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Anime

Submission + - Yamato, Macross director Noburo Ishiguro passes away. (animenewsnetwork.com) 1

Submitted by Kyusaku Natsume
Kyusaku Natsume writes: Anime News Network informs that Studio Nue co-founder Haruka Takachiho reported on Wednesday that Noboru Ishiguro, the veteran director of such works as Space Battleship Yamato, the first color Astro Boy anime series (1980), The Super Dimension Fortress Macross, and Legend of the Galactic Heroes, has passed away. He was 73.

Ishiguro directed some of the most highly regarded anime classics of the last five decades, including those listed above as well as Megazone 23, The Super Dimension Century Orguss, The Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love? film, and Ykai Ningen Bem. He also worked in classics like Doraemon, Ashita no Joe, Vicke Viking and many, many others.
Mozilla

Submission + - Mozilla Makes HTTPS Google Search Default for Firefox (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Mozilla has made a small but important change to the way that its Firefox browser handles search queries directed to Google, making the search provider's encrypted search service the default option. The modification is in is not in the stable version of Firefox yet, but users who download the daily beta builds can access it now.

The switch to using HTTPS for search by default is a major steo forward for Mozilla in terms of protecting the privacy of users' search queries and results. Google has had an option for encrypted search for some time now and the company made secure search the default choice for users who are logged in to their Google accounts last October. However, Google has not made that option the default for its own Chrome browser.
Patents

Submission + - Supreme Court Limits Patents Based on Laws of Nature

Submitted by sed quid in infernos
sed quid in infernos writes: The Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion yesterday holding that “to transform an unpatentable law of nature into a patent-eligible application of such a law, a patent must do more than simply state the law of nature while adding the words ‘apply it.’” The Court invalidated a patent on the process of adjusting medication dosage based on the levels of specific metabolites in the patient’s blood.

The opinion sets forth a “process for determining patent eligibility for patent claims that include a law of nature. The court wrote that the 'additional features' that show an application of the law must 'provide practical assurance that the [claimed] process is more than a drafting effort.' This language suggests that the burden will be on the patentee to prove that its limitations are more than patent attorney tricks.”
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Surviving the cashless cataclysm (extremetech.com) 1

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "There's been a lot of noise about Sweden becoming a cashless economy, and the potential repercussions that it might cause, most notably the (apparent) annihilation of privacy. Really, though, I think this is a load of hot air. Physical money might be on the way out, but that doesn't mean the end of anonymous, untraceable cash — it'll just become digital. If Bitcoin has taught us anything, it's possible to create an irreversible, cryptographic currency — but so far it has failed because it doesn't have sovereign backing. What if the US or UK (or any other country for that matter) issued digital cash? We would suddenly have an anonymous currency that can be kept on credit chips (or smartphones) and traded, just like paper money. No longer would handling money require expensive cash registers, safes, and secure collections; your smartphone could be your point of sale. It won't be easy to get governments to pass digital cash into law, though, not with big banks and megacorps lobbying for centralized, electronic, traceable currency. Here's hoping Sweden makes the right choice when the referendum to retire physical money finally rolls around."
NASA

Submission + - Mystery Rising Within Mercury (discovery.com)

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "Something besides volcanic eruptions and asteroid and comet impacts has sculpted the surface of Mercury — an unknown process, possibly still going on today, that causes the ground to swell from the inside out. The evidence, collected by NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft currently orbiting the innermost planet, is scattered all over Mercury, including a dramatic finding that half of the floor of the biggest crater on the planet has been raised above the walls.

The MESSENGER's team findings were announced at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston on Wednesday and will be published in this week's Science."
Government

Submission + - New Duqu Variant Discovered in Iran (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: It’s been an interesting week in developments related to Duqu, the complex cyber-espionage malware often referred to as “Son of Stuxnet.” On Monday, Kaspersky Lab revealed details on what was a previously unknown programming language used in the “Duqu Framework”, a portion of the Payload DLL used by the Trojan to interact with Command & Control (C&C) servers after the malware infects a system.

On Tuesday, Symantec came forward with details on a file that it recently received, which after being analyzed, proved to be a new variant of W32.Duqu—the first new version of Duqu that Symantec has found this year. While the sample received by Symantec isn't the full code used in the threat, it's the key component needed to fully infect a system—the loader file that loads the full malware and stores it in an encrypted state on a system once it restarts.

The newly discovered Duqu variant came from Iran, Vikram Thakur, principal manager, Symantec Security Response told SecurityWeek.

