Author: kenmay

43,000-Year-Old Woolly Mammoth Remains Offer Strong Chance of Cloning

EwanPalmer sends a followup to a story from last year about a team of Siberian scientists who recovered an ancient wooly mammoth carcass. It was originally believed to be about 10, 000 years old, but subsequent tests showed the animal died over 43, 000 years ago. The scientists have been surprised by how well preserved the soft tissues were. They say it’s in better shape than a human body buried for six months. “The tissue cut clearly shows blood vessels with strong walls. Inside the vessels there is haemolysed blood, where for the first time we have found erythrocytes. Muscle and adipose tissues are well preserved.” The mammoth’s intestines contain vegetation from its last meal, and they have the liver as well. The scientists are optimistic that they’ll be able to find high quality DNA from the mammoth, and perhaps even living cells. They now say there’s a “high chance” that data would allow them to clone the mammoth. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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43,000-Year-Old Woolly Mammoth Remains Offer Strong Chance of Cloning

Weak Apple PRNG Threatens iOS Exploit Mitigations

Trailrunner7 writes “A revamped early random number generator in iOS 7 is weaker than its vulnerable predecessor and generates predictable outcomes. A researcher today at CanSecWest said an attacker could brute force the Early Random PRNG used by Apple in its mobile operating system to bypass a number of kernel exploit mitigations native to iOS. ‘The Early Random PRNG in iOS 7 is surprisingly weak, ‘ said Tarjei Mandt senior security researcher at Azimuth Security. ‘The one in iOS 6 is better because this one is deterministic and trivial to brute force.’ The Early Random PRNG is important to securing the mitigations used by the iOS kernel. ‘All the mitigations deployed by the iOS kernel essentially depend on the robustness of the Early Random PRNG, ‘ Mandt said. ‘It must provide sufficient entropy and non-predictable output.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Weak Apple PRNG Threatens iOS Exploit Mitigations

The diaries of nearly 4,000 World War One soldiers are now online

To commemorate the centenary of the Great War, the diaries of 3, 987 British soldiers have been digitized and made available online. They contain first-hand accounts of trench warfare, gas attacks — oh, and that time two cats and a dog were suspected of being spies. Read more…        

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The diaries of nearly 4,000 World War One soldiers are now online

How to set up your own private instant messaging server

For the past few years, I’ve run my own XMPP-based instant messaging server. It’s an incredibly convenient way for my wife and I to send links back and forth to each other while we’re on our computers, and I very much like the idea of not having to depend on a third party for the exchange of simple messages. Not that Google is going to mine a lot of useful data out of our instant messages anyway (though they would be able to tell that we like funny cat pictures)—still, the server has come in extremely handy on occasions in the past. Getting the server application set up is quite easy, and even better, it works with any XMPP-compatible instant messaging application—Adium, Pidgin, Trillian, and just about anything else that can speak the open XMPP protocol. The video below will walk through the process of setting up and installing Prosody , a lightweight Lua-based instant messaging server application. We’ll be using Ubuntu 12.04 for our server, though Prosody is a cross-platform application and will run on Windows, OS X, and a number of different Linuxes. Strap in, grab your server, and let’s roll! Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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How to set up your own private instant messaging server

The New Kind of DDoS That Could Cripple the Internet

If you’re a regular on the internet, you probably know how a DDoS can choke your favorite site with garbage traffic . Well get used to it because they’re not going away; they’re actually getting worse. Read more…        

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The New Kind of DDoS That Could Cripple the Internet

In sudden announcement, US to give up control of DNS root zone

Photograph by David Davies In a historic decision on Friday, the United States has decided to give up control of the authoritative root zone file, which contains all names and addresses of all top-level domain names. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), under the United States Department of Commerce, has retained ultimate control of the domain name system (DNS) since transitioning it from a government project into private hands in 1997. With Commerce’s blessing, the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) acts as the primary essential governing body for Internet policy. The new change is  in advance of the upcoming ICANN meeting to be held in Brazil in April 2014. Brazil has fumed at revelations of American spying on its political leaders and corporations, which were first revealed in September 2013 as the result of documents distributed by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The South American country also threatened to build its “own cloud,” as a consequence of the NSA’s spying. Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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In sudden announcement, US to give up control of DNS root zone

The number of Californians who walk, bike, or take transit on an average day has doubled in the last

The number of Californians who walk, bike, or take transit on an average day has doubled in the last decade, according to a new study by Caltrans. Also notable: More people in their 20s and 30s are not getting their licenses at all. [ Los Angeles Times ] Read more…        

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The number of Californians who walk, bike, or take transit on an average day has doubled in the last

Popcorn Time, the Netflix of Piracy, Has Already Shut Down

Well, that didn’t last long. Just a little over a week ago, Popcorn Time descended upon the masses as a way to easily (if perhaps not entirely legally) stream torrents straight to your computer. Now, though, amidst pressure regarding piracy, Popcorn Time has officially closed its doors. Read more…        

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Popcorn Time, the Netflix of Piracy, Has Already Shut Down

XKCD Author’s Unpublished Book Has Already Become a Best-Seller

destinyland writes “Wednesday the geeky cartoonist behind XKCD announced that he’d publish a new book answering hypothetical science questions in September. And within 24 hours, his as-yet-unpublished work had become Amazon’s #2 best-selling book. ‘Ironically, this book is titled What If?, ‘ jokes one blogger, noting it resembles an XKCD comic where ‘In our yet-to-happen future, this book decides to travel backwards through time, stopping off in March of 2014 to inform Amazon’s best-seller list that yes, in our coming timeline this book will be widely read…’ Randall Munroe’s new book will be collecting his favorite ‘What If…’ questions, but will also contain his never-before published answers to some questions that he’d found ‘particularly neat.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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XKCD Author’s Unpublished Book Has Already Become a Best-Seller

Report: This is what iOS 8 looks like, at least right now

Apple’s next version of its mobile operating system, iOS 8, looks an awful lot like the iOS you’ve already got on your iDevice. At least that’s according to screens leaked on Chinese microblog site Weibo and lent credence by veritable Apple site 9to5Mac , which show what is supposedly iOS 8 in action. Yes, square icons with rounded edges are back, but that design is wrapped around some new entrants in the app world: TextEdit, Preview and Tips. It’s easy to guess what the first one might be (a potential replacement for the Notes app), but Preview and Tips? Given the icon’s distinct resemblance to the application of the same name in OS X, we’re guessing this serves a similar function: viewing documents and PDFs. As for Tips? Well, that’s probably just a solution for introducing new users. iOS 8 isn’t an official product just yet, but logic and history dictate it’ll be part and parcel of the next iPhone refresh. We’ve previously heard that health will feature prominently in the next version of iOS, with both an application named Healthbook and some form of integration with the M7 chip already built into the iPhone 5S. Of course, Apple’s staying mum for now, and, again, history dictates it’ll be a few more months before Cupertino’s ready to talk. Filed under: Cellphones , Handhelds , Software , Apple Comments Via: 9to5Mac Source: Weibo (1) , Weibo (2)

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Report: This is what iOS 8 looks like, at least right now