Der Dieselmotor wurde kreiert, um Dampfmaschinen abzulösen – daraus wurde eine Erfolgsgeschichte. Sein Erfinder hatte davon aber nichts. Der mysteriöse Tod Rudolf Diesels vor 100 Jahren sorgt bis heute für Gerüchte.
Ein «historischer Meilenstein» mit Pannen: Eine Woche später als geplant ist der private Raumtransporter Cygnus bei der Internationalen Raumstation angekommen.
Die Weibchen des urzeitlichen Quastenflossers verfolgen seit Jahrmillionen eine 1-Vater-Strategie, wie sie für Fische ungewöhnlich ist. Forscher stiessen dank eines Zufallsfangs auf das Phänomen.
Ein Forschungsprojekt der Uni Zürich wird gestoppt, nachdem Rehkitze wegen zu enger Halsbänder getötet werden mussten. Der Bund und die Uni können den Entscheid und die harten Vorwürfe nicht nachvollziehen.
Jacques Morel hütet die Uhren für die offizielle Zeit der Schweiz – und damit die Schaltsekunden.
Es wird wärmer, aber nicht so warm, wie es sollte. Ist das CO2 schuld oder doch die Sonnenaktivitäten? Oder pausiert der Wandel einfach? Die Klimaforscher sind am Ende ihres Lateins.
Das Klima hat sich in den vergangenen 15 Jahren weit weniger stark erwärmt als erwartet. Ist das mehr als ein Wimpernschlag in der Geschichte der Erde?
Steigende Meeresspiegel, ungebremster Temperaturanstieg: Klimaexperte Urs Neu sagt, was der Weltklimabericht an Neuem bringt – und was er über die Schweiz aussagt.
«Tages-Anzeiger»-Journalist Martin Läubli hat in Stockholm die Präsentation des Weltklimaberichts mitverfolgt. Wie er die neusten Erkenntnisse einschätzt.
Beim Freiräumen des Bohrlochs des St. Galler Geothermie-Projekts ist es zu leicht erhöhter seismischer Aktivität gekommen. Vorsichtshalber wurden die Fräsarbeiten in knapp 4400 Metern Tiefe gestoppt.
Der Weltklimarat ist sich nun zu 95 Prozent sicher, dass der Mensch für die Klimaerwärmung verantwortlich ist. Er stellt in Stockholm seinen neusten Bericht vor.
Tief im Berg, ganz hinten im Glarnerland, baut die Axpo für 2,1 Milliarden ihr neues Pumpspeicherwerk Linthal 2015. Die riesige Maschinenkaverne würde sich perfekt als Drehort für einen Actionfilm eignen.
Wo das Horbital vor den Felswänden auf drei Seiten kapituliert: Eine Wanderung von Engelberg auf die Fürenalp (OW).
Bemerkenswerter Fund des Mars-Rovers: Curiosity ist bei einer Bodenanalyse auf Wasser gestossen. Und zwar auf relativ viel.
Morgen wird in Stockholm ein neuer Bericht zum Klimawandel präsentiert. Schweizer Forscher haben einen gewichtigen Teil dazu beigetragen. Wie sattelfest sind Sie in diesem Thema?
Als erster Schweizer hat Hans Rudolf Herren den Alternativen Nobelpreis bekommen. Im Interview sagt der Agrarforscher, wie viel Preisgeld er erhält und was er damit macht.
In Stockholm wurden die Right Livelihood Awards vergeben. Mit dem Agrarforscher Hans R. Herren ist zum ersten Mal ein Schweizer unter den Geehrten.
Zwei Russen und ein US-Amerikaner konnten mit ihrer Sojus-Kapsel an der Internationalen Raumstation auf 410 Kilometern Höhe andocken. Für ihren Flug brauchten sie nur wenige Stunden, früher dauerte es zwei Tage.
Neuer Rekord: Über 13'000 Abfahrtshöhenmeter in 13 Stunden haben zwei Schweizer zurückgelegt. Einer der beiden Mountainbiker ist der dreifache Weltmeister Thomas Frischknecht.
Nur gerade 90 Meter breit ist die Insel, die sich nach dem Erdbeben in Belutschistan aus dem Meer vor Pakistan erhob. Florian Haslinger vom Schweizerischen Erdbebendienst SED erklärt das Phänomen.
