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Feed Google News Sci Tech: Virgin Galactic releases stunning footage from supersonic flight [VIDEO] - Scien (google.com)

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Science Recorder
Virgin Galactic releases stunning footage from supersonic flight [VIDEO]
Science Recorder
After completing a successful supersonic test flight, Virgin Galactic has released flight footage from the tail of its SpaceShipTwo, showing a plume behind the spacecraft and the Earth below. The test, conducted last week, was SpaceShipTwo's second test of its...
Virgin Galactic releases footage from supersonic flightChristian Science Monitor
Awesome Views From Virgin Galactic's Flight: VideoDiscovery News
Virgin Galactic Releases Video Recorded from SS2 Powered FlightFrench Tribune
Space.com-iTWire-BBC News
all 24 news articles

Security

Linus Responds To RdRand Petition With Scorn 566

Posted by timothy from the never-a-dull-moment dept.
hypnosec writes "Linus Torvalds, in response to a petition on Change.org to remove RdRand from /dev/random, has lambasted the petitioner by called him ignorant for not understanding the code in the Linux Kernel. Kyle Condon from the UK raised a petition on Change.org to get Linus to remove RdRand from /dev/random in a bid 'to improve the overall security of the linux kernel.' In his response, Torvalds asked Condon and the supporters of the petition to gain an understanding of Linux drivers and cryptography, and then 'come back here and admit to the world that you were wrong.' Torvalds stressed that kernel maintainers knew what they were doing and the petitioner didn't. Torvalds, in a similar outburst just yesterday, hoped that 'ARM SoC hardware designers all die in some incredibly painful accident.' This came in response to a message from Kevin Hilman when he noted that there were quite a few conflicts in the ARM SoC pull request for Linux 3.12 which were a result of the platform changes conflicting with driver changes going in to the V4L tree."

Submission + - $2 Million X Prize Seeks New Sensors To Study Ocean Acidification (nature.com)

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes: Nature reports, "Scientists who study ocean acidification must confront a fundamental problem: It is hard to measure exactly how much the ocean’s pH is changing. Today’s sensors don’t work well at depth or over long periods of time, and they are too expensive to deploy widely. That is where the US$2 million Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health X Prize comes in. The 22-month competition will award two $1 million prizes, one to the best low-cost sensor and one to the most accurate. The competition’s organizers decided to award two prizes because the two goals present different engineering challenges. ... As carbon dioxide levels rise in the atmosphere, ocean water takes up some of the gas and becomes more acidic. This can harm shell-building marine life like coral, whose calcium carbonate skeletons dissolve in the increasingly acidic water. All of this research is bedeviled by the simple lack of technology to monitor ocean pH in real time across the world. “I’m so excited for the potential of this prize because then we will have real understanding,” said Jane Lubchenco, former administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in an announcement broadcast today on Huffington Post Live." More at Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health X Prize

Submission + - Verizon's Not-So-Secret Plan to Kill Net Neutrality (cio.com)

Submitted by AZA43
AZA43 writes: Verizon and its legal team are this week in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit arguing for the ability to control and restrict the websites Verizon customers can access, under the guise of the telecom giant's right to free speech. Blogger Bill Snyder also cites recent moves by Comcast and ESPN that suggest Verizon may be getting closer to its goal of killing Net Neutrality.
It's funny. Laugh.

John McAfee Triggers the Ultimate False Positive 47

Posted by timothy from the we-will-miss-him-but-celebrate-his-life dept.
Barence writes "The wild man of antivirus software, John McAfee, has been forced to deny reports of his own death. Internet reports circulating last night claimed the hard-living security software entrepreneur had died after one too many drink and drugs sessions. However, McAfee has taken to his Twitter account in the past few hours to assure everyone that he's still alive, and hasn't mislaid his sense of humour.'"I felt great when I went to bed last night. I had such great plans,' tweeted McAfee, alongside a link to a report — now hastily withdrawn — that claimed he had died from an overdose."

Submission + - Change.org petition, ARM SoC changes for Linux 3.12 invite Torvalds' fury (paritynews.com) 1

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Linus Torvalds, in response to a petition on Change.org to remove RdRand from /dev/random, has lambasted the petitioner by called him ignorant for not understanding the code in Linux Kernel. Kyle Condon from UK raised a petition on Change.org to get Linus to remove RdRand from /dev/random in a bid “to improve the overall security of the linux kernel.” In his response, Torvalds asked the Condon and the supports of the petition to gain an understanding of Linux drivers, cryptography and then "come back here and admit to the world that you were wrong." Torvalds stressed that kernel maintainers knew what they were doing and the petitioner didn’t. Torvalds, in a similar outburst just yesterday, hoped that "ARM SoC hardware designers all die in some incredibly painful accident." This came in response to a message from Kevin Hilman when he noted that there were quite a few conflicts in the ARM SoC pull request for Linux 3.12, which were a result of the platform changes conflicting with driver changes going in to the V4L tree.
Businesses

Icahn Abandons Bid To Prevent Dell From Going Private 51

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the everyone-wants-out dept.
Via El Reg comes news that Carl Icahn has, after a brief battle with Michael Dell for control over the company, thrown in the towel. From the article: "Icahn said in an open letter to shareholders that he still thought that Big Mike's $13.88 per share offer for the firm undervalued it, but had decided that it would be 'almost impossible' to win the battle at the shareholder vote on Thursday. 'I realize that some stockholders will be disappointed that we do not fight on,' he wrote. 'However, over the last decade, mainly through "activism," we have enhanced stockholder value in many companies by billions of dollars. We did not accomplish this by waging battles that we thought we would lose.'"

