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Boffin blends benevolent beer
It's not a hangover cure, but it could help retain the beneficial effects of beer while mitigating some of its damage. A researcher from Queensland's Griffith Health Institute has found a way to make beer work like electrolyte drinks without ruining its taste.
Associate Professor Ben Desbrow is working on the idea that beer …
Mind-reading MRI reads letters in the brain
Researchers from Radboud University Nijmegen are claiming that with a sufficiently-sensitive MRI and decent mathematical modelling, they can reconstruct images of the brain recognising letters seen by the test subject.
Specifically, the researchers say they have “used data from the scanner to determine what a test subject is …
VLSCI fires up 20 teraflop Barcoo
The Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative – VLSCI – has gone live with its latest big iron, Barcoo, an x86 architecture machine with double the capacity of the facility's Merri x86 system.
The 70-node Barcoo runs 1,120 Sandy Bridge cores (16 cores per node), with 20 Xeon Phi 5110P cards distributed across ten nodes. …
US court rules IP address cloaks may break law
If you're a normal Internet user, you probably think you have the right to access anything that's put before the public. Not any more, at least in America, where the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act has been invoked to support a user-specific ban on accessing a Website, and in which the use of a proxy to circumvent a block has been …
Assange washes hands in election row
Julian Assange has weighed out of the row in Australia over the Wikileaks Party's preference allocation for the upcoming election.
In an interview with Perth radio station RTR-FM, the embassy-dwelling one said decisions about preference distribution (in which the party choose where preference votes go, in what's known as above- …
Kiwi jetpack gets all-clear for manned tests
A decade of testing is close to paying off for New Zealand company Martin Aircraft Company, which has announced that it has received certification to conduct manned test flights for its Martin Jetpack.
The New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority has given the outfit the go-ahead to conduct manned flights of its twelfth prototype, …
2013 World Solar Challenge racers start the big reveal
In 2011, The Reg's Special Projects Bureau followed the World Solar Challenge through the dead heart of Australia.
This year, we'll do it again. 2013's World Solar Challenge hits the road on October 6th and The Register's Vulture South team will hit the road too, tracking the racers from the top end through the never-never and …
Fooling the AppStore one code-chunk at a time
A group of researchers presenting at Usenix last week turned up a startling new way to sneak malicious apps through the AppStore and onto iOS devices. By spreading malicious chunks of code through an apparently-innocuous app for activation later, the researchers say they were able to evade Apple's test regime.
The Georgia Tech- …
Google proposes eye-tracking ad-tracking
There's many a slip between patent and product, but it seems Google is eyeing (sorry) the revenue opportunities for Google Glass beyond flogging a fashion accessory to tech tragics. The Chocolate Factory's latest patent proposes extending "pay per click" models to the world of meatware by tracking what you're looking at, in case …
Online trainer launches free student login promo
Learnable.com has launched a promo targeting students interested in learning to code, with 10,000 free places available on a first-come-best-dressed basis.
General manager Kyle Vermuelen says that the registrations will give students three years' access to courses to “learn to develop and design websites, apps and more”. Based …
Bug-finder chucked for posting to Zuck
A Palestinian IT graduate has had his account disabled and been told he won't be paid a bug bounty after demonstrating a Facebook security vulnerability by posting an image into Mark Zuckerburg's timeline.
As explained in this blog post, Khalil Shreateh discovered a vulnerability that allows an attacker to post images into …
Wikileaks Party scrambles to explain election decisions
The Wikileaks Party, established to give Julian AssangeTM a seat in Australia's Senate, has found itself scrambling to explain why it seems to endorse far-right-wing parties ahead of the Australian political mainstream in New South Wales, and is punishing The Greens in Western Australia.
The row emerged after the Australian …
An afternoon with Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer
Phil Plait – one-time NASA astronomer, science educator, and author of the Bad Astronomy blog at Slate, recently visited Australia to renew his acquaintance with the Oz confection-cum-dentist's-nightmare Minties. While here, the Bad Astronomer embarked on a multi-city lecture tour, took part in IFLS Live in Sydney, and spent an …
Facebook keeps company with misery say boffins
The more you use Facebook, the worse you feel. That's the headline finding from a new study University of Michigan published on PlosOne this week.
Of course, that could mean that the unhappy are turning to Facebook to help them cope, but across the study's sample, the University of Michigan researchers found Facebook use today a …
NASA plots Chelyabinsk plume
Not only did the Chelyabinsk bolide explosion send shock waves around the world. It also sent a plume of dust, and for the first time, such a plume has been observed by space-borne instruments.
The data, captured by the Suomi NPP satellite's Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) of instruments, gave the agency a rare chance to …
ACCC wants to check broadband performance
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has proposed a program to monitor and report broadband performance.
In a consultation paper published here, the regulator is looking for industry input into how a performance monitoring program could be rolled out. The ACCC wants to create a “robust” program to monitor data …
Keep Landsat flying forever, says US Academy of Sciences
America's National Academy of Sciences has called on the US government to guarantee the future of the country's venerable Landsat missions amid uncertainty engendered by the country's slow-motion budgetary train wreck.
Fearing that the program, which began in 1972 with the launch of the Earth Resources Technology Satellite ( …
Chipzilla Atomises fondleslabs with new reference designs
Intel has released reference designs for 7” and 10” Android tablets, based on the Atom chips.
