Forgot your password?

Close
typodupeerror

+ - Chemistry Students and Postdocs Take Safety Into Their Own Hands-> 1

Submitted by Jim_Austin
Jim_Austin writes "It's a scandal: Academic science labs are generally far less safe than labs in industry; one estimate says that people working in academic labs are 11x more likely to die than their industrial counterparts. A group of grad students and postdocs in Minnesota decided to address the issue had-on. With encouragement and funding from DOW, and some leadership from their department chairs, they're in the process of totally remaking their departments' safety cultures."
Link to Original Source

+ - Should Newsweek Have Outed Satoshi Nakamoto's Personal Details?->

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes "Newsweek’s Leah McGrath Goodman spent months tracking down the mysterious founder of Bitcoin, “Satoshi Nakamoto,” a name that everybody seemed to believe was a pseudonym for either a single individual or a shadowy collective of programmers. If Satoshi Nakamoto, former government contractor and model-train enthusiast, is actually “Satoshi Nakamoto,” Bitcoin founder, then he’s sitting atop hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto-currency. Does the article's exhaustive listing of Nakamoto's personal details place his security at risk? Many in the Bitcoin community think so, and poured onto the Web to express that opinion. The Newsweek article has raised some interesting questions about the need for thorough journalism versus peoples' right to privacy. For example, should Goodman have posted an image of Nakamoto's house and car, even though information about both would probably be relatively simple to find online, anyway?"
Link to Original Source

+ - Stanford team tries for zippier Wi-Fi in crowded buildings->

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes "Having lots of Wi-Fi networks packed into a condominium or apartment building can hurt everyone's wireless performance, but Stanford University researchers say they've found a way to turn crowding into an advantage. In a dorm on the Stanford campus, they're building a single, dense Wi-Fi infrastructure that each resident can use and manage like their own private network. That means the shared system, called BeHop, can be centrally managed for maximum performance and efficiency while users still assign their own SSIDs, passwords and other settings. The Stanford project is making this happen with inexpensive, consumer-grade access points and SDN (software-defined networking)."
Link to Original Source

+ - Computer Program Allows the Blind to 'See' With Sound-> 1

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes "Scientists have developed an algorithm that converts simple grayscale images into musical soundscapes. Even people blind from birth can use the technology to "see" their surroundings and naviagate around a room. Equally intriguing, the part of the subject's brain responsible for vision was active during these tasks, suggesting our thinking about how the brain works may be wrong. Instead of a "vision center" of the brain, for example, we may actually have a region that helps us "see", whether that input comes from sight or sound."
Link to Original Source

+ - New Tool Makes Android Malware Easier To Create->

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes "A new commercial tool designed to allow cybercriminals to easily transform legitimate Android applications into malicious software has hit the underground market, paving the way for cheap and easy development of sophisticated Android malware. Security researchers from Symantec said Wednesday in a blog post that the tool, called Dendroid, is marketed by its creators as an Android remote administration tool (RAT) and is being sold for $300."
Link to Original Source

+ - Hubble Witnesses Mysterious Breakup of Asteroid->

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes "Hubble has observed some weird things since it was launched in 1990, but this is probably one of the strangest. In September 2013, the Catalina and Pan-STARRS sky surveys spotted a mysterious object in the asteroid belt, a region of rocky debris that occupy the space between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Follow-up observations by the Keck Observatory in Hawaii resolved three separate objects within the fuzzy cloud. It was so strange that Hubble mission managers decided to use the space telescope to get a closer look. And what they saw has baffled and thrilled astronomers in equal measure. “This is a really bizarre thing to observe — we’ve never seen anything like it before,” said co-author Jessica Agarwal of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Germany. “The break-up could have many different causes, but the Hubble observations are detailed enough that we can actually pinpoint the process responsible.”"
Link to Original Source

+ - 16th-century manual shows 'rocket cat' weaponry 1

Submitted by Bomarc
Bomarc writes "An article on KOMO website highlights the proposed use of a 'rocket cat' as weaponry. The — sometimes colorful illustrations that are coming to light illustrations (Digitized by the University of Pennsylvania) that are coming to light from a circa-1530 manual on artillery and siege warfare seem to show jet packs strapped to the backs of cats.

... looks like sharks with lasers have competition!"

+ - Samsung Galaxy Glass Patent Plans To Turn Fingers Into A Keyboard

Submitted by rjmarvin
rjmarvin writes "Samsung looks to have found a way around voice commands for smart glasses by projecting an augmented reality keyboard http://sdt.bz/68883 onto users' hands. Galaxy Glass wearers' thumbs are used as input devices, tapping different areas of their fingers where various keys are virtually mapped. According to the August 2013 patent filing http://patentscope.wipo.int/se... with the WIPO and South Korea's Intellectual Property Office, Samsung states that voice controls are too imprecise a technology, which are too heavily impacted by the noise levels of the surrounding environment."

+ - Proletarian robots getting cheaper to exploit->

Submitted by Hallie Siegel
Hallie Siegel writes "Frank Tobe, returning from the recent Skolkovo Robotics Conference in Russia, writes about the irony of this Moscow Times headline, delves into the vision behind Russia's growing Skolkovo IT cluster, and gives some surprising facts about Russian robotics"
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:Trying too hard (Score 1) 255

by timothy (#46423203) Attached to: Interview: Ask Theo de Raadt What You Will

I've been reading Soylent, too, and like a lot of the stories they've selected. Running a site with reader-driven news and comments gets tricky, even with all the options out there meant to make it easier. Don't envy anyone leaping into it!

