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The paper in the posting is a reply to a comment with the contrary interpretation (i.e. that Lake Cheko isn't an impact) [Same paper as PDF]. The critical comment should be cited too.

The original paper by Gasperini et al. (2007) is also available as PDF and HTML.

I'm not particularly convinced by the evidence they present. It's quite circumstantial. What they need to find and sample is an ejecta-related layer in the lake stratigraphy or in a lake nearby, and you'd think that if such a large impactor hit the ground there would be plenty of micrometeorite debris in the sediments of the surrounding area. Geomorphological evidence and age just isn't enough.

Ian Lamont writes "A security researcher calling himself porkythepig has published attack code that can supposedly brick most HP and Compaq laptops. The exploit uses an ActiveX control in HP's Software Update. It would 'let an attacker corrupt Windows' kernel files, making the laptop unbootable, or with a little more effort, allow hacks that would result in a PC hijack or malware infection.' The same researcher last week outlined a batch of additional vulnerabilities in HP and Compaq laptops, for which HP later issued patches."

prostoalex writes "Georgia Tech and University of Oxford scientists claim bees can help up develop a better Internet traffic algorithms. By observing bees, the researchers noticed that bees pass back information on route quality. 'On a basic level, the honeybee's dilemma is a tale of two flower patches. If one patch is yielding better nectar than the other, how can the hive use its workforce most efficiently to retrieve the best supply at the moment? The solution, which earned Austrian zoologist Karl von Frisch a Nobel Prize, is a communication system called the waggle dance.' Any practical applications of that? Well, apparently ad servers, serving banners across a variety of servers, can report back on the time it took to generate the page."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Wind power is one of the world's fastest growing electric energy sources, but as wind is intermittent, a single wind farm cannot deliver a steady amount of energy. This is why scientists at Stanford University want to connect wind farms to develop a cheaper and more reliable power source. Interconnecting wind farms with a transmission grid should reduce the power swings caused by wind variability and provide a somewhat constant and reliable electric power (or 'baseload' power) provided by other power plants."

Bergkamp10 writes "Consumer and corporate use of the Internet could overload the current capacity and lead to brown-outs in two years unless backbone providers invest billions of dollars in new infrastructure, according to a new study. A flood of new video and other Web content could overwhelm the Net by 2010 unless backbone providers invest up to US $137 billion in new capacity, more than double what service providers plan to invest, according to the study by Nemertes Research Group. In North America alone, backbone investments of $42 billion to $55 billion will be needed in the next three to five years to keep up with demand, Nemertes said. Quoting from the study: 'Our findings indicate that although core fiber and switching/routing resources will scale nicely to support virtually any conceivable user demand, Internet access infrastructure, specifically in North America, will likely cease to be adequate for supporting demand within the next three to five years.' Internet users will create 161 exabytes of new data this year."

Anonymous Coward writes "Hi — I'm sort of desperately in need of help because somebody is harassing my sister. I was wondering if any of you knew or had suggestions about how to track down an ISP or email address of an anonymous posting on craigslist.org. Some dickhead posted my sister's phone number and a raunch photo (not her) on the casual encounters section. Needless to say, she's been getting a lot of nasty calls and is really freaked out. Shy of subpoena-ing craigslist (which we think we're gonna do), I wanted to know if there was a way to find out who did it. Then I can begin plotting his (her?) comeuppance ... I don't know if its possible. I don't know if any of you are looking to make a few bucks to do it (we'll most definitely pay). I swear this isn't anything sketchy and honestly, you'd really be helping her out because she's having a shit day. Thanks in advance and please contact us at the email posted."

eldavojohn writes "It's a well known situation and one often studied in everything from behavioral sciences to artificial intelligence. It involves the idea that cooperation is promoted by two or more individuals working together to achieve a return greater than working for their own interests. Scientists are now leaning toward the iterated snow drift game (ISD) replacing the iterated prisoner's dilemma (IPD) to accurately model what humans experience in real life. Essentially it removes the defective partner risk that is inherent in the IPD situation. If you are fingered by your friend while in separate interrogation rooms while you claim that both you and your friend are innocent, the outcome is much worse. In the ISD, your idle partner does not negate points from your efforts to work together — it just doesn't add anything either."
http://www.physorg.com/news111145481.html

An anonymous reader writes "In an attempted palace coup that would not have been out of place in a Shakespearian tragedy, a moderator faction at Mac Serial Junkie, one of the largest underground Mac communities, was shut out this weekend after it was discovered that many staff members were plotting a coup. The plans included a surreptitious takeover of the domain name macserialjunkie.com. In an Open Letter to the Community, the founders of MSJ explain how a number of people at the highest levels of the underground planned their takeover activities for almost two years, only to be foiled at the last minute."

prospective_user writes "Do you think you have good ears? Think again.

The community at Hydrogenaudio has prepared a Public Listening Test for comparison of the most popular audio codecs (AAC, Vorbis, and Microsoft's WMA included) in a battle to see how they stand at compressing audio at 64kbps.

Many of the participants right now have expressed their surprise at being unable to determine which is the original and which is the compressed version of 18 samples covering a vast amount of musical styles.

The results of this test (and other that are conducted at Hydrogenaudio) will be used by the developers of the codecs to further improve the "transparency" and let this kind of test be even harder.

Everyone is invited to participate and show how good your listening is!"

ancientribe writes "As if you need another reason not to use WiFi unprotected, here's one: a researcher has released a tool that lets hackers "sidejack" your machine and access your Web accounts. Called Hamster, the tool basically clones the victim's cookies by sniffing their session IDs and controlling their Website accounts.

http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=130 692&WT.svl=news1_2"

OpenSourceNut writes "The iPhone has been hacked offering access to third party programs. Businessweek has a full article explaining the various functions of the programs now being used. Hello World!"
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2007/tc2007081_895247.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily

Wired reports that researcher Neal Krawetz revealed some veeeeeery interesting things about the Al-Qaeda images that our government loves to show off.

From the article: "Krawetz was also able to determine that the writing on the banner behind al-Zawahiri's head was added to the image afterward. In the second picture above showing the results of the error level analysis, the light clusters on the image indicate areas of the image that were added or changed. The subtitles and logos in the upper right and lower left corners (IntelCenter is an organization that monitors terrorist activity and As-Sahab is the video production branch of al Qaeda) were all added at the same time, while the banner writing was added at a different time, likely around the same time that al-Zawahiri was added, Krawetz says." Why would Al-Qaeda add an IntelCenter logo to their video? Why would IntelCenter add an Al-Qaeda logo? Methinks we have bigger fish to fry than Gonzo and his fired attorneys... }:-) The article contains links to Krawetz's presentation and the source code he used to analyze the photos.

Slashdot users of the Discussion2 system now have a new 'Update' button visible on their floating control slider, as well at the end of the discussion. This button will update your page to include comments posted since the page was loaded, so now you can keep discussion pages up to date without doing a full reload. It's nowhere near complete yet, but it's a nice step that goes a long ways towards making it easier to use larger discussions while they are actively updating. If you aren't using Discussion2, you need to log in, and toggle the checkbox visible on every page. You probably need bother only if you are using Firefox 1.5 or 2.x or Safari. You can send bug reports to me if you want.