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Android

Submission + - Sprint Pushes Uninstallable FPS NOVA With Firmware 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: 'If you could change the way wireless companies did things, what would you do?' asked Sprint CEO Dan Hesse. How about stopping the use of Sprint's firmware updates to download apps that aren't wanted and can't be removed, Dan? Sprint confirmed to CNET's Elinor Mills that those strange apps she was shocked to find on her Android phone — sci-fi shooter N.O.V.A. and Blockbuster — with a long list of permissions that couldn't be uninstalled had been sneakily downloaded onto her phone during a firmware update. 'Sprint does offer a variety of partner applications that are optimized for use on our wireless phones,' a Sprint representative explained in an e-mail. 'From time to time, we will provide new apps to our customers in conjunction with a software maintenance release. Also, Sprint, in conjunction with Google, is taking steps to develop a technical solution that would allow customers to remove any unwanted applications that have been preloaded or pushed in an over-the-air software update.' Other Sprint customers have voiced displeasure with the practice. 'Unbeknownst to me, my 5-year-old found N.O.V.A. on my phone and was shooting the guns and weaponry and killing enemies in the N.O.V.A. game,' an unhappy camper wrote on an HTC customer forum thread. 'Thanks a lot HTC and Sprint for forcing violence on my 5-year-old! I am protective of my kids and would never install a game like this on my phone, but now you forced this app onto my phone and I can't uninstall it! I'm very frustrated and VERY ANGRY!'
Linux

Submission + - 7 of the Best Free Linux GPS Tools (linuxlinks.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based navigation satellite system consisting of a network of satellites which provide positioning, navigation, and timing services in all weather, anywhere on or near the Earth.

Use of space-borne positioning and timing data is now commonplace, in everything from freight movement to synchronisation of computer networks. Cellular and data networks, shipping and air transport, financial systems, railways, agriculture, and the emergency services all make frequent use of GPS. There are also many different recreational uses of GPS. The one that first springs to mind is for tracking in motor vehicles. GPS helps drivers find the best route to a specified location, summon help in the event of an emergency, plot the location of the vehicle on a map, or find the nearest bank.

This article focuses in selecting the best free software for undertaking a wide variety of GPS related tasks. Hopefully, there will be something of interest here for anyone who needs to keep track of where he or she is, to find the way to a specified location, or determine what direction and how fast they are going.
Security

Submission + - Sony Lesson: Managers Not Talking Hurts Security (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruhlinger
jfruhlinger writes: "The series of Sony security disasters over the past few months quickly went from tragedy to farce as one site after another fell to hackers. The worst part is that most of the breaches used similar techniques, but continued to succeed because the heads of Sony's far-flung business units didn't communicate with each other. Kevin Fogarty thinks that this is less a security failure than a management failure."
Security

Submission + - Senate Bill Would Derail DNSSEC (techweb.com)

Submitted by ancientribe
ancientribe writes: A key provision in the Protect IP intellectual property protection bill just approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee (and expected to ultimately become law) could sabotage Internet security and, specifically, DNSSEC, according to a who's who of Internet infrastructure and security experts. That group--which includes Dan Kaminsky, who discovered and helped get patched a serious flaw in DNS, Steve Crocker, an IETF pioneer; David Dagon of the Georgia Institute of Technology and a co-founder of Damballa; Danny McPherson, chief security officer for VeriSign; and Paul Vixie, principal author of the pervasive BIND DNS server software and creator of several DNS standards-- has published a paper describing how DNS filtering could disrupt DNS security efforts and inadvertently help cybercriminals.
Security

Submission + - 1 in 5 American drivers inept on the road (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "These stats are scary, though not surprising if you do any amount of driving: 1 in 5 drivers on the road today cannot meet the basic requirements to get a driver's license, meaning that nearly 37 million American drivers — roughly 18%- would not pass the written drivers test if taken today.

Those stats come courtesy of the 2011 GMAC Insurance National Drivers Test that showed drivers in Kansas ranked best in the nation while drivers in Washington, D.C. were worst. In fact, GMAC said 1 of 3 of all drivers in New York and Washington, D.C. failed the test. The state with the lowest percentage of failures is Wyoming, with only 1 of 20 failing the test."
Iphone

Submission + - App Attaches Virtual Images to Real Objects (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: Fans of the movie "They Live" will recall the special sunglasses in the film, that allowed the unknowing public to see that certain people were actually aliens, and that seemingly ordinary billboards in fact displayed messages like "OBEY" and "CONSUME." The new Aurasma app for iPhone 4 and iPad 2 is kind of like those glasses. OK, it doesn't actually reveal the true nature of things, but it does allow you to see otherwise unseeable videos and other images that fellow Aurasma users have virtually attached to real-world scenes and objects. If you were to point your phone's camera at a certain building, for instance, you would see real-time video of that building on your screen, but perhaps with another user's computer-generated monster climbing up the side of it to promote an upcoming event.

