dotarray writes "An American aquarium supplier obviously has a gamer on the payroll, after naming two new forms of Acanthastrea coral after Activision's shooter Call of Duty: Black Ops. From the article: 'The Facebook post announcing the two new forms openly admits to the video gaming influence – and it’s not the first time a video game has inspired the Quality Marine coral namer – One of Swords points out that earlier this month, The Master Chief made its glorious pink-and-purple debut.'"

ddfall writes "After a recent update, Avira's anti-virus software reports its own AESCRIPT.DLL file as a trojan or spyware. From the article: 'The dodgy AntiVir virus definition file was quickly pulled and replaced with a new version – 7.11.16.146 – that resolves the problem, as explained in an official post on Avira's support forum.'"

judgecorp writes "A British man born with one arm has a Nokia phone dock embedded in his prosthetic limb. Apparently, Apple refused to have an iPhone suitably customized for the job. From the article: 'Mr Prideaux, of Wedmore, Somerset, said: "I think this is the first time this has ever been done in the world - and it is brilliant. I can now take calls and make texts just by using my one hand, while the phone sits inside my arm. The phone slots smoothly and securely within my limb and is easily removable, when required. I think this would help a lot of people with prosthetic arms - especially those who were not born with the disability. People who have had motorbike crashes and soldiers who have lost limbs - they could all benefit from this."'"

Just in time for Halloween, the New York state Division of Criminal Justice Services launched a Facebook application to help families know which houses contain sexual offenders. “Knowledge is power. New Yorkers now have another way to access up-to-date information about sex offenders in their neighborhoods,” DCJS Acting Commissioner Sean M. Byrne said in a release. “With Halloween around the corner, parents now have another tool to learn where offenders live so they can ensure their children stay away from those locations, as well as strangers’ homes. The Facebook app puts that important information at parents’ fingertips, whether they are at home or on the go.”

MC Hammer was among tech entrepreneurs announcing new products at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. The rapper's product is a new search engine called WireDoo. Sadly, it is not an index of things you can't touch, but instead a search engine focusing on relational items. Searching for the word "car" will bring up topics related to a car, like insurance, pricing and safety ratings. WireDoo is still being built and not available to the public yet.

It looks like the military has finally figured out a way to combine Americans' love of french fries with their love of blowing stuff up. The Air Force says all of its 40-plus aircraft models will be able to burn biofuels by 2013, three years ahead of schedule. From the article: "The Army wants 25 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2025. The Navy and Marines aim to shift half their energy use from oil, gas and coal by 2020. 'Reliance on fossil fuels is simply too much of a vulnerability for a military organization to have,' U.S. Navy Secretary Raymond Mabus said in an interview. 'We’ve been certifying aircraft on biofuels. We’re doing solar and wind, geothermal, hydrothermal, wave, things like that on our bases.'”

Alain Williams writes "An actress has sued Amazon.com for more than $1m (£639,000) after her age was posted on its Internet Movie Database. She says revealing her age on the site will lose her acting opportunities. From the article: 'The lawsuit states: "If one is perceived to be 'over-the-hill,' i.e., approaching 40, it is nearly impossible for an up-and-coming actress, such as the plaintiff, to get work as she is thought to have less of an 'upside,' therefore, casting directors, producers, directors, agents-manager, etc. do not give her the same opportunities, regardless of her appearance or talent."' So is her career dependent on lies?"

kkleiner writes "The current official human record for the Rubik's cube 3×3×3 puzzle is just 5.66 seconds. Now a robot called CubeStormer II did it in just 5.35 seconds. CubeStormer II is controlled by four Lego NXT 'bricks' that communicate via Bluetooth with a Samsung Galaxy SII smart phone. A special app on the phone takes a picture of the cube, solves the puzzle virtually, and then relays the solution to the Lego robot. From click to finish the whole process takes just seconds."

Musical group Marconi Union and Lyz Cooper, the UK's leading therapeutic sound practitioner, have released what they claim is the world's most relaxing music. They contend that the calming effects of "Weightless" are not subjective but are based on scientific evidence. The music was found to cause brainwaves and heart rate to synchronize with the rhythm, reduce blood pressure and lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol. In fact, Scientists played the song to 40 women and found it to be 11% more effective at helping them relax than songs by Enya, Mozart and Coldplay. The eight-minute track is so effective at inducing sleep, motorists have now been warned they should not listen to it while driving.

The Jones brothers may be criminals but they are not scam artists. When they try to sell you a bridge they're willing to deliver. The pair are accused of dismantling a western Pennsylvania bridge and selling the 15 1/2 tons of scrap metal for more than $5,000. From the article: "Police say 24-year-old Benjamin Arthur Jones and 25-year-old Alexander Williams Jones of New Castle used a blowtorch to break up the bridge in late September or early October. They face felony charges of criminal mischief, theft, receiving stolen property and conspiracy. Authorities say Alexander Jones told a recycling company employee that he had permission to carve the bridge for scrap and showed the employee cellphone photos of the bridge. The recycling company called police."

