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Mars

4-Billion-Pixel Panorama View From Curiosity Rover 101

Posted by samzenpus
from the take-a-look dept.
SternisheFan points out that there is a great new panorama made from shots from the Curiosity Rover. "Sweep your gaze around Gale Crater on Mars, where NASA's Curiosity rover is currently exploring, with this 4-billion-pixel panorama stitched together from 295 images. ...The entire image stretches 90,000 by 45,000 pixels and uses pictures taken by the rover's two MastCams. The best way to enjoy it is to go into fullscreen mode and slowly soak up the scenery — from the distant high edges of the crater to the enormous and looming Mount Sharp, the rover's eventual destination."
Electronic Frontier Foundation

DOJ Often Used Cell Tower Impersonating Devices Without Explicit Warrants 146

Posted by Unknown Lamer
from the bending-the-rules dept.
Via the EFF comes news that, during a case involving the use of a Stingray device, the DOJ revealed that it was standard practice to use the devices without explicitly requesting permission in warrants. "When Rigmaiden filed a motion to suppress the Stingray evidence as a warrantless search in violation of the Fourth Amendment, the government responded that this order was a search warrant that authorized the government to use the Stingray. Together with the ACLU of Northern California and the ACLU, we filed an amicus brief in support of Rigmaiden, noting that this 'order' wasn't a search warrant because it was directed towards Verizon, made no mention of an IMSI catcher or Stingray and didn't authorize the government — rather than Verizon — to do anything. Plus to the extent it captured loads of information from other people not suspected of criminal activity it was a 'general warrant,' the precise evil the Fourth Amendment was designed to prevent. ... The emails make clear that U.S. Attorneys in the Northern California were using Stingrays but not informing magistrates of what exactly they were doing. And once the judges got wind of what was actually going on, they were none too pleased:"
Google

Google Pledges Not To Sue Any Open Source Projects Using Their Patents 153

Posted by Unknown Lamer
from the now-and-forever dept.
sfcrazy writes "Google has announced the Open Patent Non-Assertion (OPN) Pledge. In the pledge Google says that they will not sue any user, distributor, or developer of Open Source software on specified patents, unless first attacked. Under this pledge, Google is starting off with 10 patents relating to MapReduce, a computing model for processing large data sets first developed at Google. Google says that over time they intend to expand the set of Google's patents covered by the pledge to other technologies." This is in addition to the Open Invention Network, and their general work toward reforming the patent system. The patents covered in the OPN will be free to use in Free/Open Source software for the life of the patent, even if Google should transfer ownership to another party. Read the text of the pledge. It appears that interaction with non-copyleft licenses (MIT/BSD/Apache) is a bit weird: if you create a non-free fork it appears you are no longer covered under the pledge.
Open Source

+ - SPAM: Adobe Gives Apache Flex

Submitted by srimadman
srimadman writes "In a move that appears to be a step away from its Flash platform, Adobe submitted the code of its Flash-based Flex framework of the ASF (Apache Software Foundation) to be handled as a separate project."
Link to Original Source
Medicine

+ - Measles Resurgent Due to Fear of Vaccination->

Submitted by florescent_beige
florescent_beige writes "In the September Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Gregory Poland, M.D. writes that "More than 150 cases of measles have been reported in the United States already this year and there have been similar outbreaks in Europe, a sign the disease is making an alarming comeback. The reappearance of the potentially deadly virus is the result of unfounded fears about a link between the measles shot and autism that have turned some parents against childhood vaccination..."

Meanwhile, in spite of Mr. & Mrs. Great Unwashed`s opinions, the search for the true causes of autism goes on in spite of the best efforts of old Playboy bunnies."
Link to Original Source
Security

+ - A Look Into Black Hat's Wireless Network->

Submitted by Orome1
Orome1 writes "Aruba Networks, which provided and maintained the wireless network for last week’s Black Hat USA 2011 conference, today provided some interesting statistics around the network’s use. Apple devices were most prevalent at 43.3 percent of all devices (28.4 percent alone for iOS iPad and iPhone, with another 14.9 percent running OS X). Linux users composed 35 percent of the total, while Windows users represented 21.8 percent. While the majority of attendees used the Black Hat PSK network, almost 200 attendees utilized the PEAP/EAP-TLS “secured” network. Aruba captured a huge amount of security events, the most interesting of which were IP spoofing, AP spoofing, Power save DoS attacks and Block ACK attacks. Talk about a hostile environment."
Link to Original Source
Idle

+ - Washing machine + Arduino = Laundruino->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Because his washer is located in the basement, Micha decided to connect it to his home network with the help of an Arduino + Ethernet Shield. It's a rather simple gut ingenius hack that saves him from stepping down the stairs all the time to check if the laundry is done."
Link to Original Source
Security

+ - OpenLeaks Test-Launches With A Mass Hackfest->

Submitted by Sparrowvsrevolution
Sparrowvsrevolution writes "At the Chaos Communications Camp hacker conference in Finowfurt, Germany Wednesday, former WikiLeaks spokesperson Daniel Domscheit-Berg launched four days of public testing of OpenLeaks.org, in partnership with four European newspapers and one non-profit group that have signed on as the initial round of outlets who will use the site’s tools to receive documents that sources wish to anonymously send them. OpenLeaks’ testing won’t just be a mere tryout of the site’s submissions functions so much as a trial by fire: Domscheit-Berg plans to invite the 3,000 security-minded types at the German conference and anyone other willing hackers around the world to actively probe the test site (https://Leaks.taz.de) for vulnerabilities in a crowd-sourced penetration test."
Link to Original Source
Government

+ - RIAA-Backed Warrantless Search Bill->

Submitted by lordvramir
lordvramir writes "If you run a CD or DVD duplication company and you're based in California, you may soon be subject to warrantless searches in order to "fight piracy." California Senate Bill 550, introduced by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima), has slowly begun making its way through the state legislature as a way to cut down on counterfeit discs, but critics worry that it may open the door to Fourth Amendment violations."
Link to Original Source

+ - FBI leaves paperwork behind after raid on anti-war->

Submitted by Sprouticus
Sprouticus writes "An interesting development has occured in the case of some anti-war activists who had their house raided by the FBI. Apparently in their hurry to take the photos, computers and phones of the people involved, the FBI left their raid paperwork, including the raid plan and the interrogation questions, behind. This information has been posted oon a website put up to support the activists. It gives some real insight into the FBI mindset."
Link to Original Source
Space

+ - Peter Higgs explains the God Particle for you->

Submitted by HansonMB
HansonMB writes "Just in case you don’t understand what exactly they’re looking for over at CERN, watch this interview with Peter Higgs talking about his life’s work, the Higgs mechanism and the hunt for the mass-conferring particle named after him, the Higgs boson. (Don’t be afraid to close your tabs, turn off your other devices, and hit rewind occasionally.)"
Link to Original Source

Life, like beer, is merely borrowed. -- Don Reed

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