Women sue: Caffeinated underwear doesn't zap fat

Underwear performance underwhelming, says suit targeting Maidenform's caffeine microcapsule undies that promise to burn cellulite.

Maidenform's caffeine-laced Shapewear may be like having a cup of joe in your shorts, but does it slim too?

(Credit: Maidenform)

Ah, functional underpants. We've seen claims that they can protect you from radiation, eat farts, and even burn fat.
So is anyone surprised to see a lawsuit disputing claims that caffeine-infused undies can help zap fat?
Two women are suing lingerie maker Maidenform for "consumer fraud, breach of warranty and unjust enrichment," according to Courthouse News.
The manufacturer says underwear in its Shapewear line has "Novarel Slim yarn technology" that "provides slimming benefits by reducing the appearance of cellulite. Novarel Slim microfibre incorporates microcapsules containing caffeine, retinol, ceramides, and other active principles."

I don't know about you, but the only principle I want in my underwear is that of boxers over briefs.
Anyway, the Brooklyn Federal Court suit brought by New Yorkers Christine Caramore and Michelle Martin claims the Shapewear didn't burn cellulite as advertised, according to New York Daily News.
"The Federal Trade Commission calls such claims about as credible as a note from the Tooth Fairy," Courthouse News quotes the suit as saying.
Observers have noted that the case recalls one in which Sketchers USA paid $40 million to settle FTC charges that the maker's Shape-ups shoes could help incinerate fat and tone muscle.

'Space Ferrari' crashes to Earth; more space junk coming soon

A one-ton European satellite makes a fiery return to Earth somewhere between the South Pole and...the North Pole.

It's back home, but not looking nearly as sporty as this anymore.

(Credit: European Space Agency)

UPDATE: The ESA now says that GOCE reached "atmospheric interface" above an area between the tip of South America and Antarctica, near the Falkland Islands. According to ESA's Space Debris Office: "This would put the main area over which any possible GOCE remnants fell to the southernmost regions of the Atlantic Ocean."
At some point on Sunday evening, the European Space Agency's Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer -- also known as GOCE or the "Ferrari of Space" for its sleek shape -- broke up and crashed back to Earth after spending four years in a low orbit precisely mapping our planet's gravity.
As for the obvious question about where exactly it crashed, well, there's been no sightings of fireballs in the sky or reports of damage from falling space junk just yet, but the official word from the ESA is that it re-entered the atmosphere somewhere between Antarctica and Siberia. Turns out that mapping GOCE's demise is done with a little less precision than the mapping the satellite itself once did.
The agency says it's likely that the majority of the one-ton craft burned up in the atmosphere, but an estimated 25 percent of it may have reached Earth's surface, probably landing in the western Pacific or eastern Indian Ocean.

After long outlasting its planned mission length, GOCE finally ran out of fuel about three weeks ago, beginning its long descent back home.
GOCE isn't the only over-the-hill satellite planning a reunion with Earth this week. A Japanese satellite known as IGS 4B will also undergo an uncontrolled reentry in the next few days. Once again, there's no way to tell where it will crash, but I'm willing to bet it might also land somewhere between Siberia and Antarctica.
Updated at 7:30 a.m. November 11 with more information about GOCE's reentry location.

HealthCare.gov now working for 'vast majority of users'

Obama administration says it repaired hundreds of software bugs and made hardware upgrades in improving the government-run online health insurance marketplace.

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  (Credit: CBSNews) 

 

The Obama administration announced Sunday it had met its deadline for improving HealthCare.gov after myriad technical issues plagued the launch of the government-run online health insurance marketplace.
After hundreds of software fixes and hardware upgrades, the site is now running "smoothly for the vast majority of users," according to a report (PDF) released Sunday by the US Department of Health and Human Services. The launch of HealthCare.gov on October 1 was met with complaints of bugs and slow load times that prevented millions of people from searching for coverage.
"The bottom line, HealthCare.gov on December 1 is night and day from where it was on October 1," Jeffrey Zients, a former acting director at the White House Office of Management and Budget who was tapped to supervise the repairs, told reporters Sunday. When the site launched, it had "an unacceptable user experience, marked by very slow response times, inexplicable user error messages, and frequent website crashes and user outages," he said.

