Is there a Google car in your future?

If the major automakers won't play, Google might design its own autonomous cars and work with contract manufacturers to build them, says a report on Jessica Lessin's blog.

                                                                                 Google self-driving car.

The Google car may be more than a connection to the company's cloud and self-driving technology.

According to a report from Amir Efrati on Jessica Lessin's blog, Google has been talking to automakers and contract manufacturers about designing and developing a self-driving car to its specifications. The Google-designed autonomous cars could further disrupt the transportation industry with driverless "robo taxis" to get people to and from their destinations.

Coincidentally, Google's venture capital arm just invested $258 million in Uber, which connects human drivers with riders.

Google has been trying to work with the major automakers on its self-driving car initiative, but hasn't had much luck so far. Continental, a German automotive supplier, is reportedly establishing a partnership with Google and IBM for self-driving cars, according to a report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine on Thursday.

Whether Google becomes more like Tesla in building its own cars is uncertain, but the company seems committed to disrupting the transportation industry.

China eyes IBM, Oracle, EMC over possible security issues

In the wake of leaks on the NSA's PRISM program, China considers investigating the tech companies to determine if their technologies are being used to spy on the country, reports Shanghai Securities News.

Edward Snowden has provided some fuel for China.

China is determining whether it should investigate three major U.S. companies following Edward Snowden's National Security Agency leaks.
China's Ministry of Public Security is getting ready to investigate EMC, Oracle, and IBM, to determine whether their technologies are being used to spy on Chinese companies and the government, Shanghai Securities News, a China-based publication, reported on Friday, according to Reuters.
In the report, Shanghai Securities News quotes an anonymous official who said China relies heavily upon the companies' enterprise technologies, which potentially puts the country and its companies in the NSA's cross hairs. The source specifically cited Edward Snowden's leak of a secret NSA program called PRISM that reportedly provides the U.S. government access to Internet data working its way through company products.
Snowden's leaks have become a battle cry for China, which has consistently said that it's been a victim of U.S. spying. Neither the U.S. nor any of the enterprise service providers have confirmed that they're actually working together to spy on governments or companies, but China is still using the leaks to make its case.
Whether the investigation will happen is unknown at this point. If the investigation is eventually held, Shanghai Securities didn't say when it might kick off

Smart spoon helps stabilize Parkinson's tremors

Lift Labs out of San Francisco says its patented Liftware Spoon will be available next month.

Lift Labs designed its spoon for people living with Parkinson's, essential tremor, and related disorders.

For many people living with Parkinson's disease, the mere act of chewing and swallowing can be a challenge. One way to deal with this is to blend foods up to minimize the need to chew. But what if it's difficult merely bringing the spoon to one's mouth without spilling its contents?
Enter the Liftware Spoon by Lift Labs in San Francisco -- poised to hit the market in September -- whose patented spoon technology actually helps stabilize tremors in people with Parkinson's, essential tremor, and related disorders.
The folks at Lift Labs say the spoon uses an "active cancellation of tremor" technology that works to counteract the tremors people can experience in their hands and help prevent spills.
"The idea is to use active cancellation [currently in noise-canceling headphones] to stabilize larger-scale motion," Anupam Pathak, founder and CEO of Lynx Design, which is behind Lift Labs, said in a news release. While doing his Ph.D. on new materials that can be used for active cancellation in the military, Pathak said he "figured out how to make the hardware for active cancellation of human tremor very small, and realized that this would be the perfect application for active cancellation technology."
The Liftware spoon constantly steadies itself thanks to an embedded computer that takes the motion signals detected by the sensors, identifies the user's tremor, and then moves the spoon in the opposite direction of that tremor. The company reports that lab tests showed a more than 70 percent reduction in tremors.
And while it won't be the first utensil on the market to help people with tremors eat with dignity, it's probably the smartest. Many existing utensils, plates, mugs, and "crumb catchers" (yes, these are bibs) are pretty old tech, focusing on ergonomics and extra hand and finger holds.
The folks at Lift Labs say the spoon will cost $295, and they've also developed a related free iOS and Android app called Lift Pulse that records a person's tremor using the phone's built-in accelerometers and calculates its magnitude. Users can set a baseline tremor that subsequent readings are compared to.
Maybe someday spoons will be smart enough to be customizable to each user based on previous readings and baselines adjusted for time of day, energy level, and so on. For now, Liftware looks like the first step in that direction.

See the blue moon from around the world

While there are many full moons in a year, there's something special about the rare occurrence of a blue moon. We think you'll agree after seeing these photographs.

Rob Bright, equipped with a Pentax K-30 dSLR, captured this image of a passing airplane's vapor trail seen over the 2013 blue moon in Hastingwood, U.K

If you missed Tuesday's blue moon, don't worry. We've compiled some sensational shots of the rare event from around the world.
It's really something to witness the beauty of Earth's nearest neighbor from locales such as Atacama Desert in South America and ancient island peaks in Italy. Regardless of the setting and the backdrop, one constant remains: a bright, full moon that captivated countless photographers.
Want to learn more about this astronomical event? My Crave colleague Tim Hornyak breaks down the unusual history of the phrase "blue moon" in a very informative post.

Stormy weather -- on the sun -- heading toward Earth

With a massive coronal eruption from the sun, NASA warns of an approaching geomagnetic storm. While the effects will probably be mild, some power grid and satellite services could be disrupted.

