Credit cards numbers? Please. Medical records? Booooring. The modern hacker knows that the real money's in carbon emission trade credits. No, seriously: a recent phishing expedition reaped over $4 million from carbon-emitting companies in Europe, Japan, and New Zealand.

The hackers sent emails to 2,000 companies in Germany alone, claiming to be from the German Emissions Trading Authority, which keeps track of carbon credits and transactions. The email requested that the companies re-register their accounts, and the information the duped employees provided was then used—you guessed it—to access the companies' GETA accounts and and clean them out.

It's unclear who the thieves sold the credits to, but the buyers are assumed to have thought they were making a legal transaction. And it's also possible to see how it would have taken some time to see that something was amiss: four million bucks is a lot of money, but it's a drop in the bucket of $130 billion of CO2 emissions that were traded in Europe last year.

So remember, kids: lock up your gasses. People will steal just about anything these days. [Der Spiegel via Wired]

Going for a spectacular sunset shot, a man ventured onto the ice of the North Sea. But he quickly became lost on the monochromatic landscape. Ironically, two cameras would rescue him from the very danger a camera put him in.

The man started firing off the flash of his camera, hoping to grab someone's attention who could beckon him back to the coast. And someone spotted him—from hundreds of miles away at her computer—as she watched this webcam feed of St. Peter-Ording, the tourist spot where the man disappeared.

She contacted authorities who guided him back to shore safely. [Physorg and BBC]

Eamex, a Japanese company, claims to have figure out how to greatly increase the lifespan of the high-capacity lithium-ion batteries that run hybrids and electric vehicles.

The new batteries can supposedly survive 10,000 charge cycles and 20 years, which is quite a bit better than what we've got now. How do they work?

The main idea is to stabilize the electrodes and prevent the deterioration of tin, making the batteries withstand repeated charges. The batteries have a negative electrode that incorporates a tin-coated resin and accumulates lithium ions coming from the positive electrode. The positive electrode is made of silicon and tin and swells while generating the ions.

As a result, the repeated charging and discharging causes the binding between particles in the tin to weaken, but Eamex's technology helps to effectively maintain the bonding among those particles.

Neat! If the tech lives up to the claims, we should see these guys in electric vehicles within a few years. [CrunchGear]

Still think that the widespread iMac problems don't exist? After we reported Apple giving UK customers 15% refund bonuses with 27-inch iMac returns, we've heard from quite a few readers that Apple is doing the same thing in the US.

15%. Cash. So on a $2000 machine, we're talking about a $300 apology straight from Apple customer support. From the handful of reader anecdotes we've received thus far, it sounds like you need to be a repeat iMac returner who's dealt with multiple 27-inch iMacs that have been busted in some way (but they may accommodate first time buyers as well, we don't know). One reader had multiple yellow screens, then received another new model with broken Bluetooth. He took the 15% and just returned it.

Even though Apple has failed to admit the iMac's failings in a public light, there's no doubt, the company is putting their money where their mouth isn't.

There are two major camps for internet radio: Pandora and Slacker. Team Pandora's been setup on webOS for a while, but now Slacker fans can get theirs on every webOS phone.

Slacker Radio Announces Mobile App for Palm webOS Smartphones

Slacker Radio for the Palm webOS Offers Free Personalized Radio Stations and New Music Discovery On-the-Go

SAN DIEGO, CA – February 4, 2010 – Slacker, Inc. today announced the Slacker Radio Mobile app for Palm Pre, Palm Pre Plus, Palm Pixi and Palm Pixi Plus smartphones. Music lovers in the United States and Canada can now listen to their favorite Slacker Radio stations on their Palm webOS smartphone. The free Slacker Radio app is now available at the Palm webOS App Catalog or by visiting http://www.slacker.com from a Palm webOS smartphone*.

Palm webOS smartphone owners now have the ability to enjoy the Slacker music experience, including custom music stations based on their favorite artist or mix of artists, over 120 expert-programmed Slacker genre, seasonal and spotlight stations and over 10,000 artist stations. Additional application features include an intuitive interface and the ability for listeners to personalize each station based on their music tastes.

