21376656
submission
bazzalunatic writes:
That's right, great white sharks can be lured underwater to cages by playing hits from AC/DC — specifically "Shook me all night long".
Some shark diving tour operators in Australia have found this curious fact. But it's not just music, as the sharks weren't attracted by other tunes.
One wonders if they'll be turned off by Celine Dion music — a new type of shark repellent perhaps?
21363530
submission
ClientNine writes:
...California could collect more than $1 billion a year by taxing Amazon and other online retailers if a bill approved by the Assembly becomes law. Assemblyman Charles Calderon, a Democrat from Whittier, says his legislation doesn't impose a new sales tax, but extends one that California should already have been enforcing. AB155 passed, 47-16, with the support of one GOP lawmaker Tuesday. It now heads to the Senate. Other Republicans rejected the bill because they said it would invite lawsuits, drive business out of California, and get the state entangled in the messy task of regulating the Internet.
21297976
submission
oxide7 writes:
In an escalating legal melee, Samsung demanded access to upcoming iPhone and iPad products from Apple, widening the schism between the two allies who haven't always been the best of friends. Court-room drama aside, analysts believe that Apple is also lining itself up to find another foundry partner, a move that would sever the largest tie it has to Samsung.
21258840
submission
fermion writes:
An initial report has been released by the BEA concerning the details of the last minutes of Flight 447 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. According the report the autopilot disengaged and stall warning engaged at 2 hours 10 minutes and 5 seconds into flight. Less than 2 minutes later the recorded speeds became invalid. At 2 hours 14 minutes and 28 seconds, the recording stopped. The final vertical speed was recorded around 10,912 ft/min.
21229614
submission
Dr. Eggman writes:
Standford's School of Medicine brings us an update in the latest achievements towards in-vitro neuron generation via re differentiation of specialized cells (skin cells in this case.) This important progress follows on last year's success in inducing this change with mice skin cells.
The importance of this line of research lies in that the process does not need to first de-differentiate the skin cells into a kind of stem cells known as induced pluripotent stem cells. By skipping this phase, the process avoids potential problems in the body's rejection of the iPS cells.
Amazingly, the transformation occurs with the added presence of 4 proteins (one more protein than need to induce the effect in mice) over several weeks (compared to a few days in mice.) Research continues as the study highlights the significant differences in mice and human neural cells as well as the success rate of transformation (2-4% for human cells, 20% for mice.) The resultant cells aren't yet as capable as naturally derived neurons; generating less-robust electrical signals.
21203620
submission
grrlscientist writes:
A close look at a common North American songbird, the white-throated sparrow, reveals that it may be evolving a second pair of sex chromosomes.
21182470
submission
RedEaredSlider writes:
A Russian software forensics firm has reported that it cracked the encryption on an iPhone, though it requires physical possession of the device.
Elcomsoft, which provides password recovery software and security audits, said it was able to decrypt an image of the data on iOS 4 devices. But the firm said it could only do so if it had the iPhone or iPad itself, as some of the encryption keys are stored in the hardware.
Apple uses the Advanced Encryption Standard, with a 256-bit key. The length of the key is usually considered strong enough that even law-enforcement agencies would have trouble breaking it. A "brute force" attack, using every possible key combination, would take billions of years for even the fastest computer to do.
20851284
submission
adeelarshad82 writes:
If there is one thing that can be taken away from the first day of Google's I/O conference, it's that they want to be everywhere. In the first keynote session at conference, Google outlined a vision for global platform domination, which included a new cloud-based music service, a new movie rental service, Android for the home (which itself is an impressive new concept), reference designs for new Android hardware, and even Android light bulbs. Google is now ready to send its mobile operating system well beyond phones and tablets. It'll show up in everything from speakers and exercise bikes to light bulbs. These Android-enabled devices will of course work with Android phones and tablets.
20849912
submission
Jeremiah Cornelius writes:
The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski, said the Commercial Mobile Alert System that Congress approved in 2006 will direct messages to cellphones in case of a terrorist attack, natural disaster, or other serious emergency. There will be at least three levels of messages, ranging from a critical national alert from the president to warnings about impending or occurring national disasters to alerts about missing or abducted children. The alert would show up on the phone's front screen, instead of the traditional text message inbox, and arrive with a distinct ring and probably a vibration. People will be able to opt out of receiving all but the presidential alerts.
20826748
submission
Trailrunner7 writes:
Researchers at the French security firm VUPEN say that they have discovered several new vulnerabilities in Google Chrome that enable them to bypass the browser's sandbox, as well as ASLR and DEP and run arbitrary code on a vulnerable machine.
The company said that they are not going to disclose the details of the bugs right now, but that they have shared information on them with some of their government customers through its customer program. The vulnerabilities are present in the latest version of Chrome running on Windows 7, VUPEN said.
20826506
submission
sciencehabit writes:
Drilling for natural gas locked deep in a shale formation--a process known as fracking--has seriously contaminated shallow groundwater supplies beneath far northeastern Pennsylvania with flammable methane. That’s the conclusion of a new study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The analysis gives few clues, however, to how pervasive such contamination might be across the wide areas of the Northeast United States, Texas, and other states where drilling for shale gas has taken off in recent years.
20765308
submission
wiredmikey writes:
Recent research demonstrates that common Digital Video Recorders (DVR) installed in police cruisers, municipal buses, school buses, and even taxis are open for compromise by anyone with the means to observe the video and audio streams. A researcher, who was performing a penetration test into municipal resources in an unnamed city, said he gained the ability to see and hear what was happening live inside and outside a police vehicle "because the FTP service had a default password that is located in the user manual."
And the signals weren't encrypted. "We were able to use a standard ftp client and download a normal .AVI file. No special codecs were needed it simply played in Quicktime," according to the researcher.
Access to private audio and video streams is becoming common, especially when the system uses unprotected IP addresses.
20714880
submission
RedEaredSlider writes:
Sony has offered new details on the cyber-attack that compromised account details of nearly 100 million users of its online gaming and music services — and casts suspicion on the hacker collective Anonymous.
In a letter to Congress signed by the number two man at Sony Computer Entertainment America, Kazuo Hirai, the company gave a timeline of the attacks. The letter reveals that while the suspicious activity was discovered in their systems on April 19 it took another day to figure out what was wrong. Sony technicians shut the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services down soon after that. When a similar breach was discovered on the Sony Online Entertainment's systems, those were shut down as well.
So far nobody has publicly identified the source of the hacking attacks. But Sony noted in its letter that they came soon after a string of denial of service (DoS) attacks from the hacker collective Anonymous. The hackers left a file in the system with the words "we are legion," which is part of the group's motto.
Anonymous, however, said they were not behind the intrusion. On April 22 the collective put out a release that says, "For Once We Didn't Do It," though it also states rogue members might try attacking Sony.
