SoylentNews

takyon writes:

Researchers discover aluminum foil actually does improve your wireless speed

Researchers at Dartmouth University have found that a 3D printed shape covered in aluminum foil can improve wireless range and increase Wi-Fi security. The project, which appeared on Eurekalert, involves placing a reflector on and around a Wi-Fi router's antennae to shape the beam, increasing range and preventing it from passing through to unwanted spaces.

"With a simple investment of about $35 and specifying coverage requirements, a wireless reflector can be custom-built to outperform antennae that cost thousands of dollars," said Xia Zhou, a Dartmouth assistant professor.

In their paper, Zhou and his colleagues tested multiple styles of directional antennas and also tested an "anecdotal" solution that involved sticking a soda can behind a router to shape the radio waves towards a target. After a few iterations, they were able to create specific shapes to increase Wi-Fi reception in specific rooms. They then created a program called WiPrint that 3D prints the exact shape needed to form the beams for better coverage and security. Once printed all you have to do is cover them in aluminum foil.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Trump space adviser: Blue Origin and SpaceX rockets aren't really commercial: Scott Pace likens heavy-lift rockets to aircraft carriers.

In recent months, the executive secretary of the National Space Council, Scott Pace, has worked assiduously behind the scenes to develop a formal space policy for the Trump administration. In a rare interview, published Monday in Scientific American, Pace elaborated on some of the policy decisions he has been helping to make.

In the interview, Pace explained why the Trump administration has chosen to focus on the Moon first for human exploration while relegating Mars to becoming a "horizon goal," effectively putting human missions to the Red Planet decades into the future. Mars was too ambitious, Pace said, and such a goal would have precluded meaningful involvement from the burgeoning US commercial sector as well as international partners. Specific plans for how NASA will return to the Moon should become more concrete within the next year, he added.

In response to a question about privately developed, heavy-lift boosters, the executive secretary also reiterated his skepticism that such "commercial" rockets developed by Blue Origin and SpaceX could compete with the government's Space Launch System rocket, which is likely to make its maiden flight in 2020. "Heavy-lift rockets are strategic national assets, like aircraft carriers," Pace said. "There are some people who have talked about buying heavy-lift as a service as opposed to owning and operating, in which case the government would, of course, have to continue to own the intellectual properties so it wasn't hostage to any one contractor. One could imagine this but, in general, building a heavy-lift rocket is no more 'commercial' than building an aircraft carrier with private contractors would be."

I thought flying non-reusable pork rockets was about the money, not strategy. SpaceX is set to launch Falcon Heavy for the first time no earlier than December 29. It will have over 90% of the low Earth orbit capacity as the initial version of the SLS (63.8 metric tons vs. 70).

Previously: Maiden Flight of the Space Launch System Delayed to 2019
First SLS Mission Will be Unmanned
Commercial Space Companies Want More Money From NASA
U.S. Air Force Will Eventually Launch Using SpaceX's Reused Rockets

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Sheep have been trained to recognize human faces, such as that of Baaahrack Obama:

Sheep have demonstrated the ability to recognise familiar human faces, according to a study. Cambridge University researchers were able to train sheep to identify the faces of actors Jake Gyllenhaal and Emma Watson, former US President Barack Obama and BBC newsreader Fiona Bruce. After training, the sheep chose photos of familiar faces over unfamiliar ones significantly more often than not.

It shows that sheep possess similar face recognition abilities to primates. Previous studies had shown that sheep could identify other sheep and human handlers that they already knew.

"What we did is ask whether a sheep could learn to recognise someone from a photograph," the study's lead author Prof Jenny Morton said. "We focused on whether or not an animal was capable of processing a two-dimensional object as a person."

Sheep recognize familiar and unfamiliar human faces from two-dimensional images (open, DOI: 10.1098/rsos.171228) (DX)

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for soycow1984

They may not grab the most headlines, but injection attacks are the most common threats targeting organizational networks, according to IBM MSS data.

The facts are clear. According to IBM X-Force analysis of IBM Managed Security Services (MSS) data, injection attacks are the most frequently employed mechanism of attack against organizational networks. In fact, for the period assessed (January 2016 through June 2017), injection attacks made up nearly half — 47 percent — of all attacks. The most common types were operating system command injection (OS CMDi) and SQL injection (SQLi). Injection attacks versus all attacks. Figure 1: Injection attacks versus all attacks (Source: IBM Managed Security Services data).

