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Security

Malicious QR Code Use On the Rise 234

Posted by Soulskill from the time-to-incorporate-rorschach-verification-tech dept.
New submitter EliSowash writes "Malware developers are increasingly using QR Codes as an attack vector. 'The big problem is that the QR code to a human being is nothing more than "that little square with a bunch of strange blocks in it." There's no way to tell what is behind that QR code.' The advice we've always given to the computer user community is 'don't click a link in an email if you don't know who it's from or where it goes' — so how do we protect unsuspecting users from QR codes, where you can't see the destination at all?"
Science

Submission + - Unified Theory of Climate (wattsupwiththat.com)

Submitted by sanzibar
sanzibar writes: Very interesting poster presented at the Open Science Conference of the World Climate Research Program, 24 October 2011, Denver CO, USA

Recent studies revealed that Global Climate Models (GCMs) have significantly overestimated the Planet’s warming since 1979 failing to predict the observed halt of global temperature rise over the past 13 years. (e.g. McKitrick et al. 2010). No consensus currently exists as to why the warming trend ceased in 1998 despite a continued increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Moreover, the CO2-temperature relationship shows large inconsistencies across time scales. In addition, GCM projections heavily depend on positive feedbacks, while satellite observations indicate that the climate system is likely governed by strong negative feedbacks (Lindzen & Choi 2009; Spencer & Braswell 2010). At the same time, there is a mounting political pressure for Cap-and-Trade legislation and a global carbon tax, while scientists and entrepreneurs propose geo-engineering solutions to cool the Planet that involve large-scale physical manipulation of the upper atmosphere. This unsettling situation calls for a thorough reexamination of the present climate-change paradigm; hence the reason for this study.
DRM

Submission + - Implementation of MITM Attack on HDCP-Secured Link (bunniestudios.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A man-in-the-middle attack on HDCP-secured video links is demonstrated. The attack is implemented on an embedded Linux platform, with the help of a Spartan-6 FPGA, and is capable of operating real-time on HD video links. It utilizes the HDCP master key to derive the corresponding private keys of the video source and sink through observation and computation upon the exchanged public keys. The man-in-the-middle then genlocks its raster and cipher state to the incoming video stream, enabling it to do pixel by pixel swapping of encrypted data. Since the link does no CRC or hash verification of the data, one is able to forge video using this method.

Significantly, the attack enables forging of video data without decrypting original video data, so executing the attack does not constitute copyright circumvention. Therefore, this novel and commercially useful application of the HDCP master key impairs equating, in a legal sense, the master key with circumvention. Finally, the embodiment of the exploit is entirely open-source, including the hardware and the Verilog implementation of the FPGA.

Comment Re:Bogus Science (Score 1) 421

by sanzibar (#38518110) Attached to: Melting Glaciers Cutting Peru Water Supply
I see your lighting straw men on fire again. Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon recap:

".. there are several warning flags raised by this study. First, station siting is indeed important for the maximum and minimum temperature measurements. Second, the adjustments are only partly correcting the temperature record. Third, since the adjustments use data from all surrounding stations, there’s the danger that the mean trends are dominated by data from the poorer stations. (Less than ten percent of the USHCN stations are sited well enough to be considered appropriate for climate trend measurements.)"

and your published research is where again? Please enlighten us with your masterful "scientific insight and mathematical knowledge" that allows you to so harshly judge Watts et al without having read their work.
Politics

Submission + - Congress ends corn ethanol subsidy (detroitnews.com)

Submitted by sanzibar
sanzibar writes: The United States has ended a 30-year tax subsidy for corn-based ethanol that cost taxpayers $6 billion annually, and ended a tariff on imported Brazilian ethanol.

Comment Re:Bogus Science (Score 1) 421

by sanzibar (#38514864) Attached to: Melting Glaciers Cutting Peru Water Supply

does nothing to deal with the basic claims.

Anyone who reads wuwt knows this is complete bullshit.

Also, He has published. If your so willing pass judgment on another Where the fuck is your published research countering such?

