Desert ants in Tunisia smell in stereo, sensing odours from two different directions at the same time. Pigeons, rats and even people may also smell in stereo, but ants are the first animal known to use it for navigation
Facebook and Twitter users are under attack by cybercriminals — and the incidents are rising, Sophos says in its its 2010 Security Threat Report released Monday. In the past 12 months, Sophos says, cybercriminals have focused more attacks on social-network users. Spam and malware are leading the charge. Fifty-seven percent of users surveyed reported getting spammed via social-networking sites — an increase of 70.6 percent from 2008. And 36 percent say they have been sent malware via social-networking sites, a 69.8 percent increase
An invasion of giant squid in Orange County has fishermen and women hitting the waters off Newport Beach, angling for an unusual catch. The squid, some up to 60 pounds and 4 feet long, were first caught Thursday afternoon, and anglers began making twilight expeditions Friday night to catch the nocturnal sea creatures, which spend daytime close to the ground and rise to the surface at night
The ultra-high-strength composite metal foam created by Afsaneh Rabiei is a highlight of a well-traveled career during which the researcher has tried to learn everything she can about advanced materials. The result: a brand new material that can save energy and lives
Single sided deafness affects around 200 out of every million people the world over. The loss of stereo hearing can prove dangerous when crossing the street, or other mobile environments. Sonitus Medical has developed a new device, SoundBite, that uses the natural conduction of teeth and bone to transmit sound to the inner ear even after the outer and middle ear are damaged
Australians are leading the world when it comes to time spent on social media sites, with a new survey showing we spend on average almost seven hours a month on sites such as Twitter and Facebook. The poll, which surveyed audience use in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Brazil, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, France, Spain and Italy, has Australian users topping the stats at six hours and 52 minutes, followed by the US and the UK
It has never been a secret that the majority of files being shared over BitTorrent are movies and music that are likely being shared illegally. Princeton senior Sauhard Sahi confirmed this recently after setting out to survey the content available on BitTorrent and, although there are caveats to his findings, they highlight the relationship DRM has with illegal file sharing. As in: the more DRM there is on the legit versions of the content, the more popular it is on P2P
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has signed up with iCopyright, the American copyright bounty hunters used by the Associated Press, to offer ridiculous licenses for the quotation of CBC articles on the web. These are the same jokers who sell you a license
to quote 5 words from the AP —via Boing Boing
No more leaks, at least not for a while. The website WikiLeaks, known for breaking numerous news stories — ranging from publishing secret documents on Guantanamo Bay to corruption in Kenya — has shut down due to a lack of funds. In a statement posted on its website, WikiLeaks parent, The Sunshine Press, a non-profit organisation funded by human rights campaigners, investigative journalists and the general public, explained that the site needed $600,000 in order to survive 2010 and pay their employees. Since the December launch of their funding drive, the organisation has managed to raise just $130,000 in donations, far short of the amount required
Google has begun to phase out support for Internet Explorer 6, the browser identified as the weak link in a cyber attack on the search engine. The firm said from 1 March some of its services, such as Google Docs, would not work properly
with the browser. It recommended individuals and firms upgrade as soon as possible
The Central Intelligence Agency, PayPal, and hundreds of other organisations are under an unexplained assault that’s bombarding their web sites with millions of compute-intensive requests. The massive
flood of requests is made over the web sites’ SSL, or secure-sockets layer, port, causing them to consume more resources than normal connections, according to researchers at Shadowserver Foundation, a volunteer security collective. The torrent started about a week ago and appears to be caused by recent changes made to a botnet known as Pushdo
Bill and Melinda Gates announced plans Friday to invest $10 billion in the fight against a number of illnesses including AIDS and said the record donation could save nearly nine million lives. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, they said the 10-year program will focus on vaccines for AIDS, tuberculosis, rota virus and pneumonia. We must make this the decade of vaccines,
said Bill Gates. Vaccines are a miracle,
added Melinda Gates. With just a few doses, they can prevent deadly diseases for a lifetime. We’ve made vaccines our priority at the Gates Foundation because we’ve seen firsthand their incredible impact on children’s lives
3 Strikes
is a regime being introduced in various countries around the world to try to deal with illicit file-sharing. Already Taiwan, South Korea and France are putting their versions of the plan into action and other countries have similar proposals under discussion. In one form or another, could the same be coming to the United States?
As Steve Jobs and Apple prepared to announce their new tablet device, activists opposed to Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) from the group Defective by Design were on hand to draw the media’s attention to the increasing restrictions that Apple is placing on general purpose computers. The group set up Apple Restriction Zones
along the approaches to the Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts in San Francisco, informing journalists of the rights they would have to give up to Apple before proceeding inside
A major hurdle to producing fusion energy using lasers has been swept aside, results in a new report show. The controlled fusion of atoms — creating conditions like those in our Sun — has long been touted as a possible revolutionary energy source.—However, there have been doubts about the use of powerful lasers for fusion energy because the plasma
they create could interrupt the fusion
Neurons have been created directly from skin cells for the first time, in a remarkable study that suggests that our biological makeup is far more versatile than previously thought. If confirmed, the discovery that one tissue type can be genetically reprogrammed to become another, could revolutionise treatments for conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s, opening up the possibility of turning a patient’s own skin cells into the neurons that they need
Micro-blogging site Twitter is developing technology that will prevent government censorship after Iran and China moved to censor its users. Speaking at the World Economic Forum, Twitter CEO and co-founder Evan Williams said the company was working on hacks
to stop any blocking by foreign governments
Apple has put an end to weeks of speculation by unveiling its tablet device, which it has called the iPad. Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive described the tablet, which will cost between $499 and $829 in the US, as a third category
between smartphones and laptops. The device, which looks like a large iPhone, can be used to watch films, play games and browse the web. Apple has declined to reveal whether the iPad 3G model would be available in Australia, but confirmed that the Wi-Fi-only version would be available in March
Oceans of liquid diamond, filled with solid diamond icebergs, could be floating on Neptune and Uranus. The research, based on the first detailed measurements of the melting point of diamond, found diamond behaves like water during freezing and melting, with solid forms floating atop liquid forms. The surprising revelation gives scientists a new understanding about diamonds and some of the most distant planets in our solar system
In late October, Newsday, the Long Island daily that the Dolans bought for $650 million, put its web site, newsday.com, behind a pay wall. The paper was one of the first non-business newspapers to take the plunge by putting up a pay wall, so in media circles it has been followed with interest. Could its fate be a sign of what others, including The New York Times, might expect? So, three months later, how many people have signed up to pay $5 a week, or $260 a year, to get unfettered access to newsday.com? The answer: 35 people. As in fewer than three dozen. As in a decent-sized elementary-school class
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