The World’s Oldest Computer May Have Predicted the Future

Gizmodo reports: Discovered in an ancient shipwreck near Crete in 1901, the freakishly advanced Antikythera Mechanism has been called the world’s first computer. A decades-long investigation into the 2, 000 year-old-device is shedding new light onto this mysterious device… It wasn’t programmable in the modern sense, but it’s considered the world’s first analog computer. schwit1 shares a report from the Associated Press:: For over a century since its discovery in an ancient shipwreck, the exact function of the Antikythera Mechanism — named after the southern Greek island off which it was found — was a tantalizing puzzle…. After more than a decade’s efforts using cutting-edge scanning equipment, an international team of scientists has now read about 3, 500 characters of explanatory text — a quarter of the original — in the innards of the 2, 100-year-old remains. They say it was a kind of philosopher’s guide to the galaxy, and perhaps the world’s oldest mechanical computer. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The World’s Oldest Computer May Have Predicted the Future

Air Force Has Lost 100,000 Inspector General Records

schwit1 shares an article from The Hill: The Air Force announced on Friday that it has lost thousands of records belonging to the service’s inspector general due to a database crash. “We estimate we’ve lost information for 100, 000 cases dating back to 2004, ” Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek told The Hill in an email. “The database crashed and there is no data…” The database, called the Automated Case Tracking System (ACTS), holds all records related to IG complaints, investigations, appeals and Freedom of Information Act requests…. “We also use ACTS to track congressional/constituent inquiries.” The Air Force said they were “aggressively” trying to recover the data, adding that they had no evidence of malicious intent. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Air Force Has Lost 100,000 Inspector General Records

Mozilla Will Fund Code Audits For Open Source Software

Reader Orome1 writes: The Mozilla Foundation has set up the Secure Open Source (SOS) Fund, whose aim is to help open source software projects get rid their code of vulnerabilities. Projects that want Mozilla’s help must be open source/free software and must be actively maintained, but they have a much better probability to being chosen if their software is commonly used and is vital to the continued functioning of the Internet or the Web. Three open source projects — PCRE, libjpeg-turbo, and phpMyAdmin — have already gone through the process, and the result was removal of 43 vulnerabilities (including one critical). Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Mozilla Will Fund Code Audits For Open Source Software

Movie Written By Algorithm Turns Out To Be Hilarious and Intense

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Ars is excited to be hosting this online debut of Sunspring, a short science fiction film that’s not entirely what it seems. It’s about three people living in a weird future, possibly on a space station, probably in a love triangle. You know it’s the future because H (played with neurotic gravity by Silicon Valley’s Thomas Middleditch) is wearing a shiny gold jacket, H2 (Elisabeth Gray) is playing with computers, and C (Humphrey Ker) announces that he has to “go to the skull” before sticking his face into a bunch of green lights. It sounds like your typical sci-fi B-movie, complete with an incoherent plot. Except Sunspring isn’t the product of Hollywood hacks — it was written entirely by an AI. To be specific, it was authored by a recurrent neural network called long short-term memory, or LSTM for short. At least, that’s what we’d call it. The AI named itself Benjamin. The report goes on to mention that the movie was made by Oscar Sharp for the annual film festival Sci-Fi London. You can watch the short film (~10 min) on The Scene here. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Movie Written By Algorithm Turns Out To Be Hilarious and Intense

China Plans Massive Sea Lab 10,000 Feet Underwater In the South China Sea

An anonymous reader writes: In an effort to hunt for materials, China is planning to build a manned deep-sea platform in the South China Sea. The lab may also serve for military purposes in the disputed waters as well. The lab would be located as much as 3, 000 meters (9, 800 ft) below sea level, according to a recent Science Ministry presentation viewed by Bloomberg. Bloomberg writes: “The project was mentioned in China’s current five-year economic plan released in March and ranked number two on a list of the top 100 science and technology priorities.” There are few public details specifying the timeline of the project, any blueprints, costs or where exactly it will be located. China’s President Xi Jinping considers more than 80 percent of the waters its sovereign territory. The country has even created several artificial islands in the South China Sea covering 3, 200 acres. Last year, the NYT posted a fascinated piece showing clear satellite imagery of the new islands being built. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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China Plans Massive Sea Lab 10,000 Feet Underwater In the South China Sea

