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Blackberry

Submission + - Leaked Memo Says Apple Provides Backdoor to Govern 2

Submitted by Voline
Voline writes: In a tweet early this morning, cybersecurity researcher Christopher Soghoian pointed to an internal memo of India's Military Intelligence that has been liberated by hackers and posted on the Net. The memo suggests that, "in exchange for the Indian market presence" mobile device manufacturers, including RIM, Nokia, and Apple (collectively defined in the document as "RINOA") have agreed to provide backdoor access on their devices.

The Indian government then "utilized backdoors provided by RINOA" to intercept internal emails of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a US government body with a mandate to monitor, investigate and report to Congress on "the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship" between the US and China. Manan Kakkar, an Indian blogger for ZDNet, has also picked up the story and writes that it may be the fruits of an earlier hack of Symantec.

If Apple is providing governments with a backdoor to iOS, can we assume that they have also done so with Mac OS X?
Google

Submission + - Google TV reborn: ARM support, new OEMs, and more

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For some time the future of Google TV was looking pretty grim. Logitech's Revue failed miserably, and Sony seemed like the only supporter of Google TV when the 3.1 update came out in October. With competitors like Roku making waves everywhere, the ever louder drum of rumors surrounding an Apple TV, and every TV manufacturer out there trying to figure out how Smart TVs will keep them relevant, Google needed to make a big play to keep their service in the game. More hardware, less expensive, and faster distribution are necessary in order for the platform to survive.
Space

Submission + - DARPA Chooses Leader for 100-Year Starship Project

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "With Nasa scaling back its manned space programs, the idea of a manned trip to the stars may sound audacious, but the 100 Year Starship (100YSS) study is an effort seeded by DARPA to develop a viable and sustainable model for persistent, long-term, private-sector investment into the myriad of disciplines needed to make long-distance space travel practicable and feasible. The goal is not to have the government fund the actual building of spacecraft destined for the stars, but rather to create a foundation that can last 100 years in order to help foster the research needed for interstellar travel. Now DARPA has provided $500,000 in seed money to help jumpstart the effort and chosen Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman to go into space, to lead 100YSS. Jemison, who is also a physician and engineer, left NASA in 1993 after a six-year stint in which she served as science mission specialist aboard space shuttle Endeavour, becoming the first black woman to fly in space. Since leaving the space agency, she has been involved in education and outreach efforts and technology development. Rounding out her resume, Jemison also served as a medical aofficer for the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone and Liberia, is a professionally trained dancer, speaks Russian, Swahili and Japanese, and was the first real astronaut to make a cameo in an episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Jemison won the contract with her proposal titled "An Inclusive Audacious Journey Transforms Life Here on Earth & Beyond.""
Facebook

Submission + - My Facebook hack (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: My holiday sugar stupor was interrupted one morning last week by a series of phone calls from friends telling me they'd been contacted via a Facebook chat session in which they were told my wife and I had been mugged in the U.K. while on vacation and needed money to get home. I ran to my computer to find a half-dozen chat sessions open using my Facebook profile all requesting help in the form of money from my friends via a Western Union tranfer. As I frantically tried to tell each friend it was a phishing scam, the hacker would open a new session and begin the scam on another friend. It became a bit like Whac-A-Mole. I quickly changed my password and logged out, stopping the attack. And, thankfully, my friends are tech savvy. But I was still shaken up by the fact that someone had hacked my password and was passing themselves off as me in real time. According to Facebook, while these attacks are rare, when they happen they're "high impact."

Submission + - Court OKs Barring High IQs for Cops (go.com) 3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "A man whose bid to become a police officer was rejected after he scored too high on an intelligence test has lost an appeal in his federal lawsuit against the city.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld a lower court’s decision that the city did not discriminate against Robert Jordan because the same standards were applied to everyone who took the test.

“This kind of puts an official face on discrimination in America against people of a certain class,” Jordan said today from his Waterford home. “I maintain you have no more control over your basic intelligence than your eye color or your gender or anything else.” "
Privacy

Submission + - Judge Doesn't Care About Supreme Court GPS Case (forbes.com) 1

Submitted by nonprofiteer
nonprofiteer writes: The Supreme Court is currently deciding whether or not law enforcement need a warrant before they put a GPS tracker on a person's car — http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/united-states-v-jones/. A judge in St. Louis doesn't seem to care about that, tho. He ruled last week that the FBI didn't need a warrant to track the car of a state employee they suspected was collecting a paycheck without actually going to work. (Their suspicions were confirmed.) While in favor of corrupt government employees being caught, it's a bit disturbing that a federal judge would decide a warrant wasn't needed while the Supreme Court has said the issue is unclear.
Facebook

