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Millions of Americans, non-Americans have been swept up in this digital dragnet. According to a new report from the Washington Post, the National Security Agency is This new revelation, not surprisingly, comes from the top secret documents entrusted to the Post and other media outlets by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. This new unnamed program, which the Post says “has not been disclosed before, The paper added: Based on the Post’s reporting, which includes a byline from independent security researcher Ashkan Soltani, the program appears to be related to X-Keyscore, which snags nearly all short-term unencrypted traffic from various points around the globe. As Ars previously described, it would be nearly impossible for the NSA to store all that data for an extended period of time. One slide published in June 2013 says that for a single 30-day period in 2012, this amounted to “at least 41 billion total records.” According to an unnamed intelligence official, the Post noted that “because of the method employed, the agency is not legally required or technically able to restrict its intake to contact lists belonging to specified foreign intelligence targets,” adding that “when information passes through 'the overseas collection apparatus... the assumption is you’re not a US person.'" A spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence also told the Post that the agency is focused on "terrorists, human traffickers, and drug smugglers," not the contacts of ordinary Americans.

Australian textbook rental company launches hexacopter delivery in Sydney. A textbook-rental startup in Australia has found a new way to shave costs from its business model: delivery by drone. Zookal, which sells and rents textbooks to Australian university students, has launched a pilot program (pilotless program?) at the University of Sydney to deliver textbooks by autonomous hexacopter. The drone, from a University of Sydney supported startup called Flirtey, will fly to a customer at a designated GPS location based on data sent from an app on the customer's cell phone. Hamish McKenzie of PandoDaily reports that Zookal is partnering with another startup, social media company Vimbra, to build a joint drone delivery service. The companies say that the service will dramatically reduce the cost of local shipping of textbooks and cut delivery time. The drone is not equipped with a camera, but it does have collision avoidance systems to prevent collisions with birds, trees, buildings, and overhead wires. http://vimeo.com/76606906 Zookal's textbook delivery drone in tests near Sydney Harbor. The delivery system, the companies claim, will fly to the GPS waypoint assigned for the delivery, hover above it, and then lower the book package to the waiting customer. The two companies claim that Zookal's delivery trial is the first commercial use of drones in the world (though other companies have used drones in trials and as part of promotional stunts, such as a pizza delivery drone used in a viral campaign by a UK Domino's franchise holder). https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=on4DRTUvst0 The Domino's delivery drone. Australia currently allows commercial drone operations, but expansion of the service beyond the Sydney trial—and to other countries—will have to leap multiple regulatory hurdles. In the US, commercial drone operations are still not legal while the Federal Aviation Administration considers rules for integrating drones into the national airspace.

Apple this morning distributed invitations to a special event at which it’s expected to unveil the next iterations of the iPad and iPad mini. And it’s to be held on October 22, just as AllThingsD said it would. Location: the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, one of Apple’s preferred location for big announcements like this. “We still have a lot to cover,” reads the text of the invite. And indeed, Apple does. As I noted last week, the focal point of Apple’s gathering next week will be the latest updates to the company’s iPad line, but the new Mac Pro and OS X Mavericks will likely get some stage time as well. The next version of the iPad, Apple’s fifth, is expected to feature a thinner, lighter design akin to the iPad mini’s, and an improved camera. It will run Apple’s new 64-bit A7 chip, source say. The second-generation iPad mini will be upgraded with a retina display and also likely see the A7 incorporated into its innards.