Information on the command and control server that the sample would potentially use to connect to was not available in the new file, Thakur said. "The author(s) changed the encryption algorithm they use to encrypt the other components on disk. Also the driver was changed to evade AV coverage. That leads us to believe development of Duqu is still ongoing."

While Duqu is assumed to have been created by the same authors as Stuxnet, unlike Stuxnet, it does not contain any components that attempt to control industrial control systems, but instead is primarily a remote access Trojan (RAT) designed to collect intelligence data and assets, possibly for use in future attacks.
Space

Submission + - The Sun is 1,392,684 +/- 65 km across (discovermagazine.com) 2

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "In the "things you'd think we'd already know" department: using space-based observations (PDF) of Mercury transiting the face of the Sun to calculate the solar diameter, scientists found it to be 1,392,684 km across. The surprising bit is the accuracy: +/- 65 km, or a precision of 99.995%, which is hard if not impossible to achieve using ground-based telescopes."
Microsoft

Submission + - We don't negotiate with ransomware: A new scam emerges (networkworld.com)

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: If the software industry showed as much innovation and initiative as the malware business, we might have some really nice software to choose from. But for now, the bad guys are one step ahead of the rest of us, with a new way to squeeze money out of your pocket.

Microsoft calls this new trend ransomware, and it looks a lot like older scams in which an app masqueraded as an antivirus program and then tried to sucker you into buying a useless piece of software to remove an infection that doesn't exist.

In the case of ransomware, an infection takes control of and holds hostage an infected machine, locking the user out until a payment of some form is made. In one case, Microsoft found an example that looked like an official Microsoft screen, claiming the Windows license was invalid.

The ransomware locks the computer, displays the alert screen and demands the payment of a "fine" for the supposed infraction through a legitimate online payment service like Paysafecard or Ukash. Since many of these infections are taking place in Europe, Paypal does not seem to be involved.
Your Rights Online

Submission + - NASA 'Spy Center', Operation 'Stellar Wind' (theblaze.com)

Submitted by kodiaktau
kodiaktau writes: The NSA is working on building the largest cyber-security project in the Utah desert. The highly classified center is said to be near Bluffdale, the location of the largest sect of polygamists in Utah. The center will be called the Utah Data Center and will be used to decipher, analyze and store data from the world's communications grid.

Wired mag was able to get a conceptual site plan from the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers showing the size and scope of the facilities. Additional information about the kinds of machines needed to support this operation is speculation, but it is assumed that based on Pentagon goals, the facility will become a library of current data that may not be able to be decrypted at this time and will store it until it can be further broken down and analyzed.
Microsoft

Submission + - Windows Phone 'A Certain Road To Death' (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Slashdot readers will recall that back in January, Nokia CEO Steven Elop blamed the company's Windows Phone woes on commission-minded salespeople, who pushed phones they thought would actually sell. Now, ex-Nokia exec Tomi Ahonen, is calling the Nokia's Windows Phone strategy 'a certain road to death.' He bases this grim assessment on UK market shares from Kantar Worldpanel: 'When Nokia shifted from 'the obsolete' Symbian to 'the awesome' Windows Phone, Nokia lost a third of its customers! In just one quarter!' Can MeeGo, or Tizen, save Nokia now?"
Earth

Submission + - Historic Heat in North America Turns Winter to Summer (scienceworldreport.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A huge, lingering ridge of high pressure over the eastern half of the United States brought summer-like temperatures to North America in March 2012. The warm weather shattered records across the central and eastern United States and much of Canada.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Would you wear a "vibrating tattoo?" (wsj.com)

Submitted by
EliSowash
EliSowash writes: "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.” The material would react to magnetic signals emitted by a nearby electronic device, such as a smartphone, and that magnetic field would interact with the tattoo, causing it to vibrate.

Sounds to me like more of a 'patch' than a 'tattoo' but that's the language they used in the patent and not really the point.

So...would you? Are you so connected that you'd attach a notifier directly to you? And (dare I ask) just where would you put it??"
The Military

Submission + - Self-Charging Robo-Jellyfish Are Here, and the Navy Wants Them (vice.com)

Submitted by
pigrabbitbear
pigrabbitbear writes: "The weird, gooey robot war is getting heated quick: Earlier this week we heard about the strange blob-bot, an amoeba-mimicking, pulsating little horror of a robot. But that’s nothing in the face of news that engineers at Virginia Tech have built a robotic jellyfish.