 

NASA spotted a colossal "coronal mass ejection" erupting off of the sun on Tuesday morning. This solar phenomenon spewed billions of tons of particles into space at speeds of 570 miles per second and they are currently headed toward Earth, according to the space agency.
NASA estimates that the particles will reach our planet in one to three days and could cause a geomagnetic storm.
"These particles cannot travel through the atmosphere to harm humans on Earth," NASA said in a statement, "but they can affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground."
This means the power grid and any services that use satellites, like cell phones and GPS, could be disrupted. During a geomagnetic storm earlier this year, radio communications went down for a short while. And a 1989 storm was blamed for a massive power outage in the Quebec province of Canada. While 570 miles per second sounds astoundingly fast, NASA said this is an average speed for a coronal mass ejection. Eruptions of this strength have typically brought only mild effects in the past, NASA said.
Besides affecting satellites and the power grid, the geomagnetic storms can also cause stunning auroras in hues of green, blue, and red. As the fast-moving particles crash into Earth's magnetic field, they light up the atmosphere wherever they hit.
NASA said it will provide updates about the geomagnetic storm if needed

NASA image of the coronal mass ejection that erupted off the sun on Tuesday. The bright white object to the right is the planet Mercury.

(Credit: ESA & NASA/SOHO)

A star is born -- literally -- and it's stunning

Meet Herbig-Haro object HH 46/47, a very energetic youngster of a star 1,400 light-years away.

Everyone welcome another newborn to our galaxy. For now, we only know her as the Herbig-Haro object HH 46/47 (and I thought the hyphenated names in my family were clunky), and she's already a beauty. If you want to visit the new member of the family, you might want to leave soon, as she's located 1,400 light-years away in the southern constellation Vela.
The above image combines radio observations from the European Southern Observatory's Chile-based Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) with much shorter wavelength visible light observations from ESO's New Technology Telescope (NTT). According to the ESO, the ALMA observations are seen in orange and green to the lower right of the newborn star, and reveal a large energetic jet moving away from us. The pink and purple shapes to the left are parts of the jet that can be observed through visible light that is streaming partly in our direction.

In plainer English, what we're seeing here is a new star shooting off material at speeds up to 1 million kilometers per hour. As that material collides with surrounding gas, it glows.
ALMA, which was actually still under construction at the time of the observations, provides sharper images than its predecessors, allowing scientists to determine that those crazy, glowing streams of stellar afterbirth are being ejected at higher speeds than previously measured and carrying more energy and momentum than previously thought.
"ALMA's exquisite sensitivity allows the detection of previously unseen features in this source, like this very fast outflow," explained Yale's Héctor Arce, who was lead author on a paper (PDF) detailing the observations.

Camera quick draw: Which smartphone is fastest for photos?

Megapixels are nice, but sometimes what matters most in a smartphone camera is how fast you can open the camera app. Six of today's top smartphones are put to the test.

One should not measure a smartphone camera by megapixels alone.
To stand out in a crowded smartphone market, device makers boast about having more megapixels, more filters, more zoom, more sensors. But when your baby is taking his or her first steps, what counts is how fast you can get from pocket to picture.
Google's latest darling, the Motorola Moto X, has a trick for getting to the camera fast: twist your wrist twice and the camera turns on. No swiping icons, typing passwords, or fiddling with power buttons.
Motorola claims you'll "never miss a shot" with its method. But how much faster is its camera wake-up shortcut compared with those of other smartphones?
There was only one way to settle the matter: a smartphone shutter showdown. I pitted today's top smartphones against one another in a series of timed tests. Using a stopwatch to calculate the seconds between sleep mode and the snap, I averaged the time of seven trials for six different phones: Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom, Nokia Lumia 1020, iPhone 5, HTC One, BlackBerry Z10, and the Moto X.
To make this a realistic test, I put a password on every phone. Some camera shortcuts skip the password, and some do not.
Of course, testing how fast I can take a photo is not an exact science. There's human error and environmental factors that play a role. You may get a better time than I did after drinking a couple shots of espresso. Regardless, the test reveled clear slow-poke phones in the bunch. Some design and programming factors will trip up the fastest fingers:
Shutter buttons don't always mean shortcut
The Nokia Lumia 1020 and Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom are smartphones that center around camera quality. Each phone has a built-in shutter button, but it doesn't help with speed.
The shutter button on the Lumia 1020 will wake up the phone, yet owners still need to enter in a password before the camera app will open. Slowing things down more is the Galaxy S4 Zoom. Its shutter button will not wake up the phone, so owners will have to hit the power button, enter the password, and then hit the shutter button to open the camera app.
It's not just the Zoom that's slow. Samsung's flagship Galaxy S4 also takes longer to access the camera. It's a programming problem: there's no way to skip the lock-screen password to open the camera app. The ability to add a lock-screen camera shortcut is disabled when a password is enabled.
Not all shortcut icons are created equal
The security-centered BlackBerry Z10 will let users skip a password to snap a picture. But it involves holding down a camera icon for a couple seconds. That eats up a little more time (and patience) than the HTC One and iPhone 5, both of which have a lock-screen camera icon that skips the password with a quick tap and swipe.
With this tactic, the HTC One and iPhone 5 were noticeably faster than the Lumia 1020 or Galaxy S4 Zoom. But to see which phone is the quickest of the bunch, you'll have to watch the video above.
Update - Clarification: The Lumia 1020 is a bit different than other Windows Phone devices. The default setting is to have the dedicated camera button open the special Nokia Pro Cam app, which takes advantage of the 41-megapixel camera. It does require a password to use Nokia's advanced camera application. In settings, the camera button can be changed so it opens the normal Windows camera app, which does not require a password. (But what good is having a special 41-megapixel camera if you don't use Nokia's Pro Cam as the default for the camera button?)

Chrome update introduces reset button

The latest version of Google Chrome lets you wipe and refresh the browser and includes better search suggestions in the "omnibox."

