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Submission + - Why Not Replace SSL Certificates With PGP Keys? 9

Submitted by vik
vik writes: The whole SSL process has been infiltrated by the NSA, GCSB and other n'er-do-wells. If governments want a man-in-the-middle certificate they simply issue a secret gagging order to the CA to make them issue one. Consequently "certified" SSL certificates can no longer be trusted. Ironically self-issued certificates are more secure, but not easily verified.

However, PGP/GPG keys can be trusted and independently verified. They are as secure as we can get for now. Why not replace the broken SSL CA system with GPG/PGP encryption keys? Make the NSA-infiltrated stuff obsolete, and rely on a real-world web of trust?

Submission + - Look at What I'm Saying (plosone.org)

Submitted by cortex
cortex writes: University of Utah bioengineers discovered our understanding of language may depend more heavily on vision than previously thought: under the right conditions, what you see can override what you hear. In an article published in PLOS One "Seeing Is Believing: Neural Representations of Visual Stimuli in Human Auditory Cortex Correlate with Illusory Auditory Perceptions" the authors showed that visual stimuli can influence neural signals in the auditory processing part of the brain and change what a person hears. In this study patients were shown videos of an auditory illusion called the McGurk Effect while electrical recordings where made from the surface of the cerebral cortex.

Comment Don't wait for Google (Score 1) 80

by cortex (#42325687) Attached to: 5 More Google Fiberhoods Coming To Kansas City
Lobby your local city and county officials to support the installation of fiber infrastructure. Along the Wasatch Front we have the excellent UTOPIA project, which brings fiber to the home. Local cities used bonds to support setting up the infrastructure, and home owners pay for the connection from the street to their house. The fiber infrastructure is treated like a utility and any ISP can compete for your business. I have a symmetric 100 MB connection for about about 1/3 less than Comcast was charging me for a 15 MB connection, and I get MUCH better service.

Comment Fiber as a Utility Model (Score 1) 327

by cortex (#42228935) Attached to: Nationwide Google Fiber Deployment Would Cost $140 Billion
Along the Wasatch Front we have the excellent UTOPIA project, which brings fiber to the home. The fiber infrastructure is treated like a utility and any ISP can compete for your business - Keeping costs down. It was a great day when I had my symmetric 100 MB connection installed and was able to say goodbye to Comcast.

Comment Effect on Promotion and Tenure (Score 3, Interesting) 146

by cortex (#40109419) Attached to: Faculty Votes For Open Access Policy At UC San Francisco
Most researchers will think about this for about 2 seconds and then publish in the journal with the most prestige and highest impact factor that they can. Publishing in high impact journals is a major factor in promotion and tenure for professors, so until universities adapt their policies on promotion and tenure, professors will continue to published in prestigious and expensive closed access journals. When reviewing someone for promotion or tenure, high-level administrators don't have time to read all the journal articles a professor has published, so they really heavily on g-indices and/or h-indices that are based upon journal impact factor scores.

Comment No dexterity in the fingers (Score 4, Informative) 56

Pretty amazing surgery, but watching the videos shows limited restoration of function. The key is getting the transplanted/regenerating nerves to make the proper connections. The surgery is not going to re-wire the incredible number of connections made during development. Neural prostheses currently offer better dexterity and restoration of function than the nerve transplant. However, it is likely only a matter of time (maybe sever decades) before the neural re-wiring problem is solved.
Android

Submission + - New smartphone with forked version of Android from (xda-developers.com)

Submitted by
cortex
cortex writes: "XDA developers is reporting on a the release of a new smart phone, which runs a forked version of Google's Android operating system.

"Dell and Baidu, the Chinese search giant with over 80% marketshare in its home-country, unveiled the Streak Pro on Tuesday (via Computerworld). The device has a 4.3 AMOLED screen with 960×540 resolution and packs a 1.5 GHz dualcore Qualcomm processor. Most notably, however, is the operating system it runs: a forked Android version dubbed Baidu Yi, which replaces Google’s services with those of Baidu."