There's a moment that every player of the Grand Theft Auto series has experienced. You've done the missions, you've driven inside the lines, but you've gotten bored. You stop and think to yourself: "Just how crazy can I get in this thing?" GTA V is now nearly a month old, and its online mode has been accessible since the beginning of October. That means that millions of players have now had ample time to get a little creative with their exploits in Los Santos. Luckily, some of these inventive players have recorded their exploits. They've poked and prodded at GTA V's underlying systems, breaking the physics systems, exposing the game's goofiest design flaws and busting up a whole lot of cars. I've assembled nine of the most over-the-top videos and GIFs of players' adventures in GTA V. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2dGl39r4eQU ABOVE: This clip raises some interesting questions about the way momentum works in GTA V. Apparently this train's momentum is so great that it's become a totally unstoppable force of destruction. It refuses to slow down even after a collision with two building-sized dump trucks. Also, hopping feet-first into the jagged metal side of a speeding train is apparently safe, so long as you do it with enough speed. Finally, we can conclusively say that GTA V doesn't feature limb-amputation physics, because if it did Trevor would have had a bit of a rougher time climbing aboard that speeding behemoth. This is by far the most crass and unimaginative clip of the bunch, but it's also the one I've re-watched the most. Look at the details: how he distributes his weight just so before hauling around and wasting that mime. It looks like he's going to use his right arm first, but then that leftie hook curves up out of nowhere. The mime even manages to stop his fall with an outstretched hand. This is surprisingly good collision detection and animation, especially for a game that allows you to run full speed into trains with no consequences. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sSmrXJbPeeA LOUD LANGUAGE WARNING No need to comment on this one. This Youtuber sums up things well enough. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0YLRy42tO2c Normally, in GTA, cars that have taken too much damage explode. Almost any vehicle, if shot or crashed just right, will go up with a good boom eventually. Come to think of it, that's actually a pretty common trope in all video games. You can make warthogs in Halo 4 blow just by punching them. But apparently GTA cars can totally handle getting pancaked underneath a train. Add this to the quickly growing list of mysteries surrounding trains in this game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WinS7YITQyw LANGUAGE WARNING This video is titled "best death ever," but it's actually the most pathetic. You'll feel especially bad for this player once you see the what the guy in the next clip manages to survive. Again, there are some serious questions raised about how momentum works in GTA V. Trains have unstoppable momentum (but they won't blow up cars), and parachutes instantly reduce falling objects to a safe speed, even when they're deployed 10 feet above the ground. The moment that makes this clip is the character's reaction right after he lands safely: "I'm just going to lay down for one second because that was nuts. Alright, yeah, I'm good, back to business." https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QMPhvo03aeU This clip originally got popular in GIF form on Reddit, but the horrific destruction of all the other players is made so much sweeter by the sound of that one guy screaming. He sounds like he's actually dying in a plane crash. Awesome. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UXrJCE64OZA Remember what I said about exploding cars earlier? Yeah, this guy gets it. Assuming he's a cool guy, he's breaking the one rule about explosions: You don't look at them. He earns back those cool points by standing rooted to one spot while half a dozen flaming cars surge past him, though. You know how we learned that dumptrucks aren't good at stopping trains? I don't want to take you by surprise, but bullets aren't super great at it either. Sorry for the last video guys, for unknown reasons, seems that I cannot embed it... anyway, you've got the link so...

The world needs a four-wheeled hero. Superman with a diesel heart, the ability to ford rivers in a single bound, and more ground clearance than an elephant on stilts. It’s here and it’s simply called the Rescue, and we desperately — desperately — need one in our fleet. A cross between the original Hummer and Batman’s Tumbler, the Rescue hails from Romania, where Ghe-O Motors has set out to create the ultimate machine to serve humanity in the toughest conditions and most inaccessible places. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=VNwWf1r0HbA Depending on the build, the Rescue can be customized for fire-fighting, medical support, or simply transporting 11 people across whatever hellish terrain you throw at it. To combat fires, the 3.2-ton Rescue can hold hold nearly 200 gallons of water, along with all the assorted pumps and hoses. If it needs to cross a small lake on the way, it can be fitted with pneumatic pillows at each wheel to power-float its way into the action, while tank-style tracks can be mounted in place of the rear tires for blasting through snow. Naturally, it’s all-wheel-drive and comes with a choice of abnormally large engines, including gasoline mills putting out 500 horsepower or an oil burner churning out 300 hp. Beyond being about three feet longer and two feet wider than an Hummer, details are scant, but Ghe-O just showed off the production version at the Bucharest Auto Show and is taking orders from commercial, rescue, and military outfits now. Put us down for two.

Audio Technica makes a wide range of high-end headphones that plenty of audiophiles subsequently plug directly into a standalone digital-to-analog converter. Perhaps that’s why one of their new sets of cans comes with a DAC built into the ear cup. The Audio Technica ATH-D900USB uses the same 53mm drivers and components as the analog, open-back ATH-D900. But what makes it special is the 24-bit DAC built into the left ear cup. Powered by Burr-Brown amplifiers and taking a Mini USB input, the ATH-D900USB is the first pair of cans with a built-in 24-bit DAC included in the actual headset. Most of the time, these headphones will be playing music through USB, so the built-in DAC can do the usual digital-to-analog dance as well as normalize volume. But if you wanted to use these cans as a traditional pair of analog headphones, it does accept a 3.5mm jack. Not much else is known about the ATH-D900USB at the moment, including how they sound. But they should be available for purchase in late 2014 for ¥37,800, or about $385.

