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n1 writes:

A study conducted by Juniper Networks and The RAND Corporation has concluded that stolen Twitter credentials are more valuable than stolen credit card details.

A Twitter account costs more to purchase than a stolen credit card because the former's account credentials potentially have a greater yield. Immediately after a large breach, freshly acquired credit cards command a higher price as there is greater possibility for the credit cards to still be active. But after time, prices fall because the market becomes flooded.

According to the report, stolen social media credentials can be worth between $16 and $325, credit card details can be valued as low as $0.75 per record.

mrbluze writes:

IT World is reporting that the X-37B, an unmanned, space-shuttle like aircraft (only smaller), just beat its own record of space flight, spending a total of 469 days in space.

Originally envisioned as something that would be launched from the shuttle to test reusable launch vehicle technology, the X-37 never made it into space and eventually was transferred from NASA to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 2004.

That's when it moved into the shadows.

It didn't emerge again until April 22, 2010, when the Air Force launched an Atlas rocket carrying what had been renamed the X-37B. Details of the mission were kept secret, but soon after launch, amateur satellite hunters spotted the X-37B orbiting the Earth at about the same altitude as military satellites.

The article emphasises the secret and mysterious nature of the vehicle's mission, which most likely involves surveillance and other military purposes. It is the next generation of the Boeing X-37A, but the next generation of this vehicle is at least twice as large and may be intended for commercial manned space travel.

Taco Cowboy writes:

United Nations judges have ordered Japan to end whale hunts in the Antarctic after dismissing Japanese arguments that the hunting was carried out for scientific research purposes.

"Japan shall revoke any existant authorization, permit or licence granted in relation to JARPA II (research programme) and refrain from granting any further permits," said the International Court of Justice's judge Peter Tomka.

In 1982, the International Whaling Commission adopted a moratorium on commercial whaling, allowing the taking and killing of whales for research purposes only. Scientific catch limits are set by each country on a yearly basis, submitted to a review by the IWC's scientific committee.

Anti-whaling critics say that Japanese whale research is a fig leaf for commercial hunting, as whale meat can be sold to cover research costs. Japan counters that its whale meat sale is not profitable, and that it needs to take and kill whales to study the animals and their potential as a food source.

"The evidence does not establish that the programme's design and implementation are reasonable in relation to its stated objectives," the court said.

weeds writes:

The BBC reports that Turkey has started hijacking net addresses as it steps up attempts to block access to social media. http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26818104.
The report identifies Google, Level 3, and OpenDNS as net addresses that have been hijacked in an attempt to block access to Twitter and Youtube. Turkey had previously directed ISP's to route attempts to contact Twitter or YouTube to a page saying the service could not be found. Users quickly started using these (and other) DNS servers to access the services.

The claim that Turkey is blocking access to Google's DNS servers was supported by Google citing "several Credible" reports. Despite these attempts to block access, the number of Tweets has grown since the original ban and the use of Tor (anonymous browsing) has also increased.

mrbluze writes:

In what appears to be the continuing media build up of the crisis over events in Ukraine, the Independent reports on a nuclear war exercise by Russia involving 10,000 troops:

Russia's Strategic Missile Command emphasized that the event was scheduled last year and has nothing to do with the Ukraine crisis.

It was nevertheless, according to Nezavisimaya Gazeta the largest such exercise carried out in recent times.

It also states that Russia is massing troops along the Russian-Ukrainian border, however such reports have been disputed by witnesses. The same publication also states that part of Russia's geo-strategic plan is to reconquer Finland, in the name of "historical justice", which it failed to achieve under Stalin.

Papas Fritas writes:

The Christian Science Monitor reports that Costco will dump almost one million jars of peanut butter into a New Mexico landfill and bulldoze over them after retailer Costco refused to take shipment of the peanut butter and declined requests to let it be donated to food banks or repackaged or sold to brokers who provide food to institutions like prisons. The peanut butter comes from a bankrupt peanut-processing plant that was at the heart of a salmonella outbreak in 2012 and although "all parties agreed there's nothing wrong with the peanut butter from a health and safety issue," court records show that on a 19 March conference call Costco said "it would not agree to any disposition ... other than destruction."

