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Security

Submission + - Mozilla pays 12-year-old $3000 for critic bug find (geek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In the world of open source software bug hunting age is clearly not a factor. Alex Miller, a 12-year-old tech wiz from San Jose is proof of that after just receiving $3,000 from Mozilla. The check came in the post and was a reward for tracking down a critical security flaw in the Firefox web browser.

Mozilla recently increased the bounty for finding such bugs from $500 to $3,000 in an attempt to make it more worthwhile for people to spend their time looking for them. Alex set about tracking down any bug he could with 90 minute sessions each day. The first bug he submitted did not qualify for the reward, but 10 more days of hunting located a critical security flaw and the check was in the post.

According to Brandon Sterne, security program manager at Mozilla, what Alex achieved is not something just anyone can do:

        The space of people that are contributing in this area is pretty small. This is a very niche technical area.
Science

Submission + - 2010 Ig Nobel Winners Announced (foxnews.com)

Submitted by Velcroman1
Velcroman1 writes: Having trouble breathing? Try riding a roller-coaster. Really. A pair of Dutch researchers who discovered that the symptoms of asthma can be treated with a roller-coaster ride are among this year’s winner of the Ig Nobel awards, the infamous annual tribute to scientific research that seems wacky — but also has real world applications. FoxNews.com has interviews with several award winners, who are all ecstatic to win — despite the fact that they're all gently being poked fun at.

Submission + - Laser-like signal from Gliese 581 in '08 (www.vbs.tv) 3

Submitted by w0mprat
w0mprat writes: "Just about a year ago Ragbir Bhathal was scanning the night sky for alien activity, just as he does every night. Except on this December eve Ragbir Bhathal found a strong, regular, repeating signal.... Unlike most of the tin-foil hat wearing whackadoos in his field, Dr. Bhathal is a hard scientist working with university money to find extraterrestrials...As proprietor of OZSETI, Dr. Bhathal combs the universe in search of light signals, not radio transmission"

The star system in question is none other than Gliese 581, where a earthlike planet was reccently found. Bhathal has only detected this signal once, while it has been verified by a signal processing specialist to be a real signal, it has not been seen again. Bhathal has a strong case for his decision searching around the visible spectrum, something like a laser may stand out as almost unambiguously artificial. He may have indeed found just that.

In this article from '09 they specifically mention the planet's name, Gliese 581e. They claim this 'e' planet was too close to its sun to be habitable. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news...-1225710664198

This recently discovered 'goldilocks' planet is Gliese 581g. Same fracking solar system!
http://news.discovery.com/space/eart...anet-life.html
Space

Submission + - Russian Firm Plans Commercial Space Station (discovery.com)

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "Buoyed by plans for commercial space taxis, a Russian company plans to build and launch a privately owned outpost in orbit for tourists, scientists and other paying visitors. RSC Energia, which designed and built the Russian modules of the International Space Station, is partnering with Russian commercial space startup Orbital Technologies to manufacture the new hub, currently known as Commercial Space Station."
Space

Earth-Like Planet That Could Sustain Life Found 575

Posted by samzenpus from the guess-who's-coming-to-dinner dept.
astroengine writes "An exoplanet, 20 to 50 percent the mass of Earth, has been discovered 20 light-years away and it appears to have all the ingredients conducive to sustaining life. It has enough gravitational clout to hold onto an atmosphere and it orbits well within the 'Goldilocks Zone' of its parent star. However, it would be a very different place to Earth; it is tidally locked to its star, creating one perpetual day on the world. Interestingly, this may also boost the life-giving qualities of the exoplanet, creating stable temperatures in its atmosphere."
Graphics

Submission + - Radeon HD 6000 launch date confirmed (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Stoobalou
Stoobalou writes: AMD's Radeon HD 6000 series isn't the biggest thing since sliced bread, but the continuous reports in the press have sparked our inner geek and made us seek out more info from the people in the know.

After disbelieving, just yesterday, the reports on how AMD's HD Radeon 6000-series was delayed, we've managed to speak to another source who gave us some hard info on what is going on.
Graphics

Submission + - Gigabyte shows off GTX 480 SOC (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Stoobalou
Stoobalou writes: In a sneak-peek launch event today, Gigabyte introduced its new top-dog graphics card, the Gigabyte GTX 480 SOC.