How will this impact Google's support for Android and open source in general?"
Android

Submission + - Amazon Fire Tablet (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by cortex
cortex writes: Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), the world’s largest online retailer, unveiled its Kindle Fire tablet computer, taking aim at Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s bestselling iPad with a device that’s smaller and less than half the price.

The Kindle Fire will have a 7-inch display and sell for $199, compared with $499 for Apple’s cheapest iPad, Amazon executives said in interviews with Bloomberg Businessweek. The device, a souped-up version of the Kindle electronic- book reader, will run on Google Inc.’s Android software, the Seattle-based company said.
Games

Submission + - Sid Meier's Civ World on Facebook (facebook.com)

Submitted by
cortex
cortex writes: "We have some exciting news to share with you about Civilization for Facebook! As you can see from the new look of this page, the official title for our game is Civilization World (Civ World). Why a name change you say? The name better reflects the main theme of the game; in Civ World you will be joining your friends to form nations, which will compete with other player-nations to rule the world. Civ World’s shaping up to be a really fun Facebook game, as well as another addictive Civilization experience."
News

Submission + - FILM ADDS 3D TO ANY LCD SCREEN (diginfo.tv)

Submitted by
autospa
autospa writes: "Japanese firm Global Wave recently debuted film sheets that bring 3D to any LCD screen. The sheets will be available for 12.1-inch, 21.5-inch and 23-inch monitors as well as for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, and the application is compatible with both Windows and iOS."
Security

Submission + - Ex-NSA Chief Supports Separate Secure Internet

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Nextgove reports that Michael Hayden, former director of both the NSA and the CIA, says the United States may seriously want to consider creating a new Internet infrastructure to reduce the threat of cyberattacks and several current federal officials, including U.S. Cyber Command chief Gen. Keith Alexander, also have floated the concept of a ".secure" network for critical services such as financial institutions, sensitive infrastructure, government contractors, and the government itself that would be walled off from the public web. Unlike .com, .xxx and other new domains now proliferating the Internet, .secure would require visitors to use certified credentials for entry and would do away with users' Fourth Amendment rights to privacy. "I think what Keith is trying to suggest is that we need a more hardened enterprise structure for some activities and we need to go build it," says Hayden. "All those people who want to violate their privacy on Facebook — let them continue to play." Clay Dillow writes that on the existing internet everyone does everything online anonymously, and while that’s great for liberties, it’s also dangerous when cyber criminals/foreign hackers are roaming the cyber countryside. Under the proposed .secure internet "you may not be able to go to certain neighborhoods of the Web without showing your papers at a checkpoint--and perhaps subjecting yourself to one of those humiliating electronic pat-downs as well," writes Dillow. "Those who want to remain anonymous on the Web can still frolic about in the world of dot-com, but in the dot-secure realm you would have to prove you are you.""
Science

Submission + - Kelly: The Future Of Science (edge.org)

Submitted by smitty777
smitty777 writes: There is an interesting article on Kevin Kelly's vision of the future. Among some of his predictions:
  • There will be more changes in the next 50 years than in the last 400.
  • This will be the century of biology
  • Computers will keep leading to new ways of science
  • New ways of knowing will emerge
  • Science will create new levels of meaning

But the second half of the article (Speculations On The Future of Science) goes into the details: the multiple hypothesis matrix, zilionics, deep simulations, and hyper-analysis mapping are among some of the more interesting predictions. One of the more interesting quotes FTA: "Technology is, in its essence, new ways of thinking. The most powerful type of technology, sometimes called enabling technology, is a thought incarnate which enables new knowledge to find and develop news ways to know. This kind of recursive bootstrapping is how science evolves. As in every type of knowledge, it accrues layers of self-reference to its former state."
Sadly, I was led to this article after reading this piece on the future of the US Space Program.

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