Your personal stew of settings changes, add-ons, and other customizations can sometimes weigh down your browser, which is why Google has introduced a reset button in the latest build of Chrome stable.
Chrome 29 (download for Windows, Mac, or Linux) also includes more of your personal information in its Omnibox search suggestions, while Chrome 29 for Android (download) gets rudimentary Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) support.
The Omnibox improvement adds your recently visited sites to its mix, "resulting in more timely and contextually relevant suggestions," according to Google's blog post about the release.
Chrome's browser reset is similar to one introduced in Firefox a few months ago. By clicking the "reset browser settings" button under advanced settings, you can wipe all personalizations except for themes, bookmarks, and apps.
In Chrome 29 for Android, the beginnings of mobile support for WebRTC take shape. WebRTC is the new protocol that lets browsers support real-time video, audio, and data transfers without a plug-in. Currently supported by Firefox and Chrome, the Chrome for Android update lacks the data transfer protocol so far. The Chrome update is expected to be pushed to Google Play soon and rolled out to users over the next few days.

Microsoft merges Skype with Outlook in several countries

People living in the U.S., Canada, Brazil, and other countries can now make video calls directly from their e-mail.

Microsoft has integrated its two biggest communications services: Skype and Outlook.
The tech giant announced Monday that Skype is now available for all Outlook customers in the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Canada, and Brazil. What this means is that people can use the video calling and messaging service directly from their e-mail. Microsoft first announced it would begin rolling out this feature in April.
"E-mail is an important and personal tool for most people, but there are moments when you want to be able to speak live or chat face-to-face," Outlook group product manager Dawn Martynuik wrote in a blog post. "In a recent Ipsos Public Affairs poll 76 percent of people say that their e-mail conversations frequently or occasionally result in a follow-up phone or video call, or other means of communication. Those moments are perfect for Skype and now, face-to-face connection right from your inbox is just a click away."

Outlook already connects with users' Facebook and Gmail accounts. So, integrating Skype seems like a natural progression for Microsoft. The company announced last November it would soon retire its instant-messaging client in favor of Skype. Skype executives said in late October that Skype would most likely replace Messenger someday but had declined to provide a public timetable. Google also gives users the ability to make voice calls and message people through their Gmail accounts. And besides e-mail, the Google Voice feature lets users place calls from Google Hangouts, Google+, and the Chrome extension, holding conversations with up to 10 people at a time.
Further international expansion of Skype for Outlook is expected in the "near future."

NHTSA tests show Model S safest car

Tesla released data about crash tests, showing that it not only earned 5 star ratings from NHTSA in every category, but proved to be safer than any other car on the road.

In NHTSA's crash testing, the Tesla Model S offered the most protection for passengers of any other car on the road. Citing crash test scores for the Model S from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), Tesla said its electric car "set a new record for the lowest likelihood of injury to occupants".
The Model S achieved 5 star ratings in every category--Frontal Crash, Side Crash, and Rollover--tested by NHTSA, for an overall 5 star crash rating. However, Tesla points out that manufacturer receive more detailed results of the tests from NHTSA, and that the Model S actually Vehicle Safety Score of 5.4 stars, better than any other car on the road.
In a blog post, the company provided some detailed notes from the tests, pointing out that the lack of an engine under the hood of the Model S allows for a longer crumple zone, better protecting passengers in a frontal impact.

Tesla wrote that the Model S is the only car to ever receive a rating of 'Good' in the Side Pole Intrusion test, contributing to its 5 star rating in Side Crash. In the test, the Model S "preserved 63.5 percent of driver residual space", compared to only 7.8 percent for the Volvo S60, another 5 star-rated car.
The NHTSA site, Safercar.gov, shows that the Model S lacks Forward Collision Warning and Lane Departure Warning technologies when compared with models such as the Volvo S60 and Cadillac XTS.
As of this date, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has not posted its own crash test results for the Model S. The IIHS includes some testing not covered by NHTSA, such as the recently added Small Overlap Crash. IIHS
Some of the Model S' success in crash testing can be chalked up to its battery pack, the heaviest component of the car which is mounted low in the chassis. Because of that low center of gravity, Tesla wrote that NHTSA's standard testing equipment could not turn the car over.
Tesla also points out that the Model S' battery pack did not catch fire during any of the testing, and that there are no reported incidents of any Model S battery combusting.

Nokia plans 6-inch Windows Phone, claims report

The company is currently testing the huge phone with an eye toward release later this year, reports The Verge.

Nokia may be prepping a supersized Windows Phone handset.
The Finnish phone maker is testing a Windows Phone device with a 6-inch display, according to the folks at The Verge. Citing "sources familiar with Nokia's plans," The Verge reported on Monday that Nokia is eyeing a launch date later this year, certainly by the end of the year.
The big phone, codenamed Bandit, will be powered by a Qualcom Snapdragon quad-core processor and offer a 1080p display. Bandit could be the first of many potential 1080p Windows Phone handsets from Nokia, according to The Verge's sources.
Considered thin and light, the new phone will be built with a polycarbonate body and offer a 20-megapixel rear camera.
CNET contacted Nokia for comment and will update the story with any further information.
Assuming The Verge's sources are accurate, Nokia would definitely be moving into phablet territory with a 6-inch device. Samsung's Galaxy Mega offers a display size of 6.3 inches, encroaching closer to the 7-inch screen size adopted by small tablets such as the Google Nexus and Samsung Galaxy Tab.

Facebook to test mobile payments service

Facebook plans to test a mobile payments service that lets users make purchases inside mobile applications using payment information they have added to their account on the social network.

Facebook plans to test a mobile payments service that lets users make purchases inside mobile applications using payment information they have added to their account on the social network.
Facebook Inc. said Thursday that it is working on a "very small test" and the company says there is no set schedule for making the service available to users. The service would use payment information that shoppers store on Facebook to automatically complete checkout forms of certain mobile apps. Then, the app would process the purchase.
Spokeswoman Tera Randall said in an e-mailed statement that Facebook has a "great relationship with PayPal, and this product is simply to test how we can help our app partners provide a more simple commerce experience."
The test, she added, won't involve moving payment processing "away from an app's current payments provider, such as PayPal."
Nonetheless, shares of PayPal's owner, eBay Inc. declined on news of the potential competition. The stock closed down $1.05, or 1.9 percent, at $53.18.
Facebook's stock closed down 9 cents at $36.56.
Forrester Research analyst Denee Carrington thinks Facebook will face a challenge in offering mobile payments even though the company has been building up its database of users' credit cards.
"Consumers want safe, seamless and convenient mobile payments and there are a growing number of competitors that consumers trust more - such as PayPal, Visa (V.me) and others," Carrington said in an e-mailed statement.
News of the test was reported earlier by AllThingsD.