During much of its first month, HealthCare.gov was down about 60 percent of the time due to hundreds of software bugs and insufficient hardware, according to the report. The situation was exasperated by insufficient systems monitoring and inadequate management oversite.
As a result of the overhaul, the site's uptime is now more than 90 percent and its error rate is below 1 percent, the DHHS report said. Turning in an average page response time of less than a second, the site can now accommodate 50,000 users at the same time and at least 800,000 visits per day.
While the report claims that "dramatic progress" has been made toward improving consumer experience on the site, it cautions that "there is more work to be done to continue to improve and enhance the website" in the coming weeks.
This Web site is the centerpiece for President Obama's Affordable Care Act, and there have already been plenty of hearings at the US Capitol determining who to pin the blame on within the administration. Obama himself deemed the glitches as unacceptable, saying last month that the online health insurance marketplace "has not lived up to the expectations of the American people."
Tony Trenkle, who oversaw the site's creation as the chief information officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), announced his resignation in November. His departure "to take a position in the private sector" was framed at the time by the CMS as part of a management restructuring within the department.

Google pays those who find Android security glitches

Those who pinpoint vulnerabilities in Google's mobile operating system can earn cash rewards, similar to those paid out for identifying bugs in Chrome.

 

 

Google has expanded its bug-bounty program to cover vulnerabilities uncovered in Android.
The program began with Chrome and expanded to Google Web sites and other open-source software projects. Under the program, people who find security holes get paid bounties. That often equates to a few hundred dollars, but particularly skilled attacks can mean big money -- $50,000 last week for one expert who goes by the name Pinkie Pie, for example.
The broader expansion, called the Patch Reward Program, now includes Android, Google security team member Michal Zalewski said in a blog post Monday.
The program also includes three widely used Web server packages: Apache's http, Nginx, and Lighttpd, Zalewski said.

Chrome, Opera pass Epic Citadel demo's Web graphics test

Two new browsers have followed Firefox with support for the Web-based 3D gaming engine. But Chrome and Opera don't use Firefox's asm.js technology approach.

The Epic Citadel demo of Unreal Engine 3 running in a browser using high-speed JavaScript and WebGL.

Chrome and Opera have become the first browsers to match Mozilla Firefox's support for Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 and the Web-based Epic Citadel demo that's built on the 3D graphics technology. The demo's computing challenges include 3D graphics covered with 2D textures, rustling leaves, flowing water, reflective stone floors, lens flare, and shadows and other lighting effects.
Mozilla and Epic Games demonstrated the advanced Web programming in March using a combination of Mozilla technologies: Emscripten that converts C or C++ software into JavaScript, and asm.js that can run a specialized subset of JavaScript much faster.
Mozilla has been trying to drum up support for asm.js, but Chrome and Opera used their own JavaScript technology. (Opera Software, earlier this year, shifted away from its browser engine, adopting Chrome's and benefiting from Google's investment in the software.) The Epic Games demo also uses the WebGL standard for 3D graphics, which Chrome, Mozilla, and Opera all support.

Epic Games added Chrome 31 and Opera 18 to its Unreal Engine 3 supported browsers list. Martin Best, the product manager of games at Mozilla, noted the rival browsers' achievement in a blog post Tuesday.
The new browser support is notable, given the push toward Web programs that run on any machine with a browser -- cross-platform flexibility that has big advantages over writing native code that only works on iOS, Windows, or some other specific operating system. But the maturity and consistency of Web programming still leave a lot to be desired, especially for complicated, performance-intensive Web apps.
Mozilla and Google got their Unreal performance with significantly different approaches. Asm.js uses a technology called ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation for its performance boost, with the Web app sending a "use asm" hint to the browser to trigger the technology. Compilation is the process of converting human-written source code into machine language that a computer can execute. AOT compilation means the browser can build an optimized version of the software in advance.

The Epic Citadel demo of Unreal Engine 3 running in a browser using high-speed JavaScript and WebGL.

But Chrome uses a different approach with its V8 JavaScript engine called just-in-time (JIT) compilation that's standard nowadays for most Web sites and Web apps. The JIT approach means the browser compiles the JavaScript, monitors how it runs, and optimizes with new compilation as it goes.
Google likes its approach because improvements to the JIT can mean all JavaScript across the Web gets faster, not just what's specifically created to take advantage of asm.js.
Google's "V8 people seem to want to JIT-optimize harder, not process 'use asm,'" said Mozilla Chief Technology Officer Brendan Eich, but he's not convinced the performance will catch up to AOT compilation. In his experience, Unreal Engine 3 on Chrome shows more "jank" from pauses triggered by recompilation and Firefox is faster to start running the software.
"Yet they do well," Eich said, praising Chrome's virtual machine that runs the JavaScript programs. "V8 is a formidable JIT'ing virtual machine."
In my tests of the two, Chrome showed a higher frame rate on a 2012 Retina-equipped MacBook Pro. Firefox Nightly version 28.0a1 (2013-11-26) showed 52.4fps, but Chrome 33.0.1712.4-dev ran at 59.8fps.
Both versions sent the CPU fan whirring, though, so there's still work to be done.

