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Security

Submission + - Researchers Demonstrate Backdoor "Hack" Into the Human Brain (gizmag.com) 1

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: Once the preserve of science fiction, brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have advanced to the point where they can even be found in novelty headwear, which only makes an achievement of an international team of scientists more frightening. Using an off-the-shelf Emotiv BCI costing only a few hundred dollars, the team has shown that it's possible to "hack" a human brain and pull things like bank details straight out of your skull.
Power

Submission + - Harvesting Uranium from Seawater Using Shrimp Shells

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Uranium is currently mined from ore deposits around the world, but there are fears that demand may outstrip the supply of ore as nuclear power becomes more widespread and while the world's oceans hold billions of tons of uranium at tiny concentrations of three parts per billion, extracting uranium from seawater has up to now been uneconomical. Now BBC reports that a new technique using uranium-absorbing mats made from discarded shrimp shells containing plastic fibers impregnated with molecules that both lock onto the fibers and preferentially absorb uranium has culminated in a field test that has netted a kilogram of uranium. "We began working with the Gulf Coast Agricultural and Seafood Co-operative... and with the shrimpers and crabbers there, and found they were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to get rid of their waste [shells]" says Robin Rogers of the University of Alabama who outlined an improvement developed in his own group: seafood shells. Research has focussed on improving both the braided fibers of the mat and the "ligand" that captures the uranium, which has most often been a molecule called poly-acrylamidoxime. "We discovered an 'ionic liquid' — a molten salt — could extract a very important polymer called chitin directly from shrimp shells," Rogers added. Although the extraction process has not reached parity with the more mature — but more environmentally damaging — technology of mining uranium ores, work is promising enough to begin to remove a concern about the sustainability of those terrestrial sources and any stumbling block they may present to growth in the nuclear power industry. "This uncertainty around whether there's enough terrestrial uranium is impacting the decision-making in the industry because it's hard to make long-term research and development or deployment decisions in the face of big uncertainties about the resource," says Erich Schneider, Ph.D. "So if we can tap into uranium from seawater, we can remove that uncertainty.""

Submission + - BYOD makes employees work unpaid an extra 20 hours a week (computerworlduk.com) 2

Submitted by Qedward
Qedward writes: Many employees are working up to 20 additional hours per week unpaid as a result of bring your own device (BYOD) policies adopted by their firms, many of which have no security safeguards.

According to the quarterly Mobile Workforce Report from enterprise Wi-Fi access firm iPass, a third of mobile enterprise workers never fully disconnect from technology during their during personal time.

The report also said that 92% of mobile workers "enjoy their job flexibility" and are "content" with working longer hours. In fact, said the report, 42% would like "even greater flexibility for their working practices".

But 19% of mobile workers said their companies did not require security on smartphones or tablets to access work data.
Piracy

Submission + - PC has a Piracy Rate of 93-95%, says Ubisoft (gamesindustry.biz) 1

Submitted by silentbrad
silentbrad writes: From GamesIndustry International: "Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has told GamesIndustry International that the percentage of paying players is the same for free to play as it is for PC boxed product: around five to seven per cent. ... 'On PC it's only around five to seven per cent of the players who pay for F2P, but normally on PC it's only about five to seven per cent who pay anyway, the rest is pirated. It's around a 93-95 per cent piracy rate, so it ends up at about the same percentage. The revenue we get from the people who play is more long term, so we can continue to bring content.' ... 'We must be careful because the consoles are coming. People are saying that the traditional market is declining and that F2P is everything — I'm not saying that. We're waiting for the new consoles — I think that the new consoles will give a huge boost to the industry, just like they do every time that they come. This time, they took too long so the market is waiting.'