How safe is information in the cloud? This guy knows

As more companies rely on remote cloud servers to store their files, Thomas Trappler has become a highly sought-after security adviser, a celebrity of sorts in the rapidly growing cloud-computing industry.

LOS ANGELES — When Thomas Trappler talks clouds, companies listen.
But he’s not warning about rain. Rather, Trappler is a “cloud” consultant, who tells attorneys, executives and fellow information-technology experts what to look out for when they put company databases in the so-called cloud.
As more companies rely on remote cloud servers to store their files, Trappler has become a highly sought-after security adviser, a celebrity of sorts in the rapidly growing cloud-computing industry.
“No one’s teaching people about this,” Trappler said. “At the moment, I don’t think there are very many people like me.”
Trappler is the director of software licensing at UCLA — a job that opened the door to his lucrative moonlighting.
For years, he had been buying licenses for programs, such as Microsoft Office, so that UCLA faculty, students and staff could use them. But the rules started to change five years ago as these programs moved into the cloud, turning into apps such as Office 365. Trappler studied until he became a go-to expert nationwide.
“It’s easy to overlook security because of the virtual nature of the cloud, but really your data is going over the Internet to another computer and not to some magical world where everything’s going to be fine,” he said.
The $40 billion cloud industry, as measured by the research firm IDC, is attractive to companies. By transferring files via the Internet to a hard drive located in a data center or server farm, users can access the data from any Internet-connected device.
Online retailer Amazon.com is one of the largest data-center providers, housing data on behalf of thousands of companies including Netflix, Dropbox and Autodesk. Other large cloud providers are Google, Microsoft and Rackspace.
What troubles Trappler is that not every company considers security issues before agreeing to bounce consumers’ data onto the cloud services. Half of companies surveyed in December by Ponemon Institute, an independent research firm, reported that they had not taken security risks into account when striking cloud deals.
“What most of us are used to is ‘I buy it, I maintain it,’ ” Trappler said. “If something’s broken, I can beat on someone’s door down the hall and get them to fix it.”
Now “it” and “someone” are far away. “And the question is, how do I ensure they do it right,” Trappler said.
With spies after trade secrets, hackers out to steal sensitive financial information and the federal government demanding online-communications records, the threats are as prominent and varied as they have ever been.
And companies aren’t the only ones at risk. Consumers who use Web applications are caught blind in the middle. They often are not told where their sensitive information is being stored and what precautions are being taken to ensure that it’s not seen by the wrong eyes.
For example, Google’s Cloud Platform website lists BestBuy.com as a client. But the retailer recently moved customer data off the cloud, spokesman Jonathan Sandler said. Its privacy policy doesn’t note where data are stored. The policy does state that Best Buy takes “reasonable security measures to protect the confidentiality of personal information under our control and appropriately limit access to it.”
Trappler has advised more than 50 companies and has spoken to hundreds of people at conferences about what qualifies as “reasonable measures.” Among his clients have been a pharmaceutical firm from New Jersey, a biotechnology company from Southern California and a higher-education system in the Midwest. They could not be named because of confidentiality agreements.
He suggests that companies consider, among other things, encryption methods and reliability of the storage computers. Other possibilities include background checks of the cloud provider’s employees and clear notification policies in the event of a breach.
The biggest sticking point in deals is often deciding who’s responsible for the repercussions when data are stolen. Companies want cloud providers to pick up the tab, since sometimes they have little insight into security measures.
“The client wants to be able to verify the service provider’s security claims,” Trappler said. “But the more details they reveal, the less secure the provider’s infrastructure becomes.”
Some cloud providers certify that they meet standards set by the government or third parties when it comes to storing financial and health-care data. But few let potential or current clients test physical or digital security. The clients are left feeling insecure, although they may be on the hook if something goes wrong.
David Tollen, author of “The Tech Contracts Handbook,” said all a consumer can do is see whether the company he or she is dealing with has a good reputation of trust. “Scale is sometimes a good proxy for knowing a service provider’s ability, because a large vendor is likely to have done their due diligence,” he said.
Some in the cloud contracting business expect to see more regulations related to cloud storage. But until that happens, people such as Trappler remain important guardians of data.
Trappler and other contracting experts note that buying cloud space is becoming as standard as paying for power, water and Internet service. These utilities are crucial to companies. Yet security concerns at server farms are often beyond their control. But Trappler says companies can push cloud providers to take better care of their precious data.
“It’s a perceived diminishment in control,” Trappler said of the cloud. “Once you can wrap your head around that, you can start addressing all those risk issues.”

Researcher posts Facebook bug report to Mark Zuckerberg's wall

An IT expert takes to the social network CEO's timeline to demonstrate the vulnerability, which allowed anyone to post to other users' walls even if they aren't friends on the network.

A Palestinian IT expert who claimed to have discovered a Facebook vulnerability said he took his bug report to Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook page after being ignored by the social network's security team.
The vulnerability allows anyone to post anything to anyone else's page, regardless of whether they are a Facebook friend of that person, Khalil Shreateh wrote in a blog post Saturday. Shreateh initially reported the vulnerability through Facebook's "white hat" security disclosure service, which offers a minimum bounty of $500 for legitimate bugs.
However, despite including a demonstration of the bug executed on the Facebook page of Zuckerberg pal Sarah Goodwin, Shreateh was told by a Facebook security engineer in a terse note that "sorry this is not a bug."
Undaunted, Shreateh decided to share his experience with Zuckerberg by posting a note to the Facebook founder's page that apologized for the post but said he had "no other choice."
"[A] couple of days ago I discovered a serious Facebook exploit that allows users to post to other Facebook users timeline while they are not in friend list," Shreateh wrote in his post to Zuckerberg's timeline. "I appreciate your time reading this and getting some one from your company team to contact me."
Within minutes, Shreateh was contacted by a Facebook security seeking details of the exploit, Shreateh said, adding that his own Facebook account was quickly disabled. A security engineer told Shreateh his account had been disabled as a "precaution."

