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Iphone

Submission + - iPhone 4S now No.1 smartphone at top-3 U.S. carrie (bgr.com)

Submitted by hazytodd
hazytodd writes: Apple looks to be following up its surprising miss in the September quarter with a huge holiday quarter for its popular iPhone line. According to Canaccord Genuity’s checks, Apple’s iPhone 4S was the best-selling smartphone in October for Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Sprint despite only being available for half of the month.
Science

Submission + - More Evidence for Human Effects on Climate (nature.com)

Submitted by
Stirling Newberry
Stirling Newberry writes: "While the development of a crack in the ice in Antartica that will be a large iceberg is providing some of the most interesting pictures of the day, and the story about record jumps in CO2 emissions are on many newspaper sites, two new articles are pointing to the subtle effects of human activity on climate. One, in Nature, is focused on how carbon is changing the dynamics of tropical cyclones, the other ,in Science, is focused on Nitrogen fertilizer and its effects on rainforests.

The Nature article focuses on cyclone genesis in the Arabian Sea, particularly whether human carbon emission reduces upper level winds. Of the three components of cyclone formation — warm sea water, unstable air masses, and low upper level winds — the last is what turns small storms into big storms, and allows storms in unusual places. This is because upper level winds shred the chimney effect that storms use to pull warm air from the sea and shoot it upwards. Low winds are like no predation in biology: without upper level winds to tear them apart, all sorts of strange storms can survive.

The Science magazine piece shows how human generated fertilizer shows up in leaves of trees in tropical rain forests. Since fertilizer is an essential part of increasing agricultural output, and rain forests are key parts of the atmospheric cycle, their study is important to climate stability as well."
Crime

Submission + - Bill would require a warrant for digital tracking (thehill.com)

Submitted by GovTechGuy
GovTechGuy writes: Sens. Mark Kirk and Ron Wyden used the 25th anniversary of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to stump for a bill that would require police to obtain a warrant before using an individual's cell phone, laptop or other digital device to track their location. Under current law the government can access that data without a judge's approval, or even access a user's email account without first getting a warrant.
Iphone

Submission + - New Attack Uses iPhone as PC Keylogger (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Researchers from MIT and Georgia Tech have developed a new technique that enables them to use the accelerometer in an iPhone or other smartphone to capture keystrokes from a nearby PC and decipher the typed words with about 80 percent accuracy. The tactic, while quite complicated, could be used to conduct password-recovery or other attacks on unsuspecting victims.

The research relies on the fact that the accelerometers in modern smartphones have become sensitive enough to detect the vibrations produced by someone typing on a keyboard a few inches away on a surface such as a desk or table. The accelerometer is designed to detect when the phone is tilted or moved and is used in a number of applications, including the feature that flips the image on the screen when the phone is turned. However, the research team of Patrick Traynor, Arunabh Verma and Henry Carter of Georgia Tech and Philip Marquardt of MIT's Lincoln Laboratory discovered that it can also function as a discreet keylogger.
Earth

Submission + - Earth's Population to Hit 7 Billion This Year (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by MikeChino
MikeChino writes: The UN Population Division just announced that the world’s human population will hit 7 billion by Halloween 2011. The increase of one billion people in the past 12 years is worrying, especially since the global population only reached one billion total in the early 19th century. In the next 20 years, our population growth is predicted to rise to 8 billion people as our demand for food increases by 50 percent, water by 30 percent and energy by 50 percent.
Security

Submission + - NoScript awarded $10,000 (hackademix.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: NoScript having been chosen as the recipient of the DRG Security Innovation Grant. This is a great honor and a spur to keep making the Web a safer place. I feel the urge to thank the committee for recognizing NoScript as a pioneering force in browser security, and the community of contributors, researchers, translators, beta testers, and loyal users who keep this project alive day after day. The grant will fund the effort to merge the current two development lines, i.e. “traditional” NoScript for desktop environment.

Submission + - Neanderthals mated with human (eurekalert.org)

Submitted by Med-trump
Med-trump writes: Neanderthals, whose ancestors left Africa about 400,000 to 800,000 years ago, evolved in what is now mainly France, Spain, Germany and Russia, and are thought to have lived until about 30,000 years ago. Now scientists have identified a piece of Neanderthal DNA (called a haplotype) in the human X chromosome and conclude that this haplotype is present because of mating with our ancestors and Neanderthals. The study was published in the latest issue of the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.
Idle

Submission + - Dead People Scientists Keep Messing With (discovermagazine.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Some historical figures are just too interesting to leave alone, even when they're supposed to be moldering in the grave. That's why medical researchers dug up Tycho Brahe, bombarded Napoleon's hair with neutrons in a nuclear reactor, and did everything they could think of to King Tut. Discover Magazine has 8 stories of delayed diagnoses and extreme postmortems.
Data Storage

Submission + - Wall Street Hedge Fund Smashes Hard Drive Evidence (wsj.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We all know Slashdotters love debating the best way to wipe a hard drive clean. Looks like tech-savvy Wall Street Hedge Fund managers also know the best way to do it. From the WSJ article:

"F—in' pulled the external drives apart," Mr. Longueuil told Mr. Freeman during their meeting, according to the criminal complaint. "Put 'em into four separate little baggies, and then at 2 a.m. 2 a.m. on a Friday night, I put this stuff inside my black North Face jacket, and leave the apartment and I go on like a twenty block walk around the city and try to find a, a garbage truck and threw the s—t in the back of like random garbage trucks, different garbage trucks four different garbage trucks."
Earth

Submission + - Nano--sized Energy Harvesters On Horizon (smartertechnology.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Gallium nitride has already enabled those ultra-bright LEDs that are replacing headlights with brighter, lower-power equivalents (except for the weird blue color), but these guys say that's only the beginning. Next will be tiny nano-sized energy harvesters for a new generation of ambient vibration powered mobile devices.

'Forget super-sizing. Nano-sizing is the future of energy harvesters, according to researchers who claim to have mathematical proof that battery-free electronic devices can be powered by mechanical energy from vehicle vibrations to body movements.'

Boosting the output of these tiny piezoelectric energy harvesters by 100-times should enable battery-free electronic devices to enter the mainstream soon.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Kills AutoRun in Windows (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: As malware authors and attackers have continued to employ the Windows AutoRun functionality to help spread their malicious creations--culminating famously in the Stuxnet worm--Microsoft has been making gradual changes to help prevent these attacks. This week the company took the major step of putting an optional fix into Windows Update that will disable AutoRun.

The company made the change Tuesday on the same day that it shipped its monthly crop of patches, and said that the change is designed to bring Windows XP and other operating systems into a more secure state by makign it harder for malware to use AutoRun as a propagation method.
Security

Submission + - Using War Games to Make Organizations More Secure (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: Along with budget constraints and disconnect between IT and executive management surrounding information security, results of a recent survey show that a major problem is outright lack of understanding of threats.

We all know the best way to get that budget increased, is to get hacked. Unfortunately, that could also result in you losing your job.

Some companies, however, are taking creative approaches to both raise awareness and identify potential vulnerabilities. A manager with a large financial services group, for example, says that his company addresses security vulnerabilities by staging a series of what it calls "war games," in which a user or group of users is tasked with trying to compromise a system, while another user or group of users is tasked with preventing the break-in.

Management needs to understand the security threat and its impact to business, and these "war games" are an innovative and creative way for IT departments to convince executive management on security needs.

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