Rosetta’s lander Philae wakes up from hibernation

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For 85 seconds Philae “spoke” with its team on ground, via Rosetta, in the first contact since going into hibernation in November.

Source: Rosetta’s lander Philae wakes up from hibernation | Rosetta – ESA’s comet chaser

Now the scientists are waiting for the next contact.  There are still more than 8000 data packets in Philae’s mass memory which will give the DLR team information on what happened to the lander in the past few days on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Short recap:  Philae is the craft that landed on the comet and Rosetta is circling about being the direct link to the lander kind of like how Apollo missions operated for manned moon landings.  Both Philae and Rosetta travelled to the comet together and then 211 days ago Rosetta launched Philae onto the surface of the comet where it bounced funny landing next to a cliff that blocked sunlight to its solar panels.  Apparently it now has gathered enough juice to be somewhat operational.  This is quite an amazing feat involving every STEM discipline from mathematics to rocket science.

I wonder if they’ll reconsider shutting down this program as mentioned here.

xkcd has been all over this story from the landing;  From: http://xkcd.com/1446/

Chinese hack compromised security-clearance database

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Last week, the OPM announced that a database containing the personal information of about 4 million current and former federal employees was hacked. Privately, U.S. officials said the Chinese government was behind the breach. The administration has not publicly pointed a finger at Beijing.

Source: Chinese hack compromised security-clearance database – The Washington Post

I’m surprised the Washington Post continues with this Chinese narrative as there has been no official condemnation of China over this and determining the true source of an intrusion is extremely difficult if not impossible in many cases.  They still haven’t caught the culprits in the Target and Home Depot data breaches.  The list of suspects with motive to obtain this kind of data is probably quite long so it’s irresponsible to assume a guilty party before any evidence has been leaked.  No doubt consultants are working furiously tracing log records but at least wait until there is something concrete.  The Washington Post is an institution with top notch journalists so they should know better.

And here’s the blurb that made me laugh.

Offensive actions might include directing a U.S. agency to locate the servers holding the stolen data and deleting or altering the data, the former official said.

Haha.  Like whoever did this wouldn’t have backups 6 ways to Sunday of every bit gathered.  There’s no way to delete anything digital once it’s out in the ether.  Why would anyone publish a statement like that?  The only thing an offensive cyber attack can accomplish is making the US government behave like the criminals who they denounce.

A400M probe focuses on impact of accidental data wipe

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Computers operating each engine cannot work if this data, which is unique to each of the turboprops, is missing.

Source: Exclusive: A400M probe focuses on impact of accidental data wipe | Reuters

Under the A400M’s design, the first warning pilots would receive of the engine data problem would be when the plane was 400 feet (120 meters) in the air, according to a safety document seen by Reuters. On the ground, there is no cockpit alert.

Sounds like these data files became a single point of failure.

Confidential USTR Emails Show Close Industry Involvement In TPP Negotiations

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In another email in 2011, McCoy told GE lobbyists, “In case your CEO will be at the patent reform bill signing, I wanted to let you know that NZ Trade Minister Tim Groser is planning to attend. It would be a lovely opportunity for a CEO to turn to him and, for example, encourage NZ to support a strong IP chapter in the TPP…”

At another point, Jim DeLisi of Fanwood Chemical said he had just seen the text on rules of origin, and remarked, “Someone owes USTR a royalty payment. These are our rules. … This is a very pleasant surprise.”

Source: Confidential USTR Emails Show Close Industry Involvement In TPP Negotiations

FBI anti-terror official calls on tech firms to ‘prevent encryption above all else’

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“When a company, a communications company or a ISP or social media company elects to build in its software encryption, end-to-end encryption, and leaves no ability for even the company to access that, we don’t have the means by which to see the content”, he added.

“When we intercept it, we intercept encrypted communications. So that’s the challenge: working with those companies to build technological solutions to prevent encryption above all else.

Source: FBI anti-terror official calls on tech firms to ‘prevent encryption above all else’ | Technology | The Guardian

Steinbach insisted that he wasn’t asking for a “back door” to be built into encryption products, telling legislators that “we’re not looking at going through a back door or being nefarious.”

He proposes using the side door, the door no one else knows about, instead.

Slashdot burying stories about Slashdot Media owned SourceForge

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If you’ve followed any tech news aggregator in the past week, you’ve probably seen the story about how SourceForge is taking over admin accounts for existing projects and injecting adware in installers for packages like GIMP. For anyone not following the story, SourceForge has a long history of adware laden installers, but they used to be opt-in. It appears that the process is now mandatory for many projects.

Source: Slashdot burying stories about Slashdot Media owned SourceForge

How is it possible that someone, somewhere, thinks that censoring SourceForge’s adware bundling on Slashdot is a net positive for Slashdot Media, the holding company that owns Slashdot and SourceForge? A quick search on either Google or Google News shows that the story has already made it to a number of major tech publications, making the value of suppressing the story nearly zero in the best case.

I find this entire situation incredible.  Sourceforge was my go to site for FOSS and I have been using them for as long as I can remember.

Ever since the Linux world has moved to repositories where a simple yum install or apt-get loads up the entire package it has been awhile since I perused Sourceforge.  I have a set of FOSS utilities for PCs that I always download from the site that produced the software, not Sourceforge.  Many of those sites are listed on the sidebar under Tools.

All this started on Sourceforge a couple of years ago but people seem to be upset that it has recently hit the popular photo editor GIMP for Windows.  On Linux it’s just:

sudo yum install gimp

… and that’s all there is to it.  No adware, malware, nothing to worry about … so far.

As for FileZilla, the ftp program Sourceforge began making custom installers for a couple years ago, I prefer WinSCP on my Windows boxes nowadays although I have used FileZilla for many many years.   Always download from the source site of the software and you shouldn’t have any problems.  Sourceforge was the last one standing and now they have gone the route taken by CNET and Download.com many many years ago.

Here’s a Reddit thread posted a year ago about FileZilla and Sourceforge so this story isn’t something new.

That’s really deceptive. Filezilla for example, the big green DOWNLOAD button that is the correct way for downloading a file says the file name. Yet when you click it, you are taken to a page that offers you a different file name.Someone also pointed out that it’s signed by ASK.com and reporting back in with ASK.com for data. I never want ask.com associated with anything I do.

Source: Sourceforge starts using “enhanced” (adware) installers : technology

Rosetta team propose ending mission by landing on comet

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The mission is currently set to end in December 2015, after which Rosetta could simply be switched off as it continues to orbit the comet, and the mission team disperse to work on new projects. But for several months now a plan has been quietly hatched to see the craft go out with a bang by being brought down to a collision with 67P.

Source: Rosetta team propose ending mission by landing on comet – Sen.com

It would see the spacecraft brought gradually closer to the comet in a slowly spiralling orbit that would allow its cameras and instruments to gain ever more detailed views and measurements of the twin-lobed icy body. Then eventually—probably in September 2016—it would collide with the comet, bringing the mission to an end.

Computer chips made of wood promise greener electronics

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The researchers used a cellulose material for the substrate of the chip, which is the part that supports the active semiconductor layer. Taken from cellulose, a naturally abundant substance used to make paper, cellulose nanofibril (CNF) is a flexible, transparent and sturdy material with suitable electrical properties.

Source: Computer chips made of wood promise greener electronics

In a conventional chip, the support substrate is made of the same material as the active layer, but in the CNF chip, only the active layer is semiconductor material