"When we discovered your activity we did not fully know what was happening," an engineer who identified himself as "Joshua" told Shreateh. "Unfortunately your report to our Whitehat system did not have enough technical information for us to take action on it. We cannot respond to reports which do not contain enough detail to allow us to reproduce an issue."
Joshua also informed Shreateh that he would not be receiving a bug reward for reporting the exploit because he violated the site's terms of service. "We do hope, however, that you continue to work with us to find vulnerabilities in the site," he wrote.
A Facebook security engineer responded Saturday in a Hacker News post that the vulnerability was fixed Thursday and conceded that Shreateh should have been asked for more details on the issue after his initial report. Along with offering inadequate information about the bug, Shreateh's post to Zuckerberg's timeline violated the social network's responsible disclosure policy, the security engineer wrote.
"Exploiting bugs to impact real users is not acceptable behavior for a white hat," the engineer wrote, adding that researchers are allowed to create test accounts to aid their research.

Facebook to take on PayPal? Not so fast

The social network wants to collect your shopping data, but it's not trying to become the next PayPal.

Surely, Facebook envisions a future when you shop on your smartphone or tablet and keep the company in the loop on all your purchases -- but the social network poses no threat to PayPal.
The company plans to test a pay-with-Facebook mobile checkout option, as scooped by AllThingsD, but it's not trying to take over the complicated payments processing market, as has been suggested. Instead, Facebook wants to collect more data -- the best kind of data -- to pass on to its advertisers.
According to reports, the pilot Facebook feature will let social networkers pass along their credit card and billing information with a single click when making a purchase on mobile. The actual transaction, however, will be handled by the payments provider used by the application in question, according to TechCrunch, which means the system works with PayPal, Strike, Braintree, and other processors. Facebook confirmed to CNET that it is not processing payments.
"We are working on a very small test that gives people the option to use their payment information already stored on Facebook to populate the payment form when they make a purchase in a mobile app," a company spokesperson said. "The test is designed to make it easier and faster for people to make a purchase in a mobile app by simply pre-populating your payment information."
And that makes a lot more sense than Facebook attempting to become the next PayPal.

The social network needs data -- to continue to boost its burgeoning mobile ads business -- more than it needs to reinvent the wheel. If Facebook can act as middleman between mobile shopper and app maker, and help people quickly get through the often overly complicated mobile checkout process, then the company can help its advertisers fill in the blanks between online exposure and purchase.

"By understanding what consumers 'like' and discuss on the platform, Facebook understands much about their propensities and inclinations," Altimeter Group digital advertising and media analyst Rebecca Lieb told CNET. "But...actual spending data -- knowing what people buy -- breaks opens the possibilities of advertising, targeting, and messaging in ways that are extremely precise, valuable, and meaningful to advertisers." In theory, Facebook's middleman approach to mobile payments could work, as the company maintains close ties to thousands of developers who've already put Facebook hooks inside their applications. But Facebook Gifts, the 1-year-old online marketplace where people can purchase presents to send to friends, has failed to gain meaningful traction or generate revenue, highlighting the social network's inability to convince its 1.15 billion members to mix commerce with their status updates.
The question is, Lieb said, will consumers want to hand over credit card info to a company associated with social and sharing? Early evidence suggests that the answer is no.

Google Fiber reveals plans for Provo

The company's plans for upgrading Provo, Utah's existing fiber-optic network include free broadband at current speeds.

Google has announced its initial fee schedule for its planned Gigabit network in Provo, Utah, and it will include free broadband at today's speeds.
"We're working to upgrade the existing fiber network in Provo to be Gigabit-ready," Michael Slinger, Google Fiber's director of business operations, wrote in a blog post Thursday.
Provo residents and landlords who want to join Google's network will have to pay a one-time $30 construction fee. From there, Google will offer three plans. After the fee, a plan for 5Mbps download and 1Mbps upload, which approximates current broadband speeds, will be free.
Gigabit Internet at up to 100 times faster than basic broadband, up to 1Gbps download and upload, will cost $70 per month. A third plan bundles Gigabit Internet with television for $120 per month, and will add "hundreds" of high-definition channels, allow you to record up to eight shows at once, and store up to 500 hours of HD video locally.
People using the existing Veracity network will be allowed to continue to do so for now, but eventually will be asked to subscribe to Google Fiber. It's not clear yet if Veracity subscribers must choose Google Fiber, or if they will have the option to continue with Veracity or another Internet provider.

NASA captures stunning galaxy collision 60M light-years away

The Chandra X-ray Observatory delivers astrophysicists another breathtaking first by capturing a dwarf galaxy smashing into a large spiral one.

Now this is what it's like when galaxies collide.
Or at the very least, this is what it looks like. The visual effects of the collision -- which generated an immense shock wave that produced a spiral plume of 6 million-degree hot gas -- were captured by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, visible here in purple. The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope contributed to the image's impressive palate with optical observations revealing the galaxy in blue and white.
Such a shock wave, likened to a sonic boom, won't be felt anywhere near Earth, which is 60 million light-years away from the large spiral galaxy NGC 1232 that was rammed by a smaller, dwarf one.