An anonymous reader writes "The DeLorean Motor Company just announced plans to launch an all-electric version of its gull-winged Back to the Future car in 2013. While it doesn't run on fusion power (yet), it still has a top speed of 125 mph driven by a 260 horsepower electric motor."

Hugh Pickens writes "Katharine Gammon writes that last week, the Kismot Indian restaurant in Edinburgh, Scotland, held a competition to eat the extra-hot Kismot Killer curry and several ambulances were called after some of the competitive eaters were left writhing on the floor in agony, vomiting and fainting. Paul Bosland, professor of horticulture at New Mexico State University and director of the Chile Pepper Institute, says that chili peppers can indeed cause death — but most people's bodies would falter long before they reached that point. 'Theoretically, one could eat enough really hot chiles to kill you,' says Bosland adding that a research study in 1980 calculated that three pounds of the hottest peppers in the world — something like the Bhut Jolokia — eaten all at once could kill a 150-pound person. Chili peppers cause the eater's insides to rev up, activating the sympathetic nervous system — which helps control most of the body's internal organs — to expend more energy, so the body burns more calories when the same food is eaten with chili peppers. But tissue inflammation could explain why the contestants in the Killer Curry contest said they felt like chainsaws were ripping through their insides. As for the contest, restaurant owner Abdul Ali admitted the fiery dish may have been too spicy after the Scottish Ambulance Service warned him to review his event. 'I think we'll tone it down, but we'll definitely do it next year.'"

robotissues writes "Cnet reviews 'I'm Getting Arrested,' an Android app that alerts your lawyer and loved ones if you have been arrested while peacefully demonstrating. The app makes it easy to broadcast a message via SMS in case all hell breaks loose."

judgecorp writes "Virgin Media's broadband services in parts of Scotland have been taken down by rats biting through the fibre optic cables. It's unusual to have an operator attribute an outage to such a cause, but we would bet it has happened before, given the fibres are carried in underground ducts."

An anonymous reader writes "Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is already camped out in front of an Apple store for the new iPhone 4S. From the article: 'Woz and his trusty Segway showed up at his local Apple store in Los Gatos Thursday and said he will stay there overnight. He added he already has two phones coming to his house, but doesn't mind hanging out for one more for his wife.'"

Zothecula writes "It appears that there's a number of customers willing to pay a lot to be in possession of a lifelike replica of their face or even their whole head ... or at least, REAL-f hopes so. The Japanese company offers extremely realistic 3D models of human faces and heads made using vinyl chloride resin, based on its own technique called 3DPFs (3 Dimension Photo Forms)."

MrSeb writes "It seems, as a culture, we have a deep-seated interest in robots and automatons, and if we can love an animal or other non-humanoid creature, what's to stop us from falling in love with a robot? Introducing Meka Robotics' S2 Humanoid Head: It has seven degrees of freedom, high-resolution FireWire cameras in each eye, zero-backlash Harmonic Drive gearing in the neck, and a ton of unnervingly-human movements and postures. She weighs 7.6kg (16.7lbs), has a pair of luminous, waggling doggy-like ears, and can be attached to a Meka torso and arm, if you prefer your robots to be slightly more corporeal. The girly, anime face is just a custom skin, incidentally: Meka will customize the shell to look like anything you desire. We're told that they value their client's confidentiality — and more importantly they don't judge. Powered by the open-source and extensible M3 control software, the S2 head (and body and arm) could be quite easily upgraded to use Hooman Samani's artificial endocrine and psychological models — and if you had the choice of falling in love with an amorphous, decidedly odd-looking furball, or a cute, perky anime girl, which would you choose?"

cramco writes "Moments ago, a U.K. software company announced at the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) conference in Seattle that it would send a lucky contestant to space. The sponsors, Red Gate, is holding a five-week DBA contest with the winner getting a trip to space. Why? And why put them through five weeks of quizzes and technical challenges presented within B-movie-looking videos involving rubber Martians, small dogs, alien body parts and one of their own acting very strangely? Well, as any developer knows, DBA stands for Don't Bother Asking."

First time accepted submitter Pat Attack writes "In an ironic twist of fate, Phoenix Jones, a self-styled super hero from Seattle, has landed in jail. Jones happened upon a group of people fighting in the street and tried to stop the fight using pepper spray. He was arrested by police on four counts of assault. The New York Daily News quotes Jones: 'I've been shot once and I don't really want it to happen again. I've been stabbed twice, hit with a baseball bat and had my nose broken,' he says. 'But in all those incidents I helped someone who was in danger. If someone is going to take that punishment it should be the guy in body armor,' he said."

eljefe6a writes "The Million Monkeys project has finished every work of Shakespeare. The last work was The Taming of the Shrew (insert shrewish joke here), which finished on October 6. I give my thoughts on going viral. If this article about going viral goes viral, it will create an infinite loop that will bring about the destruction of the world. The project source is released, too."