39458033
submission
ChristW writes:
The final report that was handed to the Dutch government today indicates that all 8 certificate servers of the Dutch company DigiNotar were fully hacked. Because the access log files were stored on the same servers, they cannot be used to find any evidence for or against intrusion. In fact, blatant falsification has been found in those log files.
A series of so-far unused certificates has also been found. It is unknown if and where these certificates have been used.
39457479
submission
Dupple writes:
Powering cellular base stations around the world will cost $36 billion this year—chewing through nearly 1 percent of all global electricity production. Much of this is wasted by a grossly inefficient piece of hardware: the power amplifier, a gadget that turns electricity into radio signals.
The versions of amplifiers within smartphones suffer similar problems. If you’ve noticed your phone getting warm and rapidly draining the battery when streaming video or sending large files, blame the power amplifiers. As with the versions in base stations, these chips waste more than 65 percent of their energy—and that’s why you sometimes need to charge your phone twice a day.
It’s currently a lab-bench technology, but if it proves itself in commercialization, which is expected to start in 2013—first targeting LTE base stations—the technology could slash base station energy use by half. Likewise, a chip-scale version of the technology, still in development, could double the battery life of smartphones.
39456645
submission
Trailrunner7 writes:
California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris today announced a crackdown on mobile application developers and companies that haven't posted privacy policies, at least where users can easily find them.
The attorney general is giving recipients 30 days "to conspicuously post a privacy policy within their app that informs users of what personally identifiable information about them is being collected and what will be done with that private information," according to a prepared statement.
A sample letter defines the issue at hand. "An operator of a mobile application (“app”) that uses the Internet to collect PII is an "online service" within the meaning of CalOPPA. An app’s commercial operator must therefore conspicuously post its privacy policy in a means that is reasonably accessible to the consumer. Having a Web site with the applicable privacy policy conspicuously posted may be adequate, but only if a link to that Web site is 'reasonably accessible' to the user within the app."
39455723
submission
Dupple writes:
Tests have been carried out to see whether military drones can mix safely in the air with passenger planes.
The tests involved a Predator B drone fitted with radio location systems found on domestic aircraft that help them spot and avoid other planes.
The tests will help to pave the way for greater use of drones in America's domestic airspace.
There is a press release from GA available here
http://www.ga.com/press-releases/135-ga-asi-news/558-ga-asi-successfully-tests-ads-b-surveillance-system-aboard-guardian
39455545
submission
another random user writes:
In January, hackers got hold of 24 million Zappos customers' email addresses and other personal information.
Some of those customers have been suing Zappos, an online shoes and clothing retailer that's owned by Amazon.com. Zappos wants the matter to go into arbitration, citing its terms of service.
The problem: A federal court just ruled that agreement completely invalid.
So Zappos will have to go to court—or more likely settle to avoid those legal costs.
Here's how Zappos screwed up, according to Eric Goldman, a law professor and director of Santa Clara University's High Tech Law Institute: It put a link to its terms of service on its website, but didn't force customers to click through to it.
39455261
submission
Laser Dan writes:
I'm an engineer (robotics) who can't seem to find a pen that satisfies me.
Most of my writing is just temporary "thinking notes" on random bits of paper, like diagrams, flowcharts, equations etc, but pens always seem to have one or more of the following issues:
1. They write too thickly — I write very small, and when I start adding extra details to diagrams it gets even smaller. A line width of about 0.2-0.4mm would be good.
2. The ink bleeds, making the lines thick and unclear.
3. The ink is slow to dry or the tip grows blobs of ink, causing smudges everywhere.
4. The first line drawn is not fully dark, as the ink takes a short distance to get going.
5. The lines drawn are faint unless you press hard (I don't)
I have been given several fancy pens (Parker etc) over the years but they all suffered from problems 1, 3 (blobs), 4 and 5.
I'm considering trying a Fisher space pen, but it looks like even the fine cartridge writes rather thickly.
Have any fellow Slashdotters found their ultimate pen?
39455055
submission
Penurious Penguin writes:
Your curtilage may be your castle, but "open fields" are open game for law-enforcement and surveillance technology. With "No Trespassing" signs a hundred or none, your private property is public for the law, with or without a warrant. What the police cannot do, their cameras can — without warrant or court oversight. An article at CNET recounts a case involving the DEA, a federal judge, and two defendants (since charged) who were subjected to video surveillance on private property without a warrant. Presumably, the 4th Amendment suffers an obscure form of agoraphobia further elucidated in the article.
39454607
submission
waimate writes:
Famous physicist Roger Penrose has developed a theory that explains the existence of an immortal soul, near-death experience, where consciousness comes from, and how our soul survives our body. Oh dear.
39447367
submission
Maow writes:
A B.C. woman is suing Apple Inc. alleging the company has violated the privacy and security of users of its iPhones, iPads and iPods that are using the iOS4 operating system.
(Yeah, IOS4. Continuing:)
Amanda Ladas, of Surrey, has filed the lawsuit under the Class Proceedings Act in Supreme Court of B.C. Ladas’s claim alleges that in addition to the violation of security and privacy, Apple has “engaged in deceptive acts or practices” that entitle her and anyone who joins the suit “to aggravated, punitive and/or exemplary damages.”
