Aerospace engineers from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor have developed a prototype device that could power a pacemaker using vibrations in the chest cavity that are due mainly to heartbeats.

Google has quietly announced changes to its Blogger free-blogging platform that will enable the blocking of content only in countries where censorship is required.

Twitter announced technology last week addressing the same topic.

Die Wohnung meines Mandanten wurde gründlich durchsucht. Insbesondere hatten es die Beamten auf Datenträger abgesehen. Sie nahmen ein Notebook, mehrere USB-Sticks, eine externe Festplatte und etliche DVDs mit.

Im Durchsuchungsbericht heißt es, auf dem Schreibtisch hätten sich ein Monitor und eine Tastatur befunden. Der “dazugehörige PC” sei jedoch nicht auffindbar gewesen. Auf die Mitnahme des Monitors und der Tastatur habe man verzichtet.

Der iMac hat also durchaus Vorzüge.

A flyer designed by the FBI and the Department of Justice to promote suspicious activity reporting in internet cafes lists basic tools used for online privacy as potential signs of terrorist activity.

The “Potential Indicators of Terrorist Activities” contained in the flyer are not to be construed alone as a sign of terrorist activity and the document notes that “just because someone’s speech, actions, beliefs, appearance, or way of life is different; it does not mean that he or she is suspicious.” However, many of the activities described in the document are basic practices of any individual concerned with security or privacy online. The use of PGP, VPNs, Tor or any of the many other technologies for anonymity and privacy online are directly targeted by the flyer, which is distributed to businesses in an effort to promote the reporting of these activities.

Debian boot scripts make it possible to key in your password using the power button using input-events, though I only did this once and I have to admit that it is quite paranoid even for my standards.

Auch Apples durchschlagender Erfolg des iTunes-Stores beruht auf der gleichen simplen Erkenntnis wie Amazons E-Book-Erfolge: Die Nutzer zahlen durchaus für Inhalte, solange es billig, einfach und bequem ist und bruchlos funktioniert. Die deutsche Medienbranche sitzt vor dieser einfachen Wahrheit immer noch wie das Kaninchen vor der Technologie-Schlange – und ruft nach immer härterer gesetzlicher Gängelung der Nutzer.

Federal authorities said Thursday they had seized and shuttered 307 domains, 16 allegedly engaged in unauthorized live sports streaming and the remainder accused of selling fake professional sports merchandise, including National Football League paraphernalia.

“While most people are focusing on whether the Patriots or Giants will win on Sunday, we at ICE have our sights on a different type of victory: defeating the international counterfeiting rings that illegally profit off of this event, the NFL, its players and sports fans,” said ICE Director Morton.

Federal authorities are taking .com, .org. and .net domains under the same civil-seizure law the government invokes to seize brick-and-mortar drug houses, bank accounts and other property tied to alleged illegal activity. The feds are able to seize the domains because Verisign, which controls the .net and .com names, and the Public Interest Registry, which runs .org, are U.S.-based organizations

VeriSign Inc, the company in charge of delivering people safely to more than half the world's websites, has been hacked repeatedly by outsiders who stole undisclosed information from the leading Internet infrastructure company.

The previously unreported breaches occurred in 2010 at the Reston, Virginia-based company, which is ultimately responsible for the integrity of Web addresses ending in .com, .net and .gov.

The VeriSign attacks were revealed in a quarterly U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing in October that followed new guidelines on reporting security breaches to investors. It was the most striking disclosure to emerge in a review by Reuters of more than 2,000 documents mentioning breach risks since the SEC guidance was published.

Von einer Aushöhlung der bürgerlichen Freiheiten und des Rechtsstaates wollten die Abgeordneten von ÖVP und SPÖ nichts wissen. Nicht einmal Johann Maier (SPÖ), seines Zeichens Vorsitzender des Österreichischen Datenschutzrates, sah in der geplanten Ausdehnung der "erweiterten Gefahrenerforschung" auf Einzelpersonen ein Problem. Dabei könne der einzelne Bürger schon durch unbedachte Äußerungen zum potentiellen Überwachungsobjekt werden; Observation oder der Einsatz verdeckter Ermittler mit Ton- und Bildaufnahmegeräten sind dann auch hinsichtlich einzelner Personen zulässige Überwachungsmethoden, wie Albert Steinhauser, Justizsprecher der Grünen, im Vorfeld kritisiert hatte.

