Astronomers are getting ready to do battle with the iRobot corporation over their new lawn mowing robots. The makers of the Roomba are working on a similar device used to mow lawns. Astronomers are concerned about potential interference with radio telescopes. In February, iRobot filed a waiver request with the FCC to use part of the radio spectrum to guide the robots. The company wants to use the frequency band between 6240 and 6740 MHz, which is a frequency that several large radio telescopes use to observe methanol, which is plentiful in stellar nurseries.

iRobot has proposed adding a note to the user manual: "consumer use only; use must be limited to residential areas." The NRAO doesn't think the approach will work. Liszt and the NRAO say that they need a 55-mile exclusion zone to protect the data obtained by the radio telescopes. It is possible that the radio telescopes could begin generating bad data, without knowing why and without necessarily knowing that the data is bad, if the product goes ahead as planned.

Police departments across the United States are easy targets for hackers who infect their computers, encrypt their documents and give them a deadline to make a payment to decrypt their data. Over the weekend, some Maine police agencies reported having to pay ransom to hackers in order to keep their files. In Tewksbury, Massachusetts the police chief said he paid a $500 bounty to get back the department's data.

The National High Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) of the Netherlands' police, the Netherlands' National Prosecutors Office and Kaspersky Lab have been working together to fight the CoinVault ransomware campaign. They have been able to obtain data that can help you to decrypt the files being held hostage on your PC, providing both decryption keys and the decryption application. For more information see this how-to. Note that new keys will be added in the future:

https://noransom.kaspersky.com/

https://blog.kaspersky.com/ransomware-cyber-extortion/
https://securelist.com/blog/virus-watch/67699/a-nightmare-on-malware-street/
https://noransom.kaspersky.com/static/kaspersky-coinvault-decryptor.exe
https://noransom.kaspersky.com/static/convault-decrypt-manual.pdf

Popular Science recently reported on a wearable air quality monitor designed and prototyped by electrician, Kevin Hart, and nurse, Laura Moe. They are targeting a late fall 2015 release at a price point of $100 (US).

From the article, "A fan directly beneath TZOA's triangular cover sucks in air. As pollutants cross a laser, they scatter light onto a sensor that counts them. TZOA then glows a color corresponding to the air safety level. A smartphone app also displays that data, along with daily UV light exposure and crowdsourced pollution maps."