Submission + - What would your first 24 hours of a "I've got to disappear" plan look like? 1

Submitted by
diacritica
diacritica writes: "This Ask Slashdot is inspired by à-la-Bourne movies but taking a more realistic approach to the world we live in. You are native to and live in a big city (> 1M pop) in a G8 country of your choosing. T = 0h, you accidentally witness a strange event. T = 1h, you realize you're being followed AND you get the feeling that the police/government might be involved. Context data: you are able to speak one language apart from good English. You are 25 to 45 years old. You are computer savvy. You are engaged/married, you have family living in the same city. 99% of your money is in a bank account. You prefer to go "rationally" paranoid. What would you do in order to feel safe after those 24h? Remember, you didn't commit a crime, but there are plenty of real-world resources invested in catching you."
Technology

Submission + - Energy Visions Prizes Totaling $250,000 Announced for Creative Media and Apps (energyvisionsprize.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Calling all techies! Think you have what it takes to make the world more energy efficient? Can you develop the next OPower app or nest.com? If so, the American Clean Skies Foundation (ACSF) wants to hear from you.

ACSF today announced the launch of the inaugural Energy Visions Prizes, in which ten prizes totaling $250,000 are expected to be awarded to creators of outstanding media and innovative digital works that advance a vision for America’s energy security and a cleaner, low carbon environment. ACSF is accepting submissions, including in the form of mobile phone or web applications, beginning today.

It’s no secret that America is facing an energy crisis. Rising oil prices, increase in production and a greater demand for consumption can create vast shortages in energy. America has abundant home grown clean energy resources that often go unnoticed. Cleaner energy solutions such as natural gas, renewables and biofuels are often cheaper, more effective and overall reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil.

ACSF will accept submissions in the form of the media below to honor the people who are on the cutting edge of media and technology when it comes to promoting clean energy, bridging energy divides and driving innovation:

        Mobile phone or web application
        Feature films, documentaries or television programs
        Short videos, video series or advertisement that run no more than ten minutes

For more information and further details about the application process please visit www.energyvisionsprize.org.
Iphone

Submission + - AT&T defends controversial FaceTime policy following widespread backlash (bgr.com)

Submitted by zacharye
zacharye writes: AT&T is wasting no time hitting back at critics of its decision to limit the use of popular video chat app FaceTime over its cellular network to users who sign up for its shared data plans. In a post on the company’s official public policy blog on Wednesday, AT&T chief privacy officer Bob Quinn sneered at criticisms that restricting FaceTime over cellular to shared data plans violates the Federal Communications Commission’s network neutrality rules for wireless networks...
Programming

Submission + - Finding My Summer Vacation's Shortest Path (drdobbs.com)

Submitted by
CowboyRobot
CowboyRobot writes: "Clay Breshears at Dr. Dobb's has a fun formula for optimizing the drive between multiple cities. "Think of a map as an instance of a graph, the cities are the nodes and the roads between cities are the edges. The length of the road is the weight of the corresponding edge. The All-Pairs Shortest Path problem takes a graph of n nodes represented by an n x n weight matrix, W. The result is an n x n matrix, D (for distance), where the D[i][j] entry holds the minimum weight of the path from node i to node j. Entries in the W matrix can be zero, positive (if a direct edge lies between the two nodes), or the infinity value where there is no direct edge between the nodes.""
Android

Submission + - The empire strikes back: Nikon announces Android-based camera (extremetech.com) 1

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Today Nikon announced the first mainstream camera powered by Android. While Polaroid has an Android model on the market, it is very limited and hasn’t attracted much attention. The Coolpix S800c combines Nikon’s imaging prowess with a set of capabilities running on Android (in this case version 2.3) that are designed to make it as easy to use for photo sharing as a smartphone. Sharing with Google+, Facebook, and Twitter is built-in, while sharing with other services will be as simple as downloading the appropriate Android application. Hardware-wise, there's a 16MP backside-illuminated CMOS sensor — a technology which helps increase low-light performance, especially for small sensors. The S800c can also capture full HD 1080p video and stereo sound, creating clips that can be uploaded to sites like YouTube and Vimeo. As icing on the cake the S800c includes GPS, which is crucial if it is to have any hope of displacing the smartphone as a primary means of sharing images. Unfortunately, beyond saying that the camera runs Android, Nikon has been incredibly quiet on the implementation. If Android is actually linked to the camera's hardware, and there's an open API, he S800c could be the basis for a very powerful photography application platform. Going further, if the bootloader is unlocked (or can be unlocked by enterprising devs) then custom ROMs might be the order of the day. Having a high-quality image capture platform that can be programmed as easily as a smartphone will open up a lot of new ground for imaging applications if the S800c is really open at a low level. We should find out more when the camera launches in September, at a price of $350."
Facebook

