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Comment PPE and Robotics (Score 4, Interesting) 251

by Whip-hero (#59967636) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Are You Doing To Help?

I've been WFH for about five years. During the quarantine, I've been working on PPE production. A lot of people have been 3D printing masks and face shields, but it's difficult to make an impact as an individual because an FDM printer takes ~10 hours to make a respirator mask. One of my hobbies is urethane resin molding, so I've been working with a local makerspace to make silicone molds to cast PPE at a rate of about 2/hour. It's slow going because I've had to order supplies and wait for deliveries, but I think I can do 30-60 respirators as a proof of concept this week. After that, I'll hand off the work to the makerspace, which will bankroll some larger-scale production.

I also coached a FIRST FTC up until the quarantine began, and I meet with my students once per week to discuss school, working from home, and anything they want to talk about.
Security

Sloppy Linux Admins Enable Slow Brute-Force Attacks 391

Posted by kdawson from the time-lapse-intrusion-monitering dept.
badger.foo passes on the report of Peter N. M. Hansteen that a third round of low-intensity, distributed brute-force attacks is now in progress — we earlier discussed the first and second rounds — and that sloppy admin practice on Linux systems is the main enabler. As before, the article links to log data (this time 770 apparently already compromised Linux hosts are involved), and further references. "The fact that your rig runs Linux does not mean you're home free. You need to keep paying attention. When your spam washer has been hijacked and tries to break into other people's systems, you urgently need to get your act together, right now."
Microsoft

Microsoft Tax Dodge At Issue In Washington State 681

Posted by kdawson from the office-at-area-fifty-one dept.
newscloud writes "With Washington State facing a billion-dollar biennial budget deficit, the spotlight again shifts to Microsoft's software licensing office in Reno, Nevada. 'Although the majority of its software development is performed in Washington State, Microsoft records its estimated $18 billion in licensing revenue per year through a corporate office in Reno, Nevada where there is no licensing tax. Just by enforcing the state's existing tax law from 2008 onwards, we could reduce Washington's revenue shortfall by more than 70 percent. Alternately, we could pursue the entire $707 million from Microsoft's thirteen years of tax dodging and cover most of the expected deficit going forward.' We have discussed Microsoft's creative capitalism in the past."
Games

Games Fail To Portray Gender and Ethnic Diversity 590

Posted by Soulskill from the overrepresented-demon-alien-demographic dept.
eldavojohn writes "A new study has found that game characters tend not to reflect cultural diversity. According to the paper from researchers across four universities (PDF): 'A large-scale content analysis of characters in video games was employed to answer questions about their representations of gender, race and age in comparison to the US population. The sample included 150 games from a year across nine platforms, with the results weighted according to game sales. ... The results show a systematic over-representation of males, white and adults and a systematic under-representation of females, Hispanics, Native Americans, children and the elderly.' The researchers also note that games 'function as crucial gatekeepers for interest in science, technology, engineering and math,' and that without these groups represented properly, 'it may place underrepresented groups behind the curve.'"
Security

Linux, Twitter, and Red Hat "Win" Big At Pwnie Awards 63

Posted by Soulskill from the i'd-like-to-thank-the-academy dept.
hugmeplz writes "The third annual Pwnie Awards took place last night at Black Hat in Las Vegas, and a full list of the winners has been posted. 'Most Epic Fail' honors went to the notorious Twitter/Google Apps hack from earlier this month that raised all sorts of questions about cloud computing security. Red Hat got skewered with the 'Mass 0wnage' award, also known as the 'Pwnie for Breaking the Internet,' for issuing a version of OpenSSH that left a backdoor open to hackers. The Linux development team earned 'Lamest Vendor Response' recognition for 'continually assuming that all kernel memory corruption bugs are only Denial-of-Service.' Naturally, Microsoft didn't slip past judges' eyes. Its vulnerability that enabled the Conficker worm to do its thing earned honors as the 'Most Overhyped Bug.' On the more positive side, the Pwnie Awards recognized security pros Wei Yongjun, sgrakkyu, Sebastian Kramer and Bernhard Mueller for accomplishments such as discovering bugs and demonstrating exploits. The Pwnie for Best Song went to Doctor Braid for his song Nice Report. Solar Designer snagged the Lifetime Achievement Award, for among other things, being the first to demonstrate heap buffer overflow exploitation, according to the Pwnie Awards Web site."

Comment None of the above (Score 1) 921

by Whip-hero (#27245001) Attached to: Study Finds the Pious Fight Death Hardest

It's not because of self-doubt or fear of damnation. It's because as religious people, they believe they have more to live for. They believe that a supreme being has taken a personal interest in their individual lives, and that whatever is happening to them serves an important purpose in the greater scheme of things. If there is any chance of recovery at all, they'll hang on to it.

