66900815
submission
rastos1 writes:
Four years ago Jim Sanborn, the sculptor who created the wavy metal pane called Kryptos that sits in front of the CIA in Langley revealed a clue for breaking the last remaining part of the encrypted message on Kryptos. The clue was: BERLIN.
But the puzzle resisted all all decryption efforts and is still unsolved.
To honor the 25th anniversary of the Wall’s demise and the artist’s 69th birthday this year, Sanborn has decided to reveal a new clue to help solve his iconic and enigmatic artwork. It’s only the second hint he’s released since the sculpture was unveiled in 1990 and may finally help unlock the fourth and final section of the encrypted sculpture, which frustrated sleuths have been struggling to crack for more than two decades. The next word in the sequence is: “clock”.
65333939
submission
rastos1 writes:
In a recent blog, software developer Bruce Dawson pointed out some issues with the way the FSIN instruction is described in the “Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer’s Manual.”, noting that the result of FSIN can be very inaccurate in some cases, if compared to the exact mathematical value of the sine function.
Bruce Dawson says: I was shocked when I discovered this. Both the fsin instruction and Intel’s documentation are hugely inaccurate, and the inaccurate documentation has led to poor decisions being made. ... Intel has known for years that these instructions are not as accurate as promised. They are now making updates to their documentation. Updating the instruction is not a realistic option.
Intel processors had a problem with math in past
65108029
submission
rastos1 writes:
A law has come into effect that permits UK citizens to make copies of CDs, MP3s, DVDs, Blu-rays and e-books. Consumers are allowed to keep the duplicates on local storage or in the cloud.
While it is legal to make back-ups for personal use, it remains an offence to share the data with friends or family. Users are not allowed to make recordings of streamed music or video from Spotify and Netflix, even if they subscribe to the services.
Thirteen years after iTunes launched, it is now legal to use it to rip CDs in the UK.
60010445
submission
rastos1 writes:
Ars Technica takes a look at serious bug in the Linux kernel that was introduced in 2009. "The memory-corruption vulnerability, which was introduced in version 2.6.31-rc3, released no later than 2009, allows unprivileged users to crash or execute malicious code on vulnerable systems, according to the notes accompanying proof-of-concept code available here. The flaw resides in the n_tty_write function controlling the Linux pseudo tty device." This flaw has been identified as CVE-2014-0196.
56627861
submission
rastos1 writes:
State lawmakers in Maryland have filed emergency status legislation that seeks to cut the NSA’s Ft. Meade headquarters off from all material support stemming from the state. House Bill 1074 (HB1074) would ban the NSA facility from all public state utilities, ban the use of NSA collected evidence in court, ban universities from partnering with the NSA and ban all political subdivisions from assisting the NSA from within the state. Any state entity, employee or contractor refusing to comply with the law would be immediately fired and banned from all future contracts within the state.
49832781
submission
rastos1 writes:
The solar eruption, called a coronal mass ejection, occurred yesterday at 1:24 a.m. EDT (0524 GMT) and sent charged particles streaking outward at 380 miles per second. That's just over 1.3 million mph (2.2 million km/h). The solar fallout from the sun storm is expected to reach Earth within the next three days. Interestingly an unnamed icy comet from the outer solar system dove into the sun and disintegrated nearly a the same time.
49450635
submission
rastos1 writes:
On the same day that President Barack Obama spoke to the press about possible surveillance reforms—and released a related white paper on the subject—the National Security Agency came out with its own rare, publicly-released, seven-page document (PDF): "In its foreign intelligence mission, NSA touches about 1.6% of 1826 PB of information that the Internet carries per day".
48215665
submission
rastos1 writes:
Bolivia president Evo Morales' plane was forced to land in Austria on Tuesday after France and Portugal refused air permits, apparently because they suspected it was carrying Edward Snowden, the former U.S. spy agency contractor wanted by Washington on espionage charges. Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca told reporters that Portugal and France had abruptly canceled the air permits, forcing the unscheduled Vienna stopover as Morales was returning on a Bolivian government plane from Russia.
44625039
submission
rastos1 writes:
Egypt's naval forces captured three scuba divers who were trying to cut an undersea Internet cable in the Mediterranean on Wednesday, a military spokesman said. Telecommunications executives meanwhile blamed a weeklong Internet slowdown on damage caused to another cable by a ship.
33095491
submission
rastos1 writes:
A US federal judge has temporarily blocked a section of the controversial National Defense Authorization Act that allows for the indefinite military detention of US citizens. In a 68-page ruling, US District Judge Katherine Forrest agreed on Wednesday that the statute failed to “pass constitutional muster” because its language could be interpreted quite broadly and eventually be used to suppress political dissent.
24295640
submission
rastos1 writes:
In a demonstration last Friday, it took less than two minutes for researchers Thai Duong and Juliano Rizzo to wield the exploit to recover an encrypted authentication cookie used to access a PayPal user account. The researchers settled on a Java applet as their means to bypass SOP, leading Firefox developers to discuss blocking the framework in a future version of the browser.
“I recommend that we blocklist all versions of the Java Plugin,” Firefox developer Brian Smith wrote on Tuesday in a discussion on Mozilla's online bug forum. “My understanding is that Oracle may or may not be aware of the details of the same-origin exploit. As of now, we have no ETA for a fix for the Java plugin.”
23717360
submission
rastos1 writes:
If you're the owner of a decent pair of binoculars train them on the handle of The Plough or Big Dipper a little after twilight tonight. The result of a massive explosion some 21 million light years away in the Pinwheel Galaxy M101, the nearest supernova of its type to be discovered for 40 years should be at its brightest tonight.
22808132
submission
rastos1 writes:
Inspired by http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/07/31/211251/Volunteer-Towns-Sought-For-Nuclear-Waste
What is the acceptable distance (in miles) of nearest nuclear waste storage site from your house?
0 — it could be in my mom's basement if I wasn't living there
1-20 — I have no problem with nuclear waste
20-100 — just keep it out of sight
101- 1000 didn't you hear this stuff DANGEROUS?
20914330
submission
rastos1 writes:
Holed up in his walled compound in northeast Pakistan with no phone or Internet capabilities, bin Laden would type a message on his computer without an Internet connection, then save it using a thumb-sized flash drive. He then passed the flash drive to a trusted courier, who would head for a distant Internet cafe.
At that location, the courier would plug the memory drive into a computer, copy bin Laden's message into an email and send it. Reversing the process, the courier would copy any incoming email to the flash drive and return to the compound, where bin Laden would read his messages offline.
19571340
submission
rastos1 writes:
For most of the past eight months, Manning has been required to sleep wearing only boxer shorts, because of his status as a detainee under "prevention of injury watch," said 1st Lt. Brian Villiard, a spokesman for the military detention facility, or "brig," in Quantico. Beginning Wednesday night, the facility commander ordered that Manning turn over his boxers, too.
