Hasta La Gadget!

Groundbreaking photography of the Horsehead Nebula has been combined from Hubble along with several telescopes and observatories, giving viewers a fly-through of the huge and beautiful Orion constellation. The new video, shared by the European Space Agency, mashes together imagery of the Nebula captured by Hubble last week with ground-based images and sky surveys, with a mixture of visible, near-infrared, and infrared graphics coming together for a hitherto-unseen virtual journey through space.

In total, results from six different sources have been combined for the video, which begins in the constellation of Orion and then zooms in to explore the Horsehead Nebula. The ESA team took new wide-field views from its own Herschel space observatory and mixed them with the graphics from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope; on the ground, meanwhile, content from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT), the ESO Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), and the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2) all contributed.

The Nebula itself is a combination of helium, hydrogen, and other gases, along with dust suspended within them, and was first spotted in 1888. Within it, the swirls of gas cause the formation of fledgling stars – the pinpricks of bright light in the photos and animation – while further streams of gas are piped out by virtue of its magnetic field.

Roughly 1,500 light years from Earth, astronomers estimate that the Horsehead Nebula measures a whopping 8 x 6 arcmins and is classed as a stellar nursery, a location where new stars are produced in mass. Attention on such nurseries has proliferated in recent months, after researchers spotted new locations with incredibly productive star creation.

Despite the eye-catching graphics in the ESA video, however, it’s worth noting that there’s some artistic license involved all the same. The stars, for instance, are “scientifically reasonable” in terms of their placement compared to actual constellations.

ESA mashes telescopes for Horsehead Nebula fly-through video is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Germany privacy regulators have fined Google €145,000 ($189,000) for its Street View cars inadvertently harvesting WiFi network data, in what was described as “one of the biggest data protection rules violations known.” The penalty is nearly the biggest amount permitted for negligent data rule contravention in Germany, and comfortably exceeds a €100,000 fine imposed in France two years ago. However, if regulators had their way [pdf link], Germany’s Data Protection and Freedom of Information commission says, Google would be fined far more.

The decision by German regulators to punish Google’s inadvertent data-gathering is the latest in a string of fines the search giant has been hit with. Between 2008 and 2010, the company admitted, its fleet of camera-toting Street View cars accidentally collected and stored wireless network information including emails, passwords, photos, and more.

Google maintains that it was an accidental goof, with global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer saying that the collection was not intended, that the data was unwanted, and that the Street View team did not look through it. However, privacy groups in Europe decided to re-open their investigations last year, after it was revealed that the engineer responsible for programming the systems knew what would be collected.

According to Hamburg data regulator Johannes Caspar, “internal control mechanisms must have severely failed” and made Google’s actions, in his view, one of the largest violations to-date. In fact, he argues that current limits on data protection failures should be considerably higher. “As long as violations of data protection laws are punishable by discount rates, the enforcement of data protection laws in a digital world with its high potential for abuse will be all but impossible” Caspar suggests.

New regulations could make the sting far greater in the future, however. One possibility being discussed by European policy makers is that the maximum should be based on a company’s total annual turnover, with calls for a 2-percent cap. Based on Google’s 2012 total revenues of more than $50bn, that could have meant a potential fine of one billion dollars, had the search giant been penalized under the proposed limits.

[via Bloomberg]

Google’s Street View goof sees biggest fine yet (but regulators wanted more) is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The Facebook Home Android launcher has proven to reasonably popular during its first week of availability. So far, Home has been downloaded over 500,000 times via the Google Play store in a bit over week of availability. While hundreds of thousands of installations sounds good for Facebook, Home is still on shaky ground.

The big problem is that Facebook Home continues to land predominantly negative reviews. The average rating for the application on Google Play is only 2.2. Facebook Home launched on April 12 in the United States and was available for international users as of April 16.

When you compare the launch of Facebook Home to other high-profile Android launches, 500,000 installations is definitely a modest start. However, currently Facebook Home is only compatible with a few of the Android devices on the market. By comparison, Instagram was downloaded 1 million times in 24 hours when it hit Android last year, but it worked on just about every Android device out there.

