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Space

Submission + - NASA finds 'Alien' Matter From Beyond Our Solar Sy (space.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For the very first time, a NASA spacecraft has detected matter from outside our solar system — material that came from elsewhere in the galaxy, researchers announced today (Jan. 31).
This so-called interstellar material was spotted by NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), a spacecraft that is studying the edge of the solar system from its orbit about 200,000 miles (322,000 kilometers) above Earth.

"This alien interstellar material is really the stuff that stars and planets and people are made of — it's really important to be measuring it," David McComas, IBEX principal investigator and assistant vice president of the Space Science and Engineering Division at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, said in a news briefing today from NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Censorship

Submission + - Google Begins Country-Specific Blog Censorship (mashable.com)

Submitted by bonch
bonch writes: Google will begin redirecting blogs to country-specific URLs. Blog visitors will be redirected to a URL specific to their location, with content subject to their country's censorship laws. A support post on Blogger explains the change: 'Over the coming weeks you might notice that the URL of a blog you're reading has been redirected to a country-code top level domain, or "ccTLD." For example, if you're in Australia and viewing [blogname].blogspot.com, you might be redirected to [blogname].blogspot.com.au. A ccTLD, when it appears, corresponds with the country of the reader's current location.'
Censorship

Submission + - Piratebay's Pastebay has been censored by Unknown (activepolitic.com)

Submitted by bs0d3
bs0d3 writes: On January 27'th the domain pastebay.com had been taken down. We still don't know by who. So far, all we know is that the domain was removed from the dns server by the registrar; idotz. According to domaintoolz, the site was registered to Reservella LTD, parent company of thepiratebay. Pastebay and all its contents, and all of its posts are still intact. The server is still running and can be reached directly at its IP here.
Space

Submission + - What If The Apollo Program Never Happened? (discovery.com)

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "In a recent debate Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingerich said that he would like to beat the Chinese back to the moon. He has even been so bold as to propose setting up a manned base by 2020, driven by empowering private industry to take the initiative. It's ironic to hear moon travel still being debated 40 years after the last Apollo landing in 1972. Between then and now, NASA's small space shuttle fleet filled in for space travel, but astronauts could only venture as far a low earth orbit — at an altitude much shorter than the distance the early pioneers covered in settling the West. If there were no Apollo crash program to beat the Soviets to the moon, would we have planned to go to the moon eventually? But this time with a commitment of staying? Or would we never go?"
NASA

Submission + - Did Phobos-Grunt Debris Fall on Land? (txchnologist.com)

Submitted by ambermichelle
ambermichelle writes: Last week, the European Space Agency released its report on the crash of Russia’s ill-fated Phobos-Grunt probe on Jan. 15. In it, the ESA came to the same conclusion as the other major space players: all pieces of the probe, which was bound for one of Mars’s moons, fell safely into the Pacific Ocean. But this consensus isn’t reasonable at all. Instead, a sound analysis of the data by space debris experts suggests that although most of the debris did plunge into the Pacific Ocean, other debris may have fallen onto regions of Chile and possibly Argentina.
Security

Submission + - Hacker Demos Easy Wireless Credit Card Fraud (forbes.com)

Submitted by Sparrowvsrevolution
Sparrowvsrevolution writes: At the Shmoocon hacker conference, security researcher Kristin Paget aimed to indisputably prove what hackers have long known and the payment card industry has repeatedly downplayed and denied: That RFID-enabled credit card data can be easily, cheaply, and undetectably stolen and used for fraudulent transactions. With a Vivotech RFID credit card reader she bought on eBay for $50, Paget wirelessly read a volunteer’s credit card onstage and obtained the card’s number and expiration date, along with the one-time CVV number used by contactless cards to authenticate payments. A second later, she used a $300 card-magnetizing tool to encode that data onto a blank card. And then, with a Square attachment for the iPhone that allows anyone to swipe a card and receive payments, she paid herself $15 of the volunteer’s money with the counterfeit card she’d just created. (She also handed the volunteer a twenty dollar bill, essentially selling the bill on stage for $15 to avoid any charges of illegal fraud.)