Seems to me your guilty or your own accusation.
Earth

Melting Glaciers Cutting Peru Water Supply 421

Posted by Soulskill from the just-buy-some-new-glaciers dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In a story that may repeat itself in all mountainous areas dependent on glaciers for their water supply, the glaciers in Peru's Cordillera Blanca mountain range are melting so quickly (PDF) that the water they supply to the arid region is being threatened 20-30 years earlier than expected. Of the time needed for the region to adapt to the coming water shortages, previously thought to be decades, researchers now believe, 'those years don't exist.'"
Communications

Inside Obama's Twitter Blitz On the Payroll Tax 294

Posted by Soulskill from the this-is-politics-in-the-future-and-i-am-sad dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Brandon Rittiman reports that White House officials launched a Twitter campaign Tuesday to put pressure on Congress to reach a deal extending the payroll-tax cut. Using the Twitter hashtag #40dollars, the White House successfully got thousands of people to respond and explain what a $40 cut to each paycheck would mean to them personally. By Wednesday morning, the #40dollars hashtag started 'trending,' which is what happens when Twitter's algorithms see a topic suddenly surge. It's not easy to create that kind of surge, but the White House has 2.5 million Twitter followers to call upon. Macon Phillips, the President's Director of Digital Strategy, says his team has managed to get a few Twitter topics to rise to the level of 'trending' before — most notably when they began tweeting about the death of Osama bin Laden. 'What's very important about a social-media campaign like this is that regular people are making the point about how this would affect them. It's not us here in Washington trying to argue on their behalf.' says Phillips. 'The #40dollars campaign puts a face on that amount to demonstrate the payroll tax cut's real-world impact on middle-class families.'"

Comment Re:Sure, Al Gore may have INVENTED it (Score -1, Flamebait) 238

by sanzibar (#38437252) Attached to: Kim Jong-Il Was an "Internet Expert"

For some reason /. hates Al Gore.

Al Gore is the Dems version of Dear Leader and is full of fail.

One of the most technically literate people in office.

Wonders why someone so technically literate had to fake his c02 experiment
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/18/replicating-al-gores-climate-101-video-experiment-shows-that-his-high-school-physics-could-never-work-as-advertised/

And of course we have his Jan 26th, 2006 'end of the world' prediction.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2004/10/al-gores-doomsday-countdown.html
Government

Time's Person of the Year Is "The Protester" 543

Posted by samzenpus from the you're-all-individuals! dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Time's editor Rick Stengel announced on The Today Show that 'The Protester' is Time Magazine's Person of the Year: From the Arab Spring to Athens, from Occupy Wall Street to Moscow. 'For capturing and highlighting a global sense of restless promise, for upending governments and conventional wisdom, for combining the oldest of techniques with the newest of technologies to shine a light on human dignity and, finally, for steering the planet on a more democratic though sometimes more dangerous path for the 21st century.' The initial gut reaction on Twitter seems to be one of derision, as Time has gone with a faceless human mass instead of picking a single person like Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi who Time mentions in the story and is widely acknowledged as the person who set off the 'Arab Spring.' In 2006, Time chose "You" with a mirrored cover to much disappointment, picked the personal computer as 'Machine of the Year' and Earth as 'Planet of the Year,' proving 'that it should probably just be "Story of the Year" if they aren't going to acknowledge an actual person,' writes Dashiell Bennett. 'By not picking any one individual, they've basically chosen no one.'"

Submission + - Chevron Bites Back (wizbangblog.com)

Submitted by sanzibar
sanzibar writes: Chevron filed a RICO lawsuit against those behind the Ecuadorian case including: the lead attorney Steven Donziger; Stratus Consulting; and Maest. As part of their lawsuit, Chevron obtained through discovery, outtakes from a documentary film called “Crude” that show Donziger and Maest colluding to ignore their own scientific findings and make up some new unsubstantiated claims .

Details of the RICO pleading can be found here:
http://www.chevron.com/documents/pdf/ecuador/StampedComplaint.pdf
Idle

Submission + - Photos capture wind turbine bursting into flames (news.stv.tv)

Submitted by sanzibar
sanzibar writes: A wind turbine went up in flames as gust of up to 160mph battered parts of Scotland.

Mr McMahon, who captured the spectacular fire in photos, added: "I didn’t hear any explosion or anything, but my wife shouted for me to come down and see the fire.

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