It looks like the UK is going to get the phone ahead of the United States. HTC yesterday morning announced the HTC One Max, which is scheduled for availability on Verizon and Sprint in the United States this coming holiday season. As far as the UK market is concerned, if you want the phone right away, you'll have to be willing to go to Vodafone to get it. The carrier today confirmed it will have the launch exclusive on the HTC One Max for the first few weeks of availability. The HTC One Max packs a huge 5.9-inch 1080 x 1920 super LCD display, making it more of a phablet than a phone, and the same chassis we've seen in HTC's other 'One' handsets. Under the pod, you're looking at the same Snapdragon 600 CPU that we saw in the HTC One: 2 GB of RAM, 32 GB of storage, a large 3,300 mAh battery, a 4-megapixel UltraPixel camera (again, the same as the HTC One), 4G LTE support, Android 4.3, and HTC's own Sense 5.5. It should be noted that while the back is removable (to allow for storage expansion), the battery itself doesn't come out, so that 3,300 mAh battery is not designed to be user replaceable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=7GVz8owzbwY Vodafone will be getting the HTC One Max later this week. It will be available for £49 up front on a two-year contract at £47 per month. This pricing puts the phone in direct competition with Samsung's phablet, the Galaxy Note 3. Our friends at LAPTOP have already gone hands on with the HTC One Max. Check out the video below and be sure to click through for first impressions!

Woojer is a wearable mobile accessory designed to allow its wearer to feel what they’re listening to on their mobile device — via the medium of haptic feedback — rather than simply having banging tunes inserted into their earholes. It’s also being aimed at gamers who want a more immersive in-game experience, or for watching movies or other audiovisual content on a mobile device. The Israel-based startup behind Woojer, which closed a $600,000 angel round earlier this year, has been developing the product since the start of 2011. It currently has a working prototype — and plans to launch a Kickstarter campaign next month to raise funding for an initial production run. If that’s successful, they hope to ship to backers in early Spring 2014. How exactly does Woojer work? Its creators describe it as a “tactile transducer” that reproduces sound as a polyphonic vibration, allowing a haptic, noiseless element to augment the standard stereo audio the user hears via their own headphones (which plug into the Woojer box via a 3.5mm headphone jack). Unlike some of the rival offerings in this space, such as subpac and bassAware Holster, Woojer doesn’t require the user to strap on some form of backpack or wear a special headset. (Or look like they buy all their clothes at Cyberdog.) Instead, the roughly matchbox-sized box is clipped to clothing so it rests against the body. Its low frequency vibrations then create a physical bass sensation — similar to hearing live music at a concert or cinema surround sound. Or that’s the theory. Here’s how Woojer explains the tech — which it will be showing off next week at Pepcom in San Francisco: adds Woojer founder Neal Naimer. Advantages over rival offerings in this space include its small size and portability; lower price (final retail price is still being decided but Naimer suggests a ballpark figure of $70 for two devices vs $300 for some rival offerings); polyphonic sound; improved latency over rivals’ so that the tactile sensation doesn’t lag the audiovisuals; and a longer play time (Woojer will be good for more than four hours of use), according to Naimer. The startup is taking to Kickstarter to push production forward rather than attempting to partner with games or headset makers as a faster way to get to market. Here’s a video of Woojer’s Naimer pitching the concept earlier this year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=30QFmhbf0o0

