2muchcoffeeman - Slashdot User

Submission + - Dogs may use Earth's magnetic field to take shortcuts (sciencemag.org) 1

Submitted by sciencehabit on Friday July 17, 2020 @08:51AM

sciencehabit writes: Dogs are renowned for their world-class noses, but a new study suggests they may have an additional—albeit hidden—sensory talent: a magnetic compass. The sense appears to allow them to use Earth’s magnetic field to calculate shortcuts in unfamiliar terrain.

The finding is a first in dogs, says Catherine Lohmann, a biologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who studies “magnetoreception” and navigation in turtles. She notes that dogs’ navigational abilities have been studied much less compared with migratory animals such as birds.

Submission + - Iranian Spies Accidentally Leaked Videos of Themselves Hacking (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17, 2020 @12:23AM

An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at IBM's X-Force security team revealed today that they've obtained roughly five hours of video footage that appears to have been recorded directly from the screens of hackers working for a group IBM calls ITG18, and which other security firms refer to as APT35 or Charming Kitten. It's one of the most active state-sponsored espionage teams linked to the government of Iran. The leaked videos were found among 40 gigabytes of data that the hackers had apparently stolen from victim accounts, including US and Greek military personnel. Other clues in the data suggest that the hackers targeted US State Department staff and an unnamed Iranian-American philanthropist.

The IBM researchers say they found the videos exposed due to a misconfiguration of security settings on a virtual private cloud server they'd observed in previous APT35 activity. The files were all uploaded to the exposed server over a few days in May, just as IBM was monitoring the machine. The videos appear to be training demonstrations the Iran-backed hackers made to show junior team members how to handle hacked accounts. They show the hackers accessing compromised Gmail and Yahoo Mail accounts to download their contents, as well as exfiltrating other Google-hosted data from victims. This sort of data exfiltration and management of hacked accounts is hardly sophisticated hacking. It's more the kind of labor-intensive but relatively simple work that's necessary in a large-scale phishing operation. But the videos nonetheless represent a rare artifact, showing a first-hand view of state-sponsored cyberspying that's almost never seen outside of an intelligence agency.

Submission + - Trump's Twitter account has extra protections (theverge.com)

Submitted by kimmmos on Thursday July 16, 2020 @10:52PM

kimmmos writes: In yesterday’s massive attack on Twitter, some of the highest-profile accounts on the service, including President Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates had their accounts hijacked to peddle bitcoin scams. Notably, however, Donald Trump, perhaps the most famous Twitter user of all, was untouched by the attack, and it could be because Twitter has implemented extra protections for his account.

Submission + - Reusable SpaceX rocket has implications for a return to the moon (examiner.com)

Submitted by MarkWhittington on Sunday January 17, 2016 @12:32PM

MarkWhittington writes: While it is unclear what if any implications the recent successful landing of the first stage of the Falcon 9 first stage means for the future of space travel, planetary scientist and space commentator Paul Spudis suggested that the feat and the similar one performed earlier by Blue Origin could have some benefit for a return to the moon. In the meantime, a test of the engines in the recovered first stage had mixed results. The engines fired alright, but SpaceX CEO Elon Musk reported, “thrust fluctuations” that might have been caused by “debris ingestion.” Does that mean the rocket could or could not have been reused? The answer is not yet forthcoming.

Submission + - AT&T chooses Ubuntu Linux instead of Microsoft Windows (betanews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 16, 2016 @05:22PM

An anonymous reader writes: one of the largest cellular providers is the venerable AT&T. While it sells many Linux-powered Android devices, it is now embracing the open source kernel in a new way. You see, the company has partnered with Canonical to utilize Ubuntu for cloud, network, and enterprise applications. That's right, AT&T did not choose Microsoft's Windows when exploring options. Canonical will provide continued engineering support too.

