Hasta La Gadget!

Gov. Rick Snyder approved plans for the city of Detroit to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy on Thursday, calling it the “only reasonable alternative” for the cash-strapped city to survive.

In a letter addressed to Detroit’s emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, and Michigan Treasurer Andy Dillon, Snyder argued that the bankruptcy — the largest ever for an American city — was an ultimately inevitable “last resort.”

Just last January, however, Snyder told The Huffington Post in an interview that he felt Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy was not efficient enough to address Detroit’s issues in a timely fashion. “The track record, so far, has been pretty dismal,” he said. “And the associating stigma of what it does, trying to get people to go there in the interim, is even worse.”

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After a laborious wait, Gina McCarthy was confirmed as EPA administrator in a 59-40 Senate vote on Thursday.

Many environmental organizations took the opportunity to publicly congratulate McCarthy on the new position. Natural Resources Defense Council President Frances Beinecke called McCarthy “one of the most qualified, capable and collaborative leaders ever to head the Environmental Protection Agency.” Michael Brune, Executive Director of the Sierra Club, voiced similar sentiments. “Gina McCarthy has a proven record of protecting American families and getting things done,” he said in a press release.

Yet a number of Republican senators came out against the new administrator, despite a deal struck earlier this week to clear five nominations, including McCarthy’s.

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The next time you are fiddling with your smartphone over the dinner table, and you get chided for it, just tell the person off that you are making some money. That ought to get the attention of them manners Nazis, […]

Like It , +1 , Tweet It , Pin It Original content from Ubergizmo.

WIRED, Stan Winston Studios, Legacy Effects, YouTube, and Conde Nast Entertainment all decided to get together and build something truly epic – a 9-foot, 9-inch-tall robot. Yeah, not my idea of a great idea that will benefit mankind, but it’s not like they asked me. Still, this thing is pretty awesome. Even if it could rip humans limb from limb.

And it has four arms to do the ripping. This was all for the opening day of the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con. They got Adam Savage to help unveil it. It’s pretty freakin’ epic, awesome, amazing, fantastic and scary. Check it out below…

Yeah, it’s actually a dude in a robot suit, but that doesn’t make it any less impressive. You try building a costume that looks this good.

I can easily believe that there were many casualties in the building process, just like the robot says.

[via YouTube]

The government has called on handset makers to implement technology that will potentially reduce the instances of smartphone thefts, which are increasingly on the rise. Several makers were sent an open letter months ago by New York Attorney General Schneiderman, as well as District Attorney George Gascón of San Francisco, criticizing them for not taking a more proactive approach to the issue.

Now two of those companies – Apple and Samsung – are having their anti-theft technology put to the test at a meeting under the Secure Our Smartphones (S.O.S) Initiative. The devices being tested are Apple’s iPhone 5 and its Activation Lock, and Samsung’s GALAXY S 4 and its Lojack for Android. The meeting was underway today in San Francisco.

Said the two in a statement: “While we are appreciative of the efforts made by Apple and Samsung to improve security of the devices they sell, we are not going to take them at their word. Today we will assess the solutions they are proposing and see if they stand up to the tactics commonly employed by thieves. Together, we are working to ensure that the industry embeds persistent technology that is effective, ubiquitous and free to consumers in every smartphone introduced to the market by next year.”

The meeting includes reps from the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center, more commonly known as NCRIC, according to the statement. Under the test, the smartphones in question will be “treated” like they were stolen, presumably with the security features being utilized to demonstrate what the result would be. There’s no word yet on whether either of them satisfied the state and federal ambitions for the technology.

Although California and New York are being most vocal about the move, the S.O.S Initiative is a national coalition that is enjoying participation from public safety activists, various DAs and AGs, city comptrollers, law enforcement, and consumer advocates. All of this follows the launch of a stolen cell phone database that went live in the US in October 2012.

SOURCE: NY AG

iPhone 5 and GALAXY S 4 anti-theft technology put to test is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
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