50294545
submission
theodp writes:
GhettoTracker.com, which invited users to rate neighborhoods based on 'which parts of town are safe and which ones are ghetto, or unsafe', predictably drew the ire of the press and was quickly shut down amid cries of racism. "This site is gone. It's not worth the trouble," explained the site's creator, who insisted race-had-nothing-to-do-with-it. Not to excuse the at best ill-conceived 'Ghetto Tracker,' but why was there much less outrage from the press when the USPTO gave IBM a patent on adding surcharges to your auto insurance premium when a GPS device reports that you drove into an area in Big Blue's bad neighborhood database? Or when Microsoft was granted a patent on walking directions that avoid crime-ridden neighborhoods? Or when Google was charged with issuing a bad neighborhood caution to walking directions? When it comes down to it, how different is 'Ghetto Tracker' from Google's patented system and method for storing and providing routes, which proposes to 'remove streets from recommended directions if uploaded route information indicates that travelers seem to avoid the street' (routes that 'traverse one or more high crime areas,' explains Google, 'may be less appealing to most travelers')? In spirit, aren't both really kind of all about using tech to avoid Martin Luther King Boulevard? Does omitting the word 'ghetto' make the tech giants' patents non-racist?
50287887
submission
Beeftopia writes:
Researchers discovered that inserting gut bacteria from obese people into mice without gut bacteria led to the mice becoming obese. Gut bacteria from slim people inserted into the same mice did not lead to mouse obesity. The researchers concluded that gut bacteria from the slim people were more efficient at extracting nutrients from food than those of the obese.
50285183
submission
itwbennett writes:
Spam filters will catch spoofed emails, but fraudsters are employing a new trick to slip past the filters, says security researcher Markus Jakobsson. The limited screen size of smartphones puts constraints on what is presented to the user. Friendly 'from' names – yes. Email addresses – no. Just slap a friendly from in front of a not-so-friendly email address and smartphone users will be none the wiser — until they open that email message.
50283047
submission
An anonymous reader writes:
The New York Times is reporting that the NSA has "has circumvented or cracked much of the encryption, or digital scrambling, that guards global commerce and banking systems, protects sensitive data like trade secrets and medical records, and automatically secures the e-mails, Web searches, Internet chats and phone calls of Americans and others around the world, the documents show."
"The agency, according to the documents and interviews with industry officials, deployed custom-built, superfast computers to break codes, and began collaborating with technology companies in the United States and abroad to build entry points into their products. The documents do not identify which companies have participated."
50280925
submission
colinneagle writes:
We all know text-based passwords are not overly secure, so when Microsoft offered a Picture Gesture Authentication (PGA) system on Windows 8, many people chose that option. However, researchers at Arizona State University, Delaware State University and GFS Technology Inc. analyzed picture gesture authentication on more than 10,000 picture passwords collected from more than 800 subjects through online user studies, and found that regardless of what image you selected, your unique picture password gestures may not be so unique after all.
The research found that the strength of picture gesture password has a "strong connection" to how long a person spent setting up that password gesture. The most common gesture combination is three taps, meaning it took about 4.33 — 5.74 seconds to setup. Passwords with two circles and one line took the longest average input time of about 10.19 seconds. After studying why people choose certain categories of images, the most common gesture types and direction patterns in PGA passwords, the researchers developed an attack framework that is "capable of cracking passwords on previously unseen pictures in a picture gesture authentication system."
50278959
submission
recoiledsnake writes:
A federal jury has ordered Google to pay Microsoft $14.5 million in damages for breach of contract for failing to license at reasonable terms standard essential patents covering WiFi and H.264 used in the Xbox game console and Windows. Motorola had demanded Microsoft pay annual royalties of up to $4 billion for use of patents that are part of the H.264 video and 802.11 wireless standards, which are baked into Windows and the Xbox video game console. Microsoft said it was willing to pay royalties but not at the 2.25 percent of the product price that Motorola sought. We previously covered Motorola's demands.
