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Businesses

In Ukraine, IT Freelancing Under Threat 359

Posted by kdawson from the intended-consequences dept.
An anonymous reader writes "According to the new tax law (Google translation; Russian original) that is being developed now and should take effect on January 1, 2011, it will not be possible for a private Ukrainian entrepreneur to provide any services to foreign companies without becoming a full-fledged company with a dedicated bookkeeper. Currently it is possible to perform such services and pay the equivalent of $25 in tax. Instead of raising the tax (which is overall welcomed by the community), the legislators plan to outlaw ISP, e-commerce, and Internet-based services — along with any services provided to foreign entities — for individual entrepreneurs. So starting in 2011, freelancers in Ukraine will have several choices: stop doing freelance work, start working illegally, become a full-fledged company subject to multiple cumbersome rules for taxation, or leave the country."
Data Storage

Israeli Startup Claims SSD Breakthrough 159

Posted by kdawson from the believe-in-what-you-write dept.
Lucas123 writes "Anobit Technologies announced it has come to market with its first solid state drive using a proprietary processor intended to boost reliability in a big way. In addition to the usual hardware-based ECC already present on most non-volatile memory products, the new drive's processor will add an additional layer of error correction, boosting the reliability of consumer-class (multi-level cell) NAND to that of expensive, data center-class (single-level cell) NAND. 'Anobit is the first company to commercialize its signal-processing technology, which uses software in the controller to increase the signal-to-noise ratio, making it possible to continue reading data even as electrical interference increases.' The company claims its processor, which is already being used by other SSD manufacturers, can sustain up to 4TB worth of writes per day for five years, or more than 50,000 program/erase cycles — as contrasted with the 3,000 cycles typically achieved by MLC drives. The company is not revealing pricing yet."
Security

Miscreants Exploit Google-Outed Windows XP Zero-Day 497

Posted by kdawson from the time-to-fix dept.
CWmike writes "A compromised website is serving an exploit of the bug in Windows' Help and Support Center, identified by a Google engineer last week, to hijack PCs running Windows XP. Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at antivirus vendor Sophos, declined to identify the site, saying only that it was dedicated to open source software. 'It's a classic drive-by attack,' said Cluley. The tactic was one of two that Microsoft said last week were the likely attack avenues. (The other was convincing users to open malicious e-mail messages.) The vulnerability was disclosed last Thursday by Google security engineer Tavis Ormandy, who also posted proof-of-concept attack code. Ormandy defended his decision to reveal the flaw only five days after reporting it to Microsoft. Cluley called Ormandy's action 'utterly irresponsible,' and in a blog post asked, 'Tavis Ormandy — are you pleased with yourself?'"
Science

Fermilab Experiment Hints At Multiple Higgs Particles 271

Posted by kdawson from the so-many-particles-mister-fermi dept.
krou writes "Recent results from the Dzero experiment at the Tevatron particle accelerator suggest that those looking for a single Higgs boson particle should be looking for five particles, and the data gathered may point to new laws beyond the Standard Model. 'The DZero results showed much more significant "asymmetry" of matter and anti-matter — beyond what could be explained by the Standard Model. Bogdan Dobrescu, Adam Martin and Patrick J Fox from Fermilab say this large asymmetry effect can be accounted for by the existence of multiple Higgs bosons. They say the data point to five Higgs bosons with similar masses but different electric charges. Three would have a neutral charge and one each would have a negative and positive electric charge. This is known as the two-Higgs doublet model.'" There's more detail in this writeup from Symmetry Magazine, a joint publication of SLAC and Fermilab. Here's the paper on the arXiv.
The Media

Digitally Filtering Out the Drone of the World Cup 602

Posted by timothy from the it's-called-an-off-switch-use-it dept.
qubezz writes "World Cup soccer fans may think a hornet's nest has infiltrated their TVs. However the buzz that is the background soundtrack of the South African-hosted games comes from tens of thousands of plastic horns called vuvuzelas, that are South Africa's version of ringing cowbells or throwing rats. It looks like the horns won't be banned anytime soon though. A savvy German hacker, 'Tube,' discovered that the horn sound can be effectively filtered out by applying a couple of digital notch filters to the audio at the frequencies the horn produces (another summary in English). Now it looks like even broadcasters like the the BBC and others are considering using such filters on their broadcasts."
Privacy

FBI's Facebook Monitoring Leads To Arrest In England 329

Posted by timothy from the bomb-president-motorcade-rutabaga dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports that armed police were called to a UK school earlier today after being advised of a potential threat by the FBI. The school stated that the FBI 'raised the alarm after Internet scanning software picked up a suspicious combination of words,' strongly implying that they are carrying out routine, automated surveillance of social networking sites. While in this case it does appear that there may have been a genuine threat, the story nonetheless raises significant privacy concerns."
Earth

Airplanes Unexpectedly Modify Weather 223

Posted by timothy from the send-me-some-snow-planes dept.
reillymj writes "Commercial airliners have a strange ability to create rain and snow when they fly through certain clouds. Scientists have known for some time that planes can make outlandish 'hole-punch' and 'canal' features in clouds. A new study has found that these odd formations are in fact evidence that planes are seeding clouds and changing local weather patterns as they fly through. In one case, researchers noted that a plane triggered several inches of snowfall directly beneath its flight path."
Crime

178 Arrested In US/EU Credit Card Cloning Ops 103

Posted by timothy from the spreading-the-wealth dept.
eldavojohn writes with this report from Brian Krebs: "Authorities have moved in on 178 people accused of working in credit card cloning labs across the USA and Europe, but with the bulk of the work apparently operating out of Spain. The source states that 'Police in 14 countries participated in a two-year investigation, initiated in Spain, where police have discovered 120,000 stolen credit card numbers and 5,000 cloned cards, and arrested 76 people and dismantled six cloning labs. The raids were made primarily in Romania, France, Italy, Germany, Ireland, and the United States, with arrests also made in Australia, Sweden, Greece, Finland, and Hungary. The detainees are also suspected of armed robbery, blackmail, sexual exploitation, and money-laundering, the police said.' Krebs notes a new credit card debuting at Turkish banks that appears to have a built-in LCD that has a random six-digit number associated with each transaction much like RSA SecurID keys used for computer logins."
Wikipedia

Wikipedia To Unlock Frequently Vandalized Pages 244

Posted by timothy from the when-hitler-came-up-with-scientology dept.
netbuzz writes "In an effort to encourage greater participation, Wikipedia, the self-described 'online encyclopedia that anyone can edit,' is turning to tighter editorial control as a substitute for simply 'locking' those entries that frequently attract mischief makers and ideologues. The new system, which will apply to a maximum of 2,000 most-vulnerable pages, is sure to create controversies of its own."
Displays

Microsoft's Glasses-Free 3D Display 197

Posted by CmdrTaco from the believe-it-when-i-see-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Microsoft Applied Sciences Group has developed a new lens that lets you watch three-dimensional content without 3D glasses. The new lens is thinner at the bottom (about 6mm) than at the top (11mm) and steers light to a viewer's eyes via LEDs along its bottom edge. The 3D display uses a camera to track viewers so that it knows where to steer the light; the idea isn't new, but the required CPU power is now affordable and small enough to pull it off on a large scale."

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