Monday January 30, 2012

Eyeing The Net: Social Networks Under Close Watch

Mining open source data for marketing purposes horrified privacy groups for a long time but surveillance saga of internet took a new ominous twist with the recent declaration by FBI.

In a move that is seen widely as another attack on free speech the agency is also planning to target individuals to build up an interactive map enabling it to trace users daily routine.

From ZDNet:

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is looking to develop a Web app that can continuously monitor social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace, as well as various news feeds. The organization’s goal is to improve its real-time intelligence when it comes to current and emerging security threats.

Posted in: Net by bubblejam at 07:10 AM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Sunday January 29, 2012

Hot Topic:
Is Global Warming Just Hot Air?

Global warming is one of the most controversial issues of our time.

Now 16 scientists have publishing an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that casts doubt on the orthodox view of climate change.

From The Wall Street Journal:

In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: "I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?"

Posted in: Science by bubblejam at 10:51 PM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Friday January 27, 2012

Happy Anniversary:
Mars Rover's Eight Year Mission

The Mars rover Opportunity has just marked eight years on the red planet.

While its companion rover Spirit bit the dust long ago, Opportunity has managed to keep on trucking as it searches for signs of life.

From Time:

It was on January 25, 2004 that the rover Opportunity — swaddled in its cocoon of shock-absorbing air bags — bounced down on Mars for a mission designed to last a minimum of three months and a maximum of just a year or two. Eight years later, Opportunity is slower, creakier and much, much dirtier, and yet it's still at work, hunkering down on the crater rim as it prepares to ride out another bitter Martian winter. When the relative warmth and sunlight of spring return, the golf-cart-sized rover will resume its wanderings, adding to the mass of data it's already collected about Mars's wet, balmy, and perhaps biologically active past.

Posted in: Science by bubblejam at 08:04 PM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Wednesday January 25, 2012

Mother Russia on the Move:
Russia Eyes Moon Base With Nasa

In spite of the failure of the recent Phobos-Grunt mission, Russia's space programme is still forging ahead with ambitious ideas.

One possible way forward might be a joint base on the Moon in cooperation with Nasa.

From The Register:

"We don’t want the man to just step on the Moon,” agency chief Vladimir Popovkin said in an interview with Vesti FM radio station. “Today, we know enough about it. We know that there is water in its polar areas," he added. "We are now discussing how to begin [the Moon’s] exploration with NASA and the European Space Agency."

Posted in: Science by bubblejam at 12:29 AM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Tuesday January 24, 2012

Become A Secret Agent While You Wait

If you were ever wondering if you had what it takes to be a secret agent than, courtesy of MI5, you can finally put your abilities to the test.

Fortunately you can practice your wits online in case of abysmal failure.

From Spy Blog:

"The United Kingdom Security Service MI5 has an interesting little Quiz, to help pre-screen potential Intelligence Officer recruits...
This fictional scenario involves some alleged foreign intelligence officers operating from their Embassy in London"

Posted in: Politics by bubblejam at 05:40 AM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Monday January 23, 2012

YouTube expands by one hour every second

The ubiquitous online video sharing website keeps growing at the astounding rate.

Its the third most popular destination on the net and it seems that there nothing more satisfying for millions of users than watching and uploading or vice versa...

From New Scientist:

People who complain about some of the racier content on YouTube are often told that the sheer rate at which that content is uploaded makes it impossible to moderate. That claim would seem to be more than borne out by the figures released by Google, YouTube's owner, today.

Posted in: Net by bubblejam at 04:44 AM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Sunday January 22, 2012

No Guts, No Glory:
Genetically Engineered Gut Bacteria Turn Seaweed Into Biofuel

Biofuels have been controversial as they have caused the prices of crops such as corn to rise.

But researchers may have found a way to turn abundant seaweed into ethanol using genetically engineered E.coli bacteria -- which could eventually be used to manufacture other substances such as plastics.