Gen. Keith Alexander, head of the embattled National Security Agency (NSA), says he is willing to share cyberattack information with the private sector—an offer seen as a Trojan horse by at least one expert. Last week, told attendees of his keynote at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit that the NSA, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the CIA are ready to pass information back and forth with a select group of private organizations, provided they get the authorization from Congress. "We need the authority for us to share with them and them to share with us," Alexander said, Kaspersky Labs' ThreatPost security website. Alexander's comments came a day after U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, that she planned to move forward with a draft of the Senate's version of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). The House version passed in April.
Struggling smartphone maker BlackBerry is being taken private by one of its largest shareholders. Here's a quick primer to get you up to date on the news and what it means for customers and the industry.
While the energy industry may fear the appearance of another on the systems they use to keep oil and gas flowing and the electric grid powered, an equally devastating attack could come from a much more mundane source: phishing. Rather than worry about exotic cyber weapons , companies that have Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems—computer systems that monitor and control industrial processes—should make sure that their anti-phishing programs are in order, say security experts. "The way malware is getting into these internal networks is by social engineering people via email," Rohyt Belani, CEO and co-founder of the anti-phishing training firm PhishMe, said in an interview. "You send them something that's targeted, that contains a believable story, not high-volume spam, and people will act on it by clicking a link or opening a file attached to it," he said. "Then, boom, the attackers get that initial foothold they're looking for."
Rogue web plug-ins that inject their own content over the top of legitimate ads are still in widespread use by unscrupulous advertisers—and Google, Yahoo, and other major networks are keeping them in business, according to a recent study. An ad injector is usually installed on an end-user's computer as part of a bundle in a free software download, according to Harvard Business School associate professor web pages, allowing advertisers to slap their own content onto any website they want—even if it blocks out existing ads or violates a site's ad policies. The companies behind the injectors have substantial advantages over legitimate advertisers—the authors noted injected ads tend to rate well on click-through and conversion analytics, and the fact that the injectors don't have to spend any money creating content of their own makes them even more profitable. Moreover, the complexity, automation and large number of intermediaries present in the online ad market mean that it can be difficult to detect injector traffic, which means that both those intermediaries and the advertisers themselves may inadvertently contribute to the problem.
The Federal Circuit Court of Australia has awarded Microsoft $304,994.95 in damages after Paul McLane, trading as Software Paul, was caught selling counterfeit Microsoft software. This is not the first time McLane has been in trouble for selling counterfeit software. The court ordered McLane to pay $4994.95 in compensatory damages plus $300,000 in addition damages due to his repeated infringements. The Court has also imposed orders to restrain him from infringing copyright in the future. McLane previously had 1473 counterfeit discs seized by the Victorian Police in 2005 and a further 799 in 2006.
Social media has become a top target of hackers and mobile devices are expanding that target, IBM reported last week in its X-Force 2013 Mid-Year Trend and Risk Report. Attacks on businesses are getting increasingly sophisticated, said. Some attacks studied by IBM researchers were opportunistic—exploiting unpatched and untested web applications vulnerable to basic SQL injection or cross-site scripting. Others were successful, the report continued, because they violated the basic trust between end user and sites or social media personalities thought to be safe and legitimate. "Social media has become a new playground for attackers," said Kevin Skapinetz, program director for product strategy for IBM Security Systems.
Java was the most targeted development platform for exploit attacks during the first half of the year, and attacks have increasingly shifted to zero-day vulnerabilities, according to F-Secure's new threat report. "Of the top five most targeted vulnerabilities, four are found in the Java development, either the Runtime Environment (JRE) or the browser plug-in," according to the report, based on information about attacks detected through F-Secure's sensors and telemetry systems. The company notes that it's not surprising Java is an appealing target since "next to the Windows operating system (also a popular target for exploits), Java is probably the program in an organization's IT setup." Analysis of attacks shows the top five accounting for 95 percent of all attacks, with the U.S. the geographic location most targeted. F-Secure estimates 78 out of every 1000 users in the U.S. saw a detection identifying an exploit of a specific vulnerability in the last six months. Germany also saw a fairly high number of attacks with about 60 out of 1000 users hit within the same time frame. "Unfortunately, may not be a feasible option for companies that use Java in business-critical instances," the F-Secure report points out. Defense and mitigation strategies might involve something more complicated than uninstalling a program, such as "some combination of tweaking Java's security settings, configuring web browser settings to minimize unwanted applet execution (or installing other third-party plug-ins to do so) and monitoring network traffic."