Attackers take advantage of injection vulnerabilities in operating systems and applications to penetrate critical web servers and access back-end databases. From using malicious webshells to planting cryptocurrency mining tools or malicious PHP scripts, there are many ways in which cybercriminals can use injection attacks to reach their end goal.

Source: https://securityintelligence.com/injection-attacks-the-least-glamorous-attack-is-one-of-the-most-threatening/

Original Submission

canopic jug and an Anonymous Coward submitted the following story about the Intel Management Engine (IME):

Professor Andrew S. Tanenbaum from the Department of Computer Science at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam wrote "An Open Letter to Intel" regarding Intel's use of MINIX 3 to run the Intel Management Engine (video) built into their processors:

Thanks for putting a version of MINIX 3 inside the ME-11 management engine chip used on almost all recent desktop and laptop computers in the world. I guess that makes MINIX the most widely used computer operating system in the world, even more than Windows, Linux, or MacOS. And I didn't even know until I read a press report about it. Also here and here and here and here and here (in Dutch), and a bunch of other places.

[...] Note added later: Some people have pointed out online that if MINIX had a GPL license, Intel might not have used it since then it would have had to publish the modifications to the code. Maybe yes, maybe no, but the modifications were no doubt technical issues involving which mode processes run in, etc. My understanding, however, is that the small size and modular microkernel structure were the primary attractions. Many people (including me) don't like the idea of an all-powerful management engine in there at all (since it is a possible security hole and a dangerous idea in the first place), but that is Intel's business decision and a separate issue from the code it runs. A company as big as Intel could obviously write its own OS if it had to. My point is that big companies with lots of resources and expertise sometimes use microkernels, especially in embedded systems. The L4 microkernel has been running inside smartphone chips for years.

Professor Tanenbaum did the initial design and development of MINIX, a microkernel used primarily for teaching. He has helped guide it through the years as a small community around it has grown. Lately it has adopted much of the NetBSD userspace. The IME is a full operating system system running inside x86 computers. It gets run before whatever system on the actual hard disk even starts booting.

takyon writes:

0.3.2.x alpha releases of Tor support version 3 of the Tor Rendezvous Specification (onion services protocol):

We are hyped to present the next generation of onion services! We've been working on this project non-stop for the past 4 years and we officially launched it two weeks ago by publishing our first alpha releases.

The new addresses will be longer and harder to discover:

The Tor team has been working on the new onion technology for the past four years, which aims to increase the anonymity level for onion services. In the legacy onion system the network itself could be leveraged to learn about the onion addresses that were using it.

With the new onion system, the onion services are completely private. Only you, the owner of the onion, and those to whom you will disclose the address, will know about your onion service' address. Nobody outside of their tight private groups could discover certain onion addresses, unless one of the group members disclosed it to others.

Websites such as Facebook, ProPublica, and The New York Times will likely want their address to be known to the whole public, so this benefit will not apply to them.

The legacy addresses will continue to be supported for years, depending on how fast the community adopts the new addresses.

Technical specification.

Yesterday: Critical Tor Flaw Leaks Users' Real IP Address

Original Submission

takyon writes:

After losing a lawsuit filed by the American Chemical Society (ACS) due to failure to appear, Sci-Hub has been ordered to pay the ACS $4.8 million. But the district court's ruling also states that the Sci-Hub website should be blocked by ISPs, search engines, and domain name registrars:

The American Chemical Society (ACS) has won a lawsuit it filed in June against Sci-Hub, a website providing illicit free access to millions of paywalled scientific papers. ACS had alleged copyright infringement, trademark counterfeiting and trademark infringement; a district court in Virginia ruled on 3 November that Sci-Hub should pay the ACS $4.8 million in damages after Sci-Hub representatives failed to attend court.

The new ruling also states that internet search engines, web hosting sites, internet service providers (ISPs), domain name registrars and domain name registries cease facilitating "any or all domain names and websites through which Defendant Sci-Hub engages in unlawful access to, use, reproduction, and distribution of the ACS Marks or ACS's Copyrighted Works."

"This case could set precedent for the extent third-parties on the internet are required to enforce government-mandated censorship," says Daniel Himmelstein, a data scientist at the University of Pennsylvania who recently analyzed how many journal papers Sci-Hub holds.

Sci-Hub hosts millions of unpaywalled, full academic papers.

