66705857
submission
aesoteric writes:
Australian researchers have programmed industrial robots to tackle the vast array of e-waste thrown out every year. The research shows robots can learn and memorise how various electronic products — such as LCD screens — are designed, enabling those products to be disassembled for recycling faster and faster. The end goal is less than five minutes to dismantle a product.
51502349
submission
aesoteric writes:
Yahoo is set to launch its first formal bug bounty system after Swiss pen testers complained about the $12.50 vouchers offered for locating XSS vulnerabilities. The web giant also said the voucher rewards were informal and actually funded out of the pockets of the company's own IT security staff.
51058027
submission
littlekorea writes:
The world's largest web-scale users of MySQL have committed to one further upgrade to the Oracle-controlled database — but Facebook and Twitter are also eyeing off more open options from MariaDB and cheaper options from the NoSQL community. Who will pay for MySQL enterprise licenses into the future?
50451373
submission
Bismillah writes:
Graduated response regimes that warn and then penalise users for infringing file sharing do not appear to work, new research from Monash University in Australia has found. The paper studied "three strikes" laws in France, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan and the UK, as well as other anti-filesharing regimes in the US and Ireland, but found scant evidence that they're effective.
49539015
submission
AlbanX writes:
A gang of suspected Romanian criminals is using 3D printers and computer-aided design (CAD) to manufacture “sophisticated” ATM skimming devices to fleece Sydney residents.
One Romanian national has been charged by NSW Police.
The state police found one gang that had allegedly targeted 15 ATMs across metropolitan Sydney, affecting tens of thousands of people and nabbing around $100,000.
47099453
submission
aesoteric writes:
A man's backyard beer fridge in Australia has been busted interfering with the cellular network of major carrier Telstra. Engineers used an internally-developed software "robot" to crawl log files from the network and sent a field team out to pinpoint the cause of the interference.
44377917
submission
mask.of.sanity writes:
Twitter, Linkedin, Yahoo! and Hotmail accounts are open to hijacking thanks to a flaw that allows cookies to be stolen and reused.
Attackers need to intercept cookies while the user is logged into the service because the cookies expire on log-out ( except LinkedIn which keeps cookies for three months). The server will still consider them valid.
For the Twitter attack, you need to grab the auth_token string and insert it into your local Twitter cookies. Reload Twitter, and you'll be logged in as your target (video here). Not even password changes will kick you out.
35225161
submission
aesoteric writes:
Tasmania's police force has taken the unusual step of asking the public to stop alerting it to every "abusive or harassing" comment posted to Facebook or other social media sites. The force said it was "increasingly receiving complaints" about material posted to the sites, but sought to clarify that "the use of technology to undertake some conduct does not in itself create an offence".
33678413
submission
schliz writes:
Internet users could contribute to an official blacklist of suspected terrorist content under a budding 'Clean IT' project, backed by the European Commission. Participating governments are putting together 13 proposals in a text that commits web hosts, search engines and ISPs to helping to weed out content that incites acts of terror.
33512601
submission
aesoteric writes:
Six weeks after Hollywood lost a landmark internet piracy case in Australia, it appears the film studios have gone cold on the idea of helping develop legal avenues to access copyrighted content as a way to combat piracy. Instead, they've produced research to show people will continue pirating even if there are legitimate content sources available. The results appear to support the studio's policy position that legislation is a preferable way of dealing with the issue.
33511449
submission
schliz writes:
Australian tech publication iTnews is defining ”patent trolls" as those who claim rights to an invention without commercializing it, and notes that government research organization CSIRO could come under that definition.
The CSIRO in April reached a $220 million settlement over three US telcos’ usage of WLAN that it invented in the early 1990s. Critics have argued that the CSIRO had failed to contribute to the world’s first wifi 802.11 standard, failed to commercialize the wifi chip through its spin-off, Radiata, and chose to wage its campaign in the Eastern District courts of Texas, a location favored by more notorious patent trolls.
33412307
submission
aesoteric writes:
Australia's top miners have opened a new front in their march to automation, flying unmanned aerial vehicles in increasing numbers at remote sites across the country. They've been used to inspect a fire-damaged oil rig, perform aerial photography and stockpile surveys. There is also a trend towards non US-built UAVs, due to the lag in receiving export approvals for the aircraft and spare parts.
33124243
submission
schliz writes:
The Australian software patent system could be used by open source developers to ensure their inventions remain available to the community, a conference organised by intellectual property authority IP Australia heard this week.
According to Australian inventor Ric Richardson, whose company came out on top of a multi-million dollar settlement with Microsoft in March, a world without software patents would be "open slather for anybody who can just go faster than the next person".
Software developer Ben Sturmfels, whose 2010 anti-software-patent petition won the support of open source community members such as Jonathan Oxer, Andrew Tridgell, and software freedom activist Richard Stallman, disagreed.
32999465
submission
aesoteric writes:
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has voiced a renewed desire to see the company open its architecture to the masses, allowing savvy users to expand and add to their products at will. However, Wozniak qualified his desire for a more open Apple by arguing that openness should not impinge on the quality of the products themselves. He also sees any change of heart on openness as a challenge when Apple continues to rake in huge cash with its current model.
32603487
submission
aesoteric writes:
The combustion of an Apple iPhone 4 after a regional flight in Australia was likely caused by a botched repair of the handset by an unauthorised repairer, according to air safety investigators in the US and Australia. A small metal screw had been misplaced in the battery bay of the handset. The screw punctured the battery casing and causing an internal short circuit, causing the iPhone to emit dense smoke.
