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AnonTechie writes:

Unisys unveils invisibility cloak for network traffic.

If you are ultra paranoid, what could be better than hiding your network traffic in such a way that no one could possibly intercept it? This is what Unisys is offering with its new Stealth appliance, which could make man-in-the-middle attacks and keylogger exploits obsolete, or at least more difficult to mount.

Stealth has been around since 2005, when it was developed exclusively for the Defense Department, which remains one of its largest customers. Several years ago Unisys took it to commercial enterprises and has paid for various independent tests to try to compromise the system, all of which have failed. This is because Stealth uses four layers of security: each packet is encrypted with AES256, then split into three separate pieces and dispersed across the network, destined for a particular group of users that have to be running its protocols. To deploy Stealth, you create virtual "communities of interest" that tie two or more PCs together in such a way that they can only communicate with each other. No one else can join in, and no one else can intercept the traffic.

yanom writes:

Chris Mooney writes from Slate about Katharine Hayoe, a climatologist who is also a conservative evangelical Christian, about her efforts to reach out to fellow religious conservatives on the issue of dealing with climate change.

"Simply put, millions of Americans are evangelical Christians, and their belief in the science of global warming is well below the national average. And if anyone has a chance of reaching this vast and important audience, Hayhoe does. "

In this article, Hayoe outlines five arguments she believes resonate with conservative Christians, who have often come under fire for their perceived rejection of science. These arguments include "Conservation is conservative", "The Bible does not approve of letting the world burn", and "Even if you believe in a young Earth, it's still warming"

kaszz writes:

The Wall Street Journal writes that transfusing blood from young mice to old mice makes them smarter and improves functions such as exercise capacity, according to reports from two research teams that point to new ways to study and potentially treat diseases of aging. In a Stanford University and the University of California study found that blood transfusions from young mice reversed cognitive effects of aging, like memory and learning ability. The report was published Sunday in the journal Nature Medicine. Two other reports appearing in Science from researchers at Harvard University found that exposing old mice to a protein present at high levels in the blood of young mice and people improved both brain and exercise capability. An earlier report by some of the same researchers linked injections of the protein to reversal of the effects of aging on the heart. What isn't known from all this research, said Buck Institute's Dr. [Brian] Kennedy, is whether young blood might also increase the life span of mice and, if so, what such implications for humans might be. Other research show that specific antioxidants may affect lifespan of mice.

This can make one think of movies like The Hunger (1983), Traitement de choc (1973).

AnonTechie writes:

An Ars Technica article entitled "Pavlovian password management" aims to change sloppy habits. Policy would reward or penalize people based on the passwords they pick.

For more than a decade, the virtues of strong passwords have been lost on most end users, despite frequent sermons from security experts and IT administrators over their importance in locking down accounts. Now, a consultant is proposing a system that provides rewards or penalties based on the passcode choices people make. For instance, a user who picks test123@# might be required to change the password in three days under the system proposed by Lance James, the head of the cyber intelligence group at Deloitte & Touche. The three-day limit is based on calculations showing it would take about 4.5 days to find the password using offline cracking techniques. Had the same user chosen t3st123@##$x , the system wouldn't require a change for three months.

cosurgi writes:

Science daily reports about a recent paper in nature where a gamma ray burst (GRB) afterglow from a dying star collapsing into a blackhole was measured to have 10000 times more than expected circular polarization.

The GRB 121024A was detected at 2:56:12 UTC on 24 October 2012 and measurements of polarization began 2.57 hours after the burst using very large telescope (VLT). Currently we have circular polarization measurements for only one other GRB 091018 afterglow. In both of them the sources are less than 5% linearly polarized (much lower than 70% for a perfectly ordered magnetic field). Circularly polarized light is measured to be 0.61%+/-0.13% (intergalactic dust effects between us and GRB included in this error) while basic model predictions expect it be be about 10^(-4) smaller than that for the measured frequency. The authors note that "The observed polarimetric behavior poses a challenge to the long-standing assumption of isotropic electron pitch-angle distributions in the GRB forward shock afterglow".

panachocala writes:

With the upcoming release of Mint 17 LTS, I am looking to upgrade from Mint 13 primarily because of the new BTRFS file system. I have an older netbook with very limited hard disk space that just won't die, so a compressed file system is very attractive to me.

I've found instructions how to do it so the only issue is whether to go ahead... This is where I ask for your wisdom!

kaszz writes:

Direct view of the spinning Earth from the underbelly of the ISS space station 400 km up is now available as a high definition (HD) live video stream provided at Ustream and also embedded in an article by ExtremeTech. The video feed comes from four high-definition cameras, delivered by last month's SpaceX CRS-3 resupply.