Submission + - Fedora Linux Might Drop Incremental Upgrades

Submitted by prisoninmate on Saturday January 16, 2016 @05:21PM

prisoninmate writes: As you might know, Fedora, and many other GNU/Linux distributions, requires users to do an Incremental upgrade when attempting to move from an older version of the operating system to the most recent one. For example, if you want to upgrade from Fedora 21 to Fedora 23, you will have first to upgrade to Fedora 22. Lately, Fedora upgrades have become more stable and reliable, mostly because of some brand-new technologies that have been introduced in the latest versions of the distribution, such as the DNF package manger. Fedora's Adam Williamson theorizes about an innovative method that might support official upgrade of the Fedora Linux operating system across two releases in the future.

Submission + - What spotlighting harassment in astronomy means

Submitted by StartsWithABang on Friday January 15, 2016 @12:08PM

StartsWithABang writes: Geoff Marcy. Tim Slater. Christian Ott. And a great many more who are just waiting to be publicly exposed for what they've done (and in many cases, are still doing). Does it mean that astronomy has a harassment problem? Of course it does, but that's not the real story. The real story is that, for the first time, an entire academic field is recognizing a widespread problem, taking steps to change its policies, and is beginning to support the victims, rather than the senior, more famous, more prestigious perpetrators. Astronomy is the just start; hopefully physics, computer science, engineering, philosophy and economics are next.

Comment Re:Maybe it's just me ... (Score 4, Informative) 131

by 2muchcoffeeman on Monday July 21, 2014 @05:09PM (#47503597) Attached to: The "Rickmote Controller" Can Hijack Any Google Chromecast

That's not what it says in the post: "The 'Rickmote,' which is built on top of the $35 Raspberry Pi single board computer, finds a local Chromecast device, boots it off the network, and then takes over the screen with multimedia of one's choosing. ... But it gets worse for the victims: If the hacker leaves the range of the device, there's no way to regain control of the Chromecast."

So ... yeah, it's never gonna give you up.

Submission + - Wozniak Gets Personal On Innovation

Submitted by snydeq on Tuesday February 04, 2014 @10:25PM

snydeq writes: Companies are doggedly pursuing the next big thing in technology, but nothing seems to be pointing to the right way these days, claims the legendary Steve Wozniak. The reason? 'You tend to deal with the past,' replicating what you know in a new form. Consider the notion of computing eyeware like Google Glass: 'People have been marrying eyewear with TV inputs for 20 years,' Wozniak says. True innovation, Wozniak claims, becomes more human, more personal. People use technology more the less it feels like technology. 'The software gets more accepted when it works in human ways — meaning in noncomputer ways.' Here, Wozniak says, is the key to technology's role in the education system.

Submission + - Alleged Silk Road Founder Indicted Again, This Time in New York (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 04, 2014 @06:54PM

An anonymous reader writes: Wired reports, "Federal authorities today announced a Grand Jury indictment against Ross Ulbricht, the alleged founder and owner of the underground drug emporium Silk Road. The indictment, in New York, includes one count for narcotics conspiracy, one count of running a criminal enterprise, one count of conspiracy to commit computer hacking and one count of money laundering, according to the indictment. It’s the second indictment for the the 29-year-old, who was arrested last October in San Francisco. Ulbricht was previously charged in New York at the time of his arrest, but authorities had until December to obtain an indictment against him based on new evidence seized. They sought an extension of that time and announced the indictment today. Ulbricht had been previously indicted in Maryland on charges of conspiring to have a former administrator of Silk Road murdered in exchange for $80,000. "

Submission + - Voter Shortsightedness May Skew Elections (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit on Tuesday February 04, 2014 @05:42PM

sciencehabit writes: “Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?” Ronald Reagan’s famous question in the U.S. presidential election of 1980 is generally a good yardstick for picking a candidate, or at least for judging a leader’s economic policies. But few voters follow it. Instead, they are swayed by economic swings in the months leading up to the election, often ignoring the larger trends. Why are we so shortsighted? A psychological study of voting behavior suggests an answer and points to a simple fix.

