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Comment Re:This guy reads too much sci-fi. (Score 1) 323

by RevWaldo (#47122259) Attached to: 'Curiosity' Lead Engineer Suggests Printing Humans On Other Planets
The trick is differentiating between the not currently possible but we could see the pathways to get there and the not currently possible and we haven't the first clue how to practically pull it off.

We can see the paths that may make seeding planets, duplicating and assembling humans from raw materials, and so on possible.
FTL starships? Time travel? Teleportation? Let us get back to you.

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United States

Iranian Hacker Group Created Fake News Organization For Social Engineering 57

Posted by timothy from the won't-you-be-my-neighbor dept.
itwbennett (1594911) writes "A suspected Iranian hacker group seeded Facebook and LinkedIn with bogus profiles of attractive women and even created a fake online news organization to get digitally closer to more than 2,000 U.S. military members, defense contractors and lobbyists it wanted to spy on, according to a report by security consultancy iSight Partners. The group is suspected to be in Iran, based on their working patterns and the location of their command-and-control infrastructure, said Patrick McBride, vice president of iSight's marketing and communications. Their activity is consistent with government-sponsored espionage campaigns, but 'we don't have anything specific tying them back to the government,' he added." Adds reader wiredmikey (1824622): "The recently uncovered activity, which iSIGHT Partners calls NEWSCASTER, was a 'brazen, complex multi-year cyber-espionage that used a low-tech approach to avoid traditional security defenses–exploiting social media and people who are often the 'weakest link' in the security chain.' ... Working undetected since 2011, targets included senior U.S. military and diplomatic personnel, congressional personnel, Washington D.C. area journalists, U.S. think tanks, and defense contractors in the U.S. and Israel."
Earth

Researchers Experiment With Explosives To Fight Wildfires 80

Posted by Soulskill from the my-kind-of-stupid dept.
aesoteric writes: "Australian researchers are a step closer to demonstrating whether explosives — rather than water — can be used to extinguish an out-of-control wildfire. The research uses a blast of air to knock the flame off its fuel source — a technique used in the oil & gas industry for decades. The latest tests were conducted in New Mexico. Firefighters are reported to be quietly optimistic about the research's potential."
Crime

Ask Slashdot: Anti-Theft Products For the Over-Equipped Household? 408

Posted by timothy from the exploding-dye-packs dept.
First time accepted submitter Dufflepod (3656815) writes "After yet another hardware purchase last week, I realized with some alarm just how drastically an enterprising burglar could increase the crapulence quotient of my life if they ever made off with my hardware. The house is alarmed, but much to my annoyance it isn't always set when people go out for any length of time. Ideally I want to 'alarm' the expensive items among my various PCs, UPS, NAS box, test equipment, and some of the sundry other gadgets & gizmos I require to stroke my inner geek. Over the past few days I have spent hours Googling for every combination of "anti-theft perimeter alarm radius motion detector vibration wireless" etc etc.. I have found various possible solutions, though the cost of some of them does make my eyes water (eg SonicShock @ €150/box). Has anyone out there decided to bite-the-bullet and protect their kit with decent alarms, and do you have any suggested 'do's & don'ts'?" So how would you secure valuable items, as opposed to securing the entire place?
Communications

Proton-M Rocket Carrying Russia's Most Advanced Satellite Crashes 160

Posted by timothy from the tough-thing-to-get-right dept.
schwit1 (797399) writes "When it rains it pours: A Russian Proton rocket crashed Friday nine minutes after launch. Considering the tensions between the U.S. and Russia over space, combined with the increasing competition for the launch market created by SpaceX's lower prices, another Proton failure now is something the Russians could do without. Moreover, the Russians were planning a lot of Proton launches in the next few months to catch up from last year's launch failure. Many of these scheduled launches were commercial and were going to earn them hard cash. This failure definitely hurts, and will certainly be used as justification by their government in increase its control over that country's aging aerospace industry."
Hardware Hacking

Unlock Your Android Phone With Open Source Wearable NFC 81

Posted by timothy from the now-attach-it-to-your-gun dept.
coop0030 (263345) writes "Becky Stern at Adafruit has created a guide on how to create an open source NFC ring or other wearable to mod and unlock your Android phone. From the tutorial: 'Unlock your phone by just picking it up! No more pesky password or gesture PIN, just scan an NFC tag! This guide covers creating an NFC ring, putting an NFC tag in your nail polish, modding your Android installation to read tags from the lockscreen, and creating an automation toolchain to unlock the phone when the desired tag is scanned.' There is also a video that demonstrates how it works."

Comment Except (Score 1) 191

Many of us have by our own admission terrible handwriting, and have trouble reading our own notes. (And this is going to be more and more of a problem as some quarters continue viewing cursive handwriting as archaic and not worth the time needed to teach it.) Also, my paper notebook doesn't have a search function.

For many classes I would take notes on my laptop in a continuous excel spreadsheet, then re-read and annotate them with material from the book, off the internet, etc. It worked quite well.

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Earth

Scientists Race To Develop Livestock That Can Survive Climate Change 291

Posted by timothy from the just-need-to-outrun-you dept.
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Evan Halper writes in the LA Times that with efforts to reduce carbon emissions lagging, researchers, backed by millions of dollars from the federal government, are looking for ways to protect key industries from the impact of climate change by racing to develop new breeds of farm animals that can stand up to the hazards of global warming. ""We are dealing with the challenge of difficult weather conditions at the same time we have to massively increase food production" to accommodate larger populations and a growing demand for meat, says Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. For example a team of researchers is trying to map the genetic code of bizarre-looking African naked-neck chickens to see if their ability to withstand heat can be bred into flocks of US broilers. "The game is changing since the climate is changing," says Carl Schmidt. "We have to start now to anticipate what changes we have to make in order to feed 9 billion people," citing global-population estimates for 2050." (More below.)

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