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak admits he has enjoyed many adventures in hacking often for the sake of pranks on friends and family, especially back in his college days and during the early years of working on computers and the Internet. "I like to play jokes," Wozniak said jovially as he addressed his audience of thousands of security professionals attending the ASIS Conference in Chicago last week. The famed admitted he also had some fun with lighthearted forays into hacking computer and telecommunications networks several decades ago back in his college years and while learning about electronics and computers. People with imagination in engineering are naturally drawn to the idea of finding ways to bypass security controls as part of the process of discovering how things work, and Wozniak said this was especially true of himself. "But I never once hacked a computer for real," he told his audience, meaning his break-ins and intrusions were done in the spirit of exploration, never for profit or malice. One youthful prank involved some experimentation into a shared computer system several where he left nine pages of Polish jokes that were dumped on users.
A criminal group exploiting the recently discovered Internet Explorer browser zero-day vulnerability has been linked to the Chinese hackers who earlier this year. The connection between the two groups is in the command and control infrastructure used, says security vendor FireEye. Within the two infrastructures were similar malware, IP addresses, and email addresses used to register domains. The latest attack, which FireEye has appears to target manufacturers, government entities and media organizations in Japan, said Darien Kindlund, manager of FireEye Threat Intelligence. The group hid IE exploits on three Japanese news sites, hoping to compromise visitors' PCs. The compromised sites recorded more than 75,000 page views before the exploits were discovered. The attackers apparently were casting a wide net in looking for systems belonging to the desired targets. The exploit would have worked on all versions of IE, starting with IE 6.
Google last week started rolling out a for Chrome, making good on a promise from last month when it offered the revamp to users running rougher-edged versions of its browser. Most users gave the new look a failing grade. "Fail, fail, fail," said Philip Wright, one of those who commented on the announcement. Google characterized the addition as a way to speed up search. "We're rolling out a feature that can make searching faster and simpler with a streamlined New Tab page," said the Chrome team on its page. "If you use Google as your default search engine, the next time you open a new tab in Chrome the search bar will be front and center ... [and] you'll also be able to check out current Google Doodles."
The Chinese government may be about to ease up on its policy of censoring its citizens. The and The New York Times, will be unblocked in one area of Shanghai. The government, according to the report, is lifting the Internet access ban in Shanghai's free-trade zone and is set to accept bids from foreign telecommunications companies for licenses that would allow them to within the special economic zone. "In order to welcome foreign companies to invest and to let foreigners live and work happily in the free-trade zone, we must think about how we can make them feel like at home," said an unnamed source in the Post report. "If they can't or read The New York Times, they may naturally wonder how special the free-trade zone is compared with the rest of China."
The Swedish Svea Court of Appeal has overturned a verdict against Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg for intrusion and fraud against Nordea bank, but has upheld the verdict finding him The Court of Appeal has rejected a District Court's judgment against Svartholm Warg in which he was found guilty of involvement in fraud and However, it agreed with the District Court that Svartholm Warg should be sentenced for participation in the hack against Logica. The total sentence was reduced from two years to one. In its verdict, the Court of Appeal made a different assessment than the District Court in regard to the theory that Svartholm Warg's computer may have been remotely controlled during the intrusions. The court put a lot of emphasis on expert witness Jacob Appelbaum, who was a new witness during the appeals trial. Applebaum showed the court that the firewall on Svartholm Warg's computer was configured in such a way that it could have been controlled remotely, via a server written in Python, for example.
Microsoft on Friday launched yet another trade-in program to convince consumers to switch to a Windows device, this time aimed at iPhone owners. On its smartphones—the 2011 and 2012 editions, respectively—and pay a minimum of $200 for each. The Redmond, Washington technology company will issue the funds as a gift card good for purchases at the Microsoft Store. As in the that debuted two weeks ago, customers must bring their used iPhones to a retail outlet in the U.S., Canada or Puerto Rico—trade-ins are not supported online—where a sales representative will evaluate the device and decide on the dollar amount. Microsoft has 77 stores in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. "Microsoft Store gift-card value ... is subject to Microsoft's discretion and manager approval," the website said. "All trade-ins are final. Cannot be redeemed for cash. Limit 1 per customer."
