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Networking

Misconfigured Open DNS Resolvers Key To Massive DDoS Attacks 179

msm1267 writes with an excerpt From Threat Post: "While the big traffic numbers and the spat between Spamhaus and illicit webhost Cyberbunker are grabbing big headlines, the underlying and percolating issue at play here has to do with the open DNS resolvers being used to DDoS the spam-fighters from Switzerland. Open resolvers do not authenticate a packet-sender's IP address before a DNS reply is sent back. Therefore, an attacker that is able to spoof a victim's IP address can have a DNS request bombard the victim with a 100-to-1 ratio of traffic coming back to them versus what was requested. DNS amplification attacks such as these have been used lately by hacktivists, extortionists and blacklisted webhosts to great success." Running an open DNS resolver isn't itself always a problem, but it looks like people are enabling neither source address verification nor rate limiting.
The Media

What Does It Actually Cost To Publish a Scientific Paper? 166

ananyo writes "Nature has published an investigation into the real costs of publishing research after delving into the secretive, murky world of science publishing. Few publishers (open access or otherwise-including Nature Publishing Group) would reveal their profit margins, but they've pieced together a picture of how much it really costs to publish a paper by talking to analysts and insiders. Quoting from the piece: '"The costs of research publishing can be much lower than people think," agrees Peter Binfield, co-founder of one of the newest open-access journals, PeerJ, and formerly a publisher at PLoS. But publishers of subscription journals insist that such views are misguided — born of a failure to appreciate the value they add to the papers they publish, and to the research community as a whole. They say that their commercial operations are in fact quite efficient, so that if a switch to open-access publishing led scientists to drive down fees by choosing cheaper journals, it would undermine important values such as editorial quality.' There's also a comment piece by three open access advocates setting out what they think needs to happen next to push forward the movement as well as a piece arguing that 'Objections to the Creative Commons attribution license are straw men raised by parties who want open access to be as closed as possible.'"
Google

Submission + - Google pledges not to sue open source software, unless first attacked (muktware.com)

sfcrazy writes: Google has announced the Open Patent Non-Assertion (OPN) Pledge. In it's pledge Google says that they will not sue any user, distributor or developer of open-source software on specified patents, unless first attacked. Under this pledge, Google is starting off with 10 patents relating to MapReduce, a computing model for processing large data sets first developed at Google. Google says that over time they intend to expand the set of Google’s patents covered by the pledge to other technologies.

Comment Re:funny thing is (Score 1) 276

You're surprised that a quad core 1.4GHz processor outperforms a dual core 1.3GHz processor?

I'm more surprised that they were so close....

Quad what core? ARM CORTEX-A9
Dual what core? ARM CORTEX-A15
Does clock speed matter? Not as much as architecture when they are clocked at nearly the same speed.

EU

Submission + - EU Launches Effort to Model the Human Brain (slashdot.org)

Nerval's Lobster writes: "The European Union has announced an ambitious project to model the human brain. The “Human Brain Project” is one of two EU-based projects that will receive 1 billion Euros each as part of the Future and Emerging Technologies competition. The project, which is expected to last a decade, will create the world’s largest experimental facility for developing a detailed model of the brain and how it works. That could ultimately assist in the development of personalized treatment of neurological diseases, according to the EU. (The other winning project will study graphene, the carbon-based material that conducts electricity much better than copper, and also has unique optical properties.) The Swiss government and private agencies will chip additional funds into the Human Brain project’s estimated 1.19 billion Euro cost. That money will support the efforts of neuroscientist and project leader Henry Markram’s laboratory at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. It will also go towards the Swiss Supercomputing Center in Lugano, which will provide the chief supercomputing facilities for what Markram terms the Brain Simulation Platform."

