LG Optimus Vu Heading To Europe This September

LG Optimus Vu

LG has finally revealed that its over-sized smartphone, the LG Optimus Vu, will be coming to Europe and other markets this September.
Originally announced and launched in Korea, the LG Optimus Vu is a beast of a phone, offering a 5-inch 4:3 aspect ratio display, Nvidia Tegra 3 performance and an Ice Cream Sandwich OS.
Here is a review of this amazing gadget.

Cnet: Top 5 Features You'll Want In Iphone 5

Here are the top must-have iPhone 5 features, as voted on by CNET readers.

Cnet: Top 5 Phones To Avoid.

Sneak Peek Video Of BlackBerry 10

Next iPhone May Go On Sale September 21

The iPhone 4S, the fifth generation of Apple's iconic smartphone, may be updated Septermber 12. Image credit CNN.

More details about the presumably imminent release of the next iPhone have emerged, if the typically anonymous spate of Internet sources are to be believed.
iMore, the first blog to publish reports that Apple plans to unveil its latest iteration of the smartphone on September 12, is now saying that pre-orders will begin that day and that the phone will be released nine days later, on September 21.
Both reports from the blog cite "sources that have provided iMore with accurate iPhone related launch dates in the past." Several other blogs later cited their own sources saying the September 12 date is likely correct.
International launches in Europe and elsewhere will begin the first week of October, iMore said, possibly October 5.

Mars Curiosity Rover Under Hacker Attack?

Rover Curiosity, of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory.(REUTERS / Handout).

Either hackers are considering making Mars their own or else the FBI is engaged in perhaps their most far-fetched entrapment operation yet. A request has reportedly been made over the Web for help in hacking NASA’s Curiosity rover.
According to a report first published in PCMag, an Internet Relay Chat user entered a room frequented by operatives of the Anonymous hacktivism collective and asked for assistance in getting unauthorized access to Curiosity, the $2.5-billion rover currently collecting tests on the surface of the Earth’s elusive red neighbor.

Why A $150 Million Star Wars Game Is Going Free.

Starting this fall, EA's Star Wars: The Old Republic will drop its subscription fees. Image credit CNN

Electronic Arts shook up the video gaming field last week with a major price change: Star Wars: The Old Republic, one of the most ambitious and expensive multiplayer games ever made, would soon drop its subscription fees.
The move essentially marks the end of the traditional business model for "massively multiplayer" online games, better known as MMOs. Almost every major publisher has now given in and eliminated its monthly fees -- the genre's bread-and-butter business model for the past 15 years -- relying instead on sales of premium content or virtual items to make money.

It's the Zynga (ZNGA) model -- and it's an unproven risk for the gaming giants.
MMOs cost far more to make than the -Ville clones and other casual games that populate Zynga's portfolio. EA's Star Wars cost an estimated $150 million to market and develop. Plus, the Zynga model isn't working out too well even for Zynga right now.

Google To Pay Record $22.5 Million Fine For Safari Privacy Evasion

 

It's official: Google will pay a record $22.5 million fine to settle charges that it skirted the default privacy settings on Apple's Safari browser.
The Federal Trade Commission charged Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) with tracking the recent browsing history Apple's (AAPL, Fortune 500) Safari users and serving them targeted ads. The maneuver violated an earlier privacy settlement between the company and the FTC, according to the agency.

Google's $22.5 million fine is the largest penalty the FTC has ever levied on a single company , but it's still a financial wrist-slap for Google, which earned $2.8 billion last quarter. CNN previously reported on the settlement in July, when a source with knowledge of the situation revealed the then-preliminary deal.
The issue blew up in February, when a privacy researcher exposed that Google had overridden Safari's default settings.
The Safari browser is automatically set to block third-party "cookies," which are files that follow users' movements and log-ins as they travel through the Web. That's a problem for ad networks like Google's, which rely on those cookies to measure their campaigns and to enable some ad functions.
Google's override allowed advertisers to deliver messages customized to users' recent browsing history. Individual users' personal information was never collected. After the discovery in February, Google acknowledged dodging Safari's default settings and immediately disabled the technology.
The dodge caught the attention of the FTC, which has been monitoring Google's compliance with its privacy promises under the terms of a settlement deal finalized in October.
The October deal stemmed from Google's problems with Google Buzz, an early social-networking effort that violated the company's written privacy policies. Google agreed to undergo regular, independent privacy audits and to pay penalties of up to $16,000 per individual violation for any future privacy missteps.
The Safari kerfuffle counted -- so Google will have to pay up.

Hackers Attack Australian Spy Agency Website.

Anonymous has been involved in some of the most high-profile cyberattacks on the Web. (File) Image credit CNN.

Australia's national intelligence agency acknowledged Friday that its public website may have encountered problems after hackers said they had subjected it to a sustained campaign of cyber attacks.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organization "is aware that there may have been some technical issues with its public website," a spokesman for the organization said.
But the site "does not host any classified information and any disruption would not represent a risk to ASIO's business," the spokesman added, using the agency's abbreviated name.

