Archive for September, 2008

Security risks rise as smartphones become smarter

As wireless devices become more numerous within businesses, their convenience will be counterbalanced by an increasing potential for security problems, according to a Gartner analyst.
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The Stigma of a Tech Support Background

An anonymous reader writes “Since the last semester of college I’ve been working as a first line tech support agent. At first it was just a way to earn some extra money; then it became a way to scrape by until I could find myself a real job. By now (almost two years in), it’s […]

Tsunami Invisibility Cloak

BuzzSkyline writes “New Scientist is reporting on a lab-scale experiment that may lead to a tsunami invisibility cloak, which could protect islands, open-ocean platforms and even coastlines from dangerous waves by effectively making them invisible to tsunamis. The technology is based on the same sorts of negative index of refraction ideas that some physicists are […]

Feds Unwrap $15M For Corporate Energy Reduction

As hard as it is to imagine, coondoggie writes with news that the federal government just unveiled a new energy bill that will offer $15 million in assistance to retailers who help to build and adopt energy-efficient technologies. “The US Department of Energy (DOE) announced the first phase of $15 million awards to retailers Best […]

Another Way the LHC Could Self-Destruct

KentuckyFC writes “Just when you thought it was safe to switch on the LHC (though it won’t be for a while yet), another nightmare scenario has emerged that some critics worry could cause the particle accelerator to explode. The culprit this time is not an Earth-swallowing black hole but a ‘Bose supernova’ in the accelerator’s […]

CSRF Flaws Found On Major Websites, Including a Bank

An anonymous reader sends a link to DarkReading on the recent announcement by Princeton researchers of four major Web sites on which they found exploitable cross-site request forgery vulnerabilities. The sites are the NYTimes, YouTube, Metafilter, and INGDirect. All but the NYTimes site have patched the hole. “…four major Websites susceptible to the silent-but-deadly cross-site […]

Council Sells Security Hole On Ebay

Barence writes “A security expert was stunned to discover a VPN device he’d bought on Ebay automatically connected to a local council’s confidential servers. Bought for just 99p for use at work, when plugged in it automatically connected with the login details which had been carelessly left on the device. ‘The whole selling point of […]

Strong Methane Emissions On the Siberian Shelf

rrohbeck writes “The Independent reports brand new results of high concentrations of methane — 100x normal — above the sea surface over the Siberian continental shelf. A large number of methane plumes have been discovered bubbling up from the sea floor. This is probably due to methane clathrate, buried under the sea floor before the […]

Sending Excess Load To the Cloud?

TristanBrotherton writes “Cloud computing seems to be a good choice for startups like ours, looking to scale easily with users. (We’re providing a series of Web services, assets, and Web applications to users of our mobile client.) There are the obvious choices of Google, Amazon, and smaller shops like EngineYard. The biggest issue we have […]

PC Historian Finds Puzzling Game Diskette Image

This past weekend, Trixter — a self-proclaimed IBM PC historian — picked up some old software for his archive. What he didn’t count on was a couple of additional Avantage titles that had never been released into the wild. If this weren’t enough of a find, one of these titles provided Trixter with an interesting […]