Update, 11:24 a.m. PT: Adds comment from Google.

The Epic Citadel demo of Unreal Engine 3 running in a browser using high-speed JavaScript and WebGL.

Reports of Comet ISON's death may be greatly exaggerated

The sun-grazing comet spent Thanksgiving visiting our neighborhood star, and seems to have emerged from its shadow to tell the tale.\

ISON (or fragments thereof) emerges from behind the sun on its path back out of the solar system and past Earth.

(Credit: ESA/NASA/SOHO/GSFC)

It made for perhaps the nerdiest Thanksgiving moment ever when I plugged a Google Chromecast into my mother's TV on Thursday and proceeded to put a live NASA Google+ Hangout on Comet ISON's sun-grazing journey on the screen in the living room.
By the time all the pumpkin pie had been knocked back and the turkey set to work lulling me into a coma, ISON had failed to emerge from the sun's shadow after reaching perihelion, leading many observers to conclude that the comet had been destroyed by its close encounter with the massive nuclear furnace at the center of our galactic cul-de-sac.

ISON is a breed of comet fresh in from the Oort Cloud, the likes of which have not been observed from Earth in many years. If it were to survive perihelion, it would be flung back out to deep space, perhaps giving off a spectacular light show for us on planet No. 3 in the process.
That's the best-case scenario. Worst-case scenario is that ISON is basically swallowed by the sun, and for most of Thursday that seemed to be the actual-case scenario as well.
Then NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory satellite sent back an image that seemed to show...something. Here's how NASA's Karen Fox described it in a blog post:

The question remains whether it is merely debris from the comet, or if some portion of the comet's nucleus survived, but late-night analysis from scientists with NASA's Comet ISON Observing Campaign suggest that there is at least a small nucleus intact.

In other words, Comet ISON seems to have survived in some form, but it's not yet clear if what remains of it will put on the spectacular light show in the coming weeks that we've been hearing about for months now.
Fox says ISON has been behaving in unexpected ways, so the way its long-anticipated Thanksgiving perihelion went down seems true to form. Now it's time to sit back and await the big show...or the big disappointment.

Google Nexus phones reportedly susceptible to SMS attacks

 

 

Google's latest Nexus smartphones are vulnerable to an attack in which someone could force the phones to reboot or lose their network connection by sending them a large number of a certain kind of SMS message, according to PC World. Bogdan Alecu, a system administrator at Dutch IT services company Levi9, reportedly found that the vulnerability can occur when an attacker sends about 30 so-called Flash SMS messages -- messages that appear immediately on the phone's screen on arrival -- to the Galaxy Nexus, the Nexus 4, or the Nexus 5. If the messages aren't promptly dismissed, it opens the phones up for attack. Alecu plans to present his findings Friday at the DefCamp security conference in Bucharest, Romania.

One of the problems Nexus users face is that they won't be automatically alerted with an audio tone when a Flash SMS message is received, which could allow an attacker to send a lot of them quickly before they're noticed or dismissed, PC World reports.
According to Alecu, the SMS overload can result in several issues, including the phone rebooting, which is the most likely outcome. In that case, if a PIN is required to unlock the SIM card, the phone won't connect to the network after rebooting. Another problem that can occur is that the messaging app crashes, but the system then automatically restarts it.
Alecu told PC World that while the issue appears to affect the latest Nexus smartphones running Android versions Ice Cream Sandwich through KitKat, it hasn't worked on other phones he's tested.
We've reached out to Google for comment on how the company plans to address the issue and will update this post when we learn more. Alecu told PC World that he reported the issue to Google, but that it hasn't yet been addressed.

Wave fingers, make faces: The future of computing at Intel

The chip giant is working on "perceptual computing" technology that will sense your emotions and your body language. Here's an inside look.

