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Cravendale, a UK-based dairy, has created a new milk jug that keeps you informed of whether or not your milk is still fresh. The technology used in the jug was discovered by the company’s R&D team while researching the bacteria that actually turns milk sour, and is essentially a unique PH sensor that’s built into its base. When sour milk is detected, a small LCD display on the outside of the jug changes from ‘Fresh’ to ‘Sour’ and if that doesn’t get the message across, it also incorporates an “innovative alarm system” so there’s no question you probably shouldn’t drink it.
There’s no word on whether or not Cravendale plans to actually put the jug into production, but it’s hoped that the technology could one day drastically reduce the amount of milk that is thrown away because people just aren’t sure if it’s safe to drink or not.
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When top designer Jason Wu isn’t busy dressing Natalie Portman, Drew Barrymore or Michelle Obama, he’s busy designing cameras. Working with General Imaging and sold under the General Electric (GE) brand, Wu’s products will be called “Created by Jason Wu.” Someone needs to extreme makeover that product name.
The simple point-and-shoot digital cameras will be available with either 4GB ($180) or 8GB ($230) of internal memory. Both models are 12 megapixels with retractable USB connections for transferring data and charging. The Jason Wu touch includes elegant wrist straps and other fashion-forward accesories. The metal cameras are available in white, black, gold, red, yellow, blue and green. The leather colors are white, black or grey.
Both models will be for sale initially on HSN. Two questions, though. Would you buy a camera based on its external appearance, and would you buy that camera from the Home Shopping Network?
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Microsoft was aware months ago of a critical security vulnerability well before hackers exploited it to breach Google, Adobe and other large U.S. companies but did not patch the hole until Thursday.
The software giant had intended to release a patch for the flaw in February — more than four months after learning about it — but had to speed up that plan and roll it out this week in the wake of news that Google and others had been hacked through the flaw, the world’s largest software maker acknowledged Thursday.
Meron Sellen, a security researcher at BugSec, an Israeli firm, quietly reported the vulnerability to Microsoft in September, according tosecurity firm Kaspersky.
Microsoft confirmed it learned of the so-called “zero-day” flaw months ago.
According to Microsoft, “An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the logged-on user. If a user is logged on with administrative user rights, an attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.”
The flaw, which primarily affected IE6, allowed hackers to download malware to employee computers to gain access to intellectual property at Google, as well as information connected to Gmail users. It’s unknown what the hackers obtained from some 33 other companies — hi-tech, financial and defense — that were also targeted in the attack.
Although Microsoft recognized the severity of the flaw at the time Sellen reported it, the company held off releasing a patch so it could be included in a cumulative update for IE planned next month, the company said.
A zero-day flaw is a vulnerability for which there is currently no patch. It’s also a flaw that is generally unknown to the software vendor, which gives hackers who may be aware of the flaw a jump on developing malware to exploit it.
It’s unknown if other companies were breached through the flaw prior to the high-profile hacks disclosed last week. Most companies are unwilling to acknowledge a breach, let alone provide public details about how they were hacked.
Google disclosed last week it discovered in mid-December that it had been hacked in an attack originating from China, about three months after Microsoft learned of the vulnerability. Adobe followed Google, announcing it, too, was hacked. Security firm iDefense said it had information that at least 34 companies were breached in the coordinated attack.
On Thursday, meanwhile, Microsoft released a cumulative security update for Internet Explorer that fixes the flaw, as well as seven other security vulnerabilities that would allow an attacker to remotely execute code on a victim’s computer.
“Our investigation into this responsibly reported vulnerability began early September,” Jerry Bryant, senior security program manager for Microsoft, said in a statement. “As part of this investigation we began working on an update to help protect customers. We became aware of the recent attacks in mid-January and as part of our investigation determined the vulnerability being used in these attacks was similar to the one investigated in September.”
