Remember those rumors about the Start Button making its triumphant return in Windows 8.1 ? Well, seeing is believing, and thanks to Paul Thurrott , we’ve got a sneak peak at that little guy in all its glory. We missed you. Read more…
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Leaked Windows 8.1 Screenshot: Oh, Hello, Start Button
Taking a page out of the book of other social networks , Facebook is now making it possible to verify celebs and other high-profile people and companies. The feature, which consists of a small blue checkmark sitting next to their name, extends to Pages and Profiles of popular individuals and businesses, as a way to limit the confusion a reader may experience when trying to filter between real and fake accounts. It appears that Facebook is taking upon itself the duty of deciding who to verify, but it’s still a good way to ensure that your favorite Engadget Facebook Page is manned by — you know — actual Engadget editors (nudge nudge, Mark!). Filed under: Software , Mobile , Facebook Comments Source: Facebook
Ever since humans looked up, we’ve been obsessed with gazing deep into the seemingly infinite cosmos. We’ve got plenty of telescopes both on Earth and floating around it that are staring out into the abyss, but the ILO-X is going to be perched on the moon. And you’ll be able to use it right from your computer . Read more…
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This Tiny Telescope Will Be The First Moon-Mounted Webcam
Google just announced a new interface for you Gmail based around customizable tabs. The goal? To you help manage your goliath of an inbox. It looks pretty incredible. Read more…
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Gmail’s Getting a Neat Freak Overhaul for Web and Mobile
In the UK, the movie industry’s lobby group gets to requisition huge numbers of police officers to raid peoples’ houses, solely on their say-so. Here’s the story of one man who was raided by ten cops, who arrived in five cars, along with representatives from FACT (the horribly named Federation Against Copyright Theft). The FACT agents directed the arrest of a 24-year-old man, along with the seizure of all his computers and storage media, on the basis of an “emergency” search-warrant. The FACT agents conducted the bulk of his questioning at the police station, with the cops acting as stenographers. When the man was bailed, the bail sheet specified that he had been arrested for a “miscellaneous offense.” He has been banned from entering any cinemas in England or Wales as a condition of bail. As TorrentFreak notes, FACT offers cash bounties to cinema workers who disrupt people thought to be “cammers” who are recording movies in cinemas. They paid more than a dozen such bounties last year, but did not have a single successful prosecution. “This morning I was arrested at my home under suspicion of recording and distributing Fast and Furious 6 and a few other titles,” the arrested man told TorrentFreak. Mp> After seizing numerous items including three servers, a desktop computer, blank hard drives and blank media, police detained the 24-year-old and transported him to a nearby police station. Despite the ‘emergency’ nature of the raid, no movie recording equipment was found. “At the police station I was interviewed by the police together with FACT (Federation Against Copyright and Theft). During questioning they asked me about Fast and Furious 6, where I obtained a copy from and if I was the one who went and recorded it at the cinema.” Despite police involvement, as in previous cases it appears they were only present in order to gain access to the victim’s property, sit on the sidelines taking notes, and for their powers when it comes to presenting crimes for prosecution. “I was detained for 3 hrs 12 minutes, out of that I was questioned for approximately 40 minutes. One police officer and two FACT officers conducted the interview. The police officer sat back and let FACT do all the questioning, so FACT were running the show,” the man reports. Five Undercover Police Cars Sent To Arrest Single Alleged Movie Pirate [Andy/TorentFreak]
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UK film industry requisitions cops for massive raid on suspected pirate, get to question him at police station
When Verizon updates its LTE network to use the AWS frequency in the coming months, the Galaxy S4 will be the first—and, for a while, only—phone to take advantage of the doubled internet speeds it offers. Read more…
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When Verizon updates its LTE network to use the AWS frequency in the coming months, the Galaxy S4 wi
Stylish and bullet proof! What’s not to like? This new blue dress by Japanese company Spiber is woven from synthetic spider silk, which is five times stronger than steel, more flexible than nylon, and is extremely lightweight. The electric-blue dress was created from a material Spiber calls Qmonos (from kumonosu , or “spider web,” in Japanese). The high-collared cocktail dress, on display at the Roppongi Hills complex in Tokyo, was created to demonstrate the technology behind Qmonos. The territorial nature of spiders makes them difficult to farm like silkworms. So instead, Spiber developed a technology that uses synthesized genes and coaxes bacteria to produce fibroin , the structural protein in spider silk. Spiber then uses technology it developed to culture the microbes efficiently and weave the fibroin into fabric. Apart from clothing, Qmonos could potentially be be used to make film, gels, sponges, artificial blood vessels, and nanofibers. Tim Hornyak of CNET has the scoop: Link
