Author: kenmay

Mealworms convert Styrofoam waste into usable soil

Researchers have found a scourge for the 33 million tons of plastic dumped each year in the US: mealworms. A team from Stanford and China’s Beihang University found that the beetle larvae stay perfectly healthy eating just Styrofoam, which is normally considered non-biodegradable. Better still, the worms convert the plastic to CO2 and waste that’s safe to use as soil for crops. The scientists were as surprised by the discovery as you might be. “There’s a possibility of really important research coming out of bizarre places, ” said Stanford professor Craig Criddle. “This is a shock.” Mealworms don’t have some kind of magic digestive system, of course. Earlier research has showed that microorganisms in the stomachs of Indian mealmoths can digest the polyethylene plastic used in garbage bags. The scientists now plan to study such bacteria to see whether they can biodegrade plastics used in automotive components and microbeads that pollute water supplies. The goal is to eventually cut out the middleman (“middleworm”?) and isolate the bioenzymes used by microorganisms to break down the plastics. That could result in new methods of reducing plastic waste that’s already in the environment, and new types of bio-plastics that won’t accumulate on land or at sea. Source: Stanford University

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Mealworms convert Styrofoam waste into usable soil

ALS Patients Use a Brain Implant To Type 6 Words Per Minute

the_newsbeagle writes: With electrodes implanted in their neural tissue and a new brain-computer interface, two paralyzed people with ALS used their thoughts to control a computer cursor with unprecedented accuracy and speed. They showed off their skills by using a predictive text-entering program to type sentences, achieving a rate of 6 words per minute. While paralyzed people can type faster using other assistive technologies that are already on the market, like eye-gaze trackers and air-puff controllers, a brain implant could be the only option for paralyzed people who can’t reliably control their eyes or mouth muscles. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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ALS Patients Use a Brain Implant To Type 6 Words Per Minute

How to make your own bootable OS X 10.11 El Capitan USB install drive

Enlarge / Even in the download-only era, it’s easy to make yourself offline OS X install media. (credit: Andrew Cunningham) It was 2009 when Apple last released a new operating system on physical media . Things have proceeded remarkably smoothly since version 10.7 switched to download-only installers, but there are still good reasons to want an old, reliable USB stick. For instance, if you find yourself doing multiple installs, a USB drive may be faster than multiple downloads (especially if you use a USB 3.0 drive). Or maybe you need a recovery disk for older Macs that don’t support the Internet Recovery feature. Whatever the reason, you’re in luck, because it’s not hard to make one. As with last year , there are two ways to get it done. There’s the super easy way with the graphical user interface and the only slightly less easy way that requires some light Terminal use. Here’s what you need to get started. A Mac that you have administrator access to, duh. We’ve created El Capitan USB stick from both Yosemite and El Capitan, but your experience with other versions may vary. An 8GB or larger USB flash drive or an 8GB or larger partition on some other kind of external drive. For newer Macs, use a USB 3.0 drive—it makes things significantly faster. The OS X 10.11 El Capitan installer from the Mac App Store in your Applications folder. The installer will delete itself when you install the operating system, but it can be re-downloaded if necessary. If you want a GUI, you need the latest version of  Diskmaker X  app. As of this writing, version 5 is the one you’ll want for official El Capitan support, and it has been promised but not yet delivered. We’ll show you how to do it with version 4 and update the article when the update is released. Diskmaker X is free to download, but  the creator accepts donations  if you want to support his efforts. The easy way Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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How to make your own bootable OS X 10.11 El Capitan USB install drive

Listen to the Lyre of Ur, a 4,500 year-old musical instrument

“You think you know what a Lyre looks like.” I love the fact that the website dedicated to the world’s oldest musical instrument is itself made of the world’s oldest HTML. [via Metafilter ] The instrument shown here is one of the three original lyres of Ur found in 1929, which are held today in the Museums of Pennsylvania, London and Baghdad as unplayable models. It is approximately 4,550 years old and is thought to predate the construction of the Great Pyramid, and even Stonehenge in England. They made a new one and a CD is now available . All I’m saying is, it sounds better than bagpipes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvgtAHV4mzw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSWEeBGhz4M

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Listen to the Lyre of Ur, a 4,500 year-old musical instrument