As if the threat of the oceans being taken over by deadly stinging jelly cyborgs isn’t scary enough, there’s this: The researchers claim that, because their Robojelly is powered by a hydrogen-based catalytic reaction, rather than electricity, it could “theoretically” power itself indefinitely. When you consider our best options for powering underwater craft are currently batteries, nuclear reactors, or tethers to the surface, a chemically-powered propulsion system is groundbreaking (and, well, a bit nerve-wracking)."
Iphone

Submission + - Sprint CEO defends company's decision to bet it all on the iPhone (bgr.com)

Submitted by zacharye
zacharye writes: Sprint chief executive Dan Hesse is being watched closely by the company’s board of directors, but the CEO has to answer to investors and subscribers as well. Last year in October, Hesse revealed that the company is placing a massive $15.5 billion bet on Apple’s iPhone, and in a recent interview, Hesse defended the move, which has been criticized by a number of industry watchers...
Censorship

Submission + - Iowa Criminalizes Reporters on Factory Farms 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Cody Carlson writes in the Atlantic that Iowa recently passed HF 589, better known as the "Ag Gag" law, that criminalizes investigative journalists and animal protection advocates who take entry-level jobs at factory farms in order to document the rampant food safety and animal welfare abuses within. The original version of the law would have made it a crime to take, possess, or share pictures of factory farms that were taken without the owner's consent, but the Iowa Attorney General rejected this measure out of First Amendment concerns. As amended, the law achieves the same result by making it a crime to give a false statement on an "agricultural production" job application (PDF). As a Humane Society of the United States investigator, Carlson worked undercover at four Iowa egg farms in the winter of 2010 and witnessed disturbing trends of extreme animal cruelty and dangerously unsanitary conditions. "Millions of haggard, featherless hens languished in crowded, microwave-sized wire cages. Unable to even spread their wings, many were forced to pile atop their dead and rotting cage mates as they laid their eggs." The Ag Gag laws also protect the slaughterhouses that regularly send sick and dying animals into our food supply, and would prevent some of the biggest food safety recalls in US. history. "In short, the Ag Gag laws muzzle the few people that are telling the truth about our food," writes Carlson. "Now, the foxes are truly guarding the henhouse.""
Science

Submission + - Lens-less Tech Could Revolutionize Electron Microscopy (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: Researchers at the University of Sheffield have created what sounds impossible — even nonsensical: an experimental electron microscope without lenses that not only works, but is orders of magnitude more powerful than current models. By means of a new form of mathematical analysis, scientists can take the meaningless patterns of dots and circles created by the lens-less microscope and create images that are of high resolution and contrast and, potentially, up to 100 times greater magnification.
Education

Submission + - Tennessee senate passes "monkey bill" (knoxnews.com) 1

Submitted by Layzej
Layzej writes: The Tennessee Senate has passed a bill that allows teachers to "teach the controversy" on evolution, global warming and other scientific subjects. Critics have called it a "monkey bill" that promotes creationism in classrooms. In a statement sent to legislators, eight members of the National Academy of Science said that, in practice, the bill will likely lead to "scientifically unwarranted criticisms of evolution." and that "By undermining the teaching of evolution in Tennessee's public schools, HB368 and SB893 would miseducate students, harm the state's national reputation, and weaken its efforts to compete in a science-driven global economy,"

Submission + - Nokia Patents Tattoo That Vibrates When You Receive a Call or Message (latimes.com)

Submitted by
rullywowr
rullywowr writes: "In a rare move, Nokia patents a tattoo which can vibrate when you get a call or message. The tattoo, which would be made of ferrous ink, would be applied to the user. The tattoo would also link up to a particular phone such as Bluetooth does today. Provisions are made for different sensory impluses, for different calls such as a signature "ringtone." For those afraid of the needle, they have patented a sticker version of the tattoo."
Windows

Submission + - Metro UI applied to enterprise apps (get-spblog.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft has just demoed a working prototype of Microsoft Dynamics GP (an ERP package) running on Windows 8, with a full Metro UI. This is the first example of an enterprise app for the Windows 8 metro ‘wall’. The one hour keynote is available online behind a short registration form at msconvergence.com (demos start around 40 minutes in). Screenshots available at source.
Government

Submission + - NSA Chief Refutes Spying Claims (wired.com)

Submitted by AstroPhilosopher
AstroPhilosopher writes: Recently Wired, USA Today and other news outlets reported on a new spy center being built to store intercepted communications (even American citizens'). Tuesday, Gen. Keith Alexander testified in front of Congress refuting the articles. Even going so far as claiming the NSA lacks the authority to monitor American citizens. An authority that was given to the NSA through the FISA Amendments Act signed into law by Bush and still supported today by Obama.

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