Tag: facebook

Understanding the Antikythera Mechanism

szczys writes: We attribute great thinking to ancient Greece. This is exemplified by the Antikythera Mechanism. Fragments of the mechanism were found in a shipwreck first discovered in 1900 and visited by researchers several times over the next century. It is believed to be a method of tracking the calendar and is the first known example of what are now common-yet-complicated engineering mechanisms like the differential gear. A few working reproductions have been produced and make it clear that whomever designed this had an advanced understanding of complex gear ratios and their ability to track the passage of time and celestial bodies. Last year research by two scientists suggested that the device might be much older than previously thought. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

View post:
Understanding the Antikythera Mechanism

TrueCrypt Safer Than Previously Thought

An anonymous reader writes: Back in September, members of Google’s Project Zero team found a pair of flaws in the TrueCrypt disk encryption software that could lead to a system compromise. Their discovery raised concerns that TrueCrypt was unsuitable for use in securing sensitive data. However, the Fraunhofer Institute went ahead with a full audit of TrueCrypt’s code, and they found it to be more secure than most people think. They correctly point out that for an attacker to exploit the earlier vulnerabilities (and a couple more vulnerabilities they found themselves), the attacker would already need to have “far-reaching access to the system, ” with which they could do far worse things than exploit an obscure vulnerability. The auditors say, “It does not seem apparent to many people that TrueCrypt is inherently not suitable to protect encrypted data against attackers who can repeatedly access the running system. This is because when a TrueCrypt volume is mounted its data is generally accessible through the file system, and with repeated access one can install key loggers etc. to get hold of the key material in many situations. Only when unmounted, and no key is kept in memory, can a TrueCrypt volume really be secure.” For other uses, the software “does what it’s designed for, ” despite its code flaws. Their detailed, 77-page report (PDF) goes into further detail. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

See more here:
TrueCrypt Safer Than Previously Thought

Researchers Create Plant-Circuit Hybrid

sciencehabit writes: Researchers have crafted flexible electronic circuits inside a rose. Eventually such circuitry may help farmers eavesdrop on their crops and even control when they ripen. The advance may even allow people to harness energy from trees and shrubs not by cutting them down and using them for fuel, but by plugging directly into their photosynthesis machinery. The researchers used “an organic electronic building block called PEDOT-S:H. Each of these building blocks consists of a short, repeating chain of a conductive organic molecule with short arms coming off each link of the chain. Each of the arms sports a sulfur-containing group linked to a hydrogen atom. Berggren’s group found that when they placed them in the water, the rose stems readily pulled the short polymer chains up the xylem channels (abstract). … The upshot was that the myriad short polymer chains quickly linked themselves together into continuous strings as long as 10 centimeters. The researchers then added electronic probes to opposite ends of these strings, and found that they were, in fact, wires, conducting electricity all down the line.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Excerpt from:
Researchers Create Plant-Circuit Hybrid

First Images Ever Taken of a Planet Being Formed, 450 Light-Years From Earth

Zothecula writes: Of the many new exoplanets discovered over the past two decades, all have been identified as established, older planets – none have been acknowledged as newly-forming protoplanets. Now scientists working at the Keck observatory have spied just such a planet in the constellation of Taurus, some 450 light-years from Earth (abstract), that is only just beginning its life, collecting matter and spinning into a brand new world. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Continue reading here:
First Images Ever Taken of a Planet Being Formed, 450 Light-Years From Earth

First Liquid-Cooling Laser Could Advance Biological Research

Zothecula writes: In a world where lasers are sci-fi’s weapon of choice for melting away an enemy spaceship, researchers at the University of Washington have swum against the current and produced the first laser capable of cooling liquids. ” They demonstrated that the laser could refrigerate saline solution and cell culture media that are commonly used in genetic and molecular research. To achieve the breakthrough, the UW team used a material commonly found in commercial lasers but essentially ran the laser phenomenon in reverse. They illuminated a single microscopic crystal suspended in water with infrared laser light to excite a unique kind of glow that has slightly more energy than that amount of light absorbed. This higher-energy glow carries heat away from both the crystal and the water surrounding it.” The technology could be especially useful for slowing down single cells and allowing scientists to study biological processes as they happen. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Continue Reading:
First Liquid-Cooling Laser Could Advance Biological Research

