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Comment Re:How About Bluetooth Keyboards (Score 1) 85

Bluetooth 2.1 and up are pretty good security wise, links are always encrypted and pairing with SSP can also protect you from an MITM attack. (e.g. using numeric comparison or passkey entry is secure from MITM. See the relevant wikipedia page for specifics.)

Since encryption is required (and usually done in dedicated hardware), there shouldn't be a difference in battery life.
Transportation

Interpreting Global Flight Maps 93

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the pictures-depict-message-of-satan dept.
kodiaktau writes "Five experts including: artist, environmentalist, aviation consultant, data visualization expert and philosopher interpret a flight map showing global flights. While the imagery of the visualization is intriguing, the interpretations are particularly interesting and show how individual background and experience impact they way they view the data."
Windows

Microsoft Developer Explains Why Windows Kernel Development Falls Behind 347

Posted by Soulskill from the gotta-be-the-shoes dept.
New submitter mha writes "In a response that truly seems to be from a core Microsoft developer, we are told about why Windows kernel development continues to fall further and further behind that of the Linux kernel. He says, 'The cause of the problem is social. There's almost none of the improvement for its own sake, for the sake of glory, that you see in the Linux world. ... There's no formal or informal program of systemic performance improvement. We started caring about security because pre-SP3 Windows XP was an existential threat to the business. Our low performance is not an existential threat to the business. See, component owners are generally openly hostile to outside patches: if you're a dev, accepting an outside patch makes your lead angry (due to the need to maintain this patch and to justify in in shiproom the unplanned design change), makes test angry (because test is on the hook for making sure the change doesn't break anything, and you just made work for them), and PM is angry (due to the schedule implications of code churn). There's just no incentive to accept changes from outside your own team. You can always find a reason to say "no," and you have very little incentive to say "yes."'"
Businesses

Facebook Testing the Want Button 147

Posted by samzenpus from the do-not-want dept.
redletterdave writes "Facebook already knows what you 'Like.' Soon, it may ask you what you 'Want'. Tom Waddington, a Web developer for the craft website Cut Out + Keep, discovered that Facebook has included code for a disabled 'Want' button within the Javascript of its list of social plug-ins. The code was released to the Facebook Javascript SDK last Wednesday, but Waddington discovered the disabled button among other embedded tags, including 'degrees,' 'social context' and 'page events.' Waddington says the 'Want' button would work with Open Graph projects that use the tag 'products.'"

Comment Re:There are some problems with it (Score 3, Interesting) 137

The server operator could modify the javascript it sends to the client, so that the client sends either the key or the plaintext to a place of the operator's choosing.

That would fall under the same category as MITM in this case. You still need to trust the server (or a server, if you prefer)

You could move the client side code to a browser addon/extension, but you'd still have the problem of trusting the extension to behave

Comment Re:There are some problems with it (Score 4, Informative) 137

It runs on ZeroBin, which uses client side javascript to generate a random 256bit AES key, then compress and encrypt the text before sending it to the server. Comments are also compressed and encrypted. The key is never seen by the server, so the server can't decrypt your data.

It uses the Stanford Javascript Crypto Library for its AES code, and its codebase is available on github.

The system is vulnerable to an MITM attack, also a server admin may be able to reveal the poster's identity, but not the post's content
Image

Can the Hottest Peppers In the World Kill You? 337

Posted by samzenpus from the dead-man's-chili dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Katharine Gammon writes that last week, the Kismot Indian restaurant in Edinburgh, Scotland, held a competition to eat the extra-hot Kismot Killer curry and several ambulances were called after some of the competitive eaters were left writhing on the floor in agony, vomiting and fainting. Paul Bosland, professor of horticulture at New Mexico State University and director of the Chile Pepper Institute, says that chili peppers can indeed cause death — but most people's bodies would falter long before they reached that point. 'Theoretically, one could eat enough really hot chiles to kill you,' says Bosland adding that a research study in 1980 calculated that three pounds of the hottest peppers in the world — something like the Bhut Jolokia — eaten all at once could kill a 150-pound person. Chili peppers cause the eater's insides to rev up, activating the sympathetic nervous system — which helps control most of the body's internal organs — to expend more energy, so the body burns more calories when the same food is eaten with chili peppers. But tissue inflammation could explain why the contestants in the Killer Curry contest said they felt like chainsaws were ripping through their insides. As for the contest, restaurant owner Abdul Ali admitted the fiery dish may have been too spicy after the Scottish Ambulance Service warned him to review his event. 'I think we'll tone it down, but we'll definitely do it next year.'"
Google

Zuckerberg Quits Google+ Over Privacy Concerns 284

Posted by CmdrTaco from the so-much-irony dept.
ianpm writes "Mark Zuckerberg has decided to leave Google's new social network because he 'doesn't want to be tracked.' In other news, the Internet's irony meter has just exploded. Robert Scoble is now the most followed person on Google+ according to The Inquirer." Most of the article is about the rankings of various G+ users with big followings. I currently have a measly 400 or so. Guess I'll never be as cool as MySpace's Tom.
Power

Could the US Phase Out Nuclear Power? 657

Posted by samzenpus from the won't-somebody-please-think-of-the-mutants dept.
mdsolar writes "In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, [German Chancellor] Merkel announced that her country would close all of its 17 existing reactors by 2022. Other nations, including Japan, Italy, and Switzerland, have announced plans to pare back nuclear power, but none have gone as far as Germany, the world's fourth-largest economy. Merkel vows to replace nuclear power with alternatives that do not increase greenhouse gases or shackle the economic growth. Could the US do the same? An increasing number of reports suggest it is not beyond the realm of possibility, and Germany could provide a road map."

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