$30,000 Hard Disk Could Last for a Million Years of Storage

Countries with nuclear power plants have spent decades figuring out the proper place to bury nuclear waste and will spend decades more digging and filling 500 meter holes in the earth where it will live. One of the most the crucial pieces in safely burying the waste is keeping accurate records of where the waste is buried so that future generations don't accidentally dig it up.
According to Yahoo News, the solution to that problem may lie in a $30,000 hard disk, made of an indestructible combination of sapphire and platinum that claims to be durable enough to last for up to one million years. It was designed by a diverse team of scientists, anthropologists, archeologists, artists, archivists and linguists who worked to build something that would last, but could also be understood by people thousands of years from now.

Nintendo Wins Lawsuit over Wii Home Console.

Nintendo Wii

Nintendo has won a lawsuit in the United States against Copper Innovations Group, a company that sought to hold the hardware maker accountable for violating one its patents with the Wii home console and its controllers.

Microsoft Announces Windows 8 RTM Launch In October.

Windows 8 is all set for its October 26 launch. Photo Credit: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Microsoft is right on schedule with its Windows 8 launch, announcing today that the final code for Windows 8 has been released to manufacturers (RTM). The company had previously announced it would ship the RTM version of Windows 8 in the first week of August, and then make Windows 8 available to the public on Oct. 26. With Wednesday’s news, it’s clear that Microsoft is all lined up to meet its launch dates.

Windows 8 has been released to manufacturers including Lenovo, Acer, ASUS and Toshiba, along with other still unannounced partners who are developing Windows 8 hardware for the fall. With RTM, Microsoft has also launched the Windows Store commerce platform, making it possible for developers to develop and sell paid apps.

Microsoft outlined a detailed timeline for what to expect next with Windows 8. On Aug. 15, developers will be able to get their hands on the final version of Windows 8, and access the final build of Visual Studio 2012 to start building apps. IT professionals will also be able to access the final version of Windows 8 on Aug. 15. Microsoft will roll out Windows 8 access to members of various Microsoft programs, including Microsoft Partner Network and Microsoft Action Pack Providers throughout the rest of August and the beginning of September.

While this illustrates Microsoft’s ability to ship Windows 8 on time, consumers won’t see the final build until it begins shipping on new devices starting Oct. 26.

This fall is going to be incredibly busy for the Redmond giant. Microsoft has plans to release a number of products, including its Surface tablet, Windows Phone 8, and Office 15. The company has yet to announce any official dates for these products, but has set the dates for its Build developer conference for Oct. 30 to Nov. 2.

Microsoft said that Surface should be available within the weeks following the Windows 8 release, putting it at a late-October or early-November availability date. Reports also indicate that Windows Phone 8 will launch on new devices in November. Considering the timing of the company’s Build conference, it would not be surprising for Microsoft to officially release at least one of these products during the event.

Microsoft has a lot of work ahead of itself, but if the Windows 8 schedule is any indication, the company should be on track to deliver a stunning fall product launch.

83 Million Fake Accounts To Be Closed By Facebook.

A Facebook Pet Account. Image Credit CNN

If you're using a fake name on your Facebook account, maintaining a personal profile for your beloved pet or have a second profile you use just for logging in to other sites, you have one of the 83.09 million fake accounts Facebook wants to disable.
In an updated regulatory filing released Wednesday, the social media company said that 8.7 percent of its 955 million monthly active users worldwide are actually duplicate or false accounts.
"On Facebook we have a really large commitment in general to finding and disabling false accounts," Facebook's chief security officer Joe Sullivan told CNN in a recent interview. "Our entire platform is based on people using their real identities."

Rumor: 8-Pin Dock Connector Slated for Next iPhone.

The iPhone 4, pictured, and 4S, along with other iPhone, iPad, and iPod models, use a 30-pin dock connector. Photo Credit: Jon Snyder/Wired

Apple’s rumored redesigned dock connector for the upcoming iPhone may be even smaller than we’ve anticipated.

The new connector will employ only eight pins arranged in a line, according to iLounge sources. It’s an intriguing proposition, but iLounge didn’t include any images of the connector in its report. Still, in the past, iLounge has been right on the money in predicting the release date for the third-generation iPad, as well as the tablet’s overall appearance and specs.

Amazon Brings Kindle Fire’s Killer Instant Video Feature to iPad.

Amazon’s Instant Video just leaped into a larger mobile pool. Photo Credit: Peter McCollough/Wired

On Wednesday, Amazon released an iPad version of its Instant Video app. The app accesses Amazon’s video library of over 120,000 movie and TV show titles, and makes the iPad the only mobile device other than the Kindle Fire to receive Amazon’s special brand of video love.

“We listen to our customers and are always innovating on their behalf. Amazon Instant Video for iPad was one of our top customer requests, so we delivered,” an Amazon spokesperson told Wired via email.

Hacker finds flaw in hotel locks, can ruin your vacation with $50 DIY gadget

Hacker testing device.

As reported by Engadget, Cody Brocious, who was recently brought on by Mozilla to work on Boot to Gecko, is giving a presentation at the annual Black Hat conference in Vegas where he demonstrates a method for cracking open keycard locks with a homemade $50 device. The hack only works on locks made by Onity at the moment, and real life testing with a reporter from Forbes only succeeded in opening one of three hotel doors.