Month: January 2013

Atari Files For Bankruptcy

First time accepted submitter halls-of-valhalla writes “Atari was one of the very first video game companies, starting way back in 1972. However, this long-running name that brought us titles like Pong and Asteroids is having major financial issues. Atari’s United States branches have filed for bankruptcy on Sunday. This bankruptcy is an attempt to separate themselves from their French parent which has quite a bit of debt. The plan is to split from the French parent and find a buyer to form a private company.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Atari Files For Bankruptcy

Montreal comp sci student reports massive bug, is expelled and threatened with arrest for checking to see if it had been fixed

Ahmed Al-Khabaz was a 20-year-old computer science student at Dawson College in Montreal, until he discovered a big, glaring bug in Omnivox, software widely used by Quebec’s junior college system. The bug exposed the personal information (social insurance number, home address, class schedule) of its users. When Al-Khabaz reported the bug to François Paradis, his college’s Director of Information Services and Technology, he was congratulated. But when he checked a few days later to see if the bug had been fixed, he was threatened with arrest and made to sign a secret gag-order whose existence he wasn’t allowed to disclose. Then, he was expelled: “I was called into a meeting with the co–ordinator of my program, Ken Fogel, and the dean, Dianne Gauvin,” says Mr. Al-Khabaz. “They asked a lot of questions, mostly about who knew about the problems and who I had told. I got the sense that their primary concern was covering up the problem.” Following this meeting, the fifteen professors in the computer science department were asked to vote on whether to expel Mr. Al-Khabaz, and fourteen voted in favour. Mr. Al-Khabaz argues that the process was flawed because he was never given a chance to explain his side of the story to the faculty. He appealed his expulsion to the academic dean and even director-general Richard Filion. Both denied the appeal, leaving him in academic limbo. “I was acing all of my classes, but now I have zeros across the board. I can’t get into any other college because of these grades, and my permanent record shows that I was expelled for unprofessional conduct. I really want this degree, and now I won’t be able to get it. My academic career is completely ruined. In the wrong hands, this breach could have caused a disaster. Students could have been stalked, had their identities stolen, their lockers opened and who knows what else. I found a serious problem, and tried to help fix it. For that I was expelled.” The thing that gets me, as a member of a computer science faculty, is how gutless his instructors were in their treatment of this promising student. They’re sending a clear signal that you’re better off publicly disclosing bugs without talking to faculty or IT than going through channels, because “responsible disclosure” means that bugs go unpatched, students go unprotected, and your own teachers will never, ever have your back. Shame on them. Youth expelled from Montreal college after finding ‘sloppy coding’ that compromised security of 250,000 students personal data [Ethan Cox/National Post]

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Montreal comp sci student reports massive bug, is expelled and threatened with arrest for checking to see if it had been fixed

Cuba Turns On Submarine Internet Cable

angry tapir writes “A change in Internet traffic patterns over the past week suggests that Cuba may have turned on a fiber-optic submarine cable that links it to the global Internet via Venezuela. Routing analyst firm Renesys noticed that the Spanish telecommunications company Telefónica began routing Internet traffic to Cuba’s state telecommunications company, Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba S.A. (ETECSA). The Internet traffic is flowing with significantly lower latencies than before, indicating the connection is not solely using the three satellite providers that Cuba has relied on in the past for connectivity.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Cuba Turns On Submarine Internet Cable

The World’s First 3D Printed Building Will Arrive In 2014 (And It Looks Awesome)

Sure, 3D printing is fun and cute. And products like the Makerbot and Form 1 will most certainly disrupt manufacturing, even if it’s only on a small scale. But the possibilities of 3D printing stretch far beyond DIY at-home projects. In fact, it could entirely replace the construction industry. We’ve already seen folks at MIT’s Research Labs working on ways to 3D print the frame of a home in a day, as opposed to the month it would take a construction crew to do the same. But it isn’t just geeks taking an interest; a Dutch architect is interested in 3D printing a home, with the hopes that it’ll be ready by 2014. The architect’s name is Janjaap Ruijssenaars of Universe Architecture, and his project is a part of the Europan competition, which lets architects in over 15 different countries build projects over the course of two years. Ruijssenaars will work with Italian inventor Enrico Dini, founder of the D-Shape 3D printer. The plan is to print out 6×9 chunks of frame, comprised of sand and inorganic binder. From there, they’ll fill the frame with fiber-reinforced concrete. The final product will be a single flowing design, a two-story building. Here’s the project in Ruijssenaars’ words: One surface folded in an endless möbius band. Floors transform into ceilings, inside into outside. Production with innovative 3D printing techniques. Architecture of continuity with an endless array of applicability. As I said, he doesn’t plan on realizing the dream until 2014. So just because he has plans to build the world’s first 3D printed building, it would appear that others have time to nab the title first. [via 3ders.org ]

