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Android

+ - Tizen is no Android, but will still play an important role->

Submitted by Steve Patterson
Steve Patterson writes "Tizen is clumsily positioned directly against Android and iOS. Its backers — Samsung, Intel, the Linux foundation, and a large community of open source developers with experience competing with and against market-leading OS platforms — are not that naive. Naïveté aside, Tizen can play an important role."
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Security

+ - Samsung Galaxy Devices' Lock Screen Easily Bypassed->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "This week revealed not one, but two security vulnerabilities that allow anyone to bypass the lock screen on a variety of Samsung Android smatphones. On Monday, Terence Eden showed how it's possible to run apps and dial numbers on a locked Samsung Galaxy Note II phone running 4.1.2. On Tuesday, Sean McMillan published simple instructions on how to completely bypass the lock screen on the Samsung Galaxy S III (also running Android 4.1.2)."
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Apple

+ - Starbucks that Steve Jobs prank called still receives orders for 4,000 lattes->

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes "In January 2007, Steve Jobs took the stage at Macworld, introduced the iPhone, and forever changed the smartphone landscape. You might remember that he also prank called Starbucks during a demo meant to show how easy the iPhone made it to find nearby coffee shops using Google Maps and call one up. "Yes, I'd like to order 4,000 lattes to go, please. No, just kidding. Wrong number. Goodbye!"

That Starbucks, and the woman who answered his call, still receives joke orders for 4,000 lattes. Incredibly, FastCompany was able to track down the woman who answered Jobs call. Her name is Ying Hang "Hannah" Zhang and she still works at the very same Starbucks.

Adding to the humor is that store managers weren't even aware of the significance of the fake orders until FastCompany contacted them and alerted them to the existence of Jobs's now iconic iPhone introduction."
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Politics

+ - Texas Declares War on Robots-> 2

Submitted by Mr_Blank
Mr_Blank writes "Organizations like the EFF and ACLU have been raising the alarm over increased government surveillance of US citizens. Legislators haven't been quick to respond to concerns of government spying on citizens. But Texas legislators are apparently quite concerned that private citizens operating hobby drones might spot environmental violations by businesses. Representative Lance Gooden has introduced HB912 which proposes: "A person commits an offense if the person uses or authorizes the use of an unmanned vehicle or aircraft to capture an image without the express consent of the person who owns or lawfully occupies the real property captured in the image. ('Image' is defined as including any type of recorded telemetry from sensors that measure sound waves, thermal, infrared, ultraviolet, visible light, or other electromagnetic waves, odor, or other conditions.)" Can you foresee any unintended consequences if this proposal becomes law?"
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Comment: Re:It's a spam filter (Score 1) 3

by Toe, The (#43036129) Attached to: Apple censoring iCloud emails - deciding what you can and can't say.

Nah. These days some accounts receive hundreds even thousands of spam attempts each day.

Remember, Apple always chooses what it thinks is best for the user (and people generally appear to be relatively happy with this). So they don't want the user to have to sift through scores and scores of spam folder messages every day. Instead, they just kill messages that they think are likely to be spam.

You may think they're being ridiculous or overeager, but I still very much doubt they are being moralistic.

Comment: It's a spam filter (Score 1) 3

by Toe, The (#43034869) Attached to: Apple censoring iCloud emails - deciding what you can and can't say.

Anyone who has spent any time working with mail servers would know that fighting spam is a full-time and very tricky business.

It sounds like Apple's spam filter is cranked a little too high. It very well may be that they don't even know it, since many spam filters work on bayesian analysis of content (basically predicting what is likely to be spam based on what is known to be spam).

To suggest Apple is applying morality filters is just incredibly inflammatory and irresponsible.

