US may act to keep Chinese hackers out of Def Con hacker event

Washington is considering using visa restrictions to prevent Chinese nationals from attending popular summer hacking conferences in Las Vegas as part of a broader effort to curb Chinese cyber espionage, a senior administration official said Saturday.

The official said that Washington could use such visa restrictions and other measures to keep Chinese from attending the August Def Con and Black Hat events to maintain pressure on China after the United States this week charged five Chinese military officers with hacking into U.S. companies to steal trade secrets.

China has denied the charges, saying they were "made up."

How smart phones are ruining your sleep

Know that blue light your smart phone emits during the night gives you false signal that it is actually morning - forcing you to open eyes and look outside the window?
Switch off smart phones or tabs as the blue light is actually destroying your sleep, researchers warn.

“One of the best biological cues we have to what time of day it is is light. And it turns out that blue light in particular is very effective at basically predicting when morning is,” Brian Zoltowski from the American Chemical Society was quoted as saying in media reports.

In the evenings, there is more red light than blue light that signals your body to get ready for bed.

The red light does this by interacting with the protein called melanopsin in cells deep inside your eyes.

'Invisible' wireless networks brought to life

Ever wondered how does the digital network that surrounds us all the time appear and how does it react to human movements?
You may now see the “ghosts” of invisible digital networks as a researcher at Newcastle University in Britain have created images that show the ‘spectres’ of wireless networks sweeping, swirling and swooping around a ghostly figure.

“I call the images ‘spectres’ because wireless networks remind me of ghosts,” he said.

Luis created the photographs by 'Kirlian' Device, an instrument specially designed by him to reveal the qualities of wireless networks.

Now the hard part: Nadella touts new Surface tablets

Satya Nadella has enjoyed a fairly smooth ride in his first 100 days as Microsoft Corp chief executive, but he risks hitting a rough patch next week when he unveils the latest models of the tepidly received Surface tablet.
Investors have lapped up Nadella's "mobile first, cloud first" strategy to recast the venerable software maker as a "devices and services" company, sending its shares up 9 percent since he took the helm.

So far he has stressed the services side of the business, making the momentous move to put Microsoft's Office suite on Apple Inc's iPad. This was popular with Wall Street and more importantly with consumers, who performed 27 million downloads in a matter of weeks.

Implanted device to modify medicine for you

What if your doctor can implant an electronic device in your body that informs him about what is happening inside your body for best-suited treatments?
Researchers have now developed electronic devices that become soft when implanted inside the body and can deploy to grip 3D objects such as large tissues, nerves and blood vessels.

“These biologically adaptive, flexible transistors can change shape and maintain their electronic properties after they are implanted in the body,” said Jonathan Reeder, a graduate student in materials science and engineering at University of Texas at Dallas.

100 cameras to spy on Berlin for 100 years!

What if you are told that your grandchildren would retrieve a hidden camera 100 years from now - May 16, 2114 to be precise - to witness municipal changes in your city!
This is what a conceptual artist and "experimental philosopher" Jonathan Keats has done in Berlin.

It is part of the century camera project - an "unauthorised surveillance" system consisting of 100 ultra long exposure photographic devices deployed in and around Berlin that Keats plans to distribute next week May 16 to anyone who wants to participate.

Volunteers are then responsible for finding a place to secure their camera and to provide retrieval instructions to their kids and grandkids.

Is the pdf near its end?

You download it often to read academic paper, research note, even a profile of your favourite candidate on your smart phone or tablet.

But according to a World Bank study, most of pdfs are left buried unread on the servers.

Of the 1,611 pdf reports the study looked at, only 25 were downloaded more than 1,000 times in the five-year period between 2008 and 2012.

Over 31 percent of the reports the group looked at - 517 separate research papers - were not downloaded a single time.

The reason for this is because “pdfs often give up machine readability in favour of human readability”.

Google Glass celebrates Mother's Day!

As the world prepares to celebrate Mother's Day  today, a new promotional Google Glass short film features the love between a mother and her son.
Made by an Indian-origin filmmaker Aneesh Chaganty, who wore Google Glass throughout the shoot, the two-and-a-half minute film “Seeds”, released Friday, was shot over the course of 10 days in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tokyo and India.

The story talks about the journey of a young married man travelling all the way from San Francisco to India to tell his mother the new development in his life.

Chaganty wore same clothes and a wedding ring throughout the shoot.

It gives us a first-person look at the fictional father-to-be’s trip as he boards planes, trains and automobiles to get to his mother’s place.