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Science

Submission + - Particle Smasher Hints at Physics Breakthrough (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) may have made its first crack in modern physics. Physicists there have detected a charge-parity (CP) violation at least eight times as high as the standard model (the accepted theory of elementary particles) allows. If this disparity turns out to be real, it might help explain an enduring mystery of the universe: why there's lots of normal matter, but hardly any of the opposite—antimatter. In other words, why there is still "stuff" in the universe.
Microsoft

Submission + - Windows 8 Secure Boot Defeated (arstechnica.com) 1

jhigh writes: "An Austrian security researcher will release the first "bootkit" for Windows 8 at MalCon in Mumbai. This exploit loads in the MBR and stays memory resident until Windows loads, resulting in root access to the system. This allegedly defeats the new secure boot features in Windows 8's bootloader."
Government

Submission + - Court overturns Mass law banning recording of cops (universalhub.com) 1

schwit1 writes: In its ruling, which lets Simon Glik continue his lawsuit, the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston said the wiretapping statute under which Glik was arrested and the seizure of his phone violated his First and Fourth Amendment rights.
Businesses

IRS Nails CPA For Copying Steve Jobs, Google Execs 509

theodp writes "It seems $1 salaries are only for super-wealthy tech execs. The WSJ reports that CPA David Watson incurred the wrath of the IRS by only paying himself $24,000 a year and declaring the rest of his take profit. It's a common tax-cutting maneuver that most computer consultants working through an S Corporation have probably considered. Unlike profit distributions, all salary is subject to a 2.9% Medicare tax and the first $106,800 is subject to a 12.4% Social Security tax (FICA). By reducing his salary, Watson didn't save any income taxes on the $379k in profit distributions he received in 2002 and 2003, but he did save nearly $20,000 in payroll taxes for the two years, the IRS argued, pegging Watson's true pay at $91,044 for each year. Judge Robert W. Pratt agreed that Watson's salary was too low, ruling that the CPA owed the extra tax plus interest and penalties. So why, you ask, don't members of the much-ballyhooed $1 Executive club like Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt get in hot water for their low-ball salaries? After all, how inequitable would it be if billionaires working full-time didn't have to kick in more than 15 cents into the Medicare and Social Security kitty? Sorry kids, the rich are different, and the New Global Elite have much better tax advisors than you!"
Sony

Sony Files Lawsuit Against PS3 Hacker GeoHot 508

Kayot writes "George Hotz, or, as he is known on the internet, GeoHot, has been served court papers. Shorty after Team fail0verflow discovered faults in the PS3's TPMs, Geohot and others figured out how to extract the long sought after holy grail encryption keys. Apparently Sony is not pleased and is very keen on defending their poorly defended system with the US legal system. The basis is that GeoHot released programs that allow the signing of homebrew which can be used to make PSN-like games out of normal PS3 games. However GeoHot has never supported any form of piracy and in fact has taken a constant stance against it."

Submission + - Election Observer Claims E-Voting Felony In AZ (techdirt.com) 2

An anonymous reader writes: Jim Marsh, while observing the process by which mail-in votes are counted in Maricopa County, Arizona, says that he spotted a clear felony, in that an employee from Sequoia Voting Systems, had hooked up his internet connected laptop directly to the central tabulator machine via an ethernet cord. As Marsh notes: "By law, the central tabulator system on what's supposed to be an isolated local network is completely unpatched — it's not allowed to be modified in any way since the day it shipped in 2006 or 2007. Even if the Sequoia tech didn't cross-connect the cellmodem to the Ethernet (and both appeared to be live), he could have easily "pwned" the "secure" systems with any number of ancient script-kiddy exploits."
Iphone

iPhone Jailbreak Uses a PDF Display Vulnerability 289

adeelarshad82 writes "Latest reports indicate that the website that 'jailbreaks' iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches does so by means of a PDF-based vulnerability in OS X. PDF parsing and rendering is a core feature of OS X, and there have been several other vulnerabilities in the past in iOS CoreGraphics PDF components." As Gruber points out, the proper term for this is not "jailbreak," but "remote code exploit in the wild."
Democrats