Photo: FastJack/Flickr
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NVIDIA’s feud with Intel may be at an all-time high these days, but it looks like the company isn’t about to go as far as to produce its own Intel-compatible x86 chip, despite persistent rumors to the contrary. That word comes straight from NVIDIA’s always talkative CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, who flatly said “no” when asked if there was any truth to the rumors. He further went on to add NVIDIA’s focus is on visual and parallel computing, and on “getting our GPUs into the lowest power platforms we can imagine and driving mobile computing with it” — as it’s now attempting to do with Tegra. In a separate discussion after a talk in Dubai, Huang also interestingly revealed that the computers in his household are “all Apple,” but he naturally didn’t just leave it there — head on past the break for the complete, must-read quote (as reported by Shufflegazine).
Read - CNET News, “Nvidia CEO says ‘no’ to Intel-compatible chip”
Read - Shufflegazine, “NVIDIA CEO, visiting Dubai, says “I’m all Apple”
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If you’re a hardcore Gmail user, I don’t need to tell you that Gmail was down yesterday. The Gmail Blog has an explanation of the outage, which officially lasted for 100 minutes. So, here’s the reason you couldn’t get to your Gmail yesterday, straight from the horse’s mouth: apparently Google took down some servers for routine maintenance. This would have been fine, but because of some recent improvements to the way Gmail handles requests, the request routers became overloaded. This caused them to shunt the workload over to other request routers, which quickly became overloaded, too. Oops.
Fortunately, Google has tons of extra capacity just waiting to be switched on in this kind of emergency, so things were back up and running relatively quickly. Google has quite rightly determined that their request routers need some failure isolation improvements to prevent a similar chain reaction in the future, and they promise they’re working on it. Maybe this will quiet down all of the “#gfail” naysayers who freaked out via Twitter the minute the service went down yesterday.
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Online auction site eBay purchased internet telephony service Skype for about $4.1 billion in 2005. Today, the company has announced it will sell Skype for about $2 billion. eBay will keep a 35% stake in the company, which values Skype at about $2.75 billion.
Sure, on paper that means that eBay is taking a loss, but honestly, it’s still probably a good deal, because as far as anyone can tell, eBay never really figured out what to do with Skype anyway.
Once upon a time there was talking about integrating Skype’s VoIP service into the auction site to make communication between buyers and sellers easier. But really, who wants to call a comic book collector halfway around the world to ask questions about that $2.75 first edition Spider-Man #1 comic?
While a number of companies, including Google and Skype’s founders, were said to have been interested, it looks like the buyer is an investment group. The deal is expected to go through before the end of the year.
Update: You can read Skype CEO Josh Silverman’s brief comments on the deal in the official Skype blog post.
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Google, concerned by the recent departures of several top executives, has developed an algorithm to try to identify which employees are likely to quit, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The Journal said the internet search and advertising giant had turned to mathematical formulas because it was “concerned a brain drain could hurt its long-term ability to compete.”
The newspaper said Google examined data from employee reviews and promotion and pay histories to try to identify which of its 20,000 employees were most likely to leave the Mountain View, California-based company.
Laszlo Bock, who runs human resources for Google, told the Journal the algorithm helps the company “get inside people’s heads even before they know they might leave.”
The newspaper said Google officials were reluctant to share details of the formula, which is still being tested, but it had already identified employees “who felt underused, a key complaint among those who contemplate leaving.”
Edward Lawler, director of the Centre for Effective Organisations at the University of Southern California, told the Journal Google was “clearly ahead of the curve” in taking a more quantitative approach to personnel decisions.
The Journal quoted current and former Google employees as saying the company is losing talent because some employees feel they can’t make the same impact as the company matures.
Recent departures from Google include Tim Armstrong, a senior vice president, who left in March to head AOL, display-advertising chief David Rosenblatt, and Asia-Pacific and Latin America president Sukhinder Singh Cassidy.
Others who have left recently for start-ups such as Facebook and Twitter include lead designer Doug Bowman, engineering director Steve Horowitz and search-quality chief Santosh Jayaram, the Journal said.
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