[Editor's Note: The stream appears to be inaccessible at this time.]

mendax writes:

The New York Times is reporting:

Two teams of scientists published studies on Sunday showing that blood from young mice reverses aging in old mice, rejuvenating their muscles and brains. As ghoulish as the research may sound, experts said that it could lead to treatments for disorders like Alzheimer's disease and heart disease.

The research builds on centuries of speculation that the blood of young people contains substances that might rejuvenate older adults.

Perhaps Dracula's blood sucking compulsion isn't so crazy after all!

Papas Fritas writes:

Reuters reports that last week's computer glitch at a California air traffic control center that led officials to halt takeoffs at Los Angeles International Airport was caused by a U-2 spy plane still in use by the US military, passing through air space monitored by the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center that appears to have overloaded ERAM, a computer system at the center. According to NBC News, computers at the center began operations to prevent the U-2 from colliding with other aircraft, even though the U-2 was flying at an altitude of 60,000 feet and other airplanes passing through the region's air space were miles below. FAA technical specialists resolved the specific issue that triggered the problem on Wednesday, and the FAA has put in place mitigation measures as engineers complete development of software changes," said the agency in a statement. "The FAA will fully analyze the event to resolve any underlying issues that contributed to the incident and prevent a reoccurrence." The U.S. Air Force is still flying U-2s, but plans to retire them within the next few years. The U-2 was slated for retirement in 2006 in favor of the unmanned Global Hawk Block 30 system, before the Air Force pulled an about-face two years ago and declared the Global Hawk too expensive and insufficient for the needs of combatant commanders.

edIII writes:

Chemists from Europe have developed a process to produce syngas from CO2 and water. Cerium oxide is used to produce the syngas and oxygen in separate stages. This is the key that allows for the Fischer-Tropsch process to be used safely without the dangerous presence of oxygen, to produce kerosene and other fuels.

The chemists believe that a full scale system using just 1 square kilometer of space could produce 20,000 litres per day of jet fuel. At this time the efficiency is only 1.7% but chemists predict that they could achieve 15% and economic viability through testing of larger scale systems and have identified promising avenues to find greater efficiency.

Don't expect to see smaller systems for sale for point-source energy production though, Shell Oil has partnered with the chemists and in the event of success will be used to produce jet fuel for sale.

janrinok writes:

As reported by TreeHugger.com:

The giant candy and pet food maker MARS Inc has announced that it will soon begin construction of a massive wind farm in Texas that will produce enough clean energy to power all of MARS' operations in the United States. (Yhey have 37 factories and 70 offices, so it's a pretty big deal.) The wind farm will be erected near Lamesa, Texas, with 118 GE wind turbines (1.7MW each) producing annually about 800,000 megawatt-hours, equivalent to what it takes to power 61,000 U.S. households. This will be enough for MARS' 37 US factories, and represent about 24% of their global factory and office carbon footprint. Hopefully they keep rapidly improving that number and reach 100% before their target date.

Construction of the Texas wind farm will begin at the end of 2014, with about 10 turbines going up each week. It should be finished and fully operational by mid-2015. And to be clear, while the wind farm will produce an amount of electricity equivalent to what they use across the USA, it won't be directly connected to all those offices.

fliptop writes:

A small asteroid zipped by Earth at a distance less than the moon's orbit early Saturday (May 3), but posed no threat to our planet. About the size of a city bus, the asteroid was discovered Wednesday, April 28th. The rock is one of over 1400 potentially hazardous asteroids currently being monitored by NASA.

Not much warning, eh?

Angry Jesus writes:

Stop the Cap! reports that in a tit-for-tat action Viacom has decided to block all of Cable ONE's internet users from accessing the Viacom website. Viacom and Cable ONE are in the middle of a contract dispute and Cable ONE has stopped carrying Viacom's cable tv channels because their previous contract expired. Sucks to be a cable-tv cord-cutter if you have to use Cable ONE for your ISP.

AnonTechie writes:

Even as Europe powered up its most ambitious ever cybersecurity exercise this month, doubts were being raised over whether the continent's patchwork of online police was right for the job. The exercise, called Cyber Europe 2014, is the largest and most complex ever enacted, involving 200 organisations and 400 cybersecurity professionals from both the European Union and beyond. Yet some critics argued that herding together normally secretive national security agencies and demanding that they spend the rest of 2014 sharing information amounted to wishful thinking. Others questioned whether the law enforcement agencies taking part in the drill should be involved in safeguarding online security, in the wake of American whistleblower Edward Snowden's revelations of online spying by western governments.

The report does contain a contender for quote-of-the-week: One industry insider said the view in Brussels is that EU cybersecurity was "like teenage sex: everyone says they are doing it but not that many actually are."