In 2008, Mr. Kaminsky was widely hailed as a digital Paul Revere after he found a serious flaw in the internet’s basic plumbing that could allow skilled coders to take over websites, siphon off bank credentials or even shut down the internet. Mr. Kaminsky alerted the Department of Homeland Security, executives at Microsoft and Cisco, and other internet security experts to the problem and helped spearhead a patch.

Olympia Dukakis, the veteran stage and screen actor whose flair for maternal roles helped her win an Oscar as Cher's mother in the romantic comedy "Moonstruck," has died. She was 89.

Dukakis died Saturday morning in her home in New York City, according to Allison Levy, her agent at Innovative Artists. A cause of death was not immediately released, but her family said in a statement that she had been in failing health for months.

Spencer Silver, an Inventor of Post-it Notes, Is Dead at 80



Spencer Silver, a research chemist at 3M who inadvertently created the not-too-sticky adhesive that allows Post-it Notes to be removed from surfaces as easily as they adhere to them, died on Saturday at his home in St. Paul, Minn. He was 80.

His wife, Linda, said that he died after an episode of ventricular tachycardia, in which the heart beats faster than normal. Mr. Silver had a heart transplant 27 years ago.

Since their introduction in 1980, Post-it Notes have become a ubiquitous office product, first in the form of little canary-yellow pads — billions of which are sold annually — and later also in different hues and sizes, some with much stickier adhesives. There are currently more than 3,000 Post-it Brand products globally.

Dr. Silver worked in 3M’s central research laboratory developing adhesives. In 1968, he was trying to create one that was so strong it could be used in aircraft construction.

He failed in that goal. But during his experimentation, he invented something entirely different: an adhesive that stuck to surfaces, but that could be easily peeled off and was reusable.

It was a solution to a problem that did not appear to exist, but Dr. Silver was certain it was a breakthrough.

“I felt my adhesive was so obviously unique that I began to give seminars throughout 3M in the hope I would spark an idea among its product developers,” he told Financial Times in 2010.