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Submission + - Mozilla Fights In Court To Get Info About Potential Firefox Flaw

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla has asked a Washington State District Court to compel FBI investigators to provide details about a vulnerability in the Tor Browser with them before they share it with the defendant in a lawsuit, so that they could fix it before the knowledge becomes public. The lawsuit in question is against Jay Michaud, a Vancouver (Wa.) teacher that stands accused of accessing and downloading child pornography from a website on the Dark Web.

Submission + - Google: Gmail users 'have no legitimate expectation of privacy' (rt.com)

Submitted by KDEnut
KDEnut writes: As tensions worsen among privacy-focused email users amid the escalating scandal surrounding government surveillance, a brief filed by attorneys for Google has surfaced showing that Gmail users should never expect their communications to be kept secret.

Submission + - Astronomers Identify Asteroids That Can Easily Be Captured

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Long overlooked as mere rocky chunks leftover from the formation of the solar system, asteroids have recently gotten a lot more scrutiny as NASA moves forward with plans to capture, tow, and place a small asteroid somewhere near our planet and two different private space companies, Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, plan to seek out and mine precious metals and water from near-Earth asteroids. Now Adam Mann reports that astronomers have identified 12 candidate Easily Retrievable Objects (EROs) ranging in size from approximately 2 meters to 60 meters in diameter that already come (cosmically) close enough to our planet, that it would take a relatively small push to put into orbits around Lagrange points near Earth using existing rocket technology. For example, 2006 RH120, could be sent into orbit around L2 by changing its velocity by just 58 meters per second with a single burn on 1 February 2021. Moving one of these EROs would be a “logical stepping stone towards more ambitious scenarios of asteroid exploration and exploitation, and possibly the easiest feasible attempt for humans to modify the Solar System environment outside of Earth (PDF),” write the authors in Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy. None of the 12 ERO asteroids are new to astronomers; in fact one of them became briefly famous when it was found to be temporarily orbiting the Earth until 2007. But until now nobody had realized just how easily these bodies could be captured.

Comment A mix of all of them I guess. (Score 1) 309

by KDEnut (#39966611) Attached to: What do you usually do with old hardware?
Depends on the hardware.

Anything still decent I tend to turn over and donate to Goodwill or a school, usually with a linux distro running.
Obsolete mainboards, gpu's, cpus, psu's, etc I tend to put in the recycling center's electronics part.
All hard drives get fuzzed, and horded.
All Cables get horded. Period.
Science

Submission + - Anti Wi-Fi Wallpaper To Go On Sale In 2013, Costs A Tad More Than Normal Ones (itproportal.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: A new type of wallpaper, which has been developed by scientists from the "institut polytechnique Grenoble INP" and the "Centre Technique du Papier", will go on sale in 2013 after a Finnish firm, Ahlstrom acquired the license. What looks like a bog standard wallpaper roll actually contains silver particles that allows it to filter out up to three different frequencies simultaneously. It is not the first time that such a technology has surfaced. Back in 2004, BAE Systems was tasked by Ofcom to come up with a similar solution based on what was then called a stealth wallpaper. It used copper instead of silver and blocked Wi-Fi signals while letting GSM, 4G and emergency calls through. Back then though, a square meter cost £500 whereas the Wi-Fi wallpaper devised by the French researchers should be priced reasonably, with costs matching those of a "classic", mid-range wallpaper according to M. Lemaître-Auger, from Grenoble INP.

Submission + - Indian BMD shield ready (hindustantimes.com) 1

Submitted by darkstar019
darkstar019 writes: The ballistic missile defense shield system (at par with Patriot 3 system) has reached its operational readiness and is ready to be deployed in two cities. One wonders how much time it would take to respond to an actual chinese/pakistani threat given the IRBMs are only minutes away from destroying major cities.
The two level BMD still appears a few years away.
Technology

Submission + - Samsung unwraps latest Galaxy rival to iPhone (reuters.com)

Submitted by
fishmike
fishmike writes: "Samsung Electronics unveiled a new top-of-the-range Galaxy smartphone in London on Thursday, updating the most direct rival to Apple's iPhone with a larger touch screen and more powerful processor.