Krebs on Security recently revealed that of three of the biggest data mining companies on the planet. LexisNexis, Dunn & Bradstreet, and Kroll Background America Inc. have been systematically plundered by hackers, most likely from Eastern Europe, who have stolen millions of personal and business records and are A site called SSNDOB has been selling names, social security numbers, birthdates, and more culled from these sites via a botnet attack last spring. According to Brian Krebs, you . A background check would run you $12; a drivers license record $4, and assorted other bits of highly personal info costs 50 cents to $1.50 per.
Cybercriminals still make extensive use of known vulnerabilities, even as zero-day attacks continue to rise. In joint research carried out by Kaspersky Lab and Outpost24, unpatched loopholes continue to be a popular means of carrying out attacks. "The results are a wake-up call for those searching for tailored security solutions that cover the 'threats of tomorrow,'" he said. "It highlighted that training your staff to be prudent is just as important."
Is it time to finally ship the Xi3 Piston game console? The modular computing company on Friday promised that "the wait is over". On Monday, Sept. 30, at 11 a.m. MT (10 a.m. PT), the Salt Lake City-based company promises "additional details" on the new Piston console, which everyone will be a Steambox or Steam Machine, powered by Valve Software' new SteamOS. Valve announced a week ago that it would have , an oddly-shaped controller that chose to use touchscreens, rather than analog joysticks, as a controller. So far, Xi3 has never explicitly stated that the Piston would be Steam powered; in fact, the company has previously avoided using Valve's name and the Steam service, even though Valve has invested in the hardware maker.
Ricky Gervais has a new mockumentary on Netflix, and his fellow standups bring the funny too.
Hackers backed by Iran have penetrated an unclassified U.S. Navy network in one of the most serious incidents of cybercrime yet by the Middle East nation, according to a report Friday. The U.S. doesn’t believe important data was stolen, but the attacks showed a new level of Iranian hacking power, including the ability to access military data, U.S. officials told . Either agents working directly for the Iranian government or an outside group with Iran’s approval allegedly carried out the attacks. The attacks came just as U.S. and Iranian officials tried to restart negotiations over Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. President Barack Obama and Iranian President Hasan Rouhani spoke by phone on Friday. Cybersecurity experts have said China and Russia have more sophisticated hacking abilities than Iran or North Korea but the smaller countries are , seeking retaliation rather than economic gain.
Judges and police investigators are on track to submit about the same number of requests to Microsoft for end user data this year as they did in 2012, according to figures released Friday. Microsoft received 37,196 such requests worldwide in the first six months of the year, meaning it’s on track to field about the same number of requests as last year, when just over 75,000 were submitted. Microsoft disclosed the figures in its for the first half of 2013. Five countries accounted for almost three-quarters of the requests: the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany and Turkey.
Imagine a rain-slicked parapet, thunder roaring like the shouts of gods—and a Nokia smartphone, whose battery has run dry. Now imagine holding that phone to the sky, screaming defiance, as a bolt hurtles itself at your outstretched hand. —and you walk away unscathed, with the phone charged to maximum. Today, that’s a pretty great way to get yourself killed. Tomorrow, too. But Nokia, together with the University of Southampton, has taken the first steps to “harnessing the power of lightning for personal use.” Check out the video below, where Nokia creates an artificial high-voltage arc to demonstrate how a smartphone could eventually be charged by lightning. “That the Nokia Lumia 925 could withstand this sort of experiment is testament to the renowned high quality and durability of Nokia’s devices and the company’s continuing research to increase the already outstanding reliability of its products,” the company said.
Let me tell you the moment I was sold on Shadow Warrior. I was sitting in an air-conditioned trailer in Los Angeles, during E3, and the opening cutscene was playing. Lo Wang, dressed in a well-pressed suit, cranked up the radio and blasted Stan Bush's “You've Got the Touch.” Then he...started singing along. Horribly. Spouting off short lines like, “Oh yeah,” whenever there was a break in the lyrics. And then he lit up a cigarette, settled back in the driver's seat, and kept singing. This is the type of dumb I like.
Several recent IPOs and eBay’s $800 million cash offer for payments startup BrainTree this week highlight what looks like a burgeoning market for tech initial public offerings and mergers and acquisitions. On Friday, for example, Violin Memory, a flash storage maker, and RingCentral, a provider of cloud-business communications products, both went public. Last week, Benefitfocus, a provider of cloud-based benefits software solutions, and FireEye, which offers a virtual machine-based security platform, went public. Meanwhile, Twitter announced that it plans to go public, and Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group will also pursue an IPO in the U.S. On the M&A front, following to enhance parent company PayPal’s mobile capabilities.
