Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Hope it works better then my wallet (Score 1) 110

by fahrbot-bot (#48631095) Attached to: RFID-Blocking Blazer and Jeans Could Stop Wireless Identity Theft

Yes, wireless connections to the card are a risk ... but that risk is minuscule in comparison to the risks associated with using the magstripe (vulnerable to skimming) instead of the chip (uses challenge and response). These days, if someone requires me to use magstripe, I look at the terminal extremely carefully before swiping.

The VISA Pay Wave doesn't have user challenge/response, it's simply a wireless magstripe. It's just a gimmick and really no faster than swiping the card. Skimming at a POS terminal - other than at a gas station or older ATM - is pretty rare (and/or ballsy) and I've personally never heard/read about it anywhere. I live in the US, so your mileage may vary elsewhere...

Submission + - Lockheed Martin's 100 MW Compact Fusion Nuclear Reactor (globalspec.com)

Submitted by Roger Pink
Roger Pink writes: When I first heard the announcement regarding Lockheed Martin's plan to produce a compact fusion reactor (CFR) in five years, I was pretty skeptical. Then a lot of skeptical articles were written and I felt my first instinct was validated. The only problem is I think I was wrong. Having researched this story for an article I've written, I'm pretty much convinced this is actually happening.

This isn't cold fusion. Back in the late eighties a couple chemists thought they had fusion and rushed to publish out of fear of having the credit stolen. It was a complete failure of the scientific process and it set fusion back two decades. This time is different. The project leader has over a decade of experience studying and modeling fusion. The institution has a history of novel technologies and absolutely no reason to risk their credibility.

In short, it really seams like it's more likely there will be a CFR in the next ten years then not. Here's an article for a little background why:

http://insights.globalspec.com...

Comment Looks like more lies ... (Score 1) 1

by BarbaraHudson (#48630803) Attached to: Woman game developer may have never "fled her home"

Two interesting submissions from the firehose:

Woman game developer may have never "fled her home" ,:

Previously unknown indie game developer Brianna Wu made international news, including on the green, after claiming on October 11 that threats from the Gamergate movement had forced her to flee her home. As one report briefly mentioned, at that time Wu was on a planned trip to New York where she was scheduled to speak at Comic-Con. Later news interviews placed Wu at her home as they reported that she had fled from it, raising the question of whether she had ever been forced to flee her home at all.

As has come to be usual for any news on this subject, Medium administrators deleted an article that had provided additional evidence that Wu's secret media interview location was in fact her own home from which she had never fled."

and FBI confirms open investigation into Gamergate

v3rgEz (125380) writes

"In a terse form letter responding to a FOIA request, the FBI has confirmed it has an open investigation into Gamergate, the loose but controversial coalition of gamers calling for ethics in gaming journalism — even as some members have harassed and sent death threats to female gaming developers and critics"

Analysis of photos on reddit (scroll partway down) calling her claim to be in hiding false.

The interesting stuff

Here's something important I just found out.

DougieFFC in the comments below you noted how she was in the New York Comic Con the very weekend she was supposedly driven home. So I just looked it up, and I may have found more proof. So she attended NYCC on October 12, the same weekend the claimed to have been driven from her home:

https://archive.today/PRHu2
https://archive.today/SytE8

Now here's the interesting bit: she was scheduled to attend that NYCC panel since September 16:

https://archive.today/0sySH

In other words, she was "driven from her home" in the exact same weekend she already had scheduled to be out of town for months beforehand. And as the pictures show, she was back home on October 13, the very next day after the NYCC panel she attended.

Trust but verify and all, but we may have stumbled on a smoking gun, thanks to DougieFFC's comment.

I had always maintained that Wu was misleading people into believing that she was "forced from her home", that the "internet death threats" were not to be taken seriously, and that the police did NOT tell her to go into hiding. There's also the pics that show she was back home when she did the interview claiming to be on the run and not knowing when she'd be returning. So obviously she didn't take the threats seriously either - it was all hype. Whether she didn't take them seriously because she was the source of them is now a fair question.

Why? My guess is she wanted to get into the public speaking gig scene, since she wasn't exactly making a hit as a game developer. Of course, after the HuffPost interview where she claimed to have both studied law and to have a background as a journalist, but got so many things wrong, it became painfully obvious that wasn't going to happen.

