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Submission + - Cats can recognize their own names (gizmodo.com) 1

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Plenty of cat owners will happily tell you their felines are capable of responding to their own names, but the scientific jury remains ambivalent on the matter. A fascinating new experiment suggests this might actually be true for some cats, and it’s a capacity very much tied to the social environment in which the cat lives.

The new research, published today in Scientific Advances, doesn’t mean cats understand the human conception of a name, but it does show that at least some cats can distinguish their names from other words. Prior research has shown that cats can recognize human gestures, facial expressions, and vocal cues.

Submission + - Mapping Service Blurs Out Military Bases, But Accidentally Locates Secret Ones (popularmechanics.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: A Russian online mapping company was trying to obscure foreign military bases. But in doing so, it accidentally confirmed their locations—many of which were secret.

Yandex Maps, Russia's leading online map service, blurred the precise locations of Turkish and Israeli military bases, pinpointing their location. The bases host sensitive surface-to-air missile sites and facilities housing nuclear weapons.

The Federation of American Scientists reports that Yandex Maps blurred out "over 300 distinct buildings, airfields, ports, bunkers, storage sites, bases, barracks, nuclear facilities, and random buildings" in the two countries. Some of these facilities were well known, but some of them were not. Not only has Yandex confirmed their locations, the scope of blurring reveals their exact size and shape.

Submission + - China To Force Changes To 20 Popular Games, Ban 9 Including Fortnite and PUBG (bbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A panel of censors set up to vet mobile video games in China has signaled it will be hard to please. State media reports that of the first 20 titles it assessed, nine were refused permission to go on sale. The Xinhua news agency added that developers of the other 11 had been told they had to make adjustments to remove "controversial content." The authorities have voiced concerns about the violent nature of some titles as well as worries about the activity being addictive.

It was announced in August that a new body — the State Administration of Press and Publications — had taken over responsibility for approving games and that it would limit the number of online titles available. And although it has not been specified, some experts are assuming that the new panel will operate under its auspices. Xinhua said it is comprised of gaming experts, government-employed researchers, and representatives from the media and video games industry. But it provided no other information about who they were or the titles they had already examined.

Submission + - Is Facebook becomming a scammers haven?

Submitted by pcjunky
pcjunky writes: Several months ago I clicked on a Facebook ad purporting to sell a robot vacuum cleaner at a fraction of what they normally sell for. The site was complete with detailed photos of the product as well as videos showing it in operation. I also ordered a Light Sabre from another ad with similar detail and video. A month later what came in the mail in no way resembled what the site showed. The robot vacuum was cheap piece of plastic powered by two AA batteries and didn't even have wheels. I reported this cam to Facebook via their reporting option. Nothing changed, I continued to see the ad for at least two more months. I am still seeing very similar ads for other product that purport to sell items (Cubiio Laser engraver for $35) normally selling for several hundred. Obvious scams. Has anyone else encountered these ads? Does Facebook vet advertisers in any way?

Submission + - Police Decrypt 258,000 Messages After Breaking Pricey IronChat Crypto App (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Police in the Netherlands said they decrypted more than 258,000 messages sent using IronChat, an app billed as providing end-to-end encryption that was endorsed by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden. In a statement published Tuesday, Dutch police said officers achieved a “breakthrough in the interception and decryption of encrypted communication” in an investigation into money laundering. The encrypted messages, according to the statement, were sent by IronChat, an app that runs on a device that cost thousands of dollars and could send only text messages.

“Criminals thought they could safely communicate with so-called crypto phones which used the application IronChat,” Tuesday’s statement said. “Police experts in the east of the Netherlands have succeeded in gaining access to this communication. As a result, the police have been able to watch live the communication between criminals for some time.” Blackbox-security.com, the site selling IronChat and IronPhone, quoted Snowden as saying: “I use PGP to say hi and hello, i use IronChat (OTR) to have a serious conversation,” according to Web archives. Whether the endorsement was authentic or not wasn’t immediately known. The site has been seized by Dutch police.

Submission + - US Indicts Chinese Hacker-Spies In Conspiracy To Steal Aerospace Secrets (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Justice Department has charged two Chinese intelligence officers, six hackers, and two aerospace company insiders in a sweeping conspiracy to steal confidential aerospace technology from U.S. and French companies. For more than five years, two Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) spies are said to have run a team of hackers focusing on the theft of designs for a turbofan engine used in U.S. and European commercial airliners, according to an unsealed indictment dated October 25. In a statement, the DOJ said a Chinese state-owned aerospace company was simultaneously working to develop a comparable engine.

