Four years ago, Nintendo's gesture-tracking Wii system proved the power of motion controls to extend the mainstream appeal of video games.

judgecorp writes "Steady progress on inductive wireless charging. There are now certified prototypes of chargers for Blackberry and iPhone devices that meet the Qi specification of the Wireless Power Consortium, which was announced last year. The spec has advanced from version 0.95 to 1.0, too."

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StarCraft 2 has been doing some serious business: Blizzard has recently announced that the game has sold 3 million copies in the first month of availability. Mike Husky is certainly doing his part to keep the game popular; his YouTube channel has just under 200,000 subscribers, and his videos have over 64 million lifetime views.

The demand is there for high-quality commentary on StarCraft 2 matches, and Husky wants to help fill it. "It is my goal to support and promote StarCraft as much as possible," he told Ars, and his success shows the promise of "on-air" personalities in competitive gaming.

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dexmachina writes "A team of theoreticians, led by a group from Imperial College London, has released calculations that show string theory makes specific, testable predictions about the behaviour of quantum entangled particles. Professor Mike Duff, lead author of the study from the Department of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College London, commented, 'This will not be proof that string theory is the right "theory of everything" that is being sought by cosmologists and particle physicists. However, it will be very important to theoreticians because it will demonstrate whether or not string theory works, even if its application is in an unexpected and unrelated area of physics.' In other words, string theory may finally have shed its critics' most common complaint: unfalsifiability. However, given the second most common complaint, I can't help but wonder: which string theory?"

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Toshiba has announced the voluntary recall of about 41,000 notebook computers worldwide at risk of overheating and burning users.

angry tapir writes "Facebook users will soon have a new way of knocking spammers out of legitimate accounts. The social-networking company is rolling out a new security feature that lets users see which computers and devices are logged into their Facebook accounts, and then removing the ones that they don't want to have access."

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When Samsung debuted its Galaxy Tab on Thursday, it made a bold claim: the device is at least as good as today's dominant tablet, Apple's iPad.

Trailrunner7 writes "Google has released a new version of its Chrome browser and has included more than a dozen security fixes in the update. The new version, 6.0.472.53, was released two years to the day after the company pushed out the first version of Chrome. Google Chrome 6 includes patches for 14 total security vulnerabilities, including six high-priority flaws, and the company paid out a total of $4,337 in bug bounties to researchers who reported the vulnerabilities. A number of the flaws that didn't qualify for bug bounties were discovered by members of Google's internal security team." (Read on for more, below.)

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itwbennett writes "According to Harvard magazine, Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted at its meeting on May 11 to require instructors to officially inform the Registrar 'at the first week of the term' of the intention to end a course with a formal, seated exam, 'the assumption shall be that the instructor will not be giving a three-hour final examination.' Dean of undergraduate education Jay M. Harris 'told the faculty that of 1,137 undergraduate-level courses this spring term, 259 scheduled finals — the lowest number since 2002, when 200 fewer courses were offered. For the more than 500 graduate-level courses offered, just 14 had finals, he reported.'"

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Hugh Pickens writes "Ryan Lawler writes on GigaOm that although many have touted the availability of Flash on Android devices as a competitive advantage over Apple's mobile devices, while trying to watch videos from ABC.com, Fox.com and Metacafe using Flash 10.1 on a Nexus One over a local Wi-Fi network connected to a 25-Mbps Verizon FiOS broadband connection, mobile expert Kevin Tofel found that videos were slow to load, if they loaded at all, leading to an overall very inconsistent experience while using his Android device for video. 'While in theory Flash video might be a competitive advantage for Android users, in practice it's difficult to imagine anyone actually trying to watch non-optimized web video on an Android handset,' writes Lawler. 'All of which makes one believe that maybe Steve Jobs was right to eschew Flash in lieu of HTML5 on the iPhone and iPad.'"

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cgriffin21 writes "Samsung is making no bones about it: Google Android is its future. And with the revealing of the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the company is showing that it's all in when it comes to Android. At the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin, Samsung finally pulled the curtain off the long-rumored and teased Galaxy Tab, the electronics maker's touch-screen tablet and answer to the Apple iPad."

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When Google launched its Chrome Web browser in 2008, it was clear that the product had considerable potential. Its emphasis on performance and a its intriguing minimalistic user interface attracted a lot of well-deserved attention. Today, exactly two years later, Chrome has over 80 million users, a 7.52 percent global market share (21.87 at Ars, making it the second most popular browser here behind Firefox), and is gradually creeping into the mainstream.

It wasn't entirely clear at first if the browser would have real staying power or if it would be cast aside unfinished like so many of Google's other ambitious *cough*Wave*cough* experiments. But Google's commitment hasn't waned, and it's increasingly evident that the browser is an important part of Google's platform strategy and long-term aspirations for the future of the Web. To mark Chrome's second anniversary, Google has announced the official release of Chrome 6, a new major stable version of the browser.

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devjj writes "For the past year or so I have been trying (and failing) to figure out a reasonable solution for bringing my large media library to my living room. All of my media lives on an Ubuntu server that sits on my network. It's been very reliable and it's fast enough for streaming purposes. My content is exposed via SMB. It's the living room side where I keep running into problems. I am currently using Windows 7 and XBMC, but the case is too big and noisy, I don't particularly care for Windows, and the whole thing just seems overkill. What I want is a device that can present a decent UI that the non-Slashdot crowd would be able to use, but that is still powerful enough to stream full-fidelity 1080p. I dream of a small box that can transcode video over a network, but that's probably a pipe dream. The new Apple TV would be great if it could connect to network shares. What say you, Slashdot? Is what I'm looking for possible, or should I just give in to the iTunes/Amazon/whatever juggernauts?"

