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Submission + - Four Weeks Without Soap or Shampoo (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A biotech start-up from Massachusetts has an unusual product: a bottle full of bacteria you're supposed to spray onto your face. The bacteria is Nitrosomonas eutropha, and it's generally harmless. Its main use is that it oxidizes ammonia, and the start-up's researchers suspect it used to commonly live on human skin before we began washing it away with soaps and other cleaners. In fact, it's an area of heavy research in biology right now. Scientists know that the gut microbiome is important to proper digestion, and they're trying to figure out if an external microbiome can be similarly beneficial to skin. A journalist for the NY Times volunteered to test the product, which involved four straight weeks of no showers, no soap, no shampoo, and no deodorant. The sprayed-on bacteria quickly colonized her skin, along with other known types of bacteria — and hundreds of unknown (but apparently harmless) strains. She reported improvements to her skin and complexion, and described how the bacteria worked to curtail (but not eliminate) the body odor caused by not washing. At the end of the experiment, all of the N. eutropha vanished within three showers.

Submission + - Severe vulnerability at eBay's website (golem.de)

Submitted by Golem.de
Golem.de writes: The German security expert Micheal E. discovered the persistent cross-site scripting vulnerability on eBay's website about two months ago and said he reported it to Ebay immediately. Ebay ceased to answer his emails, after writing that they considered it a mostly harmless error. Micheal E. sent Golem.de a PoC demonstrating that the error that has not yet been fixed. An attacker can manipulate an official auctioning web page and insert Javascript code. By visiting the malicious web page the code is executed by the victim and could potentially be used by the attacker to to execute arbitrary actions in the victim's Ebay account and gain full control over it. There is probably no connection to the huge database theft reported a few days ago. The XSS flaw can only be used to attack one victim at a time.

Submission + - US physicist claims waves do not exist at low frequencies in cables (vixra.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The normally accepted textbook behavior of TEM modes in coaxial cable is that they have no low-frequency cut-off, ie. they occur at all frequencies down to dc. This has now been challenged by Prof Laszlo Kish, at Texas A&M, who argues that waves do have a low-frequency cut-off on this situation. http://vixra.org/abs/1403.0964

Submission + - Uk to end net neutrality (dailydot.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The uk government is planning on vetoing the EU legislation that enforces net neutrality under the guise of "won't anyone think of the child pornography blocking?" again.

Submission + - Why Cheap Smartphones Are Going To Upset the Industry (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Just when people got used to good smartphones costing $200 with a 2-year contract, they also started to realize that those 2-year contracts were bad news. Still, it's often more palatable than fronting $600 for good, new hardware. But that's starting to change. Cell phone internals are getting cheap enough that prices for capable devices have been creeping downward below $200 without a contract. We ran into something similar with the PC industry some years back — previous-gen chips had no trouble running next-gen software (excluding game with bleeding edge graphics), and so the impetus to keep getting the latest-and-greatest disappeared for a lot of people. That revolution is underway now for smartphones, and it's going to shake things up for everybody, including Apple and Samsung. But the biggest effects will be felt in the developing world: 'That means for a vast number of people in a vast number of countries, the cheap handset will be the first screen, and the only screen. Their primary interface with the world. A way of connecting to the Internet where there are no telephone lines or coaxial cables or even electricity. In nations without subsidized cell phone contracts or access to consumer credit, the $50-and-you-own-it handset is going to be transformative.'

Comment LPG is current (Score 1) 659

by Martin S. (#47008087) Attached to: Future of Cars: Hydrogen Fuel Cells, Or Electric?

While technically dual fuel I run my current car on almost entirely on LPG and I'm a big fan. It is massively cleaner than diesel and better than petrol. Performance with modern ECU engines is good. However it is still an interim solution because it is still a fossil fuel and is therefore carbon negative.

Hydrogen fuel produced from sea water by off shore wind turbines using surplus off peak power will replace it in the long term future because it is CO2 neutral.

http://www.hydrogen.co.uk/h2/o...

Comment Doesn't solve the 'problems' (Score 1) 659

by Martin S. (#47007935) Attached to: Future of Cars: Hydrogen Fuel Cells, Or Electric?

Electric cars still use hydrocarbon fuel in power stations, have a limited range and are slow to recharg.

Hydrogen powered cars can refill quickly and use Hydrogen produced by Offshore wind farms.

Offshore wind farms can produce electricity for peak demand and off peak use sea water hydrolysis to make hydrogen or even carbon neutral hydgrocarbon fuel by combining it with Carbon from CO2.

Submission + - AV offical antivirus software is barely stopping 45 of all computer attacks

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: MAY 7, 2014 9:26 AM
Is the computer 'superbug' killing the anti-virus?
By Vito Pilieci, Ottawa Citizen

Source URL: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/c...

