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Robotics

Giant Robotic Jellyfish Unveiled by Researchers 43

Posted by samzenpus from the thank-you-science dept.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, an anonymous reader writes in with news about a giant robot jellyfish. As if there weren't enough real jellyfish around to trigger our thalassophobia, researchers at Virginia Tech have created Cryo -- an eight-armed autonomous robot that mimics jelly movement with the help of a flexible silicone hat. The man-sized jellybot altogether dwarfs previous efforts, hence the upgrade from small tank to swimming pool for mock field tests. And unlike the passively propelled bots we've seen recently, Cryo runs on batteries, with the researchers hoping to better replicate the energy-efficient nature of jelly movement to eventually increase Cryo's charge cycle to months instead of hours. That's also the reason these robotic jellyfish are getting bigger -- because the larger they are, the further they can go."
Facebook

Submission + - UK man jailed for hacking a private Facebook account (techworld.com) 1

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: A 21-year-old man from West Sussex has been sent to jail for 12 months after hacking into a private Facebook account and gaining access to the private email facility.

The breach was originally reported to the FBI, who traced the source of the breach to the UK.

Thing is, how are they defining hacking? Nowadays 16-year-olds seem to be able to easily hack and take control of each other's accounts — will they now be liable too? Does guessing the Facebook password or hacking the attached email account to get the password count?
Power

Submission + - US is Happy To Pay More for Clean Energy. Well, a Little More (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
Fluffeh
Fluffeh writes: "A recent study of over 1,000 folks for a paper published in Nature Climate Change has found that the average US citizen is inclined to pay a premium to ensure that by 2035, 80% of US power comes from clean energy. At random, respondents received one of three "technological treatments" or definitions of clean energy that included renewable energy sources alone, renewable sources plus natural gas, and renewable sources plus nuclear power. Delving into the socioeconomics, researchers found that Republicans, Independents, and respondents with no party allegiance were less likely by 25, 13 and 25 percentage points respectively to support a NCES than respondents that identified themselves as Democrats."
Idle

Submission + - Easy cloaking with superconductors and magnetic tape (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "More often than not, when you see a headline proclaiming the invention of an invisibility cloak, it’s all just smoke and mirrors. A recent experiment carried out by European researchers isn’t necessarily the magical cloaking device humanity has been dreaming about for generations, but it’s much closer to reality than previous attempts. While still a laboratory proof of concept, this new experiment uses common, off-the-shelf materials — a 12.5mm magnetic tube lined with superconducting tape — and easy-to-reproduce conditions to create the most reliable cloaking effect yet seen. With this experiment, magnetic radiation has been completely cloaked. Now it's just a matter of getting the superconductor to work at room temperature (and, in its current form, you wouldn't be able to see out of the magnetic cloak, so we have to find a way around that, too)."
Security

Submission + - Wordpress Malware Injection affecting 200,000 web pages (websense.com)

Submitted by
EliSowash
EliSowash writes: "Researchers at Websense have detected a widespread rogue antivirus campaign targeting more than 200,000 Webpages and close to 30,000 unique Web hosts. The attack uses HTML injection to infect a massive number of Websites with various versions of WordPress installed. When a victim visits one of the infected sites, he or she is redirected to a site hosting rogue antivirus. After a three-level redirection chain, victims land on a fake AV site, which executes a variant of FakeAlert."
Security

Submission + - Anonymous Hacks Vatican Website (zdnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Anonymous has hacked the Vatican. The website for the Catholic Church, vatican.va, is currently down. This appears to be a typical Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, meaning no actual data was compromised: the website was simply overloaded with requests. As such, while the site was hacked, it will likely be back up shortly.

Submission + - Chinese Hackers in Nortel (wsj.com)

Submitted by porsche911
porsche911 writes: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that suspected Chinese hackers had control over Nortel's computers as far back as 2000 but the extent wasn't known until 2009.
"Using seven passwords stolen from top Nortel executives, including the chief executive, the hackers—who appeared to be working in China—penetrated Nortel's computers at least as far back as 2000 "

Submission + - Firebug Tutorial (w3resource.com)

Submitted by
morrision
morrision writes: "This tutorial teaches you how to work with Firebug. It covers how to inspect and edit HTML with Firebug, how to inspect and edit CSS with Firebug, how to debug and profile JavaScript with Firebug, how to execute JavaScript on the fly with Firebug, how to Log for JavaScript with Firebug, how to monitor network activity with Firebug."
Google

Submission + - Will Google's Valentine Doodle Win Over Santorum?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: 'It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be,' was the 2003 marriage quote that launched presidential candidate Rick Santorum's 'Google Problem'. So, whether intentional or not, it's kind of funny that this year's Google Valentine Day's Doodle concludes with a happy ending that is, you know, man on alien, cat on dog, man on man, princess on frog, black on white, and milk on cookie. Hey, you can't fight love. BTW, today is also special in that it marks Google's first patent-protected Valentine's Day Doodle!
Security

Submission + - Compromised Steam Data Included Credit Card Info (steampowered.com)

Submitted by
AaronLS
AaronLS writes: "Steam has released additional information about a previous security breach, indicating that with the help of third party security experts they have determined no passwords were compromised, but billing information and credits cards were compromised. This information was encrypted, but no details were given on the level or type of this encryption, which would be significant since the attackers would have free reign to throw as much computing power at trying to decrypt the data, either through brute force guessing of the key or other means if the encryption has weaknesses. Also of significance, would be whether all the data shared the same key, or if each user's billing information was encrypted with a different key."
Debian

Submission + - Debian's Free Software Worth Over AU$17 Billion (US$19 Billion) (james.rcpt.to)

Submitted by james.bromberger
james.bromberger writes: I've just finished doing a source line count analysis on Debian's upcoming Wheezy release using David A. Wheeler's sloccount, and using a recent salary estimate, it places all the original source software that makes up main, contrib and non-free at 419 million SLOC, and a value of US$19 Billion/AU$17 Billion/GBP£12 Billion.

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