Das ist die Gelegenheit, schon jetzt einen vorgezogenen Nachruf auf die Helden von Bits und Bytes, die Kämpfer für 0 und 1 zu formulieren. Denn, liebe „Netzgemeinde“: Ihr werdet den Kampf verlieren. Und das ist nicht die Offenbarung eines einsamen Apokalyptikers, es ist die Perspektive eines geschichtsbewussten Politikers. Auch die digitale Revolution wird ihre Kinder entlassen. Und das Web 2.0 wird bald Geschichte sein.

Law enforcement agents smash their way into a private building with sledgehammers and crowbars as part of a broad organized crackdown on “pirates” and “outlaws” who are brazenly flouting U.S. copyright and patent law, supposedly costing the legitimate copyright and patent holders a fortune in lost — “stolen” — revenue.

The legally mandated enforcers cause extensive, malicious damage and confiscate equipment, files, material and money that are the legal property of the building’s owner, who is charged with a variety of offences related to the alleged theft of intellectual property in the form of motion-picture films and technology.

Having shut down the business of the building without the necessity of a guilty verdict in court and having appropriated private property, again without a court finding of guilt, the enforcers leave the victim of their legally sanctioned invasion to pick up the broken pieces of his life.

Two British tourists were barred from entering America after joking on Twitter that they were going to 'destroy America' and 'dig up Marilyn Monroe'.

Leigh Van Bryan, 26, was handcuffed and kept under armed guard in a cell with Mexican drug dealers for 12 hours after landing in Los Angeles with pal Emily Bunting.

The Department of Homeland Security flagged him as a potential threat when he posted an excited tweet to his pals about his forthcoming trip to Hollywood which read: 'Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America?'

As a proud VPS survivor, I thought it might be fun to write up five common options for hosting a web business, ranked in decreasing order of 'cloudiness'. People who aren't interested in this kind of minutia would be wise to pull the rip cord right here.

ZEIT Campus: Sollen alle Studenten Anarchisten werden?

Chomsky: Ja. Studenten sollen Autoritäten herausfordern und sich damit in eine lange anarchistische Tradition einreihen.

ZEIT Campus: »Autoritäten herausfordern« – auch ein Liberaler oder ein moderater Linker würde diese Aufforderung unterschreiben können.

Chomsky: Sobald jemand illegitime Macht erkennt, herausfordert und überwindet, ist er Anarchist. Die meisten Menschen sind Anarchisten. Mir ist egal, wie sie sich nennen.

You know how Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie created Unix on a PDP-7 in 1969? Well around 1971 they upgraded to a PDP-11 with a pair of RK05 disk packs (1.5 megabytes each) for storage.

The /bin vs /usr/bin split (and all the others) is an artifact of this, a 1970's implementation detail that got carried forward for decades by bureaucrats who never question why they're doing things. It stopped making any sense before Linux was ever invented, for multiple reasons:

The 6502 processor from the 1970s is alive once again – and as a proper 40-pin chip in a dual in-line package (DIP) housing, not just as an embedded core. Mouser Electronics has added the 8-bit classic, since modernised by WDC (Western Design Center), to its product range, making it available in the UK for £4.90.

The music is slow and full, a smoky mid-1960s cinema soundtrack, deployed pristinely, with crackling hip-hop drums setting the pace. It lulls and stirs and feels like one portent of doom after another. If it’s close to anything it’s to Portishead and the other gauzy British trip-hop of the early- to mid-1990s, which traded aggression for atmosphere, and leaned heavily on drama.

On top of music like that, anything shy of full commitment would underwhelm, and over the course of this album, that’s just what happens.

Today, Gibson is lanky and somewhat shy, avuncular and slow to speak—more what you would expect from the lapsed science-fiction enthusiast he was in 1972 than the genre-vanquishing hero he has become since the publication of his first novel, the hallucinatory hacker thriller Neuromancer, in 1984. Gibson resists being called a visionary, yet his nine novels constitute as subtle and clarifying a meditation on the transformation of culture by technology as has been written since the beginning of what we now know to call the information age.

American citizens can be ordered to decrypt their PGP-scrambled hard drives for police to peruse for incriminating files, a federal judge in Colorado ruled today in what could become a precedent-setting case.

During his recent book tour, he took time to talk about writing nonfiction, his love of cities, and his particular view of the present – all delivered in careful, precise words barely tinted with Southern accent.