Nybble Issue No. 228

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2012.05.01 Issue No. 228

Wow! Can't believe it's been almost a year since I last published Nybble. At the rate things are going, I should start calling it an annual newsletter.

Anyway, has anyone else noticed that people are more and more pictures? Every time we eat out, I notice people taking pictures of their food. I saw this guy taking a picture of the trolleys at Costco. I saw this girl taking a picture of herself with an Ikea plush toy. Friends meet up and they take pictures of each other. Picture looks boring? Instagram it. Forgot what you ate for breakfast yesterday? Check your photo gallery. Can't think of anything to post on Facebook? (WHAT?!) Upload some pictures.

And here I am with my rarely-used too-expensive Canon EOS 550D and a Canon Powershot S2 IS stored away in a drawer.

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the shutterbugs about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* Apple Goes into Restaurant Business
* MIT Invents Super Glass
* Samsung TV Vulnerabilities
* IBM Develops Air-Breathing Car Battery
* The $60 LED Light Bulb
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________APPLE GOES INTO RESTAURANT BUSINESS_________
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57422071-71/apple-to-build-private-restaurant-to-keep-out-snoopers/

Security-conscious Apple is planning to build an off-site private restaurant for its employees. According to Dan Whisenhunt, Apple's director of real estate facilities, "We like to provide a level of security so that people and employees can feel comfortable talking about their business, their research and whatever project they're engineering without fear of competition sort of overhearing their conversations."

The 21,468-square-foot "cafeteria" is a short walk from Apple's Infinity Loop HQ and will have two stories, meetings rooms, lounge areas, conference rooms, storage lockers, an underground parking lot. Although visitors can eat at the Caffe Macs (its on-site restaurant) if they are signed in by an employee, the new restaurant is exclusively for staff, meaning there won’t be any semi-public access, allowing Apple employees to conduct their business in total secrecy from competitors.

_________MIT INVENTS SUPER GLASS________
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/333734/20120426/mit-researchers-invent-perfect-glass-video.htm

MIT researchers recently announced a major breakthrough in glass-making technology, which basically involves a new way to create surface textures on glass to eliminate inherent drawbacks like unwanted reflections and glare. In fact, this new "multifunctional" glass is not only crystal clear -- unlike all other glass, which is reflective by nature -- but it also causes water droplets to bounce right off its surface, "like tiny rubber balls."

The glass is self-cleaning, anti-reflective, and superhydrophobic. Now, if only the scientists can make it as tough as Corning's Gorilla Glass, then we'll have a winner.

The new glass also helps boost the efficiency of other glass-based tools and objects. For example, photovoltaic cells can lose up to 40 percent of their efficiency within six months, usually due to dust and dirt accumulation; but with the new self-cleaning glass as a surface, a photovoltaic panel would transmit much more light through its surface, making the cell much more powerful, especially when the sun's rays are at an angle. Without MIT's glass added to solar panels, the glass sometimes reflects as much as 50 percent of the sun's rays during the early morning and late afternoon hours.

The secret behind this incredible glass technology? MIT's invention is created by a simple surface pattern, which consists of an array of nanoscale cones that are roughly five times as tall as their base width. These conical shapes are completely responsible for the unique characteristics of the glass. The invention is still patent-pending.

_________SAMSUNG TV VULNERABILITIES________
http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/researcher-causes-endless-restart-loop-samsung-tvs-042412

As TVs become smarter and more connected, it's just a matter of time before more and more of these vulnerabilities show up.

Italian security researcher Luigi Auriemma was trying to play a trick on his brother when he accidentally discovered two vulnerabilities in all current versions of Samsung TVs and Blu-Ray systems that could allow an attacker to "disable" those devices. All you need is for the TV connected to a Wi-Fi network. One of the bugs leads to a loop of endless restarts while the other could cause a potential buffer overflow.

Basicaly, when the TV receives a controller packet from the network about a new 'remote', it prompts the user to either 'allow' or 'deny' access. Within this packet is a string for the name of the device. Auriemma discovered that if he inserted line feeds and other invalid characters into the string, the TV would enter an endless restart loop. The TV doesn't respond to manual and remote controls. Even unplugging the TV doesn't resolve the restart loop. According to Auriemma, he was only able to recover the TV by putting it in service mode.

