January 2010
36 posts
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Laser fusion test results raise energy hopes →
A major hurdle to producing fusion energy using lasers has been swept aside, results in a new report show. The controlled fusion of atoms - creating conditions like those in our Sun - has long been touted as a possible revolutionary energy source. However, there have been doubts about the use of powerful lasers for fusion energy because the “plasma” they create could interrupt the...
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Google wants to see client addresses in DNS... →
Late Wednesday evening, Google employees posted an “Internet-Draft” outlining proposed changes to the DNS protocol that allow authoritative DNS servers to see the addresses of clients. This way, geographically distributed content delivery networks can tailor their answers to a specific client’s network location. So a client from California would talk to a server in California,...
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Don't drink, drive, kill someone, drink, post on... →
As we continue our collective foray into the brave new world of social networking, we keep learning the same lesson over and over again: don’t post photos of yourself doing stupid things. This is doubly true if said stupid thing is illegal, as yet another intellectually challenged Facebook user has discovered.
Full Article (Ars Technica - arstechnica.com)
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Even without cookies, a browser leaves a trail of... →
Those with no technical knowledge generally believe that they are anonymous when simply browsing the Web. Those who know more might recognize that IP addresses can be used to do some rough targeting, while browser cookies can be used to track someone across sessions and across IP addresses. But what if your browser itself—even with cookies off and IP addresses out of the picture—was leaving a...
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How a stray mouse click choked the NYSE & cost a... →
As the practice of high-frequency trading continues to become more widespread, concerns are growing that erroneous trades carried out by “algos gone wild”—a sort of digitally amplified version of the “fat finger” phenomenon—could cause a market crash at Internet speed, a meltdown that no one could stop. Two recent market glitches could provide a preview of what’s to...
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Why Google Apps Need Fixing →
Google’s recent marketing campaign encourages people to use Google Apps to run their lives and businesses. While it is all well and good for Google to talk up its products, a more accurate message would have been, “Put some of your business on Google Apps, if collaboration is really important to you.”
Full Article (Forbes - forbes.com)
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'Oral sex' definition prompts school district to... →
A school district in Riverside County has pulled the Merriam-Webster’s 10th edition dictionary from school shelves because it includes the term “oral sex.” The Menifee Union School District took the action last week after a parent complained about the dictionary.
Full Article (Los Angeles Times - latimes.com)
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HTML5 video, H.264: what history tells us & why... →
Recently Youtube announced that you could test out an HTML5-enabled version of their site. They said that they were doing this partially based on people’s “number one request” that Youtube do more with HTML5. (They left out the other half of that #1 request – that the implementation be based on open codecs, but more on that later.) Not to be outdone, Vimeo rushed to announce a beta version of...
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The Neural Advantage of Speaking 2 Languages →
The ability to speak a second language isn’t the only thing that distinguishes bilingual people from their monolingual counterparts—their brains work differently, too. Research has shown, for instance, that children who know two languages more easily solve problems that involve misleading cues. A new study published in Psychological Science reveals that knowledge of a second language—even one...
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US gov't data-laundering: using corp DB's to get... →
“Buying You: The Government’s Use of Fourth-Parties to Launder Data about ‘The People’,” a paper by Columbia Law School’s Joshua L. Simmons in the Columbia Business Law Review, describes the way that US government agencies circumvent the fourth amendment and privacy statutes by outsourcing their surveillance to private credit reporting bureaux and other...
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Mozilla leader worries about Internet limits →
The leader of the Mozilla Project, whose Firefox Web browser now has 350 million users, said Sunday that she is concerned that legal restrictions could limit Internet expansion. Mitchell Baker said she worried about “the increase in laws that make it difficult to run an open network,” especially rules about content. “You suddenly become liable for anything that gets downloaded,...
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U.S. enables Chinese hacking of Google →
Google made headlines when it went public with the fact that Chinese hackers had penetrated some of its services, such as Gmail, in a politically motivated attempt at intelligence gathering. The news here isn’t that Chinese hackers engage in these activities or that their attempts are technically sophisticated — we knew that already — it’s that the U.S. government...
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Space pictures taken from garden shed →
Peter Shah, 38, cut a hole in the roof of his wooden shed and set up his modest eight-inch telescope inside. After months of patiently waiting for the right moment he emerged with a series of striking images of the Milky Way. His photographs of a vivid variety of star clusters light years from Earth have been compared to the images taken from the £2.5 billion Hubble space telescope.
Full Article...
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China to US: shut up about "so-called Internet... →
In the wake of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s major speech yesterday on Internet freedom, a speech in which she called out countries like Egypt, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Iran, and China, most governments have yet to respond. China, however, was quick to reply after dealing with the Google issue for a week already.
Full Article (Ars Technica - arstechnica.com)
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Obama Ruling Says FBI Can Break Law On Accessing... →
Following the report earlier this week that the FBI regularly broke the ECPA law, in obtaining information from telcos without going through the proper process (and, in some cases using just a post it note!), some interesting details from the full report have come to light. The two key ones? First, “the Obama administration issued a secret rule almost two weeks ago saying it was legal for...
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In Germany, a Tradition Falls, and Women Rise →
Manuela Maier was branded a bad mother. A Rabenmutter, or raven mother, after the black bird that pushes chicks out of the nest. She was ostracized by other mothers, berated by neighbors and family, and screamed at in a local store. Her crime? Signing up her 9-year-old son when the local primary school first offered lunch and afternoon classes last autumn — and returning to work. “I was told: ‘Why...
