ainandil - Slashdot User

Submission + - Ecuador Grants Asylum to Julian Assange (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by

paulmac84

on Thursday August 16, 2012 @07:50AM

paulmac84 writes: "The Guardian are live blogging the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister's announcement that Ecuador is to grant asylum to Julian Assange. In the announcement Minister Patino said, "We can state that there is a risk that he will be persecuted politically... We trust the UK will offer the necessary guarantees so that both governments can act adequately and properly respect international rights and the right of asylum. We also trust the excellent relationship the two countries have will continue.". The Guardian also carries a translated copy of the letter the UK sent to Ecuador regarding the threat to "storm" the Ecuadorian embassy."

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How to ensure data would survive a Carrington event 2

Submitted by kactusotp on Thursday August 16, 2012 @06:38AM

kactusotp writes: I run a small indie game company and since source code is kind of our life blood, I'm pretty paranoid about backups. Every system has a local copy, servers run from a raid 5 nas, we have complete offsite backups, backup to keyrings/mobile phones, and cloud backups in other countries as well. With all the talk about solar flares and other such near extinction events lately, I've been wondering though, is it actually possible to store or protect data in such a way, that if such an event occurred, data survives and is recoverable in a useful form? Optical and magnetic media would probably be rendered useless by a large enough solar flare and storing source code/graphics in paper format would be impractical to recover, so Slashdot, short of building a Faraday cage 100 km below the surface of the moon, how could you protect data to survive a modern day Carrington event? http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/03/06/3446150.htm

Submission + - Nokia Researcher Puts Firefox OS On Raspberry Pi (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by

judgecorp

on Thursday August 16, 2012 @06:03AM

judgecorp writes: "Mozilla's mobile phone operating system only exists in an early beta form, but Oleg Romashin, a researcher at Nokia, has already got it working on the Raspberry Pi and posted video to prove it. We don't think this indicates any alternate strategy for Nokia if Windows Phone doesn't pan out, but it does show that Firefox OS is portable, and the Pi is capable, and both can be played with — which will please both Mozilla and the Raspberry Pi Foundation. And the Firefox OS work in progress is available for download."

Submission + - Anonymous Claims to have Hacked Sony PSN Again (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec on Wednesday August 15, 2012 @02:11PM

hypnosec writes: Anonymous has claimed a new attack on Sony PlayStation Network and this time around it seems that it has managed to hack nearly 10 million user accounts and and as a proof of the hack dumped more than 3000 credentials online in the form of a pastebin post. The notorious hacktivist group is claiming that the entire set of hacked credentials contains over 10 million PSN accounts and that the file is of around 50GB.

Submission + - Coming Your Way... Less Intrusive Facebook Data Policies? (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by ainandil on Saturday May 26, 2012 @07:48PM

ainandil writes: Facebook may have to alter its data use policy now that grassrooters have driven enough complaints about the company's proposed data usage policy to trigger a user vote on the matter. Does this mean the days of the man-in-the-middle attack as social media are numbered?

Submission + - Iran Reverse Engineers Cobra Attack Helicopter

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens writes

on Saturday May 26, 2012 @05:16PM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Defense Tech reports that continuing it’s tradition of reverse engineering and fabricating its stockpile of 40-year old American weaponry, Iran announced that it is about to unveil its first ever domestically produced Cobra attack choppers. Nearly 50-years after the US introduced the legendary Bell AH-1 Cobra, once the the backbone of the United States Army's attack helicopter fleet, Iran’s locally-grown Cobras will be armed with “different types of home-made caliber guns, rockets and missiles,” according to Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency. “All the phases of designing and manufacturing of the chopper have been done inside the country and the helicopter enjoys some capabilities which make it preferable to Apache Choppers,” says Brigadier General Kioumars Heidari. Iranian officials stress that the Iran's military and arms programs serve defensive purposes and should not be perceived as a threat to any other country reports the FARS news release. More photos available here."

Submission + - Dungeons and dragons playtest released (wizards.com)

Submitted by thuf1rhawat on Friday May 25, 2012 @01:35AM

thuf1rhawat writes: for a certain type of geek, nothing is more important than dungeons and dragons, with the announcement last year of the new edition and the announcement that an open playtest will occur. finally it's available ( subject to usual nda's etc)

Submission + - Hackers broke into Lockheed Martin networks (msn.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28, 2011 @06:00AM

An anonymous reader writes: Unknown hackers have broken into the security networks of Lockheed Martin Corp and several other U.S. military contractors, a source with direct knowledge of the attacks told Reuters.

