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

Linux Kernel Running In JavaScript Emulator With Graphics and Network Support

New submitter warmflatsprite writes “It seems that there have been a rash of JavaScript virtual machines running Linux lately (or maybe I just travel in really weird circles). However until now none of them had network support, so they weren’t too terribly useful. Sebastian Macke’s jor1k project uses asm.js to produce a very fast emulation of the OpenCores OpenRISC processor (or1k) along with a HTML5 canvas framebuffer for graphics support. Recently Ben Burns contributed an emulated OpenCores ethmac ethernet adapter to the project. This sends ethernet frames to a gateway server via websocket where they are switched and/or piped into TAP virtual ethernet adapter. With this you can build whatever kind of network appliance you’d like for the myriad of fast, sandboxed VMs running in your users’ browsers. For the live demo all VMs connect to a single private LAN (subnet 10.5.0.0/16). The websocket gateway also NATs traffic from that LAN out to the open Internet.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Linux Kernel Running In JavaScript Emulator With Graphics and Network Support

How engineers freeze soil to create structurally sound solid walls of earth

In Japan, engineers are attempting to contain radioactive contamination from the Fukushima power plant by freezing the ground around it into “ice walls” that will remain frozen for years . At Nova, Jessica Morrison writes about this weird technique, which has been around for over half a century and is more commonly used as part of massive construction projects with large underground components, including Boston’s Big Dig.        

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How engineers freeze soil to create structurally sound solid walls of earth

25,000-Drive Study Gives Insight On How Long Hard Drives Actually Last

MrSeb writes with this excerpt, linking to several pretty graphs: “For more than 30 years, the realm of computing has been intrinsically linked to the humble hard drive. It has been a complex and sometimes torturous relationship, but there’s no denying the huge role that hard drives have played in the growth and popularization of PCs, and more recently in the rapid expansion of online and cloud storage. Given our exceedingly heavy reliance on hard drives, it’s very, very weird that one piece of vital information still eludes us: How long does a hard drive last? According to some new data, gathered from 25, 000 hard drives that have been spinning for four years, it turns out that hard drives actually have a surprisingly low failure rate.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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25,000-Drive Study Gives Insight On How Long Hard Drives Actually Last

Digital Textbook Startup Kno Was Sold For $15 Million

Nate the greatest writes “Intel didn’t mention how much they paid for digital textbook startup Kno when they announced the acquisition last week but inside sources are now saying that the digital textbook startup was picked up for a song. GigaOm reported earlier today that their sources told them that Kno sold effectively for pennies on the dollar: ‘Well placed sources who were in the know told us that the company sold for $15 million with some retention bonuses for the employees. Intel bought the company mostly for its hardware-related intellectual property and the employees. Intel also was one of the largest investors in the company — having pumped in $20 million via its Intel Capital arm.’ Kno had raised $73 million in venture capital since it was founded 4 years ago, and it picked up another $20 million in debt. This deal was nothing less than a fire sale, and that does not bode well for the digital textbook market or other startups in this niche. Inkling, for example, just raised $20 million dollars this summer in order to compete in a market that where one of their competitors failed.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Digital Textbook Startup Kno Was Sold For $15 Million

Sweden Is Closing Many Prisons Due to Lack of Prisoners

rtoz writes “Sweden is taking steps to close many prisons due to lack of prisoners. This year alone, four prisons and a detention center got closed in Sweden. The percentage of the population in Sweden prison is significantly lower than in most other countries. … Though the Swedish Government is taking steps to close the prisons, the crime rate in Sweden has increased slightly. It seems they are planning to take steps for preventing crime rather than focusing on jailing people involved in criminal activities.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Sweden Is Closing Many Prisons Due to Lack of Prisoners

Apple Reportedly Developing Large Curved Screen iPhones For Late 2014, Better Touchscreen Sensors

