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Security

Submission + - Using Nondefault Port Assignments For Added Security (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "Security Advisor's Roger Grimes offers some provocative advice in the wake of the latest RDP exploit: use nondefault port assignments for added security. 'As I've been recommending for more than a decade, administrators should consider running Internet-connectable services on nondefault ports if possible. In this particular case, RDP should be run on some other port than port 3389. This advice extends to other areas. Admin websites should not be run on port 80 or even 443. SSH shouldn't be listening on port 22,' Grimes writes. 'My recommendation to change the default listening port on an enterprisewide service is often met with criticism. My central argument is this: In most cases, an enterprise can change the default listening port, which causes no problems beyond admin education and one-time reconfiguring some scripts and tools, and it significantly diminishes the risk of weaponized attack.'"

Submission + - 3D printer instructions for Lego, K'Nex, adapters (techdirt.com)

Submitted by dangle
dangle writes: F.A.T. Lab and Sy-Lab have officially released their Free Universal Construction Kit, allowing builders to freely interconnect parts from Lego, K'Nex, Fischertechnik and other common building sets. ZomeTool and Zoob patterns will be available after related patents expire. The makers have also spent considerable effort investigating and anticipating legal complaints from manufacturers, using an Inverse Think of The Children Argument:

Some may express concern that the Free Universal Construction Kit infringes such corporate prerogatives as copyright, design right, trade dress, trademarks or patents of the supported toy systems. We encourage those eager to enforce these rights to please think of the children — and we assert that the home printing of the Free Universal Construction Kit constitutes protected fair use.

Submission + - Nokia Applies for Vibrating Tattoo Patent (unwiredview.com)

Submitted by CanHasDIY
CanHasDIY writes: Tired of waiting for the Pip-Boy or Omni-Tool to be invented? Never fear! Nokia is developing the basic technology needed to make your dreams a reality: haptic-feedback tattoos. According to the patent application, Nokia is proposing “a material attachable to skin, the material capable of detecting a magnetic field and transferring a perceivable stimulus to the skin, wherein the perceivable stimulus relates to the magnetic field.”

Basically, the process is the same as for normal tattooing; the difference is in the ferromagnetic ink.

Kind of brings new meaning to the term "embedded device," doesn't it?

Submission + - Engineers Enlist Weather Model to Optimize Offshore Wind Plan

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Politics aside, most energy experts agree that cheap, clean, renewable wind energy holds great potential to help the world satisfy energy needs while reducing harmful greenhouse gases. Wind farms placed offshore could play a large role in meeting such challenges, and yet no offshore wind farms exist today in the United States.
Government

Submission + - U.S. Congress Quietly Criminalizes Protesting (huffingtonpost.com)

Submitted by CanHasDIY
CanHasDIY writes: From Huffington Post:

H. R. 347, better known to those in the DC beltway as the 'Trespass Bill' — potentially makes peaceable protest anywhere in the U.S. a federal felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. H. R. 347, and it's companion senate bill S. 1794, make protest of any type potentially a federal offense with anywhere from a year to 10 years in federal prison, providing it occurs in the presence of elites brandishing Secret Service protection, or during an officially defined 'National Special Security Event' (NSSE). NSSEs , ( an invention of Bill Clinton) are events which have been deemed worthy of Secret Service protection, which previously received no such treatment... Past NSSE events included the funerals of Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, and the national security concern that was Superbowl XXXVI. Other NSSE protected events include the Academy Awards and the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions... HR 347 & S. 1794 insulates such events as the G-8, WTO and presidential conventions against tough questions and politically justified protests.
Android

Submission + - The fragmentation of the Android Platform? (theregister.co.uk) 1

Submitted by dgharmon
dgharmon writes: A new study conducted by IDC and mobile-developer platform and services company Appcelerator has determined that as Google's open source Android operating system becomes more and more fragmented, fewer and fewer developers are putting it on their "must-code-for" list.
Google

Submission + - Will Mobile Wallets Replace Their Traditional Counterparts? (banktech.com)

Submitted by
Cara_Latham
Cara_Latham writes: "Mobile wallets are all the rage. But legitimate questions remain as to whether they will ever truly replace their leathery counterparts.

Mobile wallets, which use NFC-based technology to allow customers to make contactless payments at the point of sale, already have begun to make their presence felt. Mountain View, Calif.-based Google launched a digital wallet this past fall. The search giant has agreements with Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover to make the Google Wallet available to the card companies' account holders, and there even are some NFC-enabled terminals in use across the U.S. that can accept it, including at many mass transit stations.

