A new type of reflective coating can make solar panels far more efficient, soaking up nearly all available sunlight from nearly any angle, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

Current solar panels — which convert energy from the sun into electricity — absorb only about two-thirds of available sunlight.

But surfaces treated with a coating developed at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, can harvest 96.2 percent of sunlight.

“That is a tremendous savings,” Rensselaer’s Shawn-Yu Lin, whose study appears in the journal Optics Letters, said in a telephone interview.

Lin said the technology addresses two main problems in current solar cells. It captures more colors of solar spectrum and it captures light from all angles.

Gizmodo is reporting that Apple has found a novel way to prevent the jailbreaking of its iPhones, one that no cracking of the iPhone firmware is going to fix. This time, Apple apparently is using a custom build of iTunes in the newest MacBook line to stymie attempts to jailbreak iPhones:

The new aluminum MacBooks…don’t seem to be able to recognize an iPhone or iPod Touch when it is booted into DFU mode, a vital requirement for jailbreaking…Though the hardware is where one sees the most conspicuous changes in the new MacBook, this problem most likely stems from a subtle software modification. It’s not clear what specifically changed, but a new build of iTunes, unique to the new MacBooks, seems like a likely culprit.

In this iPhone cat-and-mouse game, Apple seems to be turning to ever more ingenious methods to keep cash rolling in the door. Customers? Well, their best bet for circumventing Apple’s wily ways is to jailbreak the iPhone using Windows-based iTunes.

How ironic (and sad) is that? The more we buy into Apple, the less freedom. Sounds like Microsoft, doesn’t it? This time, however, it’s worse, because Apple also controls the hardware.

After protests from several sources, major German news site Spiegel Online has dropped Google Analytics. ‘Google gathers so much detailed information about its users that one critic says some state intelligence bureaus look “like child protection services” in comparison,’ they say. Spiegel Online no longer uses Google Analytics. ‘We want to ensure that data on our users’ browsing patterns don’t leave our site,’ says Wolfgang Büchner, one of Spiegel Online’s two chief editors.” The article covers a wide swath of German concern over Google’s data-collecting and -handling policies, including a local rebellion against Google’s Street View survey vehicles that threatens to go national.

Over the weekend, YouTube introduced a new feature to help make captioned or subtitled videos more accessible to international users. The new system uses machine translation to convert any of these videos into your language of choice in real time.

To access this feature, users simply need to turn it on from the lower-right corner of the player. From there, they can use a simple drop-down menu to pick which language into which they want the video translated. Unfortunately, YouTube won’t remember a user’s translation choices from one video to the next, but this seems like a feature that could be added down the line.

Netflix plans to stop selling DVDs that were rented by subscribers, another step toward expanding its subscription focus from DVDs rented by mail to include movies streamed over the Web.

In a Netflix blog posting Monday, the company announced that it would discontinue sales previously viewed DVDs on November 30:

“As you know, our core business is delivering great movie rentals to you on DVD by mail and instantly to the computer and TV, so we’ve decided it makes sense for us to focus exclusively on that. This means we will stop selling previously viewed DVDs through the Web site. We’re sorry for any inconvenience for those of you who regularly purchase DVDs at Netflix, but we’re excited about being able to spend the extra time focusing on continually improving our core rental business for you. ”

Netflix announced on Friday that it had completed its first phase of beta testing of its new “Watch Instantly” movie-streaming player and was expanding access to include Macintosh-owning subscribers.

Consumer electronics chain Circuit City is implementing plans for massive layoffs and closing 155 stores this week. The technology retailer is joining a list of other businesses that have had to close their doors because of a weakening economy and a less-promising holiday shopping season.

Circuit City, the nation’s second-largest electronics store, said it will reduce its workforce 17 percent, close stores in 55 U.S. markets on Tuesday, and begin a liquidation process on Wednesday. Plans to open 10 new stores next year have been canceled. As of February, Circuit City had about 46,000 employees worldwide.