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tonyPick writes:

Aeon has an essay on the lessons from Egyptology on preserving our culture.

This article covers the work of the Long Now Project, including the 10,000 year clock and the Rosetta Project.

Hugh Pickens writes:

The NYT reports that Peruvian authorities say Greenpeace activists have damaged the fragile, and restricted, landscape near the Nazca lines, ancient man-made designs etched in the Peruvian desert when they placed a large sign that promoted renewable energy near a set of lines that form the shape of a giant hummingbird. The sign was meant to draw the attention of world leaders, reporters and others who were in Lima, the Peruvian capital, for a United Nations summit meeting aimed at reaching an agreement to address climate change. Greenpeace issued a statement apologizing for the stunt at the archaeological site and its international executive director, Kumi Naidoo, flew to Lima to apologize for scarring one of Peru’s most treasured national symbols. “We are not ready to accept apologies from anybody,” says Luis Jaime Castillo, the vice minister for cultural heritage. “Let them apologize after they repair the damage.”

But repair may not be possible. The desert around the lines is made up of white sand capped by a darker rocky layer. By walking through the desert the interlopers disturbed the upper layer, exposing the lighter sand below. Visits to the site are closely supervised - ministers and presidents have to seek special permission and special footwear to tread on the fragile ground where the 1,500 year old lines are cut. “A bad step, a heavy step, what it does is that it marks the ground forever,” says Castillo. “There is no known technique to restore it the way it was.” Castillo says that the group walked in single file through the desert, meaning that they made a deep track in the ground then they spread out in the area where they laid the letters, making many more marks over a wide area. “The hummingbird was in a pristine area, untouched,” Castillo added. “Perhaps it was the best figure.”

buswolley writes:

David Holmes at pando.com says

  "Now, in what might be the ultimate troll against government oversight, somebody has proposed an unholy union between Uber and bitcoin,"

Over the course of its five-year existence, Uber has courted controversy and pushed the regulatory envelope at nearly every opportunity. From insurance to safety to privacy, Uber’s Travis Kalanick has acted like a rebel with a $40 billion cause, and many local governments are still playing catch up. They say it’s better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission. Uber has time for neither.

Alongside Uber’s centralized arrogance is Bitcoin’s decentralized anarchy. The crypto-currency resists government regulation by design. The very things that make it appealing in theory — anonymity, ease of transfer across borders — attracts money launderers and buyers and sellers of illicit goods.

The union between the two is called Ridecoin and it sounds like it’s straight out of Peter Thiel’s dream journal. The tagline reads, “Bitcoin Uber! Distributed blockchain based ridesharing. Can’t be shut down like Uber and Lyft. It just exists.”

"gewg_" writes:

El Reg reports

As foreshadowed in February, Ford has announced a new in-car entertainment and communications system that will run on BlackBerry's QNX real-time operating system, not Windows as is the case for the company's current efforts.

Ford Sync 3 will offer touch-screen and voice recognition controls. The latter will allow drivers to command both their vehicle and apps on their phone. Siri control is another feature.

The auto-maker's offered a touch-screen system for some time now, but it's widely regarded as one of its weak points. A complete refresh on a new operating system therefore looks like a good move.

frojack writes:

Courthouse News is reporting that a patent covering caching data in a computer network does not apply to any Google apps.

Google apps that let users store data online do not violate a rival software developer's patents, a federal judge ruled. SuperSpeed LLC, a Massachusetts-based company, sued Google in June 2012, claiming Google Drive and Google Docs - applications that facilitate cloud data storage - infringe on its patents.

At issue is U.S. Patent 5,918,244, caching I/O devices across a network, which enables data sharing among computers linked in a network.

The patent claims, among other things claims:

The cache keeps regularly accessed disk I/O data within RAM that forms part of a computer systems main memory. The cache operates across a network of computers systems, maintaining cache coherency for the disk I/O devices that are shared by the multiple computer systems within that network.

The patent itself was filed in 1994, and published in 1999, has in excess of 30 claims, some of which are so specific as to specify the type of network, (VAX) and a tier of three levels of caching.

Had SuperSpeed's claims prevailed, they might have had wide ranging applicability to just about everything we do with computers attached to any kind of network. U.S. District Judge Sim Lake sided with Google on Friday and determined that the Google Apps had not infringed on SuperSpeed's patent however, the judge declined to declare the patents invalid as Google had requested.

tadas writes:

An article in the British Medical Journal maintains, based on analysis of the Darwin Awards, that men are far more likely to perform truly idiotic and dangerous acts than women.

