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Brammo will offer its electric motorcycles with a six-speed transmission beginning in 2012, the company announced today.

The bikes will be unveiled this Friday in Las Vegas shortly before competing in the MiniMotoSX race.

Motorcycle manufacturer Brammo could make a big impact on the motorcycle world with this change.

While electric motorcycles have been around for some time, and even had their own race on the Isle of Man in June 2009, up until now they've mainly been seen as bikes for early adopters interested in green tech, or those who might otherwise consider a moped.

Electric motorcycles are relatively quiet, have a limited range, and arguably offer limited speed and performance when compared to comparable racing bikes with internal combustion engines. They're also fighting an image problem in a market famous for exuding a longstanding sexy, powerful, and adventurous appeal.

"Electric motorcycle design has always been a bit of a balancing act in direct drive systems where great acceleration performance comes at the expense of low top-end speed," Brian Wismann, director of product development at Brammo, said in a statement.… Read more

Adobe will release a fix for a new critical bug in Flash Player on Friday for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Solaris, while Google Chrome users will be protected by Thursday through the browser's auto-update feature, Adobe said today.

"As part of our collaboration with Google, Google receives updated builds of Flash Player for integration and testing. Once testing is completed for Google Chrome, the release is pushed via the Chrome auto-update mechanism," Adobe said in a statement.

"Adobe is testing the fix across all supported configurations of Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Solaris and Android (more than 60 … Read more

Adobe today warned of a critical hole in Flash Player that is being exploited in the wild to take control of computers or cause them to crash.

"There are reports that this vulnerability is being exploited in the wild in targeted attacks via a Flash (.swf) file embedded in a Microsoft Word (.doc) file delivered as an email attachment, targeting the Windows platform," the company said in an advisory. "At this time, Adobe is not aware of any attacks via PDF targeting Adobe Reader and Acrobat. Adobe Reader X Protected Mode mitigations would prevent an exploit of … Read more

Zero Motorocycles has secured $17 million in financing from a group of investors led by Invus.

The Santa Cruz-based motorcycle manufacturer said today that it closed the financing deal on March 3 and plans to use the funds to increase its production capacity and expand its international sales. In addition to the initial funding, the company said it also has the opportunity for an additional $9 million in the coming months per the terms of the deal.

Zero Motorcycles, which is known for its all-electric drive train on street-legal motorcycles, does its manufacturing at a plant in the U.S., … Read more

Microsoft has warned that hackers are targeting a zero-day flaw that affects all Windows operating systems.

The flaw, which was first highlighted by Microsoft in an advisory in January, allows an attacker to inject a client-side script into the response to a request made by Internet Explorer. The script could allow a hacker to compromise the user--by performing actions online that appear to have originated from the user; by stealing information from the user; or by otherwise trying to fool them.

The company updated its January security advisory on Friday, saying that it had seen attacks in the wild.

Read … Read more

Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 for iPhone and iPad brings the legendarily gory and addictive fighting game to iOS, and it mostly hits the mark with only a couple of problems. What was formerly a smash hit (and somewhat controversial) stand-up arcade game went through a complete face-lift for the iPhone version. Gone are the stop-motion character animations from the original arcade game, replaced with beautiful 3D animations that re-create all your favorite characters' fighting moves. For the most part, this game looks and plays great, as long as you can get past the limited character set and the lack of … Read more

The 2011 lineup from electric-motorcycle maker Zero Motorcycles will be offered with an upgrade allowing them to be recharged at public charging stations, the company announced yesterday.

The company's line of all-electric motorcycles, which made their debut in the U.S. in 2009, has undergone a major overhaul, including new brakes and wheels. But most notable to those interested in green tech may be that Zero will now offer an upgrade that allows its motorcycles to accept DC (direct current) fast charging, and, with the use of a plug accessory, make it compatible with any charger using the SAE … Read more

A security researcher who created a tool he used to find numerous bugs in major browsers has released it to the public, saying the importance of its distribution is heightened by the leak to the Web of an unpatched vulnerability in Internet Explorer.

Michal Zalewski, a Google security researcher based in Poland, announced in a blog post this weekend that he was releasing a tool called "cross_fuzz" and said its distribution was a priority because at least one of the vulnerabilities discovered by the tool appears to be known to a mysterious third party.

"I have reasons … Read more

Spam may be down but malware marches merrily on.

That's the message from the "November Threat Landscape Report" released yesterday by security vendor Fortinet.

Global spam levels ultimately fell 12 percent in November after Dutch authorities took down a large Bredolab network made up of 140 different servers. The Bredolab botnet was typically used by cybercriminals to send out spam selling fake drugs, according to Fortinet. Spam had actually fallen as much as 26 percent the week after the network was dismantled but was able to stage a bit of a recovery afterward.

The ever-present Koobface botnet, … Read more