They breached security systems designed to keep out intruders by creating duplicates to "SecurID" electronic keys from EMC Corp's RSA security division, said the person who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.

Submission + - An Amazing Vintage Tech Collection (stormdriver.com)

Submitted by

StormDriver

on Tuesday May 10, 2011 @08:27AM

StormDriver writes: "For every good design there are a dozen of failed concepts. Nothing illustrates that better than a great online vintage gadget collection, published yesterday by Microsoft Research team. The collection is a brainchild of Bill Buxton, one of the principal Microsoft researchers, a guy who’s been through 30 years of continuous tech design. Awarded with three honorary doctorates and several professional awards, Bill also likes to gather things – the vintage, geeky kind of things to be precise. Over the years, he has gathered an impressive collection of prototypes, probably the best I have seen online"

Comment Re:Fail (Score 1) 350

by ainandil on Friday April 01, 2011 @08:21PM (#35691542) Attached to: Facebook, Zuckerberg Sued For $1 Billion Over Intifada Page

Sort of. Random idiots can sue on behalf of society (note the lawsuit referenced in paragraph 11 in the complaint) -- but stand a chance of winning only if they have a valid cause of action. In this case, Klayman alleges damages which can neither be substantiated nor proved: an excess of one billion dollars, compensatory and punitive, plus attorney's fees and costs, for assault and negligence. IMHO, the complaint is worth reading as a welcome respite from the inane attempts at humor we've seen here on /. the past day. Best part? Paragraphs 4 and 17, wherein Klayman references "The Social Network" in substantiating Zuckerberg's "questionable business and ethical practices."

Share and enjoy,

Ainandil

Submission + - Students Create Thought-Controlled Prosthetic Arm (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula on Friday April 01, 2011 @09:56AM

Zothecula writes: Two undergraduate students from Toronto's Ryerson University have created a prosthetic arm that is controlled by its wearer's brain signals, and powered by compressed air. Not only is the Artificial Muscle-Operated (AMO) Arm said to offer a greater range of movement than traditional prostheses, but it also doesn't require the amputee to undergo invasive surgery, is easy to learn to use, and it is relatively inexpensive to make.

Submission + - Watch IBM's Watson on Jeopardy - tonight! (jeopardy.com)

Submitted by JohnMurtari on Monday February 14, 2011 @06:36AM

JohnMurtari writes: Calling all computer geeks! Don't miss watching IBM's Watson compete on Jeopardy against two of the best "human" players they've ever had.

Check IBMWatson.com for more details from IBM. This could be it — the computer that can finally talk and answer ambiguous questions. Who needs another search engine when IBM markets Watson?

Submission + - How Your Username May Betray You (technologyreview.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 14, 2011 @03:28AM

An anonymous reader writes: By creating a distinctive username—and reusing it on multiple websites—you may be giving online marketers and scammers a simple way to track you. Four researchers from the French National Institute of Computer Science (INRIA) studied over 10 million usernames—collected from public Google profiles, eBay accounts, and several other sources. They found that about half of the usernames used on one site could be linked to another online profile, potentially allowing marketers and scammers to build a more complex picture the users.

"These results show that some users can be profiled just from their usernames," says Claude Castelluccia, research director of the security and privacy research group at INRIA, and one of the authors of a paper on the work. "More specifically, a profiler could use usernames to identify all the site [profiles] that belong to the same user, and then use all the information contained in these sites to profile the victim." ....

Submission + - Infertility could impede human space colonization (independent.co.uk)

Submitted by intellitech on Sunday February 13, 2011 @10:14PM

intellitech writes: The prospect of long-term space travel has led scientists to consider, increasingly seriously, the following conundrum: if travelling to a new home might take thousands of years, would humans be able to successfully procreate along the way? The early indications from NASA are not encouraging. Space, it seems, is simply not a good place to have sex.

Submission + - Saudi students in US seek segregation on Facebook (arabnews.com)

Submitted by Beetle B. on Sunday February 13, 2011 @09:36PM

Beetle B. writes: A 22,000-member group for Saudis studying in the US on the social networking website Facebook has been split into two groups, one for women and one for men. The split follows a request from the group's female members who wanted extra privacy.

'The separate page for Saudi women is a valid decision. We took it to fulfill the wishes of the Saudi women in the US. We have been contacted by a lot of women asking for their private group,' Majed Aleid, media chair of the 'Saudis in the US' group, told Arab News in a letter.

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