Continuing its ongoing strategy to establish itself as the go-to brand for overclocking, Gigabyte has built the GTX 480 SOC (super overclock) that offers dual high-end operating modes. While in the ole days we had a standard operating mode and an alternative 'Turbo' mode that would overclock your GPU at the touch of a button, Gigabyte has decided to give us both SOC and LN2 modes.
Google

Submission + - Skype joining Facebook, or Facebook buying Skype? (frontwave.eu)

Submitted by frontwave
frontwave writes: Skype is in advanced talks with Facebook (no surprise here, you wouldn’t expect a Google Voice App in Facebook, right?). The partnership with Skype will allow Facebook users to easily log into Skype using Facebook Connect and will give them the ability to text messages, voice chat, and even video chat with their Facebook friends from within Skype.
Government

Submission + - Why Internet Wiretaps Are Doomed To Fail (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: These are disheartening times for those who value security and privacy. E-commerce companies, advertisers and marketers of all stripes have shown that they have little regard for the privacy concerns of users, tracking them at every turn and gathering every bit of available data in an effort to gain an extra morsel of insight into consumers' behavior. The term privacy policy has become a punch line and looking to Washington for help in regulating this chaos is a lot like waiting for a good book from Dan Brown: It's a waste of time. Like everyone else in this mess, the regulators, congressmen and lobbyists are out for themselves.

The news this week that the Obama administration is pushing hard on a bill that would require the operators of all communications services to figure out a way to give law enforcement agencies access to customers' messages in order to comply with wiretap orders has put this all into sharp focus. Leaving aside the complex political and legal issues in play here, the idea of intentionally introducing security weaknesses into these systems as a way of somehow making the country more secure is a horrendous mistake. What part of that sounds like it will work?
Games

Submission + - Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare Pack- Five R (rundlc.com)

Submitted by Buffalo55
Buffalo55 writes: We’ve already received a few content packs for Red Dead Redemption, but the Undead Nightmare DLC should top them all. Rockstar’s latest piece of content not only introduces zombies, but new animals, weapons and locations. Here’s why we can’t wait to spend $9.99 on it.

Submission + - Panasonic Unveils 'Business-Rugged' Toughbook S9 (crn.com)

Submitted by cgriffin21
cgriffin21 writes: Panasonic Solutions on Tuesday rolled out its Toughbook S9, a product the company is calling the world's lightest notebook PC with a 12.1-inch screen and built-in DVD drive. The S9 features the Intel Core i5-520m vPro processor running at 2 GHz, RAM expandable to 6GB, a widescreen WXGA (1280 x 800) LCD display with LED backlighting, and up to 11 hours of battery life. It also comes with Windows 7, a 320GB shock-mounted flex-connect hard drive, HDMI and VGA outputs, and an optional fingerprint reader.
Mozilla

Submission + - Mozilla: Forget About Firefox on iPhone (computerworld.com)

Submitted by CWmike
CWmike writes: Mozilla has yet again rejected the idea of crafting a version of Firefox for the iPhone, saying that it is instead focusing its iOS efforts on the Firefox Home sync software, which was admitted into the App Store in July. In a blog post that outlined Mozilla's future plans for Firefox Home, the company said, 'People have asked about adding more browser-like features to Firefox Home, but there are technical and logistical restrictions that make it difficult, if not impossible, to build the full Firefox browser for the iPhone,' said Ragavan Srinivasan, a product manager at Mozilla. Although Apple clarified its App Store admission policies earlier this month, competing browsers remain off limits to outside developers like Mozilla unless they're willing to completely rewrite their code. 'Apps that browse the Web must use the iOS WebKit framework and WebKit JavaScript,' Apple's revised guidelines read.
Science

Submission + - Engineered silkworms to produce spider silk (nd.edu)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A research and development effort by the University of Notre Dame, the University of Wyoming, and Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, Inc. has succeeded in producing transgenic silkworms capable of spinning artificial spider silks.

“This research represents a significant breakthrough in the development of superior silk fibers for both medical and non-medical applications,” said Malcolm J. Fraser Jr., a Notre Dame professor of biological sciences. “The generation of silk fibers having the properties of spider silks has been one of the important goals in materials science.â

Until this breakthrough, only very small quantities of artificial spider silk had ever been produced in laboratories, but there was no commercially viable way to produce and spin these artificial silk proteins. Kraig Biocraft believed these limitations could be overcome by using recombinant DNA to develop a bio-technological approach for the production of silk fibers with a much broader range of physical properties or with pre-determined properties, optimized for specific biomedical or other applications.
Graphics

Submission + - Whitepaper Claims GPUs Susceptible To Malware (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "For the past 3.5 years or so, NVIDIA has ardently advocated the GPU as a computational platform capable of solving almost any problem. One topic the company hasn't targeted, however, is the tremendous performance advantage the GPU could offer malware authors. Reportedly, all the computational hardware that makes the GPU such an ideal fit for certain types of scientific or graphical workloads could (and will) deliver equal benefits to workloads with considerably darker aspirations. The threat is credible enough that you can probably expect to see additional safeguards and detection systems developed as time goes by. For now, GPU-assisted malware is a theoretical problem of potentially enormous proportions, but theory is all it is."

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