Previously: Elsevier Cracks Down on "Pirate" Science Search Engines
The Research Pirates of the Dark Web
Sci-Hub, the Repository of "Infringing" Academic Papers Now Available Via "Telegram"
Elsevier Wants $15 Million Piracy Damages from Sci-Hub and Libgen
US Court Grants Elsevier Millions in Damages From Sci-Hub
Sci-Hub Faces $4.8 Million Piracy Damages and ISP Blocking

Original Submission

Broadcom Considering Unsolicited $105 Billion Bid to Acquire Qualcomm

takyon writes:

Broadcom is deciding whether to proceed with the largest-ever attempted acquisition of a chipmaker:

Broadcom Ltd. is considering a bid of more than $100 billion for Qualcomm Inc., according to people familiar with the matter, in what would be the biggest-ever takeover of a chipmaker. Broadcom is speaking to advisers about the potential deal, said the people, who asked not to be identified because talks are private. The offer of about $70 a share would include cash and stock and is likely to be made in the coming days, the people said. A final decision on whether to proceed has not been made, they said.

[...] Qualcomm finds itself in a weakened state. A legal battle with Apple is costing revenue and jeopardizing a business model that for years made Qualcomm one of the most successful chipmakers. Before today, its shares had slumped 16 percent this year, compared with a 41 percent surge in the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index. A change of management at Qualcomm might help resolve the dispute with Apple more quickly, and thereby make Qualcomm's licensing and chip businesses more valuable, according to Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst Stacy Rasgon. Earlier this week, Qualcomm executives said the legal process would "proceed under the court's schedule," indicating no resolution soon.

takyon writes:

A study has found that a "porous"/sandy/muddy core can increase the energy released by gravitational tidal friction inside Saturn's moon Enceladus. This could explain why the interior of the icy moon has not cooled down after billions of years:

A paper published in Nature Astronomy today presents the first concept that explains the key characteristics of 500 km-diameter Enceladus as observed by the international Cassini spacecraft over the course of its mission, which concluded in September.

This includes a global salty ocean below an ice shell with an average thickness of 20–25 km, thinning to just 1–5 km over the south polar region. There, jets of water vapour and icy grains are launched through fissures in the ice. The composition of the ejected material measured by Cassini included salts and silica dust, suggesting they form through hot water – at least 90ºC – interacting with rock in the porous core.

These observations require a huge source of heat, about 100 times more than is expected to be generated by the natural decay of radioactive elements in rocks in its core, as well as a means of focusing activity at the south pole.

The tidal effect from Saturn is thought to be at the origin of the eruptions deforming the icy shell by push-pull motions as the moon follows an elliptical path around the giant planet. But the energy produced by tidal friction in the ice, by itself, would be too weak to counterbalance the heat loss seen from the ocean – the globe would freeze within 30 million years.

[...] In the new simulations the core is made of unconsolidated, easily deformable, porous rock that water can easily permeate. As such, cool liquid water from the ocean can seep into the core and gradually heat up through tidal friction between sliding rock fragments, as it gets deeper.

Powering prolonged hydrothermal activity inside Enceladus (DOI: 10.1038/s41550-017-0289-8) (DX)

Previously: Hydrogen Emitted by Enceladus, More Evidence of Plumes at Europa
Cassini Finds Evidence of Change in Enceladus's Spin Axis
Could a Dedicated Mission to Enceladus Detect Microbial Life There?
How the Cassini Mission Led a 'Paradigm Shift' in Search for Alien Life

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The President of the United States of America lost the crucial ability to Tweet for an 11 minute timespan on Thursday (Nov. 2), following the temporary deactivation of his Twitter account by a Twitter employee who was being let go by the company. The incident has raised questions about the safeguards in place for high-profile Twitter users:

This is the way the world ends: not with a bang but a deleted Twitter account. At least, so it appeared for 11 minutes Thursday evening, when visitors to President Trump's personal account, @realDonaldTrump, were informed that there was no such thing.

[...] Amid a presidency that has seemed, at times, to be conducted primarily in 140-character pieces, this was a seismic event — and what was left of Twitter erupted. It was a raucous, modern-day town-square gathering of the sort not seen since ... well, since five months ago, when Mr. Trump coined a new word in the middle of the night.

[...] The answer, revealed three hours later, was something straight out of "Office Space." After saying in an initial statement that the account had been "inadvertently deactivated due to human error by a Twitter employee," Twitter announced that a rogue customer support worker had done it on his or her last day at the company.

Previously: Twitter Shadowbans Republican Frontrunner
Twitter Co-founder: I'm Sorry if We Made Trump's Presidency Possible

Similar submissions also came from martyb and Phoenix666.

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2  Original Submission #3 

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for soycow1984

Microsoft has patched only recent versions Windows against a dangerous hack that could allow attackers to steal Windows NTLM password hashes without any user interaction.