As for the buffer overflow, Auriemma determined that he could crash devices by setting the MAC address to a long string. Auriemma claims there is no fix for these bugs because he was unable to report the bugs to Samsung. He has also received no word from Samsung. He claims that Samsung doesn’t even have a channel through which to report these types of bugs.

_________IBM DEVELOPS AIR-BREATHING CAR BATTERY_________
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/126745-ibm-creates-breathing-high-density-light-weight-lithium-air-battery

IBM recently demonstrated a light-weight, ultra-high-density, lithium-air battery, as part of its Battery 500 project to produce a battery capable of powering a car for 500 miles.

In IBM’s lithium-air battery, oxygen reacts with lithium to create lithium peroxide and electrical energy. When the battery is recharged, the process is reversed and oxygen is released. While conventional batteries are completely self-contained, the oxygen used in an lithium-air battery obviously comes from the atmosphere, so the battery itself can be much lighter. The main thing though, is that lithium-air energy density is a lot higher than conventional lithium-ion batteries: The maximum energy density of lithium-air batteries is theorized to be around 12 kWh/kg, some 15 times greater than li-ion — and more importantly, comparable to gasoline.

Lithium-air batteries have been around since the 1970s, but the necessary tech was well beyond the capabilities of then-contemporary material science. Today, with assistance from partners Asahi Kasei and Central Glass — IBM now has the materials and technology required to build a lithium-air battery. Supercomputers also played a big part in this breakthrough; IBM isn’t a battery-making company, after all. IBM Blue Gene/P supercomputers at IBM Research in Zurich and Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago were used to model and optimize the li-air chemistry. The battery prototypes themselves are being built at IBM Research Almaden, California.

_________THE $60 LED LIGHT BULB_________
http://phys.org/news/2012-04-rebates-bulb.html

Phlips state-of-the-art LED light bulb is the most energy-efficient yet, lasts about 20 years and is supposed to give off a pleasing, natural-looking light. But what separates it from the pack most is the price: $60.

A bit pricey, but Netherlands-based Philips is discounting it right away to $50 for consumers, and working on deals with electric utilities to discount it even further, by as much as $20 to $30. This means the bulb will cost anywhere from $20 to $60, depending on where it's found. Online, consumers will be paying $50 for each bulb, because utilities don't subsidize online sales.

For $25, or even $35, the bulb looks like a good investment compared to an incandescent bulb. It uses only 10 watts of power, meaning saves about $8 per year in electricity if it's used four hours a day. It's expected to last at least 30,000 hours, or 30 times longer than an incandescent. At four hours per day, that's 20 years.
But the Philips bulb is not only up against $1 incandescent bulbs. CFL are nearly as energy efficient. They use about 15 watts for 60 watts worth of light. They're much cheaper too, typically costing around $5. The Philips bulb has some advantages over a CFL: It lasts three times longer and gives off a more natural-looking light. It doesn't contain the toxic mercury vapor inside CFLs, which creates a minor hazard when they break.
Incandescent bulbs of 40 watts and above will be banned in 2014.


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
eBookee
http://www.ebookee.net/
Furry Elephant
Animations, simulations, and Activities for Teaching and Learning
http://www.furryelephant.com/
Cryptocat
https://crypto.cat/
Encrypted, private chatrooms
MP3Skull
http://mp3skull.com/
Free mp3 download
Budget Bytes
http://budgetbytes.blogspot.com/
On a mission to save money and eat well!

_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
Why do all movie tickets cost the same?

_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
It's easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
 ~ Frederick Douglass

_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
Which Ninja Turtle was the odd man out?
Of the four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, all named after artists and / or sculptors, Donatello does not occur in the same time period as Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael.
Source: Arcamax Trivia

_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
My mother was away all weekend at a business conference. During a break, she decided to call home collect.
My six-year-old brother picked up the phone and heard a stranger's voice say, "We have a Marcia on the line. Will you accept the charges?"
Frantic, he dropped the receiver and came charging outside screaming, "Dad! They've got Mom! And they want money!"


That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.