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New submitter MikeatWired writes "If you're like most people, you're annoyed by passwords. So who's to blame? Who invented the computer password? They probably arrived at MIT in the mid-1960s, when researchers built a massive time-sharing computer called CTSS. Technology changes. But, then again, it...

How Allan Scherr Hacked Around the First Computer Password

An anonymous reader writes "A bit early, but just a reminder that January 28 is international Data Privacy Day in the U.S., Canada, and many European countries. Various events are being held around the globe: the head of the FTC opened a weekend forum on the topic by calling out Facebook and Google,...

January 28 is Data Privacy Day

sighted writes "This week's huge solar storm will benefit future astronauts, thanks to the rover Curiosity, now on its way to Mars. The rover is equipped with an instrument that measures the radiation exposure that could affect a human astronaut en route to the Red Planet. Scientists are just starti...


Mars-Bound Probe Serves As Radiation Guinea Pig

slew writes "This is a followup to this earlier story about 2 of 3 of Rambus's 'critical' patents being invalidated. Apparently now it's a hat-trick." There's something that seems unsavory and wasteful about a business environment in which a company's stock value "fluctuates sharply on its successes...

USPTO Declares Invalid Third of Three Critical Rambus Patents

New submitter Krazy Kanuck writes "The White House is running a story on their OSTP blog that Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra is stepping down after being appointed to the post by President Obama in 2009. There is some mention of him returning to his home state of Virginia, and the Washington...


White House Chief Technology Officer Steps Down

Sparrowvsrevolution writes "At the Shmoocon security conference, researcher Brendan O'Connor plans to present the F-BOMB, or Falling or Ballistically-launched Object that Makes Backdoors. Built from just the disassembled hardware in a commercially-available PogoPlug mini-computer, a few tiny antenna...

DARPA Funding a $50 Drone-Droppable Spy Computer

sciencehabit writes "The North Star, a celestial beacon to navigators for centuries, may be slowly shrinking, according to a new analysis of more than 160 years of observations. The data suggest that the familiar fixture in the northern sky is shedding an Earth's mass worth of gas each year." Rea...


North Star May Be Wasting Away

New submitter BraveThumb writes "One independent rap group found it impossible to post their song on YouTube. When they tried to put up their video, they were informed that the copyright belonged to Universal Music, even though the rap group wasn't signed to any label. Another group working with Uni...

Flaw In YouTube Takedown Process Exposed

An anonymous reader writes "Bitdefender reports that there exist viruses which, when they encounter other viruses, will merge and combine effects so that they create a new virus. 'A virus infects executable files; and a worm is an executable file. If the virus reaches a PC already compromised by a w...


When Viruses Infect Worms

An anonymous reader writes "The reverberations from the SOPA fight continue to be felt in the U.S. and elsewhere, but it is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement that has captured increasing attention this week. Several months after the majority of ACTA participants signed the agreement, most Euro...

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