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Submission + - How Much Should You Worry About an Arctic Methane Bomb? 1

Submitted by barlevg
barlevg writes: It was a stunning figure: $60 trillion.

Such could be the cost, according to a recent commentary in Nature, of "the release of methane from thawing permafrost beneath the East Siberian Sea, off northern Russiaa figure comparable to the size of the world economy in 2012." More specifically, the paper described a scenario in which rapid Arctic warming and sea ice retreat lead to a pulse of undersea methane being released into the atmosphere. How much methane? The paper modeled a release of 50 gigatons of this hard-hitting greenhouse gas (a gigaton is equal to a billion metric tons) between 2015 and 2025. This, in turn, would trigger still more warming and gargantuan damage and adaptation costs.

According to the Nature commentary, that methane "is likely to be emitted as the seabed warms, either steadily over 50 years or suddenly." Such are the scientific assumptions behind the paper's economic analysis. But are those assumptions realistic—and could that much methane really be released suddenly from the Arctic?

Submission + - Stop fixing all security vulnerabilities. (blog.risk.io)

Submitted by PMcGovern
PMcGovern writes: At BSidesLV in Las Vegas, Ed Bellis and Data Scientist Michael Roytman gave a talk explaining how security vulnerability statistics should be done. " Don't fix all security issues. Fix the security issues that matter, based on statistical relevance." They looked at 23,000,000 live vulnerabilities across 1,000,000 real assets, which belonged to 9,500 clients to explain their thesis.

Submission + - Hacking Group Linked to Chinese Army Caught Attacking Dummy Water Plant (technologyreview.com) 4

Submitted by holy_calamity
holy_calamity writes: MIT Technology Review reports that APT1, the China-based hacking group said to steal data from U.S. companies, has been caught taking over a decoy water plant control system. The honeypot mimicked the remote access control panels and physical control system of a U.S. municipal water plant. The decoy was one of 12 set up in 8 countries around the world, which together attracted more than 70 attacks, 10 of which completely compromised the control system. China and Russia were the leading sources of the attacks. The researcher behind the study says his results provide the first clear evidence that people actively seek to exploit the many security problems of industrial systems.

Submission + - Could burnt sugar reduce muscular dystrophy wasting? (washington.edu) 1

Submitted by vinces99
vinces99 writes: A trace substance in caramelized sugar, when purified and given in appropriate doses, improves muscle regeneration in a mouse model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy, according to new research. The University of Washington scientists behind the research said that the mice in their study, like boys with the gender-linked inherited disorder, are missing the gene that produces dystrophin, a muscle-repair protein. Neither the mice nor the affected boys can replace enough of their routinely lost muscle cells. In people, muscle weakness begins when the boys are toddlers and progresses until, as teens, they can no longer walk unaided. During early adulthood, their heart and respiratory muscles weaken. Even with ventilators to assist breathing, death usually ensues before age 30. No cure or satisfactory treatment is available. Prednisone drugs relieve some symptoms, but at the cost of severe side effects.

Submission + - Google blocked OpenCL on Android 4.3 (streamcomputing.eu)

Submitted by Vincent77
Vincent77 writes: Thanks to the work of ARM in the beginning of this year, we could use OpenCL on the Nexus 4 and 10 and starting to port the various libraries to Android, initiating the same revolution of accelerated software on smartphones and tablets as we had on the desktop. Google was not happy with the competition for their RenderScript Compute and abruptly blocked access to the OpenCL-driver in Android 4.3. Noteworthy is that Google did not have the choice to simply remove the driver itself, as ARM implemented the RenderScript-compiler on top of OpenCL.

Submission + - Texas & Florida vie for private lunar company Golden Spike to move from Col (examiner.com)

Submitted by MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: The Denver Post reported on July 12, 2013 that Texas and Florida, already embroiled in a fight over which state will be the venue for SpaceX’s commercial space port, are now vying to be the site of the headquarters of a company that, while smaller, has much loftier ambitions

Golden Spike, the Boulder, Colorado based company that proposes to start commercial space flights to the moon with paying customers, is being courted by Texas and Florida to leave Colorado and to relocate its headquarters in either state.

Submission + - Bose, founder of Bose Corporation has died at 83 (mit.edu)

Submitted by countach44
countach44 writes: “Dr. Bose founded Bose Corporation almost 50 years ago with a set of guiding principles centered on research and innovation. That focus has never changed, and never will,” said Bob Maresca, president of Bose Corporation. “Bose Corporation will remain privately held, and stay true to Dr. Bose’s ideals. We are as committed to this as he was to us. Today and every day going forward, our hearts are with Dr. Bose; and we will do everything we can to make him proud of the company he built.”

Submission + - Amazon one-click extension snoops on SSL traffic

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Amazon has their own PRISM program snooping on all your browser traffic, even SSL traffic through their one-click plugin.

As designed, the plugin reports every url you visit, including https ones to Amazon. It uses an XSS to provide some of its functionality. It also reports contents of some website visits to Alexa.

The Amazon plugin has also been exploited to allow an attacker to gain access to SSL traffic on browsers that have the plugin installed.

Submission + - Have You Ever Tried to Eat a Feral Pig (theatlantic.com) 1

Submitted by anlashok
anlashok writes: There is big problem out there troubling our environment, invasive species that are disrupting the balance. This story is about an innovative approach to battling them, by eating our way out of the problem.
"Chefs are serving up invasive species like knotweed and snakehead fish — and diners are enjoying them. How a growing food movement could also be good for the environment."
"Austin Murphy likes to hunt snakehead fish on the tidal waters of the Potomac River. The fish, native to China, have earned local renown for their horror flick-like ability to breathe air and survive for short periods on land, their sharp teeth, and their thick, mucus-secreting skin. They're voracious carnivores with no known predators except humans and are all too at home in their adopted waters. Hunting them in the shallow, aquatic-plant-choked mouths of creeks and tributaries is tricky work, most easily done at night with a light and archery gear, though some fishermen prefer the more challenging method of daytime fly fishing . If the conditions are right, a skilled hunter can bag 200 pounds of snakehead in a summer season outing, says Murphy."

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