Finding the Source of the Pioneer Anomaly

Posted on by

These spacecraft also underscore the value of data preservation. In the early days of the Pioneer missions, scientists and engineers often viewed the medium as more valuable than the data it contained. Many considered raw data to be worthless once “useful” scientific and technical information had been extracted. Nowadays data storage may be cheap, but we’re still in danger of suffering from shortsightedness when it comes to data custodianship. Every experiment needs a clear plan in place to ensure that a record of the original observations is still available and readable, even decades into the future. It may very well be the only way we’ll resolve the next confounding mystery.

via Finding the Source of the Pioneer Anomaly – IEEE Spectrum.

10 PRINT CHR$ (205.5 + RND (1)); : GOTO 10 from MIT Press, reviewed.

Posted on by

10 PRINT CHR$ (205.5 + RND (1)); : GOTO 10, a new book collaboratively written by 10 authors, takes a single line of code—inscribed in the book’s mouthful of a title—and explodes it.

That one line, a seemingly clumsy scrap of BASIC, generates a fascinatingly complicated maze on a Commodore 64

via Computer programming: 10 PRINT CHR$ (205.5 + RND (1)); : GOTO 10 from MIT Press, reviewed. – Slate Magazine

The book, which has also been released for free download under a Creative Commons license, unspools 10 PRINT’s strange history and dense web of cultural connections, winding its way through the histories of mazes and labyrinths, grids in modern art, minimalist music and dance, randomness, repetition, textiles, screensavers, and Greek mythology. There are forays into early computer graphics, hacking, Cold War military strategy and Pac-Man. References abound, from the Commodore 64 user’s manual to Roland Barthes’ S/Z. This is a book where Dungeons and Dragons and Abstract Expressionism get equal consideration.

Which Web Browser Should You Run On Your Android Device?

Posted on by

Unlike Apple, Google doesn’t impose a Draconian policy on developers. Third-party rendering and JavaScript engines get the green light on any Android-based device, jailbroken or not. This means that Firefox is free to use its Gecko rendering engine, and Opera isn’t limited to a “mini” browser.

via Which Web Browser Should You Run On Your Android Device? : Web Browser Grand Prix: Android Circuit.

Microsoft Surface sales Q4 2012- Less than 1 million tablets sold: Est

Posted on by

In a note to clients picked up by Forbes, the firm states that Surface sales in the December quarter are shaping up to fall into the 500,000 to 600,000-unit range, well below its earlier estimates of between 1 million and 2 million units. According to Detwiler, Microsoft’s tablet strategy appears to be “in disarray.”

via Microsoft Surface sales Q4 2012- Less than 1 million tablets sold: Est | BGR.

New 25 GPU Monster Devours Passwords In Seconds

Posted on by

In a test, the researcher’s system was able to churn through 348 billion NTLM password hashes per second. That renders even the most secure password vulnerable to compute-intensive brute force and wordlist (or dictionary) attacks. A 14 character Windows XP password hashed using LM NTLM (NT Lan Manager), for example, would fall in just six minutes, said Per Thorsheim, organizer of the Passwords^12 Conference.

via Update: New 25 GPU Monster Devours Passwords In Seconds | The Security Ledger.

Plexxi’s SDN Really Flattens the Data Center

Posted on by

It’s all run by a controller that’s centralized but also includes a federated piece distributed to each switch. The setup is similar to the way OpenFlow gets deployed, but the inner workings are very different (and no, OpenFlow itself isn’t supported yet). Plexxi uses algorithms and a global view of the network to decide how to configure the network.

In other words, rather than programming route tables, the controller looks at the needs of the workloads and calculates how the network ought to be getting used. Some of this can even happen automatically.

via Plexxi’s SDN Really Flattens the Data Center – Mobile Backhaul – Telecom News Analysis – Light Reading.

Providers of Free MOOC’s Now Charge Employers for Access to Student Data

Posted on by

On Tuesday, Coursera, which works with high-profile colleges to provide massive open online courses, or MOOC’s, announced its employee-matching service, called Coursera Career Services. Some high-profile tech companies have already signed up—including Facebook and Twitter, according to a post on Coursera’s blog, though officials would not disclose how much employers pay for the service. Only students who opt into the service will be included in the system that participating employers see, a detail stressed in an e-mail message that Coursera sent to its nearly two million past or present students on Tuesday.

via Providers of Free MOOC’s Now Charge Employers for Access to Student Data – Technology – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Ericsson wants US import ban on Samsung products

Posted on by

Technologies at issue relate to electronic devices for wireless communications and data transfer including Radio Frequency (RF) technology and in some cases standardized communication protocols including GSM, GPRS, EDGE, W-CDMA, LTE, and 802.11 Wi-Fi standards, Ericsson said in the filing.

via Ericsson wants US import ban on Samsung products – Ericsson, intellectual property, Samsung Electronics, legal, patent – Computerworld.

Splinternet Behind the Great Firewall of China

Posted on by

GFW is not perfect, however. Some Chinese technical professionals can bypass it with a variety of methods and/or tools. An arms race between censorship and circumvention has been going on for years, and GFW has caused collateral damage along the way.

via Splinternet Behind the Great Firewall of China – ACM Queue.

VPN (virtual private network) and SSH (secure shell) are the most powerful and stable tools for bypassing all surveillance technologies, although the basic ideas are the same as with the aforementioned tools: proxies and encrypted channels. The only difference is that VPN and SSH depend on a private host (or virtual host) or an account outside of China, instead of open, free proxies. Only technical professionals are able to set up such hosts or accounts, and most of them are not free. Commercial or public VPN services will be blocked by IP address and/or domain names if they are popular enough. In fact, the domain names *vpn.* are all blocked (such as vpn.com, vpn.net, vpn.org, vpn.info, vpn.me, vpn.us, vpn.co).