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Encryption

The Emerging Science of DNA Cryptography 46

KentuckyFC writes "Since the mid 90s, researchers have been using DNA to carry out massively parallel calculations which threaten encryption schemes such as DES. Now one researcher says that if DNA can be used to attack encryption schemes, it can also protect data too. His idea is to exploit the way information is processed inside a cell to encrypt it. The information that DNA holds is processed in two stages in a cell. In the first stage, called transcription, a DNA segment that constitutes a gene is converted into messenger RNA (mRNA) which floats out of the nucleus and into the body of the cell. Crucially, this happens only after the noncoding parts of the gene have been removed and the remaining sequences spliced back together." (More below.)
Software

Linux 2.6.27 Out 452

diegocgteleline.es writes "Linux 2.6.27 has been released. It adds a new filesystem (UBIFS) for 'pure' flash-based storage, the page-cache is now lockless, much improved Direct I/O scalability and performance, delayed allocation support for ext4, multiqueue networking, data integrity support in the block layer, a function tracer, a mmio tracer, sysprof support, improved webcam support, support for the Intel wifi 5000 series and RTL8187B network cards, a new ath9k driver for the Atheros AR5008 and AR9001 chipsets, more new drivers, and many other improvements and fixes. Full list of changes can be found here."
It's funny.  Laugh.

XKCD Improving the Internet ... Yet Again 204

netbuzz writes "Comic creator Randall Monroe suggested in a recent xkcd strip that YouTube comments would be better — or, more precisely, less idiotic — if only those posting them were forced to hear their words read aloud first. Well, YouTube has gone and made this "audio preview" a reality, albeit an optional one. And, it's not the first time that xkcd has contributed to the betterment of the Internet, as those who are familiar with last year's "Internet census" and its use of a Hilbert curve may remember."
Censorship

Submission + - Finnish Internet censorship (effi.org)

Thomas Nybergh writes: "The Finnish National Bureau of Investigation maintains a secret list of "child pornography" sites. Some major Finnish ISPs, although currently not required by law to do so, do block access to sites on this list.

The blocking, which is performed by crippling DNS, has been criticized, especially since lapsiporno.info ("childporn.info"), a site discussing the practice, but not containing any illegal material, was added to the list of blocked sites, despite the fact that only sites hosted outside of Finland are allowed to be blocked (Real child porn sites hosted inside Finland are to be shut down and the maintainers prosecuted).

Quite a lot of other sites that have nothing whatsoever to do with "child pornography" are also on the list, and critics of the practice of crippling DNS say that it's only a matter of time before other inconvenient or controversial material will be censored, too. This article on Electronic Frontier Finland's site is the most adequate summary of the situation available in English."

Censorship

Submission + - Finnish police censors a critic of censorship (effi.org) 1

An anonymous reader writes: A while ago Finland started censoring alleged child porn sites on the DNS level. The secret block list contains more than sites hosting child porn. Digital rights group Electronic Frontier Finland writes:



Now the censorship list has been appended with a site called lapsiporno.info [translates to childpornography.info] that is maintained by a Finnish Internet activist Matti Nikki. The site does not contain child pornography, but articles that criticise censorship and a list of blocked IP addresses.

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