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Submission + - Half Of U.S. Drivers Don't Recognize This Warning Light

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes: Our cars all have warning lights. There's the check engine light, ABS light, and of course a tire-pressure warning light. These warning lights are universal in all cars, so you should know what they mean. According to a new study, half of U.S. drivers don't recognize the tire-pressure warning light. Seriously, how is this even possible? Driving with properly inflated tires isn't a joke, it's a safety measure. The tire pressure monitoring system is designed to help alert drivers to under inflated tires. This is great, except the part about people not even knowing what the warning light means. The study found that 42 percent of drivers are unable to identify the warning light in the gauge cluster. An equal percentage of people admitted to rarely checking their tires' air pressure. People, this isn't a good combination.

Submission + - Microsoft Windows XP update began hosing PCs on April 15th

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Starting on April 15th, an update pushed out by Redmond triggered problems logging into PCs running Security Essentials on Windows XP. The problem arises when users try to login and receive a memory cannot be read error related to MsMpEng.exe. The PC will usually freeze at this point. While the PC can be started in Safe Mode, Microsoft does not allow Security Essentials to be uninstalled in safe mode. My solution with several PCs has been to boot into safe mode and disable Security Essentials using the msconfig utility. Security Essentials can then be disabled by unchecking a checkbox on both the Services and Startup tabs of this utility.

Microsoft promised antivirus support with Security Essentials on XP until 2015. Is this a conspiracy to break PCs or an honest mistake? Discussion at XP Forums (http://www.xpforums.com/bug-microsoft-security-essentials-lames-windows-xp-t931878.html) and Fudzilla (http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/34518-microsoft-security-essentials-bug-kills-xp-boxes) confirms this is NOT an isolated problem.

Submission + - Plant Breeders Release First 'Open Source Seeds' (npr.org)

Submitted by mr crypto
mr crypto writes: Ag with an OSS twist: "A group of scientists and food activists is launching a campaign Thursday to change the rules that govern seeds. They're releasing 29 new varieties of crops under a new "open source pledge" that's intended to safeguard the ability of farmers, gardeners and plant breeders to share those seeds freely."

Submission + - Heartbleed CRL Activity Spike Found (sans.edu)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It looks like, as I had suspected, the CRL activity numbers we have been seeing did not reflect the real volume caused by the OpenSSL Heartbleed bug.

This evening I noticed a massive spike in the amount of revocations being reported by this CRL: http://crl.globalsign.com/gs/g...

The spike is so large that we initially thought it was a mistake, but we have since confirmed that it's real! We're talking about over 50,000 unique revocations from a single CRL!

This is by an order of magnitude the largest spike in revocation activity seen in years, according to our current data.

We have set up a new page for everyone to monitor the activity as well as see how we are obtaining this data. The page can be found at https://isc.sans.edu/crls.html.

Submission + - Ubuntu Linux 14.04 LTS Trusty Tahr Released

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ubuntu Linux version 14.04 LTS (code named "Trusty Tahr") has been released and available for download. This updated version includes the Linux kernel v3.13.0-24.46, Python 3.4, Xen 4.4, Libreoffice 4.2.3, MySQL 5.6/MariaDB 5.5, Apache 2.4, PHP 5.5, improvements to AppArmor allow more fine-grained control over application, and more. The latest release of Ubuntu Server is heavily focused on supporting cloud and scale-out computing platforms such as OpenStack, Docker, and more. As part of the wider Ubuntu 14.04 release efforts the Ubuntu Touch team is proud to make the latest and greatest touch experience available to our enthusiast users and developers. You can install Ubuntu on Nexus 4 Phone (mako), Nexus 7 (2013) Tablet (flo), and Nexus 10 Tablet (manta) by following these instructions. On a hardware front, ARM multiplatform support has been added, enabling you to build a single ARM kernel image that can boot across multiple hardware platforms. Additionally, the ARM64 and Power architectures are now fully supported. See detailed release note for more information here and a quick upgrade to a newer version of Ubuntu is possible over the network.

