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AnonTechie writes:

Pulsed electrical fields destroy antibiotic-resistant bacteria infecting burn injuries. Application of a technology currently used to disinfect food products may help to get around one of the most challenging problems in medicine today, the proliferation of bacteria resistant to antibiotics and other antimicrobial drugs. In a paper appearing in the June issue of the journal Technology and already released online, investigators from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Engineering in Medicine describe how the use of microsecond-pulsed, high-voltage non-thermal electric fields successfully killed resistant bacteria infecting experimentally induced burns in mice, reducing bacterial levels up to 10,000-fold.

"Pulsed electrical field technology has the advantages of targeting numerous bacterial species and penetrating the full thickness of a wound," says Alexander Golberg, PhD, of the MGH Center for Engineering in Medicine (MGH-CEM), first author of the paper. "This could lead to a completely new means of burn wound disinfection without using antibiotics, which can increase bacterial resistance." About 500,000 individuals are treated for burn injuries in the U.S. each year. Standard burn treatment involves removal of burned tissue, skin grafts, and the application of antiseptic and antimicrobial dressings to prevent and treat infection. The growing prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria - including strains of Acinetobacter baumannii and Staphylococcus aureus - is behind the frequent failure of antibiotic treatment, necessitating novel approaches to eliminate infecting pathogens.

gewg_ writes:

gHacks reports

The author of Pale Moon confirmed on the official forum that Encrypted Media Extensions and sponsored tiles won't be included. Pale Moon won't implement DRM including EME or Adobe's closed-source encryption module

The seemingly unpopular Australis user interface used in Firefox 29 will also be avoided in the next build of this browser, which is a fork of Firefox and is available for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows and Linux.

Anonymous Coward writes:

It seems like Silverlight is becoming one of the more popular bits of software for those looking for exploits, according to Ars Technica and Cisco

Angling for Silverlight Exploits is taken from Cisco's blog: In this latest campaign we detect initial stage zero malicious advertisements redirecting to advertising banners (among other stage one destinations) on stage one websites where redirection is again occurring to Angler EK landing pages (the full list of URIs is in the article).

Thus the complete attack life cycle is composed of multiple stage web redirection, eventually landing on an Angler EP page, followed by application exploit delivery (Flash or Silverlight), and finally payload delivery. In this particular campaign, the payload is a Trojan that opens two listener ports and initiates a TCP connection to a remote host located in Brazil.

We should expect these existing Silverlight exploits to proliferate through other exploit pack families in the near future as threat actors copy code from each other and release updates. Silverlight exploits are also ideal because Silverlight continues to gain rich Internet application market share, perhaps surpassing Java, and Microsoft's life cycle schedule suggests Silverlight 5 will be supported through October, 2021.

From an Ars Technica story, Move over Java. Drive-by attacks exploiting Microsoft Silverlight on the rise we get the following:

The number of drive-by malware attacks that exploit vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Silverlight application framework may be surpassing those that abuse Oracle's Java framework, according to a recent analysis of one popular hack-by-numbers tool kit.

Since April 23, the Angler exploit kit has shown a significant uptick in attacks that target Silverlight users, according to a blog post published Monday by Levi Gundert, technical lead in Cisco Systems' threat research group. While the Silverlight exploits were accompanied by attacks that also targeted Adobe's Flash player, the recent campaign failed to trigger vulnerabilities in Oracle's Java framework, which over the past couple of years, has become widely targeted by malicious hackers who surreptitiously install malware by exploiting vulnerable software on end users' computers.

To succeed, the Angler campaign observed by Gundert had to exploit two Silverlight vulnerabilities, one that Microsoft patched 14 months ago and the other that was fixed in October. CVE-2013-0074 gave attackers the ability to remotely execute malicious code, while CVE-2013-3896 provided the means to bypass data execution prevention, a security mitigation added to most Microsoft applications in recent years. The measure prevents most data loaded into memory from being executed.

FakeBeldin writes:

Two hackers have allegedly hacked iCloud by putting a fake Apple server online. This allows anyone to unblock an iPhone or iPad. According to Dutch media [Both in Dutch] (hackers are supposedly Dutch and Moroccan in origin), the hackers contacted Apple (either end of March or 3 May there is confusing reporting), but to no avail. They decided to put their server publicly online. Result: many, many iPhones and iPads unblocked. NRC-Q reports that on Twitter, many pleas for putting the server online appear - seemingly from folk trying to fence stolen and blocked phones and tablets...