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Anil Nanduri, an Intel executive working on perceptual computing, demos technology that senses users' individual fingers. 

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- If the next big wave in devices turns out to be gestures and eye tracking, Intel wants to be ready. Intel is the king of PCs, but it hasn't always been ahead of evolving innovations. Its processors power more than 80 percent of the world's computers and the vast majority of its servers, but Intel has made little headway in smartphones and tablets. To spur interest in PCs again, as well as persuade more mobile device makers to use its chips, Intel has devoted significant resources and efforts to something it calls "perceptual computing."
Perceptual computing may sound like a jargony, marketing term, but it does just what it says -- it uses the senses to help technology interpret what's going on around it. Those features, such as gestures, facial recognition, and voice recognition, should all make devices more "natural, intuitive, and immersive," says Anil Nanduri, one of the Intel executives in charge of the company's efforts in perceptual computing.

 

 

The goal is getting "sensory inputs that make [computers] more human like," Nanduri said. "Once you give computers the ability to assess depth, a lot of wonderful things can happen."
Devices will be able to sense emotion and detect a person's biometric data simply using a camera. They'll be able to carry on conversations with users and understand context -- or what "play me some jazz" means -- instead of simply following commands. Computers will be able to pick out individual fingers instead of simply recognizing an entire hand or the fact that a person is present. And they'll create more immersive augmented reality, such as digital versions of children's pop-up books.
In the case of Intel, the company is placing particular emphasis on vision and teaching devices to recognize depth. That's made possible through 3D cameras. The company has partnered with Creative on 3D cameras, which should show up integrated into devices such as PCs and tablets in the second half of 2014.
A big pitfall for companies like Intel is the hyper focus on speeds and feeds, making technology that's the most powerful without necessarily considering all the ways it might be used. For perceptual computing, Intel says it's starting with software and users first and then moving to the hardware.
To do that, Intel released a software development kit last year to get developers interested in the technology. Since that time, the SDK has been downloaded more than 26,000 times. Intel is so serious about perceptual computing that it has even sponsored contests -- with $100 million in prizes -- to get app developers interested in the technology. Intel will announce the latest crop of winners soon.
"For the users, what am I getting for it?" Nanduri said. "That's why we started a year early, focusing on the ecosystem more so than talking about bringing this into hardware or a device."

Yuriy Kozachuk, an application engineer in Intel's perceptual computing lab, demos technology that tracks facial expressions and translates them to characters in a game. 

But now Intel believes the ecosystem has advanced enough that it's time to talk hardware. Devices will show up next year that contain elements of Intel's perceptual computing efforts. And it hopes all of those will use its chips. Technically, some features could be possible using chips such as those from Qualcomm. However, Intel says the amount of horsepower needed to run the features smoothly will require its higher-end chips. Initially, the perceptual computing features will only work with Intel's Core line traditionally used in PCs and some tablets, not its lower-power Atom line used in mobile devices. However, the company plans to eventually make the features run on its more energy efficient processors, and it's also adding accelerators, tools, and graphics to its chips to take advantage of the perceptual computing capabilities.

"We're already thinking ahead and looking at the use cases people need two to three years out from now and putting them into our silicon," Nanduri said.
Some elements of perceptual computing have already shown up in products. The Kinect for Microsoft's Xbox is one example, as are Siri and Google Now for voice recognition. However, Intel says it's taking those a step further by focusing on short-range interaction of less than a meter. That means the technology needs a very fine level of recognition, with the ability to pick out specific fingers instead of just noticing an arm or if entire person is present.
But it still will be a challenge for Intel to make features that are truly useful and not just gimmicky. Intel acknowledges that gesturse and other features won't be ideal for all instances. Computer users, for instance, won't be making slideshows by waving their hands in the air. But they might use gestures when showing the slideshow to friends.
Gaming, in particular, is one area where perceptual computing could really take off, Nanduri said, as well as education and related fields. And it's not just about PCs. This technology will show up in a wide range of devices in the coming years, he said.
The company is sure to provide more details and demos in January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
"Perceptual computing is about everything and is device agnostic in many ways," Nanduri said. "It's going to be everywhere."

'Fast & Furious' actor Paul Walker dies in car crash: Publicist

SANTA CLARITA, California: Paul Walker, the star of the "Fast & Furious" movie series, died on Saturday in a car crash that killed two people north of Los Angeles, his publicist said. He was 40.

