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Submission + - Fusion milestone passed at US lab (bbc.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Bizzeh
Bizzeh writes: The BBC reports that Researchers at a US lab have passed a crucial milestone on the way to their ultimate goal of achieving self-sustaining nuclear fusion. Harnessing fusion — the process that powers the Sun — could provide an unlimited and cheap source of energy.

But to be viable, fusion power plants would have to produce more energy than they consume, which has proven elusive.

Now, a breakthrough by scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) could boost hopes of scaling up fusion

Submission + - Car Dealers vs the Web Episode IV: GM as New Hope

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes: Car dealers may be in for a new battle, and it turns out existing car manufacturers may join the fun. Tesla Motors began the rebellion by trying to sell electric cars directly to buyers. Car dealers have battled that effort state-by-state and even complained to the DMV about Tesla's website. But things just got a little more interesting. General Motors today announced plans to expand its new web-based shopping tool (aka a shopping web site) that allows customers to bypass showrooms when buying new cars. The idea is to use the Web as a giant test platform to see if the automaker can better target people who, well, use the Web to buy things. The catch is that the web app, called 'Shop-Click-Drive' will allow users to do *almost* everything they'd do at a dealer: customize the car, get pricing and financing and even arrange for delivery. But then when you push the button, your "purchase" will be routed to GM's network of 4,300 dealers, so you still have to visit a local dealer to sign on the dotted line. Even with this limitation, the move is still making dealers nervous. GM dealers aren't required to participate in the web based test, and company officials say they have had some dealers turn it down.

Submission + - Robot Overlord Watch: Robots Join the Final Assembly Line at U.S. Auto Plant (technologyreview.com) 1

Submitted by moon_unit2
moon_unit2 writes: MIT Technology Review has a story about BMW's new collaborative final-assembly-line robots. The move could prove a significant in the ongoing automation of work, as robots have previously been incapable of doing such jobs, and too dangerous to work in close proximity to humans. Robots like the ones at BMW’s South Carolina plant are also to cooperate with human workers, by handing them a wrench when they need it. So perhaps the next big shift in labor could be robot-human collaboration.

Submission + - Researchers Create Undetectable Layout-Level Hardware Trojans

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The fact that most of computer hardware is produced outside the US and Europe has long presented a worry for the governments of those countries and for the companies and corporations based in them. They are especially concerned about the security of integrated circuits used in military devices, industrial control systems, medical and other critical devices, and are aware that the possibility of hardware Trojans being integrated in them during the manufacturing process is not at all far-fetched. A group of researchers from several universities in the US, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany have recently published a paper dealing with precisely that possibility, and have proposed an "extremely stealthy approach for implementing hardware Trojans below the gate level".

Submission + - Been groped by TSA agents? Former DHS official blames privacy advocates (networkworld.com)

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: Yesterday, on the 12th anniversary of those attacks, a Senate panel heard expert testimony about "The Department of Homeland Security at 10 Years: Examining Challenges and Achievements and Addressing Emerging Threats." Stewart Baker formerly served as DHS Assistant Secretary and NSA General Counsel, and gave his opinion on the source of the real problems within the TSA:

"Unlike border officials, though, TSA ended up taking more time to inspect everyone, treating all travelers as potential terrorists, and subjecting many to whole-body imaging and enhanced pat-downs. We can't blame TSA for this wrong turn, though. Privacy lobbies persuaded Congress that TSA couldn't be trusted with data about the travelers it was screening. With no information about travelers, TSA had no choice but to treat them all alike, sending us down a long blind alley that has inconvenienced billions."

Submission + - Marissa Mayer is too Busy to Lock Her iPhone (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer admitted to a large audience at Tech Crunch Disrupt that she does not protect access to her smartphone with a passcode. "I don't have a passcode on my phone," she told Arrington on Wednesday.

Apparently, the former Google-exec who has since taken the top spot at Yahoo!, is too busy to be bothered with security.

“I just can’t do this passcode thing like 15 times a day,” she said. Mayer, who is said to be an iPhone user, hinted at the fact that she may soon be an iPhone 5S customer. Commenting on the new biometric security feature in the iPhone 5S, Mayer added, “When I saw the finger print thing I was like, now I don’t have to.”