Apple is said to be working on two curved display iPhone models for the “second half of next year,” according to a source speaking to Bloomberg , with a likely released planned for the third quarter, and building better touchscreen sensors that introduce fine pressure sensitivity for later devices to be introduced after that. These new iPhones for 2014 would come in 4.7 and 5.5-inch flavors, according to the report, meaning that Apple would be introducing not one, but two different models at the same time, in theory. We’ve seen reports of Apple working on different models of large-screen devices in the past, including one from the Wall Street Journal that suggests it’s been working on different tests of devices with screen sizes between 4.8 and 6 inches. This is the first time we’ve really heard firm information about a possible release date for said devices, from a source as generally reliable as Bloomberg. A Japanese iOS rumor site claimed a September launch for a large-screen iPhone late in October, however, and two reliable analyst sources predict a 4.7-inch iPhone 6 bound for stores in late 2014. Apple also introduced precedent for doing two models of new iPhone at once this year with the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c, so the idea that it could do so again in the future makes some sense. But two new larger-screened devices at once does seem like a stretch – thought if Apple retained an iPhone 5c as its third, budget device and added two more to the mid-tier and high-end range, that might allow it to do so without adding crazy complexity to its product lineup. The sensor developments are potentially more interesting to those who find the current screen size of the iPhone adequate; true pressure sensitivity (currently, some crude extent of that is possible via the iPhone’s accelerometer) would make drawing and handwriting applications on the iPhone and iPad much, much better. Apple could sell the devices as professional-level artistic devices if it introduces those kinds of features, in addition to just making things better for everyday users who want to jot notes and doodle, for example, or perform minor photo touch-ups. It’s very early days to make any kind of judgement about the likely accuracy of these claims, but the source gives it some weight. Apple’s iPhone joining the ranks of bigger-screened devices definitely makes sense as a next move for the lineup, but curved glass manufacturing also seems quite expensive at this point for Apple to be considering launching two new devices with that feature at once. Via 9to5Mac . Photo courtesy MyVoucherCodes.co.uk .

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Apple Reportedly Developing Large Curved Screen iPhones For Late 2014, Better Touchscreen Sensors

EPA Makes Most Wood Stoves Illegal

First time accepted submitter Jody Bruchon writes “The Environment Protection Agency has lowered the amount of fine-particle matter per cubic meter that new wood stoves are allowed to release into the atmosphere by 20%. Most wood stoves in use today are of the type that is now illegal to manufacture or sell, and old stoves traded in for credit towards new ones must be scrapped out. This shouldn’t be much of a surprise since more and more local governments are banning wood-burning stoves and fireplaces entirely, citing smog and air pollution concerns.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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EPA Makes Most Wood Stoves Illegal

Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti Review: GK110, Fully Unlocked

An anonymous reader writes “Nvidia lifted the veil on its latest high-end graphics board, the GeForce GTX 780 Ti. With a total of 2, 880 CUDA cores and 240 texture units, the GK110 GPU inside the GTX 780 Ti is fully unlocked. This means that the new card has an additional SMX block, 192 more shader cores, and 16 additional texture units than the $1, 000 GTX Titan launched back in February! Offered at just $700, the GTX 780 Ti promises to improve gaming performance over the Titan, yet the card has been artificially limited in GPGPU performance — no doubt in order to make sure the pricier card remains relevant to those unable or unwilling to spring for a Quadro. The benchmark results simply illustrate the GTX 780 Ti’s on-paper specs. The card was able to beat AMD’s just-released flagship, the Radeon R9 290x by single-digit percentages, up to double-digits topping 30% — depending on the variability of AMD’s press and retail samples.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti Review: GK110, Fully Unlocked

Researcher Allows Sand Flea To Grow Inside Her Foot To Study It

sciencehabit writes “Marlene Thielecke came to Madagascar to study the sand flea, an insect that spends part of its life cycle burrowed into the human foot — but she wound up getting more intimate with the critter than she cared for. Months into her project, Thieleckewas bitten by a flea herself. She decided to make the best of it, by taking regular photographs and videos and keeping track of her observations. ‘I thought it might be interesting’ to watch what happened, she says. As it turns out, her experience may help resolve an question entomologists have debated foor decades: Where, exactly, does the sand flea have sex?” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Researcher Allows Sand Flea To Grow Inside Her Foot To Study It