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Submission + - Simple.TV Lets You Share DVR'd Content With Friends: When's The Crackdown? (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: Simple.TV is a DVR for over-the-air television programs with a lot of nifty functionality, and it just gained a new one: the ability to share recorded content with friends over the Internet. The question is, how long will media companies tolerate the ability to stream media to other people, even media that arrived for free over the publicly owned airwaves?

Submission + - FarmBot: An Open Source Automated Farming Machine Aims to Create Food For All (3dprint.com)

Submitted by ErnieKey
ErnieKey writes: Farming has been stuck in a bit of a rut, when compared to other industries. Businesses across the globe have been innovating for decades, while farming has been using techniques that have been handed down from centuries ago. The FarmBot Foundation is creating a machine, similar to that of a CNC mill and/or 3d printer which is capable of being run by sophisticated software and equipped with any tools you can imagine, including seed injectors, plows, burners, robotic arms (for harvesting), cutters, shredders, tillers, discers, watering nozzles, sensors and more. The goal? To bring food to the world's hungry.

Submission + - How patent trolls destroy innovation (vox.com)

Submitted by walterbyrd
walterbyrd writes: A new study by researchers at Harvard and the University of Texas provides some insight on this question. Drawing from data on litigation, R&D spending, and patent citations, the researchers find that firms that are forced to pay NPEs (either because they lost a lawsuit or settled out of court) dramatically reduce R&D spending: losing firms spent $211 million less on R&D, on average, than firms that won a lawsuit against a troll.

"After losing to NPEs, firms significantly reduce R&D spending — both projects inside the firm and acquiring innovative R&D outside the firm," the authors write. "Our evidence suggests that it really is the NPE litigation event that causes this decrease in innovation.

Submission + - Why Chinese Hackers Would Want US Hospital Patient Data (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: In a follow-up to yesterday's story about the Chinese hackers who stole hospital data of 4.5 million patients, IDG News Service's Martyn Williams set out to learn why the data, which didn't include credit card information was so valuable. The answer is depressingly simple: people without health insurance can potentially get treatment by using medical data of one of the hacking victims. John Halamka, chief information officer of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and chairman of the New England Healthcare Exchange Network, said a medical record can be worth between $50 and $250 to the right customer — many times more than the amount typically paid for a credit card number, or the cents paid for a user name and password. 'If I am one of the 50 million Americans who are uninsured ... and I need a million-dollar heart transplant, for $250 I can get a complete medical record including insurance company details,' he said.

Submission + - Robotic Vehicles Team Up on First Fully Autonomous Mission Demonstration (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: While aircraft such as the X-47B are paving the way for unmanned aircraft filling combat roles, autonomous aircraft are also being developed to tackle more mundane – but still dangerous – military operations. To this end, the first fully autonomous resupply, reconnaissance, surveillance and target-acquisition demonstration using the Squad Mission Support System (SMSS) unmanned ground vehicle, K-MAX unmanned helicopter and Gyrocam optical sensor was recently conducted at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Submission + - C++14 Is Set In Stone

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: Apart from minor editorial tweaks, the ISO C++14 standard can be considered completed. Implementations are already shipping by major suppliers. C++14 is mostly an incremental update over C++11 with some new features like function return type deduction, variable templates, binary literals, generic lambdas, and so on. The official C++14 specification release will arrive later in the year, but for now Wikipedia serves as a good overview of the feature set.

Submission + - Beijing Doctors Implant World's First 3D-Printed Vertebra into 12 Year-Old Boy (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: Doctors from the Peking University Third Hospital (PUTH) in Beijing, China, have become the first in the world to use 3D-printing in complex spinal cord surgery, after replacing a section of cancerous vertebra in a boy's neck with a piece created on a 3D printer.

The procedure to remove this form of cancer is so complex that only five hospitals in China are equipped to perform the surgery. The tumour affects the top of the spinal cord in the neck, but also the internal and external carotid arteries, and the patient's windpipe.

