FLUX

Google doesn't like vulnerabilities in its projects, and has discovered that one of the best ways to make them go away is to pay people scads of cash for finding them.

Last Februrary at their Pwnium contest, Google offered up to $1 million in prizes to hackers who could uncover dangerous vulnerabilites in the Windows 7 version of Chrome.

That wasn't just a one time deal; Google also has ongoing awards for people who can find vulnerabilities in anything of theirs, and they just upped the ante from around $3,000 to $20,000.

Video conferencing can be a cold and impersonal way to conduct business, but researchers at Osaka University in Japan think they can change that by having the participants first perform a tele-handshake using a robot hand that matches the other person's grip.

In order to make the handshake feel as real as possible, the researchers made the hand from soft silicone filled with a sponge-like material.

It's not quite the perfect human analogue, but they then heat up its outer layer to around 37°C, slightly warmer than an actual human, which when combined with a grip that matches the person on the other end is apparently enough to create a convincing handshake.