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Calif. law passed to halt employer snooping on social media

Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown took to social media today to announce that he signed two privacy laws protecting employees and students from bosses and universities wanting to snoop on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media accounts.

"Today I am signing Assembly Bill 1844 and Senate Bill 1349, which prohibit universities and employers from demanding your email and social media passwords," he wrote in a Facebook post. "California pioneered the social media revolution. These laws protect Californians from unwarranted invasions of their social media accounts."

AB 1844 was designed to prohibit employers from requiring an employee or … Read more

Laundry additive turns shirts, pants into pollution eaters

Last year, we heard about the first article of Catalytic Clothing, an experimental dress that pulls pollutants out of the atmosphere. Now the technology is moving along to the point where it could be used as a liquid laundry additive and become part of our regular clothes washing chores.

According to a release from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council in the U.K., "Within just two years, we could all be wearing clothes that purify the air as we simply move around in them."… Read more

The 404 1,132: Where we're waiting in line for the iPhone Whatever (podcast)

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Apple lines are party time...for a night or two.

- Everpurse fashionably charges smartphones.

- Google Maps shows how we spent our summer vacations.

- Missouri University correlates social-media success to self-esteem.

Bathroom break video: Remote-control rat pranks New Yorkers.… Read more

Supercomputer clicked together from Legos and Raspberry Pi's

The flexible, affordable Raspberry Pi Linux computer system has been hacked, tinkered, and transformed into all sorts of creations since its introduction. There's a Raspberry Pi Apple TV, a Raspberry Pi ocean explorer, and Raspberry Pi smart glasses.

Now there's a Raspberry Pi supercomputer. How do you turn a 700MHz mini system into a supercomputer? You use 64 of them and mount them in a rack made out of Legos.… Read more

Your sleep patterns, now in soundtrack form

I had that dream again the other night. The one where I (oops!) forgot to go to class all semester and it's time for the final, and OMG, but wait, maybe somehow I can fake my way through it?

Apparently, this dream plans to dog me no matter how far away from college I get. I've had it so many times it deserves its own soundtrack. And now, it turns out, it can get one.

Computer scientists from Finland's University of Helsinki have developed software that makes music out of sleep patterns. … Read more

Eek! Remote-controlled cyborg cockroaches are real

If Borg ships have vermin on them, they look exactly like a project researchers at North Carolina State University are working on.

These intrepid scientists have taken a lightweight chip with a wireless receiver and transmitter and attached it to a cockroach like a little backpack. For the record, large Madagascar hissing cockroaches are the roach of choice. … Read more

Top 5 home theater essentials (2012)

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It's easy to go over the top when it comes to outfitting your dream home theater system. One minute you're checking out HD projectors, and the next minute you're trying to figure out how to convert your entire basement into a giant subwoofer.

But it never hurts to start with the basics. In this CNET Top 5, I asked CNET Associate Editor Matthew Moskovciak for the essential ingredients in today's modern home theater system.

Design 3D lava lamps with gestures on Handy-Potter

Gestural interfaces like the Leap promise a world in which we'll all be driving cars and flying planes by waving our hands in the air, "Minority Report"-style.

Pudue University is joining the fun with the Handy-Potter, a design tool that lets you fashion 3D virtual objects with your bare hands.

Recently presented at the ASME 2012 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference in Chicago, the research won the All-Conference Best Paper award.

The Handy-Potter is a departure from traditional computer-aided design. It works with the Microsoft Kinect to track the user's body and hand gestures, modifying 3D shapes according to motions such as waving or pulling. … Read more

Smart kitchen helps chefs who aren't too smart

Let's face it: Opening up a cookbook, turning the pages, and reading a recipe is hard work. Thankfully, scientists in Japan recognize this and have developed a kitchen that puts recipes right on your food.

Unfortunately, you still have to read, and actually try to cook, by following instructions projected onto your food. But if you go astray a robot called Phyno is there to help out.

Developed by Yu Suzuki and colleagues at Kyoto Sangyo University, the "cooking support system" is being presented next week at the 10th Asia Pacific Conference on Computer Human Interaction (APCHI 2012) in Matsue, Japan.

With a combination of image processing and speech interaction, it's aimed at novice cooks who find recipe jargon confusing.… Read more

Do AT&T's FaceTime limits break FCC rules?

Tuesday's tech news roundup honors our future robot overlords:

AT&T is being accused of data-plan discrimination and breaking FCC rules regarding new iPhone FaceTime options. AT&T recently announced that iPhone customers could use FaceTime video chat service over a cellular network if they have the new shared data plan. (Previously, FaceTime was limited to Wi-Fi.) But several groups have spoken out about the limit and questioned if it follows FCC guidelines. AT&T responded saying it does not believe this breaks any FCC rules, since FaceTime was offered to all customers over Wi-Fi and … Read more