astroengine writes "Using an Australian very long baseline array (VLBA) of three radio antennae, the first very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) campaign has been carried out on a SETI target star: the famous Gliese 581 red dwarf. However, after 8 hours of observing the star — thought to play host to six exoplanets, two of which are in the star's 'habitable zone' — no alien signals were detected. This result isn't surprising, as the likelihood of us stumbling across intelligent aliens living in the Gliese 581 system transmitting radio is extremely slim, but it does validate VLBI as a very exciting means of using the vast amount of exoplanetary data (coming from missions such as the Kepler space telescope) for 'directed SETI' projects."
MarkWhittington writes "The proposed SpaceX space port in Brownsville, Texas, has run into opposition from an environmental group. Environment Texas is conducting a petition drive to stop the project. According to a news release by the group, the proposed space port, which would include a launch pad and control and spacecraft processing facilities, would be 'almost surrounded' by a park and wildlife refuge. Environment Texas claims the launching of rockets would 'scare the heck' out of every creature in the area and would 'spray noxious chemicals all over the place.' The petition will demand SpaceX build the space port elsewhere." I suspect a lot of people in Brownsville are instead looking forward to the jobs, tourists and excitement that a spaceport would bring.
An anonymous reader links this article describing a newly installed set of rules affecting the already put-upon Internet users of China, specifically affecting users of social network Sina Weibo: "Sina Weibo users each will now receive 80 points to begin with, and this can be boosted to a full 100 points by those who provide their official government-issued identification numbers (like Social Security numbers in the U.S.) and link to a cellphone account. Spreading falsehoods will lead to deductions in points, among other penalties. Spreading an untruth to 100 other users will result in a deduction of two points. Spreading it to 100-1,000 other users will result in a deduction of five points, as well as a week's suspension of the account. Spreading it to more than 1,000 other users will result in a deduction of 10 points, as well as a 15-day suspension of the account." The article explains (in truth, not very helpfully) the extent to which users' freedom to talk freely will be curtailed; the long list of what not to do "includes using 'nonconforming' or false images to mislead," "exaggerating events," "presenting already [resolved] events as ongoing," "efforts to incite ethnic tensions and violence and hurt ethnic unity" and "efforts to spread cultist or superstitious thinking; spreading rumors to disrupt social harmony." (And of course the catch-all: "other activities stipulated by authorities.")
omar.sahal writes "Chris Granger's Light Table IDE, covered here previously on Slashdot, has been successfully funded by a Kickstarter campaign. 7,317 backers brought in $316,720, obliging Chris to support the Python Programming language with his first release. Chris and his team have also been successful in being funded by Y Combinator. Here's some more background (video) on the concepts developed by Bret Victor found in Light Table.
McGruber writes "Joseph Bonneau, a computer scientist at the University of Cambridge, calculated the password strengths of nearly 70 million Yahoo! users. He compared the strengths of passwords chosen by different demographic groups and compared the results. People over the age of 55 pick passwords double the strength of those chosen by people under 25 years old." Does this mean that the younger users are more cavalier and naive, or are they simply more cynical about the actual value of strong passwords in the era of large-scale user-database compromises?
judgecorp writes "Google has applied for the .lol domain in ICANN's sale of generic top level domains (gTLDs). Google also asked for .google, .docs, and .youtube at a cost of $185,000 each, in the round of applications which has finally closed. A glitch in the application system may have leaked some of the applicants' data to other applicants."
alphabet26 writes "The Canadian Information Processing Society has formally responded to the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act introduced in February of this year. Bill C-30 would grant authorities extended powers to monitor and track Canadians online. In the statement CIPS recommends that the Government of Canada 'prohibit access to personal information, related records/data, content, communications or records of internet use without the safeguard of a warrant.' CIPS is a non-profit organization that represents Canadian IT professionals and is a member of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP)."
aonsquared writes "In a previous Slashdot story, I demonstrated a voice-controlled robotic arm using the open-source speech decoder Julius. This time, I have managed to port the system to a Raspberry Pi to control the same robotic arm, and as usual, posted the tutorial and source code. Some negative reviews of the Raspberry Pi are starting to appear, and they're missing the educational point of this device — I'm hoping this will counter the naysayers, and help inspire a new generation of hackers, as well as also bring open-source speech recognition the same attention as proprietary solutions (i.e Siri) are getting!"
Hugh Pickens writes "Megan Garber writes that wireless routers have become the lawn signs of the digital age, particularly in large apartment buildings, where almost every unit has a unique Wi-Fi network that will be detected in turn by all the other unique Wi-Fi networks, SSIDs can be a cheeky, geeky way to broadcast messages to your immediate neighbors. Most of us keep it simple with '275_Elm_Street,' 'Apt23,' or 'my_network,' but some get more creative with names like: 'Apt112IHaveYourMail,' 'PrettyFlyForAWiFi,' or 'WeCanHearYouHavingSex' — a great way to freak out your annoying neighbors without hiding in their bushes or peeping in their windows late at night. Now the team at OpenSignalMaps, which maintains a database of geolocated Wi-Fi access points, analyzed the data they've collected about wireless routers to see whether Wi-Fi names are 'being used to fly political colors' and have found, globally, 1,140 results for 'Obama' and an additional six for 'Romney' — an indication not necessarily of Romney's popularity relative to the president's, but of the attention that four years as president can confer. 'There's something uniquely contemporary and incredibly old-school about that kind of broadcasting: It's messaging meant only for your immediate neighbors,' writes Garber. 'The politicized network names are like lawn signs for people who don't have lawns.'"
