Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Mark Shuttleworth calls for an end to ACPI (markshuttleworth.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: ACPI comes from an era when the operating system was proprietary and couldn't be changed by the hardware manufacturer.

We don't live in that era any more.

However, we DO live in an era where any firmware code running on your phone, tablet, PC, TV, wifi router, washing machine, server, or the server running the cloud your SAAS app is running on, is a threat vector against you.

If you read the catalogue of spy tools and digital weaponry provided to us by Edward Snowden, you'll see that firmware on your device is the NSA's best friend. Your biggest mistake might be to assume that the NSA is the only institution abusing this position of trust — in fact, it's reasonable to assume that all firmware is a cesspool of insecurity courtesy of incompetence of the worst degree from manufacturers, and competence of the highest degree from a very wide range of such agencies.

Submission + - Astronomers Glimpse Universe's First Split Second (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: If imagining the big bang makes your head ache, what happened an instant later might make it explode. Cosmologists think the just-born universe—a hot, dense soup of matter and energy—went through a burst of expansion faster than the speed of light. Like a magical balloon, the cosmos doubled its size 60 times in a span of 10-32 seconds. This phase, known as inflation, ended well before the universe was even a second old.

Now, 13.7 billion years later, cosmologists have detected what they say is the first direct evidence of this inflation—one of the biggest discoveries in the field in 20 years. From studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB)—the leftover radiation from the big bang—they have spotted traces of gravitational waves—undulations in the fabric of space and time—that rippled through the universe in that infinitesimally short epoch following its birth. The imprint of these gravitational waves upon the CMB matches what theorists had predicted for decades. The findings, announced this morning at a scientific presentation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, also show that gravity—at the smallest scale—follows the rules of quantum mechanics, similar to other forces such as electromagnetism.

Submission + - Bitcoin Barron Challenges Berkshire (trilema.com) 2

Submitted by MrBingoBoingo
MrBingoBoingo writes: Bitcoin Tychoon Mircea Popescu, recent savior of OpenBSD, has wagered 1000 BTC that Bitcoin will outperform Berkshire Hathaway over the next year. The wager falls into a long tradition of high value parimutuel bets in Bitcoin that center around financial outcomes, serving a role in Bitcoin similar to the one insurance does in more mature markets.

Submission + - Julie Ann Horvath Quits GitHub, Citing Harrassment (twitter.com)

Submitted by PvtVoid
PvtVoid writes: From TechCrunch: The exit of engineer Julie Ann Horvath from programming network GitHub has sparked yet another conversation concerning women in technology and startups. Her claims that she faced a sexist internal culture at GitHub came as a surprise to some, given her former defense of the startup and her internal work at the company to promote women in technology.

Submission + - Russian State TV Anchor: Russia could turn US to 'radioactive ash' (yahoo.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Yahoo reports, ""Russia is the only country in the world realistically capable of turning the United States into radioactive ash," anchor Dmitry Kiselyov said on his weekly news show on state-controlled Rossiya 1 television. ... His programme was broadcast as the first exit polls were being published showing an overwhelming majority of Crimeans voting to leave Ukraine and join Russia. He stood in his studio in front of a gigantic image of a mushroom cloud produced after a nuclear attack, with the words "into radioactive ash". ... Kiselyov has earned a reputation as one of Russia's most provocative television news hosts, in particularly with his often blatantly homophobic remarks. But he is also hugely influential with his weekly news show broadcast at Sunday evening prime time. Putin last year appointed Kiselyov head of the new Russia Today news agency that is to replace the soon to be liquidated RIA Novosti news agency with the aim of better promoting Russia's official position." — Russia has threatened to stop nuclear disarmament treaty inspections and cooperation. Russian troops are reported to have seized a natural gas terminal in Ukraine outside of Crimea. There are reported to be 60,000 Russian troops massing on Russia's border with Ukraine.

Comment Re:90 day budget (Score 4, Insightful) 185

by MrBingoBoingo (#46470889) Attached to: Mars Rover Opportunity Faces New Threat: Budget Ax
Sure, but... Continuing a legacy like that is cheaper than launching anything else. It's almost like the Airforce retiring the A-10 and supposing a vaporware F-35 can replace it, the F-35 being both Vaporware and an abortion because someone insisted the bulk of the US's future airplanes must take off and land like helicopters. Seriously, Fund NASA, axe the F-35 and just buy some French Raphaels already.

Submission + - AI researcher says amoral robots pose a danger to humanity 1

Submitted by rlinke
rlinke writes: With robots becoming increasingly powerful, intelligent and autonomous, a scientist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute says it's time to start making sure they know the difference between good and evil.

"I'm worried about both whether it's people making machines do evil things or the machines doing evil things on their own," said Selmer Bringsjord, professor of cognitive science, computer science and logic and philosophy at RPI in Troy, N.Y. "The more powerful the robot is, the higher the stakes are. If robots in the future have autonomy..., that's a recipe for disaster.

