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Open Source

Submission + - Adafruit Raspberry Pi Educational Linux Distro (adafruit.com)

Submitted by
ptorrone
ptorrone writes: "Open-source hardware company Adafruit released a Linux Raspberry Pi distro for hardware hackers and teaching electronics. This distro comes with SPI, I2C, & OneWire WiFi. It also has some things to make overall hacking easier such sshd on startup (with key generation on first boot) andBonjour (so you can simply ssh raspberrypi.local from any computer on the local network. It's called Occidentalis v0.1. Rubus occidentalis(the black raspberry) derived fromRaspbian Wheezy and available for download here."

Submission + - Cortana: IRC-style Scripting for Armitage and Metasploit (strategiccyber.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I'm the developer of Armitage, a Metasploit Framework GUI that allows a team of hackers to collaborate on an engagement. Inspired by my days on IRC in the 1990s, I wondered what would happen if I added bots to this collaborative hacking setup. At DEFCON 20, I announced Cortana, a scripting language to write red team bots and extend Armitage with new features. Cortana is a glue language for security practitioners. With Cortana, you may automate the use of Metasploit Framework modules, integrate external tools, respond to events, and modify the Armitage user interface to reflect your hacking process. I look forward to seeing what the community does with this.

Submission + - New facts about Civilization V (amazines.com)

Submitted by smecenalimanu
smecenalimanu writes: One of the vital points in Civilization 5 is cooperation with other empires . It is wise choice to trade with resources and luxuries and to make research pacts with other nations . Second important thing is to have good contacts with city-state . There are 3 kinds of them : Militaristic city — they have big armies . If you are their friend or partner , you will receive military unit every few turns .
Apple

Submission + - Apple comes clean, admits to doing market research (networkworld.com)

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: In an interview with Fortune a few years ago, Steve Jobs explained that Apple never does market research. Rather, they simply preoccupy themselves with creating great products.

On Monday, Apple's Greg Joswiak — the company's VP of Product Marketing — submitted a declaration to the Court explaining why documents relating to Apple's market research and strategy should be sealed.

Every month, Apple surveys iPhone buyers and Joswiak explains what Apple is able to glean from these surveys. And as you might expect, Apple conducts similar surveys with iPad buyers.

Apple wants all of these tracking studies sealed. Joswiak explains that if a competitor were to find out what drives iPhone purchases — whether it be FaceTime, battery life, or Siri — it would serve as an unfair competitive edge to rival companies. Further, competitors, as it stands today, have to guess as to which demographics are most satisfied with Apple products.
Government

Submission + - US Missile Defense Staff Told To Stop Watching Porn

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: John James Jr., director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and is responsible for the nation's missile defense system, recently sent out a one-page memo warning employees and contractors to stop using agency computers to visit pornographic Web sites. That's right; apparently they were watching the wrong type of bombshells.
Microsoft

Submission + - Windows 8 Pro upgrade announced for less than $50 (bit.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft has announced that upgrading to Windows 8 Pro will cost $39.99 until January 31 next year, meaning upgrade pricing for new OS will initially be a good deal cheaper than Windows has cost in years past. The $39.99 price will apply if you’re upgrading from Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7, according to this post on the Windows blog. The post says the price will apply in 131 countries. There is one catch — when Windows 8 Pro is available, you’ll need to upgrade via the Windows.com site to get it for $39.99. If you want the software on DVD, it will cost $69.99. As this article notes, the price is reasonably less than what Windows users have been charged in years past.
Displays

Submission + - World's Thinnest Screen Created From Soap Bubble (gizmocrazed.com)

Submitted by Diggester
Diggester writes: For most people, when you think of bubbles you remember the childhood joy of seeing those floating, shimmering spheres you desperately want to pop, but for a group of researchers at the University of Tokyo, they see a new medium for 3rd dimensional displays.

Now this isn't your average soap, it's a special mixture that creates more of a "tough bubble" that can withstand the high frequency vibrations used to form the colloidal display. The initial applications of this technology are imagined as the world's thinnest 3D screen or flexible display.

