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Boffins create bulk-process on-silicon optics
A group of researchers from MIT and the University of Boulder at Colorado say they've moved photonics a step closer to integration with both microprocessors and memory.
On-chip photonics offer a number of attractive prospects for chip-makers. Photonic communications generate less heat than electrons moving through copper, and …
Cloud is a key-management pain: NIST
The ISA's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) – recently accused of collaborating with the NSA to weaken security standards – has put together a paper highlighting the key-management challenge posed by cloud computing platforms.
As readers will know, key multiplication (and therefore management) can be headache …
MVNO misery will be pain for Oz mobile users as well
With the departure of yet another mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) from the Australian market, it's clear that margin protection has become the next obsession of Australian carriers.
The collapse of ISPOne earlier this year, which sent some MVNOs (such as Aldi) scrambling for new arrangements and ended Kogan's push into …
Multipath TCP: Siri's new toy isn't a game-changer
When the iOS 7 incarnation of Siri was caught using Multipath TCP (MTCP) earlier this month, there was much excitement at it heralding a new era of communications. Which it may well do even though Siri was singing many hours before the sun begins to rise.
A quick MTCP primer: TCP connections usually travel over one path. This …
Quantum computing gets recursive
When a quantum computer can produce results that would take thousands of years to produce out of a classical computer, an obvious question arises: if you've given the wrong answer, how would you know? That's a question to which University of Vienna boffins have turned their attention to.
A computation involving a handful of …
BitTorrent trialling P2P secure messaging
BitTorrent wants to (a) take another step towards either respectability, or (b) take itself further outside the mainstream by defying Uncle Sam (take your pick), announcing that it's trialling a secure, serverless messaging application.
The P2P messaging system is taking alpha sign-ons now, here.
The idea is that if messages …
'Outback Rover' could help calibrate satellite sensors
Earth sensing satellites have driven revolutions in farming, mineral exploration and vegetation management, but just like a camera on the ground, they need calibration.
While someone like a professional videographer will check his camera against something like a white balance, earth sensing satellites aren't so conveniently …
NSA in new SHOCK 'can see public data' SCANDAL!
In the latest round of increasingly-hyperbolic leaks about what spy agencies are doing with data, reports are emerging that the NSA has been graphing connections between American individuals. Moreover, it's using stuff that people publish on their social media timelines to help the case along.
According to this item in the New …
Metasploit creator seeks crowd's help for vuln scanning
Security outfit Rapid7 has decided that there's just too much security vulnerability information out there for any one group to handle, so its solution is to try and crowd-source the effort.
Announcing Project Sonar, the company is offering tools and datasets for download, with the idea that the community will provide input into …
All roads lead to Darwin ahead of solar challenge flag-fall
Australia's second Cruiser-class entry for the World Solar Challenge has joined the teams converging on Darwin for next weekend's start of the World Solar Challenge.
TAFE SA's SolarSpirit 3 is the technical education body's third shot at the challenge, and its compliance with the Cruiser rule that there have to be at least three …
EU move to standardise phone chargers is bad news for Apple
In a move that'll be cheered by phone users the world over, the European Union has decided that mobile phones should have a standard charger plug.
In a unanimous vote, the EU's Internal Market Committee decided that there's no good reason the charger should be treated as a proprietary secret. As German MEP Barbera Weiler put it …
GIANT FLIP-FLOP IN SPACE switches between X-ray and radio emissions
An unusual pairing of objects called a “low mass X-ray binary” has been spotted by astronomers in which a pulsar shifts between emitting fast radio pulses and X-rays.
Dubbed the “Transformer Pulsar” in some quarters and the “missing link” pulsar in others, the 18,000-light-year-distant binary in the M28 cluster works like this: …
Boffins: Internet transit a vulnerability
If you think of an Internet exchange, you probably think of infrastructure that's well-protected, well-managed, and hard to compromise. The reality, however, might be different. According to research by Stanford University's Daniel Kharitonov, working with TraceVector's Oscar Ibatullin, there are enough vulnerabilities in …
Brocade virtual fabric tells multi-tenant story
One of the irritations of the world of virtualisation is that it's quite easy to end up with a relatively small number of physical devices hosting address counts that run ahead of Ethernet's constraints on things like how many MAC addresses can exist in a LAN (or VLAN).