Newly Found TrueCrypt Flaw Allows Full System Compromise

itwbennett writes: James Forshaw, a member of Google’s Project Zero team has found a pair of flaws in the discontinued encryption utility TrueCrypt that could allow attackers to obtain elevated privileges on a system if they have access to a limited user account. ‘It’s impossible to tell if the new flaws discovered by Forshaw were introduced intentionally or not, but they do show that despite professional code audits, serious bugs can remain undiscovered, ‘ writes Lucian Constantin. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Newly Found TrueCrypt Flaw Allows Full System Compromise

Raytheon signs $1 billion contract to protect government websites

Homeland Security has signed a five-year contract with Raytheon, which could be worth a whopping $1 billion. While the defense contractor is more known for weapons development, DHS hasn’t joined forces with it to create more missiles , lasers, warheads and UAVs . No, the agency has asked the company’s help to secure government websites. According to Raytheon’s announcement , it will aid the government in developing, deploying and supporting technologies that watch out for and mitigate cyberattacks. Reuters says the company will also help around 100 agencies manage their network security within the duration of the partnership as the prime contractor for DHS’ National Cybersecurity Protection System and Network Security Deployment divisions. After that massive Office of Personnel Management hack earlier this year (and the knowledge that other .gov websites are susceptible to attacks), it’s clear that the government believes it could use the cybersecurity upgrade Raytheon promises to bring to the table. And since the White House wants to start being more aggressive in securing its networks, this isn’t the government’s only anti-cyberattack project in the works. The Pentagon, for one, is building an automated system that can detect and prevent security breaches. [Image credit: Getty Images/Caiaimage] Via: Reuters Source: Raytheon

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Raytheon signs $1 billion contract to protect government websites

Tim Cook: Apple won’t merge iOS and OS X

Now that Apple is blurring the lines between its mobile tablets and PCs with the iPad Pro , it’s tempting to imagine iOS and OS X merging into a single operating system ( Windows 10-style ) that works on virtually every device the company makes. You’ll want to put any such ideas on hold, though. In a chat with Box’s Aaron Levie, Apple chief Tim Cook dismissed the prospects of unifying iOS and OS X. It “subtracts from both, ” he said, arguing that you “don’t get the best experience from either.” This isn’t a completely new idea from Apple (it once explained in detail why OS X doesn’t have touch), but it’s clear that Cook doesn’t feel any pressure to follow in Microsoft’s footsteps on this front. Not that Cook and crew are giving Microsoft and its ideas the cold shoulder — just the opposite, in fact. The exec said he doesn’t believe in “holding grudges” against Apple’s frequent rival, and that the two tech giants can “partner on more things” than they compete in. Witness the slew of iOS-friendly Office updates that were unveiled in tandem with the iPad Pro and iOS 9, for example. The enterprise crowd, Cook adds, would rather see Apple and Microsoft collaborating than fighting. On that note, the CEO contended that Apple isn’t nearly as work-phobic as it used to be. The company is big on enterprise deals (it made $25 billion in enterprise revenue in the space of a year), and that there’s no real distinction these days between personal and office-focused devices. You don’t buy enterprise smartphones any more than you buy enterprise cars, he said. We’re sure that BlackBerry won’t be happy with that last statement, but it’s hard to dispute — with occasional exceptions, software is the only thing distinguishing an off-the-shelf smartphone from a locked-down corporate handset. [Image credit: Michael Short/Bloomberg via Getty Images] Source: ZDNet , Recode

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Tim Cook: Apple won’t merge iOS and OS X

Sprint offers $2.1 billion to acquire the rest of Clearwire

As most observers  expected , Sprint has finally made a formal offer to acquire the rest of Clearwire. On Thursday, Sprint said it would pay $2.1 billion for the remaining 49.7 percent of Clearwire that it does not currently control. As we reported yesterday , the move is widely seen as a play for Sprint to acquire Clearwire’s valuable 2.5 GHz spectrum, which it would use to offer LTE and strengthen its position against Verizon and AT&T. The bid works out to $2.90 per share—higher than the company’s closing price on Wednesday—but analysts say the offer may not be good enough. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Sprint offers $2.1 billion to acquire the rest of Clearwire

GCHQ Tried To Track Web Visits of "Every Visible User On Internet"

An anonymous reader writes with Ars Technica’s story on the relevations reported today by The Intercept that the UK’s GCHQ has been tracking World Wide Web users since 2007, with an operation called “Karma Police” — “a program that tracked Web browsing habits of people around the globe in what the agency itself billed as the ‘world’s biggest’ Internet data-mining operation, intended to eventually track ‘every visible user on the Internet.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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GCHQ Tried To Track Web Visits of "Every Visible User On Internet"