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Submission + - Old Facebook Apps Still Plunder Your Privacy (pbs.org)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: If you added the Youtube Facebook app prior to 2009, you're given YouTube free access to nearly all the data in your profile (as well as many of your friends). But if you install the same app today, it gets very limited access. Older versions of Facebook apps, it turns out, still have "grandfathered" access to data that the social networking service has restricted for new apps. If you're protective of your privacy, it might be a good idea to delete and reinstall any older apps in your profile.
Security

Submission + - Anon mining Gawker data leak to attack Governments (pbs.org)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: Documents obtained by the PBS NewsHour reveal a concerted effort to filter and verify U.S. and international government email accounts from the Gawker database leak. The group involved implores participants to keep the operation secret, because leaking their efforts "will only jeopordize the serious lulz fest about to hit the internet in the coming months." Agencies who have been breached allegedly include NASA, the U.S. Senate, the South African Judiciary, and others.
Moon

Submission + - NASA strikes gold and water on the Moon (pbs.org)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: The PBS NewsHour reports: there is water on the moon ... along with a long list of other compounds, including, mercury, gold and silver. That's according to a more detailed analysis of the cold lunar soil near the moon's South Pole. The results were released as six papers by a large team of scientists in the journal, Science Thursday. The data comes from the October 2009 mission, when NASA slammed a booster rocket traveling nearly 6,000 miles per hour into the moon and blasted out a hole. Trailing close behind it was a second spacecraft, rigged with a spectrometer to study the lunar plume released by the blast. The mission is called LCROSS, for Lunar Crater Observer and Sensing Satellite.

Submission + - Secret Drama Behind the Double Helix Revealed (pbs.org)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: Dozens of letters written by Nobel prize winner Frances Crick have just been released. The letters, which even Crick thought had been destoryed, reveal the intense, and sometimes playful competition among researchers to decode DNA in the 1960's. At one point, Watson and Crick were pulled off of DNA research because they incorporated works from a competing team at Kings College. Crick's letter to his rival (and friend) Maurice Wilkins read "Cheer up and take it from us that even if we kicked you in the pants it was between friends," he wrote. "We hope our burglary will at least produce a united front in your group!"

Submission + - Would You Eat Genetically Modified Salmon? (pbs.org)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: The FDA is currently considering approval of the first mass-market, genetically modified animal, a super salmon. The engineered fish grows to full size in half the time, making it cheaper to raise and lessening it's environmental impact. But critics argue that the testing that has been done on the fish so far amounts to junk science, and there are unknown consequences if the fish escapes into the wild. Would you eat a hormone-enhanced fish?

Submission + - The 110MPG X-prize Car Was Built In Rural Virginia (pbs.org)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: Instead of using Detroit engineers or Silicon Valley bitheads, Virginia-based Edison2 relied on retired Formula 1 and Nascar engineers to build its entry for the X-prize. Relying on composite materials and titanium, the team assembled an ultra-lightweight car that provides all the comforts of a standard 4-passenger vehicle, but gets more than 100 mpg. The custom engineering goes all the way down to the car's lug nuts, which weigh less than 11 grams each. Amazingly, they expect a production version of the car should cost less than $20,000.
Be

Submission + - 500K Text Messages Reveal Nation's Mood on 9/11 (pbs.org)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: The PBS NewsHour reports that German researchers analyzed 500,000 text messages sent on Sept. 11, 2001, and created an hour-by-hour psychological profile Americans on that day. The pager text messages, which were posted to Wikileaks in 2009, were analyzed for words that correlated to sadness, anxiety and anger. The results show that words related to anger dominated communications as the day wore on. The study was published in the Journal of Psychological Science.
Privacy

Submission + - Is RFID really that scary? (pbs.org)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: Defcon participant Chris Paget demonstrated his ability to capture RFID data from people hundreds of feet away for the PBS NewsHour. Paget went through the regular laundry list of security concerns over RFID: people can be tracked, their information accessed, their identities comprimised. Not so fast, says Mark Roberti of RFID Journal. Mark challenges Paget to point to a single instance where RFID was successfully used for nefarious purposes. The signals are too weak and the data is too obscure, according to Roberti. So who is right? Has RFID yet lead to a single instance of identity theft, illegal monitoring, or other security compromise?

Submission + - China to demolish 1/2 of all residential buildings (pbs.org)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: The landscapes of Inception are a reality in many parts of China, where giant apartment buildings lean 30 degrees off center—the results of years of hasty, shoddy construction coupled with aging infrastructure. One set of apartments planned to be six stories tall eventually grew to 22 stories. A year-old highway bridge that developed catastrophic cracks was initially repaired with glue. But the process of rebuilding is also rife with corrupt land grabs and forced evictions.
Censorship

Submission + - From Slaying Dragons to Dictators (newsweek.com)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: In a weekend, programmer Austin Heap transformed from an apathetic MMO player, to a world class regime-slayer. When word for Iran's rigged election broke over Twitter, Heap decided to dedicate himself to building a better proxy system for people behind Iran's firewall. Heap's creation, Haystack, conceals someone’s real online destinations inside a stream of innocuous traffic. You may be browsing an opposition Web site, but to the censors it will appear you are visiting, say, weather.com. Heap tends to hide users in content that is popular in Tehran, sometimes the regime’s own government mouthpieces

Submission + - 6 spend 520 days in isolation for mock Mars trip (pbs.org)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: On Thursday morning, six astronauts were locked in a 550 cubic-meter windowless complex in Moscow. The mission: to simulate the experience of a real trip to Mars and back. The "voyage" will take 520 days, roughly 12 months longer than the average six-month stay at the International Space Station. Scientists will be monitoring the international crew and studying everything from social and psychological impacts of isolation to microbiology and clinical diagnostics. The crew will have to deal with food shoratages, illness, and other problems in total isolation.

Submission + - Help PBS NewsHour host the Gulf Oil Live stream 3

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: Since the gulf oil crisis began, PBS NewsHour and NPR have transcoded the BP live video stream and rebroadcast it in FLV format to reach the widest possible audience. We feel strongly that we are providing a public service by streaming a reliable, consistent feed of the goings on 5,000 feet below the surface of the gulf. But our bandwidth budget is running out. We're looking for a CDN or other organization willing to donate the bandwidth to cover this story to its conclusion. Give us a hand. If you can help us out, please email us at oilleakvideo@gmail.com. Thanks!
The Internet

Submission + - Pope admonishes the Internet and Transparency (pbs.org) 2

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: At a conference on digital media at the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI attacked the idea of transparency in the internet age, warning that digital transparency exacerbates tensions between nations and within nations themselves. And increases the "dangers of ... intellectual and moral relativism," which can lead to "multiple forms of degradation and humiliation" of the essence of a person, and to the "pollution of the spirit." All in all, it seemed a pretty grim view of the wide open communication parameters being demanded by the Internet age.

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