the real...

"The Echo may be the closest thing we’ll have to a Star Trek computer at home." – CNET "Echo could hear my voice even when music was playing loudly…" – USA Today "With Amazon Echo, it was love at first sight." – Re/code What is Amazon Echo? Amazon Echo is designed around your voice. It's hands-free and always on. With seven microphones and beam-forming technology, Echo can hear you from across the room—even while music is playing. Echo is also an expertly tuned speaker that can fill any room with immersive sound. Echo connects to Alexa, a cloud-based voice service,...

A typical computer chip includes millions of transistors connected with an extensive network of copper wires. Although chip wires are unimaginably short and thin compared to household wires both have one thing in common: in each case the copper is wrapped within a protective sheath. For years a material called tantalum nitride has formed protective layer in chip wires. Now Stanford-led experiments demonstrate that a different sheathing material, graphene, can help electrons scoot through tiny copper wires in chips more quickly. Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a strong yet thin lattice. Stanford electrical engineer H.-S....

A recent study by real-estate brokerage Redfin showed that more people are looking to move out of the Bay Area than ever before. Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman said that tech workers and their high salaries could be responsible for making Silicon Valley unaffordable. A new Redfin study demonstrates a correlation between rising home prices and hiring by big tech companies.They found that, as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google have ramped up their hiring in various cities in the past year, the cost of homes in those cities has also gone up. "For every 1% increase in technology workers, there’s a...

After enjoying nearly three decades of steady growth in its China business, Unilever PLC last year watched sales fall off a cliff. The maker of Dove soap, Lux shampoo and Comfort fabric softener warned in October of a 20% drop in its third-quarter China sales. The next quarter, the company announced another 20% fall. Unilever blamed a slowing Chinese economy and a pullback by shoppers. But a close look at retailing trends in China suggests Unilever was also feeling the pain of the migration of hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers to online shopping. Unilever wasn’t the only Western company...

The secretive Bilderberg Group has deployed a hi-tech jamming system to shut down communications around the site of the elitist confab’s luxury hotel in order to strangle media coverage of the event.

There's a serious problem in the American economy right now: Big corporations are doing well, but real household income for average Americans has been falling over the past decade — down 9 percent, according to census data. "That's not good for America," says Harvard economist Michael Porter. "That's not good for America's standard of living. That's not good for our vitality as a nation." That's why Porter's excited about the deep reserves of natural gas and oil that have been made accessible by hydraulic fracturing technology, or fracking — a boon he examines in detail in a new report. "It...

Steven A. Camarota is the Director of Research and Karen Zeigler is a demographer at the Center for Immigration Studies. While employers argue that there are not enough workers with technical skills, most prior research has found little evidence that such workers are in short supply. This report uses the latest Census Bureau data available to examine the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. Consistent with other research, the findings show that the country has more than twice as many workers with STEM degrees as there are STEM jobs. Also consistent with other research, we find only modest levels...

Self-driving cars are taking to the streets in California this summer, but the Golden State isn't the only one opening its roads to autonomous cars.Virginia just announced that 70 miles of highway in the Commonwealth would be open to self-driving cars, like the cars in Google's fleet. Any autonomous vehicle wanting to travel those routes, called the Virginia Automated Corridors, will be overseen by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, which helped the state government plan the project.As the Richmond Times-Dispatchreports the plan is for companies to test how their cars react in real-world situations on highways packed with human drivers....

In recent months, Christopher Scalia in the Wall Street Journal and Fareed Zakaria in the Washington Post have defended studying the liberal arts in college, primarily to confront advocates of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Zakaria’s article previewed his new book, “In Defense of a Liberal Education.” From my perspective as a former engineer, two caveats arise regarding their pleas: first, “liberal” education that involves “critical thinking” disappeared decades ago, to be replaced by hyper-sensitive grievance mongering; second, the quantitative reasoning STEM occupations develops also facilitates the understanding of trade-offs people need to make rational decisions among myriad conflicting...

In the world of modern firearms which use centerfire cartridges, there are two major types of mechanisms used to trigger the cartridge primer. One uses a hammer and another uses a striker. Therefore, mechanisms that use a hammer are called hammer-fired and the ones that use a striker are called striker fired. As you can guess, each mechanism has its own group of supporters. In today's post, we will study what this all means. In a hammer fired mechanism, the hammer is a heavy piece that is allowed to rotate about a pivot point. When the hammer is cocked, it...

A new Chrome extension, called Google Tone, released this week makes it possible to share a URL with another computer in the room using a series of beeps and boops. The concept is dead simple yet instantly instills a sense of disbelief. A computer making seemingly random sounds can transmit the URL for the tab I have open in Chrome across the room? Get out. Full of skepticism, I decided to put it to the test. I installed the Chrome extension on a MacBook Air and a HP laptop running Windows 10. And you know what? It works! Click on...

If you needed any more proof that you can make absolutely anything with a 3D printer, check out this video from GE. To showcase the versatility of 3D printing as a manufacturing process, a team of engineers at GE recently built a fully-functional, backpack-sized jet engine made entirely from 3D-printed parts. And it’s not just for show either — the team actually fired the engine up and took it up to 33,000 RPMs to demonstrate how robust the parts are. Now, obviously, since this is a jet turbine we’re talking about here, it wasn’t printed in ABS with the latest...