Submission + - Best resources for ARM and small form factor computing? 1

Submitted by thesandbender
thesandbender writes: I'd like to get into development with small form factor computing as a hobby but it seems every week there's new announcements for commercial and crowd-sourced projects and it's difficult to get a good handle on all the offerings out there and how they stack up against each other. What are the recommendations for blogs or aggregators that track this sort of thing?

Submission + - John McAfee triggers the ultimate false positive (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by Barence
Barence writes: The wild man of antivirus software, John McAfee, has been forced to deny reports of his own death.

Internet reports circulating last night claimed the hard-living security software entrepreneur had died after one too many drink and drugs sessions. However, McAfee has taken to his Twitter account in the past few hours to assure everyone that he's still alive, and hasn't mislaid his sense of humour. "I felt great when I went to bed last night. I had such great plans," tweeted McAfee, alongside a link to a report — now hastily withdrawn — that claimed he had died from an overdose.

 

Submission + - Historic First: Pakistan's President Completes Full Term - New One Sworn In (latimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Los Angeles Times reports, "Mamnoon Hussain was sworn in as Pakistan’s new president Monday, replacing Asif Ali Zardari, who becomes the first democratically elected president in the nation’s history to complete a full term. Hussain’s swearing-in came as leaders of more than a dozen political parties gathered at a conference led by Sharif and agreed to negotiate with militant groups in the lawless tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, groups that have sought to topple the government. In telephone calls to news media, Taliban spokesman Shahidullah Shahid said his group welcomed the government’s offer of talks and would convene within a few days its central council, which would form a team to negotiate and formalize its demands. Sharif was elected in May on a pledge to bolster security and improve Pakistan’s beleaguered economy. Once in office, he outlined his preference for peace talks over military strikes. Major political parties' support for that approach Monday should give Sharif the political cover he needs to move ahead."

Submission + - Intel, Red Hat working on enabling Wayland support in Gnome (muktware.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: After shooting down Canonical's Mir, Intel and Red Hat teams have increased collaboration on the development of Wayland. Intel and Red Hat developers are working togather to 'merge and stabilize the patches to enable Wayland support in GNOME' as Christian Schaller writes on his blog. The teams are also looking into improving the stack futher. Weston won't be used anymore so Gnome Shell will become the Wayland compositor.

It must be noted that Canonical earlier committed to support and embrase Wayland. Despite the promise to contribute to it the company silently stopped contribution and it was later learned that they were secretly working on their own display server Mir.

Intel's management recently rejected patches for Mir leaving it to Canonical to maintain Mir.

Before Intel's rejection, Gnome and KDE also refused to adopt Mir.

Intel's message is clear to Canonical — if you promise to contribute then do contribute.
United States

German Federal Police Helicopter Circles US Consulate 239

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the just-checking dept.
New submitter mwissel writes "The German Federal Police ('Bundespolizei') had sent out an helicopter in late August to fly over the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt and take photos from only 60 meters height — reportedly to search for spy antennae and other espionage related equipment on the building rooftops. A government spokesmen more or less confirmed the purpose of the flight, and it is said that Merkel's chief of staff, Ronald Pofalla, gave the order. This is remarkable, because Pofalla so far stood out with a very U.S.-friendly attitude in the debate around NSA surveillance programs. There was, of course, no word about any findings. It also remains unclear whether this was just plain provocation or a PR-stunt for the upcoming federal elections in Germany on September 22nd."

Submission + - AMD Reveals Roadmap for ARM and x86 SoCs (linuxgizmos.com)

Submitted by __aajbyc7391
__aajbyc7391 writes: On the eve of the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, AMD unveiled what it calls an ambidextrous embedded roadmap, based on a series of new system-on-chip (SoC) and accelerated processing unit (APU) products built from both ARM and x86 CPU cores. Planned for launch in 2014 are an ARM Cortex A57-based 'Hierofalcon' SoC, a 'Bald Eagle' APU using a new 'Streamroller' x86 CPU, a multi-core x86 'Steppe Eagle' APU, and an 'Adelaar' discrete Embedded Radion GPU. 'There are different customer needs in different segments of this market, from low-power to high-performance, Linux to Windows, and x86 to ARM,' commented Arun Iyengar, VP and general manager, of the AMD Embedded Solutions division.

Comment Re:Google, Money, Mouth (Score 1) 248

by Greyfox (#44803723) Attached to: Google Speeding Up New Encryption Project After Latest Snowden Leaks
That's not really the point. Gmail is one of the larger mail services and if they were encrypt-by-default, a lot more mail would be encrypted. A large campaign to subvert that would be more likely to be spotted. I'm not saying that would be the be-all and end-all to security. There IS NO be-all and end-all to security. I'm just saying I would find that to be an impressive move on their part and it would go a long way toward restoring the confidence I've lost in the company.

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