Comment Re:WTF? (Score 3, Funny) 226
What do you mean? An African or European swallow?
Comment So what (Score 5, Insightful) 157
Google is not responsible for your CC info. Find the merchants and tell on them.
Submission + - How Your Compiler Can Compromise Application Security (itworld.com)
jfruh writes: Most day-to-day programmers have only a general idea of how compilers transform human-readable code into the machine language that actually powers computers. In an attempt to streamline applications, many compilers actually remove code that it perceives to be undefined or unstable — and, as a research group at MIT has found, in doing so can make applications less secure.
Comment Re:Greengrocers apostrophe? (Score 1) 214
Surely you meant to say you idiot's.
Comment Re:Right (Score 1) 314
Bradley Manning is a hero, he did the right thing.
Submission + - SSL Vulns Found in Critical Non-Browser Software (threatpost.com)
Gunkerty Jeb writes: The death knell for SSL is getting louder.
Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and Stanford University have discovered that poorly designed APIs used in SSL implementations are to blame for vulnerabilities in many critical non-browser software packages.
Serious security vulnerabilities were found in programs such as Amazon’s EC2 Java library, Amazon’s and PayPal’s merchant SDKs, Trillian and AIM instant messaging software, popular integrated shopping cart software packages, Chase mobile banking software, and several Android applications and libraries. SSL connections from these programs and many others are vulnerable to a man in the middle attack.
Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and Stanford University have discovered that poorly designed APIs used in SSL implementations are to blame for vulnerabilities in many critical non-browser software packages.
Serious security vulnerabilities were found in programs such as Amazon’s EC2 Java library, Amazon’s and PayPal’s merchant SDKs, Trillian and AIM instant messaging software, popular integrated shopping cart software packages, Chase mobile banking software, and several Android applications and libraries. SSL connections from these programs and many others are vulnerable to a man in the middle attack.
Comment Re:Kickstarter (Score 1) 103
I did and... sold!
Comment Re:COM, CORBA, Objective-C (Score 1) 933
Wasn't that figured out in Plan 9 using file system namespaces and 9P? I'd love to see what the Linux community could do with that.
Comment Re:Chat has its place, but shouldnt be primary (Score 1) 228
Comment Re:Big surprise? (Score 3, Interesting) 576
Submission + - Software-Defined Radio: The Apple I of Broadcast? (arstechnica.com)
benfrog writes: "A company called Per Vices has introduced software-defined radio gear that Ars Technica is comparing to the Apple I. Why? Because software radio can broadcast and receive nearly any radio signal on nearly any frequency at the same time, and thus could "revolutionize wireless." The Per Vices Phi is one of the first devices aimed at the mass hobbyist market to take advantage of this technology."
Submission + - US Election Year, Still No Voting Reform
An anonymous reader writes: A year ago, we discussed this on Slashdot: E-Voting Reform In an Out Year?. The point was that due to the hoard of problems with electronic (and mechanical) voting, it is best to approach reform in an out year, when it is not on everyone's mind yet too late to do anything about it. Well, we failed, didn't we? Another election year is upon us, and our vote is less secure, less reliable, less meaningful than ever. To reference the last article, we still have no open source voting, no end-to-end auditable voting systems and no open source governance. So don't complain when this election is stolen. You forgot to fix the system.
Submission + - Real-life Avatar: The first mind-controlled robot surrogate (extremetech.com)
MrSeb writes: "An Israeli student has become the first person to meld his mind and movements with a robot surrogate, or avatar. Situated inside an fMRI scanner in Israel, Tirosh Shapira has controlled a humanoid robot some 2000 kilometers (1250 miles) away, at the Béziers Technology Institute in France, using just his mind. The system must be trained so that a particular “thought” (fMRI blood flow pattern) equates to a certain command. In this case, when Shapira thinks about moving forward or backward, the robot moves forward or backward; when Shapira thinks about moving one of his hands, the robot surrogate turns in that direction. To complete the loop, the robot has a camera on its head, with the image being displayed in front of Shapira. Speaking to New Scientist, it sounds like Shapira really became one with the robot: “It was mind-blowing. I really felt like I was there, moving around,” he says. “At one point the connection failed. One of the researchers picked the robot up to see what the problem was and I was like, ‘Oi, put me down!’”"
Submission + - Ubuntu Can't Trust FSF: Thus Dropped Grub 2 For Secure Boot (muktware.com)
sfcrazy writes: Free Software Foundation, FSF, recently published a white paper criticizing Ubuntu's move to drop Grub 2 in order to support Microsoft's UEFI Secure Boot. FSF also recommend that Ubuntu should reconsider their decision. Ubuntu's charismatic chief, Mark Shuttleworth, has finally responded stating the reason why they won't change their stand on dropping Grub 2 from Ubuntu. Mark Shuttleworth said "The SFLC advice to us was that the FSF could require key disclosure if some OEM screwed up. As nice as it is that someone at the FSF says they would not, we have to plan for a world where leaders change and institutional priorities change. The FSF wrote a licence that would give them the rights to take specific actions, and it's hard for them to argue they never would!
So, does that FSF can't be trusted?"
So, does that FSF can't be trusted?"
Comment Yes. (Score 1) 502
Had you read TFA you'd realize that it's you who's mistaken.
In their experiments, the researchers reduced the LED’s input power to just 30 picowatts and measured an output of 69 picowatts of light - an efficiency of 230%. The physical mechanisms worked the same as with any LED: when excited by the applied voltage, electrons and holes have a certain probability of generating photons. The researchers didn’t try to increase this probability, as some previous research has focused on, but instead took advantage of small amounts of excess heat to emit more power than consumed. This heat arises from vibrations in the device’s atomic lattice, which occur due to entropy.
This light-emitting process cools the LED slightly, making it operate similar to a thermoelectric cooler. Although the cooling is insufficient to provide practical cooling at room temperature, it could potentially be used for designing lights that don’t generate heat. When used as a heat pump, the device might be useful for solid-state cooling applications or even power generation.
