Most heat pumps maintain an average useful life of 10-20 years, but researchers at the University of Stavanger in Norway (USN) and the University of Oslo believe that they have developed a new heat pump that will last up to 10,000 years.

Currently, existing heat pumps start to deteriorate after the first year of use, and require frequent inspection thereafter until the pump completely fails.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau is hoping to lay a little guilt on movie downloaders by dramatizing the stark human toll BitTorrent inflicts on Hollywood boom mic operators... or something.

The public service address shows a peddler on a New York street giving away free movies he said were downloaded from the internet. Beside him stands a soon-to-be unemployed worker. "What's more important," he asks, "the movie or this human being?"

The PlayStation Network had been down for days, with Sony saying little other than that it was caused by an "external intrusion" and that they were "rebuilding their network."

Sony just posted more details, saying that a massive data breach occurred: An "unauthorized person" has PSN users' "name, address (city, state, zip), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity password and login, and handle/PSN online ID." Billing address, password questions, and credit card info may also have been taken.

WikiLeaks on Sunday began publishing from a collection of 779 classified reports on current and former prisoners of America's military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Obama administration protested the partial publication of the documents by several news organizations Sunday.

"These documents contain classified information about current and former GTMO detainees, and we strongly condemn the leaking of this sensitive information," read an official statement published in The New York Times.

Apple's iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, the iPhone 4, and iPad models are also keeping track of consumers whereabouts. Mac computers running Snow Leopard and even Windows computers running Safari 5 are being watched.

The company has remained silent after researchers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden revealed this Wednesday that the iPhone was storing logs of users' geographic coordinates in a hidden file.

"By using any location-based services on your iPhone, you agree and consent to Apple's and its partners' and licensees' transmission, collection, maintenance, processing and use of your location data to provide such products and services," Sewall's letter reads.

Apple also stores the location information in a database only accessibly to Apple, the letter says.

Security forces in Syria have shot dead at least 12 people at funerals for anti-government protesters killed on Friday, reports say.

The BBC's Owen Bennett-Jones in Beirut says it appears that the government has made a deliberate decision to use live ammunition, to clear the streets and to impose order.

"One of the fallen people wasn't dead, he was injured and when someone tried to help, one security guard shot the injured person twice, to make sure he's dead."

The iOS 4 operating system allows your iPhone to store location data constantly without you activating the feature. The unencrypted file where the data is stored, labeled "consolidated.db," was discovered and brought to light by software hackers Peter Warden and Alasdair Allen. The data is stored on your computer when you sync it with your iPhone.

"To make it less useful for snoops, the spatial and temporal accuracy of the data has been artificially reduced. You can only animate week-by-week even though the data is timed to the second, and if you zoom in you'll see the points are constrained to a grid, so your exact location is not revealed. The underlying database has no such constraints, unfortunately."

iRobot PackBots are being used to explore the interior of reactor buildings at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which was severely damaged in last month's massive tsunami and subsequent hydrogen blasts.

In a release, Honeywell said its staff has flown five "successful" missions at Fukushima so far, recording video and images of the plant. The four T-Hawks there are equipped with radiation sensors.

The Michigan chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has accused the MSP of using devices to extract information from the cellphones of drivers they've pulled over without the owner's knowledge.

The MSP has issued a statement saying that it will provide information about the devices and what they've been used to capture, "in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act," but added that "there may be a processing fee to search for, retrieve, examine and separate exempt material." That fee, according to Fancher, has been estimated around $500,000.

Google removed Grooveshark's app from its open market last week, upon a complaint from the RIAA that the app violated the app store's Terms of Service.

For Android users who don't want to rely on the vagaries of a supposedly open app store, you can download the app directly from Grooveshark's mobile page. Unless, of course, you are using an Android device from AT&T, which locks down its supposedly open-source device so heavily that you can't install apps not from the Android market.