Tag: journal

Mimic, the Evil Script That Will Drive Programmers To Insanity

JustAnotherOldGuy writes: Mimic implements a devilishly sick idea floated on Twitter by Peter Ritchie: “Replace a semicolon (;) with a Greek question mark (;) in your friend’s C# code and watch them pull their hair out over the syntax error.” There are quite a few characters in the Unicode character set that look, to some extent or another, like others – homoglyphs. Mimic substitutes common ASCII characters for obscure homoglyphs. Caution: using this script may get you fired and/or beaten to a pulp. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Mimic, the Evil Script That Will Drive Programmers To Insanity

China’s Flash Consumption Grows To 30%; 8TB SSDs Are Coming

Lucas123 writes: Seven of the world’s top 10 smartphone vendors hail from China as does PC giant Lenovo, which is driving up the amount of NAND flash and DRAM the country consumes. This year alone, China is expected to purchase nearly 30% of the world’s NAND flash and 21% of its DRAM, according to a report from TrendForce. Additionally, state-backed companies are trying to break into Western markets with SSDs. For example, Sage Microelectronics (SageMicro), a four-year-old company based in Hangzhou, China, plans to release an 8TB SSD next month that will be based on eMMC flash, and it said it will release a 10TB drive next year. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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China’s Flash Consumption Grows To 30%; 8TB SSDs Are Coming

In 26 Hours, Sick Newborns Go From Genome Scan To Diagnosis

the_newsbeagle writes: Parsing the first human genome took a decade, but times have changed. Now, within 26 hours, doctors can scan a sick baby’s entire genome and analyze the resulting list of mutations to produce a diagnosis. Since genetic diseases are the top cause of death for infants (abstract), rapidly diagnosing a rare genetic disease can be life-saving. The 26-hour pipeline results from automated technologies that handle everything from the genome sequencing to the diagnosis, says the doctor involved: “We want to take humans out of the equation, because we’re the bottleneck.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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In 26 Hours, Sick Newborns Go From Genome Scan To Diagnosis

"E-mailable" House Snaps Together Without Nails

MikeChino writes: Your next house could snap together like a jigsaw puzzle without the use of any power tools. Clemson University students designed and built Indigo Pine, a carbon-neutral house that exists largely as a set of digital files that can be e-mailed to a wood shop anywhere in the world, CNC cut, and then assembled on-site in a matter of days. “Indigo Pine has global application, ” says the Clemson team. “Because the house exists largely as a set of digital files, the plans can be sent anywhere in the world, constructed using local materials, adapted to the site, and influenced by local culture.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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"E-mailable" House Snaps Together Without Nails

Open-Source Doom 3 Advances With EAX Audio, 64-bit ARM/x86 Support

An anonymous reader writes: Dhewm3, one of the leading implementations of the Doom 3 engine built off the open-source id Tech 4 engine, has released a new version of the GPL-licensed engine that takes Doom 3 far beyond where it was left off by id Software. The newest code has full SDL support, OpenAL + OpenAL EFX for audio, 64-bit x86/ARM support, better support for widescreen resolutions, and CMake build system support on Linux/Windows/OSX/FreeBSD. This new open-source code can be downloaded from Dhewm3 on GitHub but continues to depend upon the retail Doom 3 game assets. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Open-Source Doom 3 Advances With EAX Audio, 64-bit ARM/x86 Support

Vostochny Launch Building Built To the Wrong Size

schwit1 writes: The Russians have just discovered that their Soyuz 2 rocket does not fit in the building just finished at their new spaceport at Vostochny: “The cutting-edge facility was meant be ready for launches of Soyuz-2 rockets in December, but an unidentified space agency told the TASS news agency late Thursday that the rocket would not fit inside the assembly building where its parts are stacked and tested before launch. The building ‘has been designed for a different modification of the Soyuz rocket, ‘ the source said, according to news website Medusa, which picked up the story from TASS.” The rocket had just been delivered to Vostochny for assembly, so this report, though unconfirmed at this time, fits well with current events. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Vostochny Launch Building Built To the Wrong Size

Stagefright 2.0 Vulnerabilities Affect 1 Billion Android Devices

msm1267 writes: Security researcher Joshua Drake today disclosed two more flaws in Stagefright, one that dates back to the first version of Android, and a second dependent vulnerability that was introduced in Android 5.0. The bugs affect more than one billion Android devices, essentially all of them in circulation. One of the vulnerabilities was found in a core Android library called libutils; it has been in the Android OS since it was first released and before there were even Android mobile devices. The second vulnerability was introduced into libstagefright in Android 5.0; it calls into libutils in a vulnerable way. An attacker would use a specially crafted MP3 or MP4 file in this case to exploit the vulnerabilities. Google has released patches into the Android Open Source Project tree, but public patches are not yet available. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Stagefright 2.0 Vulnerabilities Affect 1 Billion Android Devices

ALS Patients Use a Brain Implant To Type 6 Words Per Minute

the_newsbeagle writes: With electrodes implanted in their neural tissue and a new brain-computer interface, two paralyzed people with ALS used their thoughts to control a computer cursor with unprecedented accuracy and speed. They showed off their skills by using a predictive text-entering program to type sentences, achieving a rate of 6 words per minute. While paralyzed people can type faster using other assistive technologies that are already on the market, like eye-gaze trackers and air-puff controllers, a brain implant could be the only option for paralyzed people who can’t reliably control their eyes or mouth muscles. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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ALS Patients Use a Brain Implant To Type 6 Words Per Minute

Newly Found TrueCrypt Flaw Allows Full System Compromise

itwbennett writes: James Forshaw, a member of Google’s Project Zero team has found a pair of flaws in the discontinued encryption utility TrueCrypt that could allow attackers to obtain elevated privileges on a system if they have access to a limited user account. ‘It’s impossible to tell if the new flaws discovered by Forshaw were introduced intentionally or not, but they do show that despite professional code audits, serious bugs can remain undiscovered, ‘ writes Lucian Constantin. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Newly Found TrueCrypt Flaw Allows Full System Compromise

How Wind and Politics Pushed the Price of Texas Electricity Below Zero

Slate dissects the strange circumstances that led the price of electricity in Texas to briefly dip not just to zero, but into negative territory, reaching at one point negative $8.52 per megawatt hour. Why? A combination of being an “electricity island” with only weak ties to the surrounding state’s grids; strong wind in a state that’s sprouted thousands of windmills; and infrastructure design that means the only real buyer for most electricity producers’ output is ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. (One of the comments attached to the story notes that Texas is not completely isolated from the national grid, but it’s still markedly isolated.) A slice: Demand fell—at 4 a.m., the amount of electricity needed in the state was about 45 percent lower than the evening peak. The wind was blowing consistently—much later in the day Texas would establish a new instantaneous wind generation record. At 3 a.m., wind was supplying about 30 percent of the state’s electricity, as this daily wind integration report shows. And because the state is an electricity island, all the power produced by the state’s wind farms could only be sold to ERCOT, not grids elsewhere in the country. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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How Wind and Politics Pushed the Price of Texas Electricity Below Zero