Archive for December, 2013
Saturnalia
December 21st, 2013Tis the season. Update: Don’t Forget About Krampus Wikipedia: Krampus is a beast-like creature from the folklore of Alpine countries thought to punish children during the Christmas season who had misbehaved, in contrast with Saint Nicholas, who rewards well-behaved ones with gifts. Krampus is said to capture particularly naughty children in his sack and carry […]
U.S. Tests Surveillance Balloons on Mexico Border
December 21st, 2013Via: AP: The U.S. Border Patrol will evaluate the use of three helium-filled surveillance balloons along the Texas-Mexico border that were originally used by the Department of Defense in Iraq and Afghanistan. Standing beneath a 52-foot-long tethered balloon on Thursday in Penitas, the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector Chief Rosendo Hinojosa said the blimp-shaped […]
Coalition of Leading Scientists Claim H5N1 Ferret Experiments Could Lead to Pandemic
December 21st, 2013Conspiracy theorists! Via: Independent: Some of the world’s most eminent scientists have severely criticised the arguments used by some influenza researchers who are trying to make the H5N1 bird-flu virus more dangerous to humans by repeatedly infecting laboratory ferrets. More than 50 senior scientists from 14 countries, including three Nobel laureates and several fellows of […]
Majority of Scientific Data Lost Due Within 20 Years
December 21st, 2013Via: Nature World News: The vast majority of scientific data are evaporating, never to be heard from again. The reason, based an analysis published in the journal Current Biology, is almost boring – old email addresses and obsolete storage devices are making off with hard-earned research, according to Tim Vines, a visiting scholar at the […]
GnuPG: 16 Years of Protecting Privacy
December 21st, 2013I don’t trust anything completely when it comes to computer security, but I trust GnuPG more than anything else. Via: GnuPG: Today marks 16 years since the first release of GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG). In that time the project has grown from being a hacker’s hobby into one of the world’s most critical anti-surveillance tools. […]
NSA Had Secret Contract with RSA
December 21st, 2013Via: Reuters: As a key part of a campaign to embed encryption software that it could crack into widely used computer products, the U.S. National Security Agency arranged a secret $10 million contract with RSA, one of the most influential firms in the computer security industry, Reuters has learned. Documents leaked by former NSA contractor […]
Algae to Crude Oil: Million-Year Natural Process Takes Minutes in the Lab
December 19th, 2013Via: U.S. Department of Energy / Pacific Northwest National Laboratory: Engineers have created a continuous chemical process that produces useful crude oil minutes after they pour in harvested algae — a verdant green paste with the consistency of pea soup. The research by engineers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory was reported […]
Woman Faced Illegal Body Cavity Search, Observed Bowel Movement — Billed $5000
December 19th, 2013Via: CBS: Federal agents wrongfully strip-searched a New Mexico woman at the El Paso border crossing, then took her to a hospital where she was forced to undergo illegal body cavity probes in an attempt to find drugs, according to a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday. The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in El Paso […]
Obamacare: Think Carefully About Traveling
December 19th, 2013Via: IBD: A prominent New York insurance broker pointed out that most of the policies offered on the ObamaCare exchanges are not national networks, so “if you need routine medical services, they will not be covered when you leave your local area,” as they were before. Travel health insurance, unfortunately, only covers emergencies. So, the […]
4096-Bit RSA Broken Using Data Contained in Audio Emissions from Computers
December 19th, 2013Via: ExtremeTech: Security researchers have successfully broken one of the most secure encryption algorithms, 4096-bit RSA, by listening – yes, with a microphone — to a computer as it decrypts some encrypted data. The attack is fairly simple and can be carried out with rudimentary hardware. The repercussions for the average computer user are minimal, […]