Submission + - Audience Jeers Contestant Who Uses Game Theory to Win at 'Jeopardy'

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com on Tuesday February 04, 2014 @03:59PM

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: USA Today reports that Arthur Chu, an insurance compliance analyst and aspiring actor, has won $102,800 in four Jeopardy! appearances using a strategy —- jumping around the board instead of running categories straight down, betting odd amounts on Daily Doubles and doing a final wager to tie — that has fans calling him a "villain" and "smug". Arthur's in-game strategy of searching for the Daily Double that has made him such a target. Typically, contestants choose a single category and progressively move from the lowest amount up to the highest, giving viewers an easy-to-understand escalation of difficulty. But Arthur has his sights solely set on finding those hidden Daily Doubles, which are usually located on the three highest-paying rungs in the categories (the category itself is random). That means, rather than building up in difficulty, he begins at the most difficult questions. Once the two most difficult questions have been taken off the board in one column, he quickly jumps to another category. It's a grating experience for the viewer, who isn't given enough to time to get in a rhythm or fully comprehend the new subject area. "The more unpredictable you are, the more you put your opponents off-balance, the longer you can keep an initial advantage," says Chu. "It greatly increases your chance of winning the game if you can pull it off, and I saw no reason not to do it." Another contra-intuitive move Chu has made is playing for a tie rather than to win in "Final Jeopardy" because that allows you advance to the next round which is the most important thing, not the amount of money you win in one game. "In terms of influence on the game, Arthur looks like a trendsetter of things to come," says Eric Levenson. "Hopefully that has more to do with his game theory than with his aggressive button-pressing."

Submission + - Greenland's fastest glacier sets new speed record (washington.edu)

Submitted by vinces99 on Tuesday February 04, 2014 @01:49PM

vinces99 writes: The latest observations of Jakobshavn Glacier show that Greenland’s largest glacier is moving ice from land into the ocean at a speed that appears to be the fastest ever recorded. Researchers from the University of Washington and the German Space Agency measured the speed of the glacier in 2012 and 2013. The results were published Feb. 3 in The Cryosphere, an open access journal of the European Geosciences Union.

Jakobshavn Glacier, which is widely believed to be the glacier that produced the large iceberg that sank the Titanic in 1912, drains the Greenland ice sheet into a deep-ocean fjord on the west coast of the island. This speedup of Jakobshavn means that the glacier is adding more and more ice to the ocean, contributing to sea-level rise.

“We are now seeing summer speeds more than four times what they were in the 1990s, on a glacier which at that time was believed to be one of the fastest, if not the fastest, glacier in Greenland,” said lead author Ian Joughin, a glaciologist at the UW’s Polar Science Center.

The new observations show that in summer of 2012 the glacier reached a record speed of more than 10 miles (17 km) per year, or more than 150 feet (46 m) per day. These appear to be the fastest flow rates recorded for any glacier or ice stream in Greenland or Antarctica, researchers said.

Submission + - Kansas drops plan for municipal broadband ban (kansas.com)

Submitted by Mokurai on Monday February 03, 2014 @11:13PM

Mokurai writes: "Facing public backlash over a Senate bill that would outlaw community broadband services statewide, Sen. Julia Lynn, R-Olathe, announced on Monday the postponement of hearings set to take place this week. Senate Bill 304 would prohibit cities and counties from building public broadband networks."

The bill was reportedly "introduced by John Federico, a cable industry lobbyist."

I didn't see this on SlashDot when it was introduced, but the Internet definitely responded to the threat of damage.

Submission + - Heat Waves in Australia are Getting More Frequent - and Hotter (climatecouncil.org.au)

Submitted by vikingpower on Thursday January 16, 2014 @03:44PM

vikingpower writes: In a landmark report on bushfires and climate change, the Australian Climate Council concludes that heat waves in Australia, as driven by climate change, are becoming more frequent — and that they get hotter. "It is crucial that communities, emergency services, health services and other authorities prepare for the increasing severity and frequency of extreme fire conditions.", says the Council in the report. Sarah Perkins, one of the report's co-authors, was interviewed by The Guardian Australia. "“While we can’t blame climate change for any one event, we can certainly see its fingerprint. This is another link in the chain.” Perkins said her latest work had analysed heatwave trends up to 2013. She said the trend “just gets worse – it’s a bit scary really”." Already back in 2009, the United Nations World Meteorological Organization signaled that a Southeast Australian heatwave was the hottest in 100 years.

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