The once-iron-clad protector of computer systems everywhere is no longer doing its job, according to one of the world’s largest makers of antivirus software.
Brian Dye, senior vice-president for information security at Symantec Corp., which makes the Norton Antivirus software, said this week that today’s antivirus software is barely stopping 45 per cent of all computer system attacks, and that record is getting worse.
While the software, which is designed to scan a person’s system for signs of malicious software on a regular basis then quarantine or remove those programs, was great when it was created in 1980s, ’90s and even early 2000s, new breeds of viruses, worms and engineered attacks have rendered the software obsolete.
Symantec admitted a whopping of 55 per cent of today’s attacks are getting through, a monstrous admission for a company that still sees antivirus software account for as much as 40 per cent of its annual revenues. Symantec reported sales of $6.9 billion US in 2013.
“The era of the standalone antivirus is over,” said Piero DePaoli, director of product marketing for Endpoint, Messaging & Web Security at Symantec. “Antivirus is the foundation for catching known threats. But, a majority of the things we see today are new and unknown and specifically designed to evade your traditional antivirus.”
As with other warnings from other security companies, the big hole in the security is still coming from users themselves. Targeted attacks — many of which leverage a person’s Facebook, Twitter or other online accounts to engineer an online attack against the individual — have become increasingly common. With users clicking on links, opening files and visiting websites, despite often being warned by their anti-virus programs not to, the effectiveness of the antivirus is waning.
According to 2014 Symantec’s Internet Security Threat Report, the company’s 19th such report, 2013 was a real turning point in the war against hackers. The year saw a 62 per cent increase in the number of data breaches reported, accounting for the personal details of 552 million people being exposed in a number of “mega” high-profile electronic heists, including a major breach at Target stores, according to Symantec.
Symantec gathered the information for its study through information provided by its Global Intelligence Network, which is made up of more than 41.5 million attack sensors recording thousands of malicious events every second in more than 157 countries around the globe.
Symantec found that spam email volumes dropped to become 66 per cent of all email traffic. It accounted for more than 90 per cent less than two years ago. However, targeted attacks against individuals increased by 91 per cent, as hackers have discovered that laser-focused attacks yield a better payout than the scattershot approach that spam email campaigns have produced in the past.
Hackers are also now targeting certain professionals in hopes of using them as stepping stones to access higher-profile people. Executive assistants and public relations professionals are the two most targeted professions for hackers who hope to leverage the contacts and networks that those professionals hold in order to gain access to corporations and executives where they can then steal information or cash.
DePaoli said while many businesses are now thinking past antivirus programs as being their line of defence against hackers, many consumers have to now adjust to that reality. Symantec and others are changing the way they safeguard computers to focus more on active protection, which monitors the traffic on a computer system for suspicious activity and can lock down data, or alert a user should malicious activity be detected.

Submission + - Why Hollywood's Best Robot Stories Are About Slavery (popsci.com)

Submitted by malachiorion
malachiorion writes: On the occasion of Almost Human's cancellation (and the box office flopping of Transcendence), I tried to suss out what makes for a great, and timeless Hollywood robot story. The common thread seems to be slavery, or stories that use robots and AI as completely blatant allegories for the discrimination and dehumanization that's allowed slavery to happen, and might again. My analysis for Popular Science, including a defense (up to a point!) of HAL 9000's murder spree.

Submission + - Secure Coding Guidelines to Prevent Vulnerabilities Like Heartbleed (cmu.edu)

Submitted by heidibrayer
heidibrayer writes: Software developers produce more than 100 billion lines of code for commercial systems each year. Even with automated testing tools, errors still occur at a rate of one error for every 10,000 lines of code. While many coding standards address code style issues (i.e., style guides), CERT secure coding standards focus on identifying unsafe, unreliable, and insecure coding practices, such as those that resulted in the Heartbleed vulnerability. For more than 10 years, the CERT Secure Coding Initiative at the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute has been working to develop guidance—most recently, The CERT C Secure Coding Standard: Second Edition—for developers and programmers through the development of coding standards by security researchers, language experts, and software developers using a wiki-based community process. This blog post explores the importance of a well-documented and enforceable coding standard in helping programmers circumvent pitfalls and avoid vulnerabilities.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How Do You Tell A Compelling Story About IT Infrastructure?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Every month we submit status reports to upper management. On the infrastructure side, these reports tend to be "Hey, we met our service level agreements ... again." IT infrastructure is now a lot like the electric company. Nobody thanks the electric company the lights come on but they have plenty of colorful adjectives to describe them when the power is off.

What is the best way to construct a compelling story for upper management so they'll appreciate the hard work that an IT department does. They don't seem particularly impressed with functioning systems because they expect functioning systems. The extensive effort to design and implement reliable systems has also made IT boring and dull. What types of summaries can you provide upper management to help them appreciate IT infrastructure and the money they spend on the services it provides?

Submission + - The Strange Death of Comet Ison

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: Last year, astronomers announced that a small ball of ice and rock heading towards the inner Solar System could turn out to be the most eye-catching comet in living memory. They calculated that Comet Ison's orbit would take it behind the Sun but that it would then head towards Earth where it would put on a spectacular display of heavenly fireworks. Sure enough, Ison brightened dramatically as it headed Sunwards. But as astronomers watched on the evening of 28 November, the brightly flaring Ison moved behind the Sun but never emerged. The comet simply disappeared. Now a new analysis of the death of Ison suggests that the comet was doomed long before it reached the Sun. Images from several Sun-observing spacecraft that had a unique view of events, indicate that Ison exhausted its supply of water and other ice in the final flare-ups as it approached the Sun. The new study shows that all that was left in its last hours were a few hundred thousands pebbles glowing brightly as they vapourised in the Sun's heat. In fact, Comet Ison died in full view of the watching hordes of astronomers on Earth who did not realise what they were watching at the time.

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