The MSS officers involved were identified as Zha Rong, a division director in the Jiangsu Province regional department (JSSD), and Chai Meng, a JSSD section chief. At the direction of the MSS officers, the hackers allegedly infiltrated a number of U.S.-based aerospace companies, including California-based Capstone Turbine, among others in Arizona, Massachusetts, and Oregon, the DOJ said. The officers are also said to have recruited at least two Chinese employees of a French aerospace manufacturer—insiders who allegedly aided the conspiracy by, among other acts, installing Sakula, a remote access trojan, onto company computers.

Submission + - Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970 (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Artem Tashkinov
Artem Tashkinov writes: The new estimate of the massacre of wildlife is made in a major report produced by WWF and involving 59 scientists from across the globe. It finds that the vast and growing consumption of food and resources by the global population is destroying the web of life, billions of years in the making, upon which human society ultimately depends for clean air, water and everything else. Many scientists believe the world has begun a sixth mass extinction, the first to be caused by a species – Homo sapiens. Other recent analyses have revealed that humankind has destroyed 83% of all mammals and half of plants since the dawn of civilisation and that, even if the destruction were to end now, it would take 5-7 million years for the natural world to recover. Tanya Steele, chief executive at WWF, said: “We are the first generation to know we are destroying our planet and the last one that can do anything about it.”

Submission + - Windows Defender Becomes First Antivirus To Run Inside A Sandbox (zdnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft announced today that Windows Defender is the first antivirus to gain the ability to run inside a sandbox environment. In software design, a "sandbox" is a security mechanism that works by separating a process inside a tightly controlled area of the operating system that gives that process access to limited disk and memory resources. The idea is to prevent bugs and exploit code from spreading from one process to another, or to the underlying OS.

"We're in the process of gradually enabling this capability for Windows insiders and continuously analyzing feedback to refine the implementation," Microsoft said today in a celebratory blog post. Users who can't wait until Microsoft finishes testing the feature can also enable it right now. Support for Windows Defender running inside a sandbox environment has been silently added since Windows 10 version 1703. To enable it right now, Windows 10 users can follow these steps.
GUI

Submission + - Ubuntu Still Aims For Wayland

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: While there's still more than one month until the Ubuntu 12.10 feature freeze, Ubuntu developers continue to work towards their tight schedule of having Wayland serve as the compositor for the Quantal Quetzal release due out in October. Canonical's intends to provide smooth transitions from boot to shutdown. Wayland is also used for session switching and other operations, avoiding traditional VT switching, providing a consistent monitor layout, using the greeter as the lock screen, ensuring that locked sessions are actually secure from displaying, and showing the greeter while the session loads. Phoronix remains skeptical about Ubuntu making the deadline.
Image

Man Patents Self-Burying Coffin 159

Posted by samzenpus from the ashes-to-ashes-righty-tighty dept.
disco_tracy writes "A California inventor has filed a patent for a coffin that screws into the ground vertically. The reason? It greatly reduces excavation labor and burial costs, decreases land use, and opens up more space for burials in unused areas of a cemetery. Writer Clark Boyd also lists 5 other unconventional burial options, including lye, ecopods, GPS devices that track bodies buried without headstones, cryogenics and — my favorite — getting buried in the sky."
Education

NAMCO Takes Down Student Pac-man Project 218

Posted by Soulskill from the chasing-ghosts dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The core of how people first learn to do stuff — programming, music, writing, etc. — is to imitate others. It's one of the best ways to learn. Apparently a bunch of students using MIT's educational Scratch programming language understand this. But not everyone else does. NAMCO Bandai sent a takedown notice to MIT because some kids had recreated Pac-man with Scratch. The NAMCO letter is pretty condescending as well, noting that it understands the educational purpose of Scratch, but 'part of their education should include concern for the intellectual property of others.'"
Firefox

Submission + - Firefox May Overtake IE in Europe This Month (conceivablytech.com)

Submitted by peterkern
peterkern writes: History in the making: It appears that the July browser market share reports are somewhat inconsistent, but if we believe StatCounter, then it looks like Firefox will be overtaking Microsoft’s IE in terms of market share next month. Both browsers are now within 1 point of 40% market share – IE above and Firefox below. Europeans appear to be more crazy about Firefox than Americans: In Germany, Firefox has a stunning 61% market share, while IE has only 25%. Google’s Chrome is, according to StatCounter, now above 10% market share. ConceivablyTech has more details, including market share data from StatCounter and NetApplications.