Nike is revealing a new version of its FuelBand today at an event in New York City. Dubbed the FuelBand SE, the new fitness tracker sports a variety of color accents and represents the sporting goods maker’s first non-cosmetic update to its activity tracking wearable since the gadget’s introduction. The FuelBand, for those who aren’t familiar, is a wearable wristband that provides users with a visual readout of their steps taken during the course of a day, and also offers up a ‘Fuel’ tally, which is a metric made up by Nike that calculates based on your activity level through things like walking, running, paying basketball and more. They don’t share much about how they come up with that number, but it’s likely not terribly scientific and meant primarily as a motivation device to get people moving more frequently. This new second-generation product has a similar design to the original version (but with red, pink or yellow accents), with a rubberized band that fits snugly around the wrist available in different sizes. This edition is intended to be better at encouraging users to move, and harder to cheat with. Nike reports that doing things like punching your fist in the air to game your score won’t up your Fuel score, according to CNET. It also looks to offer up better ability to differentiate between different types of activity, like cycling, spinning and rowing. Nike’s new hardware is sealed and waterproofed, making it usable in the shower, and it’s got a highly refined motion detection algorithm. There are regular reminders (once hourly) to prompt you to get up and stop being so lazy, and there’s a new shortcut to let you double tap the button to access time. It uses Bluetooth 4.0, too, which should make it easier to sync data and provide a bit of a battery boost. There’s also a brand new app redesign to do along with it, with more granular and informative charts and graphs related to activity data. A new Fuel-per-minute metric offers a look at your average intensity, rather than just cumulative activity totals. Finally, there’s sleep tracking, which the first generation device lacked entirely. Sleep tracking is available to users of the Fitbit Flex, and the Jawbone Up, so that’s a huge addition in terms of playing catchup with the competition. The FuelBand SE is still iOS only, however, so don’t be expecting an Android app anytime soon. Users not in the Apple flock can still use the website, however

The real problem is the fact that this 'browsing behaviour" is a footprint for each user. So, even if the data will be anonymized, linking ads and stuff to this behavior means to directly link it to the user. And this is the real direction of this kind of studies. So, they are still trying to scam ppls that still don't understand anything about those new techs. And they cannot, as those are "NEW' technologies. This is a really strange and weird situation, where ppls must protect their privacy from 'unknown' threats... like in the anti-malware industries... IS GOOGLE A NEW KIND OF MALWARE?

Like AT&T and Verizon Wireless, U.S. Cellular is making the move to shared data plans. Its prices are similar to those carriers, and this is a good move for getting multiple family members to sign up and start using additional devices. But on the other hand, this means new users will no longer be eligible to sign up for a plan with unlimited data. U.S. Cellular’s shared data plans included unlimited text messages and voice minutes, like AT&T and Verizon. Consumer plans support up to 10 devices, and business plans will connect up to 25. Each smartphone line costs $40 per month. Feature phones cost $30, modems cost $20 and tablets cost $10. From there, all users share data from a single bucket, which starts at 300MB per month for $40 and goes as high as 75GB for $560 per month. The table below shows a sample of shared data plan prices you can choose from: In addition to the new shared plans, U.S. Cellular offers data-only plans for tablets, modems and hotspots starting at $10 per month for 1GB of data. And the carrier is offering talk-and-text-only plans that include 450 minutes and unlimited messaging for $50 for individual users. A family plans gets you 1,000 minutes and unlimited messaging for 2 lines for $100 and each additional line costs $20. These rates are fairly similar to what you’ll find at AT&T or Verizon. Also like those carriers, this means that U.S. Cellular is doing away with unlimited data. The carrier says that all existing users can keep their grandfathered unlimited plans, but that option won’t be available to new subscribers. This leaves Sprint and T-Mobile as the only major U.S. wireless U.S. to offer unlimited data.

I've mentioned a few ways to detect liars, but Pamela Meyer has discovered just about all of them. She's taken a look at the most common behaviors of liars, scientifically, and shares her expertise on how to detect them. Meyer believes that lying is often a cooperative act. We willingly let others deceive us because we want to avoid conflict. We may tell each other an email didn't receive a response because it ended up in the spam folder or that dinner was delicious (or at least tolerable). This is okay to some extent because we're all okay with it, but studies show that you may be lied to anywhere from 10 to 200 times per day. Many of those are white lies, but studies have also discovered that strangers lie three times within the first ten minutes of meeting each other. Meyer sees lying as what we do to bridge the gap between fantasy and reality. When we want something to be true, we lie so that it at least appears to be true in the hopes that we may be able to make it that way before any truth is uncovered. We hope it will be true, and so our lies are essentially loans of a desired future. We all do this on occasion, but some lies are worse than others. Fortunately, science points to plenty of indicators to help us detect when we're being told a lie, many of which are contrary to what most people believe: Liars like to distance themselves from the subject. Taking Bill Clinton as an example, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman," has the two giveaways of "did not" and "that woman" help point out that it's a lie. Liars use qualifying language, like "to tell you the truth." Repeating the question before answering it dishonestly is a common indicator of a lie. Liars look you in the eyes too much. They don't fidget, but rather freeze their upper body. Liars will fake smiles. Here's how to tell the difference. Liars like to offer details. When liars are the culprits and trying to avoid punishment for what they did, they're more likely to suggest strict punishments for the "real culprit." Liars are terrible at telling their stories backwards. Liars will often point their feet towards an exit. Liars will often put barrier objects between themselves and the person asking them about their lie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=P_6vDLq64gE Meyer's talk demonstrates several other lie detection methods, such as head shakes and asymmetrical expressions, that you really need to watch the video to understand. It's fascinating and worth the 15 minutes it'll take to watch—especially because, with a little practice, you should be able to point out lies in your everyday life pretty easily.