The payment industry often claims that contactless credit cards are more safe than traditional cards, and that any data a hacker could wirelessly read from them can't be used for fraud. But with 100 million of the RFID-enabled credit cards now in circulation, Paget wanted to undisputably show that's not the case. A stealthy attacker in a crowded public place could easily scan hundreds of cards through wallets or purses.
EU

Submission + - ACTA protests continue; summary of situation in Po (sirmacik.net)

Submitted by
rysiek
rysiek writes: "Few days ago, Poland (along with many other European countries) signed ACTA, which sparked paneuropean protests (map).

All this commotion started last week in Poland, after Polish NGOs shared the news about the date of signing. According to some estimates, about 1 million people protested against ACTA in all major (and many smaller) Polish cities during the last week. There finally is a comprehensive English summary (mirror) of what happened in Poland and where it stands for now."
Hardware

Submission + - Molybdenite threatens graphene as silicon replacem (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have created integrated circuits using single-atom-thick molybdenite, a substance that's very similar to graphene. Molybdenite logic has very similar characteristics to its silicon-based cousins, but because single sheets of the material are just 0.65nm thick it can be used to make very small, very power-efficient transistors. Like graphene and graphite, atom-thick layers of molybdenite can be flaked off using sticky tape — but unlike graphene, molybdenite has a direct semiconductor bandgap, which makes it much more palatable as a replacement to silicon for everyday computer chips."
Data Storage

Submission + - Megaupload data could be deleted this week (geek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Megaupload as a service didn’t actually store the data on its own servers. Instead, such storage was farmed out to Carpathia Hosting and Cogent Communications Group. Megaupload then paid a regular fee for them handling the data. But now when Cogent and Carpathia attempt to collect their payment, there’s no money available, therefore putting the future of all Megaupload data in danger of being deleted.

Both hosting companies are in fact threatening to start deleting files starting this Thursday. If that happens, users will definitely lose their data forever. But just as serious, prosecutors will lose valuable evidence with which to prosecute Megaupload’s owners. On the flip side, Kim Dotcom will lose the ability to use the data to defend himself after pleading not guilty to piracy.
Iphone

Submission + - IPhone 4S's Siri is a bandwidth guzzler (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Frankie70
Frankie70 writes: Siri’s dirty little secret is that she’s a bandwidth guzzler, the digital equivalent of a 10-miles-per-gallon Hummer H1.

A study by Arieso shows that users of the iPhone 4S demand three times as much data as iPhone 3G users and twice as much as iPhone 4 users, who were identified as the most demanding in the 2010 study.

In all, Arieso says that the Siri-equipped iPhone 4S “appears to unleash data consumption behaviors that have no precedent.”
Government

Submission + - White House Chief Technology Officer Steps Down (whitehouse.gov)

Submitted by
Krazy Kanuck
Krazy Kanuck writes: "The WH is running a story on their OSTP blog that Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra, is stepping down after being nominated tot he post by President Obama in 2009. There is some mention of him returning to his home state of Virginia, and the Washington Post is all running a story on a possible bid as lieutenant governor"
Microsoft

Submission + - Nokia Numbers Show Microsoft's Mobile Madness (informationweek.com)

Submitted by
gManZboy
gManZboy writes: "Nokia said it "sold" 1 million Lumia devices in the fourth quarter (in quotations because there is no easy way to tell how many units actually made it to consumers or are simply idling in channel inventories). That means every Windows Phone 7 device Nokia shipped in Q4 cost Microsoft $250, minus the royalty. That's for phones, like the Lumia 710, that can be bought for $50 or less with a standard carrier contract.

Ordinarily, this would be madness. Even a kid with a lemonade stand knows you're supposed to sell stuff for more than it costs to make. But these are not normal times at Redmond. Microsoft's willingness to extend what is basically a billion-dollar bribe to Nokia, still the world's biggest handset maker by volume, to ditch Symbian and use Windows Phone as its default OS shows how desperate the software maker is to get back into the mobile race, where it badly trails Apple and Google."

Submission + - Flaw In YouTube Takedown Process Exposed (hollywoodreporter.com)

Submitted by BraveThumb
BraveThumb writes: One independent rap group found it impossible to post their song on YouTube. When they tried to put up their video, they were informed that the copyright belonged to Universal Music, even though the rap group wasn't signed to any label. The Hollywood Reporter shares what happens and concludes by saying, "For an industry that's pursuing copyright reform, the portrayal of a copyright regime that works against young artists can't be a good thing."

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