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Submission + - Kids with operators manual alert bank officials: "We hacked your ATM"

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Two 14-year-olds hacked a Bank of Montreal ATM after finding an operators manual online that showed how to gain administrative control. Matthew Hewlett and Caleb Turon alerted bank employees after testing the instructions on an ATM at a nearby supermarket. At first the employees thought the boys had the PIN numbers of customers. 'I said: "No, no, no. We hacked your ATM. We got into the operator mode,"' Hewlett was quoted as saying. Then, the bank employees asked for proof. 'So we both went back to the ATM and I got into the operator mode again,' Hewlett said. 'Then I started printing off documentations like how much money is currently in the machine, how many withdrawals have happened that day, how much it's made off surcharges. Then I found a way to change the surcharge amount, so I changed the surcharge amount to one cent.'

Submission + - South African schools to go textbook free (htxt.co.za)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: South African education authoraties are about to embark on an ambitious plan to take their schools textbook free, using the familiar refrain of one-tablet-per-child to do so. The education minister in Gauteng (the province which covers Johannesburg and Pretoria) has announced a plan to model new schools in the area on Sunward Park, a government school which went all-digital at the start of 2012. Other schools in the state will then follow, along with a plan to extend the project nationally. There's not much in the way of detail yet in terms of costings, but the country recently came last in a WEF survey of school performance (in a particularly poorly researched survey).

Submission + - Lavabit Mk2 ships to backers via snail mail, and to the public in 60 days (kickstarter.com)

Submitted by sandbagger
sandbagger writes: Famously, Lavabit is the mail system Snowden used before the company shut down amidst legal woes after the Guardian and Post stories began running last year. A new version of the code has been funded via Kickstarter. The goal is to white label and release the source code that was used to power Lavabit as a f/oss project with support for dark mail added after. The first part of that initiative has occurred: CDs went into the post yesterday along with T-Shirts. The code will be released to the public in 60 days.

Submission + - Snowden rallies privacy advocates in New York City (dailydot.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Mass global surveillance “isn’t just an American problem, this is a global problem,” Edward Snowden told the Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) conference in New York on Thursday. Appearing via video call from Moscow, Snowden spoke with John Perry Barlow, cofounder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in front of a crowd of hundreds gathered in downtown Manhattan. Barlow announced the launch of the Courage Foundation, an organization dedicated to financially supporting Snowden’s considerable legal battles. “I’m afraid we’ve descended to this point,” Barlow said, “But why do animals lick their genitals? Because they can. Why do governments do this? Because they can’t lick their own.” “They’re licking ours,” Snowden quipped, “and taking pictures.”

Submission + - Who Must You Trust? (acm.org)

Submitted by CowboyRobot
CowboyRobot writes: In ACM's Queue, Thomas Wadlow argues that "Whom you trust, what you trust them with, and how much you trust them are at the center of the Internet today."
He gives a checklist of what to look for when evaluating any system for trustworthiness, chock full of fascinating historical examples.
These include NASA opting for a simpler, but more reliable chip; the Terry Childs case; and even an 18th century "semaphore telegraph" that was a very early example of steganographic cryptography.
FTA: "Detecting an anomaly is one thing, but following up on what you've detected is at least as important. In the early days of the Internet, Cliff Stoll, then a graduate student at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories in California, noticed a 75-cent accounting error on some computer systems he was managing. Many would have ignored it, but it bothered him enough to track it down. That investigation led, step by step, to the discovery of an attacker named Markus Hess, who was arrested, tried, and convicted of espionage and selling information to the Soviet KGB."

Submission + - Meet The Bionic Teenager From Apple's WWDC Video (businessinsider.com)

Submitted by redletterdave
redletterdave writes: Patrick Kane was born in London with all 10 phalanges, but lost all of the fingers from his left hand at just 9 months old after contracting a virulent form of meningitis called meningococcal septicemia, which is an infection in the blood stream that’s often fatal. Kane received passive prostheses over the years, but as he entered his teenage years in 2010, he reached out to Scotland-based Touch Bionics and began the process to be fitted with the company’s robotic prosthetic technology, called “i-limb.” Now, the 17-year-old Londoner is wearing a state-of-the-art prosthesis with a wide range of grips all controlled by a unique iOS app that offers flexibility and customization but also training to optimize the device and troubleshoot it when problems arise.

Submission + - D-Wave Quantum Computers Able to Demonstrate Entanglement (bbc.com)

Submitted by lecoupdejarnac
lecoupdejarnac writes: A study published by the peer-reviewed journal Physical Review X shows that D-Wave's quantum computers are able to attain at least 8-qubits of entanglement:

"Dr Federico Spedalieri of University of Southern California's Viterbi Information Sciences Institute and co-author of the paper, said: 'There's no way around it. Only quantum systems can be entangled. This test provides the experimental proof that we've been looking for.'"

Submission + - Lawsuit: Tuition should be free (savecooperunion.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art is a unique college in New York City that has provided a full-tuition scholarship to every enrolled student for over 150 years. Its founder, Peter Cooper, who wanted to provide talented youth with opportunities, secured an enormous endowment for Cooper Union that now includes the Chrysler Building. ÂAfter a series of fiscally imprudent steps, including building an expensive new building without first securing adequate financing, not following through on a promised 10% expense reduction, and excessive administrative compensation and expenses, the Board of Directors, in a split decision, decided to charge tuition beginning September 2014."

"The Committee to Save Cooper Union is pursuing legal action as a last resort after Cooper Unionâ(TM)s Board of Trustees and administration proceeded with their plans to abolish a 150 year tradition of free tuition, refusing alternatives that would preserve free tuition."

Submission + - MIT Researchers Creates 3D Printed Self Assembling Robots (3dprint.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at MIT have found a way of creating 3D printed robots, which assemble themselves once placed in an oven. The printer prints the robot in a flat form, with slits within the material. When heated the slits forces the material to deform, assembling the shape of the robot. More details: http://3dprint.com/4836/3d-pri...

Submission + - Porn Star Runs against Crack Head for Toronto Mayor (nydailynews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Continuing its way down a long and ridiculous path the Toronto mayoral race heats up. Porn star Nikki Benz has thrown her 'hat' into the ring. Which begs the ever popular question "Who would you rather" Only in a slightly different context.

Some of her clever campaign slogans include:
"'Trade in your Ford for a Benz!"
"may lower my top now, and as Toronto Mayor I'll lower property taxes."

One wonders if a real candidate in the race will have any chance to get noticed along side all the absurdity that is flooding the media.

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