Submission + - The World of the Online Gamer (mirolta.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The internet started life as a small compendium of useless information. It contained a few sites mainly containing gibberish while the average computer user still relied on tools such as Microsoft Encarta to look up information. How times change. In the modern digital age, with high speed wireless internet everywhere, we spend most of our time plugged into one online platform or another, be it Facebook, Google or Twitter. One of the areas that has grown massively with this has been online gaming. From humble beginnings with text based games, the internet has spawned a whole raft of different styles of games ranging from role playing games to poker and shooting games to pool. So how did it come about?
Security

Submission + - Crisis Trojan Makes Its Way onto Virtual Machines (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: The Windows version of the Crisis Trojan is able to sneak onto VMware implementations, making it possibly the first malware to target such virtual machines. It also has found a way to spread to Windows Mobile devices.

Samples of Crisis, also called Morcut, were first discovered about a month ago targeting Mac machines running various versions of OS X. The Trojan spies on users by intercepting e-mail and instant messenger exchanges and eavesdropping on webcam conversations. Launching as a Java archive (JAR) file made to look like an Adobe Flash Installer, Crisis scans an infected machine and drops an OS-specific executable to open a backdoor and monitor activity.

This week, researchers also discovered W32.Crisis was capable of infecting VMware virtual machines and Windows Mobile devices.
The Internet

Submission + - Class of 2016: No need for TV, CDs or airline tix; can't miss Daily Show (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "In one of the more interesting annual measurement of society the Beloit College Mindset List offers a snapshot of what the entering college class of 2016 likes and dislikes.
This year's report — the 14th annual version — starts out: The Class of 2016 has "come to political consciousness during a time of increasing doubts about America's future, and are entering college bombarded by questions about jobs and the value of a college degree. They have never needed an actual airline "ticket," a set of bound encyclopedias, or Romper Room. Members of this year's freshman class, most of them born in 1994, are probably the most tribal generation in history and they despise being separated from contact with friends. They prefer to watch television everywhere except on a television, have seen a woman lead the U.S. State Department for most of their lives, and can carry school books--those that are not on their e-Readers--in backpacks that roll. ""
Businesses

Submission + - Sony closes WipEout developer Studio Liverpool (eurogamer.net)

Submitted by
RogueyWon
RogueyWon writes: "Eurogamer is reporting that Sony has closed its subsidiary developer Studio Liverpool. Beginning its life in 1984 under the name Psygonis, the development house has played an important role in the history of computer and video gaming, publishing classics such as the Lemmings series. Since its acquisition by Sony in 1993, the studio has been best known for its work on the WipEout franchise, which helped to establish the Playstation console as a successful brand. Sony's statements indicate that it will seek to find positions for staff in its other development houses, but that some redundancies will be necessary."
Hardware

Submission + - Logitech releases K310 washable keyboard (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Logitech has released its first washable keyboard. We’re not just talking about “splash proof” either — you can take the K310, immerse it in up to 30cm of water (12in), and give it a good scrub. The only limitation is you can only use standard washing up liquid — oh, and Logitech says you should try to keep the USB connector out of the water, too. Once you’ve washed the keyboard, simply leave it to dry. The user guide says it takes eight hours to air dry, and that you shouldn’t use a hair dryer. There are actually drainage holes on the backside of the K310, to help speed things along. This isn't the first washable keyboard — HP and Kensington have both had models on the market for a while — but the K310 does seem to be the first reasonably attractive, consumer-oriented washable keyboard. It goes on sale at the end of the month for $40."
The Internet

Submission + - What is 4G? - Everything You Need to Know (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by AlistairCharlton
AlistairCharlton writes: With Ofcom allowing Everything Everywhere to start providing 4G coverage in the UK from 11 September — a move branded as shocking and bizarre by Vodafone — we take a look at what 4G actually is, and how it will benefit UK users.

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