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The World’s First 3D Printed Building Will Arrive In 2014 (And It Looks Awesome)

Wires smaller in diameter than light waves boost solar cell efficiency

Electron micrograph of indium phosphide (InP) nanowires. Each is 180 nanometers in diameter; this diameter allows them to capture more light, making them effective in a photovoltaic solar cell. Wallentin et al. In the continuing quest to create solar cells, researchers seek new materials, use clever techniques, and look for novel physical phenomena to extract the maximum electricity out of sunlight for the lowest cost. One method of extracting more power at a lower cost relies on creating arrays of nanowires that stand vertically on inexpensive substrates. In contrast to the material in ordinary solar cells, nanowires use less material, can potentially be built with less costly materials, and in principle trap more light thanks to the geometry of the arrays. However, most nanowire solar cells are currently outperformed by their conventional counterparts. A new effort used indium phosphide (InP) nanowires with diameters smaller than the wavelength of the light they were trapping. That trick enabled Jesper Wallentin and colleagues to reach comparable efficiencies and slightly higher voltage than a conventional InP solar cell. While the wires only covered 12 percent of the surface area, they exploited a principle known as resonant trapping to extract over half as much current as a full planar cell of InP. This approach could lead to even greater efficiency at lower cost for solar cells. Many candidates for the next generation of photovoltaic (PV) solar cells are being investigated. Research in this area has two goals that don’t always overlap: maximizing the efficiency of converting sunlight into electric current, and reducing cost per unit of electricity. The advantage of nanowire-based cells lies in using a lot less material, since the entire surface need not be covered in PV material. Additionally, the wires themselves can be fabricated from relatively inexpensive semiconductor materials. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Wires smaller in diameter than light waves boost solar cell efficiency

Watch This Brilliant Video Explaining How 3D Printing Is About To Revolutionize The Entire World

If you want to know what the future looks like you need look no further than the video below.   The Creators Project and VICE put together this terrific report on how 3D printing technology is on the verge of pulling the design world and the objects that surround us in our everyday lives into the realm of infinite possibilities.  Peter Weijmarshausen is the CEO of  Shapeways™  and in the report he explains to the viewer the history and future of 3D printing technology.  We also get a chance to meet some other experts in the field who each explain how their respective industries — from medicine to fashion to industrial design — are about to be transformed in the most remarkable ways imaginable.  Included in the video is some mind-bending footage of 3D printers at work.  Watching these amazing objects being pulled out of the laser dust is nothing short of astonishing. Source: The Creators Project

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Watch This Brilliant Video Explaining How 3D Printing Is About To Revolutionize The Entire World

Pandora cranked out over 13 billion hours of music in 2012

Springing into the new year, internet radio heavyweight Pandora has released some of its major statistics from 2012. The company states that 1.6 billion personalized radio stations were created and that it played over 13 billion hours of music. These hefty stats translate to the service’s users listening to over one million different songs from more than 100,000 artists. Wrapping up last year’s scorecard, around 10,000 artists reached about 250,000 unique listeners. While these numbers are impressive, we can’t help but wonder how many audio commercials had to be endured so people could continue listening to countless hours of One Direction. In any case, we’re sure it was worth it. Filed under: Internet , Software Comments Via: The Next Web Source: Pandora

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Pandora cranked out over 13 billion hours of music in 2012

Genius Bank Robbers Dug a 100 Foot Long Tunnel to Rob a Bank

This is so incredible that I think I’ve seen this in a movie before.* And if I didn’t, it should be put in a movie immediately. Genius bank robbers dug a 100 foot tunnel from a parking garage across the street to the bank’s safe deposit room and walked away with over $15,000,000 in goods. More »

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Genius Bank Robbers Dug a 100 Foot Long Tunnel to Rob a Bank