See for yourself: @MerrukTechnolog and @AquaXetine.

Sidenote: as far as I can tell, the hackers first made contact with Dutch newspaper "De Telegraaf", whose story sounds reasonable. Then an online branch (NRC-Q) of Dutch newspaper "NRC" reported the matter, with rather inflammatory statements along the lines of "If Apple doesn't want to listen, we'll teach them!". I can't tell which report is more accurate - what do you make of it? Pent-up anger heading for a Cupertino smackdown or responsible disclosure?

[Ed's note: We normally insist on at least one source being in English - none has been found so far. If any Dutch speakers are able to confirm or deny this story, I would be grateful.]

stormwyrm writes:

The EFF reports that Senate Judiciary Committee chair Patrick Leahy has announced that he is taking the Innovation Act off the Judiciary Committee's agenda. According to Senator Leahy's official statement:

Unfortunately, there has been no agreement on how to combat the scourge of patent trolls on our economy without burdening the companies and universities who rely on the patent system every day to protect their inventions. We have heard repeated concerns that the House-passed bill went beyond the scope of addressing patent trolls, and would have severe unintended consequences on legitimate patent holders who employ thousands of Americans.

I have said all along that we needed broad bipartisan support to get a bill through the Senate. Regrettably, competing companies on both sides of this issue refused to come to agreement on how to achieve that goal.

However, the Innovation Act passed 325-91 in the House with strong bipartisan support, as well as massive support from industry as well, and the President has signalled his support for the initiative. The EFF comments:

Leahy effectively deferred a problem—a serious problem he readily admits exists—in order to please the pharmaceutical, biotech, and university lobbies that are hardly the victims of patent trolls anyway... What Senator Leahy really means, is that he does not support a deal and is willing to be the final roadblock.

taylorvich writes:

A pair of researchers in the Netherlands has found that if a running wheel is placed outdoors in a natural setting, wild animals will come and run on it. Neurophysiologists Johanna Meijer and Yuri Robbers describe in a paper they've had published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, how they set up running wheels in natural settings then filmed wild animals using the wheels.

[Link contains a video of a slug on a running wheel]

c0lo writes:

Just in: many news outlets report on Zenimax suing Oculus over misappropriation of trade secrets.

ArsTechnica has a good timeline of the "brawl" (too long to post here, but RTFA for it):

What started merely as strongly worded letters and back-and-forth accusations between Id Software parent company ZeniMax Media and VR headset maker Oculus has now turned into an actual legal case. ZeniMax today filed a federal lawsuit in the Northern Texas district accusing Oculus of misappropriation of trade secrets, copyright infringement, breach of contract, unfair competition, unjust enrichment, trademark infringement, and false designation.

In a statement, an Oculus spokesperson said "the lawsuit filed by ZeniMax has no merit whatsoever. As we have previously said, ZeniMax did not contribute to any Oculus technology. Oculus will defend these claims vigorously."

Popcorn, anyone?

[Details on the lawsuit here]

AnonTechie writes:

DARPA Unveils Hack-Proof Drone:
The Pentagon's Defense Advance Research Project Agency (DARPA) unveiled a new drone built with secure software that prevents the control and navigation of the aircraft from being hacked. The program, called High Assurance Cyber Military Systems(HACMS), uses software designed to thwart cyber attacks.

It has been underway with DARPA for several years after originating at the University of California, San Diego and the University of Washington, said Kathleen Fischer, HACMS program manager for DARPA. "The software is designed to make sure a hacker cannot take over control of a UAS. The software is mathematically proven to be invulnerable to large classes of attack," Fisher said.

See the HACMS Open Catalog for access to publications and software that comprise the system, much of which is available as open source.

taylorvich writes:

There's a secret to persuading strangers to retweet your messages. And a machine learning algorithm has discovered it.

From the article:

These guys say that by studying the characteristics of Twitter users, it is possible to identify strangers who are more likely to pass on your message than others. And in doing this, the researchers say they've been able to improve the retweet rate of messages sent strangers by up to 680 percent.

mrMagoo writes:

Matt Inman, as most folks know, is the creator/curator of The Oatmeal, a very geek-oriented site.

