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Updated: 20 hours 36 min ago

Supernova Shrapnel Found In Meteorite

Thu, 09/09/2010 - 22:37
coondoggie writes "Talk about finding a needle in a cosmic haystack. Scientists this week said they found microscopic shrapnel in a meteorite of a star they say exploded around the birth of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago."

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New Adobe PDF Zero-Day Under Attack

Thu, 09/09/2010 - 21:46
Rahmmp writes "Adobe has sounded an alarm for a new zero-day flaw in its PDF Reader/Acrobat software, warning that hackers are actively exploiting the vulnerability in-the-wild. An Adobe spokeswoman described the attacks as "limited" but warned that that could change with the availability of public samples and exploit code."

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Cybercriminals Create 57,000 Fake Sites Each Week

Thu, 09/09/2010 - 21:11
wiredmikey writes "In a recent investigation, it was discovered that cybercriminals are creating 57,000 new 'fake' websites each week looking to imitate and exploit approximately 375 high-profile brands. eBay and Western Union were the most targeted brands, making up 44 percent of exploited brands discovered. Visa, Amazon, Bank of America and PayPal also heavily targeted by cybercriminals. Banks comprise the majority of fake websites by far with 65 percent of the total. Online stores and auction sites came in at 27 percent, with eBay taking the spot as the No. 1 most targeted brand on the Web today."

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Apple Relaxes iOS Development Tool Restrictions

Thu, 09/09/2010 - 20:36
An anonymous reader writes "Earlier this year Apple caused major upset among developers by updating the iPhone developer program license with clause 3.3.1. It basically stopped the use of cross-platform compilers, meaning Adobe Flash could not be used to develop an app for the App Store. The move also put into doubt which other development platforms could be used and generally caused a lot of confusion. Apple has just significantly relaxed that policy and allowed for the use of development tools, as long as "the resulting apps do not download any code"."

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GoogleTV, AppleTV and the Battle For The Living Room

Thu, 09/09/2010 - 19:42
An anonymous reader pointed us to an article talking about Google TV and AppleTV challenging the major networks and taking their place in your living room. It'll be a tough battle, amusingly waged on cable company wires in many major markets.

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DHS CyberSecurity Misses 1085 Holes On Own Network

Thu, 09/09/2010 - 19:07
Tootech writes "In a case of "physician, heal thyself," the agency — which forms the operational arm of DHS's National Cyber Security Division, or NCSD — failed to keep its own systems up to date with the latest software patches. Auditors working for the DHS inspector general ran a sweep of US-CERT using the vulnerability scanner Nessus and turned up 1,085 instances of 202 high-risk security holes. "The majority of the high-risk vulnerabilities involved application and operating system and security software patches that had not been deployed on computer systems located in Virginia," reads the report from assistant inspector general Frank Deffer."

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Rackspace Shuts Down Quran-Burning Church's Sites

Thu, 09/09/2010 - 18:22
theodp writes "In response to a complaint, Rackspace has shut down the websites of the Dove World Outreach Center, a small 50-member church which has received national and international criticism for a planned book burning of the Quran on the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. The center 'violated the hate-speech provision of our acceptable-use policy,' explained Rackspace spokesman Dan Goodgame. 'This is not a constitutional issue. This is a contract issue,' said Goodgame, who added he did not know how long it had hosted the church's sites. Not quite the same thing, but would Kurt Westergaard's cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad also violate Rackspace's AUP? How about Christopher Hitchens' Slate articles? Could articles from one-time Rackspace poster child The Onion pass muster?"

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IOS 4.1 Jailbroken Already

Thu, 09/09/2010 - 17:37
mspohr writes "Just hours after Apple released iOS 4.1 to great fanfare, hardware hackers found a way to jailbreak devices that run the new operating system. More surprising still, there doesn't appear to be anything Steve Jobs can do to stop them in the near future. The exploit in the boot ROM of iOS devices was first announced by iPhone Dev-Team member pod2g. It was soon confirmed by other hackers, who said that because the exploit targets such a low-level part of the operating system, Apple won't be able to stop jailbreakers without making significant hardware changes."

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Scientists Cut Greenland Ice Loss Estimate By Half

Thu, 09/09/2010 - 14:30
bonch writes "A new study on Greenland's and West Antarctica's rate of ice loss halves the estimate of ice loss. Published in the journal Nature Geoscience, the study takes into account a rebounding of the Earth's crust called glacial isostatic adjustment, a continuing rise of the crust after being smashed under the weight of the Ice Age. 'We have concluded that the Greenland and West Antarctica ice caps are melting at approximately half the speed originally predicted,' said researcher Bert Vermeeersen."

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DARPA Wants Extreme Wireless Interference Buster

Thu, 09/09/2010 - 12:23
coondoggie writes "This month the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will begin looking for technology that will let wireless communications work through the most extreme interference. From the article: 'The CommEx program will assess next generation and beyond jamming threats and then develop advanced interference suppression and avoidance technologies to successfully communicate in the presence of severe, traditional, and novel types of interference that are orders-of-magnitude more severe than what are currently addressed by the most advanced systems, DARPA stated.'"

