Tag: wired

Earthquakes’ booms big enough to be detected from orbit

Artist’s impression of GOCE satellite. European Space Agency Last year, we reported on some mysterious booms in a small Wisconsin town that turned out to be small earthquakes. While it was an unusual story, it’s actually not that uncommon of an occurrence. Early in the summer of 2001, folks in Spokane, Washington started reporting similar booms. The sounds continued, off and on, for about five months. The mystery didn’t last long, as the earthquakes responsible were picked up by seismometers in the area. (A particularly loud one that took place exactly one month after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York did rattle some nerves, however.) In total, 105 earthquakes were detected, with a couple as large as magnitude 4.0. For most of them, there wasn’t good enough seismometer coverage to really pinpoint locations, but some temporary units deployed around the city in July located a number of events pretty precisely: the earthquakes were centered directly beneath the city itself. While a dangerously large earthquake is pretty unlikely in Wisconsin, the possibility can’t be ignored in Washington. The 2011 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand was only a magnitude 6.3, but the damage was extensive because the epicenter was so close to the city. In L’Aquila, Italy, a swarm of small earthquakes in 2009 was followed by a deadly magnitude 6.3. (The poor public communication of risk during that swarm netted six seismologists manslaughter convictions .) Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Earthquakes’ booms big enough to be detected from orbit

Sony unveils thinnest 10.1″ tablet ever—the Xperia Tablet Z

The Sony Xperia Tablet Z, one of the hardiest and most svelte tablets we’ve seen. Sony Sony is unveiling a new Android tablet, the Xperia Tablet Z, at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Monday. Sony claims the tablet is not only the “world’s thinnest 10.1-inch tablet” at 6.9 millimeters, but it’s apparently waterproof in up to three feet of water for 30 minutes. Inside, the Xperia Tablet Z has a quad-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, 2GB of RAM, and a 1920×1200 display running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. (Sony has gone scouts-honor that the tablet will be updated to 4.2 “after launch.”) The tablet weighs 495 grams (1.05 pounds) and it has an 8-megapixel rear and 2-megapixel front camera, plus 16GB/32GB storage configurations with a microSD slot than can take up to a 64GB card. The tablet also contains an IR blaster that works with a special version of an app Sony has created called TV SideView. TV SideView integrates with a user’s cable provider and allows users to browse the program guide as well as currently airing content. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Sony unveils thinnest 10.1″ tablet ever—the Xperia Tablet Z

Server hack prompts call for cPanel customers to take “immediate action”

The providers of the cPanel website management application are warning some users to immediately change their systems’ root or administrative passwords after discovering one of its servers has been hacked. In an e-mail sent to customers who have filed a cPanel support request in the past six months, members of the company’s security team said they recently discovered the compromise of a server used to process support requests. “While we do not know if your machine is affected, you should change your root level password if you are not already using SSH keys,” they wrote, according to a copy of the e-mail posted to a community forum . “If you are using an unprivileged account with ‘sudo’ or ‘su’ for root logins, we recommend you change the account password. Even if you are using SSH keys we still recommend rotating keys on a regular basis.” Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Server hack prompts call for cPanel customers to take “immediate action”

Reports: Microsoft planning to unveil Xbox successor at April event

With Sony jump-starting the next-generation console hype train with its PlayStation 4 reveal this week , it seems Microsoft might not be willing to wait for June’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) to unveil its follow-up to the Xbox. Computer & Video Games is reporting that Microsoft is planning a “one-off media event” to show off its new system in early April, based on information from unnamed sources inside and outside of Microsoft. VG247 has corroborated CVG’s information , saying it has “also received word of the April event,” and National Alliance Securities analyst Mike Hickey has previously said he expected Microsoft to announce its console successor in April. Internet sleuths on gaming forum NeoGAF have noted that the company that helped organize Microsoft’s E3 2012 media briefing registered the domain XboxEvent.com just yesterday , suggesting that, um, an Xbox event might be in the works. Practically the entire professional game industry will be gathered together in San Francisco at the end of March for the Game Developers Conference, which would also seem like a natural time for Microsoft to reveal its next-gen plans to an interested audience. Then again, Microsoft could use GDC as a sort of pre-tease tease, letting slip certain small, developer-centric details before a fuller April event. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Reports: Microsoft planning to unveil Xbox successor at April event

Google shows the world its official Android 4.2.2 changelog

When Android 4.2.2 quietly debuted last week , most users were left guessing about what exactly had been included in the software update. Helpful community sites like AndroidPolice had put together a thorough listing of some of the new features in Android 4.2.2, but any official listing of updates had yet to be made. Today, Google published its official changelog for its Android 4.2.2 update, as well as everything else that comes as a part of the Jelly Bean package. Many of the bullet points marked as “new” actually identify features that have been included in Android 4.2 since its initial launch and have since been  thoroughly  discussed. However, the changelog does include some of the minor features not previously touched on, like networking changes that were made to improve Wi-Fi Direct support and faster captive portal detection. Updates also include minor features, like the fact that TalkBack can now be accessed right from the power menu. You can also view the entirety of the Google Cards updates that have been made in Android 4.2. If you’re curious, you can view the official changelog at Google’s official Android site, then try out some of the features you may not have known existed on your Android 4.2 device. Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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Google shows the world its official Android 4.2.2 changelog

Skype calls now equivalent to one-third of global phone traffic

TeleGeography New research (PDF) from TeleGeography, a telecom market analysis firm, shows that worldwide Skype usage is now equivalent to over one-third of all international phone traffic—a record level. The firm’s new data, released Wednesday , shows that “international telephone traffic grew 5 percent in 2012, to 490 billion minutes.” At the same time, “cross-border Skype-to-Skype voice and video traffic grew 44 percent in 2012, to 167 billion minutes. This increase of nearly 51 billion minutes is more than twice that achieved by all international carriers in the world, combined.” While that doesn’t mean that telcos are going to go out of business anytime soon, it does mean that they are certainly continuing to feel the heat. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Skype calls now equivalent to one-third of global phone traffic

How we built a DIY book scanner with speeds of 150 pages per minute

Bookshelves today are simply not as appealing as they used to be, and there’s no shortage of people looking to digitize their own book collections. Fortunately, we now have easy and relatively inexpensive ways to digitize those books. You don’t have to slave away at your copier or scanner, either—we’re talking about building a book scanner of your very own. We’re not talking about the numerous book scanning services that have popped up in the last few years, offering book digitization at the cost of only a few cents per page. Nor are we talking about chopping off the binding of your book and feeding the pages into a copier or scanner, or purchasing a commercial book scanner for upwards of $10,000 (that just isn’t going to happen for most). No, we’re talking toolbelts, paint cans, bike brakes, and digital cameras—doing it yourself. For two law students interested in the legal and policy discussions surrounding copyright and technology, deciding to build a DIY Book Scanner was never just a project to digitize our own textbooks (however practical that might be). Instead, it gave us the opportunity to experience these issues first hand. Plus, we wanted to see what it would take to build one. Read 31 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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How we built a DIY book scanner with speeds of 150 pages per minute

Thanks, Adobe. Protection for critical zero-day exploit not on by default

dimland.blogspot.com The recently discovered zero-day attacks targeting critical vulnerabilities in Adobe’s ubiquitous Reader application are able to bypass recently added security defenses unless end users manually make changes to default settings, company officials said. According to an advisory Adobe published Wednesday night , the “protected view” feature prevents the current attacks from working—but only if it’s manually enabled. To turn it on, access Preferences > Security (Enhanced) and then check the “Files from potentially unsafe locations,” or even the “All files” option. Then click OK. There’s also a way for administrators to enable protected view on Windows machines across their organization. The revelation is significant because it means users aren’t protected when using the default version of the widely used document reader. The limitation came to light following the discovery of in-the-wild attacks against current versions of Reader, which are being exploited to surreptitiously install malware on end-user computers. The exploit is also noteworthy because its intricate code base bypasses several additional protections added just four months ago with the goal thwarting malware attacks. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Thanks, Adobe. Protection for critical zero-day exploit not on by default

Zero-day attack exploits latest version of Adobe Reader

FireEye A previously undocumented flaw in the latest version of Adobe Systems’ ubiquitous Reader application is being exploited in online hacks that allow attackers to surreptitiously install malware on end-user computers, a security firm said. The attacks, according to researchers from security firm FireEye, work against Reader 11.0.1 and earlier versions and are actively being exploited in the wild. If true, the attacks are notable because they pierce security defenses Adobe engineers designed to make malware attacks harder to carry out. Adobe officials said they’re investigating the report . “Upon successful exploitation, it will drop two DLLs,” FireEye researchers Yichong Lin, Thoufique Haq, and James Bennett wrote of the online attacks they witnessed. “The first DLL shows a fake error message and opens a decoy PDF document, which is usually common in targeted attacks. The second DLL in turn drops the callback component, which talks to a remote domain.” DLL is the researchers’ shorthand for a file that works with the Microsoft Windows dynamic link library. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Zero-day attack exploits latest version of Adobe Reader

Apple releases iOS 6.1.1 for iPhone 4S users with 3G issues (Updated)

Update : Apple has now released the iOS 6.1.1 update mentioned in our original writeup. The update is specifically for the iPhone 4S and “fixes an issue that could impact cellular performance and reliability for iPhone 4S.” This is most likely to address the 3G issues experienced by some users, though it doesn’t sound like iOS 6.1.1 does anything to improve battery life as of yet. Original story : iOS 6.1.1 may be making its way into consumers’ hands sooner than we expected. The first beta of iOS 6.1.1 was only released to Apple’s developer network last week, but the update is reportedly being “rushed” out to customers in order to address 3G performance bugs, according to German iPhone site iFun . It is also said to address other problems like reduced battery life. The software is said to have undergone some carrier testing, though it’s still unclear exactly when Apple plans to publish the update. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Apple releases iOS 6.1.1 for iPhone 4S users with 3G issues (Updated)