Submission + - How to Avoid Being Tasered: Wear Carbon-Fibre Clothing (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: Hackaday user Shenzhen cut open a suit jacket and lined it with strip after strip of carbon-fibre tape together with iron-on interfacing.

When he tried to shock himself with a Taser, the carbon-fibre conducted the 50,000-volt electrical charge but he did not receive a shock. He also attempted to shock himself with the Taser needle piercing through the suit into his skin — and still came out unscathed.

Submission + - GnuTLS Goto Bug is Not Same as Apple Goto Fail (threatpost.com)

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: The similarities between the GnuTLS bug and Apple’s goto fail bug begin and end at their respective failure to verify TLS and SSL certificates. Otherwise, they’re neither siblings, nor distant cousins.
The GnuTLS bug is very different, though like Apple’s infamous goto fail error, it will also treat bogus digital certificates as valid.
“This one was more of a dumb coding mistake, whereas Apple could have been a cut-and-paste error. It looks like [GnuTLS] failed to cast a return variable correctly. C is hard," said cryptographer Matthew Green of Johns Hopkins University.
While the goto command appears in the buggy code in both vulnerabilities, the GnuTLS bug veers off in a different direction. Goto fail, for example is a standard C paradigm for error handling. Goto, in this case, is being used correctly, said Melissa Elliott, a security researcher with Veracode. The problem, she said, is related to variable typing and an improper mixing of error codes that led to this mess.

Comment Re:now, if someone could handle the weather warnin (Score 1) 32

by MrBingoBoingo (#46390583) Attached to: Book Review: Threat Modeling: Designing For Security
Right, in weather watches alert to favorable contitions for adverse incidents and warning alert that shit is imminent or going down at the moment. It's why in the midwest large portions of states may be covered under a Tornado watch, but the actual warnings are much more sparse. The difference between a weather warning and a "Terrorism warning" though is that generally the weather makes no special effort to conceal its intentions.

Comment Re:Not a good idea (Score 3, Insightful) 246

Pretty much this. People going into an associates program generally are doing it for the vocational training with the expectation that when they graduate they can get a job where they continue learning and training in the craft. For this sort of curriculum you want to start with the basics of learning the relevant languages and tools, and bleed into working on practical projects before the end of the program. The biggest challenge in a two year curriculum is going to be introducing databases.

Submission + - NASA Forgets How to Talk to ICE/ISEE-3 Spacecraft 1

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Randall Munroe's XKCD cartoon on the ICE/ISEE-3 spacecraft inspired me to do a little research on why Nasa can no long communicate with the International Cometary Explorer. Launched in 1978 ISEE-3 was the first spacecraft to be placed in a halo orbit at one of Earth-Sun Lagrangian points (L1). It was later (as ICE) sent to visit Comet Giacobini-Zinner and became the first spacecraft to do so by flying through a comet's tail passing the nucleus at a distance of approximately 7800 km. ICE has been in a heliocentric orbit since then, traveling just slightly faster than Earth and it's finally catching up to us from behind, and will return to Earth in August. According to Emily Lakdawalla, it's still functioning, broadcasting a carrier signal that the Deep Space Network successfully detected in 2008 and twelve of its 13 instruments were working when we last checked on its condition, sometime prior to 1999. Can we tell the spacecraft to turn back on its thrusters and science instruments after decades of silence and perform the intricate ballet needed to send it back to where it can again monitor the Sun? Unfortunately the answer to that question appears to be no. "The transmitters of the Deep Space Network, the hardware to send signals out to the fleet of NASA spacecraft in deep space, no longer includes the equipment needed to talk to ISEE-3. These old-fashioned transmitters were removed in 1999." Could new transmitters be built? Yes, but it would be at a price no one is willing to spend. "So ISEE-3 will pass by us, ready to talk with us, but in the 30 years since it departed Earth we've lost the ability to speak its language," concludes Lakdawalla. "I wonder if ham radio operators will be able to pick up its carrier signal — it's meaningless, I guess, but it feels like an honorable thing to do, a kind of salute to the venerable ship as it passes by."

Submission + - How the Next Keurig Will Make Your Coffee: with a Dash of DRM (techdirt.com)

Submitted by FuzzNugget
FuzzNugget writes: Apparently seeking to lock competitors out of the burgeoning single-serve coffee market, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, maker of the popular Keurig coffee machines, is jumping on the DRM bandwagon. GMCR's CEO confirmed this in a statement, heaping piles of marketing doublespeak about providing "game-changing functionality and performance" by using "interactive technology" to "ensure quality". The obvious goal, of course, is to prevent "unlicensed" third parties from selling compatible refills and reusable pods. Want to bet on quickly the DRM will be subverted? Loser buys coffee.

Slashdot Top Deals

Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.

Close