It's one of the constraints that lies behind the rise of …
Apple Maps directs drivers INTO path of ONCOMING PLANES
It's easy to blame Apple Maps: but why on earth did an airport have a highway-adjoining access road without a manned gate?
That's the question The Register is asking after this story popped up in the Alaska Dispatch:
“At least twice in the past three weeks, drivers from out of town who followed the directions on their iPhones …
A Tapestry of network complexity
Forget drawing network maps or sending your network management software on an epic tour of auto-discovery: a group getting ready to launch an open-source “network complexity scoring” tool says it's all about the endpoint.
Infoblox, part of the Flowforwarding.org SDN (software defined networking) community, is prepping the ground …
Krebs: Lexis-Nexis, D&B and Kroll hacked
Major data aggregators have been compromised “for months”, according to prominent security blogger Brian Krebs, including Lexis-Nexis and Dun & Bradstreet.
Writing at Krebsonsecurity, Krebs says the ID theft invasion of the brokers' servers dated back at least as far as April this year, and that “the miscreants behind this ID …
Boffins explain bizarre here-one-month-gone-the-next 'third Van Allen belt'
UCLA scientists have gone some way to explaining the mysterious “third Van Allen” belt that turned up unexpectedly last August when NASA fired up its Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) to look at the radiation region that surrounds the Earth.
Back in March, NASA said its work to calibrate the RBSPs' Relativistic Electron Proton …
How long will the next NBN Co board last?
Wanted: NBN Co board members. Essential: telecommunications network rollout experience; ability to conduct a thorough review of the current NBN rollout; conduct weekly performance reviews of network rollout without interruption to operations. Desirable: willing to be dismissed at short notice.
Cost blowouts and missed targets …
Medical apps to come under FDA scrutiny
In a move that's sure to be watched closely by medical regulators worldwide, America's Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has issued its final regulatory guidance on regulating medical apps running on smartphones.
The announcement formalises a draft guidance issued in July, the culmination of a long process under which 100 apps …
Dodgy 'iMessage for Android' app deep-sixed by Google
Google has yanked an app that purported to give Android users the ability to use iMessage.
As is discussed by Jay Freeman here, there was a catch in the app. It didn't “make iMessage run on Android”, but rather sent data off for pre-processing to a server in China.
And that meant users were being asked to submit their Apple ID …
Great Britain rebuilt - in Minecraft: Intern reveals 22-BEEELLION block map
A summer intern at the UK's Ordnance Survey has pumped up the country's map data into 22-billion-block representation of Great Britain in Minecraft.
The Ordnance Survey is perfectly happy with the outcome – so much so that it's published the 3D model, which covers 224 thousand square kilometres of Great Britain.
The intern, …
'I shot the sheriff': Turnbull asked for NBN Co board scalps
New communications minister Malcolm Turnbull has told a Sydney press conference that the government specifically requested the resignation of the NBN Co board, “to give the government complete flexibility in remaking the board in light of the policy agenda.”
Turnbull said that “I have never criticised any of the individuals on …
Redmond plants flag in Chinese game dev market
It seems that the rumoured relaxation of China's prohibition of foreign games consoles is inching closer to reality, with IPTV outfit BesTV joining with Microsoft to play some games.
According to an announcement posted on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, BesTV New Media said the new venture, E-Home Entertainment Development, will be …
Kiwi cable signs TE SubCom for build
A proposed submarine cable for New Zealand has signed TE SubCom as its build contractor.
The Hawaiki Cable would link New Zealand to Australia and Hawaii, providing an alternative to the Southern Cross Cable Network (SCCN), currently the Kiwis' only direct link to American destinations.
According to Computerworld New Zealand, …
Mobile broadband 'fastest growing technology in history' says ITU
Mobile networks are fast outrunning fixed broadband in terms of growth, according to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), and that's going to put pressure on wireless spectrum's ability to cope.
