Kiran Upadhyay

Lavu, an Albuquerque-based startup that provides iPad-centric point of sale systems for restaurants, has raised $15 million in new funding led by Aldrich Capital Partners. Previously bootstrapped, Lavu has been profitable since its second month in operation, according to founder Andy Lim. The company charges a licensing fee (around $1k per POS terminal) and a recurring monthly fee determined by the size of the restaurant. Lim says that Lavu is currently being used by over 4,000 restaurants in 86 countries. Australia, Thailand, and Singapore are a few regions with especially high adoption. The $15 million will be used to ramp up sales and marketing efforts. “That’s what we lack; we don’t really do quite well in terms of sales and marketing… the investment is really to get those resources and connections to reach out to more of the big chains,” Lim says. By partnering with an international fast food chain, for example, Lavu would be able to scale its platform globally at a r

During testimony today in a grueling two-hour hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Katherine Archuleta claimed that she had recognized huge problems with the agency's computer security when she assumed her post 18 months ago. But when pressed on why systems had not been protected with encryption prior to the recent discovery of an intrusion that gave attackers access to sensitive data on millions of government employees and government contractors, she said, "It is not feasible to implement on networks that are too old." She added that the agency is now working to encrypt data within its networks. But even if the systems had been encrypted, it likely wouldn't have mattered. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity Dr. Andy Ozment testified that encryption would "not have helped in this case" because the attackers had gained valid user credentials to

During periods of chronic stress, we often up our caffeine consumption. This works better than you might expect—the increase can reduce some of the negative effects of long-term stress, including depression and memory deterioration. In a new study published in PNAS, researchers dug further into this finding, examining the signaling networks that caffeine influences within the brain. One of the proteins they identify is a potential treatment target for the symptoms of long-term stress. Chronic unpredictable stress alters neural circuits in the hippocampus. It dampens mood, reduces memory performance, and increases an individual’s susceptibility to depression. The researchers studied this phenomenon in mice by exposing them to chronic, unpredictable, long-term stress in a variety of forms: cage-tilting, damp sawdust, predator sounds, placement in an empty cage, switching cages, and inversion of day/night light cycles. Just like humans experiencing chronic stress, the mice showed weigh

The Federal Communications Commission today said it plans to fine AT&T $100 million for throttling the wireless Internet connections of customers with unlimited data plans without adequately notifying the customers about the reduced speeds. "The Commission charges AT&T with violating the 2010 Open Internet Transparency Rule by falsely labeling these plans as 'unlimited' and by failing to sufficiently inform customers of the maximum speed they would receive under the Maximum Bit Rate policy," the announcement said. The action isn't yet final. The FCC issued a Notice of Apparent Liability against AT&T that includes the proposed fine and provisions designed to bring AT&T into compliance with the commission's rules about making proper disclosures to customers. AT&T can ask the commission to reduce or eliminate the fine, which would be deposited into the US Treasury. But even if AT&T opposes the fine, the commission says the company

Researchers have uncovered huge holes in the application sandboxes protecting Apple's OS X and iOS operating systems, a discovery that allows them to create apps that pilfer iCloud, Gmail, and banking passwords and can also siphon data from 1Password, Evernote, and other apps. The malicious proof-of-concept apps were approved by the Apple Store, which requires all qualifying submissions to treat every other app as untrusted. Despite the supposed vetting by Apple engineers, the researchers' apps were able to bypass sandboxing protections that are supposed to prevent one app from accessing the credentials, contacts, and other resources belonging to another app. Like Linux, Android, Windows, and most other mainstream OSes, OS X and iOS strictly limit app access for the purpose of protecting them against malware. The success of the researchers' cross-app resource access—or XARA—attacks, raises troubling doubts about those assurances on the widely used Apple platforms. &q

You probably don’t always like/share/comment on the stuff that pops up in your Facebook feed, even if it’s something you care to see. Take, for example, a breaking news items about an earthquake on the other side of the world — you’d probably feel weird hitting a button labeled “Like” on that one, and you might not have anything to say… but that doesn’t mean you don’t care. Realizing this, Facebook is tweaking its algorithms to account for a new metric: the amount of time you spend looking at things in your feed, regardless of whether or not you actively interact with it. Scroll past something without stopping for long, and Facebook’s algorithms will slowly learn that you don’t particularly care for that sort of content. Camp out on a post for a bit, though, and Facebook starts the timer behind the scenes. If you spend more time on this story than you spend on most things in your feed — studying a picture, perusing the comment thread — they’ll take that as a signal that it’s

Your phone is about to get a lot more Fallout; Bethesda Softworks held its own E3 press event last night, wherein they revealed a lot about upcoming title Fallout 4, and launched a new Fallout dedicated mobile game called Fallout Shelter. True fans of the series will probably be most excited by in-game support in Fallout 4 for a real-world Pip-Boy, powered by your very own smartphone. A version of Fallout 4 called the “Fallout 4 Pip-Boy Edition” will ship on November 10, the same day the game is generally released, with a retail price of $120 and a package that includes a Pip-Boy replica, designed to actually be worn on your wrist. The replica has a slot suitable to accommodate a number of different kinds of smartphones thanks to included foam inserts to adjust sizing, and works with the Pip-Boy companion app that lets players actually manipulate their in-game inventory, character perks, holotapes and beyond. As far as second screen experiences go, this one sounds pretty damn am