And mobile wallet ventures are cropping up around the globe, as well. Telecom companies including Vodafone and Telefonica announced this year wallet initiatives in Africa and Latin America. But mobile wallets still face many hurdles before they can gain widespread adoption, experts say, including the rather difficult task of getting consumers to change long-held habits."
China

Submission + - U.S. Missile Defense Against Iran makes China/Russia mad, might not even work.. (the-diplomat.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The United States since the 1980's has been trying to make missile defense, aka hitting a bullet with a bullet, work. Billions of dollars spent, tons of political capital spent, and not a lot to show. The U.S. does have two viable options, the SM-2 and 3, although both are not 100% perfect.

The U.S. with European allies have been deploying missile defense in Europe to block a possible strike from Iranian nuclear tipped missiles (even though they have not made nukes or the missiles to carry them). One problem: such defenses could, in theory, also block Russian and Chinese missiles. Russia is now planning to make more missiles to counter such defenses and could pull out of the new Start treaty and stop helping U.S. forces from supply themselves in Afghanistan.

Is this all worth it for something that might not even work?
Science

Submission + - Camera can see around corners (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge have created a camera that is able to record images of objects hidden behind walls.
They fire a pulse of laser light at a wall on the far side of the hidden scene, and record the time at which the scattered light reaches a camera. Photons bounce off the wall onto the hidden object and back to the wall, scattering each time, before a small fraction eventually reaches the camera, each at a slightly different time. The camera captures this time-of-flight information and uses it to reconstruct an image of the hidden object (abstract).
Mars

Submission + - Elon Musk: Future Round-Trip To Mars Could Cost Under $500,000 (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Rocket entrepreneur Elon Musk believes he can get the cost of a round trip to Mars down to about half a million dollars. The SpaceX CEO says he has finally worked out how to do it, and told the BBC he would reveal further details later this year or early in 2013. ... 'My vision is for a fully reusable rocket transport system between Earth and Mars that is able to re-fuel on Mars — this is very important — so you don't have to carry the return fuel when you go there,' he said. 'The whole system [must be] reusable — nothing is thrown away. That's very important because then you're just down to the cost of the propellant.' ... He conceded the figure was unlikely to be the opening price — rather, the cost of a ticket on a mature system that had been operating for about a decade. Nonetheless, Musk thought such an offering could be introduced in 10 years at best, and 15 at worst.
Science

Submission + - Is it time for the US government to back fusion at NIF over ITER? (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: Laser beams at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) have fired a record 1.875 megajoule shot into its target chamber, surpassing their design specification. The achievement is a milepost on the way to ignition — the 'break-even' point at which the facility will finally be able to release more energy than goes into the laser shot by imploding a target pellet of hydrogen isotopes.
NIF’s managers think that the end of their two-year campaign for break-even energy is in sight and say they should achieve ignition before the end of 2012.
However, with scientists at NIF saying that a $4 billion pilot plant could be putting hundreds of megawatts into the grid by the early 2020s, some question whether the Department of Energy is backing the wrong horse with ITER — a $21-billion international fusion experiment under construction at St-Paul-lez-Durance, France. Is it time for DoE to switch priorities and back NIF's proposals? Or is fusion power doomed to be a source of power that is always 30 years away?
Network

Submission + - $1.5 billion: The cost of cutting London-Toyko latency by 60ms (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Starting this summer, and thanks to the continuing withdrawal of Arctic sea ice, a convoy of ice breakers and specially-adapted polar ice-rated cable laying ships will begin to lay the first ever trans-Arctic Ocean submarine fiber optic cables. Two of these cables, called Artic Fibre and Arctic Link, will cross the Northwest Passage which runs through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. A third cable, the Russian Optical Trans-Arctic Submarine Cable System (ROTACS), will skirt the north coast of Scandinavia and Russia. All three cables will connect the United Kingdom to Japan, with a smattering of branches that will provide high-speed internet access to a handful of Arctic Circle communities. The completed cables are estimated to cost between $600 million and $1.5 billion each. As it stands, it takes roughly 230 milliseconds for a packet to go from London to Tokyo; the new cables will reduce this by 30% to 170ms. The latency drop will mainly benefit algorithmic stock market traders, but other areas like education, telemedicine, and POTS will also enjoy the speed-up. Perhaps more importantly, almost every cable that lands in Asia goes through a choke point in the Middle East or the Luzon Strait between the Philippine and South China seas. If a ship were to drag an anchor across the wrong patch of seabed, billions of people could wake up to find themselves either completely disconnected from the internet or surfing with dial-up-like speeds. The three new cables will all come down from the north of Japan, through the relatively-empty Bering Sea — and the Arctic Ocean, where each of the cables will run for more than 5,000 miles, is one of the least-trafficked parts of the world. That said, the cables will still have to be laid hundreds of meters below the surface to avoid the tails of roving icebergs."
Science

