News, Entertainment, Enlightenment
If one was born in say, 1929, one could not be blamed for thinking that the Flash Gordon era has arrived.
Even Dick Tracy would even the new Apple Watch.
And then there is the new jet-powered backpacks cooked up at Arizona State University to help soldiers run faster. The goal is everyone to be able to do a four minute mile.
The ultra-secure CryptoPhone 500 came on the market not that long ago courtesy of ESD America and one of its features is an ability to find things that are not part of the standard cellphone network.
And one of the things it found was 17 fake cellphone towers spread around the country, according to Popular Science.
EDS CEO Les Goldsmith described these towers as “interceptors” which look just like regular cellphone tower but are not part of the official communication network. He said they allow eavesdropping on calls and text along with pushing spyware to the device.
He said a lot of them were close to military bases. He expressed a concern that perhaps they were not placed by our government but a foreign one such as China something that would be frankly hard to believe possible but for the JV squad now in running our nation’s security.
Note that the 17 were the only ones found.
A map showing the locations of the fake cellphone towers found by the CryptoPhone 500 as of August.
Sandia National Laboratories is studying jewel thefts and other noted big heists to determine how to best protect our nuclear secrets, reports Popular Mechanics.
It has reportedly found that the weakest link is the human one as about two-thirds of the heists involved insiders either willing or not.
The man the Obama administration tapped to head Information Technology (IT) security at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was convicted yesterday, Aug. 26, of seven counts relating to internet child porn and faces a long prison stretch.
Timothy DeFoggi, 56, was found guilty by a Nebraska jury of engaging in a child exploitation enterprise, conspiracy to advertise and distribute child pornography, and accessing a computer with intent to view child pornography, all federal charges.
DeFoggi registered for a child porn website operated by Aaron McGrath, 31, on March 2, 2012, and remained a active member until Dec. 8, 2012 when the site was taken down by the FBI, according to a statement from the Department of Justice.
McGrath has since been convicted of charges related to running it and is serving a 20-year sentence.
DeFoggi’s name was on an HHS flowchart from 2013 given to Congress to determine appropriations for 2014.
Maybe if Obama would take things a bit more seriously, we wouldn’t end up with perverts running computer security.
Where do these guys come from anyway and how to they end up in influential positions?
Didn’t see anything in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer, by the way, concerning this rather important story.
The chart HHS provided in 2013 to congressional committees for 2014 appropriations with DeFoggi’s name right there at the top.
A University of Michigan study led by J Alex Halderman has revealed that the nation’s traffic control system is laughably easy to take over.
The study said all that was needed was a laptop computer with a wireless card that could communicate at the same frequency used by the traffic lights, and the systems passwords. It was noted that the passwords and usernames in use were often the default ones.
Fourth Amendment advocate and international fugitive Edward Snowden says Dropbox, the cloud storage service, is “very hostile to privacy” reports PCWorld.com.
He is recommending that those with a need for cloud storage use companies that practice “zero-knowledge”, means that the data is encrypted before it reaches the cloud and the key remains with the user.
He cited Spider Oak as an example.
Of course, unlike with Dropbox, if you lose your password with Spider Oak you files are lost forever.
What a solar storm looks like
Civilization almost ended in 2012 just as those crazy Mayans had predicted.
A massive solar eruption happened on July 23 of that year that would have fried just about all circuit boards on Planet Earth if it hit us.
If it happened two weeks earlier it would have.
Without circuit boards water would not be pumped, electricity would not be transmitted and automobiles made after the 1980s would not have started.
Food would spoil in refrigerators and freezers. Hospitals would be paralyzed.
The death told would likely be in the billions.
And it almost happened.
A solar storm of that magnitude did strike Earth but that was in September 1859 and it was no big deal.
But that was well before computer chips and power was produced by muscle and steam, and food for storage was either salted or dried or kept in ice houses.
Things are different now.
A solar strike is inevitable. NASA is giving one a 12 percent chance of happening in the next decade.
It strikes us as being far wiser to invest in shielding our infrastructure to resist it than following the Chicken Little proponents of global warming. This would mean investing in upgrades for power facilities and water pumping stations. It would mean making sure that all emergency vehicles can withstand an EMP blast — basically the same thing. It would mean encouraging world automobile makers to design consumer vehicles with the appropriate shielding. It would mean factoring in EMP shielding in home design and educating the average person on how best to shield his home.
One wonders about the lack of discussion about such matters.
This video puts what is claimed to be the screen on the next iPhone to the hardness test.
It’s a good lesson on smartphone screens and also provides excellent explanations of how to choose sandpaper and the Mohs scale of mineral hardness.
A new cast cooked up by Deniz Karasahin of Turkey could heal broken bones 40 to 80 percent faster reports Techcrunch.com
The cast uses ultra-sonic vibrations, a proven therapy but not widespread since the vibrations couldn’t penetrate the traditional plaster cast.
Using 3D printing technology — that’s where a computer images are sent to devices for molding with plastics and other material rather than merely appearing as ink on paper — Karasahin has created a cast that would keep the bone in place while allowing ultra-sonic drivers to be placed directly on the skin.
Kudos Karasahin.
Kiddie helium balloons will soon cost $100 each according to Cornell scientist Robert Richardson.
Why?
Helium is used in radiation portal monitors to scan for bomb-making components entering the country, and the proliferation of these devices after 9/11 is causing a shortage, reports Popular Science.
The upside is that at $100 per balloon it would cost $9,900 to release 99 of them making the accidental start of World War III cost prohibitive for hippies.