Submission + - Evad3rs Launch iOS 6, 6.1 Untethered Jailbreak (paritynews.com)

hypnosec writes: The much awaited untethered iOS 6 jailbreak from evad3rs has been released just a few minutes back is available on evasi0n.com as an easy to use tool for all three major operating system: Windows, Linux and Mac. The jailbreak is claimed to be working on all the iDevices — the iPhone 5, 4S, 4, 3GS, iPod Touch 4th generation and 5th generation and both the iPad Mini and iPad 3rd & 4th generation.
Google

Submission + - Microsoft and Google push for FCC's public Wi-Fi for free networks (networkworld.com)

colinneagle writes: How sweet would it be to dump that monthly cellphone bill in favor of making calls over free Wi-Fi networks, so powerful it would be like "Wi-Fi on steroids"? Microsoft and Google are working together to support the FCC's powerful Wi-Fi for free proposal.

Now, the Washington Post reports that Google, Microsoft and other tech giants "say a free-for-all WiFi service would spark an explosion of innovations and devices that would benefit most Americans, especially the poor."

Meanwhile, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and chip makers Intel and Qualcomm are lobbying hard against the FCC's proposal. These wireless carrier companies are opposed to using the spectrum for free Wi-Fi to the public and insist that the airwaves should instead be sold to businesses.

But FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has designed the free Wi-Fi plan. If you are interested, you can read Genachowski's Presentation on White Spaces for Wireless Broadband and Genachowski's remarks to the President's Council of Advisors on Science & Technology.

Blackberry

Submission + - The best news BlackBerry could possibly get (bgr.com)

redkemper writes: BlackBerry laid all its cards on the table last week as it unveiled its new BlackBerry 10 platform and the two next-generation smartphones that will carry it through the first half of the year. BlackBerry fans were blown away, but as we discussed in a feature last week, the real challenge for the struggling smartphone vendor will be wooing users away from leading smartphone platforms. Early reviews were not convinced that the BlackBerry Z10 would gain much ground in this regard, however a recent research note from CIBC suggests BlackBerry may already be off to a phenomenal start with 50% of preregistration coming from non-BlackBerry users...
Businesses

Submission + - Google Invests $1 Billion To Build New London HQ (ibtimes.com)

redletterdave writes: "Google just purchased a 2.4-acre plot in the King’s Cross Central development in London, where the company plans to build a brand-new, 1 million square foot office. Google reportedly invested about £650 million ($1.04 billion) on the property, which, when finished, will be valued at more than £1 billion ($1.6 billion). While Google traditionally leases its overseas offices, the company's decision to buy rather than rent in this case was likely tax motivated, since Google can’t repatriate its cash to the US without paying a hefty tax."
Java

Submission + - Latest Java Update Broken; Two New Sandbox Bypass Flaws Found (threatpost.com)

msm1267 writes: Oracle's long security nightmare with Java just gets worse. A post to Full Disclosure this morning from a security researcher indicated that two new sandbox bypass vulnerabilities have been discovered and reported to Oracle, along with working exploit code. Oracle released Java 7u11 last Sunday and said it fixed a pair of vulnerabilities being exploited by all the major exploit kits. Turns out one of those two bugs wasn't completely patched. Today's bugs are apparently not related to the previous security issues.
Japan

Submission + - Fukushima's fallout of fear (nature.com)

gbrumfiel writes: "Experts believe that the many thousands who fled from the Fukushima nuclear disaster received very low doses of radiation. But that doesn't mean there won't be health consequences. Nature magazine travelled to Fukushima prefecture and found evidence of an enormous mental strain from the accident. Levels of anxiety and PTSD-like symptoms are high among evacuees. Researchers fear that, in the long run, the mental problems could lead to depression and substance abuse among those who lost their homes. In other words, even if no one develops cancer as a direct result of radiation, the health effects could still be very real."
Idle

Submission + - Google did not run over a donkey (thenextweb.com)

iONiUM writes: "From the article: "Here’s a story you don’t see every day. Google on Wednesday has gone on record to deny reports that one of its Google Maps Street View cars killed a donkey in the Kweneng region of Botswana. Seriously, we’re not kidding: the story got big enough that the company actually had to waste resources dispelling the speculation."
How long until they have a similar debacle, but surrounding a human instead?"

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