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Comment Re:Yes, go ahead! (Score 1) 505

This is precisely the same model being fomented by the Defense contractor community in wanting to replace working Ada code (see below) - which had been mandated for years - with C++ or Java code. Their rationale is often that they can't find Ada programmers to maintain the code. Of course, what they don't tell you is that there is so little maintenance required that they can't make money unless they do the conversions to something more buggy...

Submission + - Fewer IPsec Connections at Risk from Weak Diffie-Hellman (threatpost.com)

msm1267 writes: A challenge has been made against one of the conclusions in an academic paper on cryptographic weaknesses that may be the open door through which intelligence agencies are breaking encrypted connections.

The paper, “Imperfect Forward Secrecy: How Diffie-Hellman Fails in Practice,” claims that a massively resourced agency such as the NSA could build enough custom hardware that would crack the prime number used to derive an encryption key. Once enough information is known about the prime, breaking Diffie-Hellman connections that use that same prime is relatively trivial.

In the paper, the team of 14 cryptographers and academics who wrote it claim that upwards of 66 percent of IPsec VPN connections can be passively decrypted in this manner.

Paul Wouters, a founding member and core developer of the Libreswan Project, as well as a Red Hat associate, said that researchers are jumping to a conclusion because of the way they scanned and tested VPN servers, and that the number is likely too high.

Comment What about other "compensation"? (Score 1) 229

Stock, stock options, vacations, automobile, life / health / disability insurance?

Too many CEOs think they are making a statement by announcing that they are only getting paid $1 / year all the while cleaning up on all the other perks...

It's comparing apples and oranges by using only one metric.

Submission + - CNN/Money Reporter Drives Tesla - Confirms Company's Claims (cnn.com)

karlnyberg writes: "Putting to rest the conflict between Tesla's Elon Musk and New York Times Reporter John Broder, CNN/Money's Peter Valdes-Dapena drives DC to Boston (primarily to test the SuperCharger network):

As he says in the money quote and byline of the article:

In the end, I made it — and it wasn't that hard.

As for the Supercharger network? Turns out that works, too."

Submission + - Darpa Shredder Contest Won - $50K (shredderchallenge.com)

karlnyberg writes: "In case you had not heard, the team “All Your Shreds Are Belong To U.S.” has correctly solved all five puzzles, and the Challenge has now ended. You may view the winning team’s submissions as well as the complete puzzle solutions by following the links on our homepage at www.shredderchallenge.com.

We recognize that many of our participants have devoted countless hours to painstakingly piecing our puzzles back together, and we truly appreciate everyone’s efforts. Hopefully you enjoyed the Challenge and learned something new along the way. We certainly did!

Regards,

DARPA Shredder Challenge"

Image

Man Takes Up Internal Farming 136

RockDoctor writes "'A Massachusetts man who was rushed to hospital with a collapsed lung came home with an unusual diagnosis: a pea plant was growing in his lung.' Just that summary should tell you enough to work out most of the rest of the details, but it does raise a number of questions unaddressed by the article: How did the pea roots deal with the patient's immune system? What would have happened if the situation had continued un-treated? I bet the guy has a career awaiting him in PR for a pea-growing company."
Programming

Simpler "Hello World" Demonstrated In C 582

An anonymous reader writes "Wondering where all that bloat comes from, causing even the classic 'Hello world' to weigh in at 11 KB? An MIT programmer decided to make a Linux C program so simple, she could explain every byte of the assembly. She found that gcc was including libc even when you don't ask for it. The blog shows how to compile a much simpler 'Hello world,' using no libraries at all. This takes me back to the days of programming bare-metal on DOS!"
Image

Man Swallows USB Flash Drive Evidence 199

SlideRuleGuy writes "In a bold and bizarre attempt to destroy evidence seized during a federal raid, a New York City man grabbed a flash drive and swallowed the data storage device while in the custody of Secret Service agents. Records show Florin Necula ingested the Kingston flash drive shortly after his January 21 arrest outside a bank in Queens. A Kingston executive said it was unclear if stomach acid could damage one of their drives. 'As you might imagine, we have no actual experience with someone swallowing a USB.' I imagine that would be rather painful. But did he follow his mother's advice and chew thoroughly, first? Apparently not, as the drive was surgically recovered."

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