The South Korean technology group, which overtook Finnish company Nokia (NOK1V.HE) as the world's biggest cellphone maker earlier this year, said the new Galaxy SIII model would go on sale in some markets in late May and around the world from June."
Linux

Submission + - Server side "open" solutions can block Linux on the desktop (fsfe.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The blog entry shows how Linux based alternatives can serve to block Linux on the desktop, and in particular slow down LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org adoption through the mechanics of Microsoft's licensing strategy and argues Open Source Groupware should a) not focus on Outlook and b) work hand in hand with the Open Source Offices.
Censorship

Submission + - Anonymous attacks serious crime site in response to UK Pirate Bay ban (daniweb.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Looks like Operation Payback is alive and well in the UK as the website of the Serious and Organized Crime Agency remains offline more than 36 hours after being hit by a DDoS attack. Anonymous has yet to lay cliam to it, but with the courts ordering ISPs to block The Pirate Bay just days earlier, seems highly likely.
Australia

Submission + - Optus loses second battle in Aussie TV-timeshifting battle (abc.net.au)

Submitted by beaverdownunder
beaverdownunder writes: After winning an initial legal battle to continue its mobile TV Now terrestrial-television re-broadcasting service, Optus has lost a second battle in Australian Federal court. The Optus system 'time-shifted' broadcast signals by two minutes, and then streamed them to customers' mobile phones.

In the previous ruling, the judge sided with Optus' argument that since the customer requested the service, they were the ones recording the signal, and thus was fair-use under Australian copyright law. However, the new ruling had declared Optus to be the true entity recording and re-distributing the broadcasts, and thus is in violation of the law.

There has been no word yet on whether Optus will appeal the decision, but as they could be retroactively liable for a great deal of damages, it is almost certain that they will.

Submission + - Any Hotmail account could be hacked by just sending a specific string (whitec0de.com) 2

Submitted by fxbar
fxbar writes: Any hotmail account could be taken over by sending "+++)-" to the server. The problem is fixed now. Hackers sold accounts for 20$. Here more techinical detail: http://www.vulnerability-lab.com/get_content.php?id=529

The article speculates about rumors that "... there exists another critical vulnerability but it’s knowledge is limited to only the hackers who frequent the dark web."

Maybe this explains: http://idle.slashdot.org/story/12/04/25/2055225/microsofts-hotmail-challenge-backfires
News

Submission + - Taxing junk food: A new public health campaign against obesity (patexia.com) 2

Submitted by
ericjones12398
ericjones12398 writes: "Today, many developed and developing countries including European Union nations, Australia, South Africa, Egypt, Turkey, Bangladesh and Vietnam apply excise taxes on unhealthy products. Research has shown that both for tobacco and alcohol, excise taxes are an effective way of reducing consumption. With respect to tobacco, a 10 percent price increase in cigarettes is shown to reduce demand by 4 percent in high-income countries and by 8 percent in low-middle income countries. Taxes imposed on cigarettes have not only prevented people from starting to smoke, but have also reduced rates of relapse for those who recently quit smoking."
Displays

Submission + - MIT Researchers Invent 'Super Glass' (ibtimes.com) 1

Submitted by
redletterdave
redletterdave writes: "On Thursday, researchers at MIT announced a breakthrough in glass-making technology, which basically involves a new way to create surface textures on glass to eliminate all of the drawbacks of glass, including unwanted reflections and glare. The research team wanted to build glass that could be adaptable to any environment: Their "multifunctional" glass is not only crystal clear, but it also causes water droplets to bounce right off its surface, "like tiny rubber balls." The glass is self-cleaning, anti-reflective, and superhydrophobic. The invention has countless applications, including TV screens, as well as smartphone and tablet displays that benefit from the self-cleaning ability of the glass by resisting moisture and contamination by sweat."
Ubuntu

Submission + - Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) released! (linuxstall.com)

Submitted by
Chankey Pathak
Chankey Pathak writes: "The Ubuntu team is very pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Long-Term Support) for Desktop, Server, Cloud, and Core products.

Codenamed “Precise Pangolin”, 12.04 continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. The team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing a few new features and improving quality control."

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