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Submission + - Simulating 800,000 years of California earthquake history to pinpoint risks (utexas.edu)

Submitted by aarondubrow
aarondubrow writes: A study in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America presents results from a new earthquake simulator, RSQSim, that simulates hundreds of thousands of years of seismic history in California. Coupled with another code, CyberShake, the framework can calculate the amount of shaking that would occur for each quake. The framework makes use of two of the most powerful supercomputers on the planet: Frontera, at the Texas Advanced Computing Center, and Summit, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The new approach improves seismologists' ability to pinpoint how big an earthquake might occur at a given location, allowing building code developers, architects, and structural engineers to design more resilient buildings that can survive earthquakes.

Submission + - One hull crack located in ISS, another one suspected (tass.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: The specialists have discovered one more crack at the International Space Station and suspect that yet another one exists, ISS Russian Segment head Vladimir Solovyov told Rossiya-24.

"So far, we have found one place and suspect another, where as some kind of leak exists. We must bring a powerful microscope on a cargo spacecraft and use to examine this place. We are not totally certain so far," Solovyov said.

He underscored that air loss due to the crack are insignificant.

"This leak is like as if you’d drill the hull with a 0.2 mm diameter drill. I’m not sure such drills even exist in household. As for the leak it causes, our [space air] pressure is 750 mmHg, and this alleged crack causes us to lose 0.3 to 0.4 mmHg every day," the official said, adding that emergency leak starts when pressure falls at 0.5 to 1 mmHg per minute.

Submission + - Google Blocking Web Privacy Proposals at W3C (cpomagazine.com) 1

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Throughout much of 2019, Internet tech giant Google has attempted to portray itself as a public champion of web privacy. Yet, behind the scenes, a very different view of Google is emerging. In August 2019, at approximately the same time that Google was rolling out its much-hyped “Privacy Sandbox” privacy framework, it was also working to block efforts of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards body to bolster the web privacy features of new technical specifications.

Most notably, Google was the only member of the W3C to vote “No” to a proposed charter change for the Privacy Interest Group (PING), a working group of the W3C dedicated to web privacy matters. Concerned that web privacy issues were being routinely ignored by many working groups of the W3C, the Privacy Interest Group sought to expand its charter, such that it would have the ability to block any new technical specification that it felt would have negative implications for web privacy. PING, for example, had earlier voiced its concerns about the Internet of Things (IoT), and how new IoT web standards failed to address important web privacy issues.

Submission + - Canada's AeroVelo breaks human-powered land speed record (design-engineering.com)

Submitted by yyzmcleod
yyzmcleod writes: First, they designed and flew the world’s first human-powered ornithopter called the Snowbird in 2010. Then, in 2013, they surmounted the seemingly impossible challenge of winning the Sikorsky Prize with the Atlas human-powered helicopter.

And now, as of yesterday, AeroVelo, the Ontario-based team of engineers and University of Toronto students, have helped their captain, Dr. Todd Reichert, become the fastest human-powered man alive. At the World Human Powered Speed Challenge (WHPSC), held annually along a five-mile stretch of highway in Battle Mountain, Nevada, the team’s Eta recumbent speed bike hit 85.71mph (137.93km/h) Thursday morning, besting the previous world record of 83.13 mph.

Submission + - Tracking a Bluetooth ATM Skimming Gang in Mexico

Submitted by tsu doh nimh
tsu doh nimh writes: Brian Krebs has an interesting and entertaining three-part series this week on how he spent his summer vacation: driving around the Cancun area looking for ATMs beaconing out Bluetooth signals indicating the machines are compromised by crooks. Turns out, he didn't have to look for: His own hotel had a hacked machine. Krebs said he first learned about the scheme when an ATM industry insider reached out to say that some Eastern European guys had approached all of his ATM technicians offering bribes if the technicians allowed physical access to the machines. Once inside, the crooks installed two tiny Bluetooth radios — one for the card reader and one for the PIN pad. Krebs's series concludes with a closer look at Intacash, a new ATM company whose machines now blanket Cancun and other tourist areas but which is suspected of being connected to the skimming activity.

Submission + - The Browser Wars are back. Addicted to the Vivaldi browser. (wired.com)

Submitted by cdysthe
cdysthe writes: When I’m working on my laptop, I usually have about 40 tabs open at a time: a dozen Google Docs, Twitter, a couple of forums, oodles of other research pages. Pretty soon my work slows to a crawl because I can’t refind the damn site I was just looking at. That’s why I’ve become addicted to Vivaldi, an upstart browser launched in “technical preview” this year. — Wired

Submission + - Evolution shown in real time (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by sandbagger
sandbagger writes: "People think of evolution as historical. They don't think of it as something that's happening under our nose. It is a contemporary process. People are skeptical; they don't believe in evolution because they can't see it. Here, we see it. We can see if something makes you better able to make babies and live longer," University of California, Riverside biologist David Reznick says. Working in a river in Trinidad, he and colleagues determined which male guppies would contribute more offspring to the population as well as which would live longer and which would have shorter lifespans.

Submission + - Obama invites Texas teen to White House after 'bomb' clock incident at school (upi.com)

Submitted by The Grim Reefer
The Grim Reefer writes: IRVING, Texas, Sept. 16 (UPI) — A Texas teen who made a digital clock and brought it to school, only to end up being arrested and accused of a bomb scare, has been invited to the White House to show off his creation.

  President Obama
    @POTUS
Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what makes America great.

Ahmed Mohamed, 14, faces no charges after he was arrested in Texas for bringing to school a homemade clock teachers and administrators mistook for a bomb — a detention some claim was due to his Muslim background.

Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd said the event was a "naive accident," adding that the department is "confident" the clock is not a bomb and that the case is closed.

Submission + - Fukishama Springs Water Leak

Submitted by sl4shd0rk
sl4shd0rk writes: The Japanese Fukishama crisis took a turn for the worse this week as it was found a barrier built to contain contaminated water has been breached; a leak defined by 20 trillion to 40 trillion becquerels of radioactive tritium. This is yet another problem on top of a spate of errors plauging the 2011 nuclear disaster site. Nuclear regulatory official Shinji Kinjo has cited Tokyo Electric Power Company as having a "Weak sense of crisis" as well as hinted at previous bunglings by TEPCO as the reason one cannot "just leave it up to Tepco alone". If Nuclear energy is ever to move forward, these types of disasters need to be eliminated. Is the ongoing saga of Fukishama a problem which can be cured with appropriate technology, or are disasters like this simply the element of cost vs. risk in the business of nuclear energy?

Submission + - BREACH Compression Attack Steals SSL Secrets (threatpost.com)

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: A serious attack against ciphertext secrets buried inside HTTPS responses has prompted an advisory from Homeland Security. The BREACH attack is an offshoot of CRIME, which was thought dead and buried after it was disclosed in September. Released at last week’s Black Hat USA 2013, BREACH enables an attacker to read encrypted messages over the Web by injecting plaintext into an HTTPS request and measuring compression changes.
Researchers Angelo Prado, Neal Harris and Yoel Gluck demonstrated the attack against Outlook Web Access (OWA) at Black Hat. Once the Web application was opened and the Breach attack was launched, within 30 seconds the attackers had extracted the secret.
“We are currently unaware of a practical solution to this problem,” said the CERT advisory, released one day after the Black Hat presentation.

Submission + - XKeyscore: NSA Tool Collects 'Nearly Everything A User Does On The Internet' (theguardian.com)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats, social media activities and the internet browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its "widest-reaching" system for developing intelligence from the internet. The latest revelations will add to the intense public and congressional debate around the extent of NSA surveillance programs. They come as senior intelligence officials testify to the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, releasing classified documents in response to the Guardian's earlier stories on bulk collection of phone records and Fisa surveillance court oversight. The files shed light on one of Snowden's most controversial statements, made in his first video interview published by the Guardian on June 10. "I, sitting at my desk," said Snowden, could "wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email". US officials vehemently denied this specific claim. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden's assertion: "He's lying. It's impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do."

Submission + - Auto Enthusiast to 3D-Print Full-Scale Aston Martin DB4 ... Sort of (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: While many Solidoodlers will likely use their 3D printers to output Yodas, gearsets or bunnies, one New Zealander decided to take 3D modeling to the next level. With the average price of an Aston Martin DB4 running in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, Ivan Sentch decided to go one better by printing a full-scale Aston Martin DB4 replica.

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