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Security

Submission + - Fearmongering About Cyberwar And Cybersecurity Is Working: American Public Very, (techdirt.com)

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "Well, it looks like all the fearmongering about hackers shutting down electrical grids and making planes fall from the sky is working. No matter that there's no evidence of any actual risk, or that the only real issue is if anyone is stupid enough to actually connect such critical infrastructure to the internet (the proper response to which is: take it off the internet), fear is spreading. Of course, this is mostly due to the work of a neat combination of ex-politicians/now lobbyists working for defense contractors who stand to make a ton of money from the panic — enabled by politicians who seem to have no shame in telling scary bedtime stories that have no basis in reality.

But it's all working. And, by working, I mean scaring the public unnecessarily. As reported by Wired, a new survey from Unisys finds that Americans are more worried about cybersecurity threats than terrorism, and they seem pretty worried about those threats. When asked about which security issues were the highest priority, survey respondents noted:"
Hardware

Submission + - DDR4 May Replace Mobile Memory For Less (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: The upcoming shift from Double Data Rate 3 (DDR3) RAM to its successor, DDR4, will herald in a significant boost in both memory performance and capacity for data center hardware and consumer products alike. Because of greater density, 2X performance and lower cost, with the upcoming specification and products will for the first time mean DDR may be used in mobile devices instead of LPDDR. Today, mobile devices use low-power DDR (LPDDR) memory, the current iteration of which uses 1.2v of power. While the next generation of mobile memory, LPDDR3, will further reduce that power consumption (probably by 35% to 40%), it will also likely cost 40% more than DDR4 memory.
Open Source

Submission + - Moving From CouchDB To MySQL (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Sauce Labs had outgrown CouchDB and too much unplanned downtime made them switch to MySQL. With 20-20 hindsight they wrote about their CouchDB experience. But Sauce certainly isn't the first organization to switch databases. Back in 2009, Till Klampaeckel wrote a series of blog posts about moving in the opposite direction — from MySQL to CouchDB. Klampaeckel said the decision was about 'using the right tool for the job.' But the real story may be that programmers are never satisfied with the tool they have."

Submission + - Air defence rockets left unguarded in London (philosophers-stone.co.uk)

Submitted by
Big Hairy Ian
Big Hairy Ian writes: ""Amateur video posted on the internet shows military rockets left unguarded outside a block of flats in Bow, East London, as Britain’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) prepares to deploy missiles on top of flats in London during the 2012 Olympics.

The video was posted by journalist Brian Whelan who lives in Bow Quarter, London. The video shows unguarded military rockets with nobody around.

The unguarded military rockets were part of the MoD’s security plans for the London Olympics. Earlier this week, the MoD confirmed that six sites, including two residential blocks of flats, would be tested as launch pads for missile systems in order to combat air threats during the Olympics.

Local residents have expressed their anger over the plans saying they were not consulted and questioning why the MoD did not build a missile base instead of using residential flats as a missile base.""
Windows

Submission + - Avira Premium causes premium problems (avira.com)

Submitted by Adesso
Adesso writes: Seem Avira is having difficulty with a update of all there Premium customers. A update that has been downloaded over 70 million times is causing the 32-bit version in Windows to block almost all critical application. Avira has responded promptly on a interim solution for this problem.

In most cases this causes Windows to not boot properly.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Custom home server with video capture

Submitted by gr3yh47
gr3yh47 writes: Fellow Slashdotters,
I am looking to build a home server to serve a few purposes — media server, backup/general storage, low to mid range gaming — but, most importantly (to me) I want to be able to capture video input from my consoles. I need to be able to run my component video and composite video systems through it. I need the same outputs as well so i can run the signal to the TV without splitting. And, Ideally, I'd like capture to happen automatically whenever the box detects a signal.

should I go intel or AMD? what OS? what video cap hardware and software? what other hardware should I grab?

I'd like to keep it under/around $1000
Science

Submission + - Iranian physics student from UT gets 10 years in jail for spying (nature.com)

Submitted by scibri
scibri writes: Omid Kokabee, a laser physics graduate student from the University of Texas who has been imprisoned in Tehran for the past 15 months, was sentenced to 10 years in jail on Sunday for allegedly conspiring with foreign countries against Iran.

Kokabee was arrested in February 2011 while on a trip home, and charged with “communicating with a hostile government” (ie Israel) and “illegal earnings”. He has consistently denied the charges, and refused to speak at his trial, where no evidence against him was presented.

Several international science groups, including the American Physical Society, have spoken up in his defence, and an online petition has been set up in support.
AMD

Submission + - AMD detonates Trinity: Behold Bulldozer's second coming (extremetech.com) 1

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "It’s been a turbulent 12 months for AMD. Since the company launched Llano, its first mainstream “Fusion” part, it has replaced its CEO, brought in multiple new executives, debuted a disappointing architecture, delayed its next-generation Brazos parts by a full year, and outlined a comprehensive vision of the future that de-emphasizes cutting-edge process node transitions in favor of re-useable IP blocks that can be shared between multiple SoCs (system-on-a-chip). When it launched last year, Bulldozer ran hot, scaled poorly, and was less efficient than its predecessor. When it came to building Llano’s successor, AMD clearly had its work cut out for it. How does Trinity do, then? Well, on the GPU side it comfortably holds its own against Intel's Ivy Bridge HD-4000, but the Piledriver CPU still doesn't come close to Sandy Bridge, let alone Ivy Bridge. But really, Trinity was never intended to compete directly with Ivy Bridge. AMD’s goal with Trinity is to position the CPU as a successor to Llano, a further fulfillment of the company’s “Fusion” vision, and as an anchor in the popular $400-$700 segment. Based on what we’ve seen today, and a few educated guesses, it’s got a fair chance of pulling it off — short term."
Politics

