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Security

Submission + - SANS NetWars tests cybersecurity pros against peers (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Organizers played "Eye of the Tiger" and "We are the Champions" over the loudspeakers as participants in the SANS Institute's NetWars Tournament of Champions sat down at their laptops and prepared for action. About 200 cybersecurity professionals, and about 30 high school students, gathered last week in Washington, D.C., for two nights of NetWars, a realistic cybersecurity competition, with prizes including an Apple iPad, Star Wars chop sticks and gift cards. But many participants were playing as much for pride as they were for the prizes.
Open Source

Submission + - Open-source hardware hacker Ladyada awarded Entrepreneur of the Year (entrepreneur.com)

Submitted by
ptorrone
ptorrone writes: "Limor "Ladyada" Fried of open-source hardware company Adafruit Industries was awarded Entrepreneur of the Year by Entrepreneur Magazine. From the article — "Recognizable by her signature vivid-pink locks, Fried (or Ladyada, as she is known on the internet) is one of the dominant forces behind the maker movement--a legion of do-it-yourself-minded folks who create cool things by tweaking everyday technology. Last year New York City-based Adafruit did a booming $10 million trade in sales of DIY open-source electronic hardware kits"."
Iphone

Submission + - Every Apple-Made App On Your iPhone Can Be Replaced By A Better App (businessinsider.com)

Submitted by
Andy Prough
Andy Prough writes: "Business Insider's Steve Kovach writes that he has now replaced all of Apple's built-in iPhone apps with those made by 3rd-party developers: Gmail for Mail, Google Maps for Apple Maps, Fantastical for Calendar, Chrome for Safari, Camera+ for Camera, Clear for Reminders, Evernote for Note, Adappt for Contacts, and others. Kovach states, "And now, all of the Apple-made apps are now in a folder labeled with an Emoji of a smiling pile of poop." While Kovach believes this is a good thing for iPhone users to have access to superior software, the San Francisco Chronicle posits that "it's becoming conventional wisdom that Apple isn't particularly good at making software for the iPhone"."
Google

Submission + - Google brings the Dead Sea scrolls to the digital age (blogspot.com) 5

Submitted by skade88
skade88 writes: Google has been working to bring many old manuscripts to the internet in high resolutions for all to see.

From the Google Press Release:
'A little over a year ago, we helped put online five manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls—ancient documents that include the oldest known biblical manuscripts in existence. Written more than 2,000 years ago on pieces of parchment and papyrus, they were preserved by the hot, dry desert climate and the darkness of the caves in which they were hidden. The Scrolls are possibly the most important archaeological discovery of the 20th century.

Today, we’re helping put more of these ancient treasures online. The Israel Antiquities Authority is launching the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, an online collection of some 5,000 images of scroll fragments, at a quality never seen before. The texts include one of the earliest known copies of the Book of Deuteronomy, which includes the Ten Commandments; part of Chapter 1 of the Book of Genesis, which describes the creation of the world; and hundreds more 2,000-year-old texts, shedding light on the time when Jesus lived and preached, and on the history of Judaism.'
Science

Submission + - Spider that Builds It's Own Spider Decoys Discovered (wired.com)

Submitted by
OakDragon
OakDragon writes: "A newly discovered species of spider — apparently of the genus Cyclosa — has been discovered in the Peruvian Amazon. The spider builds an elaborate decoy out of web, twigs, and other scraps, that appears to be a much larger spider. The spider will even cause the decoy to move, marionette-style, by shaking the web."
Space

Submission + - Cassini's Christmas Gift: In the Shadow of Saturn (discovery.com)

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "As the Cassini mission continues to orbit the ringed gas giant Saturn, it's hard to imagine what magnificent view the NASA spacecraft will show us next. Today, however, is one for the history books. As a very special Christmas holiday treat, the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) team have processed a magnificent view of Saturn that is rarely seen — a portrait from the dark side of the planet."
Facebook

Submission + - Ayatollah's Granddaughter Bypasses Censors to Join Facebook and Criticize Iran (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Censorship doesn't work too well in Iran since millions of people use VPNs, including Ayatollah Khomeini's own granddaughter, who has 5,000 Facebook friends and says Iran "should stop fearing the transfer of new communications technology."
http://www.ibtimes.com/khomeinis-granddaughter-knows-how-win-facebook-friends-influence-ayatollahs-946776
Science

Submission + - Researchers Create Ultrastretchable Wires Using Liquid Metal (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Researchers, by using liquid metal, have created wires that can stretch up to eight times their original length while retaining its conduction properties. Boffins over at North Carolina State University made the stretchable wires by filling in a tube made out of extremely elastic polymer with gallium and indium liquid metal alloy.

Submission + - blekko donates search data to Comomn Crawl (blekko.com)

Submitted by Greg Lindahl
Greg Lindahl writes: blekko is donating search engine ranking data for 140 million domains and 22 billion urls to the Common Crawl Foundation. Common Crawl is a non-profit dedicated to making the greatest (yet messiest) dataset of our time, the web, available to everyone, including tinkerers, hackers, activists, and new companies. blekko's ranking data will initially be used to improve the quality of Common Crawl's 8 billion webpage public crawl of the web, and eventually will be directly available to the public.
Businesses