The Next Gold Rush Will Be 5,000 Feet Under the Sea, With Robot Drones

merbs writes: In Papua New Guinea, one well-financed, first-mover company is about to pioneer deep sea mining. And that will mean dispatching a fleet of giant remote-operated robotic miners 5, 000 feet below the surface to harvest the riches scattered across ocean floor. These mammoth underwater vehicles look like they’ve been hauled off the set of a sci-fi film—think Avatar meets The Abyss. And they’ll be dredging up copper, gold, and other valuable minerals, far beneath the gaze of human eyes. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Continued here:
The Next Gold Rush Will Be 5,000 Feet Under the Sea, With Robot Drones

Google And ASUS Launch The $85 Chromebit, A Chrome OS Desktop On An HDMI Stick

 Earlier this year, Google and ASUS announced the Chromebit — a full Chrome OS-based computer on an HDMI stick. Today, the two companies are officially launching this new way of using Chrome OS on any screen with an HDMI port. The $85 Chromebit is a 75 gram (or 2.6 ounces) stick that you can plug into any HDMI port — whether that’s a regular computer screen or that large TV… Read More

Continue Reading:
Google And ASUS Launch The $85 Chromebit, A Chrome OS Desktop On An HDMI Stick

US Navy Is Planning To Launch a Squadron of Underwater Drones By 2020

Hallie Siegel writes: According to the non-profit Autonomous Undersea Vehicle Applications Center, there are over 250 different configurations of unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs) in service today. That number is likely to grow in the coming years as the technology improves — note that the US Navy has made UUVs a priority and is planning to launch a whole squadron of them by 2020. Dan Gettinger from the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College gives an overview of this technology. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More:
US Navy Is Planning To Launch a Squadron of Underwater Drones By 2020

Intel Flagship Core I7-6950X Broadwell-E To Offer 10-Cores, 20-Threads, 25MB L3

MojoKid writes: Intel has made a habit of launching enthusiast versions of previous generations processors after it releases it a new architecture. As was the case with Intel’s Haswell architecture, high-end Broadwell-E variants are expected and a it looks like Intel is readying a doozy. Recent details revealed show four new processors under the new HEDT (High-End Desktop) banner for Broadwell, which is one more SKU than Haswell-E brought to the table. The most intriguing of the new chips is the Core i7-6950X, a monster 10-core CPU with Hyper Threading support. That gives the Core i7-6950X 20 threads to play with, along with a whopping 25MB of L3 cache. The caveat is the CPU’s clockspeed — it will run at just 3.0GHz (base), so for applications that aren’t properly tuned to take full advantage of large core counts and threads, it could potentially trail behind the Core i7-6700K, a quad-core Skylake processor clocked at 3.4GHz (base) to 4GHz (Turbo). Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read the article:
Intel Flagship Core I7-6950X Broadwell-E To Offer 10-Cores, 20-Threads, 25MB L3

Police Body Cameras Come With Pre-Installed Malware

An anonymous reader writes: The old Conficker worm was found on new police body cameras that were taken out of the box by security researchers from iPower Technologies. The worm is detected by almost all security vendors, but it seems that it is still being used because modern day IoT devices can’t yet run security products. This allows the worm to spread, and propagate to computers when connected to an unprotected workstation. One police computer is enough to allow attackers to steal government data. The source of the infection is yet unknown. It is highly unlikely that the manufacturer would do this. Middleman involved in the shipping are probably the cause. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

View article:
Police Body Cameras Come With Pre-Installed Malware