Ladas said in a release Tuesday that she is concerned that, without her permission, anyone with moderate computer knowledge can find out where she’s been.
According to a report by digital forensics technologist Francis Graf, whose report is filed with the lawsuit, Ladas’s iPhone 4 contains location data, going back approximately one year, which was easily accessible using free tools readily available on the internet.
39445213
submission
ParryHotter writes:
Well, last august CDE was open sourced. Now, Motif itself followed. It is being distributed under the LGPL license. You can read the announcement here: http://motif.ics.com/
Here is the link to the project's page on Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/motif/
Richard Stallman can now declare Lesstif officially deprecated
39443453
submission
wiredmikey writes:
According to FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, superstorm Sandy this week delivered a "substantial and serious" hit to the telecom infrastructure in the northeastern United States.
The Chairman warned that communications outages could get worse before they get better, particularly for mobile, as flooding and snow in some areas could slow efforts.
FCC officials said that approximately 25 percent of wireless towers were out of service in a "core" region in 10 states from Virginia to Massachusetts. Many homes and businesses have lost cable television and Internet services as well.
Genachowski said that some wireless cells had switched to backup electric power after outages, but that "many sites were running out of backup power."
The major wireless carriers including Verizon, AT&T, Spring and T-Mobile said they had outages and were working to restore service. Sandy had also knocked out data centers in the New York City area, knocking some popular sites offline.
39439017
submission
ThorGod writes:
From the article:
"The Orion space capsule is designed to carry humans farther into the solar system than they've ever been by taking trips to the moon, asteroids and Mars."
39437607
submission
SoftwarePearls writes:
Ever since our water company hit us with a shock water bill that was about five times the average, and completely inexplicable (by all adults in the household, hint) I've wanted to install a wireless monitoring system that would monitor our last century analogue water, gas and electricity meters so that I could run some software on my PC that would swiftly alert me when there's any sign of abnormal consumption. The monitoring would have to sample at least a few times per day, ideally every 5-10 minutes. Our utility meters are in a dark, humid, spiderweb-infested basement. Has any Slashdotter come up with a cheap, reliable mechanism? Do I need to become an Arduino wizard to achieve my simple goal?
39436765
submission
sgunhouse writes:
Wired is running an article on a Supreme Court challenge (well, actually two of them) to the use of drug-sniffing dogs. The first case discussed involved Florida police using a drug-sniffing dog as a basis for searching a suspected drug dealer's home. The court in Florida excluded the evidence obtained from the search, saying a warrant should be required for that sort of use of a dog.
Personally, I agree — police have no right to parade a dog around on private property on a "fishing expedition", same as they need a warrant to use a thermal imaging device to search for grow houses. I have no use for recreational drugs, but they had better have a warrant if they want to bring a dog onto my property.
39435627
submission
mas939 writes:
Northwestern University researchers have found that public Domain Name System (DNS) services could slow down users' Internet connections, and have developed namehelp, a solution that could speed up Web performance by as much as 40 percent. The Northwestern researchers, led by professor Fabian Bustamante, found that users' Web performance can suffer due to the hidden interaction of DNS with Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), which help performance by offering exact replicas of Web site content in computer servers around the world. The namehelp system runs personalized benchmarks in the background, from within users' computers, to determine their optimal DNS configuration and improve the Web experience by helping sites load faster.
39435191
submission
rtfa-troll writes:
The collapse of the PC market has had much discussion on Slashdot with a common opinion that, now that Apple is the largest personal computer manufacturer, a loss of sales combined with Apple's iPad will completely eliminate most of them. Now Asustek's most recent results show that there may be a way out for those that can move away from their standard markets. Concentrating on Android tablet devices, the Google Nexus 7, with a help from ASUS transformer tablets has driven the company to massive $230 million profits. Asus gross revenue also climbed 9 percent to around $3.8 billion.
We have discussed related issues recently: Where companies like HTC have lost their focus on open Android devices and suffered from devastating collapses, ASUS has managed to differentiate it's tablets by providing the most open tablet experience possible via with Google's Nexus program and branding.
39435051
submission
dcblogs writes:
Two monolithic buildings in lower Manhattan that serve as major network hubs for the U.S. are operating on generator power, thanks to Hurricane Sandy. The buildings, known as carrier hotels, are a 2.9 million square foot structure at 111 8th Ave., and a 1.8 million square foot facility at 60 Hudson St. Telecom companies use carrier hotels to interconnect networks to allow data sharing and users of one network to connect with those of another. The two buildings are critical to the nation's infrastructure. In 2002, Richard Clarke, then special advisor to the president for cyberspace security, described their importance in a speech. "Transatlantic fiber lands at about 10 different places in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Long Island and New Jersey that, after having landed, it all goes to one of two facilities — 60 Hudson St. or 111 8th Ave in lower Manhattan. If that's true, that would seem to be a problem." Michael Levy, an analyst at Datacenters Tier1 Research, a division of 451 Research, said that "111 8th Ave. and 60 Hudson are two of the most carrier dense buildings in the world." Google owns 111 8th Ave., but isn't commenting on its storm prep for the building.