Despite the peanut butter being safe, Curry County landfill employee Tim Stacy says that no one will be able to consume the peanut butter once it's dumped because it was immediately rolled over with a bulldozer, destroying the supply. Stacy added more trash will then be dumped on top of the pile. Sonya Warwick, spokeswoman for New Mexico's largest food bank, declined to comment directly on the situation, but she noted that rescued food accounted for 74% of what Roadrunner Food Bank distributed across New Mexico last year. "Access to rescued food allows us to provide a more well-rounded and balanced meal to New Mexicans experiencing hunger." No word yet on where anyone was going to find a million jars of jelly.

janrinok writes:

Science Daily is carrying a story about a recently developed, ultra-thin light detector working in the infra-red (terahertz) band. This discovery, made at Vienna University of Technology, now opens up the possibility of integrating a light detector for terahertz radiation into a chip. From the report:

"With conventional fabrication methods, large arrays of such detectors can be built," Professor Karl Unterrainer explains. They do not take up much space: Layers with a thickness in the order of magnitude of nanometers are enough to detect light -- the detector is more than a thousand times thinner than the wavelength of the light which is being detected.

"Ultra-thin layered semiconductor systems have the great advantage, that their electronic properties can be very precisely tuned," says Unterrainer. By selecting suitable materials, by tuning the thickness of the layers and the geometry of the device, the behaviour of the electrons in the system can be influenced. That way, quantum cascade lasers can be built, in which the electrons jump from layer to layer and emit a photon with each jump. Also, light detectors can be created, with a selective sensitivity to one particular wavelength.

The problem, however, is that quantum physics prohibits photons with a certain directions of oscillation (polarization) from interacting with the electrons of the semiconductor system. Light which hits the layered surface head-on, cannot influence the electron in the semiconductor. Therefore a method is required to rotate the polarization of the incident light, so that it can be detected in the semiconductor layers.

prospectacle writes:

How to best replace Windows XP has become interesting to a much wider group of people, due to the end of official support for the product. (a previous story mentioned an Indian state government that urged its departments to use India's home-grown linux distro "BOSS Linux").

Some people may be using XP because it came with their computer and they never gave it a second thought, but there are probably plenty of others who don't want to spend the money, don't like the look of Windows 8, have older hardware, or are just used to the XP interface.

To these people, ZDNet humbly offers Linux Mint as a suggestion to replace XP.

They provide fairly compelling arguments to their target audience like:
- You can make it look almost exactly like XP
- It's free
- You can boot the live CD to try before you "buy".
- Decent, free alternatives exist for email, office, book-keeping and web-browsing.
- Virtually no need for any anti-virus for home users.
- Installation is quite easy these days.
- Works on fairly modest hardwar

Ending free support for a 12 year old product seems like a sensible policy for a for-profit entity like microsoft. In the past they've been able to count on people upgrading from old microsoft products to new microsoft products, and so any measure that would encourage (or pressure) people to upgrade would increase their sales.

Seems like a winning formula.

n1 writes:

De La Soul, the award winning hip-hop group have released their latest project "Smell the Da.I.S.Y." for free through BitTorrent. This comes after the group released their entire catalog for free, on the 25th anniversary of their debut album. The free catalog was only available for 25 hours, and some of the catalog appeared to have been obtained from dubious sources.

The new release is a tribute to producer J Dilla.

Starting today, the group's new mixtape, Smell the DA.I.S.Y., will be accessible to fans everywhere as a BitTorrent Bundle. The new record consists of classic De La Soul lyrics over vintage J Dilla production. In honor of Jay Dee, it's free for all. Just kick in your email.