Singapore, Japan and Finland top the world in mobile broadband penetration on a per-100-inhabitants basis, with Australia …
'Occupy' affiliate claims Intel bakes SECRET 3G radio into vPro CPUs
Intel has apparently turned up one of the holiest of holy grails in the tech sector, accidentally creating an zero-power-consumption on-chip 3G communications platform as an NSA backdoor.
The scoop comes courtesy of tinfoil socialist site Popular Resistance, in this piece written by freelance truther Jim Stone, who has just …
ENTIRE NBN BOARD offers to walk the plank: report
The chair of NBN Co, Siobhan McKenna, has tendered her resignation to the new communications minister Malcolm Turnbull, along with those of the organisation's entire board, according to Fairfax Media.
In this report, the Sydney Morning Herald notes that the move would open the door for Turnbull to appoint former Telstra CEO and …
Chaos Computer Club: iPhone 5S finger-sniffer COMPROMISED
Well, that lasted a long time: the Chaos Computer Club has already broken Apple's TouchID fingerprint lock, and warns owners against using biometric ID to protect their data.
As the group explains here, it seems that the main advance in Cupertino's biometrics was that it uses a high resolution fingerprint scan. The post states …
Mach 8 Scramjet flies but sends no data
The University of Queensland's ScramSpace hypersonic flight experiment in Norway's Andøya Rocket Range has failed to fire in its one-chance-only test flight.
In a terse statement, the university said the launch lifted off successfully, with the first two stages of the launcher landing safely in the water. “However it appears at …
Japanese government pushes SDN out of data centre
The world's still getting a handle on what software defined networking (SDN) means for the data centre, but Japan would like to take it further. The nation's government is getting together with five of the country's big names in tech to work out what's needed to take SDN to the wide area.
Members of the project include NEC, NTT …
Victorian agencies criticised for poor telecomms management
Victoria's Departments of Human Services and Justice and Victoria Police have come under fire from the state's auditor-general for poorly managing a combined annual telecommunications spend of $AUD13 million.
In a report tabled in the Victorian parliament yesterday, the state's auditor-general stated that “the agencies examined …
Telstra to DNS-block botnet C&Cs with unknown blacklist
Telstra is preparing to get proactive with malware, announcing that it will be implementing a DNS-based blocker to prevent customer systems from contact known command-and-control servers.
The “malware suppression” tool will will be introduced at no cost for fixed, mobile and NBN customers using domestic broadband and Telstra …
Redmond cash splash follows mobile hash
Microsoft has decided to fling handfuls of cash at its shareholders, in the form of a 22 percent increase in its quarterly dividend, and renewing its $US40 billion share buyback program.
The decision comes as Microsoft seeks a replacement for outgoing CEO Steve Ballmer, and seeks to digest its $US7 billion acquisition of its …
TPG floats fibre cherry-pick
Second-tier ISP TPG is eyeing the big league, announcing a plan to use its fibre network to connect a 100 Mbps fibre-to-the-building service to high-density apartments around Australia.
At the company's 2013 full-year financial briefing, TPG chairman David Teoh discussed the plan and said the company had begun design work on the …
Redmond slips out temporary emergency fix for IE 0-day
Stepping outside its normal Patch Tuesday cycle, Microsoft has rolled out an emergency fix to an Internet Explorer bug that was under active malware attack.
This advisory provides access to “Fix it For Me”, with a more detailed outline of the CVE-2013-3893 vulnerability here. All versions of IE 6 to 10 are affected.
As …
Telstra scrambles to fix voice
Telstra is scrambling to overcome an outage that ABC Radio is reporting has affected “tens of thousands” of business voice services nationwide.
The outage affects customers of Telstra's Digital Business service. Digital Business is a range of bundles covering both broadband connection and telephony.
At the time of writing, a …
North American teams land in Oz to race for the sun
Canada is about to dispatch its World Solar Challenge entry on its trip to Darwin, with the Ecole de Technologie Supérieure of Montréal – ÉTS – sending its tubular Eclipse 8 on its way.