Submission + - Extremely Viral Facebook Clickjacking Scam (net-security.org)

Submitted by Orome1
Orome1 writes: A new and extremely viral clickjacking scam has been spotted targeting curious Facebook users. It hooks them with links to titillating, disgusting or "amazing" videos that their friends apparently "liked", but once they click on the link, they are redirected to a splash page where they are asked to jump through some hoops in order to watch the video. Unfortunately, their clicks are hijacked to "like" the video without their knowledge and to post the same bait message on their own Walls, while they are redirected to a page seemingly containing that and other interesting videos. Will Facebook users ever learn?
Android

Submission + - Transformer Prime to get ICS January 12, boot unlo (facebook.com)

Submitted by symbolset
symbolset writes: The maker of the wildly popular Transformer Prime Tegra 3 tablet Asus announces via their Facebook page that Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) will be available January 12th. In addition they are developing a boot unlocker which will void the warranty and break Google movie rentals, but will allow modding.

There's also announced an intermediate software update to improve the camera and touch experience, and they're dropping GPS from the feature list for poor performance.
Programming

Submission + - 10 Programming Languages That Could Shake Up IT (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "InfoWorld's Neil McAllister takes a look at 10 cutting-edge programming languages, 'each of which approaches the art of software development from a fresh perspective, tackling a specific problem or a unique shortcoming of today's more popular languages. Some are mature projects, while others are in the early stages of development. Some are likely to remain obscure, but any one of them could become the breakthrough tool that changes programming for years to come — at least, until the next batch of new languages arrives.'"
Microsoft

Submission + - Average .NET developer salary in U.S.: $92,000 (visualstudiomagazine.com) 1

Submitted by msmoriarty
msmoriarty writes: Visual Studio Magazine just conducted its first annual salary survey, and according to the results, the average developer focused on Microsoft technologies in the U.S. earns $92,000. 59 percent of those surveyed said their salary rose in 2011. The charts on this page show the average salary by job title, male v. female, and education level, while on the bottom of this page a chart breaks out the average salary by major metropolitan areas.
Science

Submission + - We are getting very close to finding the (mouse) f (vice.com)

Submitted by HansonMB
HansonMB writes: As you can maybe tell from buffmouse.jpg up there, this research is still in mice, but a new study out from the University of Pittsburg published in Nature Communications has big news for fans of not getting old and gross and dying. Shots of stem cells from healthy, young mice delivered to the abdomens of prematurally aging mice have been show to head off many of the effects of old age, leading to lives two to three times as long as would normally be the case. So, yes: a fountain of youth in a syringe full of stem cells. For mice.

“Our experiments showed that mice that have progeria, a disorder of premature aging, were healthier and lived longer after an injection of stem cells from young, healthy animals,” says senior investigator Laura Niedernhofer, M.D., Ph.D. “That tells us that stem cell dysfunction is a cause of the changes we see with aging.”

Submission + - Nokia: The Sun Can't Charge Your Phone (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Nokia's research into solar-powered cell phones ended with a (barely audible) thud. Under the best of conditions researchers were able 'to harvest enough energy to keep the phone on standby mode but with a very restricted amount of talk time,' Nokia wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. Not surprisingly, the prototype phone, which had a solar panel on the back cover, performed better in Kenya than in other testing locations, like southern Sweden and the Arctic Circle."
AMD

Submission + - A deeper look at high-end graphics performance (techreport.com)

Submitted by crookedvulture
crookedvulture writes: Although Slashdot has already covered the launch of AMD's Radeon HD 7970 graphics card, those early reviews relied on frames-per-second figures that can mask stuttering and other interruptions to smooth gameplay. To get a sense of what it's really like to play games on a given card, one must take a deeper look at frame times. The Tech Report does just that in this review of the Radeon HD 7970, which offers new insight into how contemporary high-end graphics cards really compare when playing the latest games. The 7970 still reigns supreme, but its victory isn't always as triumphant as mere FPS averages would have you believe.

Submission + - The quasicrystal from outer space (nature.com)

Submitted by scibri
scibri writes: You thought quasicrystals, the winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in chemistry, could only be made in the lab? Nope, turns out they also formed in meteorites 4 billion years ago.

But to prove that, you'd have had to track down ex-KGB smugglers and trek across the Siberian tundra, like theoretical physicist Paul Steinhardt did last summer.

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