With a music catalog that is nearly four times the leading competitor, Slacker gives listeners the ultimate music discovery resource by providing artist biographi es, album reviews and "peek ahead" artist and album previews. In addition to marking songs as favorites, listeners can also ban songs and artists to create perfect custom radio stations on their phones.

"Slacker offers music lovers an effortless way to discover and enjoy music on their computers, smartphones or through their home entertainment devices," said Jonathan Sasse, senior vice president of marketing at Slacker. "Our free app for Palm webOS enables music fans play their favorite Slacker Radio stations wherever they go."

Slacker Radio for Palm webOS:
- Music library featuring millions of songs
- High-quality stereo playback from any available wireless connection
- Create custom artist stations based on artists or songs
- Over 120 professionally programmed and customizable genre stations
- View artist biographies and photos
- View album art and read reviews
- "Peek Ahead" artist and album preview
- Rate songs as favorites
- Ban songs and artists from stations

Pricing and Availability

The free Slacker Radio application is available through the Palm webOS mobile platform App Catalog or by visiting http://www.slacker.com from the webOS browser.

About Slacker, Inc.

Slacker is the world's first Personal Radio company offering "Your Radio Everywhere." Slacker enables music lovers to play highly personalized music online at the Slacker web site or on the go with Slacker Personal Radio players and mobile phones. Slacker mobile applications are currently available for Palm webOS, Android, iPhone and BlackBerry smartphones. For more information visit http://www.Slacker.com/everywhere.

For regular Slacker updates follow us at http://www.Twitter.com/SlackerRadio, become a Fan on Facebook at http://www.Facebook.com/SlackerRadio or visit http://www.Slacker.com.

[Slacker]

Delta's Touch Sensitive Faucet does one thing and one thing well: It dispenses water when touched with any part of your body, then shuts off when touched again. Not only that, it's also a pretty fantastic faucet.

The Price:

$547 on Delta's site, but $300ish if you shop around

The Verdict:

This is a high quality faucet, even without the touch features, and most likely beats whatever faucet you have installed in your house when you built/bought it. Add the touch features to that, and you get the first true revolution in sink faucets that I've seen in a while.

This actually isn't Delta's first touch-sensitive faucet. They had one model before that had this feature plus a motion-sensitivity, and discovered that most people only used the touch-sensitivity and decided to focus there instead.

The Installation:

It's a little bit of a hassle to install, because you actually have to follow a series of instructions that has you removing your old faucet and installing this one (with the electronics that controls the touch-sensitivity). You actually need two people at one point, when you want to make sure you align the faucet correctly above the sink while the person below tightens.

It's not completely undoable if you have a spare hand and you're somewhat knowledgeable with tools, but I had a Delta professional install it to ensure optimum performance, and it didn't take too much longer than an hour.

Performance:

The touch sensitivity, if installed correctly, is good, but not overly sensitive. The faucet and water handle, on the right, are both smart enough to detect the difference between a grasp—when you're moving the thing around—and a tap—when you're turning it on and off.

You turn on the faucet like any other faucet, by using the handle and switching it left for hot and right for cold. Once it's "on", you can tap anywhere on the body or the handle to turn it off. Tap it again to turn it back on. When you're completely done with washing, pull the handle down to the off position to ensure that a cat or a jumping baby brushing past it doesn't activate the water flow. It's also got a 4-minute timeout, so even if you do forget to turn the thing off, an accidental activation won't flood your house.

It's pretty great as an actual faucet too. The head has a pull-down for spray flexibility, and you can adjust the type of spray (like a shower) in one of two modes.

Warnings and Usage:

If you install it yourself, make sure you install the base plate insulation unit, because if you don't, you're going to get finicky performance from the touch-sensitivity part. I had to have the installer revisit a couple times because it's not so clear in the instructions that many sinks need it, so even if you think you don't, put it in. Not doing so will make the touch only work 1 out of 3 or 4 times, which is a painful grey zone between not working at all, which is fine, and working all the time. If something like this happens to you, you can luckily disable the touch portion and just use it as a regular faucet until you get around to repairing it.

