miller

If Earth had rings like Saturn, the sky would look like this

The sunsets would be impossibly beautiful. The evening sky would glitter with a thousand silver arcs. If Earth had rings like Saturn, you'd only have to look up to get a spectacular show.

Veteran astronomy artist Ron Miller has created some stunning views of what our skies would look like if Earth were a ringed planet, and they make me want to launch a Kickstarter campaign to make it happen.

In a recent article for sci-fi blog io9, Miller presented his wild visions of a ringed Earth and what the sky would look like from various places on our … Read more

Twitter hires security expert Charlie Miller

Twitter is creating a security dream team. Charlie Miller, famous for his hacks on the iPhone and MacBook Air, finding holes in iOS and devising ways to hijack Android phones with NFC, will be starting his new job at the microblogging company next week.

Miller will be working with encryption expert Moxie Marlinspike, who was hired by Twitter last year.

"Monday I start on the security team at Twitter. Looking forward to working with a great team there!" Miller tweeted this morning.

Miller told CNET today that he can't talk about his new job until he gets … Read more

News Corp. digital chief Jon Miller exits

News Corp. digital chief Jonathan Miller is out as of the end of September.

The executive, who had mixed success trying to drag a disparate range of old-media businesses into the digital age -- or, in the case of MySpace, trying to keep it there -- is apparently heading for the exit as a result of the big restructuring that will divide News into two freestanding companies.

AllThingsD first reported Miller's pending departure, which News confirmed with a press release.

It has been a rough season for digital-media execs. Interim Yahoo CEO Ross Levinsohn, who helped stabilize the company … Read more

Leap Motion: Gesture tech's come-hither allure

Developers eager to be among the first to create applications for Leap Motion's new gesture control system think it could be used to auto-translate sign language.

That was among the details the company released this morning about the initial round of requests from developers to design tools that work with the Leap -- technology that lets users control what's on their computers with hundredth of a millimeter accuracy with nothing more than their fingers or their hands.

The San Francisco company said that in the two months since pulling back the wraps on the Leap, more than 26,… Read more

Researcher uses NFC to attack Android, Nokia smartphones

LAS VEGAS -- Security specialist Charlie Miller demonstrated at the Black Hat security conference today a way to hijack an Android smartphone via the Near Field Communication (NFC) technology that's turned on by default on the device, and said he's found problems with NFC implementations on Nokia as well.

NFC tags have built-in antennas and are found in stickers and smart cards that are designed to transfer data to NFC readers, to send specific phone numbers and Web addresses to smartphones and other benign purposes. They require close proximity, a few centimeters or so, for data to be … Read more

Former Apple executive joins Leap Motion

Andy Miller, Apple's former VP of mobile advertising, is joining Leap Motion as the company's president and chief operating officer starting in August.

Miller will be responsible for guiding the motion-control software and hardware company's growth, including business development, growing the executive team, and leading the development of the Leap application discovery store, according to a press release.

"I've been fortunate to work with some of the most influential figures and companies in the technology industry, and I'm as excited about the Leap as I've ever been about a technology," Miller said … Read more

Ross Levinsohn gets endorsement for permanent Yahoo CEO job

News Corp. digital media head Jon Miller is bullish on the odds of his friend Ross Levinsohn becoming the permanent chief executive at Yahoo.

"I would bet that Ross Levinsohn will be the CEO of Yahoo," he said today during an interview at the PaidContent 2012 conference in New York.

"Ross is as good a person as exists on the planet [to run Yahoo]," he said.

The two were once partners in a venture firm, Velocity Investment Group, which was formed after Levinsohn resigned as president of Fox Interactive Media and Miller left his post … Read more

SkyLight smartphone-microscope mount: Let's get small (video)

It may not be the first smartphone-microscope combo, but creators of the SkyLight adapter say their device is different: it doesn't use any optics.

Attach the base of SkyLight to a microscope and slide in a smartphone--most any smartphone actually, thanks to the mount's adjustable clips. Users -- whether students or scientists -- can then capture microscopic images and send them via e-mail or to the Web.

SmartPlanet visits with SkyLight creators Andy Miller and Tess Bakke for a hands-on look at the device.

This video originally appeared on SmartPlanet with the headline "SkyLight starts selling combo smartphone-microscope mount.&… Read more

Twitter co-founders partner with new startup, Branch

Twitter's co-founders, who now head an incubator site called the Obvious Corporation, announced their involvement in a second project today--Branch. This new Web site will be focused on creating a discussion platform that will "turn the Internet's monologues into dialogues."

"The prototype, called Branch (formerly Roundtable), enables a smart new brand of high quality public discourse," Twitter and Obvious Corporation co-founder Biz Stone wrote in a blog post today. "Curated groups of people are invited to engage around issues in which they are knowledgeable."

The Branch project is a partnership between … Read more

Controversial iPhone app security bug fixed in iOS 5.0.1

The security flaw that led to security researcher Charlie Miller getting kicked out of Apple's developer program has been patched in the company's latest iOS update.

That flaw, which let apps phone home to download potentially malicious unsigned code, thus changing the behavior of an application, is listed as one of the security fixes in iOS 5.0.1, which went out to users today.

"A logic error existed in the mmap system call's checking of valid flag combinations. This issue may lead to a bypass of codesigning checks," Apple posted in a security document … Read more