From Scientific American:

The microbe could turn out to be useful for making molecules other than ethanol, such as isobutanol or even the precursors of plastics, Yoshikuni says. "Consider the microbe as the chassis with engineered functional modules," or pathways to produce a specific molecule, Yoshikuni says. "If we integrate other pathways instead of the ethanol pathway, this microbe can be a platform for converting sugar into a variety of molecules."

Posted in: Science by bubblejam at 08:30 PM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Saturday January 21, 2012

Hotshots:
Coronal Mass Ejection From Sun Heads For Earth

A coronal mass ejection (CME) from the Sun is heading for Earth but don't panic just yet.

Whilst the CME was originally predicted to head straight for us, it now looks like we're in for a near miss.

From The Washington Post:

“At first glance, it was, ‘Oh my God, it’s at the center of the [sun’s] disk, it ought to go right to the Earth,’ ” Kunches said. But upon further review and “head-scratching” Thursday, NOAA’s space weather team calculated that most of the plasma blob should pass harmlessly over the top of our planet.

Posted in: Science by bubblejam at 05:28 PM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Friday January 20, 2012

The DNA Code:
Using Genetics to Defeat Counterfeiters

Methods to defeat counterfeiters such as holograms often don't take long to be circumvented.

So the US Department of Defense are turning to DNA as a way of embedded invisible 'barcodes' that are impractical to replicate.

From Wired:

“DNA is beyond what the bad guys can copy,” Hayward says. “You can counterfeit your way through visual inspection, through X-Rays. DNA is easily the strongest platform for authentication in the world.”

Posted in: Science by bubblejam at 11:16 PM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Thursday January 19, 2012

Sweden formally recognise file sharing as a religion

The Church of Kopimism was founded by the group of around 3,000 Swedish file sharers and approved as a spiritual movement before Christmas last year.

The name is derived from "Kopimi" pronounced "copy me" and its followers hold sharing information as a sacred act and believe that monitoring and eavesdropping on people is wrong.

From BBC News:

"The church, which holds CTRL+C and CTRL+V (shortcuts for copy and paste) as sacred symbols, does not directly promote illegal file sharing, focusing instead on the open distribution of knowledge to all.

It was founded by 19-year-old philosophy student and leader Isak Gerson. He hopes that file-sharing will now be given religious protection.."

Posted in: Esoterics by bubblejam at 04:32 PM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Wednesday January 18, 2012

RIM Job:
Blackberry Maker Prepares For Sale to Samsung

Blackberry maker RIM has been in financial trouble for some time, but salvation may be on the horizon.

Rumours indicate that Samsung may be interested in acquiring the Canadian smartphone manufacturer.

From The Globe and Mail:

The Boy Genius Report blog said on Tuesday, citing “a trusted source with knowledge of the situation,” that RIM's co-CEO Jim Balsillie was pushing for a sale to Samsung, but that talks had so far led nowhere, given the large difference between what RIM executives think their company is worth and what potential suitors are willing to pay.

Posted in: Net by bubblejam at 10:46 PM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Wednesday January 18, 2012

Wikipedia and Boing Boing take a break today!

Most popular encyclopedia in the world and immensely popular guide to what is quirky on the net are joining forces in protest at looming SOPA regulation slowly making its way through US House and Senate and will be unaccessible for the next 24 hours for English speaking users.

They will be joined in the blackout - symbolising what the SOPA may allow content creators to do to sites they accuse of copyright infringement - by thousands of other popular sites including Reddit, Wired, browser pioneer Mozilla and photo-sharing favorite Twitpic.

From Wikipedia:

Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the statement from the Wikimedia Foundation here). The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States – the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate – that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia.

Posted in: Politics by bubblejam at 04:50 AM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Sunday January 15, 2012

Here's Ears:
Scientists Create Tiniest Microphone Ever

Scientists have developed the smallest microphone ever created, using gold nanoparticles and lasers.

The tiny microphone could record the sound of activity inside the smallest cells.

