The only thing cuter than this Game Master asking TeX gurus for help making his RPG notes look like they were scrawled by a gibbering madman, unhinged by the horrors he has witnessed
is the serious responses, with examples of output. He even got an answer saying how to typeset an Elder Sign! Truly, there is nothing more awesome than typesetting geeks helping gaming geeks — via Boing Boing
Twitter has acquired Internet security firm Dasient, the Sunnyvale, California startup said on its blog on Monday.
Dasient, which describes itself as a cloud-based Web anti-malware technology company, introduced in 2010 a service to protect advertisement networks and publishers from malicious ads — via redwolf.newsvine.com
.htaccess files are used to configure Apache, as well a range of other web servers. Despite the .htaccess file type extension, they are simply text files that can be edited using any text-editor. In this article, we’ll review what they are, and how you can use them in your projects — via Nettuts+
The excellent ReadNow application, which allows you to easily read articles from your Instapaper and Read It Later articles on your Mac, has been pulled from the Mac App Store …because of an infringement letter
. Developer Michael Schneider added [i]n my current situation I’m not allowed to provide any further information
.
The good news is that if you have already purchased the app, you can still download it from the Purchases
tab in the App Store.app even though the iTunes page for ReadNow now leads to the message, Your request could not be completed
.
However, as I waited for the Mac App Store to load on my iMac this morning, I found myself wondering “What would I do if I couldn’t re-download it from the Mac App Store?
Fortunately I have the app on my MacBook Air, so I could go to /Applications/ReadNow.app and then select File » Compress Read Now
(or control+click the app and choose Compress
from the menu) — via TUAW
Los Angeles-based Web hosting firm DreamHost reset the FTP and shell access passwords for all of its customers on Friday after detecting unauthorised activity within one of its databases.
One of DreamHost’s database servers was illegally accessed using an exploit that was not previously known or prevented by our layered security systems in place,
said DreamHost’s CEO, Simon Anderson, in a blog post on Saturday.
Even though it couldn’t be blocked, the unauthorised access was detected by one of the company’s intrusion detection systems (IDS), allowing its security team to react quickly and take the necessary mitigation steps.
The company notified its customers about the security breach via email and informed them that only passwords used for FTP and shell access were affected by the breach. Billing or personal information was not exposed, DreamHost said — via redwolf.newsvine.com
After snatching a notorious copyright troll’s name at auction, a Swiss company is turning Righthaven.com into a web hosting service. The intended customers? Publishers worried about the kind of abusive legal threats spewed out by the domain’s previous owner.
The Swiss courts don’t play games and registrars here cannot be scared,
said Stefan Thalberg of Ort Cloud, an ISP based in Zürich. Frivolous plaintiffs will find little comfort here.
With hosting in Switzerland and planned in Iceland, the new Righthaven promises infrajuridsictional infrastructure
— in other words, uptime that would require international co-operation to bring down — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Google has tweaked its search algorithm to punish websites with excessive advertising above-the-fold
, that is, websites that stack the top of the page with nothing but advertisements.
According to Google, rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away
. To help users get to that content, Google may drop ad-heavy websites from its search results.
Google says that the change will only affect about one in 100 searches, and emphasizes that websites using what Google’s Distinguished Engineer and SEO guru Matt Cutts calls ads above-the-fold to a normal degree
will not be affected — via redwolf.newsvine.com
How to use Facebook safely: Here’s the easy solution: don’t fucking surveil yourself! If you want to stay safe on Facebook, the answer is, you should not use it, and don’t tag people! There are benefits of using it, there are tradeoffs, but in the long run I think it’s going to be pretty bad that you gave a bunch of capitalists all your private information where the US government asserts and has the right to read it without a warrant and with the ability to gag the corporate.
What’s the greatest database of Jews on the planet? Facebook. What will happen when you want the biggest database of leftists on the planet? Or right wing people? That’s really, really scary, so one way to not be part of that dataset is to not put yourself in it voluntarily, and to chastise people who only hang out with you to tag you in Facebook as a sort of conspicuous consumption of the 21st Century say: Hey, if that’s all you get out of our friendship then go fuck yourself!
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.
Why can’t that work come home? Mr Obama asked.
Mr Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. Those jobs aren’t coming back,
he said, according to another dinner guest.
The president’s question touched upon a central conviction at Apple. It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that Made in the USA
is no longer a viable option for most Apple products — via redwolf.newsvine.com
At 40, the WikiLeaks founder comes across more like an embattled rebel commander than a hacker or journalist. He’s become better at handling the media – more willing to answer questions than he used to be, less likely to storm off during interviews — but the protracted legal battle has left him isolated, broke and vulnerable. Assange recently spoke to someone he calls a Western intelligence source
, and he asked the official about his fate. Will he ever be a free man again, allowed to return to his native Australia, to come and go as he pleases? He told me I was fucked,
Assange says.
Are you fucked?
I ask.
Assange pauses and looks out the window. The house is surrounded by rolling fields and quiet woods, but they offer him little in the way of escape. The British Supreme Court will hear his extradition appeal on 1 February — but even if he wins, he will likely still remain a wanted man. Interpol has issued a so-called red notice
for his arrest on behalf of Swedish authorities for questioning in connection with a number of sexual offences
— Qaddafi, accused of war crimes, earned only an orange notice
— and the US government has branded him a high-tech terrorist
, unleashing a massive and unprecedented investigation designed to depict Assange’s journalism as a form of international espionage. Ever since November 2010, when WikiLeaks embarrassed and infuriated the world’s governments with the release of what became known as Cablegate, some 250,000 classified diplomatic cables from more than 150 countries, the group’s supporters have found themselves detained at airports, subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury, and ordered to turn over their Twitter accounts and emails to authorities — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Megaupload users are crying foul after their personal files, not necessarily copyright-infringing material, stored with the file-sharing service was seized on Thursday along with a trove of illegally distributed copyrighted works.