Download the BitTorrent Bundle for the 11-track mixtape, the J Dilla documentary, an audio letter, and wallpapers. And Smell Da Inner Soul of Yancy. Check out the J Dilla Foundation to learn more about Jay Dee, and his organization's commitment to funding music programs in inner-city schools.

cbiltcliffe writes:

Crittercism has performed testing on mobile platforms, and found that while Apple's release of iOS 7 is the most stable iOS release to date, reducing the crash rate to 1.7%, this still pales compared to Android versions 4.0+, which have a crash rate of only 0.7%.

Not surprisingly, gaming apps with complex graphics and sound crashed more often (4.4%) than other apps, with eCommerce apps getting the best rating of only 0.6%. Some pre-digested coverage from gantdaily.com can save having to dig through pages of research data slides, if you're not looking for the gritty details.

Is this consistent with your experience, or does your particular usage tell a different story?

keplr writes:

Phoronix, a 10-year old linux-focused tech website, has benchmarked the latest Nvidia GeForce drivers and compared the results under Ubuntu 14.04 and Windows 8.1. The Ubuntu driver actually performed slightly ahead in a few tests. While Intel and AMD are considered better citizens in the FLOSS community, Nvidia has enjoyed a lead in technical performance with their proprietary drivers.

With increasing support from hardware manufacturers, and big names like Valve backing Linux, one of the last remaining pillars of Windows dominance on the desktop continues to be chipped away.

cbiltcliffe writes:

Darth Vader is running for President of Ukraine, as the candidate for the Ukrainian Internet Party (UIP). The Sith Lord will apparently be up for election come May 25th.

It's not the first time Vader has entered Ukraine's political sphere.

As well as being seen in Kiev's Independence Square during the protests this winter - Vader also made a bid to become mayor of Odessa late last year, after being carried to the city hall by stormtroopers.

Meanwhile, further reports suggest that as well as his pledge to restore Ukraine to its former glories, his presidential demands also include a plot of land where he can park his spaceship.

[Editors Note: The official UIP website is currently unavailable, "Site exceeds CPU load allowed by purchased hosting plan." ]

lhsi writes:

It is possible to predict whether someone will be overweight later in their adolescence at age 6 from their body mass index (BMI) category at the age of 6, the mother's education level and mother's obesity.

Overweight/obesity in adolescence can be predicted by BMI category at the age of 6 allowing for parent counselling or risk guided interventions in children with BMI>=P75, who accounted for >2/3 of overweight/obesity in adolescents.

BradTheGeek writes:

Sky and Telescope are reporting some interesting news from a group of astronomers that claim to have evidence of dark matter.

From the article:

A team of astronomers led by Tansu Daylan (Harvard University), claims that excessive gamma-rays detected from the center of the galaxy by the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope are not from pulsars, but dark matter. More specifically, if the theory that dark matter is made up of massive particles and anti-particles, their collision should produce gamma-ray burst signatures similar to those seen.

"If our interpretation is correct, this signal would constitute the discovery of an entirely new particle that makes up the majority of the mass found in the universe," says co-author Dan Hooper (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory). "I can't find words that are strong enough to capture the significance of such a discovery."

But others remain skeptical. " 'Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence,' as we said about the B-mode signal recently," says expert Kevork Abazajian (University of California, Irvine), referring to the discovery of inflation's fingerprint on the cosmic microwave background announced last week.

The abstract for the paper can be found here [PDF, tar.gz and HTML formats available].

Angry Jesus writes:

A new process that combines geothermal power and carbon-dioxide sequestration kills two birds with one stone. The idea is to take the CO2 produced by traditional fossil fueled energy plants, liquefy it and inject it deep into the ground at geothermal sites. Due to the heat in those areas, the CO2 will expand and some of it will carry that heat to the surface. It turns out that CO2 is 10x more efficient at extracting geothermal energy than traditional water-based methods, making geothermal practical in areas where current water-based geothermal energy is not.