President Obama announced plans this morning for a long-term research project to improve our understanding of the brain. Comparing it to the Human Genome Project, Obama said the brain-mapping initiative could lead to cures for diseases like Alzheimer’s and autism, while fueling economic growth and job creation. Here’s what you need to know. Read more…
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Obama has announced a $100-million brain-mapping project
paysonwelch writes “North Korea has declared a state of war against South Korea, stating that neither peace nor war has ended. Quoting the news release via Reuters: ‘1. From this moment, the north-south relations will be put at the state of war and all the issues arousing between the north and the south will be dealt with according to the wartime regulations.’ The DPRK goes on to say that this will be a ‘blitz’ war and that they will regain control of the south, and destroy U.S. bases in the process.” Great line from the declaration: “[The U.S.] should clearly know that in the era of Marshal Kim Jong Un, the greatest-ever commander, all things are different from what they used to be in the past.” A senior U.S. official called this statement “pot-banging and chest-thumping.” The official said, “North Korea is in a mindset of war, but North Korea is not going to war.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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North Korea Declares a State of War
theodp writes “In a move that would do Bill Lumbergh (YouTube homage) proud, Microsoft has been pulling in about $25 million a year through its unusual practice of charging its vendors for occupying office space on its campus while working on Microsoft projects, according to the real estate firm that manages the program. And that’s before a planned July 1st rate increase that Microsoft informed vendors of earlier this week, which will boost the ‘chargeback’ rate for its ‘shadow workforce’ from $450 per month ($5,400 per year) for every workstation to $510 per month (or $6,120 per year). So, is there a discount if you’re moved downstairs into Storage B?” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Microsoft Makes Millions Renting Campus Space to Vendors
First time accepted submitter CanadianRealist writes “Electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen is very inefficient without the use of a catalyst. Unfortunately catalysts are currently made of crystals containing rare, expensive toxic metals such as ruthenium and iridium. Two chemists from the University of Calgary have invented a process to make a catalyst using relatively non-toxic metal compounds such as iron oxide, for 1/1000 the cost of currently used catalysts. It is suggested this would make it more feasible to use electrolysis of water to create hydrogen as a method of storing energy from variable green power sources such as wind and solar.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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New Catalyst Allows Cheaper Hydrogen Production
Nerval’s Lobster writes “IBM announced this week that it has developed a way to manufacture both logic and memory that relies on a small drop of ‘ionic liquid’ to flip oxides back and forth between an insulating and conductive state without the need to constantly draw power. In theory, that means both memory and logic built using those techniques could dramatically save power. IBM described the advance in the journal Science, and also published a summary of its results to its Website. The central idea is to eliminate as much power as possible as it moves through a semiconductor. IBM’s solution is to use a bit of ‘ionic liquid’ to flip the state. IBM researchers applied a positively charged ionic liquid electrolyte to an insulating oxide material — vanadium dioxide — and successfully converted the material to a metallic state. The material held its metallic state until a negatively charged ionic liquid electrolyte was applied in order to convert it back to its original, insulating state. A loose analogy would be to compare IBM’s technology to the sort of electronic ink used in the black-and-white versions of the Kindle and other e-readers. There, an electrical charge can be applied to the tiny microcapsules that contain the ‘ink,’ hiding or displaying them to render a page of text. Like IBM’s solution, the e-ink doesn’t require a constant charge; power only needs to be applied to re-render or ‘flip’ the page. In any event, IBM’s technique could conceivably be applied to both mobile devices as well as power-hungry data centers.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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IBM Dipping Chips In ‘Ionic Liquid’ To Save Power
itwbennett writes “Do you know what data the 1300+ tracking companies have on you? Privacy blogger Dan Tynan didn’t until he had had enough of being stalked by grandpa-friendly Jitterbug phone ads. Tracking company BlueKai and its partners had compiled 471 separate pieces of data on him. Some surprisingly accurate, some not (hence the Jitterbug ad). But what’s worse is that opting out of tracking is surprisingly hard. On the Network Advertising Initiative Opt Out Page you can ask the 98 member companies listed there to stop tracking you and on Evidon’s Global Opt Out page you can give some 200 more the boot — but that’s only about 300 companies out of 1300. And even if they all comply with your opt-out request, it doesn’t mean that they’ll stop collecting data on you, only that they’ll stop serving you targeted ads.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Tracking the Web Trackers
iComp sends this quote from El Reg: “PayPal, Google Wallet and other online payment systems face higher transaction fees from MasterCard in retaliation for their refusal to share data on what people are spending. Visa is likely to follow suit. The amount that PayPal has to pay MasterCard for every transaction will go up as the latter introduces new charges for intermediated payment processors. This change is on the grounds that such processors don’t share transaction details, which the card giants would love to get hold of as it can be used to research buying patterns and the like. Companies such as PayPal allow payments between users, so the party (perhaps a merchant) receiving the money doesn’t need to be registered with the credit-card company. PayPal collects the dosh from the payer’s card, and deducts a processing fee before passing the cash on to the receiving party. MasterCard would prefer the receiver to be registered directly so will apply the new fee from June to any payment that is staged in this way.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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MasterCard Forcing PayPal To Pay Higher Fees
An anonymous reader writes “Hackers can influence real-time traffic-flow-analysis systems to make people drive into traffic jams or to keep roads clear in areas where a lot of people use Google or Waze navigation systems, a German researcher demonstrated at BlackHat Europe. ‘If, for example, an attacker drives a route and collects the data packets sent to Google, the hacker can replay them later with a modified cookie, platform key and time stamps, Jeske explained in his research paper (PDF). The attack can be intensified by sending several delayed transmissions with different cookies and platform keys, simulating multiple cars, Jeske added. An attacker does not have to drive a route to manipulate data, because Google also accepts data from phones without information from surrounding access points, thus enabling an attacker to influence traffic data worldwide, he added.’ ‘You don’t need special equipment for this and you can manipulate traffic data worldwide,’ Jeske said.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Researcher: Hackers Can Jam Traffic By Manipulating Real-Time Traffic Data
An anonymous reader writes “When cell phone unlocking became illegal last month, it set off a firestorm of debate over what rights people should have for phones they have legally purchased. But this is really just one facet of a much larger problem with property rights in general. ‘Silicon permeates and powers almost everything we own. This is a property rights issue, and current copyright law gets it backwards, turning regular people — like students, researchers, and small business owners — into criminals. Fortune 500 telecom manufacturer Avaya, for example, is known for suing service companies, accusing them of violating copyright for simply using a password to log in to their phone systems. That’s right: typing in a password is considered “reproducing copyrighted material.” Manufacturers have systematically used copyright in this manner over the past 20 years to limit our access to information. Technology has moved too fast for copyright laws to keep pace, so corporations have been exploiting the lag to create information monopolies at our expense and for their profit. After years of extensions and so-called improvements, copyright has turned Mickey Mouse into a monster who can never die.’ We need to win the fight for unlocking phones, and then keep pushing until we actually own the objects we own again.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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We Should Be Allowed To Unlock Everything We Own
New submitter NuclearCat writes “Polish security researchers have found a backdoor in TP-Link routers, allowing an attacker to not only gain root access to the local network, but also to knock down the router via a CSRF attack remotely. (Further information — Google translation of Russian original). According to the researchers, TP-Link hasn’t yet responded to give an answer about issue. The good news: Users who replaced their TP-Link firmware with Open/DD-WRT firmware can sleep well.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Backdoor Found In TP-Link Routers