Submission + - Drug helps overwrite bad memories (scienceblog.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Recalling painful memories while under the influence of the drug metyrapone reduces the brain’s ability to re-record the negative emotions associated with them, according to a new study by a team of University of Montreal researchers. The finding challenges the theory that memories cannot be modified once they are stored in the brain. “Our findings may help people deal with traumatic events by offering them the opportunity to ‘write-over’ the emotional part of their memories during therapy,” said the team lead. One major hurdle, however, is the fact that metyrapone is no longer commercially produced.
Power

Submission + - Gudersen testifies on reactor safety (fairewinds.com)

Submitted by
mdsolar
mdsolar writes: "Arne Gundersen, known to slashot for discovery of Entergy's lies under oath about underground pipes at the the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, has been trying to call attention to problems with reactor containment for years. Those problems have surfaced in spades at Fukushima and now the the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards is ready listen. Watch the testimony."
Networking

Submission + - Hardware Vendor Offers Backdoor with Every Product (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Nameisyoung007
Nameisyoung007 writes: A support page, titled "Backdoor Password for Allied Telesis Devices" recently turned up on Google. The page, labeled ***INTERNAL ONLY*** was written to answer customer questions like "'How do I obtain a backdoor password for my Allied Telesis device?'" and includes instructions on accessing a "built in Backdoor function" on any Allied Telesis device.

Probably a good time to double check your devices, just to make sure you're not affected.
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - ATM repairman accused of faking cash (gawker.com)

Submitted by
fysdt
fysdt writes: "An ATM repairman was nabbed in Phoenix on charges of having stolen about $200,000 in ATM funds from San Francisco-area branches of Bank of America. His method was almost brilliant in its sheer stupidity: He pocketed the cash, and replaced it in the machines with "counterfeit or photocopied $20 bills.""
Idle

Submission + - Load a C64 Into Your Browser... (kingsquare.nl)

Submitted by beaverdownunder
beaverdownunder writes: Forget having Linux boot in your browser... 'jsc64 is a Commodore 64 emulator written in JavaScript by Tim de Koning. It's a port of the FC64, the Commodore 64 emulator written in Actionscript by Darron Schall and Claus Wahlers.' Even has a few demo games. Trés cool!
Transportation

Submission + - Robot Batcopter to improve drone flight (suasnews.com)

Submitted by
garymortimer
garymortimer writes: "The objective of my week in the Texan back-country was to perform some experiments on trajectory planning in bats, alongside some other bat researchers from Boston University.

These Brazilian Free-tailed bats (also called Tadarida) come together in the millions in caves all over Texas, leaving every night in swarms so big they can be detected by doppler radar. Somehow, they manage to fly through this dense self-clutter without major collisions, and so our goal is to better understand this behavior. The goal is to fly a UAV through the dense clutter, and record the bats’ response with three ground-based high-speed FLIR cameras, and an airborne 3D HD GoPro camera. The hope is to extract fundamental control laws of flying behavior in order to achieve better autonomous UAV flight."
Japan

Submission + - DoE: Salt in Fukushima reactors a grave danger (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by
mdsolar
mdsolar writes: "At a second meeting Thursday related to the Fukushima Daiichi crisis, a U.S. Energy Department official warned that the nuclear facility still faces grave danger.

John E. Kelly, deputy assistant secretary for nuclear reactor technologies, said that protective components at the facility could crack because of high salt levels. There “is still a concern about more massive failure” of steel in the “lower head,” an important part of the containment system, Kelly told an NRC advisory committee. About 100 to 200 tons of salt left by the emergency pumping of salt water to cool the reactors are probably corroding the containment components."
Idle

Submission + - The man who tastes sounds (wordpress.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Synaesthesia — a condition where the brain has extra connections, causing numbers or days to have colours associated with them, or sounds to have particular tastes etc. — has always fascinated me. This interview with a man with lexical-gustatory synaesthesia shows how all-encompassing the condition is. I asked him when he first became aware of it and he replied that it's like asking someone what was the first thing they saw or smelled. Also, my name tastes salty and metallic. Yum.

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