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Film Industry Hires Cyber Hitmen To Take Down Pirates

Thu, 09/09/2010 - 10:03
thelostagency writes "Girish Kumar, managing director of Aiplex Software says his company is being hired by the film industry to attack online pirates. He says if a provider did not do anything to remove the link or content hosted on its site, his company would launch what is known as a denial-of-service (DoS) attack on the offending computer server. From the article: 'Kumar said that at the moment most of the payment for his company's services came from the film industry in India. "We are tied up with more than 30 companies in Bollywood. They are the major production houses." As for Hollywood films, he said they, too, used his services.'"

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The Real "Stuff White People Like"

Thu, 09/09/2010 - 09:06
Here's an interesting and funny look at 526,000 OkCupid users, divided into groups by race and gender and all the the things each groups says it likes or is interested in. While it is far from being definitive, the groupings give a glimpse of what makes each culture unique. According to the results white men like nothing better than Tom Clancy, Van Halen, and golfing.

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Biometric IDs For All India's Citizens

Thu, 09/09/2010 - 07:47
wiedzmin writes "This month, officials from the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), armed with fingerprinting machines, iris scanners and cameras hooked to laptops, will fan out across the towns and villages of southern Andhra Pradesh state in the first phase of the project whose aim is to give every Indian a lifelong Unique ID (UID) number for 'anytime, anywhere' biometric authentication. While enrolling with the UIDAI may be voluntary, other agencies and service providers might require a UID number in order to transact business. Usha Ramanathan, a prominent legal expert who is attached to the Center for the Study of Developing Societies in the national capital, said that, 'taken to its logical limit, the UID project will make it impossible, in a couple of years, for an ordinary citizen to undertake a simple task such as traveling within the country without a UID number.' Next step, tying that UID number and biometric information to to their RIM BlackBerry PIN number."

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Big Brother In the School Cafeteria?

Thu, 09/09/2010 - 06:43
AustinSlacker writes "An Iowa school district's lunch program asks children as young as 5 years old to memorize a four-digit PIN code so it can monitor what they eat in the school cafeteria - prompting some parents to claim it's an unhealthy case of 'Big Brother.' An over reaction by parents or an unnecessary invasion of privacy?"

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Viking Landers Might Have Missed Martian Organics

Thu, 09/09/2010 - 05:40
Sonny Yatsen writes "A new study suggests that the Viking Landers might have found organic compounds on Mars, but failed to recognize them because of the methodology used to detect organics. The findings may suggest specific strategies that would improve on the way organic compounds are detected on the red planet."

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Online Ads, Privacy Remain In FTC Crosshairs

Thu, 09/09/2010 - 04:43
AC95 writes "The FTC wants to give users a browser-based tool for opting out of online behavioral tracking, a proposal that has privacy advocates cheering and online advertisers up in arms. A key issue, says FTC attorney Loretta Garrison, is that while most consumers know they're tracked online, they don't fully appreciate how much information is collected. Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, worries about knee-jerk legislation criminalizing mistakes that are an inherent part of applying any new technology."

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Anti-Product Placement For Negative Branding

Thu, 09/09/2010 - 03:55
An anonymous reader writes "Product placement to promote your brand just isn't enough any more. These days, apparently, some companies are resorting to anti-product placement in order to get competitors' products in the hands of 'anti-stars.' The key example being Snooki from Jersey Shore, who supposedly is being sent handbags by companies... but the bags being sent are of competitors' handbags as a way to avoid Snooki carrying their own handbag, and thus potentially damaging their brand."

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Solar Cells Made From Bioluminescent Jellyfish

Thu, 09/09/2010 - 03:55
An anonymous reader writes "Swedish researchers have devised a way to turn bioluminescent jellyfish into solar cells. It works like this: the green fluorescent protein (GFP) that makes the Aequorea victoria glow is simply dripped onto a silicon dioxide substrate between two electrodes. The protein works itself into strands between the electrodes. When ultraviolet light is shined on the circuit, voila, the GFP absorbs photons and emits electrons, generating a current. The GFP-powered cells work like dye-sensitized solar cells, but don't require expensive materials such as titanium dioxide."

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How 6 Memorable Tech Companies Got Their Names

Thu, 09/09/2010 - 03:15
itwbennett writes "If Larry Page and Sergey Brin had stuck with the first name for their search engine, we'd be 'BackRubbing' instead of Googling. But the fun doesn't stop there. The unforgettable Go Daddy was first saddled with the eminently Seussian moniker 'Jomax Technologies.' And as for Yahoo!... its original name just rolled off the tongue: 'Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web.'"

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School Swaps Math Textbooks For iPads

Thu, 09/09/2010 - 02:33
MexiCali59 writes "Four of California's largest school districts will be trying something new on eighth-grade algebra students this year: giving them iPads instead of textbooks. The devices come pre-loaded with a digital version of the text, allowing students to view teaching videos, receive homework assistance and input assignment all without picking up a pen or paper. If the students with iPads turn out to do improve at a faster pace than their peers as expected, the program could soon spread throughout the Golden State."

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