50077445
submission
Jim_Austin writes:
Teams of hundreds of young scientists--including many grad students and postdocs--staffed the Large Hadron Collider and helped make one of the most important scientific discoveries in recent decades. Now they must compete for just a handful of jobs.
50077121
submission
rjmarvin writes:
Cities are taking coding to the streets http://sdt.bz/64063 through projects like Code for America and CityNext, working with governments on multiple levels to better serve constituents with mobile and cloud technologies. The "Peace Corps for geeks" is leveraging technology to make everyday life in cities run more smoothly, providing a way to "connect technologist and designers with their government to solve important problems and reimagine how government could work." It's the way of the future...
50063909
submission
AlbanX writes:
PayPal has responded to claims it is ripping out its VMware hypervisors for OpenStack, describing its use of components of OpenStack as a means for ending its reliance on vendor release cycles.
49986301
submission
rjmarvin writes:
Two developers were able to successfully reverse-engineer Dropbox http://sdt.bz/64049 to intercept SSL traffic, bypass two-factor authentication and create open-source clients. They presented their paper, "Looking inside the (drop) box" at USENIX 2013, explaining step-by-step how they were able to succeed where others failed in reverse-engineering a heavily obfuscated application written in Python. They also claimed the generic techniques they used could be applied to reverse-engineer other Frozen python applications: OpenStack, NASA, and a host of Google apps, just to name a few...
49983979
submission
Daniel_Stuckey writes:
This weekend, the popular password cracker software Hashcat rolled out an update that makes it possible to break passwords up to 55 characters long—a big leap from the previous 15-character limit. To retrieve the original word, password recovery systems run millions of guesses through the same cryptographic function that first generated the hash value, and wait for a match. As you can imagine, the longer and more complicated the sequence, the more time this takes. But the process is advancing rapidly—now, the new version of Hashcat can conduct 8 billion guesses per second, with an unlimited number of tries.
49982217
submission
bryanandaimee writes:
A few years ago the baseband code for the Vitelcom TSM30 was leaked to the public. From that leaked code others have written open source GSM firmware firmware for the baseband processor. Using that code researchers in Berlin have created firmware to intercept the cell tower to cell phone handshake and block calls and text messages from getting through. A single hacked cell phone can bring down a cell.
49839611
submission
itwbennett writes:
The lunar laser communications demonstration will be part of the agency's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission, which is scheduled to launch on Sept. 6. Here's how the system will work: When the satellite is in orbit around the moon and visible from Earth, one of three ground stations will shoot a laser towards its approximate location. The laser beam from Earth will scan a patch of sky and should illuminate the spacecraft at some point. When that happens, the spacecraft will begin transmitting its own laser towards the ground station and the two will lock on to each other. The technology should allow an upstream data rate, from the Earth to the spacecraft, of around 20Mbps and a much faster downstream rate of 622Mbps. That's roughly six times the speed that's currently possible with radio-based transmission, said Don Cornwell, mission manager for the lunar laser communications demonstration.
49836887
submission
Zothecula writes:
In three years, if you happen to be 3,000 meters (9,800 ft) beneath the surface of the ocean, keep an eye out for the Cyclops. No, not the hairy giant, but the 5-passenger submersible. Once it’s commercially available in 2016, it should be “the only privately owned deep-water manned submersible available for contracts.” As for why it’s called the Cyclops, just check out its one-big-eye-like 180-degree borosilicate glass observation dome.
49804951
submission
Zappy writes:
Number of internet users sharing files increased from 15% at the start of the blockade to 18% six months later a study done by Universiteit van Amsterdam show. Full artike in Dutch
http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2013/08/22/ondanks-blokkade-pirate-bay-neemt-downloaden-toe/?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=nieuwsbrief-20130822&utm_content=Media&utm_term=hoofdartikel