Walker died on Saturday afternoon, Ame Van Iden told the Associated Press.

A statement on the actor's Facebook page said he was a passenger in a friend's car, and that Walker was in the area to attend a charity event for his organization Reach Out Worldwide.     

 A statement on the actor's Facebook page said he was a passenger in a friend's car, and that Walker was in the area to attend a charity event for his organization Reach Out Worldwide.
   "We... are stunned and saddened beyond belief by this news," the statement said.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's department said that deputies found a car engulfed in flames when they responded to a report of a collision in the community of Valencia. Two people who were found in the car were pronounced dead at the scene.

The Santa Clarita Signal reports a red Porsche crashed into a light pole and tree and burst into flames.

Walker was working on "Fast & Furious 7" at the time of his death. He also starred in the suspense drama, "Hours," which is set for release this month.

Pop music finally put to good use tracking space junk

The dipole antennas of the Murchison Widefield Array radio telescope can pick up reflections from up to 620 miles away. 

Australian broadcaster Triple J plays a mix of pop and alternative tunes that are being recruited to serve science -- by helping track space junk orbiting above us.
The station is among FM broadcasters whose signals are bouncing off decaying satellites and other debris and into the giant "ear" that is the Murchison Widefield Array in Western Australia.
The high sensitivity of the radio telescope launched earlier this year allows it to detect objects smaller than 1 meter (3.2 feet), according to its director Steven Tingay of Curtin University. Tingay wants to use the array to improve knowledge of the thousands of bits of scrap that may threaten working satellites.
FM radio transmitters send waves over the Earth but also into space, where they bounce off satellites and space junk. Some of those waves get reflected back to Earth.

The array, which consists of 2,048 dual-polarization dipole antennas arranged in 128 formations of four-by-four tiles, is a precursor to the international Square Kilometer Array radio telescope. It can pick up reflected waves from objects up to 620 miles away.
In 2009, an Iridium communications satellite collided with a defunct Russian satellite, creating an unprecedented cloud of more than 2,000 bits of debris, which worried operators of other satellites as well as the International Space Station.
Earlier this month, the European Space Agency's 1-ton Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer fell back to Earth, mostly burning up in the atmosphere with bits hitting the southern Atlantic.
In a study in The Astronomical Journal, Tingay and collaborators showed how they used the Murchison Widefield Array to track the ISS based on how it reflected FM radio broadcast signals originating in southwestern Australia.
"Because the telescope has such a large field of view, monitoring vast patches of the sky at any given time, we can simultaneously image hundreds of these objects every day and track them for long enough to determine their orbits," Tingay says in a recent video.
"We can do all this at the same time as our primary mission. That is, to look way back into cosmic time."

Microsoft, bored of bashing Apple, bashes Samsung

It's been established that Microsoft believes the i Pad has many, many flaws. Now Redmond would like you to know that the Samsung Galaxy Tab isn't all that either.

Look how substandard the Galaxy Tab is.

If you're in business, you have to get used to criticism.
If you're in the gadget business, however, you're nobody unless Microsoft criticizes you.
What other conclusion can one reach after Redmond's assault on its various rivals?
There's the constant poking at the iPad's foibles. Then there's the sublimely gauche Scroogled campaign, which accuses Google of being little more than a malevolent dictatorship.
Samsung, though, has been relatively free of Microsoft's barbed fire. Until now, that is.
For Microsoft has chosen the Thanksgiving weekend to give thanks that its own Surface RT is so much more intelligent and useful than the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.
I'll admit I haven't seen an enormous proliferation of Tab 10.1s adorning coffee shops, holding cells, and public transport. So it makes for a slightly odd target for Microsoft.
However, Redmond wants you to be clear, should you be vacillating between a Tab and a Surface RT, that its machine is superior.

It has a full-size USB port, which allows you to do, well, full-size USB porting. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 has one micro USB port, which means you can't power and connect to an external device at the same time.
And then there's the need for connectors that you have to buy as extras.
Microsoft is looking to find any and every possible rational reason to persuade you that the Surface is all things to all people with computing needs.
Indeed, more ads targeting the Galaxy Tab appeared last week -- including a family sharing comparison similar to one of the most recent anti-iPad ads.
Sadly, the initial launch of Surface, with its embarrassing dancing teens and business people, continues to hamper progress.
When people don't have their emotions positively disposed to your brand, it's so much harder to persuade them that you're as great as you think you are.