A solicitation on FedBizOpps from the Navy asks security researchers to sell them their “vulnerability intelligence, exploit reports and operational exploit binaries affecting widely used and relied upon commercial software.” Read the rest
Most people know that New York City has its own little Alcatraz, called Riker’s Island. But few know that there’s another prison in the East River, this one floating next to the new Fulton Fish market in the Bronx. The Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center is a 47, 000-ton, five-story barge with 800 beds spread over 16 “dormitories” and 100 proper jail cells. At 625 feet in length and 125 feet wide, it also holds a gym, a basketball court, a library, three chapels, a rooftop exercise area, an IMAX theater and a casino. Okay, it doesn’t really have an IMAX theater and a casino but I wanted to see if you were paying attention. Tide and punishment Built in a Louisiana shipyard in the late ’80s, the floating prison was towed up to New York in the early 90s, and it looks for all the world like it was designed by a child playing with blue and white Legos. The unattractive structure is also, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, “The world’s largest prison ship.” (Go New York.) All A-board of Corrections As for why we even have the thing, a New York Times article detailing its opening says the ship was built “as a way of trying to develop prison space more quickly and to avoid complaints from community groups about building jails in densely populated neighborhoods.” The D.O.Sea And the 800-bed facility wasn’t cheap: As the writer of this tugboat blog points out, “She was built…at a cost of $161 Million, which as usual, means it would have been cheaper to send the inmates to Harvard instead.”
New submitter nickweller writes: More than 20 Stingray fake phone towers which can collect data from passing devices and listen in on calls have been discovered operating in the UK. The Metropolitan Police have refused to say who is controlling the IMSI catchers, also known as Stingrays, or what is being done with the information they are gathering. Met Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said: “If people imagine that we’ve got the resources to do as much intrusion as they worry about, I would reassure them that it’s impossible.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Fake Mobile Phone Towers Found To Be "Actively Listening In" On Calls In UK
AmiMoJo writes: Last month Microsoft changed its policy on protecting search settings to include any software that attempts to hijack searches as malware. As a result, this month the Ask Toolbar, which most people will probably recognize as being unwanted crapware bundled with Java, was marked as malware and will now be removed by Microsoft’s security software built in to Windows 7 and above. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Ask Toolbar Now Considered Malware By Microsoft
A 23-year-old Magic: The Gathering player who had $8,000 worth of his cards stolen managed to help snare the perpetrator after working with the police to craft an elaborate sting operation. According to The Washington Post , Kemper Pogue of Woodbridge, Virginia said he was quite upset when he realized that his car had been burglarized and that he’d lost 300 cards. “I went in the house, cracked open a beer, had a few sips, and promptly started screaming expletives as I waited for the police to arrive,” he told the Post . “I’d been collecting these cards since I was a kid, and over the years they’ve only increased in value.” Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Magic: The Gathering player helps cops recover his $8,000 collection
This image is a detail of an 1896 United States $1 note from the Educational Series of silver certificates issued by the United States Treasury in 1896. It is widely regarded as the most beautifully designed money in U.S. history. Read the rest
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The most beautiful money in U.S. history
No, not Star Wars . A full quarter century before he played Obi-Wan Kenobi, Alec Guinness starred in one of the purest, most science-focused science fiction films ever made. The Man in the White Suit is about scientific progress, and the law of unintended consequences, and it’s brilliant. Read more…
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Alec Guinness Stars In The Best Science Fiction Movie You’ve Never Seen
iPhone users will be able to block ads in Safair running on iOS 9 . Read more…
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iPhone users will be able to block ads in Safair running on iOS 9.
sciencehabit writes: The cupboards of the Natural History Museum in London hold spectacular dinosaur fossils, from 15-centimeter, serrated Tyrannosaurus rex teeth to a 4-meter-long hadrosaur tail. Now, researchers are reporting another spectacular find, buried in eight nondescript fossils from the same collection: what appear to be ancient red blood cells and fibers of ancient protein. Using new methods to peer deep inside fossils, the study in this week’s issue of Nature Communications backs up previous, controversial reports of such structures in dinosaur bones. It also suggests that soft tissue preservation may be more common than anyone had guessed. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Signs of Ancient Cells and Proteins Found In Dinosaur Fossils
stowie writes: The DARPA Robots Challenge concluded recently, and three teams were given prizes for completing all the tasks. The other robots in the competition struggled — not only were they unable to complete the required tasks, many of them were unable to even stay standing the entire time. So why did these robots have such a hard time? “DARPA deliberately degraded communications (low bandwidth, high latency, intermittent connection) during the challenge to truly see how a human-robot team could collaborate in a Fukushima-type disaster. And there was no standard set for how a human-robot interface would work. So, some worked better than others. The winning DRC-Hubo robot used custom software designed by Team KAIST that was engineered to perform in an environment with low bandwidth. It also used the Xenomai real-time operating system for Linux and a customized motion control framework. The second-place finisher, Team IHMC, used a sliding scale of autonomy that allowed a human operator to take control when the robot seemed stumped or if the robot knew it would run into problems.” If nothing else, the competition’s true legacy may lie in educating the public on the realistic capabilities of high-tech robots. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Why So Many Robots Struggled With the DARPA Challenge