The hack is easy to carry out and doesn't involve advanced technical skills to pull off. All the attacker needs to do is to place a malicious SCF file inside publicly accessible Windows folders.

Once the file has been placed inside the folder, it executes due to a mysterious bug, collects the target's NTLM password hash, and sends it to an attacker-configured server. Using publicly available software, an attacker could crack the NTLM password hash and later gain access to the user's computer.

Such a hack would allow an attacker that has a direct connection to a victim's network to escalate access to nearby systems.

Source: Bleeping Computer

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Historically, one of the larger bottlenecks to computing performance hasn't been processor speed; it has been getting data and instructions to and from the processor. Working with memory isn't only a performance bottleneck, as the multiple layers of caches and high-speed memory add significantly to a computer's power budget. Other systems, like the extremely power-efficient neuron, mix processing and memory in individual cells.

That has inspired some computer scientists to try to figure out if we could do the same. Resistance-based memory, like memristors and phase-change memory, operate based on physics that make them amenable to performing calculations, and a few proof-of-concept demonstrations have been done using them. But a team from IBM Zurich has now gone beyond proof of concept, and it has used an array of a million phase change memory bits as an analog computer, performing tests for temporal correlations on real-world weather data.

[...] The authors note that a variety of other calculations, like factorization and matrix manipulations, can be performed using phase change memory arrays, meaning this isn't a one-trick pony. The primary limitation, in the end, may be with developing a sufficient market for phase change as memory. If it ends up being mass produced, then adapting it for calculations would probably be relatively simple. But phase change memory has been on the periphery of the market for nearly a decade now, and there's no clear indication that it will be taking off. Until that changes, using it for analog computing will be a niche within a niche.

Source: Ars Technica

Nature Communications, 2017. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-01481-9

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Rubik's cube is a multicolored, three-dimensional puzzle that has challenged folks for decades. Some, though, have faced that challenge much better than others. The Daily Mail has a very brief story noting that Korean speedcuber SeungBeom Cho ("Steve") has broken his own world record. Solved in under 4.6 seconds! A video of the solution is imbedded in the article or you can see it directly on YouTube.

Having utterly mastered the ubiquitous 3x3x3 puzzle, maybe next he'd next like to take a shot at this 17x17x17 Puzzle? Or how about a 1000x1000x1000 puzzle? Of course, after such a heavy mental work out, it is important to also keep oneself in good physical shape, so it only makes sense to try one's hand at this impressive 3x3x3 puzzle.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The "testing" is over. Twitter has officially raised the character limit to 280:

Avid tweeters such as President Trump were often forced to send multiple tweets to express their thoughts on a single subject given the constrictions of the previous limit.

Twitter explained after testing the 280-character limit that "people needed to use more than 140 characters, they Tweeted more easily and more often."

The company also preemptively addressed concerns that the structure of Twitter would change from the new character limit. "We – and many of you – were concerned that timelines may fill up with 280 character Tweets, and people with the new limit would always use up the whole space. But that didn't happen," Twitter said. "As a result, your timeline reading experience should not substantially change, you'll still see about the same amount of Tweets in your timeline."

Twitter said that the new character limit won't be accessible to Japanese, Korean or Chinese-language tweets.

Two German Twitter users managed to boldly break the limit by adding a massive URL:

Over the weekend, two German Twitter users successfully broke the existing character limit by sending a 35,000-character tweet. By formatting a message as a URL with extensive gibberish, they were able to absurdly pollute followers' timelines. Twitter soon removed it, but for a moment, all the complaints about the length of 280-character tweets seemed insignificant in the face of such a monster.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Altice USA, a cable television provider, is entering into a strategic agreement with Sprint:

Altice USA struck a deal with Sprint Corp. that will allow the cable operator to sell wireless service using Sprint's network.

As part of the agreement, Sprint will use Altice's broadband infrastructure to strengthen its nationwide wireless network, according to a statement from both companies that didn't disclose financial terms. Talks between Sprint's majority owner, SoftBank Group Corp., to combine the carrier with T-Mobile US Inc. collapsed over the weekend after months of negotiations.

The deal between Altice and Sprint marks the latest example of a U.S. cable operator entering the wireless business to compete with giants like Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc. Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable operator, recently started selling cellular service using Verizon's network. Charter Communications Inc., the No. 2 cable operator, plans to enter the wireless business next year.

What's up with Google's Project Fi lately?

Also at FierceCable and FierceWireless (wow, so fierce!).

Related: T-Mobile and Sprint Merger Called Off After Months of Talks

Original Submission