Sophisticated hacking attacks on U.S. banks in recent months have distinctive qualities that are leading investigators to believe another nation may be behind the assault. The likely suspect is Iran, which officials believe may be trying to even the score for American hacking of its nuclear program.
At least nine U.S. financial institutions have been hit since September; more attacks are expected. And part of what makes them suspicious is that they seem calculated not to steal account data or money, but instead to disrupt the banking system.
Originally published on Fri January 11, 2013 2:14 pm
Cities have plenty of reasons to care about how much food is being produced within their limits — especially now that community and guerrilla gardeners are taking over vacant urban lots across the country. But most cities can only guess at where exactly crops are growing.
And in Chicago, researchers have found that looks — from ground level, anyway — can be very deceiving when it comes to food production.
The MaKey MaKey invention kit includes a plan for making a "banana piano," helping the Kickstarter project make it to the site's best-of-2012 list. Kickstarter says 2.2 million people pledged nearly $320 million in 2012.
Originally published on Wed January 9, 2013 3:54 pm
Kickstarter, the crowd-funding site that pairs indie-minded inventors and entrepreneurs with online investors, fully funded more than 18,000 projects in 2012, according to its end-of-year analysis. The site says that in total, more than 2.2 million people pledged a total of nearly $320 million. For the year, 17 projects raised more than $1 million.
Many popular food games for computers and devices like tablets are actually "advergames", created by food manufacturers to market their products to kids.
Originally published on Wed January 9, 2013 1:02 pm
Some kids can't get enough of online games where they can pretend to run a candy factory or decorate cakes. But children who play with these games may eat more, and eat more junk food, even if the game features fruit or other healthful choices, according to new research.
The Consumer Electronics Show opened this week in Las Vegas. It's supposed to give the world a glimpse of what's coming next in technology. But the absence of major consumer-technology companies such as Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, has led some to wonder whether CES still matters.
Now, this week, the American Dialect Society announced its word of 2012, and the winner comes from Twitter. The word is hashtag. The symbol for a hashtag looks like the pound sign on your phone. Five years ago, Twitter introduced it as a way to organize tweets and sort through trends. Now, hashtags are everywhere. Movie trailers use them to promote the latest blockbuster, shirts and hats sport the hashtag #YOLO for you only live once. Hashtags even pop up in conversations with friends like hashtag #eyeroll.