From ScienceNOW:

Feldmann's team recorded and analyzed the movements of this particle in response to acoustic vibrations caused by the laser-induced heating of other gold nanoparticles in the water nearby. As well as having unprecedented sensitivity, their nano-ear could also calculate the direction the sound had come from. They suggest three-dimensional arrays of nano-ears working together could be used to listen in on cells or microorganisms such as bacteria and viruses, all of which emit very faint acoustic vibrations as they move and respire. "There are definitely medical opportunities which we can tackle together with the right people," Feldmann says, "but we just have to see how it works first."

Posted in: Science by bubblejam at 10:57 PM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Thursday January 12, 2012

Phobos:
Russian Official Fears Space Mission Sabotage

The recent failure of the Phobos-Grunt mission to Mars damaged the pride of Russian space scientists.

Now a senior Russian official has inferred that Russia's space launch failures could be the result of interference of from other countries.

From The New York Times:

“We don’t want to accuse anybody, but there are very powerful devices that can influence spacecraft now,” Mr. Popovkin said in the interview. “The possibility they were used cannot be ruled out.”

Posted in: Science by bubblejam at 08:35 PM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Wednesday January 11, 2012

Minutes to Go:
Doomsday Clock Moves Closer to Midnight

Since 1947, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have maintained the Doomsday Clock, a metaphorical representation of how close we are to a nuclear apocalypse.

The bad news is that they have just decided to move the clock one minute closer to midnight, representing a deterioration in international security.

From The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

In a formal statement issued at the time of today's announcement, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists noted: "It is five minutes to midnight. Two years ago, it appeared that world leaders might address the truly global threats that we face. In many cases, that trend has not continued or been reversed. For that reason, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is moving the clock hand one minute closer to midnight, back to its time in 2007."

Posted in: Politics by bubblejam at 02:22 PM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Monday January 09, 2012

A Brief History of Hawking:
Surviving Motor Neurone Disease

Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease in 1963 and told he had months to live.

In a remarkable testament to his tenacity and will to surive, the scientist has just marked his 70th birthday.

From BBC News:

The man himself says: "I have been lucky, that my condition has progressed more slowly than is often the case. But it shows that one need not lose hope.

Posted in: Science by bubblejam at 05:17 PM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Sunday January 08, 2012

Spy Games:
Have Nokia, RIM, and Apple Given India Backdoor Access to Mobiles?

A set of documents liberated by hackers may indicate that the Indian government is seeking assistance with eavesdropping from mobile device manufacturers.

The documents seem to indicate that companies such as Nokia, RIM, and Apple have provided government agencies with backdoor access to their mobile devices.

From ZDNet:

Earlier today I came across scans of a set of documents that are internal communications between the Indian Military. The documents claim the existence of a system known as RINOA SUR. While I did not find what SUR stands for but RINOA is RIM, NOkia and Apple. And this is where things start to get very interesting, according to the set of documents, the RINOA SUR platform was used to spy on the USCC—the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

Posted in: Net by bubblejam at 10:18 PM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Saturday January 07, 2012

Hard Luck Story:
Vendors Ramp Up Hard Drive Prices

Floods in Thailand late last year wiped out a huge chunk of the world's hard drive manufacturing capacity.

Now the shortage of drives has caught up with businesses as vendors ramp up their prices.

From Computerworld:

"Similar to other vendors we have seen a negative impact to our drive costs. While we initially absorbed the cost increases to protect our partners and customers, we are no longer able to do so," NetApp stated in its announcement.

Posted in: Net by bubblejam at 01:09 PM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

Tuesday January 03, 2012

Un-Like:
Facebook Cited in One-Third of UK Divorce Petitions

Facebook has been cited in one-third of UK divorce petitions in 2011.

This is a increase from 2009 when the social network was only mention in one-fifth of divorce petitions.

From T3:

The top three reasons for listing Facebook in the petitions, according to the survey, were: Inappropriate messages to members of the opposite sex; Separated spouses posting nasty comments about each other; and, Facebook friends reporting spouse’s behaviour.

Posted in: Net by bubblejam at 06:07 PM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry