Category: reader

The Smithsonian Is Uploading Its Lost Treasures to the Internet

With over 137 million artifacts, works of art, and specimens in its collections, the Smithsonian can’t display even one percent of that at any given time. Many historically significant pieces won’t go on display in our lifetimes and other likely won’t ever see the light of day again. But their replicants will. Read more…        

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The Smithsonian Is Uploading Its Lost Treasures to the Internet

The Second Operating System Hiding In Every Mobile Phone

Jah-Wren Ryel writes “Every smartphone or other device with mobile communications capability (e.g. 3G or LTE) actually runs not one, but two operating systems. Aside from the operating system that we as end-users see (Android, iOS, PalmOS), it also runs a small operating system that manages everything related to radio. So, we have a complete operating system, running on an ARM processor, without any exploit mitigation (or only very little of it), which automatically trusts every instruction, piece of code, or data it receives from the base station you’re connected to. What could possibly go wrong?” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The Second Operating System Hiding In Every Mobile Phone

Meteorite impacts capture time capsules of the ecosystems they destroy

Sites like this can be searched for glass beads that reveal the past. rickmach Meteorite impacts can be very destructive. A meteorite that fell in Mexico around 66 million years ago created a 180 km crater and caused the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs while spewing debris and molten rock into the air. Now, in what is a fascinating tale of serendipity, researchers have found that these events don’t entirely destroy all traces of life at the site of impact. Molten rocks can capture and preserve organic matter as they cool down to form glass beads. When a meteor enters Earth’s atmosphere, the friction causes it to heat up, scorching everything in its path. Most of the time that’s where the story ends, as the meteor burns up in the sky as a “shooting star.” But sometimes it’s big enough to reach all the way to the surface and transfer its remaining energy to the ground. This energy is dissipated as mild earthquakes and sound shockwaves—but mostly as heat. The heat energy can be so great that it melts rocks on the surface and hurls them up in the atmosphere. Anything that comes in contact with this molten rock would presumably get burnt, leaving nothing but rocky material that cools down in the atmosphere, forming glass beads and tektites (gravel-sized natural glass). This is what City University of New York researcher Kieren Howard assumed, but he was able to show that his assumptions were wrong. Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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Meteorite impacts capture time capsules of the ecosystems they destroy

UK to Get Driverless Taxis. Heathrow Already Has Them. Man, NYC/JFK Sucks

[Image via Podcars ] Milton Keynes sounds like the name of someone your cousin married for his money, but in fact it’s a large town in Buckinghamshire, 50 miles northwest of London. With a population of over 200, 000, it can be considered urban, and the area is about to become more well-known, perhaps even famous. Because in 2015 it will start deploying driverless taxis, also called PRTs, for Personal Rapid Transit. In actuality the electricity-operated PRTs are less like taxis and more like surface-going, two-person subway cars that travel directly from point A to point B, without making undesired stops. Routes, it seems, will be fixed, with the town’s central train station serving as a hub, and areas of service expected to include the local shopping mall and particular office buildings. PRTs are not without precedent in the UK; London Heathrow has been running them since 2011 to ferry passengers between terminals, and the things recharge themselves. Check out how they operate, and don’t be put off by this video’s silly beginning, as the entire thing is pretty informative: (more…)

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UK to Get Driverless Taxis. Heathrow Already Has Them. Man, NYC/JFK Sucks

The Operations of a Cyber Arms Dealer

An anonymous reader writes “FireEye researchers have linked eleven distinct APT cyber espionage campaigns previously believed to be unrelated (PDF), leading them to believe that there is a shared operation that supplies and maintains malware tools and weapons used in them. The eleven campaigns they tied together were detected between July 2011 and September 2013, but it’s possible and very likely that some of them were active even before then. Despite using varying techniques, tactics, and procedures, the campaigns all leveraged a common development infrastructure, and shared — in various combinations — the same malware tools, the same elements of code, binaries with the same timestamps, and signed binaries with the same digital certificates.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The Operations of a Cyber Arms Dealer

Hack of MacRumors forums exposes password data for 860,000 users

MacRumors MacRumors user forums have been breached by hackers who may have acquired cryptographically protected passwords belonging to all 860,000 users, one of the top editors of the news website said Tuesday evening. “In situations like this, it’s best to assume that your MacRumors Forum username, e-mail address and (hashed) password is now known,” Editorial Director Arnold Kim wrote in a short advisory . He went on to advise users to change their passwords for their MacRumors accounts and any other website accounts that were protected by the same passcode. The MacRumors intrusion involved “a moderator account being logged into by the hacker who then was able to escalate their privileges with the goals of stealing user login credentials,” Kim said. The company is still investigating how the attacker managed to compromise the privileged account. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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Hack of MacRumors forums exposes password data for 860,000 users

Netflix updates Xbox 360, PS3, Roku and Smart TV apps with unified interface

As much as we love Netflix , we’ve always found it a bit odd that the browsing experience is fragmented between platforms. Jumping between PS3, Xbox and Roku devices can be a jarring experience, each offering its own spin on the Netflix queue with an inconsistent distribution of the service’s best features. Even Netflix is put off by the mixed ecosystem: which is why it’s launching a new, unified television experience today. “About a year and half ago we took a step back to think about Netflix’s television experience across devices, ” explains company director of innovation Chris Jaffe. “What we saw was a mismatch in how Netflix worked relative to how regular TV works, where you just turn it on and things are happening.” Jaffe explained that compared to the active browsing experience of traditional channel surfing, Netflix seemed static. “We also looked at the devices and realized that while we’ve got a great experience on the PS3 and some smart TVs , we’ve got an Xbox 360 experience that’s very different.” Fixing these problems required the company to rethink its interface from the ground up. We met up with Netflix to see the results. Filed under: Home Entertainment , Internet , HD Comments

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Netflix updates Xbox 360, PS3, Roku and Smart TV apps with unified interface

Microsoft Warns Customers Away From RC4 and SHA-1

Trailrunner7 writes “The RC4 and SHA-1 algorithms have taken a lot of hits in recent years, with new attacks popping up on a regular basis. Many security experts and cryptographers have been recommending that vendors begin phasing the two out, and Microsoft on Tuesday said it is now recommending to developers that they deprecate RC4 and stop using the SHA-1 hash algorithm. RC4 is among the older stream cipher suites in use today, and there have been a number of practical attacks against it, including plaintext-recovery attacks. The improvements in computing power have made many of these attacks more feasible for attackers, and so Microsoft is telling developers to drop RC4 from their applications. The company also said that as of January 2016 it will no longer will validate any code signing or root certificate that uses SHA-1.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Microsoft Warns Customers Away From RC4 and SHA-1

CyanogenMod makes installing its Android OS a breeze with new desktop and mobile apps

Making CyanogenMod the third major mobile ecosystem is a lofty goal, but the minds behind the custom Android ROM have just made it easier for smartphone users to join their ranks. Rather than installing the operating system by hand, folks can now rely on the freshly-released CyanogenMod Installer app — which just arrived on the Play Store — to do the heavy lifting. A smartphone wielding the application can score the latest version of CyanogenMod by being hooked up to a windows PC (with Windows Vista or newer) running the companion desktop software. The majority of current flagship devices are supported by the setup, and the devs say they’re working on adding more models to the list. Head to the source links below if you’re ready to embrace this outsider operating system, just be sure to back up your handset’s data beforehand. Filed under: Cellphones , Software , Mobile Comments Via: CyanogenMod Blog Source: Google Play Store , CyanogenMod Installer

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CyanogenMod makes installing its Android OS a breeze with new desktop and mobile apps