When our forefathers were amending the constitution for the fifth time, they probably didn’t have TrueCrypt-locked hard drives in mind. However, a ruling from the 11th Circuit Appeals Court has upheld the right of an anonymous testifier to not forcibly decrypt their data. The case relates to a Jon Doe giving evidence in exchange for immunity. The protection afforded to them under this case wouldn’t extend to any other incriminating data that might be found, and as such Doe felt this could lead to violation of the fifth amendment. The validity of the prosecution’s demands for the data decryption lies in what they already know, and how they knew it — to prevent acting on hopeful hunches. The prosecutors were unable to demonstrate any knowledge of the data in question, leading the 11th Circuit to deem the request unlawful, adding that the immunity should have extended beyond just the current case. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this part of the constitution under the digital spotlight, and we’re betting it won’t be the last, either.

Court upholds Fifth Amendment, prevents forced decryption of data originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 26 Feb 2012 07:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Court upholds Fifth Amendment, prevents forced decryption of data

suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from the Wall Street Journal: “The Supreme Court’s recent ruling overturning the warrantless use of GPS tracking devices has caused a ‘sea change’ inside the U.S. Justice Department, according to FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann. Mr. Weissmann, speaking at a University of San Francisco conference called ‘Big Brother in the 21st Century’ on Friday, said that the court ruling prompted the FBI to turn off about 3,000 GPS tracking devices that were in use. These devices were often stuck underneath cars to track the movements of the car owners. In U.S. v. Jones, the Supreme Court ruled that using a device to track a car owner without a search warrant violated the law. After the ruling, the FBI had a problem collecting the devices that it had turned off, Mr. Weissmann said. In some cases, he said, the FBI sought court orders to obtain permission to turn the devices on briefly – only in order to locate and retrieve them.”

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After US v. Jones, FBI Turns Off 3,000 GPS Tracking Devices

Working with Hokkaido University, Kuraray Living has created a soft washable fabric woven with carbon nanotube coated fibers that produces heat when electricity is applied. So when it’s perfected, your electric blanket could get a lot less bulky. More »

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Carbon Nanotube Coated Fibers Could One Day Lead To Self-Heating Clothing [Video]

wiredmikey writes with this extract from Security Week: “On Friday, researchers from security firm Intego reported that a new variant of Flashback is targeting passwords and as a byproduct of infection, Flashback is crashing several notable applications. Flashback was first discovered by Intego in September of 2011. It targets Java vulnerabilities on OS X, two of them to be exact, in order to infect the system. Should Flashback find that Java is fully updated, it will attempt to social engineer the malware’s installation, by presenting an applet with a self-signed certificate. The certificate claims to be signed by Apple, but is clearly marked as invalid. However, users are known to skip such warnings, thus allowing the malware to be installed. … The newest variant will render programs such as Safari and Skype unstable, causing them to crash. Interestingly enough, normally these are stable programs, so if they start suddenly crashing might be a sign of larger issues.”

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New Version of Flashback Trojan Targets Mac Users

Iconic Italian car manufacturer BERTONE has been teasing the world with slow-released tidbits of information about their upcoming Bertone Nuccio™ concept car design for a little while now, but yesterday the legacy car company finally unveiled the thick shroud of secrecy by revealing the very first images of the supercar design. Named after Nuccio, the son of its founder Giovanni, the car is a love letter of sorts to the man who took over the reigns of the company after World War II. It was Nuccio who separated the company into two branches: Stile Bertone for styling, and Carrozzerio for manufacturing. Officials with BERTONE say the Bertone Nuccio™ is an extreme sportscar, and a significant evolution of the mid-rear engined rear-wheeled drive Berlinetta™ design from the 1970s — with a completely new look. Bertone’s chief design director Michael Robinson is the genius behind its stunning final result, and he will deservedly be front and center when the car itself is unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show next month. Following its Geneva debut, the Bertone Nuccio™ will travel to similar exhibitions around the world including the Beijing Motor Show in April, the Laguna Seca in California in August, and Florence in September. What a beautiful car.

Source: INAUTONEWS

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Once Shrouded In Secrecy, Jaw-Dropping First Images Of Bertone Nuccio™ Supercar Are Released, Unveiling Set For March In Geneva

ESRB writes “North Korea is apparently able to produce high-quality counterfeits of U.S. dollars — specifically $100 and $50 bills. It’s suspected that they possess similar printing technologies as the U.S. and buy ink from the same Swedish firm. ‘Since the superdollars were first detected about a decade ago, the regime has been pocketing an estimated $15 to $25 million a year from them. (Other estimates are much higher — up to several hundred million dollars’ worth.)’ The article also advocates a move to all-digital payment/transfers by pointing out both forms are only representations of value and noting it would cripple criminal operations such as drug cartels, human traffickers, and so forth.”