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Spider Silk Dress
Gov. Rick Perry is expected to sign the e-mail privacy bill, which passed both houses of the state legislature without a single “nay” vote. Gov. Rick Perry Assuming that Texas Governor Rick Perry does not veto it, the Lone Star State appears set to enact the nation’s strongest e-mail privacy bill , requiring state law enforcement agencies to get a warrant for all e-mails, regardless of the age of the e-mail. On Tuesday, the Texas bill ( HB 2268 ) was sent to Gov. Perry’s desk, where he has until June 16, 2013 to sign it or veto it—if he does neither, it will pass automatically, taking effect on September 1, 2013. The bill would give Texans more privacy over their inbox to shield against state-level snooping, but the bill would not protect against federal investigations . The bill passed both houses of the state legislature earlier this year without a single “nay” vote. This new bill, if signed, will make Texas law more privacy-conscious than the much-maligned (but frustratingly still in effect) 1986-era Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), where federal law enforcement agencies are only required to get a warrant to access recent e-mails before they are opened by the recipient. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Unprecedented e-mail privacy bill sent to Texas governor’s desk
Several readers sent word of a group of University of Alberta researchers, who were exploring the edge of the Teardrop Glacier in northern Canada when they noticed a ‘greenish tint’ coming out from underneath the glacier. It turned out to be a collection of bryophytes, which likely flourished there the last time the land in that area was exposed to sunlight before the Little Ice Age. They collected samples of plants estimated to be 400 years old, and the researchers were able to get them to sprout new growths in the lab (abstract). “The glaciers in the region have been receding at rates that have sharply accelerated since 2004, at about 3-4m per year. … Bryophytes are different from the land plants that we know best, in that they do not have vascular tissue that helps pump fluids around different parts of the organism. They can survive being completely desiccated in long Arctic winters, returning to growth in warmer times, but Dr La Farge was surprised by an emergence of bryophytes that had been buried under ice for so long. ‘When we looked at them in detail and brought them to the lab, I could see some of the stems actually had new growth of green lateral branches, and that said to me that these guys are regenerating in the field, and that blew my mind.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Researchers Regenerate 400-Year-Old Frozen Plants
Ars Technica’s Nate Anderson Dan Goodin follows up on Nate Anderson’s excellent piece on the nuts and bolts of password cracking with a further attempt to decrypt an encrypted password file leaked from LivingSocial, this time with the aid of experts. The password file they were working on was encrypted with the relatively weak (and now deprecated) SHA1 hashing algorithm, and they were only attacking it with a single GPU on a commodity PC, and were able to extract over 90% of the passwords in the file. The discussion of the guesswork and refinement techniques used in extracting passwords is absolutely fascinating and really is a must-read. However, the whole exercise is still a bit inconclusive — in the end, we know that a badly encrypted password file is vulnerable to an underpowered password-cracking device. But what we need to know is whether a well-encrypted password file will stand up to a good password-cracking system. The specific type of hybrid attack that cracked that password is known as a combinator attack. It combines each word in a dictionary with every other word in the dictionary. Because these attacks are capable of generating a huge number of guesses—the square of the number of words in the dict—crackers often work with smaller word lists or simply terminate a run in progress once things start slowing down. Other times, they combine words from one big dictionary with words from a smaller one. Steube was able to crack “momof3g8kids” because he had “momof3g” in his 111 million dict and “8kids” in a smaller dict… What was remarkable about all three cracking sessions were the types of plains that got revealed. They included passcodes such as “k1araj0hns0n,” “Sh1a-labe0uf,” “Apr!l221973,” “Qbesancon321,” “DG091101%,” “@Yourmom69,” “ilovetofunot,” “windermere2313,” “tmdmmj17,” and “BandGeek2014.” Also included in the list: “all of the lights” (yes, spaces are allowed on many sites), “i hate hackers,” “allineedislove,” “ilovemySister31,” “iloveyousomuch,” “Philippians4:13,” “Philippians4:6-7,” and “qeadzcwrsfxv1331.” “gonefishing1125” was another password Steube saw appear on his computer screen. Seconds after it was cracked, he noted, “You won’t ever find it using brute force.” Anatomy of a hack: How crackers ransack passwords like “qeadzcwrsfxv1331”
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Anatomy of a password-crack, part II