The eye-popping visual result marks the first time such a collision has been captured in X-rays and may shed light on the cloudy subject of galaxy formation through collisions like this. It is believed that the shock wave may have caused an uptick in the formation of bright and massive stars, which would explain vibrant X-ray emissions picked up due to heavy star winds and supernovas as the new stars rapidly evolve.
As for how heavy this beautiful gas cloud is, the two-dimensional image is not enough to suss that out because it's unclear whether the gas is concentrated across a thin, flat area or distributed over a large, spherical one. In the event it is thin, NASA says the mass would equal 40,000 suns, while a uniformly spread cloud could have a mass to the tune of 3 million suns.
The collision will go on for about 50 million years, and should keep glowing for tens to hundreds of millions of years. Studying such concentrations of hot gas around the universe could lead to more understanding about collisions and their importance.
NASA did concede that there is a slight chance a galaxy collision did not take place. "An alternative explanation of the X-ray emission is that the hot gas cloud could have been produced by supernovas and hot winds from large numbers of massive stars, all located on one side of the galaxy," the statement reads. But "the lack of evidence of expected radio, infrared, or optical features argues against this possibility."

Google now encrypts cloud storage by default

In the lengthening shadow of the NSA surveillance scandal, Google adds encryption to all its Cloud Storage customer data.

Google's Cloud Storage service now automatically encrypts all its customer data for free, the company said Thursday.
The encryption has "no visible performance impact," Google Cloud Storage's product manager, Dave Barth, wrote in a blog post. "If you require encryption for your data, this functionality frees you from the hassle and risk of managing your own encryption and decryption keys," he said.
New files added to Cloud Storage will be encrypted as they're uploaded and before they're saved to a drive. Older files will be migrated "in the coming months," Barth said. This is part of Google's emphasis on "forward secrecy," which many Internet companies have yet to adopt.

When asked about how Google handles encrypted data when requested by a government agency, the company repeated in a statement that user information is only provided "in accordance with the law."
"We don't provide our encryption keys to any government," said a Google spokesperson. "We believe we're an industry leader in providing strong encryption, along with other security safeguards and tools."
Google's Cloud Storage uses 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), a lower standard of encryption than the 256-bit AES that's often used to protect password managers and financial data.
Developers can still use their own encryption and manage their own keys.
Basically, this completes Google's quest to encrypt all of your data in its Cloud Platform. It adds to the encryption offered by the Google Compute Engine's Persistent Disks and Scratch Disks, so that all data saved to unstructured storage on the Google Cloud Platform gets protected automatically.

Get ready for the sun to flip its magnetic field

We're just a few months away from the sun flipping its magnetic field, a change that only happens about once every 11 years.

We're hitting the peak of the solar cycle and the sun will be pulling off quite the gymnastics move to mark the occasion. According to NASA, a flip of the sun's magnetic field is only a few months away. It's dramatic, but it's also normal behavior.
"The sun's polar magnetic fields weaken, go to zero, and then emerge again with the opposite polarity. This is a regular part of the solar cycle," says Stanford solar physicist Phil Scherrer.
NASA Science News describes the changes:

When solar physicists talk about solar field reversals, their conversation often centers on the "current sheet." The current sheet is a sprawling surface jutting outward from the sun's equator where the sun's slowly-rotating magnetic field induces an electrical current. The current itself is small, only one ten-billionth of an amp per square meter (0.0000000001 amps/m2), but there's a lot of it: the amperage flows through a region 10,000 km thick and billions of kilometers wide. Electrically speaking, the entire heliosphere is organized around this enormous sheet.
During field reversals, the current sheet becomes very wavy. Scherrer likens the undulations to the seams on a baseball. As Earth orbits the sun, we dip in and out of the current sheet. Transitions from one side to another can stir up stormy space weather around our planet.

NASA-sponsored solar observatories have been keeping an eye on changes in the sun that indicate the field reversal is imminent. Nobody on Earth is likely to wake up and notice a sudden change in the sun's magnetic field, so we'll have to wait for the official announcement from scientists.

NASA gears up to study twin astronauts

NASA issues a call for suggestions on ways to study twin astronauts while one is in space and the other is on Earth.

NASA has a rare opportunity ahead. Astronaut Scott Kelly is scheduled to spend an entire year on the International Space Station starting in March 2015. Meanwhile, back on Earth, his twin brother Mark Kelly will go about his usual life in Arizona.
Mark commanded the final mission of the space shuttle Endeavor in 2011. His wife, former Congress member Gabrielle Giffords, was severely injured in a shooting in Tucson, Ariz., in January 2011. Mark retired from NASA in late 2011 to be with his wife during her extended recovery and spend more time with his family.
Scott will be busy setting a record for the longest space mission by a NASA astronaut, but there will still be time to conduct some investigations into how the twins' bodies react in their very different environments.
The research plans came about at the suggestion of the twins. "This is a once-in-a-space-program opportunity," said John Charles, chief of NASA's Human Research Program's International Science Office.
NASA is soliciting ideas for ways to test the twins with a call for proposals titled "Differential Effects on Homozygous Twin Astronauts Associated with Differences in Exposure to Spaceflight Factors."

Initial plans include collecting blood samples. Any other tests designed for the twins must not interfere with Scott's duties while on the ISS. "Proposed investigations should focus on the analysis of human molecular responses to the physical, physiological, and environmental stressors associated with human spaceflight," says a NASA release.
Studying the differences in the Kelly twins during an entire year in space could help NASA gain a deeper understanding of how spaceflight impacts the body, and work toward finding ways to reduce risks to humans in space.
Proposals are due by September 17, so there's still time for researchers to get in on this rare twin study.

Needle-steering robot could save lives

Researchers turn to an unusual robot for new method of treating blood clots in the brain.

Blood clots in the brain are a growing health problem with devastating effects. These clots have a 40 percent mortality rate, and survivors can suffer from brain damage. Treatment is extremely challenging, but researchers at Vanderbilt University hope a new robot will be able to help. The bot uses a steerable needle to clear out clots.
Doctors often avoid operating on brain blood clots due to their tricky location and the risk of causing collateral damage. The robot, however, needs only a small opening to do its work. It can be guided by ultrasound or CT imaging to the targeted spot in the brain where it sucks out the clot. The needle extends like a telescope and is curved to navigate bends.