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North Korea's High-Tech Counterfeit $100 Bills

This is the best, the most detailed and clearest image of a dying star yet, according to NASA. Pause for a few seconds, expand the image, and really look at it. Imagine all that unstoppable fire in motion, like a real version of the Death Star explosion, but a gazillion times bigger. More »

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This Is What the Death of a Star Really Looks Like [Image Cache]

The long-running “Live” name Microsoft has placed on its many connected services (Mail, messenger, photos, etc) is coming to an end in Windows 8, as part of their ongoing, major brand rehaul. Zune, of course, has been on its way out for some time, but will receive the coup de grace in Windows 8.

Their main services are being rolled into bundled applications with a native Metro look and simpler names — Mail instead of Windows Live Mail, Photos instead of Windows Live Photo Gallery, and so on. The new apps will be tightly integrated, as we’ve seen in demos, and will retain much of the Live cross-service functionality. They’ll be unified by a single “Microsoft Account.”

But Live isn’t going away entirely: the name is too strong to take away from Xbox Live and its subsidiary components, and in fact Xbox Live may be coming to Windows as the main entertainment brand — for music, games, and video content. This will replace Zune, which Microsoft has been gradually sweeping under the rug over the past two years. Zune fans mustn’t despair, though: Zune pass functionality will remain intact, and chances are the old desktop player and Zune hardware will continue to be supported in some way. And the fact is that Zune has left an indelible mark on Microsoft’s operations, pioneering the look and feel found in Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8.

Smaller services, like Writer and Games for Windows Live, will likely be rolled into existing products. It’s in major brand shakedowns like this that one starts to realize just how many platforms and pieces of software Microsoft actually has and supports. This coalescence of services is probably coming as a huge relief to the company, though the labor involved in repurposing them is, naturally, Herculean.

Conspicuously absent from the lineup mentioned is Messenger, which may be seeing some integration with Skype. A multi-service messenger/video-chat app with Skype built in seems likely, though Skype would definitely have to have a discrete presence as well for power users.

No doubt they’ll leave behind many irate users who want things to remain the same — and indeed how Microsoft intends to accommodate these legacy users isn’t clear. Their new clean-break approach maroons many people on the old Windows XP/7 mainland, where they’ll likely remain until the launch quakes of Windows 8 clear away and the new land is safe for colonization.

(This failed to publish earlier in the day, which accounts for its lateness)

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Microsoft To Replace “Live” Branding With “Microsoft Account” In Windows 8

Historically, people slept for four hours, woke up for a couple of hours, then fell back asleep for another four hours, according to historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech. In 2001, he “published a seminal paper, drawn from 16 years of research, revealing a wealth of historical evidence that humans used to sleep in two distinct chunks.”

His book At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past, published four years later, unearths more than 500 references to a segmented sleeping pattern – in diaries, court records, medical books and literature, from Homer’s Odyssey to an anthropological account of modern tribes in Nigeria.

…

During this waking period people were quite active. They often got up, went to the toilet or smoked tobacco and some even visited neighbours. Most people stayed in bed, read, wrote and often prayed. Countless prayer manuals from the late 15th Century offered special prayers for the hours in between sleeps.

And these hours weren’t entirely solitary – people often chatted to bed-fellows or had sex.

A doctor’s manual from 16th Century France even advised couples that the best time to conceive was not at the end of a long day’s labour but “after the first sleep”, when “they have more enjoyment” and “do it better”.

BBC: The myth of the eight-hour sleep (Via TYWKIWWDBI)

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The myth of the 8-hour sleep

You’re forgiven if you missed this little blip on the news radar: Intel has joined the advisory board of the Document Foundation and added the coalition’s LibreOffice to the AppUp market. What’s more, Chipzilla actually worked with SUSE to help optimize the free and open source office suite for Intel hardware and, as part of the advisory board, will be providing the project with significant monetary support. This is good news for fans of LibreOffice, but it’s probably not sitting well with Microsoft — normally Intel’s ally and current king of the office suite hill.

Intel joins the Document Foundation, pimps LibreOffice originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Feb 2012 11:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Intel joins the Document Foundation, pimps LibreOffice