Submission + - Microsoft and HP Working on $199 Laptop to Rival Google Chromebooks (freshinfos.com)

Submitted by nrjperera
nrjperera writes: Microsoft has reamed up with HP to make an affordable Windows laptop to beat Google Chromebooks in its own game. German website Mobile Geeks have found some leaked information about this upcoming HP laptop dubbed Stream 14, including its specifications.

According to the leaked data sheet the HP Stream 14 laptop will share similar specs to HP’s cheap Chromebook. It will be shipped with an AMD A4 Micro processor, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of flash storage and a display with 1,366 x 768 screen resolution. Microsoft will likely offer 100GB of OneDrive cloud storage with the device to balance the limited storage option.

Submission + - Nuclear regulator hacked 3 times in 3 years (cnet.com)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: Unspecified foreigners and a third unknown person or group are to blame for three computer hacks over the past three years at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, according to a new report.

The body that governs America's nuclear power providers said in an internal investigation that two of the hacks are suspected to have come from unnamed foreign countries, the news site Nextgov reported based on a Freedom of Information Act request. The source of the third hack could not be identified because the logs of the incident had been destroyed, the report said.

Hackers, often sponsored by foreign governments, have targeted the US more frequently in recent years. A report (PDF) on attacks against government computers noted that there was a 35 percent increase between 2010 and 2013.

Intruders used common hacking techniques to get at the NRC's computers. One attack linked to a foreign country or individual involved phishing emails that coerced NRC employees into submitting their login credentials. The second one linked to a foreign government or individual used spearphishing, or emails targeted at specific NRC employees, to convince them to click a link that led to a malware site hosted on Microsoft's cloud storage site SkyDrive, now called OneDrive.

The third attack involved breaking into the personal account of a NRC employee. After sending a malicious PDF attachment to 16 other NRC employees, one person was infected with malware.

Feed Schneier: The Security of al Qaeda Encryption Software (schneier.com)

From feed by bsfeed
The web intelligence firm Recorded Future has posted two stories about how al Qaeda is using new encryption software in response to the Snowden disclosures. NPR picked up the story a week later. Former NSA Chief Council Stewart Baker uses this as evidence that Snowden has harmed America. Glenn Greenwald calls this "CIA talking points" and shows that al Qaeda...

Feed Google News Sci Tech: Iceland Girds for Possible Volcano Eruption as Tremors Persist - Businessweek (google.com)

From feed by feedfeeder

Businessweek
Iceland Girds for Possible Volcano Eruption as Tremors Persist
Businessweek
Iceland's Civil Protection Agency says it has registered hundreds of earthquakes since midnight yesterday at the site of one of its biggest volcanoes as the island braces itself for a possible eruption. “There is a very strong indication of magma movement east...
Threat Level of Iceland Volcano RaisedTIME
Iceland raises Bardarbunga volcano alert to orangeBBC News
Iceland warns Europe's airlines of possible volcanic eruptioneuronews
Discovery News-The Seattle Times
all 139 news articles

Feed Google News Sci Tech: Octopus Skin Has Inspired a New Type of Camouflage Sheet - TIME (google.com)

From feed by feedfeeder

UPI.com
Octopus Skin Has Inspired a New Type of Camouflage Sheet
TIME
Scientists have developed a color-changing device inspired by octopuses and their natural camouflaging techniques. The research, carried out at the University of Houston and University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, looked at how the skins of octopuses,...
Scientists Take Inspiration from Octopus to Create New Camouflage MaterialDumb-Out
Octopus inspires camouflage sheetWallStreet OTC
Scientists unveil camouflage sheet inspired by octopus skinUPI.com
Nature World News-BBC News
all 20 news articles

Submission + - How to make terrible passwords secure (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Although pass-phrases have recently been acknowledged to be far harder to crack than passwords, most secure systems will not let you create a meaningful one due to varying 'complexity policies'. This article suggests that companies should consider training their employees in the use of mnemonic techniques that will let the user retain the weak-but-memorable 'word/number' combination, and offers an example which extends the cracking-time for the classically weak [my-name][my-birth-year] format from 7.5 hours to 13 nonillion years.

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