The Canadian team offers a stark contrast to the comforts of the Cruiser class, and even to most of the Challenger class cars. Its weight …
Boffins demo on-chip entanglement at macro scale
Quantum computing watchers are familiar with the idea of entanglement – the “spooky action at a distance” that gives rise to quantum teleportation. Now, a team led by the University of Queensland is claiming a different kind of first: quantum teleportation between two spots on a single chip.
Not only that: but unlike schemes …
iiNet getting ready for 802.11ac
While there might be political controversy surrounding the question of how much broadband is enough, iiNet is preparing for a near-term future in which consumer kit has to cope with multiple high-definition TV streams being distributed around a single household.
Lifting a veil from its future product plans, the number-two DSL …
Sloppy call data gets Telstra an ACMA wrist-slap
Telstra is on notice that its data roaming billing isn't up to scratch, courtesy the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
At fault : billing systems with a persistent penchant for plugging multiple flagfall fees on a single data session. This, the ACMA says, put the incumbent in breach of the Telecommunications …
In MASSIVE surprise, world+dog discovers Nokia checked out Android
Reports have emerged over the weekend that Nokia had run up research lab versions of its Lumia phones running Android, and that this was somehow linked to Microsoft's decision to finesse the Finns.
Kicking off the clickfest was the New York Times with this post that offered the following analysis:
A team within Nokia had …
Ninefold preps infrastructure to help roll out Rails
On the back of its newly-launched Rails Cloud infrastructure offering, Australian elastic public cloud outfit Ninefold has reconfirmed its ongoing expansion plans, with new presences planned for California, the US east coast and Ireland by July 2014.
Ninefold chair Peter James told The Register the data centre expansion plans …
Push mail outfit Good Tech wins CC cert
Good Technology is trumpeting a newly-inked EAL4+ Common Criteria certification awarded to the its Good For Enterprise MDM and data protection platform.
The company's local VP and GM Gavin Jones told Vulture South the certification relieves the need for the company to work through certifications on a country-by-country basis, at …
Modular smartphones floated by Dutch designer chap
There isn't a product, or even a prototype, but if it could be made to work, why not turn the smartphone into a bunch of replaceable modular components on a standard backplane?
It may or may not be feasible, but the notion gathered enough attention that the proposal page, on crowdfunding site Thunderclap.it, was hosed by visitor …
Corel re-animates zombie brand for patent case
Google, Motorola and Samsung are fielding new patent suits from Corel-owned Micrografx over graphics rendering, covering a slew of Android-based products as well as the Chocolate Factor's Google Maps.
Micrografx – a brand that faded from view more than a decade ago after its acquisition by Corel – is claiming that both Samsung …
BlackBerry goes all 'patch Tuesday' with multi vuln fixes
BlackBerry has issued four patches covering vulnerabilities in Flash, Webkit and libexif on its devices.
The Z10, Q10 and PlayBook all need patching for Adobe Flash vulnerabilities. If a user were led to a page containing crafted Flash content, an attacker could execute arbitrary code on an affected device. BSRT-2013-007 notes …
SolAce, Team Arrow inch towards Solar Challenge starting line
The University of Western Sydney will soon be heading north with its World Solar Challenge entrant, while in Queensland, Team Arrow is getting ready for a pre-race public run on the weekend of 14 September.
The UWS team, SolAce, under construction since 2011, had its public launch on August 29 at the university's Parramatta …
Startup claims 1W wireless charging at 10 metres
Another company is claiming to have cracked the mysteries of wireless charging, with an outfit called Ossia saying that using the 2.4 GHz band, it can recharge devices over-the-air at distances of up to 10 metres.
Shown off at TechCrunch's Disrupt conference in the video posted here, the charging tech is described as delivering …
New iPhones are latte-sipping inner city elitists
Not only has Apple reintroduced the “Australia tax” for its newly-launched iPhone 5 series: it turns out that LTE support doesn't include the 700 MHz bands Telstra and Optus purchased earlier this year.
In fact, the iPhone 5c and 5s LTE models only support one of the LTE bands currently in use in this country – the 1800 MHz LTE …
