Comment Re:Curious, he stopped being a PoC (Score 1) 287
Don't use stupid abbreviations. PoC could easily mean Piece of Crap.
Indeed, I read it as Proof of Concept without it making any sense.
Submission + - NASA's New Horizons shows Pluto's moon Charon is a strange, new world (examiner.com)
MarkWhittington writes: NASA's New Horizons has returned a stunning series of images of Pluto, the dwarf planet that resides on the edge of the solar system, revealing a strange new world of ice mountains and glaciers of frozen nitrogen. NASA released images of Pluto’s largest moon. Charon. Scientists expected a plain ball of rock pockmarked with craters. What they saw was anything but plain and monotonous.
Submission + - 30 years a sysadmin (itworld.com)
itwbennett writes: Sandra Henry-Stocker’s love affair with Unix started in the early 1980s when she 'was quickly enamored of the command line and how much [she] could get done using pipes and commands like grep.’ Back then, she was working on a Zilog minicomputer, a system, she recalls, that was 'about this size of a dorm refrigerator’. Over the intervening years, a lot has changed, not just about the technology, but about the job itself. 'We might be ‘just' doing systems administration, but that role has moved heavily into managing security, controlling access to a wide range of resources, analyzing network traffic, scrutinizing log files, and fixing the chinks on our cyber armor,’ writes Henry-Stocker. What hasn’t changed? Systems administration remains a largely thankless role with little room for career advancement, albeit one that she is quick to note is ‘seldom boring’ and ‘reasonably' well-paid.
Submission + - How someone acquired the Google.com domain name for a single minute (bgr.com)
An anonymous reader writes: We’ve all been there: It’s nearly 2 in the morning and you’re cruising around the Internet looking for new domain names to purchase. I mean, talk about a cliched night, right?
Now imagine that during the course of your domain browsing, you unexpectedly discover that the holy grail of domain names — Google.com — is (gasp!) available for purchase for the low, low price of just $12. Testing fate, you attempt to initiate a transaction. Dare I say, you’re feeling a little bit lucky. And just like that, in the blink of an eye, the transaction goes through and the vaunted and highly valuable Google domain is in your possession.
While this might read like a ridiculous plot summary from some horrible piece of nerd fiction, this series of events above, believe it or not, actually happened to former Googler Sanmay Ved earlier this week.
Now imagine that during the course of your domain browsing, you unexpectedly discover that the holy grail of domain names — Google.com — is (gasp!) available for purchase for the low, low price of just $12. Testing fate, you attempt to initiate a transaction. Dare I say, you’re feeling a little bit lucky. And just like that, in the blink of an eye, the transaction goes through and the vaunted and highly valuable Google domain is in your possession.
While this might read like a ridiculous plot summary from some horrible piece of nerd fiction, this series of events above, believe it or not, actually happened to former Googler Sanmay Ved earlier this week.
Comment Re:I doubt it (Score 1) 29
If only.
I wear a few medical devices which talk to each other, and other things, wirelessly. I have seen firsthand that the main device can connect to a computer and obey a command to download its history without any indication showing on the screen, no beep or other indication that anything is going on. If it can do that without my permission, what else is it open to? Could it obey a command to, say, silently overdose me?
It is clear from my experience that these devices were designed with convenience in mind, both for the user and the doctor's office, and with security in mind not at all. My worry is mitigated some because I don't believe anyone has it out for me personally.
Comment Re:Why no public discussion beforehand? (Score 1) 190
As long as the collection of cells is not proven to be self aware I do not believe it matters what they do with those cells.
You haven't been proven to be self aware, so it doesn't matter what people do to you, either, I suppose?
Oh you say... sure you've been proven to be self aware? Not to a philosopher's satisfaction, you haven't. You can't disprove the solipsism hypothesis. So I haven't been proven to be self aware, either. Not to your satisfaction, anyway.
So don't be so fast to demand proof of self-awareness. I'm upset on behalf of brains in vats, because they can't protest on their own behalf. They deserve, philosophically, our great caution, lest someone else be quick to deny you or me our rights.
Comment Re:America has been put in a bad position. (Score 4, Insightful) 576
According to the article, 40% of illegals are visa overstayers. This breaks the syllogism you attempted to imply all asunder.
Submission + - Another slew of science papers retracted because of fraud
schwit1 writes: The uncertainty of peer-review: A major scientific publisher has retracted 64 articles in 10 journals after discovering that the so-called independent peer reviewers for these articles were fabricated by the authors themselves.
