scharkalvin writes "Adafruit has announced a winner to their bounty for an open source driver for the MS Kinect. From the article: 'We have verified that it works and have a screenshot from another member in the hacking community (thanks qdot!) who was also able to use the code. Congrats to Hector! He's running all this on a Linux laptop (his code works with OpenGL) and doesn't even have an Xbox!'" We talked about Adafruit's bounty yesterday.

Toe, The writes "Apple has announced that they are discontinuing their line of 1u rack-mount servers. With their usual understated style, the announcement comes in the form of a box on their website and a transition guide (PDF) to their low-end Mac mini server or their now-more-powerful-than-Xserve Mac Pro server. Attitudes about the Xserve have ranged from considering it a token nod to enterprise to an underpowered wimp to a tremendous value. Apparently, the migration to Intel processors removed some of the value of clustering Xserves, leaving them somewhat overpriced compared to other, more traditional offerings. The odd thing is that Apple clearly has shown they have the capacity for enterprise, but rarely the will to take it on. So, does the discontinuation of their rack-mount mean they have abandoned enterprise for their post-PC offerings, or are they simply acknowledging that their products aren't gaining traction in the data center? Or do they have something else up their sleeve for next year?"

Velcroman1 writes "In August, Slashdotters learned that full-body scanners were roaming the streets in vans: 'The same technology used at airport check points, capable of seeing through clothes and walls, has also been rolling out on US streets where law enforcement agencies have deployed the vans to search for vehicle-based bombs. Fox took a ride in one of the $800,000 vans, videotaping the entire event — and continues the debate about security, privacy, and health risks."

eldavojohn writes "After developing and using TaintDroid, several universities found that of 30 popular free Android apps, half were sharing GPS data and phone numbers with advertisers and remote servers. A few months ago, one app was sending phone numbers to a remote server in China but today the situation looks a lot more pervasive. In their paper (PDF), the researchers blasted Google saying 'Android's coarse grained access control provides insufficient protection against third-party applications seeking to collect sensitive data.' Google's response: 'Android has taken steps to inform users of this trust relationship and to limit the amount of trust a user must grant to any given application developer. We also provide developers with best practices about how to handle user data. We consistently advise users to only install apps they trust.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Chile is the first country of the world to guarantee by law the principle of network neutrality, according to the Teleccomunications Market Comission's Blog from Spain. The official newspaper of the Chilean Republic published yesterday a Law that guarantees that any Internet user will be able to use, send, receive or offer any content, applications or legal services over the Internet, without arbitrary or discriminatory blocking."

snydeq writes "AT&T says it won't interfere with a highly anticipated talk on intercepting cell phone calls at the Black Hat conference this week. Hacker Chris Paget last week said that he plans to demonstrate on Saturday how to set up what's essentially a fake cell tower that allows him listen in on nearby mobile calls. But Tuesday, he wrote on his blog that he had 'heard that AT&T may be considering suing me to stop my talk.' AT&T, however, has insisted it has no plans to interfere with the talk."

TheGrapeApe writes "The ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (ACMUIST) has an interesting proof-of-concept video up demonstrating the use of cameras and laser pico-projectors to 'extend' a laptop's user interface to adjacent surfaces. The video demonstrates some simple gestures like tapping and dragging being captured on the 'extended' surface. While the prototype appears to be somewhat cumbersome, it's easy to see how it might be more elegantly integrated into the hardware with more R&D."

shogun writes "The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports a strong geomagnetic storm is in progress. The shuttle, ISS and GPS systems may be affected." They think this storm was caused by a weak solar flare on April 3rd. As you may expect, this has caused some unusually impressive northern lights since it started. What you may not expect is a photograph from Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi aboard the International Space Station showing the aurora from orbit. He apparently tweets a lot of pictures from space. He and his crewmates have taken over 100,000 pictures since coming aboard the ISS.

An anonymous reader writes "At 1:06 p.m. Central European Summer Time (CEST) today, the first protons collided at 7 TeV in the Large Hadron Collider. These first collisions, recorded by the LHC experiments, mark the start of the LHC's research program."