Submission + - NAVSOP: A robust solution to GPS jamming? (newscientist.com)

Submitted by dangle
dangle writes: BAE Systems has developed a positioning solution that it claims will work even when GPS is unavailable. Its strategy is to use the collection of radio frequency signals from TV, radio and cellphone masts, even WiFi routers, to deduce a position.
BAE's answer is dubbed Navigation via Signals of Opportunity (NAVSOP). It interrogates the airwaves for the ID and signal strength of local digital TV and radio signals, plus air traffic control radars, with finer grained adjustments coming from cellphone masts and WiFi routers. In any given area, the TV, radio, cellphone and radar signals tend to be at constant frequencies and power levels as they are are heavily regulated — so positions could be calculated from them. "The real beauty of NAVSOP is that the infrastructure required to make it work is already in place," says a BAE spokesman — and "software defined radio" microchips that run NAVSOP routines can easily be integrated into existing satnavs. The firm believes the technology could also work in urban concrete canyons where GPS signals cannot currently reach.
Movies

Submission + - The Boy Who Loved Batman

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: As a young boy, Batman producer Michael Uslan — a self-described 'ultimate comic book geek' — was traumatized to see the Caped Crusader being 'murdered' in front of his very eyes by the camp 60's TV series. 'I was horrified,' Uslan told a Harper College audience last week. 'I was horrified because the whole world was laughing at Batman, and that just killed me.' At that point, the 13-year-old vowed to teach the world about the Batman he knew, about the crusader who lurked in the shadows, about a darker, grittier superhero. As told in his memoir The Boy Who Loved Batman, he made good on that vow: Uslan has served as the executive producer of all Batman major motion pictures, from 1989's Batman to the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises .
Intel

Submission + - US-CERT discloses security flaw in Intel chips (csoonline.com)

Submitted by Fnord666
Fnord666 writes: The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) has disclosed a flaw in Intel chips that could allow hackers to gain control of Windows and other operating systems, security experts say.

The flaw was disclosed the vulnerability in a security advisory released this week. Hackers could exploit the flaw to execute malicious code with kernel privileges, said a report in the Bitdefender blog.

"Some 64-bit operating systems and virtualization software running on Intel CPU hardware are vulnerable to a local privilege escalation attack," the US-CERT advisory says. "The vulnerability may be exploited for local privilege escalation or a guest-to-host virtual machine escape."
Operating Systems

Submission + - Linux OS written in pure Python (python-os.info) 6

Submitted by KaZaNtiP2
KaZaNtiP2 writes: Python OS Project (POP) created with idea to make a pure python OS. POP based on linux kernel (currently 2.6.32) and GNU userland utilities.

We think, that OS, written in simple interpreted language, like python, allows us to dominate desktop operating systems market.
Security

Submission + - Sen. Rand Paul Introduces TSA Reform Legislation (senate.gov) 1

Submitted by OverTheGeicoE
OverTheGeicoE writes: Over a month after Sen. Rand Paul announced his intention to pull the plug on TSA, he has finally released his legislation that he tweets will 'abolish the #TSA & establish a passengers "Bill of Rights."' Although the tweet sounds radical, the press release describing his proposed legislation is much less so. 'Abolition' really means privatization; one of Paul's proposals would simply force all screenings to be conducted by private screeners. The proposed changes in the 'passenger Bill of Rights' appear to involve slight modifications to existing screening methods at best. Many of his 'rights' are already guaranteed under current law, like the right to opt-out of body scanning. Others can only vaguely be described as rights, like 'expansion of canine screening.' Here's to the new boss...
Medicine

Submission + - Skin Cells Turned into Heart Muscle for First Time

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: By taking skin cells and turning them into stem cells, a technique that is already well known, researchers were able to generate beating heart cells — a medical first.

"We have shown that it's possible to take skin cells from an elderly patient with advanced heart failure and end up with his own beating cells in a laboratory dish that are healthy and young — the equivalent to the stage of his heart cells when he was just born," Lior Gepstein, study author and professor of medicine at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Israel.
Government

Submission + - Anonymous releases 1.7GB of hacked DOJ emails (anonnews.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Today we are releaseing 1.7GB of data that used to belong to the United States Bureau of Justice, until now. Within the booty you may find lots of shiny things such as internal emails, and the entire database dump. We Lulzed as they took the website down after being owned, clearly showing they were scared of what inevitably happened.

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It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.

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