Re: interviews -- Nah. Robert (Samzenpus), who's organized the vast bulk of our interviews recently (and at this point, maybe bulk of them in the site's history) managed to get three we've been after for a while, and sometimes that happens in a cluster. Theo turned down my interview overtures a few years back, so I'm especially glad that he's now going to answer questions!

(Who else would you like to see interviewed? Always taking suggestions!)

Cheers,

timothy

+ - Massachusetts Court Says 'Upskirt' Photos Are Legal->

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes "CNN reports, "Massachusetts' highest court ruled Wednesday that it is not illegal to secretly photograph underneath a person's clothing — a practice known as "upskirting" — prompting one prosecutor to call for a revision of state law. The high court ruled that the practice did not violate the law because the women who were photographed while riding Boston public transportation were not nude or partially nude.""
Link to Original Source

+ - Microsoft Confirms DirectX 12 Is Alive And Well, Demo Coming At GDC->

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes "Buzz has been building for the last week that Microsoft would soon unveil the next version of DirectX at the upcoming Games Developer Conference (GDC). Microsoft has now confirmed that its discussion forums at the show won't just be to discuss updates to DX11, but that the company is putting a full court press behind DirectX 12. The company responded sharply over a year ago, when an AMD executive claimed that future versions of the API were essentially dead, but it has been over four years since DX11 debuted. To date, Microsoft has only revealed a few details of the next-generation API. Like AMD's Mantle, it will focus on giving developers "close-to-metal" GPU resource access and reducing CPU overhead. Like Mantle, the goal of DirectX 12 is to give programmers more control over performance tuning, with an eye towards better multi-threading and multi-GPU scaling. Unlike Mantle, DirectX 12 will undoubtedly support a full range of GPUs from AMD, Intel, Nvidia and Qualcomm. Qualcomm's presence is interesting. With Windows RT all but moribund, Qualcomm's interest in that market may have seemed incidental. However, the fact that the company is involved with the DX12 standard could mean that the handset and tablet developer is serious about the Windows market in the long term."
Link to Original Source

+ - Is Traffic Congestion Growing Three Times As Fast As Economy?

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes "Math watch time: For many traffic analysts, INRIX is considered the gold-standard. This week the company says traffic congestion surged in 2013 and grew over three times as fast as the American economy. The bad news: If true, this reverses two consecutive years of traffic declines with a six percent increase in 2013. (GDP, by comparison, grew 1.9 percent last year.) The analysts then theorize links between economic growth and traffic congestion, which makes sense on the surface. (As the economy improves, more jobs are created, so more commuters on the roads) But INRIX's theory creates as many questions as it answers. For example, the U.S. GDP has been steadily growing since 2009. So why did congestion decline in 2011 and 2012?"

+ - It's True: Some People Just Don't Like Music-> 1

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes "Researchers have found that between 1 and 3% of people don't like music of any kind. These people aren't tone deaf or incapable of grasping the emotional meaning of a song—their brains simply didn’t find listening to music rewarding. While some psychiatric disorders are associated with the loss of the ability to feel pleasure, called anhedonia, the music-haters represent the first evidence for not feeling pleasure from only one specific pleasing stimulant, a condition that has been dubbed music-specific anhedonia. Curious where you fall on the music reward spectrum? The researchers have an online quiz. [http://www.brainvitge.org/bmrq.php]"
Link to Original Source

+ - It's the End of (XP) Support as we Know It->

Submitted by X!0mbarg
X!0mbarg writes "We've all heard about the inevitability of it, but M$ has started sending out Downloaded Notifications of its End Of Support for Windows XP as part of Automatic Updates. Has anyone else seen these pop up on their XP systems? I certainly did.

(Apologies in advance for my poor code-fu here.)


Many links abound for reference here:
  • http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/end-support-help?locale=ja-jp
  • http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows/lifecycle
  • http://www.scmagazine.com/pop-ups-to-signal-the-coming-end-of-windows-xp-support/article/336777/
  • http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2014/03/windows-xp-will-now-notify-you-that-its-dying/
  • and the Google-it-for-you reference: https://www.google.ca/search?q=WinXP+End+Of+Support+Notice&num=100&source=univ&tbm=nws&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=mLoYU-7WJ4nTqgHEjoGgCw&ved=0CE4QqAI&biw=1173&bih=750

Anyone else see this as an attempt to scare users into upgrades directly from the desktop?

Yes, we all knew this day would be upon us, but surely we didn't see M$ being so downright aggressive, did we?

Ultimately, what is everyone's opinion on this effort and its' ultimate affect to their usage of the admittedly antiquated OS?

I for one, will still be chugging along on a few systems until the system finally just Dies on me.

Any theories on actual support and afterlife cycle predictions? Anyone still patching together their Win98 systems? Win3.11? What duties have they been relegated to and why? What plans does everyone have in the Upgrade department? Are you waiting for anything specific from M$ before taking the Win8.1 plunge, or planning on holding onto your Win7 systems 'till they pry the code from its cold, dead drive?"
Link to Original Source

"For the man who has everything... Penicillin." -- F. Borquin

Close