Tag: science

Google Security Expert Finds, Publicly Discloses Windows Kernel Bug

hypnosec writes “Security expert Tavis Ormandy has discovered a vulnerability in the Windows kernel which, when exploited, would allow an ordinary user to obtain administrative privileges of the system. Google’s security pro posted the details of the vulnerability back in May through the Full Disclosure mailing list rather than reporting it to Microsoft first. He has now gone ahead and published a working exploit. This is not the first instance where Ormandy has opted for full disclosure without first informing the vendor of the affected software.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google Security Expert Finds, Publicly Discloses Windows Kernel Bug

Disposable VPN: Tor Gateways With EC2 Free Tiers

The established regime in Turkey (not to mention many other countries: take your pick) may not like any-to-many communications, but luckily established regimes don’t always get the final word. An anonymous reader writes “Lahana is my little side project to help people access the Internet and Tor via Amazon EC2 free tier-based VPNs. It’s a couple of scripts that set up a new VPN in a couple of minutes that automatically tunnels everything through Tor. It’s easy to share credentials with groups of people and for most people is free to set up and use. I built it with Turkey in mind, but it no doubt has other uses.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Disposable VPN: Tor Gateways With EC2 Free Tiers

Surgeries On Friday Are More Frequently Fatal

antdude writes “A British Medical Journal (BMJ) research report says that ‘Surgeries on Friday Are More Frequently Fatal … compared to those who opt for really bad Mondays, Britons who have a planned surgery on a Friday are 44 percent more likely to die. And the few patients who had a leisurely weekend surgery saw that number jump to 82 percent. The skeleton staff working on weekends might be to blame.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Surgeries On Friday Are More Frequently Fatal

Matt Smith Leaves “Doctor Who”

First time accepted submitter Dave Knott writes “The BBC has announced that Matt Smith will be leaving ‘Doctor Who’, after spending the last four seasons in the titular role of The Doctor. Smith will remain for the upcoming 50th anniversary special, where he will star alongside a majority of the other actors who have taken on the character, and will exit following the yearly Christmas episode. No actor has yet been cast as the twelfth incarnation of The Doctor, although there was a teaser involving John Hurt at the end of the most recent season of the show.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Matt Smith Leaves “Doctor Who”

Google Maps Used To Find Tax Cheats

phantomfive writes “Some countries are worried about the privacy implications of Google Maps, but Lithuania is using them to find tax cheats. ‘After Google’s car-borne cameras were driven through the Vilnius area last year, the tax men in this small Baltic nation got busy. They have spent months combing through footage looking for unreported taxable wealth. … Two recent cases netted $130,000 in taxes and penalties after investigators found houses photographed by Google that weren’t on official maps. … “We were very impressed,” said Modestas Kaseliauskas, head of the State Tax Authority. “We realized that we could do more with less and in shorter time.”‘ The people of Lithuania don’t seem to mind. ‘Authorities have been aided by the local populace. “We received even more support than we expected,” said Mr. Kaseliauskas.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google Maps Used To Find Tax Cheats

E. coli engineered into an analog computer

Synthetic biology researchers at MIT are creating simple analog computers in living cells, complete with fluorescent “displays.” Rahul Sarpeshkar and Timothy K. Lu engineered genetic circuits in E. coli so that the bacteria glows with a brightness determined by the amount of certain chemicals surrounding it. From Science News: By making bacteria glow more or less brightly depending on the number of different chemicals around, the new circuit can compute answers to math problems, Lu’s team reports May 15 in Nature. To add 1 plus 1, for example, the circuit would detect two chemicals and crank up the bacteria’s glow to “2.” ” Analog circuits boost power in living computers ” (Science News) ” Cell-Based Computing Goes Analog ” (The Scientist) ” Synthetic analog computation in living cells ” (Nature)        

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E. coli engineered into an analog computer

Kim Dotcom Wins Case Against NZ Police To Get Seized Material Back

New submitter Mistakill writes “It seems the case against Kim Dotcom for the NZ Police isn’t going well, with Kim Dotcom scoring another victory in his legal battles. Police have been told they must search everything they seized from Dotcom and hand back what is not relevant to the U.S. extradition claims. Justice Helen Winkelmann told police their complaints about the cost and time of the exercise were effectively their own fault for indiscriminately seizing material in the first place. She wrote, ‘The warrants could not authorize the permanent seizure of hard drives and digital materials against the possibility that they might contain relevant material, with no obligation to check them for relevance. They could not authorize the shipping offshore of those hard drives with no check to see if they contained relevant material. Nor could they authorize keeping the plaintiffs out of their own information, including information irrelevant to the offenses.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Kim Dotcom Wins Case Against NZ Police To Get Seized Material Back

New Graphene Camera Sensors Are 1,000 Times More Sensitive to Light

Not content to just turn paint into a power source , revolutionize headphones , suck pollution out of oceans , bestow us with hyper-fast upload times , and pretty much anything else you can dream up, graphene is at it once again. And this time, the supermaterial that keeps on giving is opening the door to better low-light photos in the form of an image sensor that can catch light 1,000 times better than traditional sensors. Oh, and it uses 10 times less energy, too. Read more…        

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New Graphene Camera Sensors Are 1,000 Times More Sensitive to Light

How modeling HIV on an atomic level could lead to a cure Part…

How modeling HIV on an atomic level could lead to a cure Part of what makes the HIV virus so difficult to kill — aside from being thousands of times smaller than an average human cell — is that it’s covered in several layers of protective proteins. Techniques are already being developed to attack the virus when it’s at its weakest and most vulnerable. But new models — developed by scientists using the University of Illinois’ “Blue Waters” supercomputer — are finally giving researchers an atomic-level look at the formidable barrier mechanism enclosing the heart of the virus.

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How modeling HIV on an atomic level could lead to a cure

Part…