The definition of faith is the belief in that for which there is no evidence, so perhaps religious people are less likely to give up hope.
Space

Submission + - Electron Behavior Suggests Possible Structure (redorbit.com)

Submitted by pln2bz
pln2bz writes: Scientists are spinning the recent observation of electrons' inherent rotational properties in the absence of a magnetic field as a breakthrough towards the eventual creation of a quantum computer. That may be the case, but it's worth noting also the works of Wal Thornhill and Ralph Sansbury, who have suggested a theory that can explain gravity, magnetism and light on the basis of an internal structure for electrons, called subtrons. Their theory appears to predict these latest observations: "Simply stated, all subatomic particles, including the electron, are resonant systems of orbiting smaller electric charges of opposite polarity that sum to the charge on that particle. These smaller electric charges he calls 'subtrons.' ... In this model, the electron cannot be treated like a fundamental, point-like particle. It must have structure to have angular momentum and a preferred magnetic orientation, known vaguely as 'spin.' There must be orbital motion of subtrons within the electron to generate a magnetic dipole. The transfer of energy between the subtrons in their orbits within the classical electron radius must be resonant and near instantaneous for the electron to be a stable particle. The same argument applies to the proton, the neutron, and, as we shall see — the neutrino." If Thornhill and Sansbury are right, then the speed of subtrons would be on the order of 2.5 million light-years per second — so fast, in fact, that they could travel to the other side of Andromeda within just one second. Not only might this elegantly explain why many quantum effects appear to us as instantaneous, but their combined works also clarify some prior anti-gravity claims.
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Keep your friend close and your enemies closer. (enemybook.info)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Enemybook is a Facebook app that allows you to manage your enemies as well as your friends. With Enemybook you can add people as Facebook enemies, specify why they are your enemies, notify your enemies, see who lists you as an enemy, and even become friends with the enemies of your enemies. Ever wanted to "enemy" somebody instead of friend them? Finally you can. This app remedies the one-sided perspective of Facebook.
Censorship

Submission + - Google Bans Anti-MoveOn.org Ads

Submitted by
Whip-hero
Whip-hero writes: "Citing copyright infringement, Google has removed a Republican candidate's ads attacking MoveOn.org. "Internet giant Google has banned advertisements critical of MoveOn.org, the far-left advocacy group that caused a national uproar last month when it received preferential treatment from The New York Times for its 'General Betray Us' message." The article goes on to state that "Google routinely permits the unauthorized use of company names such as Exxon, Wal-Mart, Cargill and Microsoft in advocacy ads. An anti-war ad currently running on Google asks 'Keep Blackwater in Iraq?' and links to an article titled 'Bastards at Blackwater — Should Blackwater Security be held accountable for the deaths of its employees?'""
Enlightenment

Submission + - Can Transhumanism Survive W/o Libertarianism? (functionalisminaction.com)

Submitted by
IConrad01
IConrad01 writes: "From Functionalism In Action: Can A Transhuman Future Survive Without Libertarian Ideals?:

As a transhumanist, I am all too keenly aware of the good and the ill that can come of technology. One technology, however, that seems to have only ills springing from it these days is that of surveillance technology. Consider, for example the perhaps not so infamous as it ought to be 'dragonfly spy':
[...]

This becomes all the more troublesome when we consider that — regardless of Ray Kurzweils's 'law' of accelarating returns — technological development is outstripping society's ability to regulate our machines. There's nothing really new about that idea — but still; it is strongly worth paying attention to when we consider the advocates of regulation for new, 'existentially risky' technologies — such as molecular manufacturing, or synthetic biology, or viral engineering, or... well, by now the point is clear.
Click the link to read the article in full."
Programming

Submission + - Parallellism, Math, and the Curse of the Algorithm (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: From the article: Adding more processing cores to a CPU should have been a relatively painless evolution of computer technology but it turned out to be a real pain in the ass, programming wise. Why? To understand the problem, we must go back to the very beginning of the computer age, close to a hundred and fifty years ago, when an Englishman named Charles Babbage designed the world's first general purpose computer, the analytical engine.
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Russian "Father of All Bombs" = Fake? (wired.com) 1

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "Remember Russia's "Father of All Bombs," reportedly the most powerful thermobaric weapon in the world? Turns out it's at least partially a fraud. I've got the scoop over at Wired News:

Father of All Bombs "has no match in the world," a military officer boasts in the official video. ... But close analysis of the video reveals inconsistencies that have led some U.S. experts to question the veracity of the Russian claims, and to downgrade assessments of the weapon. It's possible, they say, that the video was partially faked, and that the test was hyped for political reasons.

The Father of All Bombs, as shown, would not fit in a Tu-160's bomb bay, as it features a horizontally deploying drogue parachute that would be fouled by the aircraft if released vertically."

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