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l3g0la5 writes:

"Apple released iOS 7.0.6 to patch a vulnerability which, if unpatched, could allow attackers to capture or modify data in sessions protected by SSL/TLS. However, quite a few users have reported that the upgrade didn't go as planned and their iDevices have been bricked after the update or during the update process. Users have flocked to Twitter as well as Apple support forums voicing their concerns and frustrations as quite a few users have tried updating their iOS 7 devices while on the move and once bricked, their iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch requires a connection to iTunes to restart."

joekiser writes "In 2010, Ford Motor Company was rated as top-five automotive manufacturer in terms of quality, per J.D. Power and Associates. This was a major turnaround for the automotive giant, which had faced bankruptcy just two years prior. This high reliability rating would be short lived however; Ford began installing touch screen hubs powered by Microsoft SYNC, which were both confusing and buggy.

By 2012, Ford quality rankings had dropped to 23rd, even after numerous software upgrades and a rebranding of SYNC to "MyFordTouch." One customer reported:

"The voice controls typically do not work until the vehicle has been on for five to 10 minutes, meaning short trips require dialing phone calls by hand, only to have the call cut off when the system finally starts up."

This slide continued into 2013, when Ford ranked 27th of 28 brands (as an aside, Ford's premium brand, Lincoln, ranked one slot higher that year at 26th).

Apparently, Ford Motor Company has had enough. On Friday, the Detroit News reported that Ford will make the switch to QNX on future vehicles. This is the same platform currently used by Acura, Audi, BMW, and Land Rover."

[ED Note: "Ford Motor Company's decision to move to QNX aside, I'll be heavily considering a Blackberry for my next phone, especially with rumors of a 64-bit octa-core model for later this year. BB10 also has gotten rave reviews for its design and ease-of-use."]

girlwhowaspluggedout writes:

"A mere three days after Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook's acquisition of Whatsapp, the popular smartphone messaging app suffered a major service outage that lasted three and a half hours. Left to their own devices, Whatsapp users worldwide went rushing to its rival apps, including secure chat provider Telegram. The surge in new users quickly turned into a tidal wave that brought Telegram's service to its knees:

The SMS gateways we use to send registration codes are overloaded and slow 100 SMS per second is too much. Trying to find a solution.

In its official twitter, Telegram announced that more than 1.8 million new users had joined on Saturday, Feb 22. Four hours later, it reported an additional 800 thousand.

Telegram's messaging service, which uses 256-bit symmetric AES encryption, RSA 2048 encryption and Diffie-Hellman secure key exchange, began enjoying a spike in popularity after Whatsapp's acquisition. Although it has released the source code for its java libraries and all its official clients, its server software is still closed source."

TBNZee writes:

"Mainstream television has, for a long time, under-served the science fiction loving segment. But with declining production costs, there seem to be two potential sources of alternative production/distribution: digital content (e.g. Netflix, Hulu) and crowd-funded projects. There's still not a lot of science fiction shows that are being produced by the major streaming services, but we'll probably see more with the success of Hulu's exclusive U.S. distribution of Misfits or Netflix's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Doctor Who. On the other hand, you have many enthusiastic upstarts on Kickstarter that look novel and engaging while having a surprisingly professional look to them.

Which do you think will ultimately be more successful? Do you have any recommendations for other good material out there, or is there something you would like to see?"

Gaaark writes:

"Paleontologists from the University of Calgary have discovered a massive, 70 million-year-old skull of a horned dinosaur: a pachyrhinosaur, to be exact. It is described as a 'rare find': the last discovery of this type in the same region dates back to more than 50 years ago when only a partial skull was collected.

Found in the Alberta Badlands in Canada, its two meter long head had large bony bumps, short curved horns and a large frill at its neck. In her statement, researcher Darla Zelenitsky said, "the skull of this animal has an enormous bony structure over the snout that would have made for a very strange looking individual.

The University of Calgary statement with more details and related links can be found here."

berrance writes "ITworld reports that the source code for the Android mobile banking Trojan app "iBanking" has surfaced via an underground forum. The software has been masquerading as a security app appearing on banking sites, via HTML injection attacks. In addition to serving as a Trojan, this app is also a bot net client, which 'connects to a command-and-control server that allows attackers to issue commands to each infected device.'"

siliconwafer writes "The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is looking to acquire a vehicle license plate tracking system, to be used at the national level. According to the solicitation obtained by the Washington Post, commercial readers, supplied by a private company, would scan the plate of vehicles and store them in a "National License Plate Recognition" (NLPR) database. This is already being done at the state level, and privacy advocates are up in arms, with EFF and ACLU suing California over their automatic plate readers. Now that this has potential to become a broad and national program."