The cull comes after similar discoveries of 'fake peer review' by several other major publishers, including London-based BioMed Central, an arm of Springer, which began retracting 43 articles in March citing "reviews from fabricated reviewers". The practice can occur when researchers submitting a paper for publication suggest reviewers, but supply contact details for them that actually route requests for review back to the researchers themselves.
Overall, this indicates an incredible amount of sloppiness and laziness in the peer-review field. In total, more than a 100 papers have been retracted, simply because the journals relied on the authors to provide them contact information for their reviewers, never bothering to contact them directly.
Submission + - Most Powerful Geomagnetic Storm of Solar Cycle 24 is Happening (discovery.com)
astroengine writes: The most powerful solar storm of the current solar cycle is currently reverberating around the globe. Initially triggered by the impact of a coronal mass ejection (CME) hitting our planet’s magnetosphere, a relatively mild geomagnetic storm erupted at around 04:30 UT (12:30 a.m. EDT), but it has since ramped-up to an impressive G4-class geomagnetic storm, priming high latitudes for some bright auroral displays.
Comment Re:Sovereign Immunity (Score 1) 538
There is an ancient concept called "sovereign immunity" which holds that rulers (people making laws) are automatically exempt from those laws.
Very ancient concept. What was it, Magna Carta, 1215*, that established that the sovereign was indeed subject to the law? Nowadays, sovereign immunity only applies to the state itself being immune from lawsuit, unless voluntarily waived. I think.
[0] - actually its 800th anniversary was 1 month ago today.
Submission + - This Battery Has Lasted 175 Years and No One Knows How (vice.com)
sarahnaomi writes: There sits, in the Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford University, a bell that has been ringing, nonstop, for at least 175 years. It's powered by a single battery that was installed in 1840. Researchers would love to know what the battery is made of, but they are afraid that opening the bell would ruin an experiment to see how long it will last.
The bell’s clapper oscillates back and forth constantly and quickly, meaning the Oxford Electric Bell, as it’s called, has rung roughly 10 billion times, according to the university. It's made of what's called a "dry pile," which is one of the first electric batteries. Dry piles were invented by a guy named Giuseppe Zamboni (no relation to the ice resurfacing company) in the early 1800s. They use alternating discs of silver, zinc, sulfur, and other materials to generate low currents of electricity.
The bell’s clapper oscillates back and forth constantly and quickly, meaning the Oxford Electric Bell, as it’s called, has rung roughly 10 billion times, according to the university. It's made of what's called a "dry pile," which is one of the first electric batteries. Dry piles were invented by a guy named Giuseppe Zamboni (no relation to the ice resurfacing company) in the early 1800s. They use alternating discs of silver, zinc, sulfur, and other materials to generate low currents of electricity.
Comment Re:Not Planets (Score 1) 219
One day, dear Mars, unless I die first.
So you'll get to Mars unless you don't? That's profound or something.
Comment Re:Not the remote exploit many are looking for (Score 1) 41
How do you figure? The keyspace is too vast for exploitation by enumeration... by any but the most well-funded adversaries, anyway. And if they're after you, there are easier ways.
Submission + - What came first, black holes or galaxies?
StartsWithABang writes: It was one of the most hotly contested questions for decades: we first expected and then found supermassive black holes at the centers of practically all large galaxies. But how did they get there? In particular, you could imagine it happening either way: either there was this top-down scenario, where large-scale structures formed first and fragmented into galaxies, forming black holes at their centers afterwards, or a bottom-up scenario, where small-scale structures dominate at the beginning, and larger ones only form later from the merger of these earlier, little ones. As it turns out, both of these play a role in our Universe, but as far as the question of what came first, black holes or galaxies, only one answer is right.
Submission + - Hacking Internet Connected Light Bulbs (contextis.co.uk)
An anonymous reader writes: We've been calling it for years — connect everything in your house to the internet, and people will find a way to attack it. This post provides a technical walkthrough of how internet-connected lighting systems are vulnerable to outside attacks. Quoting: "With the Contiki installed Raven network interface we were in a position to monitor and inject network traffic into the LIFX mesh network. The protocol observed appeared to be, in the most part, unencrypted. This allowed us to easily dissect the protocol, craft messages to control the light bulbs and replay arbitrary packet payloads. ... Monitoring packets captured from the mesh network whilst adding new bulbs, we were able to identify the specific packets in which the WiFi network credentials were shared among the bulbs. The on-boarding process consists of the master bulb broadcasting for new bulbs on the network. A new bulb responds to the master and then requests the WiFi details to be transferred. The master bulb then broadcasts the WiFi details, encrypted, across the mesh network. The new bulb is then added to the list of available bulbs in the LIFX smart phone application."
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