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11 April, 2014
Heartbleed, official designation CVE-2014-0160, is a bug in OpenSSL’s heartbeat extension. It isn’t important to know what this extension does, only that it was poorly coded (in coder speak, it lacked bounds checking). This bug can be exploited by a hacker to read blocks of 64KB from the server’s RAM. The hacker can only grab one 64KB block at a time, but he can keep going back for more until he’s gathered all the data he needs. With access to the server’s memory, the jig is up. Passwords, security certificates (encryption keys), other sensitive details — they’re all stored in memory, and they’ve all been exposed for the last two years thanks to OpenSSL’s Heartbleed bug.
A collective of scientists and writers, known as the Slow Reading Movement, fears this addiction to speed-reading is affecting our brains, and is encouraging people to rediscover the novel. The group includes Maryanne Wolf, a cognitive neuroscientist at Tufts University and author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. Professor Wolf fears we might “lose the ‘deep-reading’ brain in a digital culture”. In a paper for the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, she argues that “it takes time ... to (learn to) read with deep, expanding comprehension, and to execute all these processes as an adult expert reader”. There is “no genetic guarantee that any individual novice reader will ever form the expert reading brain circuitry,” she warns
He calls it P2SH — short for “pay-to-script hash” — and it’s basically a hack of the protocol that drives the digital currency. It lets you keep your bitcoins safe even if your primary private key is stolen. You see, bitcoin’s other great strength is that it’s open source software. It can be hacked and extended
Labels:
Cybersafety
10 April, 2014
AMAZON Web Services will host its new desktop computer as a service product Workspaces locally by the end of June. AWS head Andy Jassy said it was recommended that Australian customers not use Workspaces until it was rolled out on AWS servers in the Sydney region. “The latency is too high for it to be a good experience,” he said.
Labels:
ICT Capability
Dubbed "Heartbleed", the vulnerability exists in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library used by millions of companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Google, to provide security and privacy over the internet for applications such as web, email, instant messaging and some virtual private networks.
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Cybersafety
09 April, 2014
Jim Barber believes many campuses will simply lose their customers — students and industry — if massive open online courses, or MOOCs, morph into a product that offers engaging online education at a cut price, and credentials accepted by employers. And he sees Australia’s universities as captives of a risk-averse culture, looking the wrong way, fixated on the recruitment of locals for courses that offer little choice
TODAY at 5pm, after 12 years, Microsoft will turn off the lights on Windows XP. Now don’t panic too much. Windows XP computers will still power on and work after the clock strikes 5pm (AEST), but behind the scenes Microsoft will be cutting off support and security updates, leaving XP computers — and the information you have stored on them — vulnerable to newly developed attacks.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
History
08 April, 2014
The Civil Aviation Safety Authority says it is investigating an incident that involved an athlete in a West Australian triathlon being injured by a drone that was filming the event. Mr Abrams told ABC Radio that his own investigation showed that someone other than the pilot had "channel-hopped" and taken control of the drone. According to drone regulator CASA, drones need to be at least 30 metres away from people.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
research,
Sustainability
Robots will not take over manufacturing jobs, but enhance future employment opportunities, according to a landmark report on production in Australia. But as demand for workers with a higher level of skills grows, some workers will find themselves at risk of displacement. "Lightweight assistive systems will facilitate humans' work in factories, resulting in jobs with more high-value tasks and fewer repetitive tasks and physically demanding activities such as weight-lifting and tool-picking," the report by the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency says. "Integrating new technologies such as in mechanical and electrical manufacturing will mean that workers need skills to operate and manage computerised and technological advances in machinery and equipment.
07 April, 2014
Sharing Australian Aboriginal Culture Australian Aboriginal culture has existed continuously for more than 40 000 years. They have developed sophisticated social organisations, complex legal systems and a numerous practices and ceremonies based around their Dreamtime beliefs. There is no way we could ever hope to capture all their knowledge of animal behaviour, or of the seasons and bush tucker that each one brings. For that matter we will never know the full extent of the geographical, ecological or land management skills that these communities possess but at least some of them are documenting different aspects of their culture for future generations. Here are a number of apps that introduce students to both their oral story telling tradition and their traditional languages.
Labels:
Indigenous,
Intercultural Understanding,
Literacy
Cortana starts off by trying to get to know a little bit about you — what you like to do in your spare time, who is important in your life, what sports teams you follow, etc. It uses that information to begin preparing tidbits of information it can show you first thing in the morning, or when it thinks you might need them. It also learns about your habits and becomes more personal over time.
Labels:
Ethical,
ICT Capability,
Privacy
The PS4′s undeniable hardware advantage Everything we know about the Xbox One-PS4 matchup suggests that the PS4 is winning the hardware battle thanks to a straightforward memory arrangement (no need to muck with the 32MB of SRAM) and a stronger GPU.
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Game,
Graphic Design
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