Submission + - FreeBSD 8.1 Released (freebsd.org)

Submitted by hsn
hsn writes: The highlights in the 8.1-RELEASE are the following:

[powerpc] FreeBSD now supports SMP in PowerPC G5 systems. Note that SMP support on FreeBSD/powerpc is disabled by default in GENERIC kernel.

[sparc64] FreeBSD now supports UltraSPARC IV, IV+, and SPARC64 V CPUs.

The ZFS zpool version has been updated to 14. The zfsloader has been added. This is a separate zfs(8) enabled loader. Note that a ZFS bootcode (zfsboot or gptzfsboot) need to be installed to use this new loader.

The bwn(4) driver for Broadcom BCM43xx chipsets has been added.

The run(4) driver for Ralink RT2700U/RT2800U/RT3000U USB 802.11agn devices has been added.

The sge(4) driver for Silicon Integrated Systems SiS190/191 Fast/Gigabit Ethernet has been added. This supports TSO and TSO over VLAN.

The uhso(4) driver for Option HSDPA USB devices has been added. A new uhsoctl(1) userland utility can be used to initiate and close the WAN connection.

The urtw(4) driver has been improved and now supports RTL8187B-based devices.

The ipfw(4) subsystem including dummynet(4) has been improved.

The pfil(9) framework for packet filtering in FreeBSD kernel now supports separate packet filtering instances like ipfw(4) for each VIMAGE jail.

The vlan(4) pseudo interface now supports TSO (TCP Segmentation Offloading). The capability flag is named as IFCAP_VLAN_HWTSO and it is separated from IFCAP_VLAN_HWTAGGING. The age(4), alc(4), ale(4), bce(4), bge(4), cxgb(4), jme(4), re(4), and mxge(4) driver support this feature.

The vlan(4) pseudo interface for IEEE 802.1Q VLAN now ignore renaming of the parent's interface name. The configured VLAN interfaces continue to work with the new name while previously the configurations were removed as the renaming happens.

The HAST (Highly Avalable STorage) framework has been added. This is a framework to allow transparently storing data on two physically separated machines connected over the TCP/IP network. HAST works in Primary-Secondary (Master-Backup, Master-Slave) configuration, which means that only one of the cluster nodes can be active at any given time. Only Primary node is able to handle I/O requests to HAST-managed devices. Currently HAST is limited to two cluster nodes in total.

FreeBSD cam(3) SCSI framework has been improved and a new kernel option option ATA_CAM has been added. This turns ata(4) controller drivers into cam(4) interface modules. When enabled, this option deprecates all ata(4) peripheral drivers and interfaces such as ad and acd, and allows cam(4) drivers ada, and cd and interfaces to be natively used instead. Note that this is not enabled by default in the GENERIC kernel.

The mvs(4) CAM ATA driver for Marvell 88SX50XX/88SX60XX/88SX70XX/SoC SATA controllers has been added. This driver supports same hardware as the ata(4) driver does, but provides many additional features, such as NCQ and PMP.

The liblzma library for LZMA2 lossless data compression algorithm and the userland utilities xz(1), xzdec(1), lzma(1), and lzmainfo(1). has been imported.

The ACPI-CA has been updated to 20100304.

ISC BIND has been updated to version 9.6.2-P2.

OpenSSH has been updated from version 5.1p1 to version 5.4p1.

OpenSSL has been updated to version 0.9.8n.

sendmail has been updated to version 8.14.4.

The supported version of the GNOME desktop environment (x11/gnome2) has been updated to 2.28.2.

The supported version of the KDE desktop environment (x11/kde4) has been updated to 4.4.3.
First Person Shooters (Games)

Crytek Plans Free Version of CryENGINE 3 75

Posted by Soulskill from the everybody-gets-an-engine dept.
Develop reports that Crytek, makers of the Far Cry series, the Crysis series, and the game engines behind them, have plans to release a free-to-use version of CryENGINE 3, the software's latest iteration. Quoting: "Unreal vendor Epic Games and Unity have both seen their user-bases mushroom overnight since launching versions of their own engines that, while tied to different royalty rates, are completely free to download and operate. Now the CryEngine 3 group has revealed it wants to tap into this thriving market. The firm's CEO Cevat Yerli told Develop that Crytek already gives away a CryEngine 2 editor to the mod community, but explained that Crytek's expansion strategy stretches beyond. 'We have a very vivid community of users and modders and content creators, and usually that's a great way of unlocking the engine,' he said. ... 'So far that's what we've been offering for free, and it's easy entry into the production environment. [But] we do want to make a standalone free platform that people can run independent of CryEngine that will also be up to speed with the latest engine.'"

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