noogzer - Slashdot User

Submission + - Yahoo Debuts End-To-End Encryption Email Plugin, Password-Free Logins (theverge.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 15, 2015 @10:40PM

An anonymous reader writes: Today Yahoo has released the source code for a plugin that will enable end-to-end encryption for their email service. They're soliciting feedback from the security community to make sure it's built properly. They plan to roll it out to users by the end of the year.

Yahoo also demonstrated a new authentication system that doesn't use permanent passwords. Instead, they allow users to associate their accounts with your phone, and text you a code on demand any time you need to log in. It's basically just the second step of traditional two-step authentication by itself. But Yahoo says they think it's "the first step to eliminating passwords."

Submission + - Nokia Names Microsoft's Elop As New CEO (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett on Friday September 10, 2010 @08:31AM

itwbennett writes: Nokia has tapped Stephen Elop, former president of Microsoft's business software group, to become its new CEO effective Sept. 21. Elop will replace Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo who loses his board seat immediately and will step down from the CEO position on Sept. 20. Microsoft said that Elop will leave immediately, but the company doesn't seem to be rushing to fill the vacancy at the top of one of its largest divisions. 'I am writing to let you know that Stephen Elop has been offered and has accepted the job as CEO of Nokia and will be leaving Microsoft, effective immediately,' Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer wrote in a letter to employees late Thursday. 'Stephen leaves in place a strong business and technical leadership team, including Chris Capossela, Kurt DelBene, Amy Hood and Kirill Tatarinov, all of whom will report to me for the interim.'

Submission + - What Nokia Must Do To Stay Relevant In Mobile (infoworld.com)

Submitted by

snydeq

on Friday July 09, 2010 @10:14AM

snydeq writes: "Mikael Ricknäs reports how Nokia can turn around its three-year slide in the mobile market — one that has transformed the company's iconic N95 into a distant memory given the pace of innovation at Apple and around Android. Completely underestimating the impact of the iPhone, Nokia took too long to realize that Symbian's lack of touch capabilities would hinder its ability to compete in the smartphone market. Moreover, the company's move to open source the OS has significantly slowed down Symbian's development, according to analysts, leaving Nokia with both a lack of support from other vendors and a platform on which competitors can keep a close eye. Meanwhile, developer interest in Nokia's Ovi app store is nearly nonexistent. 'Nokia's problems are still fixable but the window is closing. I am not optimistic that they will be fixed in 2010 because there isn't much time left; if they aren't fixed in 2011, Nokia will be in big trouble.'"

Submission + - Microsoft Applies for Page-Turn Animation Patent (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by eldavojohn on Friday July 09, 2010 @08:51AM

eldavojohn writes: Ever seeking to out innovate their competition, Microsoft has applied for a patent on animating page flips in devices like the Nook or Kindle. The application summary reads "One or more pages are displayed on a touch display. A page-turning gesture directed to a displayed page is recognized. Responsive to such recognition, a virtual page turn is displayed on the touch display. The virtual page turn actively follows the page-turning gesture. The virtual page turn curls a lifted portion of the page to progressively reveal a back side of the page while progressively revealing a front side of a subsequent page. A lifted portion of the page is given an increased transparency that allows the back side of the page to be viewed through the front side of the page. A page-flipping gesture quickly flips two or more pages." Maybe you've seen this before?

Submission + - Black hole emits a 1,000 light-year wide fireball (io9.com) 1

Submitted by

PhrostyMcByte

on Friday July 09, 2010 @12:09AM

PhrostyMcByte writes: "12 million light-years away in the outer spiral of galaxy NGC 7793, a bubble of hot gas approximately 1,000 light-years in diameter can be found shooting out of a black hole — one of the most powerful jets of energy ever seen. The bubble has been growing for approximately 200,000 years, and is expanding at around 1,000,000 kilometers per hour."

Submission + - Solar plane completes 24-hour flight (msn.com)

Submitted by asukasoryu on Thursday July 08, 2010 @08:11AM

asukasoryu writes: An experimental solar-powered plane landed safely Thursday after completing its first 24-hour test flight, proving that the aircraft can collect enough energy from the sun during the day to stay aloft all night. The record feat completes seven years of planning and brings the Swiss-led project one step closer to its goal of circling the globe using only energy from the sun. The team will now set its sights on an Atlantic crossing, before attempting a round-the-world flight in 2013.

Submission + - 'Forest Bathing' is Good for Your Health 2

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Tuesday July 06, 2010 @11:24AM

Hugh Pickens writes: "The NY Times reports that although allergies and the promise of air-conditioning tend to drive people indoors this time of year, when people swap their concrete confines for a few hours in more natural surroundings — forests, parks and other places with plenty of trees — they experience increased immune function. A study of 280 healthy people in Japan, where visiting nature parks for therapeutic effect has become a popular practice called “Shinrin-yoku,” or “forest bathing" found that being among plants produced “lower concentrations of cortisol, lower pulse rate, and lower blood pressure,” among other things. Another study in 2007 showed that men who took two-hour walks in a forest over two days had a 50-percent spike in levels of natural killer cells and a third study found an increase in white blood cells that lasted a week in women exposed to phytoncides in forest air. "It is popular to decry the destruction of tropical rainforests—citing the wonder drugs that may eventually be found there," writes Botanist Joan Maloof. "Meanwhile, closer to home, we may have medicines of our own lurking right beneath our noses. Perhaps someday, when your physician asks you to “take a deep breath,” it will be the old-growth air that he or she is referring to.""

Submission + - Hayabusa returns particles from asteroid (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by mbone on Tuesday July 06, 2010 @09:48AM

mbone writes: Slashdot readers may remember the long odyssey of the Japanese Hayabusa spacecraft — and the recent Slashdot article entitled "No Samples On Japan's Hayabusa Asteroid Probe."

