April 15, 2013 – Ken May

U.S. Offshore Wind Farm Receives $2 Billion From Japanese Banks

kkleiner writes “The Bank of Tokyo has invested $2 billion into Cape Wind, the 130-turbine wind farm that is inching closer to becoming a reality. The project is vying to the first offshore wind farm in the U.S. after a decade-long campaign mired by red tape in order to receive approval. Proposed to be installed in Nantucket Sound, the wind farm is estimated to have a capacity of 468 megawatts.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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U.S. Offshore Wind Farm Receives $2 Billion From Japanese Banks

Download BitTorrent Files from Your Browser with BitTorrent Surf Beta

Yo ho yo ho, a pirate’s life for me. And for you! And for everyone! Because downloading BitTorrent files just got a lot easier. BitTorrent is finally pushing its torrenting browser plug-in, BitTorrent Surf, to beta for you to try. That means you don’t have to deal with pesky desktop clients, your browser (Chrome or Firefox) effectively becomes the only BitTorrent client you need. More »

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Download BitTorrent Files from Your Browser with BitTorrent Surf Beta

How an accountant created an entire RPG inside an Excel spreadsheet

A communique from the emperor, above, expresses interest at my formidable skill in killing bunnies and koalas with rocks. Sometimes it’s not always easy (or possible) to install your favorite games on your work computer. Sometimes, some Solitaire or maybe a little collaborative Bomberman is as much as you can get away with when you can’t install anything downloaded from the Internet. And you’d better make sure whatever you’re playing actually looks like work to any nearby screen snoopers around the office. Throughout a few months ending this past February, Cary Walkin created the perfect solution to this problem: an entire RPG made of a spreadsheet and many macros. The game, called Arena.Xlsm , is a turn-based RPG encompassed entirely in an Excel file. Users can download that and use it to progress through levels, collect items, and battle enemies and bosses with melee and ranged attacks as well as spells. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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How an accountant created an entire RPG inside an Excel spreadsheet

New security protection, fixes for 39 exploitable bugs coming to Java

A dialog box presented by Java when it encounters an application that isn’t signed by a digital certificate. Java.com Oracle plans to release an update for the widely exploited Java browser plugin. The update fixes 39 critical vulnerabilities and introduces changes designed to make it harder to carry out drive-by attacks on end-user computers. The update scheduled for Tuesday comes as the security of Java is reaching near-crisis levels. Throughout the past year, a series of attacks hosted on popular websites has been used to surreptitiously install malware on unwitting users’ machines. The security flaws have been used to infect employees of Facebook and Apple in targeted attacks intended to penetrate those companies. The vulnerabilities have also been exploited to hijack computers of home and business users. More than once, attackers have exploited one previously undocumented bug within days or weeks of patching a previous “zero-day,” as such vulnerabilities are known, creating a string of attacks on the latest version of the widely used plugin. In all, Java 7 Update 21 will fix at least 42 security bugs, Oracle said in a pre-release announcement . The post went on to say that “39 of those vulnerabilities may be remotely exploitable without authentication, i.e., may be exploited over a network without the need for a username and password.” The advisory didn’t specify or describe the holes that will be patched. Security Exploration, a Poland-based security company that has discovered dozens of “security issues” in Java, has a running list of them here . Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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New security protection, fixes for 39 exploitable bugs coming to Java

