Submission + - NZ Prime Minister Apologizes To Dotcom For Spying (siliconangle.com)
KristenNicole writes: "On September 24th, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key announced that he had requested an inquiry by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security regarding the Megaupload raid that happened in January because of “unlawful interception of communications of certain individuals by the Government Communications Security Bureau.”
read full article here: http://siliconangle.com/blog/2012/09/27/nz-prime-minister-apologizes-to-dotcom-for-spying/#"
read full article here: http://siliconangle.com/blog/2012/09/27/nz-prime-minister-apologizes-to-dotcom-for-spying/#"
Submission + - New Smartphone Malware Designed to Steal Your Life
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Neal Ungerleider writes about PlaceRaider, a trojan that can run in the background of any phone running Android 2.3 or above, and is hidden in a photography app that gives PlaceRaider the necessary permissions to access the camera and upload images. Once installed, PlaceRaider quietly takes pictures at random that are tagged with the time, location, and orientation of the phone while muting the phone's shutter sound. Once pictures are taken, PlaceRaider uploads them to a central server where they are knitted together into a 3D model of the indoor location where the pics were taken. A malicious user can then browse this space looking for objects worth stealing and sensitive data such as credit card details, identity data or calender details that reveal when the user might be away. If a user's credit card, bank information, or personal information happen to be out in the open — all the better. — the software can identify financial data, bar codes, and QR codes. End users will also be able to get the full layout of a victim's office or room. The good news? PlaceRaider isn't out in the wild yet. The malware was built as an academic exercise by a team at Indiana University as a proof of concept to show the invasive potential of visual malware beyond simple photo or video uploads and demonstrate how to turn an individual's mobile device against himself (PDF), creating an advanced surveillance platform capable of reconstructing the user's physical environment for exploration and exploitation. "The message is clear — this kind of malware is a clear and present danger. It's only a matter of time before this game of cat and mouse becomes more serious.""
Submission + - ZeroAccess Botnet Commands One Million Zombie Army (siliconangle.com)
KristenNicole writes: "A new research report by Sophos has revealed that the ZeroAccess Botnet has over 1 million zombie computers in an army that can earn a staggering amount of $100,000 in a single day.
read full article here: http://siliconangle.com/blog/2012/09/25/zeroaccess-botnet-commands-one-million-zombie-army/#"
read full article here: http://siliconangle.com/blog/2012/09/25/zeroaccess-botnet-commands-one-million-zombie-army/#"
Submission + - African Robotics Network announced their $10 robot design challenge announced (wired.com)
An anonymous reader writes: When the African Robotics Network announced their $10 robot design challenge this summer, co-founder Ken Goldberg was careful not to share too many expectations, lest he influence contestants' designs. But he never imagined one of the winning entries would prominently feature a pair of Spanish lollipops.
The challenge, hosted by AFRON co-founders Goldberg and Ayorkor Korsah, emphasized inexpensive designs to help bring robotics education to African classrooms. Goldberg announced AFRON's 10 winners in three categories today at Maker Faire, including the lollipop-laden Suckerbot and traditional (roaming) category first prize winner Kilobot, a Harvard-spawned three-legged, vibrating, swarming robot.
The challenge, hosted by AFRON co-founders Goldberg and Ayorkor Korsah, emphasized inexpensive designs to help bring robotics education to African classrooms. Goldberg announced AFRON's 10 winners in three categories today at Maker Faire, including the lollipop-laden Suckerbot and traditional (roaming) category first prize winner Kilobot, a Harvard-spawned three-legged, vibrating, swarming robot.
Submission + - Chinese Hospital Offers Handsfree Sperm Extraction Device (tomshardware.com)
markass530 writes: "The Zhengzhou Central Hospital in Nanjing, China, announced a new and rather unique therapeutic device that is designed to treat infertility in patients.
Zoom
The hands-free "sperm extractor" is a stand up device with a height-adjustable "massage pipe" that moves inward and outward from the main body of the sperm extractor. According to the manufacturer, the speed, amplitude and frequency can be adjusted by the user, which aims to provide a "warm" and "comfortable" feeling for users who find difficult to retrieve their sperm the traditional, manual way. There is even a screen to play movie content to help with the extraction process."
Zoom
The hands-free "sperm extractor" is a stand up device with a height-adjustable "massage pipe" that moves inward and outward from the main body of the sperm extractor. According to the manufacturer, the speed, amplitude and frequency can be adjusted by the user, which aims to provide a "warm" and "comfortable" feeling for users who find difficult to retrieve their sperm the traditional, manual way. There is even a screen to play movie content to help with the extraction process."
Submission + - Drone duel outwits FAA, but not hackers (suasnews.com)
garymortimer writes: "What began as a think tank stunt with a do-it-yourself drone turned into a lesson for researchers on the inadequacy of Federal Aviation Administration unmanned aircraft zoning.
Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, challenged friends to a duel in the sky last weekend with smartphone-controlled toy helicopters purchased from Brookstone. Congress this year mandated that FAA open the U.S. airspace to privately owned drones in 2015. On Sunday, two children younger than 15 helped Wittes win the Drone Smackdown by disabling their opponents’ control panel, or iPhone in this case."
Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, challenged friends to a duel in the sky last weekend with smartphone-controlled toy helicopters purchased from Brookstone. Congress this year mandated that FAA open the U.S. airspace to privately owned drones in 2015. On Sunday, two children younger than 15 helped Wittes win the Drone Smackdown by disabling their opponents’ control panel, or iPhone in this case."
Submission + - TweetMeme Shuts Down (i-programmer.info)
mikejuk writes: With less than a week's notice TweetMeme is to shut completely on October 1st and the green Retweet button which was used by half a million websites has already disappeared. Although existing buttons have been replaced on users' websites by Twitter's own button which has similar functionality, the counts have been reset to zero, wiping out any trace of their popularity. Twitter is imposing conditions to deter third-party developers from building or maintaining consumer-facing products and while TweetMeme could have continued for a while, why bother once you know your days are numbered? This is presumably the first of many shutdowns.
Submission + - Aircraft Carriers in Space (foreignpolicy.com) 1
An anonymous reader writes: Real-world military conventions have had obvious effects on many sci-fi books, movies, and TV shows. But how does their fictional representation stack up against the evolving rules of high-tech warfare? In an interview with Foreign Policy magazine, a naval analyst discusses some of the technological assumptions involved in transposing sea combat to space combat, and his amusement with the trope of 'aircraft carriers in space.' He says, 'Star Wars is probably the worst. There is no explanation for why X-Wings [fighters] do what they do, other than the source material is really Zeroes [Japanese fighter planes] from World War II. Lucas quite consciously copied World War II fighter combat. He basically has said they analyzed World War II movies and gun camera footage and recreated those shots. Battlestar Galactica has other issues. One thing I have never understood is why the humans didn't lose halfway through the first episode. If information moves at the speed of light, and one side has a tactically useful FTL [faster-than-light] drive to make very small jumps, then there is no reason why the Cylons couldn't jump close enough and go, "Oh, there the Colonials are three light minutes away, I can see where they are, but they won't see me for three minutes?"'
Submission + - Computer History Museum gets the attention it deserves (nytimes.com) 1
mcpublic writes: "For years the Computer History Museum has been quietly collecting and displaying the computational relics of yesteryear. Now, finally the New York Times Arts Section shines the spotlight on this most nerdy of museums. Speak Steampunk? You can find a working replica of Babbages Difference Engine in the lobby of the Museum's Mountain View, California home. Of course the vast majority of the collection is electronic, and though 'big iron' is king, that hasn't stopped dedicated volunteers from bringing back to life pioneering 'mini' computers like the 1960 PDP-1 and the first video game software ever: Spacewar!"
Submission + - Woman Successfully Grows Ear from Arm
An anonymous reader writes: Walters' doctors have been able to grow an ear on her arm and then attach it to the side of her face, giving her a functioning ear again.
Submission + - Hacking Urban Noise
b1tbkt writes: I live at the corner of one of the busiest intersections in our City (pop. 350k). Although I've replaced all windows, insulated, and caulked every square inch of the place, the fire trucks and cars with obnoxious stereos still regularly intrude on my home office. Most of the noise comes in through the windows. I'm considering mounting an oblong parabolic reflector in the ceiling above the windows with a steady feed of white or brownian noise directed into it (eg., via small speaker placed within the reflector) to create a 'wall' of sound that would act as a buffer to the outside world. Active noise cancellation would be nice, too, but that's probably more than I want to take on. I don't see any products on the market for this sort of thing. Does anyone have any experiences to share with similar homebrew noise remediation efforts?
Submission + - Minecraft Creator Refuses To Certify Game For Windows 8 (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: "The backlash against Windows 8 from various developers continues, but this time the game's creator isn't just expressing discontent. Notch, the developer behind smash hit Minecraft, has declared that he won't be working with Microsoft to certify Minecraft for Windows 8. Note that this doesn't mean Mincraft won't run on Windows 8. The certification process in question is Microsoft's mandatory rules for submitting content to the Windows game store. In order to be listed there, an application must be Metro-compatible and conform to a laundry list of other conditions. The real problem with Windows 8 is that it locks ARM users into a second class experience. If you buy an x86 tablet, you can download programs from Sourceforge, Github, or any file mirror. If you're an ARM user, you can download programs from the Microsoft store and that's it. The bifurcated permission structure is the problem, and it makes WinRT tablets categorically impossible to recommend for anyone who values the ability to install whatever software they please."