Also, be aware that you're going to get false positives occasionally when you're reaching over and grabbing something off your sink and you brush against the faucet. This is much less frustrating than the alternative of the thing NOT working when you want it to.

Is this practical?

Perhaps. You use your sink every day, but it's not that often that your hands are salmonella-tained enough to not be able to touch the handle and turn on the water manually. This is for those times. It's definitely a fantastic faucet, don't get me wrong, but it's a luxury. If you install this yourself without hiring a person to do so, $300 isn't too much to pay for the ability to turn something on with a touch. At my house, every guest that's seen it has been impressed. [Delta]

Jonathan Schwartz manned the CEO helm at Sun Microsystems for almost four years. But now that the company's been sold to Oracle, he's tweeting off into the sunset. Hey, at least he counted his haiku syllables right.

I think it's only fair, since Jonathan left us with a poem, that we return the courtesy. I'll start!

Jonathan Schwartz: Don't
care for the ponytail, but
Java's pretty sweet.

Okay, now you go. Dirty limericks also accepted/encouraged. And bonus points for something with MySQL. [Twitter via Boing Boing]

How do you counter Apple's iPad? With another iPad. That's what Sony's going to do, according to Sony's CFO Nobuyuki Oneda.

"[Slates are] a market we are also very interested in. We are confident we have the skills to create a product...Time-wise we are a little behind the iPad but it's a space we would like to be an active player in."

To be fair, Sony's Reader was the first major eReader in the world, and it was a pretty remarkable product for its time. The Vaio P, while a bit unusable by normal-sized humans, is also a small engineering marvel.

But...oh Sony. I just can't take anything you say or do seriously anymore. I'm trying here. Make you a deal—say that whole piece about the iPad again. This time, I'll do my best not to crack a smile.

Nope, not working. I tried. I tried so hard. [Computerworld]

Joining the SH1 and CS1 from a mere month ago are three new Xacti models from Sanyo—the GH2, CG102 and CG20. All three film in 1080i widescreen resolution, and will cost under $230 each. Score!

Of course, I'd rather have a camcorder shooting 1080p like the SH1 and CS1, but what's a few less lines between friends? The CG20 and CG102 are both pistol-grip models, with the GH2 coming in a minute barrel shape. Specs-wise, the GH2 and CG102 take photos with a 14.4-megapixel sensor, with the CG20 a 10.7-megapixel one.

A "double-range zoom" on the first two models means you can switch between 5x and 12x zoom.

Expect all three to go on sale in March, with the GH2 and CG102 pricier at $229 and the CG20 just $199. [Electronista]

"Unlike other companies, Microsoft never developed a true system for innovation." Dick Brass, a former VP at Microsoft, lays out in a scathing NYT op/ed how the company has destroyed its ability to "bring us the future." It's insanely fascinating.

His anecdotes, from this time running tablets at Microsoft—a type of computer the company believed was the future—are chilling, revealing the destructive level of competition between some divisions. For instance, someone in his group developed ClearType, Microsoft's font smoothing tech that was developed to sell ebooks, but other groups at Microsoft freaked out and actively sabotaged project, or tried to steal it from the tablet division, which is why it took 10 years to actually make it out into the world.

His other example is ridiculous too: The head of Office believed so strongly in the keyboard and mouse, he refused to develop a version optimized for tablets. Which is the exact opposite of what Apple showed last week, obviously, with a fully redesigned, multitouch version of iWork for the iPad. And it's the lack of software that doomed tablets from Microsoft.

Lastly, Brass blames a dated corporate culture that's afraid to take the risk of building integrated hardware and software products, a thought relic from the '70s, when hardware was risky. And if you look, Microsoft's best products lately are from the Entertainment & Devices division, where they've designed and built the hardware themselves: Xbox 360 and Zune HD. In fact, E&D is the one place innovation you can safely say that innovation keeps on rolling, largely because J. Allard was allowed to insulate it from the rest of Microsoft for so long.

But here's a question: How do you turn around a ship that big? [NYT via Gartenberg]