Submission + - Researchers Debut Software That Extract 3D Objects From Photos (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by kkleiner
kkleiner writes: Forget about CAD — software developed by researchers at Tel Aviv University called 3-Sweep allows the extraction of 3D objects from regular photographs rapidly and intuitively. Using standard drawing tools, 3D objects are defined by starting with a basic shape and drawing a line through each axis. The software then builds the model allowing the user to transform the object in a variety of ways. When coupled with 3D printing, this method could lead to the ability to create physical 3D models of objects in regular photographs with ease.

Submission + - New Brain-to-Brain Interface Allows Human to Control Another's Movements

Submitted by barlevg
barlevg writes: Earlier this year, researchers at Harvard devised a system by which a human could control a rat's tail using only the person's thoughts. Now a team at the University of Washington have demonstrated that the same principle can be applied to human-to-human control. The Washington Post reports: "First, they placed electronic probes against their heads. Then one man looked at a computer game on a screen and thought about what move he wanted to make. Sure enough, the other man, who was across campus with no view of the screen, almost instantaneously moved his right index finger to make that move. He said it had the sensation of a nervous tic."

Submission + - Indian Government to ban use of US email services for official communications (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: The Government of India is planning to ban the use of US based email services like Gmail for official communications and is soon going to send out a formal notification to it half a million officials across the country asking them to use official email addresses and services provided by National Informatics Centre. The move is intended to increase the security of confidential government data and information and protect it from overseas surveillance.

Submission + - Raspberry Pi, Smart Highways Win World's Biggest Design Prize (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Last night the €500,000 INDEX: Award was awarded to 5 designs that can improve life for millions of people around the world — including high-tech highways that light up at night, the $25 Raspberry Pi computer, and a simple piece of paper that can cut food waste by extending the life of fresh produce by 2-4 weeks.

Submission + - MobileIron unveils Anyware: Mobile management with no IT department required (citeworld.com)

Submitted by rjupstate
rjupstate writes: Anyware makes end-to-end mobile device and app management easy non-technical administrators, integrates with Salesforce, and offers a new model of mobile content management that functions like an enterprise app store. Its consumer-like management experience also points to a future when technology management can be done without an IT department.

Submission + - US electrical grid on the edge of failure (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: Facebook can lose a few users and remain a perfectly stable network, but where the national grid is concerned simple geography dictates that it is always just a few transmission lines from collapse, according to a mathematical study of spatial networks. The upshot of the study is that spatial networks are necessarily dependent on any number of critical nodes whose failure can lead to abrupt — and unpredictable — collapse.
The warning comes ten years after a blackout that crippled parts of the midwest and northeastern United States and parts of Canada. In that case, a series of errors resulted in the loss of three transmission lines in Ohio over the course of about an hour. Once the third line went down, the outage cascaded towards the coast, cutting power to some 50 million people. The authors say that this outage is an example of the inherent instability the study describes. But others question whether the team’s conclusions can really be extrapolated to the real world. “The problem is that this doesn’t reflect the physics of how the power grid operates,” says Jeff Dagle, an electrical engineer at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, who served on the government task force that investigated the 2003 outage.

Submission + - Google's Director of Regime Change (cryptome.org)

Submitted by Memroid
Memroid writes: 'It has been revealed today, thanks to Edward Snowden, that Google and other US tech companies received millions of dollars from the NSA [...] Documents published last year by WikiLeaks obtained from the US intelligence contractor Stratfor, show that in 2011 Jared Cohen, then (as he is now) Director of Google Ideas, was off running secret missions to the edge of Iran in Azerbaijan. In these internal emails, Fred Burton, Stratfor’s Vice President for Intelligence and a former senior State Department official, describes Google as follows:

"Google is getting WH [White House] and State Dept support and air cover. In reality they are doing things the CIA cannot do... [Cohen] is going to get himself kidnapped or killed. Might be the best thing to happen to expose Google’s covert role in foaming up-risings, to be blunt. The US Gov’t can then disavow knowledge and Google is left holding the shit-bag."'

Submission + - Secure Email in Dark Age of PRISM .. (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: With the specter of government surveillance hanging over this post-PRISM world, people are beginning to wonder if the idea of secure email is complete nonsense.

  “E-mail is going to be with us for a long time,” says Bjarni Rúnar Einarsson, a software developer and member of the Icelandic Pirate Party. “We need to do what we can to make it more secure.”

Submission + - NSA Shuts down critics under guise of copyright violations (infowars.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: “Can a government agency block criticism by claiming copyright infringement? Sounds a bit ridiculous but it is happening. The NSA is effectively stopping one small business owner from criticism, claiming that by using its name he has infringed on their copyright,” according to a report by Infowars guest and investigative journalist Ben Swann.

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