Robots evolve to learn cooperation, hunting

In a series of experiments described in the journal PLoS Biology, Dario Floreano of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne and Laurent Keller of the University of Lausanne reported that simple, small-wheeled Khepera and Alice robots can evolve behaviors such as collision-free movement and homing techniques in only several hundred “generations.”
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10432608-1.html

Multitasking: Intel does, iPad doesn’t

How important is the ability to multitask on tablet-class devices like Apple’s iPad? Important enough that the feature will likely be touted as a trump card for Intel-based smartphones such as a tablet-size phone from LG due later this year.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10444141-64.html

Google censors ‘Lolita,’ but not ‘bestiality’

It seems like only yesterday that news surfaced that naughty words were being replaced by hash marks on Android phones. Should you have missed this purely puritan entertainment, words such as the very common one beginning with an “f” were being censored by the built-in voice-to-text feature found on Google’s mobile operating system. Even the latter half of “BS” became “####”.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10444868-71.html

Mad-cow proteins created in the lab

Researchers from the United States and China have artificially created a disease-causing prion using proteins from mice. Prions are proteins that occur naturally in the cells of mammals. Infectious prions are abnormal, misshapen versions of this protein that cause neurodegenerative diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as mad cow disease.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/01/29/tech-prion-disease.html

Mozilla releases first mobile Firefox browser

Firefox for the Maemo 5 platform has a few interesting conceits that set it apart from other mobile browsers, like Opera Mobile and Opera Mini. Mozilla is banking on the uniqueness of its claim to fame–third-party, customizable browser extensions–to help its browser win mobile market share.
http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-10444754-12.html

Chrome 5 debuts more settings options

Google updated its Chrome browser’s developer’s builds to version 5 for Windows and Mac today, the first time any version of Chrome has reached that milestone. Google was expected to push version 5 out to the public before the end of the month – Download Chrome.
http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-10444735-12.html

DNA helps link Obama and Senator-elect Brown

Today, genealogists are linking President Obama to Senator-elect Scott Brown. That’s right: the man who took away the president’s filibuster-proof margin in the U.S. Senate is also, it turns out, a 10th cousin, says Chris Child, the New England Historic Genealogical Society researcher who helped uncover the link through not only good old-fashioned research (sites like Ancestry.com help), but in part through DNA
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-10444540-247.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Google phasing out support for IE6

As of March 1, Google will no longer support IE6 on its Google Docs and Google Sites services, it announced Friday. IE users will have to upgrade to at least version 7 if they want to use those products, as “many other companies have already stopped supporting older browsers like Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers,” the company said in a blog post.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10444574-265.html

Tearing down Twitter’s walls

Twitter has become hugely popular, but it remains a closed communication medium. Yes, it has opened its data stream and maintains an open API approach to its development, but Twitter is still a silo.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10444454-16.html

MacKay promises landing strip for UFOs

We will provide money to build a landing strip for UFOs at Harbour Mille,” said MacKay, speaking in St. John’s to announce federal funding for road construction in the province [...] A model plane flier said an earlier a comment from the Prime Minister’s Office about a mysterious object spotted near Harbour Mille is laughable.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/01/29/nl-ufo-follow-129.html?ref=rss