In the past, he has had some success in his funding drives.

Also, he is arguably singlehandedly responsible for a huge increase in the popularity of sriracha sauce (and possibly, the subsequent issues faced by the company).

This weekend, he made a pair of posts, extolling the virtues of the Tesla Model S, and begging Elon Musk for funding assistance for the Tesla Museum.

Should be interesting. There's a very good chance that Inman's pean to the Tesla is worth much more than the money he's asking for, but Musk definitely keeps his own counsel. Hopefully more will be revealed.

hubie writes:

Small pieces of plastic (sizes less than 5mm), dubbed microplastics, have been found all over the world, particularly in the great garbage patches associated with major ocean gyres. One of the puzzling things about the microplastic composition of these garbage patches is that, despite the enormous increase in production of plastics and other man-made materials over the past decades, the microplastic abundance has not changed over the time they have been monitored. This suggests that there are large sinks where these particles disappear.

Obbard et al. report in the most recent issue of the open-access journal Earth's Future that Arctic ice is one of these sinks. Ice core sampling has shown the concentration of microplastics encapsulated in the ice is at least two orders of magnitude higher than that observed in the garbage patches. Given the expected melt rate of the ice, this means a great deal of trapped plastic will be released back into the oceans.

freetown writes:

When one thinks of bamboo scaffolding, one thinks China. The irony of this is that one won't think of China when it comes to Bamboo Bicycles...at least, not yet. And the finished product? ....look here.

Funny how the world's largest cycling population and largest source of bamboo did not put two and two together until some outsider comes in to promote bamboo bicyles.

AnonTechie writes:

Does sending more people to prison make us safer? New South Wales imprisonment rates have skyrocketed to an unprecedented high in the last 12 months despite a drop in crime rates. In 2013, there were 9,900 prisoners across the state this year there are 11,000 and this rate of increase is likely to continue.

Contrary to what many fear, crime is not rising and is not out of control. In fact the current government pursued a sound policy over its first two years to reduce the imprisonment rate. This resulted in fewer people in, and returning to, prison; fewer people returning to crime after leaving prison, and reduced spending. Most significantly, it did not result in a rise in crime. So, if crime isn't rising, why such growth in prisoner numbers?

The New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics in a preliminary analysis, suggests that policing and sentencing practices have changed. Police are arresting and convicting more people, and more offenses are now attracting a prison sentence. The reality is that the majority of people imprisoned haven't committed high-end crimes. They are disproportionately poor. They are disproportionately Indigenous. And they are disproportionately people with mental illness and cognitive impairment, many with low IQs.

Open4D writes:

You may have heard two weeks ago that a German activist group created a parody of Google and their recently acquired Nest Labs (which is "a home automation company that designs and manufactures sensor-driven, Wi-Fi-enabled, self-learning, programmable thermostats and smoke detectors"). The domain name they used, "google-nest.org", is not obviously a parody.

Now the EFF has the story of how Google demanded that the activists "revise the site and assign the domain name to Google". And the EFF believes that Google got it wrong this time. We'll just have to wait and see whether Google follows EFF's reasoning or whether they want to get the big legal guns out.

For non-US folks: 501(c)(3) refers to tax-exempt status in the United States. Unlike most countries, non-for-profit organizations are NOT automatically tax-exempt, I've included a larger summary in the 'Read More' section.

So, on the slow but progressing front of incorporation, I've been working on drafting the bylaws for the umbrella non-for-profit for SoylentNews. Our current plan is to have all the documents ready for incorporation done in a single go, then involve a lawyer to review them to make sure that we meet all the requirements. Once that is done, I'll finalize my move to New Hampshire (which has gotten unfortunately sidetracked due to real life), and submit the documentation to the state.

When I took over this site, I said that we would incorporate and (eventually) become a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. At the time, I had not dug into the specifics of what this would entail, and I've got some concerns that makes me wonder if 501(c)(3) is a good thing for our future. My biggest concern involves a prohibition that prevents 501(c)(3)'s from being involved with anything related to "political activity". While seemingly benign on the surface, this prohibition may create some difficulty for us.