Submission + - Chile Threatens To Drop Out Of TPP Negotiations Due To Ridiculous US Demands Abo (techdirt.com)

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "You may remember that some officials in Chile recently began wondering what benefit they would get from agreeing to be a part of TPP. It seems that view is going even further. There was just another negotiating round and it appears (as we've expected, but don't know for sure because the US negotiators, led by Ron Kirk refuse to be even remotely transparent) that the US's strong position on IP is scaring off Chile. A high level government official is now saying that the country is considering pulling out of the TPP negotiations unless the US "significantly moderates its intellectual property demands." The article suggests that Chile is willing to move forward with much of the rest of the agreement, but the ridiculous USTR position on IP is giving it reason to be concerned."
Science

Submission + - Fungi Discovered In The Amazon Will Eat Your Plastic

Submitted by DaneM
DaneM writes: Recently, a group of student researchers from Yale University brought home a previously-undiscovered fungus that has a voracious appetite for polyurethane. For those not aware, polyurethane comprises many garden hoses, truck seats, shoes, and other durable plastic items--and will be around for your great-grandchildren to watch decompose if you throw it in the dump today. Depending on further study, this new organism may prove to be a solution to a significant part of our slow-decomposing waste problem.

Submission + - OpenNIC Launches dotPirate TLD (dotpirate.me)

Submitted by
ktetch-pirate
ktetch-pirate writes: "As the US Govt. seizes domains willy nilly, and ICANN demands hundreds of thousands of dollars for vanity TLD's, it's hard to remember that they're not the only game in town. Alternate DNS group OpenNIC had added another TLD to their offerings, with the launch this weekend of the .pirate TLD"
AMD

Submission + - AMD Trinity A10-4600M Processor Launched, Tested (hothardware.com) 3

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "AMD lifted the veil on their new Trinity A-Series mobile processor architecture today. Trinity has been reported as offering much-needed CPU performance enhancements in IPC (Instructions Per Cycle) but also more of AMD's strength in gaming and multimedia horsepower, with an enhanced second generation integrated Radeon HD graphics engine. AMD's A10-4600M quad-core chip is comprised of 1.3B transistors with a CPU base core clock of 2.3GHz and Turbo Core speeds of up to 3.2GHz. The on-board Radeon HD 7660G graphics core is comprised of 384 Radeon Stream Processor cores clocked at 497MHz base and 686Mhz Turbo. In the benchmarks, AMD's new Trinity A10 chip outpaces Intel's Ivy Bridge for gamingbut can't hold a candle to it for standard compute workloads or video transcoding."
Microsoft

Submission + - Forbes Names Microsoft's Steve Ballmer names worst CEO

Submitted by _0x783czar
_0x783czar writes: Microsoft haters gleefully have latched on to the latest scoop that a Forbes columnist has named Steve Ballmer the worst CEO. It seems that the article has leveled some strong accusations of irresponsible and ineffective business practices; claiming that Microsoft has not progressed over the last 12 years of Ballmer's leadership.

http://www.bgr.com/2012/05/14/microsoft-steve-ballmer-worst-ceo/

(full disclosure: I'm not a Microsoft fan myself and tend to agree with this piece.)
Politics

Submission + - 3D-Printing gets boost from Obama and DOD (3dprinterhub.com)

Submitted by
jcho5
jcho5 writes: "Surprising, even politicians can see where the tech winds blow. In this case, additive manufacturing --aka 3d-printing.

With the economy in the dumps, the US needs all the jobs it can get. A hobbling manufacturing sector makes 3d-printing a promising sight. Under Obama's National Network of Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI), a new Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute is soon to be born

The Brains at DoD, DoE and NASA don't want to see another technology pass us by. Long live innovation!"
Security

Submission + - Has th3j35t3r been unmasked? (scmagazine.com.au)

Submitted by mask.of.sanity
mask.of.sanity writes: The Wikileaks-hating, cyber terrorist-fighter The Jester (th3j35t3r) has reportedly been unmasked by a former US army colleague who claims to have served alongside the hacker in the US Special Operations Command.

Twitter user cubespherical uploaded what they claimed to be a direct message exchange with The Jester in which they claimed to release the hackers' resume once a donation of 20,000 BitCoins was received.

The BitCoins would be donated to Wikileaks and help cubespherical "hide".

Submission + - Best iPad apps for computer security professional?

Submitted by CompusecKevin
CompusecKevin writes: So I just purchased a new iPad with my blazing fast LTE internet and thought to myself what all can a security professional do from the ipad? I've already installed a great SSH client (that does RDP and VNC too), nessus client, and my VPN is all setup and good to go. What other iPad apps are out there for doing pen testing and the like? No metasploit for iPad yet?
Graphics

Submission + - Modeling People and Places with Internet Photo Collections (acm.org)

Submitted by
CowboyRobot
CowboyRobot writes: "Two resarchers have created a system that aggregates thousands of photos from around the Web and integrates them into single images.
One application is creating maps by taking the GPS coordinates of photos taken from a collection. Another is creating 3D models of historical buildings by automatically pasting together tourists' photos taken from different angles.
"The challenge is that online data sets are largely unstructured and thus require sophisticated algorithms that can organize and extract meaning from noisy data. In our case, this involves developing automated techniques that can find patterns across millions of images.""

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