Tag: jobs

Intentional Backdoor In Consumer Routers Found

New submitter janoc (699997) writes about a backdoor that was fixed only not “Eloi Vanderbeken from Synacktiv has identified an intentional backdoor in a module by Sercomm used by major router manufacturers (Cisco, Linksys, Netgear, etc.). The backdoor was ostensibly fixed — by obfuscating it and making it harder to access. The original report (PDF). And yeah, there is an exploit available …” Rather than actually closing the backdoor, they just altered it so that the service was not enabled until you knocked the portal with a specially crafted Ethernet packet. Quoting Ars Technica: “The nature of the change, which leverages the same code as was used in the old firmware to provide administrative access over the concealed port, suggests that the backdoor is an intentional feature of the firmware … Because of the format of the packets—raw Ethernet packets, not Internet Protocol packets—they would need to be sent from within the local wireless LAN, or from the Internet service provider’s equipment. But they could be sent out from an ISP as a broadcast, essentially re-opening the backdoor on any customer’s router that had been patched.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Intentional Backdoor In Consumer Routers Found

China Just Commissioned the World’s Fastest Elevators

Today, the Japanese tech giant Hitachi announced a contract to build two of the fastest elevator in the world for a forthcoming skyscraper in China. Seems innocuous enough, right? But buried within the press release are a few fascinating details that illustrate how China’s skyscraper boom is affecting the global economy—including the fact that it bought a whopping 60 percent of all elevators sold in 2013. Read more…

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China Just Commissioned the World’s Fastest Elevators

This Incredible Animation Was Made By Code That Could Fit on a Floppy

This is no 20 GB video file, painstakingly pulled from a render farm. All of it was generated in real time by one tiny algorithm. And it’s amazing. Read more…

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This Incredible Animation Was Made By Code That Could Fit on a Floppy

Closing Surgical Incisions With a Paintbrush and Nanoparticles

New submitter BiancaM (3582365) writes “A group of chemists has shown the power of nanoparticles for closing and healing surgical wounds [abstract]. Using no more than a paintbrush they are able to close surgical openings as well as classical techniques such as sutures. However in fragile deep tissues such as liver even more remarkable results were found- normally fatal damage to internal organs is repaired in seconds using a nanoparticle glue. The results show that closing after surgery can be faster and simpler using nanomaterials to glue wounds shut.” For something between the above linked abstract and the research paper, there’s this write-up at PhysOrg, and a video of the technique in action. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Closing Surgical Incisions With a Paintbrush and Nanoparticles

Microsoft Plans $1 Billion Server Farm In Iowa

1sockchuck (826398) writes “Microsoft will invest $1.1 billion to build a massive new server farm in Iowa, not far from an existing data center in West Des Moines. The 1.2 million square foot campus will be one of the biggest in the history of the data center industry. It further enhances Iowa’s status as the data center capital of the Midwest, with Google and Facebook also operating huge server farms in the state.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Microsoft Plans $1 Billion Server Farm In Iowa

How a Simple Design Error Could Have Toppled a NYC Skyscraper

When it was built in 1977, Citicorp Center (later renamed Citigroup Center, now called 601 Lexington) was, at 59 stories, the seventh-tallest building in the world. You can pick it out of the New York City skyline by its 45-degree angled top. Read more…

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How a Simple Design Error Could Have Toppled a NYC Skyscraper

Investors Value Yahoo’s Core Business At Less Than $0

An anonymous reader writes “Yahoo is most known for its search, email, and news services. But its U.S. web presence is only part of its corporate portfolio. It also owns large stakes in Yahoo Japan and Alibaba (a web services company based in China). Yahoo Japan is publicly traded, and Alibaba is heading toward an IPO, so both have a pretty firm valuation. The thing is: when you account for Yahoo’s share of each and subtract them from Yahoo’s current market cap, you get a negative number. Investors actually value Yahoo’s core business at less than nothing. Bloomberg’s Matt Levine explains: ‘I guess this is fairly obvious, but it leads you to a general theory of the conglomerate discount, which is that a business can be worth less than zero (to shareholders), but a company can’t be (to shareholders). … A fun question is, as fiduciaries for shareholders, should Yahoo’s directors split into three separate companies to maximize value? If YJHI and YAHI are worth around $9 billion and $40 billion, and Core Yahoo Inc. is worth around, I don’t know, one penny, then just doing some corporate restructuring should create $13 billion in free shareholder value. Why not do that?'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Investors Value Yahoo’s Core Business At Less Than $0

Look At These Beautiful Little Corals Grown Like Popsicles In A Lab

Coral sex is a wonder to behold. On a summer night, always around a full moon, corals somehow all know to release billions of sperm and eggs into the sea, turning the water into a pink miasma of sex. This spawning relies on precise environmental cues, which could get scrambled in climate change. That’s why researchers are trying to get them to spawn in the lab. Read more…

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Look At These Beautiful Little Corals Grown Like Popsicles In A Lab

Google Street View Accidentally Made an Algorithm That Cracks CAPTCHAs

House numbers on Google Street View can turn up as blobby, blurry things, so its engineers built a pretty crazy neural network to decipher them. Except this algorithm also turns out to be very very good at deciphering other blobby, blurry texts—like CAPTCHAs, which it cracks with 99 percent accuracy . Take that, human. Read more…

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Google Street View Accidentally Made an Algorithm That Cracks CAPTCHAs