Some of those users took to Twitter complaining about the loss of their files, as first reported by TorrentFreak. I had files up there…gone forever..and they were personal recordings! No copyright infringement!
said Twitter user J. Amir. Another user complained that her work files were now gone, and others used more colorful language to describe their predicament — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A novel high-speed, high-security computing technology will be compatible with the cloud computing
approach popular on the web, a study suggests.
Quantum computing will use the inherent uncertainties in quantum physics to carry out fast, complex computations.
A report in Science shows the trick can extend to cloud
services such as Google Docs without loss of security.
This blind quantum computing
can be carried out without a cloud computer ever knowing what the data is.
Quantum computing has been heralded as the most powerful potential successor to traditional, electronics-based computing — via redwolf.newsvine.com
McAfee is promising to patch a vulnerability in its hosted anti-malware service after it found a flaw that allowed systems where the product was installed to be turned into potential spam-relay nodes.
SaaS for Total Protection, the vulnerable software, will be patched on January 18 or 19, as soon as we have finished testing
, McAfee promised in a blog post published on Wednesday — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Failed holographic storage start-up InPhase is selling off its patents as Eugen Pavel’s Storex has developed 2nm optical lithography which could lead to a 100 exabyte optical disk.
At one end of the holographic storage spectrum we see a crumbling corpse, while at the other holographic gee-whizzery is talking about a disk with almost unimaginable capacity. It could store the data held in 25 million 4TB hard disk drives, they say — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Equipped with tiny sensors, insects could scout out buildings filled with noxious chemicals, check under rubble after an earthquake and go places no human spy ever could. In a first step toward making these technologically enhanced insects a reality, scientists have devised a way to power bug-robot hybrids by tapping into their own metabolism.
The secret: an implantable biofuel cell powered by a sugar the cockroaches make from their food — via redwolf.newsvine.com
What initially sounded like a somewhat gormless idea — blacking out websites to draw users’ attention to the Stop Online Piracy and Protect IP acts before US Congress — has turned out to be dramatic intervention in the battle against SOPA and PIPA.
In particular, Wikipedia blacking out (easily circumvented by turning off javascript, but that’s beyond a lot of users) appears to have acted as a mass distribution mechanism for information on the draconian bills. Plainly it’s not just journalists who rely on the crowd-sourced banalities of Wikipedia; tens of thousands of people took to Twitter to alternately complain, bitch and cheer the removal of what is evidently a key resource for most of the Anglophone world’s students.
Timing is everything, however: the blackout coincided with a tipping point against the bills, with the DNS provisions crashing and burning, the Obama administration rejecting the bill and even Congressional supporters sniffing the wind and backing away from them. Doubtless they’ll try again — they receive too much in the way of bribes donations from movie and music companies not too — but SOPA has suffered a remarkable turnaround in fortunes over the holiday break.
This has plainly made the copyright industry deeply unhappy. And the unhappiness has rippled all the way to Australia, with Dan Rosen, of one of the local branches of the copyright industry, ARIA, writing for The Australian today to attack piracy. Rosen was clever enough not to outright back SOPA, but he backed Rupert Murdoch’s bizarre, straight-out-wrong attack on Google last week, and lamented Google’s lax attitude to intellectual property rights
and the need for a properly functioning market
for content rather than chaos — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A silver ink for printing high-performance electrical circuits on flexible substrates has been developed by a team at the University of Illinois. Electronics printed on flexible substrates are gaining popularity with the rising desire for thinner electronic gadgets, wearable devices, and the nascent market for flexible screens.
The team was led by Jennifer Lewis, Hans Thurnauer professor of materials science and engineering, and Jennifer Bernhard, a professor of electrical and computer engineering. Lewis and graduate team member Brett Walker have published the work in the Journal of the American Chemical Society — via redwolf.newsvine.com
German ministers have approved plans to establish a national register of far-right extremists, after revelations of 10 neo-Nazi murders since 2000.
It is thought there are almost 10,000 neo-Nazis in Germany and the database would include information held by all federal and state authorities.
Police and intelligence have been criticised for failing to detect the gang allegedly behind the murders.
The database proposal still has to be backed by the German parliament — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The ditch between Australia and New Zealand is getting a lot more hectic with moves for another trans-Tasman cable link underway.
Axin Limited and Huawei Marine have signed a survey agreement for the trans-Tasman Optikor Network.
This fresh trans-Tasman link, a rival to Southern Cross Cable Networks, is set to be completed by the end of 2013.
Another competitive cable cabal, Pacific Fibre, backed by Trade Me entrepreneur Sam Morgan, is also planning to enter the cable market and build a $US400 million between Auckland, Sydney and Los Angeles.
The Optikor 3,000 Km link is designed to provide a capacity of 120 Gbps with one fibre pair and will eventually provide 6.4 Tbit/s with two fibre pairs — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Six Daleks, labeled as Pratt Whitney Rocketdyne engines
from the space shuttles Endeavour and Atlantis are invading being shipped to Stennis Space Centre in Mississippi to be refurbished for use in NASA’s new project, the Space Launch System (SLS) — via Neatorama
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