Biotech

+ - Did viruses evolve from an extinct domain of life?->

Submitted by Shipud
Shipud writes "A study was recently published by a group from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign . The authors analyzed the structures of proteins found in the genomes of organisms from the three domains of life. Those domains are eukarya which includes all plant, animals, fungi and some microbes; bacteria, and archaea which is a group of single-celled microorganisms distinct from eukarya and bacteria. The researchers also included a group of viruses known as NCLDVs (Nucelocyptoplasmic Large DNA viruses), Their conclusion is these viruses may have evolved from a, now extinct, fourth domain of life. Viruses are not considered to be alive, or even to have a place on the universal tree of life, by most researchers. So their claim has far-reaching consequences in our understanding of the origins of life."
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+ - Close Approach of Asteroid 2013 CL22->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "2013 CL22 has an estimated size of 30 m — 68 m and it had a close approach with Earth at about 1.2 LD (Lunar Distances = ~384,000 kilometers) or 0.0031 AU (1 AU = ~150 million kilometers) at 0743 UT on 2013 Feb. 02."
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Politics

+ - First city in the United States to pass an anti-drone resolution->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Charlottesville, Virginia is the first city in the United States to pass an anti-drone resolution. The writing of the resolution coincides with a leaked memo outlining the legal case for drone strikes on US citizens and a Federal Aviation Administration plan to allow the deployment of some 30,000 domestic drones."
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Security

+ - Raspberry Pi used for prototype hardware laptop docking station backdoor->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "At Black Hat Europe in March a security researcher from NCC Group will show how a Raspberry Pi can be used as a hardware backdoor when built into a modified laptop docking station. While details on their blog are a little light at the moment it shows how versatile the platform is and the diverse applications outside of learning.."
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Comment: Nuance (Score 5, Funny) 123

by Toe, The (#42616121) Attached to: DHS Steps In As Regulator for Medical Device Security

Technology in hospitals? Good.

Internet-connected technology in hospitals? Why?

Sure, people in hospitals need information, but surely something which is assisting in the physical process of a surgery (etc.) doesn't need to be in the cloud, does it?

The cloud can be cool, but be reasonable. Why not put the operations of the CIA into Salesforce.com while we're at it?

+ - Mathematical breakthrough sets out rules for more effective teleportation ->

Submitted by dsinc
dsinc writes "Once considered impossible, in 1993 a team of scientists calculated that teleportation could work in principle using quantum laws. Quantum teleportation harnesses the âentanglementâ(TM) law to transmit particle-sized bites of information across potentially vast distances in an instant.

Entanglement involves a pair of quantum particles such as electrons or protons that are intrinsically bound together, retaining synchronisation between the two that holds whether the particles are next to each other or on opposing sides of a galaxy. Through this connection, quantum bits of information â" qubits â" can be relayed using only traditional forms of classical communication.

Previous teleportation protocols have fallen into one of two camps, those that could only send scrambled information requiring correction by the receiver or, more recently, âoeport-basedâ teleportation that doesnâ(TM)t require a correction, but needs an impractical amount of entanglement â" as each object sent would destroy the entangled state.

Now, physicists from Cambridge, University College London, and the University of Gdansk have developed a protocol to provide an optimal solution in which the entangled state is ârecycledâ(TM), so that the gateway between particles holds for the teleportation of multiple objects."
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+ - 19 yr hacker reveals how the results of a state election in Brazil was altered->

Submitted by
Bruno Cassol
Bruno Cassol writes "Accompanied by an expert in data transmission and a police chief, a young 19 year old hacker showed how — through illegal and privileged access to the intranet used to transfer election results — intercepted data and modified results benefiting candidates over others. All without anything being officially detected."
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Security

+ - Hacked review system leads to fake reviews and retraction of scientific papers->

Submitted by dstates
dstates writes "Retraction Watch reports that fake reviewer information was placed in Elsevier's peer review database allowing unethical authors to review their own or colleagues manuscripts. As a result, 11 scientific publications have been retracted. The hack is particularly embarrassing for Elsevier because the commercial publisher has been arguing that the quality of its review process justifies its restrictive access policies and high costs of the journals it publishes."
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"Contrary to popular belief, penguins are not the salvation of modern technology. Neither do they throw parties for the urban proletariat."

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