Interestingly, out of the approximately 10,900 reviews for Facebook Home on Google Play, 5617 of those are one start reviews. Despite poor reviews, Facebook Home appears to be steadily increasing its user numbers. On April 19 the app was listed with a number of installs between 100,000 and 500,000. Reports now indicate that the app is listed in the 500,000 to 1,000,000 install range.

[via The Next Web]

Facebook Home installations eclipse 500,000 mark is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

At his keynote at Digital Dragons, Quantic Dream COO, Guillaume de Fondaumiere, stated that innovation and experimental games doesn’t always result in unprofitable games. He cited Quantic Dream’s PlayStation 3 game, Heavy Rain, as a prime example of that. He states that it cost a total of $40 million to produce, market, and distribute the game. The game successfully generated $100 million for Sony, making it extremely profitable.

Foundaumiere says that Heavy Rain was highly experimental, and it pushed the boundaries of gaming, but it still became widely successful. The experimental game was not only successful in sales, but also in bringing exposure to Quantic Dream as well. Foundaumiere says that now gamers who loved Heavy Rain will be more likely to purchase the company’s next game, Beyond: Two Souls. Foundaumiere states that the game industry as a whole needs to start taking more risks and being more creative, instead of just creating the same games over and over again.

Fondaumiere also cites ThatGameCompany’s game Journey as an example. While he wasn’t able to release any sales figures for the game, or how much it cost to produce, he says that the game was both profitable for the company as well as Sony. He uses the Tomb Raider series as an example as to why lack of innovation can be deadly to the game industry. The franchise became irrelevant because the game company behind it overkilled it with too many similar sequels. By completely revamping the game’s story and gamestyle, Crystal Dynamics was able to revive the franchise.

At the keynote, Foundaumiere also touched on many other topics, including campaigning for the implementation of tax breaks for the game industry, as well as getting developers to be more responsible when developing their games. He says that children play their video games, and that even an ESRB rating won’t stop them. To make develop games more responsibly, he says that developers should “ban gratuitous violence in our games, that would be one step in the right direction.”

To conclude his keynote, Foundaumiere states that the gaming industry is currently going through a financial crisis. Part of the reason is due to the economy, but he also says that another part of it is the lack of creativity from developers. He says that the lack of creativity is the reason why gamers are “playing less.” He concludes that by offering new IPs and creations, developers will be able to get gamers, old and new, interested in their products once again.

[via Games Industry International]

Heavy Rain proves experimental games aren’t always unprofitable is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Yesterday, several of CBS’s Twitter accounts were hacked, including its main account, and its accounts for 60 Minutes, 48 Hours, and CBS Denver. The hackers got into the account and tweeted a series of things relating to President Obama and the United States being in cahoots with Al-Qaeda. The tweets also had links that led users to malware-infested sites. While CBS was able to regain access to its accounts, it was unable to figure out who was behind the attacks, until now.

The Syrian Electronic Army, the same group that hacked 3 of the BBC’s Twitter accounts, claimed credit for hacking into CBS’s accounts. In a statement through its official website, the Syrian Electronic Army also claimed credit for hacking into an account belonging to a radio station in San Diego. The group published a screenshot of one of the accounts that it had hacked. The groups stated that they used the hacked accounts and “published through it the truth”.

CBS and BBC weren’t the only victims of the Syrian Electronic Army. The group also hacked NPR’s Twitter accounts, the website and Twitter belonging to the Human Rights Watch, and a blog used by Reuters. On its website’s bio, the group states that they are trying to fight against the campaigns “led by the Arab media and Western on our Republic by broadcasting fabricated news about what is happening in Syria”.

Twitter has proceeded to block all Twitter accounts associated with the Syrian Electronic Army, however the group continues to make new ones. There have been several account hacks in the past. Recently Colin Powell’s Facebook had been hacked by the same hacker who obtained personal emails from members of the Bush family. It may be wise for these social networks to implement a two-factor authentication feature to better defend themselves from these type of situations in the future.

[via All Things D]

Syrian Electronic Army claims credit for CBS Twitter accounts hack is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.