Submission + - NASA proposes "water world theory" for origin of life

Submitted by William Robinson
William Robinson writes: A new study from researchers at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has proposed the "water world" theory as the answer to our evolution, which describes how electrical energy naturally produced at the sea floor might have given rise to life. While the scientists had already proposed this hypothesis called "submarine alkaline hydrothermal emergence of life" the new report assembles decades of field, laboratory and theoretical research into a grand, unified picture.

Submission + - Lying Eyes: Cyborg Glasses Simulate Eye Expressions

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: A researcher in Japan has taken what is, perhaps, the next step after Google Glass: Glasses which produce animated images of the user's eyes to simulate emotional responses. They are intended to aid workers in emotionally-intensive environments. As the researcher explains, '... they allowed others to feel they were "cared" about ...' Really? Or do they just give creepy a whole new dimension?

Submission + - The Dismal State Of SATCOM Security

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Satellite Communications (SATCOM) play a vital role in the global telecommunications system, but the security of the devices used leaves much to be desired. The list of security weaknesses IOActive foundwhile analyzing and reverse-engineering firmware used on the most widely deployed Inmarsat and Iridium SATCOM terminals does not include only design flaws but also features in the devices themselves that could be of use to attackers. The uncovered vulnerabilities include multiple backdoors, hardcoded credentials, undocumented and/or insecure protocols, and weak encryption algorithms. These vulnerabilities allow remote, unauthenticated attackers to compromise the affected products. In certain cases no user interaction is required to exploit the vulnerability; just sending a simple SMS or specially crafted message from one ship to another ship would be successful for some of the SATCOM systems.

Submission + - GoPiGo: Turn Your Raspberry Pi into a Fully Functioning Robot (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: If you've always wanted a robot of your own (and come on, who hasn't?), then a new Kickstarter campaign for a robot kit powered by the Raspberry Pi £30 computer would be right up your street.

Dexter Industries is a Virginia-based company that is already well known for BrickPi – a robotics platform combining Raspberry Pi with LEGO Mindstorm kits to make an intelligent robot that is much more powerful than the LEGO Technic robot kits you might have played with as a kid.

Now it's back with GoPiGo, a Raspberry Pi robot made from assorted non-trademarked parts sold in a handy kit.

The kit can be easily assembled in 10 minutes and costs less than $100 (£59) — much less than other robot kits on the market. It comes with motors, power supply, sensors, a USB port and camera expansion, as well as a full Linux computer.

Submission + - Microsoft malware attacks taking down XP computers 6

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In an apparent attempt to force Windows XP users to update, Microsoft is now using its Security Essentials program as a malware trojan to make XP machines unusable. It slows the machine down to a crawl, mimicking a virus attack. In other cases, it locks it up completely. The timing couldn't be an accident. Shouldn't this be illegal?

https://plus.google.com/104518...

Submission + - Anonymous Linux Kernel Hacking Challenge (eudyptula-challenge.org)

Submitted by LibbyMC
LibbyMC writes: An anonymous hacker (or hackers) going by the name Little Penguin has created the Eudyptula Challenge, modeled after the Matasano Crypto Challenge, as a way to get more developers involved with the Linux kernel. Challenge participants sign up by sending an email to Little, who sends them a series of programming tasks commonly employed by Linux kernel developers. All you need to start is some C programming experience. Little penguin answers questions here: http://www.linux.com/news/feat...

Submission + - GoPro Project Claims Technology is Making People Lose Empathy for Homeless (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by EwanPalmer
EwanPalmer writes: A project involving GoPro cameras and people living on the streets of San Francisco has suggests technology is making people feel less compassionate towards the homeless.

Started by Kevin F Adler, the Homeless GoPro project aims to “build empathy through a first-hand perspective” by strapping one of the cameras onto homeless volunteers to document their lives and daily interactions.
One of the volunteers, Adam Reichart, said he believes it is technology which is stopping people feel sympathy towards people living on the street as it’s easier to have “less feelings when you're typing something” than looking at them in the eye

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