Submission + - Uber agrees to temporarily suspend service in Portland (cnn.com) 1

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: Uber is standing down for the next three months in Portland, just one of the cities where it has run into trouble.

The company said it would stop picking up customers there for three months after the city sued, asking a judge to order Uber to stop operating until it is in compliance with safety, health and consumer protection rules.

But Uber fully expects to be back. In fact, this could be good news for Uber fans in the long-run.

The city has agreed to update its laws, creating a new regulatory framework for companies like Uber that tend to fall somewhere between a taxi and a ridesharing service. People use it by requesting a driver with a smartphone app.

Uber, which operates in 60 cities across 21 countries, has run into problems because its drivers do not always meet the city's regulations for taxi and car services.

Last week, for example, a judge in Spain temporarily blocked Uber because the Madrid taxi service said it was unfair to competition and not properly licensed.

Submission + - Scientists Discover That Exercise Changes Your DNA

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: The human genome is astonishingly complex and dynamic, with genes constantly turning on or off, depending on what biochemical signals they receive from the body. Scientists have known that certain genes become active or quieter as a result of exercise but they hadn’t understood how those genes knew how to respond to exercise. Now the NYT reports that scientists at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm have completed a study where they recruited 23 young and healthy men and women, brought them to the lab for a series of physical performance and medical tests, including a muscle biopsy, and then asked them to exercise half of their lower bodies for three months. The volunteers pedaled one-legged at a moderate pace for 45 minutes, four times per week for three months. Then the scientists repeated the muscle biopsies and other tests with each volunteer. Not surprisingly, the volunteers’ exercised leg was more powerful now than the other, showing that the exercise had resulted in physical improvements. But there were also changes within the exercised muscle cells’ DNA. Using technology that analyses 480,000 positions throughout the genome, they could see that new methylation patterns had taken place in 7,000 genes (an individual has 20–25,000 genes).

In a process known as DNA methylation, clusters of atoms, called methyl groups, attach to the outside of a gene like microscopic mollusks and make the gene more or less able to receive and respond to biochemical signals from the body. In the exercised portions of the bodies, many of the methylation changes were on portions of the genome known as enhancers that can amplify the expression of proteins by genes. And gene expression was noticeably increased or changed in thousands of the muscle-cell genes that the researchers studied. Most of the genes in question are known to play a role in energy metabolism, insulin response and inflammation within muscles. In other words, they affect how healthy and fit our muscles — and bodies — become. Many mysteries still remain but the message of the study is unambiguous. “Through endurance training — a lifestyle change that is easily available for most people and doesn’t cost much money,” says Sara Lindholm, “we can induce changes that affect how we use our genes and, through that, get healthier and more functional muscles that ultimately improve our quality of life.”

Submission + - Scientists Discover That Exercise Changes Your DNA

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: The human genome is astonishingly complex and dynamic, with genes constantly turning on or off, depending on what biochemical signals they receive from the body. Scientists have known that certain genes become active or quieter as a result of exercise but they hadn’t understood how those genes knew how to respond to exercise. Now the NYT reports that scientists at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm have completed a study where they recruited 23 young and healthy men and women, brought them to the lab for a series of physical performance and medical tests, including a muscle biopsy, and then asked them to exercise half of their lower bodies for three months. The volunteers pedaled one-legged at a moderate pace for 45 minutes, four times per week for three months. Then the scientists repeated the muscle biopsies and other tests with each volunteer. Not surprisingly, the volunteers’ exercised leg was more powerful now than the other, showing that the exercise had resulted in physical improvements. But there were also changes within the exercised muscle cells’ DNA. Using technology that analyses 480,000 positions throughout the genome, they could see that new methylation patterns had taken place in 7,000 genes (an individual has 20–25,000 genes).

In a process known as DNA methylation, clusters of atoms, called methyl groups, attach to the outside of a gene like microscopic mollusks and make the gene more or less able to receive and respond to biochemical signals from the body. In the exercised portions of the bodies, many of the methylation changes were on portions of the genome known as enhancers that can amplify the expression of proteins by genes. And gene expression was noticeably increased or changed in thousands of the muscle-cell genes that the researchers studied. Most of the genes in question are known to play a role in energy metabolism, insulin response and inflammation within muscles. In other words, they affect how healthy and fit our muscles — and bodies — become. Many mysteries still remain but the message of the study is unambiguous. “Through endurance training — a lifestyle change that is easily available for most people and doesn’t cost much money,” says Sara Lindholm, “we can induce changes that affect how we use our genes and, through that, get healthier and more functional muscles that ultimately improve our quality of life.”

