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Photos Stream Back From China’s Lunar Lander

After the successful soft landing of its carrier vessel on the surface of the moon, China’s Jade Rabbit lunar rover has begun beaming back photos of the lunar surface. From the BBC’s article, with links to video as well as several photos, comes this description: “Chang’e-3 is the third unmanned rover mission to touch down on the lunar surface, and the first to go there in more than 40 years. The last was an 840kg (1, 900lb) Soviet vehicle known as Lunokhod-2, which was kept warm by polonium-210. But the six-wheeled Chinese vehicle carries a more sophisticated payload, including ground-penetrating radar which will gather measurements of the lunar soil and crust. The 120kg (260lb) Jade Rabbit rover can reportedly climb slopes of up to 30 degrees and travel at 200m (660ft) per hour. … The rover and lander are powered by solar panels but some sources suggest they also carry radioisotope heating units (RHUs), containing plutonium-238 to keep them warm during the cold lunar night. According to Chinese space scientists, the mission is designed to test new technologies, gather scientific data and build intellectual expertise. It will also scout valuable mineral resources that could one day be mined.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Photos Stream Back From China’s Lunar Lander

Why Cloud Infrastructure Pricing Is Absurd

itwbennett writes “Two reports out this week, one a new ‘codex’ released by 451 Research and the other an updated survey into cloud IaaS pricing from Redmonk, show just how insane cloud pricing has become. If your job requires you to read these reports, good luck. For the rest of us, Redmonk’s Stephen O’Grady distilled the pricing trends down to this: ‘HP offers the best compute value and instance sizes for the dollar. Google offers the best value for memory, but to get there it appears to have sacrificed compute. AWS is king in value for disk and it appears no one else is even trying to come close. Microsoft is taking the ‘middle of the road, ‘ never offering the best or worst pricing.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Why Cloud Infrastructure Pricing Is Absurd

Safari Stores Previous Browsing Session Data Unencrypted

msm1267 writes “Users of Apple’s Safari browser are at risk for information loss because of a feature common to most browsers that restores previous sessions. The problem with Safari is that it stores session information including authentication credentials used in previous HTTPS sessions in a plaintext XML file called a Property list, or plist, file. The plist files, a researcher with Kaspersky Lab’s Global Research and Analysis Team said, are stored in a hidden folder, but hiding them in plain sight isn’t much of a hurdle for a determined attacker. ‘The complete authorized session on the site is saved in the plist file in full view despite the use of https, ‘ said researcher Vyacheslav Zakorzhevsky on the Securelist blog. ‘The file itself is located in a hidden folder, but is available for anyone to read.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Safari Stores Previous Browsing Session Data Unencrypted

More Students Learn CS In 3 Days Than Past 100 Years

theodp writes “Code.org, backed by Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, boasts in a blog post that thanks to this week’s Hour of Code, which featured a Blockly tutorial narrated by Gates and Zuckerberg, ‘More students have participated in computer science in U.S. schools in the last three days than in the last 100 years.’ Taking note of the impressive numbers being put up on the Hour of Code Leaderboards (’12, 522, 015 students have done the Hour of Code and written 406, 022, 512 lines of code’), the Seattle Times adds that ‘More African American and Hispanic kids learned about the subject in two days than in the entire history of computer science, ‘ and reports that the cities of Chicago and New York have engaged Code.org to offer CS classes in their schools. So, isn’t it a tad hyperbolic to get so excited over kids programming with blocks? ‘Yes, we can all agree that this week’s big Hour of Code initiative is a publicity stunt, ‘ writes the Mercury News’ Mike Cassidy, ‘but you know what? A publicity stunt is exactly what we need.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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More Students Learn CS In 3 Days Than Past 100 Years

ITU Standardizes 1Gbps Over Copper, But Services Won’t Come Until 2015

alphadogg writes “The ITU has taken a big step in the standardization of G.fast, a broadband technology capable of achieving download speeds of up to 1Gbps over copper telephone wire. The death of copper and the ascent of fiber has long been discussed. However, the cost of rolling out fiber is still too high for many operators that instead want to upgrade their existing copper networks. So there is still a need for technologies that can complement fiber, including VDSL2 and G.fast. Higher speeds are needed for applications such as 4K streaming, IPTV, cloud-based storage, and communication via HD video, ITU said.” Meanwhile, I’m hoping Google Fiber, FIOS, and other fast optical options scare more ISPs into action along both price and speed axes. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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ITU Standardizes 1Gbps Over Copper, But Services Won’t Come Until 2015