The steerable needles have been in development at Vanderbilt for several years, with a team of both engineers and physicians working on the project. Originally, the system was designed to reach brain tumors, but the team realized it could be effective for clots as well.
The robot is in prototype form. The researchers have been testing the technology on fake clots using gelatin models. The ultimate goal is to get the machine into the hands of neurosurgeons to reduce the mortality rate from intracerebral hemorrhages.

4 Things You’ll Feel Right Before a Heart Attack

When your body tries to tell you something, how well do you listen?

With many health issues, your body sends out signals that something has gone awry. Of course, listening to your body when it complains that you just ate too much spicy food or you have a minor cold coming on may not be of life-shattering importance.

However, when it comes to your heart, listening to your body is crucial — because ignoring or misinterpreting these bodily signals can be deadly.

In fact, researchers at Duke University Medical Center have recently determined that unrecognized myocardial infarctions (or “silent” heart attacks, in layman’s terms) are much more common than physicians had previously suspected. And unfortunately, they note these silent heart attacks carry a very high risk of death.

Studies indicate that about 200,000 Americans suffer a heart attack each year without even realizing it. These unrecognized heart attacks account for about one-fourth of all heart attacks, making this a serious public health issue.

Fortunately, according to renowned cardiologist Dr. Chauncey Crandall, you can easily train yourself to listen to your own body’s signals when it comes to the state of your heart health.

Dr. Crandall recently collaborated with Newsmax Health to make available a special video presentation: 4 Things You’ll Feel Right Before a Heart Attack. In this no-cost video, you’ll see four major ways your body tries to warn you — before it’s too late to intervene and survive the damage.

Because, while they are called “silent” heart attacks, your body will warn you of these impending attacks days, weeks, even months before the actual cardiac events. However, symptoms may be mild, vague, or even painless — and many people don’t even realize they’re heart-related.

In particular, four things you could feel are the most sinister signs of a silent heart attack. Just don’t expect the stereotypical “Hollywood” heart attack, where you see an actor clutching at the left side of his chest in severe pain. This is actually less common.

When it comes to surviving a heart attack, statistics show a clear link between delay in treatment and disability or death. That’s why knowing what to look for in terms of symptoms is critical, especially when they’re the kind that most people don’t think to associate with a heart attack — like the four things in this complimentary video presentation: 4 Things You’ll Feel Right Before a Heart Attack. The video also discusses simple strategies to prevent and reverse general heart disease and high cholesterol.

Dr. Crandall, chief of the cardiac transplant program at the esteemed Palm Beach Cardiovascular Clinic in Florida, practices on the front lines of interventional, vascular, and transplant cardiology. Decades of experience have afforded him the chance to detect little-known warning signs and symptoms like the ones addressed in the video.

Editor’s Note: For a limited time, Newsmax Health is making 4 Things You’ll Feel Before a Heart Attack: A Newsmax Heart Health Special Report available at no charge. Click here to discover how to listen more effectively to your body’s signals about your heart health.

What Do Doctors Recommend for Longer Looking Eyelashes?

With so many beauty products on the market today, selecting the ones that are truly beneficial is never an easy task—so when an expert like board-certified Dr. Ashley Magovern speaks up on her faves, we’re inclined to listen. The latest product of which this world-renowned skin care expert is singing the praises? A non-prescription eyelash enhancer called SmartLash.
Eyelash enhancement is one of the biggest trends in the beauty industry, with companies everywhere launching products promised to leave you with the long, lush lashes you have always wanted. Often,  though, these products pose nasty side effects—darkening of the eyelids or blurred vision, anyone?—and this is where SmarLash holds the edge: there’s no prescription required to get it, and because it’s free of the harmful ingredients some of its top competitors rely on, it promises to give you the look of longer, more beautiful lashes without any risk whatsoever for side effects.
And you know what the best thing about SmartLash is? It works!
Clinical studies have revealed:

• Participants experienced an increase in the appearance of lash length up to 68%*
• 100% of participants saw an increase in the appearance of eyelash length, fullness and thickness after just 30 days

But don’t just take our word for it; remember, SmartLash is backed by a Georgetown-educated M.D. who completed her medical internship at Stanford University before working closely with Dr. Howard Murad and going on to open her own practice in Los Angeles. SmartLash advocate Dr. Ashley Magovern boasts unparalleled expertise when it comes to beauty and skin care, and SmartLash is her lash enhancer of choice—she, too has noticed a change in her own lashes using SmartLash.
This easily applicable, non-irritating lash enhancer WILL transform the appearance of your lashes. Take it from Dr. Magovern, or why not the 89% of customers who said they would purchase SmartLash again on DermStore.com? Visit DermStore.com and read its reviews, and you’ll see what real customers are saying about it. Then, take advantage of special savings on this amazingly effective formulation: SmartLash Eyelash Enhancer is currently being offered at 76% off, ONLY on DermStore.com. But you must act quickly, because these exclusive savings are for a limited time only!
*Results based on a 60-day independent clinical study with product application twice a day.

Faster brain scans offer new perspective on brain activity

Magnetoencephalography allows researchers to observe neural activity with frequency waves that are faster than 50 cycles per second.