DillyTonto writes "U.S. officials have acknowledged playing a role in the development and deployment of Stuxnet, Duqu and other cyberweapons against Iran. The acknowledgement makes cyberattacks more legitimate as a tool of not-quite-lethal international diplomacy. It also legitimizes them as more-combative tools for political conflict over social issues, in the same way Tasers gave police less-than-lethal alternatives to shooting suspects and gave those who abuse their power something other than a club to hit a suspect with. Political parties and single-issue political organizations already use 'opposition research' to name-and-shame their opponents with real or exaggerated revelations from a checkered past, jerrymander districts to ensure their candidates a victory and vote-suppression or get-out-the-vote efforts to skew vote tallies. Imagine what they'll do with custom malware, the ability to DDOS an opponent's web site or redirect donations from an opponent's site to their own. Cyberweapons may give nations a way to attack enemies without killing anyone. They'll definitely give domestic political groups a whole new world of dirty tricks to play."
New submitter lsatenstein writes with this snippet from The H:"The regional government of Spain's Basque Country has decreed that all software produced for Basque government agencies and public bodies should be open sourced. Joinup, the European Commission's open source web site, cites an article in Spanish newspaper El Pais [English translation], saying that the only exceptions will be software that directly affects state security and a handful of projects which are being conducted in conjunction with commercial software suppliers."
schliz writes "Australian tech publication iTnews is defining 'patent trolls' as those who claim rights to an invention without commercializing it, and notes that government research organization CSIRO could come under that definition. The CSIRO in April reached a $220 million settlement over three U.S. telcos' usage of WLAN that it invented in the early 1990s. Critics have argued that the CSIRO had failed to contribute to the world's first wifi 802.11 standard, failed to commercialize the wifi chip through its spin-off, Radiata, and chose to wage its campaign in the Eastern District courts of Texas, a location favored by more notorious patent trolls."
Liberated Pixel Cup is an ambitious project backed by the FSF, Creative Commons. the Mozilla Foundation, and OpenGameArt to "program a bunch of free software games"; before the programming can get properly underway, though, they're looking for art that the game logic can manipulate, and they're using a contest to organize collecting it. Now, writes new submitter paroneayea, "Liberated Pixel Cup has announced that the art contest phase has just started. Several other bits have been announced as part of the post, including prize amounts, and a style guide, asset directory, and interactive demo section. Let the liberated pixeling commence!"
Nerval's Lobster writes "Google has sent invitations for a June 6 event in which it will apparently unveil 'The Next Dimension of Google Maps.' Meanwhile, rumor suggests Apple is preparing its own mapping service for iOS devices. The escalating battle over maps demonstrates the importance of cloud apps to tech companies' larger strategies." I only wish my phone would hold by default the X-million data points that my outmoded (but cheap and functional) dedicated GPS device does, without quite so much cloud-centric bottlenecking, and leave all expensive data use for optional overlays and current conditions.
aesoteric writes "Six weeks after Hollywood lost a landmark internet piracy case in Australia, it appears the film studios have gone cold on the idea of helping develop legal avenues to access copyrighted content as a way to combat piracy. Instead, they've produced research to show people will continue pirating even if there are legitimate content sources available. The results appear to support the studios' policy position that legislation is a preferable way of dealing with the issue." The industry-controlled kill switch is a popular idea all over the world.
Your gadgets are watching you and analyzing your routes -- all to identify your habits, your interests, and what you might want to buy.
Slowdowns at the popular social network bog down traffic on the entire Internet, a Comcast study reveals.
Swiss scientists find a way to treat spinal cord injuries and have disabled rats walking within weeks.
The LTE smartphone survives its immigration challenge and becomes available to customers this weekend; the LTE network requires a longer wait.
A security firm says Apple's lack of support for older Macintosh operating systems leaves Mac users vulnerable to cyber security attacks such as the recent Flashback.
While everyone copies one another or rebrands old software as the private cloud, enterprise buyers must sniff out real value.
Most 3D printers can only handle one material at a time. But the Objet Connex can use up to 14 materials in a single print job.
The app offers multiple ways to search for upcoming events by sport or channel.
The major car companies -- including Audi, BMW, Cadillac, Ford, GM, Mercedes, Volkswagen and Volvo -- all have advanced self-driving car projects in the works, as does Google, many universities and even the Pentagon.