From the article abstract:

Non-technical summary available at the Washington Post and C|Net.

lhsi writes:

GCHQ (Government Communication Headquarters, UK) have hosted an event aimed at boosting the cyber security sector in the UK.

Also announced was a new Android application that aims to teach basic encryption techniques.

[More after the break.]

"crutchy" writes:

The BBC reports: A fully operational Apple 1 computer has been sold at auction for $365,000 (£230,000). It was expected to go for between $400,000 and $600,000. Covered also at Business Insider, NDTV Gadgets, and MacRumors.

Fewer than 50 original Apple-1s are believed to be in existence of the few hundred originally produced.

Blackmoore writes with news of a report in Ars Technica has a story: Iranian hackers used Visual Basic malware to wipe Vegas casino’s network

Stop us if this sounds familiar: a company executive does something that makes a foreign government’s leadership upset. A few months later, hackers break into the company’s network through a persistent cyber attack and plant malware that erases the contents of hard drives, shuts down e-mail servers and phone systems, and brings operations to a screeching halt.

That’s not just what happened to Sony Pictures Entertainment in late November—it’s also what happened to Las Vegas Sands Corp., owners of the Sands, Venetian, and Palazzo hotels and casinos, in a cyber attack that began last January. The attack and the damage it did were kept quiet by the company until it was reported in a story by Bloomberg Businessweek today.

Attempts to reach Las Vegas Sands Corp. have gone unanswered, and a spokesperson for Dell SecureWorks—which was brought in to clean up the mess afterward and determine its cause—declined to speak about the article, as it is the company’s policy not to discuss work done for a customer. But according to Bloomberg’s sources, the Sands attack was undertaken by “hacktivists” who were responding to a speech by Sands majority owner Sheldon Adelson. The billionaire 52-percent owner of the Sands and Israeli media mogul made an October 2013 appearance on a panel at the Manhattan campus of Yeshiva University, where he called for a nuclear attack on Iran to get the country to abandon its own nuclear program.

Well, if you are going to buy into corporate sovereignty; I can't wait to see one of these companies hire mercenaries to attack a state.

Leebert writes:

This story is a few weeks old, but still interesting. Back in late November, SpaceNews reported that Orbital Sciences will be receiving a partial payment from NASA for the failed Antares launch. From the article:

While the CRS [Commercial Resupply Services] contract with NASA is based on a service-delivery model, NASA and Orbital structured it so that Orbital receives milestone payments tied to launches. It is not uncommon in launch contracts to make “intentional ignition” a milestone that, for example, signals the end of one contractual relationship and the beginning of another — even if ignition and liftoff are followed by explosion and failure.

The CRS contracts have two milestones: "intentional ignition", and a successful mission. Orbital is therefore entitled to a payment for completion of the first milestone. It's not clear how much that payment is. The article also mentions that Orbital was insured for the full amount of the second milestone, to the tune of US$48M. As such, the direct revenue impact of the failure to Orbital is essentially nothing. Looks like Orbital's contract lawyers and business continuity planners earned their keep on this one.

Meanwhile, Orbital announced this week that it has contracted with United Launch Alliance for an Atlas V launch to carry the next Cygnus cargo spacecraft to the ISS. The ULA contract reportedly has an option for a second Atlas V if necessary to completely bridge the gap until the Antares return-to-flight launch.

lhsi writes:

According to a report at TorentFreak, Google has gotten so fed up with the MPAA making snarky remarks about them that they have ended cooperation on anti-piracy measures:

After delivering a major blow to torrent sites during October, Google must've thought the MPAA would be pleased. Instead, however, the MPAA issued a 'snarky' press release. According to a leaked email, the press release so infuriated Google's top brass that the company ended cooperation with the MPAA.

Each week Google removes millions of ‘infringing’ links from search engine results at rightsholders’ request, 9.1 million during the last documented week alone. In the main Google removes these links within hours of receiving a complaint, a record few other large sites can match.

But no matter what Google does, no matter how it tweaks its search algorithms, it’s never been enough for the MPAA. For years the movie group has been piling on the pressure and whenever Google announces a new change, the MPAA (and often RIAA) tell the press that more can be done.

