Now, in photographs taken by Rosetta’s OSIRIS camera as the spacecraft zoomed within 2.7 kilometers (1.6 miles) of the comet’s surface on Sept. 2, the guesswork of Philae’s fate can be put to rest. The lander really did end up on its side, with two of its three legs awkwardly poking upwards. It seems to be jammed in a dark crack, proving why it was so hard to maintain contact with the robot after landing.
Category Archives: Current Events
Microsoft and Liebherr Collaborating on New Generation of Smart Refrigerators
With the SmartDevice capability, future Liebherr refrigerators will help in shopping and planning meals with intelligent food management. Stored groceries can be monitored using internal cameras and object recognition technology. This process not only captures images for viewing but also recognizes individual food items inside the refrigerator. This information flows automatically into an inventory list, which lets the customer see quickly and clearly what is in the refrigerator from anywhere. Using the SmartDeviceBox voice module, additional groceries can be added to a shopping list that customers can access when on the move using an app for iOS, Android or Windows devices.
NanoRacks To Catalyze Concepts for Deep Space Habitats
The Ixion Team is a new addition to NASA’s NextSTEP effort, and will begin by conducting a comprehensive feasibility study evaluating the conversion of rocket upper stages into habitats. This innovative approach offers a pathway that is more affordable and involves less risk than fabricating modules on the ground and subsequently launching them into orbit.
Source: NanoRacks To Catalyze Concepts for Deep Space Habitats
Rightscorp Threatens Every ISP in the United States
While Rightscorp was expected to make the most of BMG’s victory in its future dealings with ISPs, the level of aggression in its announcement still comes as a surprise. Essentially putting every provider in the country on notice, Rightscorp warns that ISPs will now have to cooperate or face the wrath of litigious rightsholders.
Source: Rightscorp Threatens Every ISP in the United States – TorrentFreak
Whether this week’s developments will help to pull Rightscorp out of the financial doldrums will remain to be seen. The company has been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy for a couple of years now, and its shares on Wednesday were worth just $0.038 each. Following the BMG news, they peaked at $0.044.
Facebook’s Filter Bubble Is Getting Worse
It wasn’t only about his News Feed list: He also tried to use the Facebook search function, also to no avail. It wasn’t that there were no posts about how great the Leave victory was. It was that Facebook, having identified him as a Remain voter, just wasn’t allowing him to see them.
The Washington Post partners with Twitter, Double Robotics to test robot at 2016 political conventions
Working with Twitter and Double Robotics, The Post’s robot will provide a live stream of delegates and politicians in Cleveland and Philadelphia via Twitter’s app, Periscope, giving users a guided tour of the convention site and letting them ask questions about the convention experience via Periscope chat.
Flat lens promises possible revolution in optics
The lens is quite unlike the curved disks of glass familiar from cameras and binoculars. Instead, it is made of a thin layer of transparent quartz coated in millions of tiny pillars, each just tens of nanometres across and hundreds high.
Singly, each pillar interacts strongly with light. Their combined effect is to slice up a light beam and remould it as the rays pass through the array
Source: Flat lens promises possible revolution in optics – BBC News
“The quality of our images is actually better than with a state-of-the-art objective lens. I think it is no exaggeration to say that this is potentially revolutionary.”
ImageMagick Remote Command Execution Vulnerability
The vulnerability is very simple to exploit, an attacker only needs a image uploader tool that leverages ImageMagick. During our research we found many popular web applications and SaaS products vulnerable to it (people love gravatars), and we have been contacting them privately to get things patched. Unfortunately, even with all the media attention, not everyone is aware of this issue.
Source: ImageMagick Remote Command Execution Vulnerability – Sucuri Blog
Update From: ImageMagick Is On Fire — CVE-2016–3714
If you use ImageMagick or an affected library, we recommend you mitigate the known vulnerabilities by doing at least one of these two things (but preferably both!):
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Verify that all image files begin with the expected “magic bytes” corresponding to the image file types you support before sending them to ImageMagick for processing. (see FAQ for more info)
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Use a policy file to disable the vulnerable ImageMagick coders. The global policy for ImageMagick is usually found in “/etc/ImageMagick”. The below policy.xml example will disable the coders EPHEMERAL, URL, MVG, and MSL.
My ImageMagick policy file is in /usr/lib64/ImageMagick-6.6.4/config/policy.xml Click the link to get the exact rules to add. I use ImageMagick with Gallery software but only admin has access to uploading images so this bug doesn’t matter for my use case.
Keeping secrecy the exception, not the rule: An issue for both consumers and businesses
We believe that with rare exceptions consumers and businesses have a right to know when the government accesses their emails or records. Yet it’s becoming routine for the U.S. government to issue orders that require email providers to keep these types of legal demands secret. We believe that this goes too far and we are asking the courts to address the situation.
We believe these actions violate two of the fundamental rights that have been part of this country since its founding. These lengthy and even permanent secrecy orders violate the Fourth Amendment, which gives people and businesses the right to know if the government searches or seizes their property. They also violate the First Amendment, which guarantees our right to talk to customers about how government action is affecting their data.
Here’s how brothers rigged lotteries, authorities say
Examiners found out-of-place programs known as dynamic link libraries, or DLLs, that had been written onto the Wisconsin computer. The programs were designed to “redirect” a drawing if certain conditions were met, according to the complaint, helping orchestrate the outcome.
Source: Here’s how brothers rigged lotteries, authorities say