Submission + - University makes 80,000 Einstein documents publicly available

Submitted by
orgelspieler
orgelspieler writes: "The Hebrew University of Jerusalem has scanned in some 80,000 of Albert Einstein's documents. According to the university's press release, the documents cover more than just scientific matters. The broad range of subjects include his solution to the Jewish-Arab conflict, a postcard to his mother, and a letter from one of his mistresses asking for assistance getting to America. Some documents have been translated and annotated and are completely searchable."
Books

Submission + - Teacher Suspended For Reading Ender's Game To Students (forbes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Forbes reports that a middle school teacher in South Carolina has been placed on administrative leave for reading sci-fi classic Ender's Game to his students. According to blogger Tod Kelly, '[A parent] reported him to the school district complained that the book was pornographic; that same parent also asked the local police to file criminal charges against the teacher. As of today, the police have not yet decided whether or not to file charges (which is probably a good sign that they won’t). The school district, however, appears to agree with the parent, is considering firing the teacher and will be eliminating the book from the school.'
Games

Submission + - MLG Winter Championship Anaheim (shoujikimedia.com)

Submitted by
G1ngerN1nja
G1ngerN1nja writes: "This weekend is the first event of the new MLG season, MLG columbus. Fighting games are back in vogue, and there is no place for Call of Duty in this years line-up. MLG stalwarts Starcraft 2 and Halo:Reach will both also be played at the event. Read on for more info.
The event is the culmination of various online tournaments, and kicks off the season proper. This is the first time Since Tekken 5 that a fighting game has appeared at an MLG, and they have three of them on show. Soul Calibur 5, Mortal Kombat 9 and King of Fighters XIII will all be making their MLG début. Starcraft 2 and Halo: Reach pick right up where they left off last season. Murmurings from the MLG camp suggest that League of Legends could join the line-up during the next tournament. If the stream numbers from the recent IEM tournament are any suggestion, it would be a great pick up for MLG."
Music

Submission + - What is love on eight floppy drives (youtube.com)

Submitted by polyp2000
polyp2000 writes: 90s techno band "Haddaway" "What is love" played on 8 floppy drives. Does this need more description? The bass on one of those floppies is amazing!
Apple

Submission + - The New iPad Gets 10 Degrees Hotter Than iPad 2 (ibtimes.com) 1

Submitted by
redletterdave
redletterdave writes: "To power all of the features in "the new iPad" and maintain a solid 10 hours of battery life, Apple upgraded the iPad 2's rechargeable lithium-ion battery and made it substantially bigger — about 70 percent. But at what cost? Dutch website Tweakers.net ran two GL Benchmarks on a new iPad and an iPad 2 for five minutes each, and then looked at both devices with an infrared camera. The company discovered that the new iPad reached 33.6C (92.5 Fahrenheit), with the hottest region nearby the device's motherboard towards the bottom of the device, while the second-generation model only reached 28.3C (82.9 Fahrenheit). That means on average, the new iPad gets 10 degrees hotter than its predecessor. Now, users worry if the new iPad has the same risks as laptops, which are believed to cause testicular and reproductive dysfunction when they get too hot."
Security

Submission + - PwnedList alerts you when you've been hacked, for a price

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: PwnedList, a website launched just nine months ago, helps users figure out if their account credentials have been hacked. The service crawls public sites where hackers post stolen data and then indexes all the login credentials it finds. As such, if your company or a website you use was hacked, and PwnedList found it, it can tell you. If you want to check yourself, the service is free. If you want PwnedList to alert you when your account credentials have been stolen, however, you’ll have to pay.

Submission + - A Computer Program to Detect Possible Cheating in Chess (nytimes.com)

Submitted by
jeffrlamb
jeffrlamb writes: "Cheating in live chess matches — fueled by powerful computer programs that play better than people do, as well as sophisticated communication technologies — is becoming a big problem for world championship chess.
Kenneth W. Regan is attempting to construct a mathematical proof to see if someone cheated, the trouble is that so many variables and outliers must be taken into account. Modeling and factoring human behavior in competition turns out to be very difficult."
Math

Submission + - Radiolab on The Turing Problem (radiolab.org)

Submitted by
dooling
dooling writes: "WNYC's Radiolab has a "short" on the life and times of Alan Turing, specifically how his personal life may have informed his thoughts on machines. A relevant discussion given the recent refusal of the UK government to give Turing a posthumous pardon for "acts of gross indecency between men, in public or private." As usual, Radiolab treats the subject in an entertaining and informative manner."

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