Our brains are mysterious organs. And fast. Too fast, it turns out, to be fully observed using the current gold standard: functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
So researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the Institute of Technology and Advanced Biomedical Imaging at the University of Chieti in Italy are turning to faster technology called magnetoencephalography (MEG) to sample neural activity every 50 milliseconds.
In doing so, they've been afforded novel insights into the inner-workings of neural networks in resting and active brains. As the researchers report in the journal Neuron, these new insights could help us better understand how brain networks function and, in turn, better diagnose and treat brain injuries.
"Brain activity occurs in waves that repeat as slowly as once every 10 seconds or as rapidly as once every 50 milliseconds," said senior researcher and neurology professor Maurizio Corbetta in a school news release. "This is our first look at these networks where we could sample activity every 50 milliseconds, as well as track slower activity fluctuations that are more similar to those observed with functional magnetic resonance imaging. This analysis performed at rest and while watching a movie provides some interesting and novel insights into how these networks are configured in resting and active brains."
The scientists observed brain activity in two groups of volunteers: one that was either resting or watching a movie during the scans, and another that was watching a movie and looking for event boundaries -- i.e., points at which the plot or some element of the story changed.
The scientists initially used fMRI to locate several known resting-state brain networks, which are characterized by activity levels that rise and fall in sync when the brain is at rest. They were surprised to see that the spatial pattern of activity, which they call topography, was similar regardless of whether the brain was active or at rest. Still, fMRI limited their ability to observe activity that changed faster than every 10 seconds.
When they turned to MEG, which enabled them to detect activity with frequency waves faster than 50 cycles every second, the higher "temporal resolution" showed that when the volunteers went from resting to watching a movie, these networks actually shifted frequency channels, which indicates that our brains may use different frequencies for rest versus activity.

Most of the volunteers noticed similar event boundaries in the movie. (They were told to push a button when they observed one.) The MEG scans found that near those event boundaries, brain activity changed between regions in the visual cortex.
"This gives us a hint of how cognitive activity dynamically changes the resting-state networks," Corbetta said. "Activity locks and unlocks in these networks depending on how the task unfolds. Future studies will need to track resting-state networks in different tasks to see how correlated activity is dynamically coordinated across the brain."

When wearable tech makes you smarter -- by zapping your brain

A slew of controversial, DIY methods of brain stimulation have culminated in the Focus headset. But take note: It's not yet known whether augmenting the mind is truly safe.

Wearable tech can track your sleep patterns, give you walking directions that float above your eye, and measure your heart rate using the shirt on your back. But can a wearable gadget make you think faster, or even make you momentarily smarter?
Turns out, it can. But only by attaching electrodes to your head that shock your brain, which is how devices like the Focus headset work. The Focus is designed for gamers --- only if you're 18 years old, or older -- and made headlines in May when its Web site opened for preorders. The Focus marks the first device of its kind, and it could bring what is now a cutting-edge enthusiast activity into the mainstream.
The unknown, however, is just how safe it might be to clamp this type of device to your head on a daily basis. So far, scientists have tested the technology, but mainly to figure out if it's effective. And creating a mass consumer product of this sort raises whole new concerns. The medical community remains wary, and the Focus headset may force an answer that dictates the future of consumer enhancement products.
The technique in question is called tDCS, for transcranial direct current stimulation, and it's a brain stimulation method that involves sending very low amounts of electrical current through various parts of the brain to achieve different effects. Historically it's been reserved for medical treatment, and it was first used as far back as 1804. Recent studies have determined that minor stimulation can have positive effects on healthy brains. For example, shocking the prefrontal cortex, as the Focus device does, is thought to improve learning and working memory, while shocking the motor cortex may raise one's threshold for pain and improve the use of one's nondominant hand.
It sounds too good to be true, and in fact tDCS is widely believed to have few, if any, side effects for short-term use. It's also painless. Research even shows that it does work; a study published in Neuroscience Letters last year outlines how 33 individuals attempted to solve a logic puzzle with and without tDCS; 40 percent succeeding using stimulation and zero without it.

The tDCS enthusiast community is also blossoming, especially considering that stimulation can be replicated with do-it-yourself electrodes and over-the-counter batteries, as this YouTube tutorial outlines. Dave Siever, a Canadian man whose company, Mind Alive, makes a $650 tDCS device, swears by the technique, claiming it has improved his sense of pitch and even works as an antidepression device.

When wearable tech makes you smarter -- by zapping your brain

A slew of controversial, DIY methods of brain stimulation have culminated in the Focus headset. But take note: It's not yet known whether augmenting the mind is truly safe.

Wearable tech can track your sleep patterns, give you walking directions that float above your eye, and measure your heart rate using the shirt on your back. But can a wearable gadget make you think faster, or even make you momentarily smarter?
Turns out, it can. But only by attaching electrodes to your head that shock your brain, which is how devices like the Focus headset work. The Focus is designed for gamers --- only if you're 18 years old, or older -- and made headlines in May when its Web site opened for preorders. The Focus marks the first device of its kind, and it could bring what is now a cutting-edge enthusiast activity into the mainstream.
The unknown, however, is just how safe it might be to clamp this type of device to your head on a daily basis. So far, scientists have tested the technology, but mainly to figure out if it's effective. And creating a mass consumer product of this sort raises whole new concerns. The medical community remains wary, and the Focus headset may force an answer that dictates the future of consumer enhancement products.
The technique in question is called tDCS, for transcranial direct current stimulation, and it's a brain stimulation method that involves sending very low amounts of electrical current through various parts of the brain to achieve different effects. Historically it's been reserved for medical treatment, and it was first used as far back as 1804. Recent studies have determined that minor stimulation can have positive effects on healthy brains. For example, shocking the prefrontal cortex, as the Focus device does, is thought to improve learning and working memory, while shocking the motor cortex may raise one's threshold for pain and improve the use of one's nondominant hand.
It sounds too good to be true, and in fact tDCS is widely believed to have few, if any, side effects for short-term use. It's also painless. Research even shows that it does work; a study published in Neuroscience Letters last year outlines how 33 individuals attempted to solve a logic puzzle with and without tDCS; 40 percent succeeding using stimulation and zero without it.

The tDCS enthusiast community is also blossoming, especially considering that stimulation can be replicated with do-it-yourself electrodes and over-the-counter batteries, as this YouTube tutorial outlines. Dave Siever, a Canadian man whose company, Mind Alive, makes a $650 tDCS device, swears by the technique, claiming it has improved his sense of pitch and even works as an antidepression device.