Liberal Watchdog Questions White House Gmail Use 283

MexiCali59 writes "Liberal watchdog CREW has joined Republican Congressman Darrell Issa in calling for an investigation into whether White House staffers regularly use private email accounts to communicate with lobbyists. The allegations, first reported last week by the New York Times, would likely constitute a violation of federal law as well as an ethics pledge created by Obama upon taking office last year."
Image

SketchUp 7.1 Architectural Visualization 62

dango0 writes "SketchUp 7.1 for Architectural Visualization – Beginner's Guide is a detailed guide that will figuratively take you by the hand and teach you how to make stunning photorealistic and artistic visuals of your projects with free software and free resources that you can find all over the Internet." Read on for the rest of Dan's review.
Displays

The Movie Studios' Big 3D Scam 532

An anonymous reader writes "There's a lot of things wrong with 3D movies. Avatar's 3D was well executed, but Alice's 3D was really bad, like all 2D-to-3D conversions. And yet, studios are reconverting 2D movies—including classics—into 3D to milk this fad. On top of that, the theaters are not prepared for 3D, with bad eyeglass optics and dark projections. In this article, a top CG supervisor in a prominent visual effects studio in Los Angeles calls it as it is: it's all a big scam by the movie studios."
Image

Aussie Gamers Dress As Zombies To Raise R18+ Awareness 85

swandives writes "Australian gamers will dress as zombies to raise awareness about the lack of an R18+ rating for video games in the country. The protest will begin at Hyde Park Fountain on March 27 and lumber through Sydney, raising awareness of the need for a higher classification rating and hopefully causing a bit of havoc at the same time! Computerworld Australia has pictures of previous zombie protests in the lead-up to the event. Australia has a long history of lobbying for an R18+ games classification but, even after a decade, video games are banned from sale if they exceed the maximum M15+ classification. So far, the list of banned titles includes 7 Sins, Risen, Left 4 Dead 2 and Dark Sector. Others, like Alien vs. Predator, were initially banned but appealed the rating and are now MA15+."
Biotech

Scientists Demonstrate Mammalian Tissue Regeneration 260

telomerewhythere writes "A quest that began over a decade ago with a chance observation has reached a milestone: the identification of a gene that may regulate regeneration in mammals. The absence of this single gene, called p21, confers a healing potential in mice long thought to have been lost through evolution and reserved for creatures like flatworms, sponges, and some species of salamander. 'Unlike typical mammals, which heal wounds by forming a scar, these mice begin by forming a blastema, a structure associated with rapid cell growth and de-differentiation as seen in amphibians. According to the Wistar researchers, the loss of p21 causes the cells of these mice to behave more like embryonic stem cells than adult mammalian cells, and their findings provide solid evidence to link tissue regeneration to the control of cell division. "Much like a newt that has lost a limb, these mice will replace missing or damaged tissue with healthy tissue that lacks any sign of scarring," said the project's lead scientist.' Here is the academic paper for those with PNAS access."

Submission + - U.S. Intelligence planned to destroy WikiLeaks, 18 (wikileaks.org) 3

An anonymous reader writes: This document is a classifed (SECRET/NOFORN) 32 page U.S. counterintelligence investigation into WikiLeaks. ``The possibility that current employees or moles within DoD or elsewhere in the U.S. government are providing sensitive or classified information to Wikileaks.org cannot be ruled out''. It concocts a plan to fatally marginalize the organization. Since WikiLeaks uses ``trust as a center of gravity by protecting the anonymity and identity of the insiders, leakers or whisteblowers'', the report recommends ``The identification, exposure, termination of employment, criminal prosecution, legal action against current or former insiders, leakers, or whistlblowers could potentially damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others considering similar actions from using the Wikileaks.org Web site''. [As two years have passed since the date of the report, with no WikiLeaks' source exposed, it appears that this plan was ineffective]. As an odd justificaton for the plan, the report claims that ``Several foreign countries including China, Israel, North Kora, Russia, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe have denounced or blocked access to the Wikileaks.org website''. The report provides further justification by enumerating embarrassing stories broken by WikiLeaks---U.S. equipment expenditure in Iraq, probable U.S. violations of the Cemical Warfare Convention Treaty in Iraq, the battle over the Iraqi town of Fallujah and human rights violations at Guantanmo Bay.

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