Submission + - ISP Data Caps Just a 'Cash Cow' (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ars summarizes a new report into the common practice of ISPs implementing data caps, ostensibly to keep their network traffic under control. The report found a much simpler reason: money. Quoting: 'The truly curious thing about the entire debate has been the way in which caps have mostly remained steady for years, even as the price of delivering data has plunged. For example, paying for transit capacity at a New York Internet exchange costs 50 percent less now than it did just one year ago, and many major ISPs aren't paying at all to exchange data thanks to peering. So why don't prices seem to fall? ... The authors of the new paper contend that all explanations are more or less hand-waving designed to disguise the fact that Internet providers are now raking in huge—in some cases, record—profit margins, without even the expense of building new networks. ...While Internet users have to endure a ceaseless litany of complaints about a "spectrum crunch" and an "exaflood" of data from which ISPs are suffering, most wireline ISPs are actually investing less money in their network as a percentage of revenue, and wireless operators like AT&T and Verizon are seeing huge growth in their average revenue per user (ARPU) numbers after phasing out unlimited data plans—which means money out of your pocket. In the view of the New America authors, this revenue growth is precisely the point of data caps.'
Graphics

Submission + - Carmack: Next-gen games will still target 30 fps (develop-online.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Games developed for the next-generation of consoles will still target a performance of 30 frames per second, claims id Software co-founder John Carmack. Taking to Twitter, the industry veteran said he could 'pretty much guarantee' developers would target the standard, rather than aiming for anything as high as 60 fps. ID Software games such as Rage and the Call of Duty series both hit up to 60 fps, but many titles in the current generation fall short such as the likes of Battlefield 3, which runs at 30 fps on consoles. 'Unfortunately, I can pretty much guarantee that a lot of next gen games will still target 30 fps,' said Carmack.

Submission + - Wal-Mart implicated in widespread bribery in Mexico (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by
Darren Hiebert
Darren Hiebert writes: "An excellent example of investigative journalism conducted by the New York Times has implicated Wal-Mart in extensive bribery, revealing the company as "an aggressive and creative corrupter, offering large payoffs to get what the law otherwise prohibited" in its in-depth story The Bribery Aisle: How Wal-Mart Got Its Way in Mexico."
Apple

Submission + - Patent Wars 2012: Six Key Battles in the Technology Industry (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by
DavidGilbert99
DavidGilbert99 writes: "2012 has been the year of the Patent Wars. While the battle between Apple and Samsung rages across ten countries, it is not all about the two smartphone giants, with Google, Motorola, Microsoft and Oracle all involved in high-profile case too.

here are six of the most important patents battles of the last 12 months."

Submission + - What do you buy a 90 year old, tech-savy Dad who has everything? (bbc.com)

Submitted by Bearhouse
Bearhouse writes: My Dad amazes me with (a) his longevity & energy, and (b) his continued ability to mess around with electronics stuff. Since he already has things ranging from valve amps made from war-surplus, via an original IBM PC kit to an Android tablet, I was going to buy him a Raspberry Pi for Christmas. Turns out he's already got one. I saw nothing that really got me excited in the attached link, so your ideas would be appreciated, thanks.
Apple

Submission + - Samsung drops European injunction requests against Apple (itworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Samsung dropped all claims pending in European courts in which it asserted patents that are essential for mobile communication devices to prevent the sales of Apple products in Europe.

The injunction requests against Apple, which aimed to get courts to impose sales bans on infringing products, were withdrawn in the U.K., France, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy.

Samsung only withdrew the injunctions requests — other litigation against Apple in Europe continues, Anne ter Braak, a spokeswoman for Samsung in the Netherlands, said in an email on Tuesday.

While Samsung said it withdrew its claims in the interest of protecting consumer choice, it could have to do with a European antitrust investigation.
Security

Submission + - TSA (Finally) Studying Health Effects of Body Scanners (propublica.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A 2011 ProPublica series found that the TSA had glossed over the small cancer risk posed by its X-ray body scanners at airports across the country. While countries in Europe have long prohibited the scanners, the TSA is just now getting around to studying the health effects.
Earth

Submission + - The World's Fastest-Growing Cause of Death Is Pollution from Car Exhaust (vice.com)

Submitted by
pigrabbitbear
pigrabbitbear writes: "Cars, once again, are killing us. They're killing us in crashes and accidents, yes, and they're encouraging us to grow obese and then killing us a little more slowly. But, more than ever before, they're killing us with their pollution.

Particulate air pollution, along with obesity, is now the two fastest-growing causes of death in the world, according to a new study published in the Lancet.

The study found that in 2010, 3.2 million people died prematurely from the air pollution–particularly the sooty kind that spews from the exhaust pipes of cars and trucks. And of those untimely deaths, 2.1 million were in Asia, where a boom in car use has choked the streets of India and China's fast-expanding cities with smog."
Security

Submission + - Hacker Behind Leaked Nude Celebrity Photos Gets 10 Years (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: A US judge sentenced a computer hacker to 10 years in prison on Monday for breaking into the email accounts of celebrities and stealing private photos. The hacker accessed the personal email accounts and devices of stars including Scarlett Johansson, Christina Aguilera and Renee Olstead, among dozens of other people he hacked.

The hackers arrest in October 2011 stemmed from an 11-month investigation into the hacking of over 50 entertainment industry names, many of them young female stars. Hacked pictures of Johansson showed her in a state of undress in a domestic setting. Aguilera's computer was hacked in December 2010, when racy photos of her also hit the Internet. Mila Kunis' cell phone was hacked in September that year with photos of her, including one in a bathtub, spread online.
According to the FBI, the hacker used open-source, public information to try to guess a celebrity's email password, and then would breach the account.

Submission + - 5 Scenarios Where Piracy Didn't Matter

Submitted by adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: With news around Psy making about $8.1 million thanks to The Gangam Style video on YouTube and its 1 billion views, one can't help but wonder that there are certain cases where a slightly more relaxed attitude towards piracy can actually work in ones favor. In fact a recently published article highlights four other scenarios where individuals have made piracy work in their favor.

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