It's that time of year again. Legions of eager, fresh-faced interns have invaded IT departments across the country, hoping to get real-world experience, or at least something that sounds impressive to put on their resumes.
Despite calls for more information about how Apple stores and analyzes the voice data it may be collecting through its Siri feature, Apple hasn't offered much explanation.
The social network's regulations require the company hold a vote whenever more than 7000 users comment on a proposed change.
If you're the type of mobile warrior who needs space in your bag to store random things you pick up during the day, this bag might not be for you.
Facebook has been suffering from intermittent outages since Thursday night and a hacker group is taking responsibility.
A teardown of the Samsung Galaxy S III shows that the phone has a camera similar to the one in the iPhone 4S.
By dynamically adding glyphs to text in websites, the PIE extension for Chrome aims to help you learn to read.
It can be very challenging implementing policies which ban the devices completely; someone somewhere will have a very compelling need for using mobile devices when they are out of the office.
Netflix is the largest U.S. online movie streaming service in terms of revenue, says market research firm IHS.
You've probably mastered your favorite built-in iOS apps, like Camera, Mail, and Safari. But other apps come preloaded on your iOS device, and they include some features you just might not have discovered yet.
After Oracle and Hewlett-Packard enjoyed a long and fruitful partnership in enterprise IT, it's hard to find anything that hasn't gone wrong with their...
Now that Microsoft has shipped the Release Preview for Windows 8, you may wondering whether to try it out. Here's what you need to know to do so.
The European Union is considering sweeping new data protection laws that would mandate many organizations in Europe formally appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO). To get ahead of the potential high demand for qualified candidates, organizations should consider defining their needs now.
Got an old dot matrix printer sitting around? One modder turned one into a DIY Twitter ticker.
Buying a Windows 7 PC and expecting a cheap upgrade to Windows 8? Microsoft provides details, clarifying dates, offer limits and the expected hit on its revenue.
Semiconductor company Microsemi has issued a statement denying that one of its products, a popular silicon chip called ProASIC3, has a backdoor built into it.
Google will host an event next week to talk about the “next dimension” of Google Maps--five days before Apple is expected to ditch the service in favor of its own mapping product for iOS.
This week's collection of free games has three different twists on the platformer formula.
Oracle has pledged to appeal a judge's ruling Thursday that Java APIs cited in its lawsuit against Google weren't subject to copyright protection, but legal...
June is off to a rocky beginning in the markets for technology companies as shares slump in the wake of troubling economic reports, though cooler heads appear to have...
PCWorld editors discuss the just-released Windows 8 Release Preview, some apps to make your desktop or laptop PC work with your Android phone, and what we expect from the E3 Expo next week.
You've probably mastered your favorite built-in iOS apps, like Camera, Mail, and Safari. But iOS comes with other stock apps too, with some handy and hidden features.
Earlier this week, NASA held a news conference. No big deal, right? But NASA’s decision to livestream the event--as well as field questions from Twitter--made this an important event to pay attention to.
This clever 99-cent app does more to convey your contact info than a paper card ever could.
Is your newsfeed is packed with dozens of videos and articles shared by apps your friends use? Facebook hears your pain and scales back the sharing.
UPDATE: U.S. President Barack Obama ordered the Stuxnet cyberattacks on Iran in an effort to slow the country's development of a nuclear program, according to a report.
Typography fans, rejoice: Here’s a really fascinating new font, created entirely out of DNA tiles
UPDATE: Apple has won a battle over the standard for a smaller SIM card, use of which would leave more room for other components in future phone designs.
No headphones required: A design student creates a mouth mounted MP3 player that uses your head as a speaker.
Securing your upgrade now might seem like a deal, but on second thought, consider whether today's hardware is best equipped to run Microsoft's new operating system.
Microsoft has enabled 'Do Not Track' by default in Internet Explorer for the Windows 8 Release Preview to give users a choice, and control over their own privacy.
The social network experiences scattered service interruptions; Facebook says it's fixed, but some issues continue.
Europe's lawmakers have asked for feedback on its proposed new rules on allocating state aid to fund broadband networks.
The Bluetooth functionality of the Flame cyberespionage malware could potentially be used to pinpoint the physical location of infected devices and allow local...
The United States and Israel developed Stuxnet for a specific purpose, but Pandora's Box is open now and the consequences impact us all.
As Microsoft's refreshed operating system nears release, tablets running Windows 8 are starting to appear -- and the next batch may be at Computex.
Microsoft confirms it will kick off a Windows 8 upgrade program this week, giving buyers of new Windows 7 PCs the chance to get the unreleased Windows 8 at a steep discount.
Google has asked European Union regulators to investigate alleged collusion between Nokia, Microsoft, and so-called patent trolls.
Piper Jaffray analysts think that in the long run any cannibalizing of Mac sales by iPads will pay off.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation rates services' online privacy efforts as getting better, but still with plenty of room for improvement.
Google's Chrome passed Mozilla's Firefox in May to become the world's second-most-popular browser, according to data released today by a Web analytics company.