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NSA notably uninvited to speak at Vegas hacker conferences this year

NSA Director Adm. Michael Rogers [REUTERS] It’s Las Vegas hacker convention season: Black Hat kicks off Aug. 2-7, and Def Con runs Aug. 7-10. This time around, National Security Agency leadership will be absent from the speaking rosters, in contrast with previous years. Read the rest

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NSA notably uninvited to speak at Vegas hacker conferences this year

The World’s Fastest Network Lets You Download a Movie In .2 Milliseconds

Danish researchers just created the Usain Bolt of networks. A team from the Technical University of Denmark used a single multi-core optical fiber to transfer 43 terabits per second, making it the world’s fastest fiber network . I’d say it makes Google Fiber look like 1996 AOL dial-up from a decrepit rural phone line, but that comparison is too kind to Google Fiber. Read more…

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The World’s Fastest Network Lets You Download a Movie In .2 Milliseconds

The second Oculus Rift headset uses the Samsung Note 3 screen, literally

Back when Oculus VR first showed off its second virtual reality development kit, the Facebook subsidiary wasn’t saying anything specific about the origins of its new, higher-resolution screen. But now that that second dev kit is shipping to pre-order customers, the teardowns have begun and we have a better idea of what it’s using: the screen from Samsung’s Note 3 . Not a similar screen, but the screen directly taken from a Note 3 smartphone — an AMOLED pushing 1080 x 960 into each eye. Oculus VR even kept the touch module attached, though we’d strongly suggest against trying to use it while wearing the Rift headset. As iFixit notes, the screen is being overclocked to run a higher refresh rate (75 Hz), which is important in creating what Oculus calls “low-persistence”. Hilariously, when the headset’s taken apart, you can see the directness of the screen’s use, camera-holes and all. Check out the video below for a full walkthrough of the new Rift dev kit. Of course, Samsung and Oculus working together is interesting unto itself. We reported in May that Oculus VR and Samsung are collaborating on another VR headset — “Gear VR” — which Oculus is creating the software for while Samsung creates the hardware. That Samsung is providing the screen for Oculus’ new dev kit looks to be another component of the partnership. Interested in learning more about the second Oculus Rift dev kit? Check out the video below! Filed under: Cellphones , Gaming , Wearables , Software , HD , Mobile , Samsung , Facebook Comments Source: iFixit

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The second Oculus Rift headset uses the Samsung Note 3 screen, literally

BitTorrent Launches Bleep, a Serverless, Anonymous Chat Client

BitTorrent just opened up invitations for its pre-alpha version of Bleep, a chat client that’s structured around anonymity and works similar to a peer-to-peer network. Read more…

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BitTorrent Launches Bleep, a Serverless, Anonymous Chat Client

Opt Out of Amazon Prime’s Free Two-Day Shipping, Earn $1 Video Credit

If you’re an Amazon Prime subscriber, you can choose a no-rush shipping option during checkout and earn $1 of Amazon Instant Video credit for every order. Read more…

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Opt Out of Amazon Prime’s Free Two-Day Shipping, Earn $1 Video Credit

World’s Strongest Material Goes from Conductor to Insulator When Stretched

You’ve heard all about the wonder properties of graphene, so come meet its one dimensional cousin, carbyne. A chain of single carbon atoms to graphene’s two-dimensional layer of atoms, carbyne has some pretty amazing properties of its own. By one measure, it’s the strongest material in the world (over graphene!), and a new study finds it has the strange ability to go from conductor to insulator with a small stretch. Read more…

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World’s Strongest Material Goes from Conductor to Insulator When Stretched

23andMe gets $1.4 million NIH funding to advance human DNA research

Genetic testing firm 23andMe might not be in good terms with the FDA, but it impressed the National Institutes of Health enough for the agency to give it a $1.4 million grant. The money will be used for a two-year project that’ll improve the firm’s web-based genetic database and make data available (anonymously, that is) for use by external researchers. This will also allow the company to look into the association between genes and health conditions, conduct more extensive surveys to collect data, among other things that it details on its official announcement . Haven’t heard of 23andMe before? It calls itself a “personal genetics company” that sells DNA test kits and sends customers back their genetic ancestry information and raw genetic data. It also used to issue health reports that indicate how much you’re at risk for a certain disease (cancer, for instance), but the FDA called the reports’ accuracy into question last year. The company believes this two-year project will ultimately lead to valuable information on thousands of diseases and help improve disease detection and drug development. Filed under: Science Comments Source: Reuters , 23andme , FierceHealthIT

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23andMe gets $1.4 million NIH funding to advance human DNA research

Crytek USA Collapses, Sells Game IP To Other Developers

MojoKid (1002251) writes Game developer Crytek’s problems have been detailed recently from various source, and it’s now clear that it wasn’t just the company’s UK studios that were affected. Crytek announced today that it has officially moved development of its F2P shooter Hunt: Horrors of the Guilded Age to a German developer, ignoring the fact that the majority of the US team had apparently already quit the company. The problem? Just as in the UK, the US employees weren’t getting paid. In a separate announcement, Crytek also declared that development of the Homefront series had passed entirely to developer Deep Silver. The company has stated, “On completion of the proposed acquisition, the Homefront team from Crytek’s Nottingham studio would transfer their talents to Koch Media in compliance with English law and continue their hard work on upcoming shooter, Homefront: The Revolution. Both parties hope to finalize and implement a deal soon.” It’s hard to see this as good news for Crytek. The company can make all the noise it wants about moving from a development studio to a publisher model, but Crytek as a company was always known for two things — the CryEngine itself, adapted for a handful of titles and the Crysis series. Without those factors, what’s left? Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Crytek USA Collapses, Sells Game IP To Other Developers

This thumbdrive hacks computers. “BadUSB” exploit makes devices turn “evil”

Saurabh R. Patil When creators of the state-sponsored Stuxnet worm used a USB stick to infect air-gapped computers inside Iran’s heavily fortified Natanz nuclear facility , trust in the ubiquitous storage medium suffered a devastating blow. Now, white-hat hackers have devised a feat even more seminal—an exploit that transforms keyboards, Web cams, and other types of USB-connected devices into highly programmable attack platforms that can’t be detected by today’s defenses. Dubbed BadUSB, the hack reprograms embedded firmware to give USB devices new, covert capabilities. In a demonstration scheduled at next week’s Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, a USB drive, for instance, will take on the ability to act as a keyboard that surreptitiously types malicious commands into attached computers. A different drive will similarly be reprogrammed to act as a network card that causes connected computers to connect to malicious sites impersonating Google, Facebook or other trusted destinations. The presenters will demonstrate similar hacks that work against Android phones when attached to targeted computers. They say their technique will work on Web cams, keyboards, and most other types of USB-enabled devices. “Please don’t do anything evil” “If you put anything into your USB [slot], it extends a lot of trust,” Karsten Nohl, chief scientist at Security Research Labs in Berlin, told Ars. “Whatever it is, there could always be some code running in that device that runs maliciously. Every time anybody connects a USB device to your computer, you fully trust them with your computer. It’s the equivalent of [saying] ‘here’s my computer; I’m going to walk away for 10 minutes. Please don’t do anything evil.” Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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This thumbdrive hacks computers. “BadUSB” exploit makes devices turn “evil”