NASA: 2009 tied for 2nd-warmest year, 00s hottest... →
As the past year’s temperature data came in, it became increasingly clear that 2009 was going to be a very hot one unless something unexpected happened in the latter months of the year. Something unusual did in fact happen, but it only ended up shifting warm and cold air around. As a result, when NASA completed its analysis of 2009’s surface temperatures, the year ended up in a...
Cyber Crooks Cooked the Books at Fla. Library →
Jan. 7, 2010 was a typical sunny Thursday morning at the Delray Beach Public Library in coastal Florida, aside from one, ominous dark cloud on the horizon: It was the first time in as long as anyone could remember that the books simply weren’t checking out. Sure, patrons were still able to borrow tomes in the usual way — by presenting their library cards. The trouble was, none of the staff could...
Obama Supports $675K File Sharing Verdict →
The Obama administration is backing $675,000 in damages a Massachusetts student must pay the Recording Industry Association of America for file sharing 30 songs. The Justice Department, where President Barack Obama has tapped five former RIAA lawyers to serve, said copyright infringement “creates a public harm that Congress determined must be deterred.”
Full Article (Wired - wired.com)
GoogleSharing :: A Special Kind Of Proxy →
GoogleSharing is a special kind of anonymizing proxy service, designed for a very specific threat. It ultimately aims to provide a level of anonymity that will prevent google from tracking your searches, movements, and what websites you visit. GoogleSharing is not a full proxy service designed to anonymize all your traffic, but rather something designed exclusively for your communication with...
Google and China: the attacks and their aftermath →
Yesterday’s announcement that Google would stop censoring its search results in China, and that the company had been the victim of sophisticated Chinese cyberattacks, was a Big Deal; Secretary of State Hilary Clinton even felt the need to weigh in on it with an official statement.
Full Article (Ars Technica - arstechnica.com)
Google Faces The Slickest Click Fraud Yet →
Click fraud, that perpetual bane of online advertisers, is usually hard to detect in the moment, but easy to spot after the fact. That’s because, unlike real clicks, sham clicks performed by automatic click software or human fraudsters pump up an advertiser’s pay-per-click fees but never generate sales.
Full Article
Google attack part of widespread spying effort →
Google’s decision Tuesday to risk walking away from the world’s largest Internet market may have come as a shock, but security experts see it as the most public admission of a top IT problem for U.S. companies: ongoing corporate espionage originating from China.
Full Article
RCA's Airenergy charger converts WiFi energy to... →
Airenergy is a gadget that can harvest free electricity from WiFi signals such as those from a wireless Internet connection, apparently with enough efficiency to make it practical for recharging devices such as mobile phones.
Full Article
Droid security flaw makes lock screen a mere... →
You might recall Apple having a hard time keeping its lock screen locked at one point, and it looks like we’ve got a common theme brewing here now that Android’s suffering from the same drama. Turns out that Android 2.0.1 — the build currently deployed on the Droid — suffers from a flaw whereby you can back out to a locked phone’s home screen simply by pressing the...
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Fake Mobile Banking App Discovered in Android... →
A selection of applications written and uploaded by an Android Marketplace user/developer have been found to contain malicious code that attempts to compromise banking information stored on the device in order to commit bank/credit card fraud.
Full Article
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Purported Interview With Facebook Employee Details... →
Earlier today, The Rumpus published a very revealing interview with someone claiming to be a Facebook employee. The interview covers a variety of subjects, including privacy restrictions at the world’s largest social network and some of the technological hurdles the site has to deal with. The biggest revelations? That Facebook collects more data about your habits than you may realize, and that...
Police fight cellphone recordings →
Simon Glik, a lawyer, was walking down Tremont Street in Boston when he saw three police officers struggling to extract a plastic bag from a teenager’s mouth. Thinking their force seemed excessive for a drug arrest, Glik pulled out his cellphone and began recording. Within minutes, Glik said, he was in handcuffs.
Full Article
Markets: Bubble warning →
THE effect of free money is remarkable. A year ago investors were panicking and there was talk of another Depression. Now the MSCI world index of global share prices is more than 70% higher than its low in March 2009. That’s largely thanks to interest rates of 1% or less in America, Japan, Britain and the euro zone, which have persuaded investors to take their money out of cash and to buy risky...
Best Buy Optimization Is A Big Stupid Annoying... →
Over the past year, a number of you have been telling us that, due to “pre-optimization” of computers, it’s difficult — sometimes impossible — to walk into a Best Buy and leave with the advertised deal (in effect, you would be paying a $39.99 surcharge over the computer’s advertised price). We decided to look into your complaints. We sent the Consumer Reports...
What does the Nexus One mean for Google Voice,... →
With Google’s Nexus One phone scheduled to launch tomorrow, most of the focus has been on the handset and wireless plan. But it’s worth thinking about what the launch could mean for Google’s existing products and services.
Full Article
Google mounts a big WAC attack on Microsoft in the... →
Microsoft’s financial results and its deal with Yahoo have motivated Google to launch a marketing campaign aimed at Microsoft’s enterprise revenue. The marketing will escalate because Microsoft and Yahoo now threaten Google’s crown jewels of search and advertising. Google wants to gut Microsoft’s strongest money machines, which are its applications and enterprise software. Google has been moving...