Google To Deprecate SSLv3, RC4 in Gmail IMAP/POP Clients

Michael Mimoso, reporting for Threatpost: Google said that it will initiate on June 16 a gradual deprecation of SSLv3 and RC4 for Gmail IMAP/POP mail clients. Both the crypto protocols cipher are notoriously unsafe and are being phased out in big chunks of the Internet. Google, for its part, had already announced in May that it would no longer support SSLv3 and RC4 connections for Gmail SMTP. Google does note that most mail clients already default to safer TLS connections, and most will not be affected by the impending changes.”Unlike Gmail SMTP, this change will be rolled out as a gradual change, where it may take longer than 30 days for users to be fully restricted from connecting to Gmail from SSLv3 or RC4 connections; however, we recommend updating your clients soon in order to avoid any potential disruption, ” Google said in an announcement. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google To Deprecate SSLv3, RC4 in Gmail IMAP/POP Clients

Run Android on an iPhone – with some heavy engineering and caveats

Familiar with cramming one operating system into somewhere it doesn’t belong , developers at Tendigi have just created a homemade iPhone case that lets you run Android on your iOS smartphone. (Well, kind of). Fortunately, because of the Android Open Source Project , it gave Nick Lee the freedom to clone the mobile OS and build his own local hardware. Before he went that far, Lee decided to test the concept — streaming Android across to an iPhone through a cable — with a Nexus 5. He needed tools that could communicate with iOS, as well as services that let USB cables play nice with an iPhone. Lee also crafted software that transmitted what was happening on the Android devices’ screen to the iPhone, while also send touch-input back. The next challenge: cramming it all into an iPhone “case”. See it working after the break. He then made his own tiny Android development board (all the technical specifics are here ), linking it to the soon-to-be franken-iPhone and its own power supply, prototyping and 3D-printing an enclosure to house it all and attach to the iPhone. It’s not the prettiest case, and really you’re ‘streaming’ Android to your iPhone screen, but it’s the man-hours thought that counts, right? Source: Tendigi

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Run Android on an iPhone – with some heavy engineering and caveats

Many Lexus Navigation Systems Bricked By Over-The-Air Software Update

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: An unknown number of Lexus automobiles have seen their infotainment and navigation head units broken by a bug in an over-the-air software update from Lexus. The glitch, which was confirmed by a Lexus spokesperson, was delivered in a routine software update. In affected cars, it can cause the dashboard screen to spontaneously reset itself and, as a result, both the radio and navigation system can be unusable. It affects cars equipped with Lexus’ Enform system with navigation. Lexus social media channels have been flooded by frustrated owners, but the company has been unable to give any estimates for when the problem will be resolved. The company also couldn’t say whether customers will see the problem fix itself with another software update or if they will need to head into dealers to get it fixed. Some users on Twitter have reported success with disconnecting their battery for a few moments to force a reset of the system. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Many Lexus Navigation Systems Bricked By Over-The-Air Software Update

The US Army Is Rolling Out Superhuman Hearing to Soldiers

An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Army has developed an all-in-one hearing system that not only boosts the hearing of troops in the field, it also acts to cut down the noise of battle. The system, known as Tactical Communication and Protective System (TCAPS), is currently rolling out to units in the field. TCAPS is $2, 000 pair of earbuds designed to limit battlefield noise exposure, cutting off noise that reaches a set decibel threshold. The wearer can still hear gunshots and estimate their direction, but the noise is dampened to a non-damaging level thanks to microphones that detect the noise, and internals that use sound canceling technology to modify it for a wearer’s ears. At the same time, the decibel cap allows TCAPS-equipped soldiers to hear the voices of others around him, including through radios and other communications equipment. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The US Army Is Rolling Out Superhuman Hearing to Soldiers

Finnish Mail System Abandons Tuesday Delivery

Reader jones_supa writes: In a world moving to electronic communications, the snail mail traffic has seen a huge drop. Because of this, Posti, the mail delivery organization of Finland will not be delivering letters and magazines on Tuesdays anymore. Tuesday was selected because it generally has the lowest volume of mail. For example, magazines and advertisements are targeted to the end of the week, so that people have more time for shopping dreams in the weekend. Another reason is that Posti recently launched a lawn mowing service which operates on Tuesdays. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Finnish Mail System Abandons Tuesday Delivery