When someone is lying about something, they're usually unconsciously trying to distance themselves from the situation to make the lie more tolerable to tell. As The Wall Street Journal points out, this means that when people lie they tend to use the word "I" a lot less. A lot of people generally avoid using the word "I," including high-powered people and bosses, but it's also a pretty good indicator that someone is hiding the truth. The Wall Street Journal explains: Of course, the lack of pronoun usage isn't a definitive way to spot a liar, but it's something you can add to your lie-spotting toolkit.

You’re probably sick and tired of Nexus 5 leaks by now, but this next one is a doozy of a spill. Over the weekend, a surprisingly clear video of a phone that looks very much like the rumored Nexus 5 made its rounds online. The7-minute video (with no sound) is the first good look we’ve had at the phone since that Google employee “ accidentally” showed his off during the unveiling of the Kit Kat Android statue. Although the front of the phone doesn’t look all that different than last year’s Nexus 4, the device is bigger and features a giant camera lens like the one on the new Nexus 7. The glass on the camera lens looks raised, so our fingers are crossed that whoever built this thing knew that they were doing and built it to last. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2ksOJl0PDDg It’s rumored that this new Nexus will have optical image stabilization like Nokia’s Lumia line, but we might have to wait for the next big video leak to see that feature in action. Unfortunately the video doesn’t go into much detail about the phone’s software. The operating system is still labeled “KeyLimePie,” so it’s possible that this is an early build from before the Google-Nestle partnership, and the launcher doesn’t look like the one we’ve been seeing in other leaks. The video spends a considerable amount of time poking around the Google Earth, Chrome, and YouTube apps, none of which are particularly exciting. You can see an icon for the new Google Experience Launcher when the open app drawer is opened, and you can practically hear Android fans everywhere screaming for the video maker to tap the icon. Google is still expected to announce the Nexus 5 and Kit Kat on Tuesday but, at this point, it doesn’t seem like there is much else to say unless the big G has a surprise up its sleeve.

Over the weekend, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities revealed that Apple has plans for a new laptop in 2014. In a note picked up at 9 to 5 Mac, Kuo says Apple is planning a high-resolution 12-inch laptop that will be as portable as the 11-inch MacBook Air, but as productive as the 13-inch MacBook Air. This new MacBook will "redefine laptop computing" according to Kuo, just like the current MacBook Air redefined laptop computers when it was introduced in 2010. (The original MacBook Air was out in 2008, but was flawed. The 2010 version fixed the flaws and became the industry standard.) This new laptop will be thinner and lighter than the current MacBook Airs, per Kuo. For Apple, the Mac business is a small portion of the company's overall earnings, and it's in decline like the rest of the consumer PC industry. Still, lots of people use laptops, so it's not like Apple is just going to give up on it. What's interesting here, is that it doesn't sound like Apple wants to go the Microsoft route and make a Surface — a tablet with a keyboard. Instead, it looks like it's just trying to make its laptops more mobile, keeping the distinction between the two categories. Kuo has a very good track record when it comes to Apple product announcements. He's not great on timing, though. We don't know when Apple might reveal this new laptop, but we expect it at some point next year.