Dish Network bids $25.5 billion for Sprint, goes head-to-head with Softbank

In the battle for Sprint’s heart, Dish Network always seemed to be stuck in the “friend zone”. That’s not the case anymore, however, now that Dish has quietly lobbed an informal $25.5 billion offer to purchase the carrier. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that after Dish was knocked-back in its attempts to buy Clearwire , the satellite TV company scrounged together the cash to beat Softbank’s multi billion dollar deal . If the bid is made formal, then Sprint’s board will have to decide if Softbank’s massive size and buckets of cash can be trumped by Dish’s spectrum reserves , pay-TV business and ability to skip commercials in a breeze. Update: Dish clarified on a conference call that its bid for Clearwire is still on the table for the company to consider even if it was turned down, and that the Sprint offer is not contingent on the carrier closing out its Clearwire purchase . Should the deal go through, the plan is target underserved and rural customers, rather than competing with inner-city fiber-based services. Softbank may find itself beaten by the higher offer, but if Dish succeeds, the Japanese company would still hold around 5% of Sprint’s shares. Filed under: Cellphones , Home Entertainment , Wireless , HD , Mobile , Sprint Comments Via: The Wall Street Journal Source: Dish

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Dish Network bids $25.5 billion for Sprint, goes head-to-head with Softbank

This Lab-Grown Kidney Can Keep Rats—And Maybe Even You—Alive

For the first time ever, a whole lab-grown kidney has been successfully transplanted into a rat , where it allowed the creature to process urine like a really kidney would—and it could someday save your life. More »

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This Lab-Grown Kidney Can Keep Rats—And Maybe Even You—Alive

Construction of World’s Largest Optical Telescope Approved

The University of Hawaii at Hilo has been granted a permit by the Hawaii Board of Land and Natural Resources to begin construction of the $1.3 billion Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). From the article: “The TMT has been in development for over a decade, but the large amount of land needed for its construction raised concerns over the environmental and cultural impact of such a project. Now, however, the land board has rendered a final decision, saying that the university had satisfied the eight criteria necessary under Hawaiian state law to allow the venture to go forward. The giant TMT will be an optical and infrared telescope with enough coverage area and sharpness to observe light from 13 billion years ago, track extrasolar planets, and observe planets and stars in their early formative years.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

How Chinese Scammers Are Swapping Fake iPhone Parts for the Real Deal

A very ingenious new kind of high-tech scam has been going down in China, where clever thieves are returning fake iPhone components to Apple and claiming they’re broken official parts, receiving genuine Apple-made pieces in return. And making a nice profit in the process. More »

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How Chinese Scammers Are Swapping Fake iPhone Parts for the Real Deal

TurboTax Went Down At a Kind of Crucial Moment and Didn’t Handle It Well on Twitter

So taxes are due…any minute now. And TurboTax is a popular service for doing taxes. Yes? Sure. Well, that’s a lot of pressure! Cue meltdown. More »

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TurboTax Went Down At a Kind of Crucial Moment and Didn’t Handle It Well on Twitter

New F-1B rocket engine upgrades Apollo-era design with 1.8M lbs of thrust

NASA has spent a lot of time and money resurrecting the F-1 rocket engine that powered the Saturn V back in the 1960s and 1970s, and Ars recently spent a week at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, to get the inside scoop on how the effort came to be . But there’s a very practical reason why NASA is putting old rocket parts up on a test stand and firing them off: its latest launch vehicle might be powered by engines that look, sound, and work a whole lot like the legendary F-1. This new launch vehicle, known as the Space Launch System , or SLS, is currently taking shape on NASA drawing boards. However, as is its mandate, NASA won’t be building the rocket itself—it will allow private industry to bid for the rights to build various components. One potential design wrinkle in SLS is that instead of using Space Shuttle-style solid rocket boosters, SLS could instead use liquid-fueled rocket motors, which would make it the United States’ first human-rated rocket in more than 30 years not to use solid-fuel boosters. The contest to suss this out is the Advanced Booster Competition , and one of the companies that has been down-selected as a final competitor is Huntsville-based Dynetics . Dynetics has partnered with Pratt Whitney Rocketdyne (designers of the Saturn V’s F-1 engine, among others) to propose a liquid-fueled booster featuring an engine based heavily on the design of the famous F-1. The booster is tentatively named Pyrios , after one of the fiery horses that pulled the god Apollo’s chariot; the engine is being called the F-1B. Read 34 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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New F-1B rocket engine upgrades Apollo-era design with 1.8M lbs of thrust