Engineering the Perfect Coffee Mug

Nerval’s Lobster writes “From the annals of Really Important Science comes word that a research assistant who picked up his B.S. just seven months ago has invented a coffee mug designed to keep java at just the right piping-hot temperature for hours. Logan Maxwell, who got his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from North Carolina State University in May, created the “Temperfect” mug as part of his senior design project for the College of Engineering. Most insulated mugs have two walls separated by a soft vacuum that insulates the temperature of a liquid inside from the temperature of the air outside. Maxwell’s design has a third layer of insulation in a third wall wrapped around the inner basin of the mug. Inside is a chemical insulator that is solid at room temperature but melts into a liquid at 140 degrees Fahrenheit. The insulator – which Maxwell won’t identify but swears is non-toxic – turns to liquid as it absorbs the extra heat of coffee poured into the mug at temperatures higher than 140 F, cooling it to a drinkable temperature quickly. As the heat of the coffee escapes, the insulating material releases heat through the inner wall of the mug to keep it hot as long as possible; a graph mapping the performance of a prototype shows it could keep a cup of coffee at between 128 F and 145 F for as long as 90 minutes. “Phase-change” coffee-mug insulation was patented during the 1960s, but has never been marketed because they are difficult and expensive to manufacture compared to simpler forms of insulation. While working on the Temperfect design, Maxwell met Belgian-born industrial designer Dean Verhoeven, president of consulting form Ancona Research, Inc., who had been working on a similar design and had already worked out how to manufacture a three-walled insulated mug cost effectively. The two co-founded a company called Joevo to manufacture the mugs.” According to the Joevo Kickstarter page, you can get one starting at $40. For that much, I’d like a clever lid like this Contigo has. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Engineering the Perfect Coffee Mug

Cybercrime Marketplace Mastermind Faces 18 Years In Prison

wiredmikey writes “A Ukrainian national, Roman Vega, who pleaded guilty in 2009 to creating a popular online marketplace for selling stolen financial account data has been sentenced to 18 years in prison. Called one of the world’s ‘most prolific cybercriminals’ by the Department of Justice, Vega, 49, will serve significant time in prison for his role in co-founding the notorious website CarderPlanet. In the early 2000s, Vega co-founded and became a high-ranking administrator of the notorious website, which became one of the first and busiest online marketplaces for the sale of stolen financial information, computer hacking services and money laundering. At its height, CarderPlanet had more than 6, 000 members and had a hierarchical leadership structure that borrowed its leadership titles from La Cosa Nostra, US authorities said.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Cybercrime Marketplace Mastermind Faces 18 Years In Prison

Pirate Bay Founder Warg Being Held in Solitary Confinement

From Torrent Freak comes news that one of the Pirate Bay founders is now being held in solitary confinement after Sweden turned him over to Denmark. From the article: “In a recent letter sent to Amnesty and shared with TorrentFreak, Gottfrid’s mother Kristina explains her son’s plight. She says that Gottfrid is being kept in solitary and treated as if he were a ‘dangerous, violent and aggressive criminal’ even though his only crime — if any — is hacking. Gottfrid’s lawyer Luise Høi says the terms of his confinement are unacceptable and are being executed without the correct legal process. ‘It is the case that Danish authorities are holding my client in solitary confinement without a warrant, ‘ Høi explains, noting that if the authorities wish to exclude Gottfrid from access to anyone except his lawyer and prison staff, they need to apply for a special order.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Pirate Bay Founder Warg Being Held in Solitary Confinement

California Man Arrested for Running ‘Revenge Porn’ Website

cold fjord writes “Yahoo reports, ‘A California man was arrested on Tuesday on accusations he ran a ‘revenge porn’ website, one that featured nude pictures of women often posted by jilted or angry ex-lovers … The San Diego arrest, the latest action by the state to crack down on such websites, comes after California Governor Jerry Brown signed a first-in-the-nation law in October specifically targeting revenge porn. The law defines revenge porn as the posting of private, explicit photos of other people on the Internet to humiliate them. But authorities did not charge 27-year-old Kevin Bollaert under that law, because it is geared to those who post the incriminating pictures and not those who run websites that feature them …. Bollaert’s site, which is no longer operational, had featured over 10, 000 sexually explicit photos, and he charged women up to $350 each to remove their photos, officials said. … Bollaert was charged under a California identity theft law that prohibits using identifying information of a person without their permission, and under anti-extortion legislation, according to court documents. Unlike many other revenge porn websites, Bollaert’s site had required users post the photo subject’s full name, location, age and a link to the person’s Facebook profile, the Attorney General’s Office said in a statement.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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California Man Arrested for Running ‘Revenge Porn’ Website