Well, the BBC now has a story, "Hayabusa capsule particles may be from asteroid." Apparently JAXA (the Japanese Space Agency) has opened the sample container returned to Earth by Hayabusa, and has released "images of tiny dust particles inside the container."

You will note that I titled this story carefully — Hayabusa has now returned particles from the asteroid. Whether they are asteroid particles or pieces of dust brought all the way from Earth remains to be seen, but they were certainly returned from the asteroid — a remarkable technical feat. This announcement, I think, gives considerable hope that these particles are from the near-Earth asteroid, Itokawa, as the Japanese have been very careful in trying to avoid contamination. Even a tiny speck of dust would be very revealing about the asteroid's constitution and possibly its history as well. Kudos to JAXA for a job well done.

Submission + - First full-sky image from Planck (bbc.co.uk) 1

Submitted by krou on Monday July 05, 2010 @08:02AM

krou writes: Six months of work has produced a remarkable full-sky map from Planck.
It shows what is visible beyond the Earth to instruments that are sensitive to light at very long wavelengths — much longer than what we can sense with our eyes. Researchers say it is a remarkable dataset that will help them understand better how the Universe came to look the way it does now. "It's a spectacular picture; it's a thing of beauty," Dr Jan Tauber, the European Space Agency's (Esa) Planck project scientist, told BBC News. ... Of particular note are the huge streamers of cold dust that reach thousands of light-years above and below the galactic plane. "What you see is the structure of our galaxy in gas and dust, which tells us an awful lot about what is going on in the neighbourhood of the Sun; and it tells us a lot about the way galaxies form when we compare this to other galaxies," observed Professor Andrew Jaffe, a Planck team member from Imperial College London, UK.

The ESA have more news here, with a higher-res JPG available.

Submission + - New Material Can Store Vast Amounts Of Energy (gizmag.com)

Submitted by ElectricSteve on Monday July 05, 2010 @01:18AM

ElectricSteve writes: Using super-high pressures similar to those found deep in the Earth or on a giant planet, researchers from Washington State University (WSU) have created a compact, never-before-seen material capable of storing vast amounts of energy. Described by one of the researchers as “the most condensed form of energy storage outside of nuclear energy,” the material holds potential for creating a new class of energetic materials or fuels, an energy storage device, super-oxidizing materials for destroying chemical and biological agents, and high temperature superconductors.

Submission + - Possible effects of radio waves on plants found (dailycamera.com)

Submitted by dwguenther on Sunday July 04, 2010 @08:46PM

dwguenther writes: A Lyons (Colorado) area woman with no academic pedigree has published a scientific paper in the International Journal of Forestry Research about the adverse effects of radio waves on aspen seedlings.

Katie Haggerty, who lives north of Steamboat Mountain, found in a preliminary experiment done near her house that aspens shielded from the waves were healthier than those that were not.

"I found that the shielded seedlings produced more growth, longer shoots, bigger leaves and more total leaf area. The shielded group produced 60 percent more leaf area and 74 percent more shoot length than a mock-shielded group," she said.

Submission + - No Samples on Japan's Hayabusa Asteroid Probe (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Thursday July 01, 2010 @02:15PM

eldavojohn writes: "Reports are coming in that JAXA's Hayabusa probe came up empty handed in its bid to collect asteroid matter. There may be gas in the probe but no dust samples as many hoped. Murphy's Law hit JAXA hard, 'After landing in 2005 on the Itokawa asteroid, which is about one-third mile long and shaped like a potato, the probe's sample-capture mechanism went awry. To the public's dismay, JAXA officials said they were not sure whether any samples had been collected. Next, the probe's robotic rover, meant to take photos and temperature readings on the asteroid, inexplicably floated off into space and was never heard from again. Worse yet, after Hayabusa took off from the asteroid, all four of NEC's ion engines shut down. So did all 12 of the chemical-fueled rocket engines made by another space industry giant, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The probe was left drifting in space. Then, for more than seven weeks, for reasons still not clear, there were no communication signals from the probe. Public dismay quickly turned to derision and, eventually, indifference.' The probe did return, however, and hoped to salvage something but now it appears that the only thing it accomplished was one long and error prone journey."

Submission + - NASA sets date for space shuttle finale (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie on Thursday July 01, 2010 @01:43PM

coondoggie writes: After some debate, NASA today said it has set the final two launch dates for its venerable space shuttles. Those dates are: Nov. 1 for space shuttle Discovery's STS-133 mission; and Feb. 26, 2011, for the liftoff of shuttle Endeavour's STS-134 mission.
NASA said the dates needed to be adjusted because critical payload hardware for STS-133 will not be ready in time to support the planned Sept. 16 launch.

Submission + - Spitzer telescope pictures star being born (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by Arvisp on Saturday June 19, 2010 @06:12AM

Arvisp writes: Astronomers at the American Ivy League universities discovered the youngest known star in the Perseus star-forming region, about 800 light-years or more than 4700 trillion miles away from the Milky Way. Despite its tiny size, scientists believe they caught the precise moment the star, called L1448-IRS2E, was formed born. It is the most detailed glimpse of a star’s birth to date.
They took an extraordinary image of it using Nasa’s Spitzer Space Telescope. It has “just begun pulling in matter from a surrounding envelope of gas and dust” and only detected the faint light after it was emitted by the dust surrounding it.

Submission + - NASA Says Moon Has More Water than Great Lakes (treehugger.com) 1

Submitted by jerryjamesstone on Wednesday June 16, 2010 @02:35AM

jerryjamesstone writes: The U.S. Great Lakes have some competition. The moon. Yes, that old thing in the sky may hold more than all of the water contained in the Great Lakes, according to a NASA-funded study.

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