. about an ambitious new project he was embarking on. ”Free Unix!” began the missive. ”Starting this Thanksgiving I am going to write a complete Unix-compatible software system called GNU (for Gnu’s Not Unix), and give it away free to everyone who can use it. Contributions of time, money, programs and equipment are greatly needed,” he wrote.
Shares of solid-state storage vendor Violin Memory plunged more than 17 percent on the company’s first day of trading Friday, but analysts said the market for flash storage remains hot. Violin raised just over $160 million in an initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange, which the company will use primarily to expand its global sales and marketing capabilities. But the shares, which the company had priced at $9 per share, started trading far below that and closed at $7.11, down $1.89, or 21 percent. The weak result came on a gloomy day overall, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the tech-heavy Nasdaq both down. The market’s lukewarm response to Violin’s IPO doesn’t spell gloom for flash storage, which is still a young and fast-growing technology, industry analysts said. Enterprises are buying flash to speed up access to their data, and the price premium for the solid-state media versus spinning disks is shrinking. Violin makes all-flash arrays for enterprises, designed to accelerate applications such as databases and online transaction processing. The market for those products is growing by about 60 percent per year, IDC analyst Jeff Janukowicz said.
Facebook wants to make its ads less annoying to users by only showing them what they want to see, even if it means a dip in ad exposure for some marketers. The company is changing its ads algorithms to provide users with advertisements that are more relevant, and desirable, to them, it said Friday. Facebook already takes information both from marketers and end users into account when deciding how to place advertisements. But the social network will now put more emphasis on feedback from users to decide which ads to show them. .
You're done with the hashtags and retweets, and it's time to go for good.
A looming U.S. government shutdown could mean smaller paychecks for some government IT workers and contractors, as well as renegotiated contracts for some IT vendors. The possible shutdown is scheduled to happen next Tuesday unless President Barack Obama and congressional leaders can agree on a continuing budget resolution to keep agencies open. Many congressional Republicans want to cut funding for the huge health-care program known as Obamacare and approved in the 2010 , in exchange for passing a government funding bill, but Obama has refused to negotiate. With little time for Congress to avoid a government shutdown, some IT workers should prepare to be furloughed, said Trey Hodgkins, senior vice president for global public sector government affairs at TechAmerica, a large tech trade group. Many government IT systems will continue to run during a shutdown, and systems administrators will likely need to continue to work, but some IT workers, such as desktop support staff, may have an unpaid vacation during a shutdown, he said. IT workers who install new desktops won’t be needed if there aren’t many workers on the job, he said. “Those things can probably wait for a week” until the issues surrounding a shutdown are resolved, Hodgkins said.
One of the easiest ways to speed up your computer is to add a solid state drive (SSD). Though expensive, an SSD quickly pays for itself by greatly improving your efficiency and productivity. But what you gain in speed, you lose in storage because the 128GB or 256GB capacities of the more affordable SSDs just don't cut it for today’s storage requirements. But don’t fret. Below are some low cost ways to free additional space on your SSD (or even hard disk drive) to maximize its use. The most obvious method to maximize space on your SSD is taking advantage of cloud storage. Archiving old documents and files in the cloud can free precious space on your SSD, while allowing them to be easily accessed from anywhere with an Internet connection when necessary. .
It may be the world's largest PC vendor, but Lenovo isn't exactly a household name in the U.S. That could change over the next few years as the company builds up its brand and sells more product to U.S. consumers. But in its home market of China, Lenovo long ago finished the task of making its name known, and is reaping the benefits.In the U.S., you won't find one single Lenovo store. But walk around anywhere in China, and chances are you'll come across one of its 18,000 retail outlets in the country.The company's presence can especially be felt in Beijing, where Lenovo shops and company advertisements can be easily found across the city.
Google faces financial sanctions in France after failing to comply with an order to alter how it stores and shares user data to conform to the nation's privacy laws. , said Friday on its website. Google was ordered in June by the CNIL to comply with French data protection laws within three months. But Google had not changed its policies to comply with French laws by a deadline on Friday, because the company said that France's data protection laws did not apply to users of certain Google services in France, the CNIL said. The company "has not implemented the requested changes," the CNIL said.