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Submission + - Gardasil cleared of Anti-Vax nonsense (slate.com)

Submitted by Zane C.
Zane C. writes: A new study once again proves that vaccines have no link with yet another batch of medical disorders. The vaccine in question is a relatively new HPV vaccine called Gardasil, mainly targeting preteens to reduce infection. Phil Plait has more on this, debunking anti-vax claims and explaining why you should receive the vaccine.

Submission + - Nanotech could make incandescent light bulbs as efficient as LEDs (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Thomas Edison would be pleased. Researchers have come up with a way to dramatically improve the efficiency of his signature invention, the incandescent light bulb. The approach uses nanoengineered mirrors to recycle much of the heat produced by the filament and convert it into additional visible light. The new-age incandescents are still far from a commercial product, but their efficiency is already nearly as good as commercial LED bulbs, while still maintaining a warm old-fashioned glow.

Submission + - "Get Windows 10" turns itself on and nags Win7 and 8.1 users twice a day (infoworld.com)

Submitted by LichtSpektren
LichtSpektren writes: As you may recall, Microsoft has delivered KB3035583 as 'recommended update' to users of Windows 7 and 8.1. What this update does is install GWX ("Get Windows 10"), a program which diagnoses the system to see if it is eligible for a free upgrade to Windows 10, and if so, asks the user if they would like to upgrade (though recently, the option to decline has been removed). Some users have gotten around this by editing Windows Registry values for "AllowOSUpgrade", "DisableOSUpgrade", "DisableGWX", and "ReservationsAllowed" in order to disable the prompt altogether. This advice was endorsed by Microsoft on their support forums.

According to a report by Woody Leonhard at InfoWorld, the newest version of KB3035583 update includes a background process which scans the system's Windows Registry twice a day to see if the values for the four aforementioned registry inputs were manually edited to disable the upgrade prompt. If they were, the process will alter the values, silently re-download the Windows 10 installation files (about 6 GB in total), and prompt the user to upgrade.
Hardware

Preserving Great Tech For Posterity — the 6502 290

Posted by timothy from the double-secret-reverse-engineering dept.
trebonian writes "For great old hardware products like the MOS 6502 (used in the Apple II, the C64, the Nintendo NES), the details of the designs have been lost or forgotten. While there have been great efforts to reverse engineer the 6502 from the outside, there has not been the hardware equivalent of the source code — until now. As Russell Cox states: 'A team of three people accumulated a bunch of 6502 chips, applied sulfuric acid to them to strip the casing and expose the actual chips, used a high-resolution photomicroscope to scan the chips, applied computer graphics techniques to build a vector representation of the chip, and finally derived from the vector form what amounts to the circuit diagram of the chip: a list of all 3,510 transistors with inputs, outputs, and what they're connected to. Combining that with a fairly generic (and, as these things go, trivial) "transistor circuit" simulator written in JavaScript and some HTML5 goodness, they created an animated 6502 web page that lets you watch the voltages race around the chip as it executes. For more, see their web site visual6502.org.'"
Businesses

Humble Bundle 2 Is Live 217

Posted by kdawson from the now-how-much-would-you-pay dept.
Dayofswords writes "The first Humble Bundle was a monster success, with over 100,000 people donating over $1 million in total to support the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Child's Play, and of course the developers behind the games. The second bundle is now live (bundle site), containing five great games: Braid, Cortex Command, Machinarium, Osmos, and Revenge of the Titans. Each game is DRM-free, the games work on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, and you pay what you want and decide where your money goes."

Comment Re:yes, its wrong (Score 5, Informative) 318

by a.deity (#33122816) Attached to: Prankster Jailbreaks Apple Store Display iPhone
Back in the old days of 2.x jailbreaking (another one where a visit to a website would do it), there would always be a few display models running Cydia every morning. It was just a pain in the ass, and no one at the retail level was greatly angered or even cared too much; we'd just restore them when we saw them. To anyone on their way to an Apple Store to do this: you're not making a subversive statement, you're just taking 5 minutes out of a Specialist's day, one who probably jailbroke their phone a long time ago.
Businesses

Bungie Signs 10-Year Deal With Activision 85

Posted by Soulskill from the make-sure-you-write-your-name-on-your-lunch dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Infinity Ward may be suing Activision under allegations of low payment and no royalties, but it seems some developers are still happy to work with the publisher — it has just signed a 10-year deal with Bungie, the studio behind the popular Halo series of FPS games. Activision will publish all of Bungie's games in the next decade — although Bungie will own the IP. The terms of the deal are similar to those brokered by former Infinity Ward chiefs Jason West and Vince Zampella when they signed with EA after being fired in March."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Nostalgic Elation; The Super Mario Crossover (joystiq.com) 1

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: Sure, they're stepping all over proprietary rights and copyright but something must be said about the amount of bliss-filled nostalgia inside Exploding Rabbit's Super Mario Crossover . If the plumbers never really did it for you, you can now kill those goombas as Link, Mega Man, Samus, Simon Belmont or Contra's Bill. Goodbye jumping and spitting; hello slicing, whipping, and shooting. Is this one of the early firsts in the new genre of video game mashups? Let's hope Exploding Rabbit does not feel the need to also transport the portly Mario and lanky Luigi to the harsh war torn jungles of Contra or the ghoul ridden realms of Castlevania.

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