Tag: security

DARPA Developing the Ultimate Auto-Pilot Software

coondoggie (973519) writes “Call it the ultimate auto-pilot — an automated system that can help take care of all phases of aircraft flight-even perhaps helping pilots overcome system failures in-flight. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will in May detail a new program called Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS) that would build upon what the agency called the considerable advances that have been made in aircraft automation systems over the past 50 years, as well as the advances made in remotely piloted aircraft automation, to help reduce pilot workload, augment mission performance and improve aircraft safety.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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DARPA Developing the Ultimate Auto-Pilot Software

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

Apache OpenOffice Reaches 100 Million Downloads. Now What?

We’re thankfully long past the days when an emailed Word document was useless without a copy of Microsoft Word, and that’s in large part thanks to the success of the OpenOffice family of word processors. “Family, ” because the OpenOffice name has been attached to several branches of a codebase that’s gone through some serious evolution over the years, starting from its roots in closed-source StarOffice, acquired and open-sourced by Sun to become OpenOffice.org. The same software has led (via some hamfisted moves by Oracle after its acquisition of Sun) to the also-excellent LibreOffice. OpenOffice.org’s direct descendant is Apache OpenOffice, and an anonymous reader writes with this excellent news from that project: “The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of more than 170 Open Source projects and initiatives, announced today that Apache OpenOffice has been downloaded 100 million times. Over 100 million downloads, over 750 extensions, over 2, 800 templates. But what does the community at Apache need to do to get the next 100 million?” If you want to play along, you can get the latest version of OpenOffice from SourceForge (Slashdot’s corporate cousin). I wonder how many government offices — the U.S. Federal government has long been Microsoft’s biggest customer — couldn’t get along just fine with an open source word processor, even considering all the proprietary-format documents they’re stuck with for now. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Apache OpenOffice Reaches 100 Million Downloads. Now What?

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

This Photosynthetic Algae Roof Filters the Neighborhood Air

Let’s take rooftop farming to a whole new level—a microscopic level. Unveiled at Expo Milan this week, the Urban Algae Canopy is a living, breathing alternative to our inert roofs and facades. Could algae be the next hip trend in urban agriculture? Read more…

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This Photosynthetic Algae Roof Filters the Neighborhood Air

Paper Microscope Magnifies Objects 2100 Times and Costs Less Than $1

ananyo writes: “If ever a technology were ripe for disruption, it is the microscope. Microscopes are expensive and need to be serviced and maintained. Unfortunately, one important use of them is in poor-world laboratories and clinics, for identifying pathogens, and such places often have small budgets and lack suitably trained technicians. Now Manu Prakash, a bioengineer at Stanford University, has designed a microscope made almost entirely of paper, which is so cheap that the question of servicing it goes out of the window. Individual Foldscopes are printed on A4 sheets of paper (ideally polymer-coated for durability). A pattern of perforations on the sheet marks out the ‘scope’s components, which are colour-coded in a way intended to assist the user in the task of assembly. The Foldscope’s non-paper components, a poppy-seed-sized spherical lens made of borosilicate or corundum, a light-emitting diode (LED), a watch battery, a switch and some copper tape to complete the electrical circuit, are pressed into or bonded onto the paper. (The lenses are actually bits of abrasive grit intended to roll around in tumblers that smooth-off metal parts.) A high-resolution version of this costs less than a dollar, and offers a magnification of up to 2, 100 times and a resolving power of less than a micron. A lower-spec version (up to 400x magnification) costs less than 60 cents.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Paper Microscope Magnifies Objects 2100 Times and Costs Less Than $1

How to Slipstream Windows Updates Into Your Installation Disc

One of the horrors of reinstalling Windows is the endless amount of software updates and reboots required to get it secure, stable, and current. But there’s a better way: slipstreaming. With a bit of prep, you can create a new installation disc with all the updates included, so everything installs at once. Read more…

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How to Slipstream Windows Updates Into Your Installation Disc

Cortana vs. Siri vs. Google Now: The Ultimate Voice Control Showdown

Windows Phone 8.1 is here , and with it comes not only with a notification center(!) but a brand new Halo-flavored voice assistant. But how does Cortana shape up against her competitors, who have a year or two of experience on her? Surprisingly well. Read more…

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Cortana vs. Siri vs. Google Now: The Ultimate Voice Control Showdown

$250K Reward Offered In California Power Grid Attack

An anonymous reader writes “The Associated Press reports that Pacific Gas & Electric Co. has put up a $250, 000 reward for ‘information leading to an arrest and conviction in a startling attack mounted nearly a year ago on telephone lines and the power grid in Silicon Valley.’ Besides cutting power lines, the attackers also cut AT&T fiber-optic phone lines, thereby denying some people access to 911, and fired shots into a PB&E substation, knocking out 17 transformers in Silicon Valley and causing $15 million in damage. As of this post, the perpetrators are still unidentified and continue to elude the FBI. Meanwhile, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Thursday was brought before the Senate Energy Committee to explain why the FERC disseminated via insecure media a sensitive document describing where all the nation’s power grids are particularly sensitive to a physical attack. FERC responded with assurances that databases are currently being scrubbed and procedures being implemented to safeguard critical data.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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$250K Reward Offered In California Power Grid Attack

Stung By File-Encrypting Malware, Researchers Fight Back

itwbennett (1594911) writes “When Jose Vildoza’s father became the victim of ransomware, he launched his own investigation. Diving into CryptoDefense’s code, he found its developers had made a crucial mistake: CryptoDefense used Microsoft’s Data Protection API (application programming interface), a tool in the Windows operating system to encrypt a user’s data, which stored a copy of the encryption keys on the affected computer. Vildoza and researcher, Fabian Wosar of the Austrian security company Emsisoft, collaborated on a utility called the Emsisoft Decrypter that could recover the encrypted keys. In mid-March Vildoza had launched a blog chronicling his investigation, purposely not revealing the mistake CryptoDefense’s authors had made. But Symantec then published a blog post on March 31 detailing the error.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Stung By File-Encrypting Malware, Researchers Fight Back