About 28 million years ago a comet exploded over Egypt, creating a 3600°F (2000°C) blast wave that spread out over the desert below. The fiery shockwave melted the sand, forming copious amounts of yellow silica glass scattered over 2,300 square miles (6,000 square kilometers) of the Sahara. Polished into the shape of a scarab beetle, a large piece of this glass found its way into a brooch owned by the famed Egyptian boy king Tutankhamen. said study co-author David Block, an astronomer at Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa. Saharan Surprise A tiny slice of the black pebble was put through isotopic analysis, which definitely ruled out that it came from a meteor. Instead, the analysis showed that the pebble possessed the unique chemical signature of a comet, measured in terms of elements such as argon and carbon. Block says. While meteors are known to enter the Earth's atmosphere frequently—one can be seen as a shooting star every 15 minutes or so on any random night—not so with comets. The implosions of comets in planetary atmospheres are exceedingly rare events—the only other definitive case of a comet hitting a planet was back in 1994 when comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacted Jupiter's atmosphere. Astronomical Odds Inspire Caution And it's because of this rarity that Earth scientist Andrew Glikson of the Australian National University in Canberra, who was not involved in this study, questions if these yellow glass objects, called tektites, might instead have been created through much more common meteoric events, as seen at many impact sites around the world. asks Glikson. While this extraterrestrial glass is considered common around many impact sites, geologist Gerald Johnson, who was not involved in the study, says that beyond the compelling evidence the team presents in their chemical workup of the black pebble, it's not surprising that the research community may be wary of these results. said Johnson, a meteor impact researcher at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Solar System Origins Microscopic dust particles from these icy interlopers have been collected from the upper atmosphere and from Antarctic ice, and have been scooped up by space probes. But having a chance to study sizable comet material firsthand would be exceptional, and Block and his team believe it can offer a unique chance to study the birth of our solar system. Cosmic particles called presolar grains formed in the stellar cloud of gas and dust that gave birth to our solar system, and are thought to have remained within comets and meteors. said Block. The comet study will be published in an upcoming issue of Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

D-secret is D-logon string allowing access to everything A group of embedded device hackers has turned up a vulnerability in D-Link consumer-level devices that provides unauthenticated access to the units' admin interfaces. The flaw means an attacker could take over all of the user-controllable functions of the popular home routers, which includes the DIR-100, DI-524, DI-524UP, DI-604S, DI-604UP, DI-604+ and TM-G5240 units. According to the post on /DEV/TTYS0, a couple of Planex routers are also affected, since they use the same firmware. A Binwalk extract of the DLink DIR-100 firmware revealed that an unauthenticated user needs only change their user agent string to xmlset_roodkcableoj28840ybtide to access the router's Web interface with no authentication. The /DEV/TTYS0 researcher found the user agent string inside a bunch of code designed to run simple string comparisons. For one of those comparisons, “if the strings match, the check_login function call is skipped and alpha_auth_check returns 1 (authentication OK)”, the author notes. Some commentards to that post claimed to have successfully tested the backdoor against devices visible to the Shodan device search engine. The /DEV/TTYS0 author, Craig, says the backdoor exists in v1.13 of the DIR-100revA products. At this point, there's no defence against the backdoor, so users are advised to disable WAN-port access to the administrative interfaces of affected products.

There was a brief moment when we were excited about the future of curved smarphones. But LG and Samsung are killing that interest very quickly. Just a few days after Samsung announced its bizarre, curved Galaxy Round, renderings of LG’s own curved smartphone have also leaked out. The device, known as the LG Flex, features a 6-inch curved display, which should make it more comfortable to hold. Or something. There is a difference, however subtle, between the curved devices from Samsung and LG: While the Galaxy Round is curved on is horizontal axis (side-to-side), the LG Flex is curved on its vertical axis (up and down). It’s too early to say which approach makes more sense for smartphones, but we do know this: These things are going to be an absolute nightmare in your pocket. Do you want your phone curved horizontally or vertically? LG and Samsung are trying out both approaches. Another thing to point out: While the LG phone is known as the “Flex,” the new device isn’t actually flexible. So don’t get your hopes up on that front just yet. LG plans to officially announce the LG Flex at an event next month, so we should know pretty soon whether the curved approach to smartphone is really the future of the form factor. Right now, though, things aren’t looking good.

