radicalpi writes "Motorola has responded to claims that eFuse is designed to brick your device if you attempt to mod it or install unauthorized bootloaders. Yes, the device will still not operate with unauthorized software, but it will only go into recovery mode until you reinstall the authorized software. According to Motorola: 'If a device attempts to boot with unapproved software, it will go into recovery mode, and can re-boot once approved software is re-installed.'"

r00tyroot writes with news that slipped by yesterday, quoting from the Internet Systems Consortium's release: "ISC joined other key participants of the Internet technical community in celebrating the achievement of a significant milestone for the Domain Name System today as the root zone was digitally signed for the first time. This marked the deployment of the DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) at the top level of the DNS hierarchy and ushers the way forward for further roll-out of DNSSEC in the top level domains and DNS Service Providers."

An anonymous reader writes "Japan's IKAROS spacecraft has already successfully deployed the first solar sail in space, but today it made the only first that really matters: it successfully captured the sun's rays with its 3,000-square-foot sail and used the energy to speed its way through space. Each photon of light exerts 0.0002 pounds of pressure on the 3,000-square-foot sail, and the steady stream of solar exposure has succeeded in propelling the nearly 700-pound drone."

An anonymous reader writes "All along the Gulf Coast's beaches it's turtle-hatching season. Conservationists knew the poor hatchlings wouldn't have a chance if they swam out into the oily waters of the Gulf, so they came up with an incredibly ambitious plan: they would dig up 70,000 turtle eggs, carefully raise them in a climate-controlled hanger at the Kennedy Space Center, and release the hatchlings into the clean Atlantic waters off Florida's east coast. Now that project is well underway, and Discover Magazine has pictures of the first batch of hatchlings crawling toward the welcoming waves. But there's a chance all this do-gooding won't do any good. New Scientist found experts who argue that releasing them into the Atlantic rather than into the Gulf will screw up the turtles' navigation systems, which will prevent them from following their normal migratory routes."

FleaPlus writes "The German Aerospace Center is planning to launch a novel reusable spacecraft in 2011, incorporating flat, damage-resistant tiles. Nitrogen will be pumped through the porous tiles, creating a protective gas layer that actively cools and shields the hottest parts of the spacecraft from the searing heat of reentry. The €12.5M unmanned 'SHEFEX II' project is a major technological step toward the team's eventual goal of a reusable space glider, which will be cheaper and easier to build than NASA's space shuttle."

eldavojohn writes "A startup called Metaweb (looks like an ontological, entity-based approach to Web 2.0 tagging) has been acquired by Google. You can find out what they're about from a super marketing fluff video they put together. The neat thing about Metaweb is that the database of entities it has is free. Will Google be able to make Metaweb work on their omniscient scale, or was this just Google making sure a startup doesn't become yet another player in search?"

RedEaredSlider writes with news that a recently-detected gamma-ray burst, originating roughly five billion light-years away, was powerful enough to temporarily blind NASA's Swift satellite. Phil Plait has an interesting writeup on the event. Quoting: "Swift, normally easily able to handle the X-ray load from these explosions, was overwhelmed, and actually shut down temporarily when software detected that the cameras onboard might get damaged by the flood of light. That’s never happened before. The burst was so bright in X-rays it put other GRBs to shame: slamming Swift with 143,000 X-ray photons per second, it was 5 times brighter than the previous record holder, and nearly 200 times as bright as a typical GRB! Weirdly, it didn’t look out of the ordinary in visible light."

CWmike writes "Researchers Nate Lawson and Taylor Nelson say they've discovered a basic security flaw that affects dozens of open-source software libraries — including those used by software that implements the OAuth and OpenID standards — that are used to check passwords and user names when people log into websites such as Twitter and Digg. By trying to log in again and again, cycling through characters and measuring the time it takes for the computer to respond, hackers can ultimately figure out the correct passwords. This may all sound very theoretical, but timing attacks can actually succeed in the real world. Three years ago, one was used to hack Microsoft's Xbox 360 gaming system, and people who build smart cards have added timing attack protection for years. The researchers plan to discuss their attacks at the Black Hat conference later this month in Las Vegas."

Apple just finished their press conference about the iPhone 4 antenna issues that have been widely reported and discussed in the past few weeks. Steve Jobs started by showing that the problem wasn't limited to iPhones, using videos of the BlackBerry Bold 9700, the HTC Droid Eris, and the Samsung Omnia 2 as examples, all of which dropped bars while being gripped in certain ways. He said, "This is life in the smartphone world. Phones aren't perfect. It's a challenge for the whole industry. Every phone has weak spots." He went on to say that only 0.55% of all iPhone 4 users have called in to complain about reception problems, and that the return rate on the iPhone 4 so far is less than a third of the return rate for the 3GS. Jobs then said that according to their data, the iPhone 4 drops an average of less than one additional call per hundred than the 3GS. He continued by pointing out that because the 3GS was based on the 3G, there was already a large supply of Bumpers, which most customers left the store with. When the iPhone 4 came out, the old Bumpers didn't fit, so stock was lower and fewer customers used them (80% vs. 20%). Therefore, Apple's solution to the antenna problems is to give a free case to every iPhone 4 purchaser before September 30. Refunds will be offered for those who already purchased one. Since they can't make the Bumpers fast enough, they'll be supplying other cases from third parties. Jobs also acknowledged recently reported problems with the proximity sensor, promising a future software update to fix it. Engadget's liveblog of the conference has a ton of pictures and more direct quotes from Jobs. It's worth looking at if only for pictures of Apple's anechoic testing chambers.

ChippedTeapot writes "Researchers at Cornell University have devised an algorithm for synthesizing sounds associated with brittle fracture simulations. Computers can now automatically generate synchronized sound, motion, and graphics for physically based fracture events, such as in future interactive virtual environments. The results will be presented at ACM SIGGRAPH 2010 in Los Angeles July 25-29. Check out the smashing results on YouTube."