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coondoggie writes:
Calling it an "increasingly urgent problem" US Attorney General Eric Holder warned consumers and businesses alike that scammers looking to snatch fraudulent tax refunds based on stolen identities is at an all time high. Holder said that a growing pool of criminals are engaged in tax fraud, including gangs and drug sellers seeking quick access to cash. He urged Americans to protect themselves by reporting suspicious activity and learning more at the IRS website, the Justice Department's Tax Division website..
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coondoggie writes:
NASA recently began laying out the groundwork for the technology it will need to fly an unmanned mission to Jupiter's intriguing moon Europa.
Scientists say Europa — which orbits the planet Jupiter about 778 million km (484 million miles) from the Sun — could support life because it might have an ocean of liquid water under its miles-thick frozen crust. NASA said in December the Hubble Space Telescope observed water vapor above the frigid south polar region of Jupiter's moon Europa, providing the first strong evidence of water plumes erupting off the moon's surface.
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coondoggie writes:
Mars is closer to Earth than it has been for nearly seven years and with a 4-inch or larger telescope you may be able to get quite a view. According to Sky & Telescope in the middle two weeks of April, Mars will shine with a brightness of magnitude -1.5, matching the luster of Sirius — typically the brightest star in the night sky.
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coondoggie writes:
The FBI said a man admitted he ripped off more than $1 million worth of iPhones and iPads from Verizon Wireless using an elaborate scheme that involved misappropriating corporate purchasing accounts and bribing Federal Express drivers.
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coondoggie writes:
In its history the IBM mainframe has been hailed and vilified. It has been born, reborn (many times) and pronounced dead. And yet the Big Iron remains a key computing resource for many large companies and will do so for many years. Here we take a look at the mainframe’s long history, from its use with the US space program to its prominence inside large business data centers.
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coondoggie writes:
A newly released response to public UFO sighting only increases the notion that the military — which was often forced into looking into "flying saucer" sightings — was exceptionally skeptical about such reports. The National Archives this week published a letter and photo collected under Project Grudge — an Air Force investigation into flying saucer sightings in 1949. The Archives writes that the document "is a classic example of the skeptical tone taken by the [Air Force and Grudge] study [stating bluntly the letter doesn't even deserve a response]."
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coondoggie writes:
By all accounts, many of the massive data breaches in the news these days are first revealed to the victims by law enforcement, the Secret Service and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). But how do the agencies figure it out before the companies know they have been breached, especially given the millions companies spend on security and their intense focus on compliance? The agencies do the one thing companies don’t do. They attack the problem from the other end by looking for evidence that a crime has been committed. Agents go undercover in criminal forums where stolen payment cards, customer data and propriety information are sold. They monitor suspects and sometimes get court permission to break into password-protected enclaves where cyber-criminals lurk.
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coondoggie writes:
NASA today released images of a comet that will make a pass within 84,000 miles of Mars — less than half the distance between Earth and the moon.
NASA said the Hubble Space Telescope captured the image on the left March 11 of comet C/2013 A1, also called Siding Spring, at a distance of 353 million miles from Earth. Hubble can't see Siding Spring's icy nucleus because of its minuscule size. The nucleus is surrounded by a glowing dust cloud that measures roughly 12,000 miles across, NASA said.
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coondoggie writes:
There are a ton of details involved in flying an aircraft no doubt but you might think landing at the correct airport would be one of those things that just wouldn't be a serious problem. Well I guess we'd be wrong on that score because today the National Transportation Safety Board has issued a Safety Alert to remind pilots to um, land at the right airport. There have been at least two wrong landing incidents in the past year that prompted the NTSB's missive entitled "Landing at the Wrong Airport." The most recent occurred in January when a Southwest Airlines 737 landed at the wrong airport in Branson, Missouri (the video in this story shows the plane leaving that airport); then last November a Boeing 747 cargo plane landed on a 6,100-foot runway instead of the 12,000-foot one at its intended airport 12 miles away.
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coondoggie writes:
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Artificial Intelligence challenge: Could a robot give its own TED talk?
New X Prize, TED competition wants TED-worthy robot presenters
By Layer 8 on Tue, 03/25/14 — 12:16pm.
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x prizeWithout a doubt the most presentations and presenters for that matter at any given TED conference deliver leading edge material. And now that group — who's tag line if "Ideas worth Spreading" — wants to make them even more advanced by challenging the Artificial Intelligence community to develop a thinking robot to deliver a TED presentation. The TED organization has teamed with competition extraordinaires at X Prize to develop a contest whose ultimate goal would be to have an AI-based robot "deliver a compelling TED Talk with no human involvement."
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US Navy preps Black Box finder for Malaysia Flight 370 search
Device looks for aircraft emergency pinger acoustic signal which is transmitted to either a Oscilloscope, or Signal Processing Computer
By Layer 8 on Mon, 03/24/14 — 12:40pm.
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The US Navy is sending an emergency system that will help searchers find the Black Box of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which mysteriously disappeared March 8. The Navy system will help find the Black Box in the event a debris field of the plane is ever located.
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coondoggie writes:
f you think online and telephone scammers just couldn't fool more people — think again. The Treasury Inspector General for Taxpayer Administration this week issued a warning to taxpayers to beware of phone calls from individuals claiming to represent the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in an effort to defraud them. "This is the largest scam of its kind that we have ever seen," said J. Russell George, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.
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coondoggie writes:
Gotta love this letter published in the guardian.com this week. It comes from a number of scientists throughout the world who are obviously frustrated with the barriers being thrown up around them — financial, antiquated procedures and techniques to name a few — and would like to see changes. When you speak of scientific mavericks, you might look directly at Improbable Research's annual Ig Nobel awards which recognize the arguably leading edge of maverick scientific work.
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coondoggie writes:
he Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency today embarked on it plan to build a super vertical take off and landing or VTOL aircraft that can fly fast and carry a big load.
DARPA said it has awarded Phase 1 of anticipated three phase award contracts to Aurora Flight Sciences Corporation; The Boeing Company; Karem Aircraft; Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation to begin developing the VTOL X-Plane which is expected to fly in the neighborhood of 460 MPH and carry some 12.5% of its gross weight in cargo. The plane's gross weight should come in between 10,000 lb. — 12,000 lbs., DARPA stated.
57796159
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coondoggie writes:
he US government in 2011 or so realized that it could tap the techie conscience of the country by financially and legislatively backing good old-fashioned competition via the America Competes Act. That's the driving notion behind numerous public competitions, or challenges as they are often labeled, that have taken place since. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), NASA, X Prize and others already knew the power of the public collection having pioneered the big tech competitions with myriad competitions about everything from space gloves and shredders to spacecraft. Here’s a look at some of the coolest competitions going on now