Netflix has added the data for September to its ISP Speed Index, which looks at the ISPs providing their customers with the best Netflix streaming experiences. As usual, Google Fiber leads the pack. In fact, there aren’t many changes for the month, except Bright House moved up a notch, and Mediacom moved down. If you look at these lists regularly, you’ll notice it looks a little different this time. They’ve added the gradient bars to better illustrate the difference in performance from provider to provider. The index is based on data from over 37 million Netflix subscribers and over a billion hours of streaming activity per month. Last month, Netflix made its high quality HD streams available to all subscribers, regardless of ISP. The company says it doesn’t expect this to have much of an impact on the rankings. Also last month, Netflix put out its first regional ISP speed index snapshot looking at the greater Boston area. In related news, Netflix is reportedly in talks with a handful of U.S. cable providers to potentially get the Netflix app on some set-top boxes, as with recent deals with Virgin Media and Com Hem.

Everybody hates wires, but if you want crazy speed, they're the way to go. But maybe not anymore. A team of German scientists have developed record-setting Wi-Fi that cooks right along at 100 Gigabits per second. You know, like Google Fiber but times 100. The tech was developed by a joint team from the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics (IAF) and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), and this isn't their first record. They already set one for the world's fastest Wi-Fi with a 40Gbps connection a few months ago. These guys are legit. Like the previous 40Gbps tech, this new 100Gbps version uses some super high-frequency signals (237.5 GHz) that let you really pack in the data. At 100Gbps, for instance, you can transmit a whole Blu-ray of data in two seconds flat. The catch is that high-frequency signals like this aren't very good at going through walls like the low frequency ones your average router spits out. So you wind up with something less like a dome of coverage and something more like an invisible cable where the ends need to be able to see each other. Previously, IAF and KIT's tech was tested to blast data between the peaks of skyscrapers, and this new version could serve as a bad-ass, cheap, and modular framework for patching holes in fiber lines and bringing high-speed internet to places where it's too cost prohibitive or obnoxious to lay down a ton more fiber infrastructure. Which is to say, a lot of places. But the best part is, this record probably won't stand for long. According to Swen König, one of the researchers on the project: Now just put that in my living room and we'll really be in business.

Scientists recently discovered a new type of botulinum toxin (a.k.a. botox) that they believe is the deadliest substance known to man. Because they've yet to discover an antitoxin, researchers won't publish the details of gene sequence due to security concerns—a first for the scientific community. Thank God. When scientists say this stuff is deadly, they mean it. It takes an injection of just 2 billionths of a gram or inhaling 13 billionths of a gram to kill an adult. A spoonful of the stuff in a city's water supply could be catastrophic. The toxin, which comes from the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, blocks the chemical that makes nerves work, causing botulism and death by paralysis. In a comment accompanying a newly published journal article on the new botox, Stanford Medical School professor David Relman said the substance posed "an immediate and unusually serious risk to society." You'd be right to wonder: If this stuff is so dangerous, why do we have it in the first place? Well, it's not manmade if that's what you're thinking. Before this new discovery, there were seven known branches on the botulinum family tree, but researchers recently found an eighth type of toxin in stool samples of an infant with botulism. It just so turns out that eighth type, known as type H, is the deadliest substance in the world. Scientists are withholding the genetic sequence so that terrorists, for instance, can't synthesize it and do something terrible. Terrorists do like botox, too. It was one of these toxins that the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo tried to release in downtown Tokyo in the 1990s. Despite the somewhat sensational nature of this latest discovery, everything is okay for now. This is, however, a rude reminder of how scientific discoveries can always be twisted into weapons of warfare. Unless we keep them secret, that is.

Video cameras have traditionally been used to document the world in a pretty straightforward manner. But they've become so small, and so versatile, that you can do some incredible things with them. Like the crazy world The production is a result of a workshop at ECAL, an art and design school in Switzerland. The students there were charged with the task creating videos that the world has never seen. A daunting task no doubt, but whether it was fulfilled or not, the short vignettes show how inventive one can be with technology and a bit of creative thinking. It's particularly refreshing to see the GoPro capturing interesting footage that is not of some extreme sport. And there's nothing quite like odd experience of rolling down a street suspended in a translucent sphere filled with water. http://vimeo.com/62869207

ROFLMAO!

ROFLMAO!

A very simple game... Some poor soul posts a wish I wish I found a million dollars The user below grants their wish, but screws it up in a horrible way. Sort of like R.L. Stein's Be Careful What You Wish For Granted, but Charlie Sheen shows up at your house, get drunk and destroy everything, causing more than a $1 million of damages to you and your neighbors So, first wish I wish to win $1 billion at the public lottery