"crutchy" writes:

iRobot says its iRobot Create 2 is aimed at students interested in robotics. The device is affordable and can be used to build anything from a Bluetooth-controlled DJ to a small security guard.

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/22018/20141211/irobot-more-floor-cleaner-hackers-dream-machine.htm

-- submitted from IRC

"As a global leader in robotics technology, iRobot believes its greatest social responsibility is to ignite students' passion for STEM-related careers through the excitement of robots," said Colin Angle, chairman and CEO of iRobot.

The company is supplying the device to enhance STEM, or science, technology, engineering and math, programs. Not only does it come with hardware and a USB cable, but it also comes with a faceplate drill template, encouraging users to start building their own robotic inventions. There is even a programming interface included for the software side and a list of DIY projects that can be built with it.

For example, the device can be made into a Bluetooth-controlled DJ, a tiny security guard, or anything else that a consumer's skills and budget allow for.

buswolley writes:

PandoDaily has been posting a series of editorials and investigative reports about government ties to the Tor project which has led to some hot words exchanged by members of the Tor project and journalists at PandoDaily.

Now, PandoDaily reports a threatening tweet from Anonymous (since deleted). Is this a case of a journalist trying to bring attention to himself, or has the author struck a nerve?

Brief history of Tor (from Almost everyone involved in developing Tor was (or is) funded by the US government)

The origins of Tor go back to 1995, when military scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory began developing cloaking technology that would prevent someone’s activity on the Internet from being traced back to them. They called it “onion routing” — a method redirecting traffic into a parallel peer-to-peer network and bouncing it around randomly before sending it off to its final destination. The idea was to move it around so as to confuse and disconnect its origin and destination, and make it impossible for someone to observe who you are or where you’re going on the Internet.

Onion routing was like a hustler playing the three-card monte with your traffic: the guy trying to spy on you could watch it going under one card, but he never knew where it would come out.

The technology was funded by the Office of Naval Research and DARPA. Early development was spearheaded by Paul Syverson, Michael Reed and David Goldschlag — all military mathematicians and computer systems researchers working for the Naval Research Laboratory, sitting inside the massive Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling military base in Southeast Washington, D.C.

The original goal of onion routing wasn’t to protect privacy — or at least not in the way most people think of “privacy.” The goal was to allow intelligence and military personnel to work online undercover without fear of being unmasked by someone monitoring their Internet activity.

"gewg_" writes:

AlterNet reports

In a Sunday presidential run-off election in Uruguay, Frente Amplio (Broad Front) candidate Tabaré Vázquez beat opposition candidate Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou by 53.6 to 41.1 percent, a vote that had major implications for the future of Uruguay's historic marijuana regulation.

While Vázquez has promised to continue implementing marijuana regulation, National Party opposition candidate Lacalle Pou had said that if he were to become president, he would repeal major parts of the law, including government-regulated sales to adults--the most distinguishing feature of the Uruguayan initiative.

"Sunday's presidential election result safeguards Uruguay's historic marijuana legalization" said Hannah Hetzer, Policy Manager of the Americas at the Drug Policy Alliance. "The Uruguayan people determinedly chose the presidential candidate who will continue the country's progressive policies, including the roll out of the world's first national legally regulated marijuana market."

fliptop writes:

An article at ACM.org talks about how Intrinsic Use Control, the technology use to secure nuclear weapons, can also be used to secure IT hardware and communications with uncrackable encryption:

"Using the random process of nuclear radioactive decay is the gold standard of random number generators," [scientist and engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Mark] Hart said. "You'd have a better chance of winning both Mega Millions and Powerball on the same day than getting control of IUC-protected components."

The code is randomly generated by its unique nuclear source and is not known by any person.

Hart added:

All radiation sources decay — from highly enriched uranium to everyday background radiation — so IUC coding could easily be generated outside the nuclear weapons realm. For instance, the approach could be used in the manufacturing process of IT equipment destined for secure uses to prevent tampering and better secure the supply chain.

The coding could eliminate insider threats by preventing people from adding counterfeit components or tampering with the equipment.

Additionally, gear in point-to-point communications links could be loaded with a unique radiologically generated encryption key, rather than relying on a manufacturer's less-secure coding.

Full article at FCW.com.