[ED Note: "Shortly after the Washington Post broke the story on the national plate reading system, it appears the DHS has shelved their plans for the tracking system, by order of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, at least in the interim."]

pjbgravely writes:

"Scientists use gravity lensing measurements to determine mass of galaxy clusters. Anja von der Linden, an astrophysicist at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford University in California, is using the Subaru telescope and the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope, both on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The results are 40% higher than the measurements done by the Planck collaboration.

I guess there goes Douglas Adams' theory that the missing mass was in the packing material of the scientists' equipment."

kef writes "According to a blog post from the Unity desktop team, Ubuntu 14.04 will move the application menus back into the application windows, starting in Unity 7. Spread improvements, HighDPI support, new decorations, and the usual bug-fixes are also making it into the new LTS release. Is Unity starting to grow up?"

SpallsHurgenson writes "Steve Perlman is ready to give you a personal cell phone signal that follows you from place to place, a signal that's about 1,000 times faster than what you have today because you needn't share it with anyone else.

"It's a complete rewrite of the wireless rulebook," says Perlman. The technology is now called pCell - short for "personal cell" - and it allows streaming video and other data to phones with a speed and a smoothness you're unlikely to achieve over current cell networks.

Perlman's invention - formerly known as DIDO - discards the current arrangement of cells shared by many users, giving each phone its own tiny cell, a bubble of signal that goes wherever the phone goes. This "personal cell" provides just as much network bandwidth as today's cells, Perlman says, but you needn't share the bandwidth with anyone else. The result is a significantly faster signal."

CyberB0B39 writes: "The Department of Energy is set to approve $6.5B for a Georgia nuclear power plant, the first such plant in more than 3 decades. While other nuclear plants are shutting down due to competition from natural gas, Atlanta-based Southern Company is forging ahead with its planned construction of the plant."

[ED Note: "For those that are wondering, the new nuclear plant will be based on the AP1000 design by Westinghouse Electric Company LLC, a company based in Pittsburgh, PA and a subsidiary of Toshiba."]

dyslexic writes "An Equation For Intelligence? It is something like the philosopher's stone. A sort of E=mc2 that would put intelligence, and more particularly artificial intelligence, on a sound theoretical footing. But could it be as simple as this TED talk video (available on the link in addition to the article) suggests? The video explains some of this and provides examples of the principle in action where it is claimed to replicate a number of "human-like" intelligent behaviors including cooperation and tool use."

Fluffeh writes:

"In June, President Barack Obama called for action against patent trolls. Today the White House held a short conference updating what has happened in the arena of patent policy since then and announced new initiatives going forward — including one to 'crowdsource' the review of patents.

Currently, getting a patent is a one-on-one proceeding between the applicant and the examiner. Two pilot programs that allowed the public to submit prior art were only applied to a tiny number of patents, and in the first program, all the patents were voluntarily submitted by the applicants. Applying such scrutiny to a few hundred patents, out of the hundreds of thousands issued each year, isn't any kind of long-term solution.

Unless the crowd-sourcing initiatives were to put major new burdens on applicants — which would be resisted — the fundamentals of patent examination aren't going to change. Patent examiners get an average of eighteen hours to review a patent. Most importantly, examiners effectively can't say 'no' to applicants. They can reject a particular application, but there's no limit to the number of amendments and re-drafts an applicant can submit."

CQ writes:

Qubes-OS, the Security-by-Isolation, VM-based operating system, has concluded that a port to the Windows OS line isn't feasible. In this post, the CEO of Inivisble Things Labs outlines what she had hoped to accomplish with the port and her explaination why it was just not meant to be.

This paper [pdf] contains all the technical bits you need to know, and the explanation on why the Windows APIs and system architecture are not appropriate for the task of creating an isolation system. It also has some interesting (if that's your thing) information on the Windows security model.

Does anyone here have any experience with Qubes? Does it make sandboxing easy enough for day to day use?

technopoptart writes:

"I need advice from people more experienced that I am with open source forum software. I am going to be setting up a forum system for computer science students from the various colleges in the area.

I have been running a closed SMF forum for my wife for a year. I wanted to solicit advice about SMF or any other systems that I may consider. I have played with phpBB but I found it labor intensive, as newly created sections are made invisible even to the admin by default, I don't want a laborious permissions system. I appreciate any advice you can give."