Archive for the 'Technology' Category
Bloomberg Sources Claim NSA Exploited Heartbleed Bug for Intelligence for Years
April 12th, 2014Via: Bloomberg: The U.S. National Security Agency knew for at least two years about a flaw in the way that many websites send sensitive information, now dubbed the Heartbleed bug, and regularly used it to gather critical intelligence, two people familiar with the matter said. … Putting the Heartbleed bug in its arsenal, the NSA […]
This Tower Pulls Drinking Water Out of Thin Air
April 11th, 2014Via: Smithsonian Magazine: The invention from Arturo Vittori, an industrial designer, and his colleague Andreas Vogler doesn’t involve complicated gadgetry or feats of engineering, but instead relies on basic elements like shape and material and the ways in which they work together. At first glance, the 30-foot-tall, vase-shaped towers, named after a fig tree native […]
Condoleezza Rice Joins Dropbox’s Board
April 10th, 2014Via: TechCrunch: Condoleezza Rice, former United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor has joined the board of cloud file storage and syncing firm Dropbox.
U.S. Government Spied on Human Rights Workers
April 9th, 2014Shocker. Via: Guardian: The US has spied on the staff of prominent human rights organisations, Edward Snowden has told the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, Europe’s top human rights body. Giving evidence via a videolink from Moscow, Snowden said the National Security Agency – for which he worked as a contractor – had deliberately snooped […]
Serious Reading Takes a Hit from Online Scanning and Skimming
April 9th, 2014Via: Washington Post: Claire Handscombe has a commitment problem online. Like a lot of Web surfers, she clicks on links posted on social networks, reads a few sentences, looks for exciting words, and then grows restless, scampering off to the next page she probably won’t commit to. “I give it a few seconds — not […]
Navy’s New Railgun Can Hurl a Shell Over 5,000 MPH
April 9th, 2014Via: Wired: The U.S. Navy is tapping the power of the Force to wage war. Its latest weapon is an electromagnetic railgun launcher. It uses a form of electromagnetic energy known as the Lorentz force to hurl a 23-pound projectile at speeds exceeding Mach 7. Engineers already have tested this futuristic weapon on land, and […]
‘Heartbleed’ Bug in OpenSSL Puts Encrypted Communications at Risk
April 8th, 2014Via: PC World: Computer security experts are advising administrators to patch a severe flaw in a software library used by millions of websites to encrypt sensitive communications. The flaw, nicknamed “Heartbleed,” is contained in several versions of OpenSSL, a cryptographic library that enables SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) or TLS (Transport Security Layer) encryption. Most websites […]
U.S. Navy $100 Million Program to Develop New Autonomous Aircraft
April 6th, 2014Via: Wall Street Journal: Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder has positioned himself to become the Jeff Bezos of the Pentagon. Much as the Amazon.com Inc. founder envisions mini-drones that deliver small packages across America, Adm. Klunder, the Navy’s research chief, wants to create innovative unmanned helicopters able to perform tasks now carried out by humans: resupplying […]
Amazon Dash
April 4th, 2014I, for one, find grocery lists so odious that I need a wi-fi enabled barcode scanner with voice recognition to make sure my whims are catered to immediately. Can we just cut to the chase and order coffin-sized pods full of lukewarm nutrient agar and neural interfaces? Via: Amazon:
The “Cuban Twitter” Scam Is a Drop in the Internet Propaganda Bucket
April 4th, 2014Via: Firstlook: This week, the Associated Press exposed a secret program run by the U.S. Agency for International Development to create “a Twitter-like Cuban communications network” run through “secret shell companies” in order to create the false appearance of being a privately owned operation. Unbeknownst to the service’s Cuban users was the fact that “American […]