Submission + - Space X - Going where no one has gone before (planetary.org)

Submitted by ColdWetDog
ColdWetDog writes: This Friday, SpaceX will attempt what no agency or company has done before: land a used rocket stage on a floating ocean platform. The effort will be made during the private spaceflight company's fifth paid cargo run to the International Space Station. Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 40 is scheduled for 1:22 p.m. EST (18:22 UTC).

Submission + - Hackers' Shutdown of 'The Interview' Confirms Coding is a Superpower

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: The idea of programming as a superpower was touched upon by CS teacher Alfred Thompson back in 2010, but it became a rallying call of sorts for the Hour of Code after Dropbox CEO Drew Houston described coding as "the closest thing we have to a superpower" in a Code.org video that went viral. And if the kids who learned to code with the President last week were dubious about the power of coding, this week's decision by Sony to scrap the release of the satirical film 'The Interview' after a massive hack attack should put aside any doubts, especially after new revelations that Sony had reached out to the White House for help and screened the film for administration officials back in June. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Thursday that the Obama Administration is viewing the Sony attack as a 'serious national security matter' and is considering a range of possible options as a response, which could turn things into a contest of U.S. Superpower vs. Coding Superpower. In case it wasn't mentioned last week, remember to always use your coding superpower for good, kids!

Submission + - Sports tix too pricey? Come to Doha in Qatar and get paid to watch. (ap.org)

Submitted by FarnsworthG
FarnsworthG writes: Come to Doha in Qatar and get paid to watch sports. Soccer, handball, volleyball, you name it. Qatar will pay you to watch — IF you're a migrant worker hungry for money to send home. They'll even provide official Arab-style robes and headgear so the TV audience will think actual Qataris are watching and the World Cup officials will continue to be willing to let Qatar host it in 2022.

Submission + - Critical Git security vulnerability announced

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Github has announced a security vulnerability and has encourage users to update their Git clients as soon as possible. The blog post reads in part: "A critical Git security vulnerability has been announced today, affecting all versions of the official Git client and all related software that interacts with Git repositories, including GitHub for Windows and GitHub for Mac. Because this is a client-side only vulnerability, github.com and GitHub Enterprise are not directly affected. The vulnerability concerns Git and Git-compatible clients that access Git repositories in a case-insensitive or case-normalizing filesystem. An attacker can craft a malicious Git tree that will cause Git to overwrite its own .git/config file when cloning or checking out a repository, leading to arbitrary command execution in the client machine. Git clients running on OS X (HFS+) or any version of Microsoft Windows (NTFS, FAT) are exploitable through this vulnerability. Linux clients are not affected if they run in a case-sensitive filesystem....Updated versions of GitHub for Windows and GitHub for Mac are available for immediate download, and both contain the security fix on the Desktop application itself and on the bundled version of the Git command-line client."

Submission + - Critical Git security vulnerability announced

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Github has announced a security vulnerability and has encourage users to update their Git clients as soon as possible. The blog post reads in part: "A critical Git security vulnerability has been announced today, affecting all versions of the official Git client and all related software that interacts with Git repositories, including GitHub for Windows and GitHub for Mac. Because this is a client-side only vulnerability, github.com and GitHub Enterprise are not directly affected. The vulnerability concerns Git and Git-compatible clients that access Git repositories in a case-insensitive or case-normalizing filesystem. An attacker can craft a malicious Git tree that will cause Git to overwrite its own .git/config file when cloning or checking out a repository, leading to arbitrary command execution in the client machine. Git clients running on OS X (HFS+) or any version of Microsoft Windows (NTFS, FAT) are exploitable through this vulnerability. Linux clients are not affected if they run in a case-sensitive filesystem....Updated versions of GitHub for Windows and GitHub for Mac are available for immediate download, and both contain the security fix on the Desktop application itself and on the bundled version of the Git command-line client."

Slashdot Top Deals

A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable. -- Thomas Jefferson

Close