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Microsoft is warning about a new piece of malware, Rogue:MSIL/Zeven, that auto-detects a user's browser and then imitates the relevant malware warning pages from Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Chrome. The fake warning pages are very similar to the real thing; you have to look closely to realize they aren't the real thing. The ploy is a basic social engineering scheme, but in this case the malware authors are relying on the user's trust in their browser, a tactic that hasn't been seen before. 

Beyond the warning pages, the actual malware looks like the real deal: it allows you to scan files, tells you when you're behind on your updates, and enables you to change your security and privacy settings. Performing a scan results in the product finding malicious files, but of course it cannot delete them unless you update, which requires paying for the full version. Attempting to buy the product will open an HTML window that provides a useless "Safe Browsing Mode" with high-strength encryption. To top it all off, the rogue antivirus webpage looks awfully similar to the Microsoft Security Essentials webpage; even the awards received by MSE and a link to the Microsoft Malware Protection Center have been copied.

While the malware is a pretty good attempt, it's not perfect. The goal is to get the user to download and install something, shelling out some cash in the process, which neither of the three browser vendors would ever recommend. The Firefox warning page, meanwhile, has an obvious typo ("Get me our of here"). In addition, it's suspicious that a webpage is going out of its way to tell you it is protecting your purchase. It's also not hard to check that the supposedly detected files do not actually exist on the user's computer. All of these missteps should raise red flags immediately; having said that, we've still not before seen this level of detail and effort from the bad guys.

Malware progress

Just two years ago, a fake malware warning page and a fake antivirus looked like this:

Now, we've got a much more believable malware warning that changes based on which of the top three browsers you are using (compare Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome):

We have a full-blown webpage that tries to sell a fake antimalware product and rips off Microsoft's own offering:

Finally, here's the fake antimalware product which uses various Microsoft security icons:

Malware authors have come a long way recently and this latest effort is worrying because even informed users can easily be tricked by something like this. Thankfully, there's a universal rule that still applies: don't download something simply because a webpage says you should.

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"Men," said he, "must have corrupted nature a little, for they were not born wolves, and they have become wolves." —Voltaire, Candide

One of the less pleasant aspects of our online Age of Anxiety is that most of us now get anonymous e-mails on a daily basis from people who, given their druthers, would rob us silly as fast as technologically possible. Of late, I've been getting a frenzy of bogus missives thanking me for the five thousand dollars or so worth of software, gadgets, self-help books, and lingerie I supposedly purchased on a famous online shopping service over the last five minutes.

Of course, if this message was a mistake, I'm helpfully directed to an online form, where, upon disclosing my credit card data, someone will presumably clean my financial clock in nanoseconds.

What fun. Good to know that there are so many people out there who care. But better to know what the most common scams look like. Here is security vendor Panda's new list of the biggest Web scams of the decade.

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dh003i writes "Canon has developed a 8 x 8 inch CMOS digital sensor. It will be able to capture an image with 1/100th the light intensity required by a DSLR and will be able to record video at 60 fps in lighting half the intensity of moonlight. There are already many excellent quality lenses designed to cover 8 x 10 inches, although Canon may develop some of their own designed specifically for their requirements."

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When we interviewed Tweetie developer Loren Brichter in June, he made two things clear: 1) Tweetie (now branded simply as "Twitter" after the company was acquired by the microblogging service) would definitely be coming to the iPad, and 2) Loren was really looking forward to exploring the larger screen touch interface.

Now, the official Twitter client for iPad is finally out in the form of a universal app. The team has clearly put some effort into utilizing parts of the multitouch experience in ways that third-party Twitter apps have not, and the app is certainly feature-rich. However, the interface can be confusing at times, and many of the features are not easily discoverable without some help.

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donniebaseball23 writes "EA's Medal of Honor reboot doesn't ship until October 12, but it's already seen a fair amount of controversy thanks to the publisher's decision to allow people to play as Taliban in multiplayer. The controversy just got escalated another notch, reports IndustryGamers, as the world's biggest games retailer GameStop has decided it won't sell the title at its stores located on US military bases. The new Medal of Honor won't be advertised at these stores either. GameStop noted that they came to this decision 'out of respect for our past and present men and women in uniform.'"

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"White spaces" broadband has been in hibernation—the rules governing unlicensed use in empty TV channels have never been finalized, and therefore no devices have yet appeared. This despite the fact that the idea was approved under previous FCC Chairman Kevin Martin in 2008.

That's about to change at last. At its next open meeting on September 23, the FCC will vote on the "TV White Spaces Second Memorandum Opinion and Order" that will "create opportunities for investment and innovation in advanced WiFi technologies and a variety of broadband services by finalizing provisions for unlicensed wireless devices to operate in unused parts of TV spectrum."

The tech is ready to go; trial deployments have already been rolled out successfully. But lingering issues, including the question of who would administer an Internet-connected geolocation database that would help prevent interference, have kept the rules from becoming final.

We're looking forward to see what designers and engineers come up with once the tech is open to widespread deployment.

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donniebaseball23 writes "EA's Medal of Honor reboot doesn't ship until October 12, but it's already seen a fair amount of controversy thanks to the publisher's decision to allow people to play as Taliban in multiplayer. The controversy just got escalated another notch, reports IndustryGamers, as the world's biggest games retailer GameStop has decided it won't sell the title at its stores located on US military bases. The new Medal of Honor won't be advertised at these stores either. GameStop noted that they came to this decision 'out of respect for our past and present men and women in uniform.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.