In the 7” form factor, Intel's design calls for an Atom Z2420 CPU processor running at 1.2 GHz, using Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). The system config would include 1 GB of memory and 8 GB of multimedia card storage. For I/O, Intel …
NYT crackers get busy again, claims vendor
Security vendor FireEye believes it's spotted signs that the attackers who breached the New York Times' network last year are busy again – and that they've improved the malware they're using.
The vendor says the group, dubbed APT 12, has revised the Aumlib and "lxeshe" malware in the time between January and now. January was …
Philips' smart lights left in the dark by dumb security
The Philips Hue “smart lighting” system uses a dumb-as-a-sack-of-hammers device authentication scheme that allows anyone with the iPhone control app to issue instructions to the controller via HTTP.
According to researcher Nitesh Dhanjani, who has form looking at iPhone security, the “perpetual blackout” (PDF) vulnerability …
Magnets too slow for disk writes? Use lasers
A group of Swiss researchers has demonstrated using lasers to control magnetisation at extremely high speed, a line of research they hope will one day will help speed up hard drives.
One of the limits of the modern hard drives' performance is how quickly a bit's magnetisation can be accurately changed using a magnetic write …
Don't trash-talk the boss on Twitter: Oz judge
Australia's Federal Magistrates Court has sparked an argument about Internet speech freedoms by declining to issue an injunction preventing a federal public servant's dismissal over her use of Twitter.
It should be noted that while there is a real risk the public servant, Michaela Banerji, could be dismissed, her fate is still …
Android detective explains Bitcoin borkage breadcrumbs
Over the weekend, it emerged that a flaw in Android's Java-derived pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) created a vulnerability that allowed the theft of Bitcoins.
The individual responsible identifying the nasty bug, Jean-Pierre Rupp, has now contacted The Register by e-mail to confirm how he was able to track down the problem …
Australian government websites in "compulsory mod" mode during election campaign
Australian federal government websites – everything in the gov.au domain that's managed at the federal level – are frantically putting moderators onto anything that resembles online engagement.
From the time that the Prime Minister visited the Governor-General in Yarralumla to request that she dissolve the parliament, “caretaker …
Mother of Chelyabinsk spotted
Spanish astronomers looking for the origins of the meteor that came scarily-close to the Russian city of Chelyabinsk last February believe they've spotted a cluster of as many as 20 objects that are possible candidates.
The Chelyabinsk superbolide, which damaged buildings, caused injuries on the ground and gave rise to a …
Bigger frames make Wi-Fi a power miser: boffins
A group of researchers from Greece's University of Thessaly and the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas believe there's scope for energy consumption reductions of as much as 75 percent if 802.11n's energy saving extensions are combined with frame aggregation techniques.
The reason this is important? Because, as wireless …
Android bug batters Bitcoin wallets
Users of Android Bitcoin apps have woken to the unpleasant news that an old pseudo random number generation bug has been exploited to steal balances from users' wallets.
The Bitcoin Foundation's announcement, here, merely states that an unspecified component of Android “responsible for generating secure random numbers contains …
D-Link patches vid storage units
D-Link has issued patches for a pair of its network video recorders after a Qualys analysis identified remote authentication bypass vulnerabilities.
The DNR-322L and DNR-326 recorders are midrange 4TB recorders which among other things can be used as recorders for the company's IP cameras. As reported by PC World, Qualys also …
Boffins use lasers to detect radio waves
The universe is a noisy place, if you're a radio signal: travelling through space, there's everything from the cosmic background radiation to the screaming noise of stars and galaxies; travelling through copper wires, there's the random noise that makes weak signals hard to detect.
Researchers from the University of Copenhagen, …
Snowden's XKeyscore revelations challenged
Edward Snowden's latest revelations about NSA snooping, the Xkeyscore program, have quickly been called into question.
While The Guardian correctly identifies XKeyscore as being a search tool for NSA databases (providing what the outlet's Glenn Greenwald writes is an “ability to query the databases at any time”, which is pretty …
Oz sets $AU900 million reserve for remaining 700 MHz spectrum
The federal government has decided to set a price of $AU900 million on the 700 MHz spectrum that remained unsold after auctions earlier this year, and in the process has closed off any chance that the spectrum would be given to the country's public safety agencies.
The ministerial direction sets the price of the unsold spectrum …
Beam me up? Not in the life of this universe
If you ever doubted that the world needs vastly, incredibly, unbelievably more bandwidth, how about this: if you wanted to scan every detail of a human and teleport them via, say, a radio signal, it'll take a very, very, VERY long time.
How long? Try a "universe-is-not-old-enough-by-a-long-shot" kind of long time.
That's …
Southern Cross completes cable upgrade to 100 Gbps
The Southern Cross Cable Network has announced the completion of an upgrade to 100 Gbps kit on all routes.
With the Ciena 100 Gbps kit in place, the network now claims total lit capacity on its two cables of 2.6 Tbps. According to marketing director Ross Pfeffer, the cables' potential capacity between Australia/New Zealand and …
Disney finds new way to give movies depth
Disney Research in Zürich is working on ways to improve how 2D composite images can be turned into 3D models.
The basic techniques are well known, but – according to the research the group presented at the recent SIGGRAPH conference – there are limitations. Lasers can capture data to present a 3D surface, but are blocked by …
Big Blue beats path to Australia's north-west
Big Blue, which over the last year has been talent scouting a number of Australian regions via its Smarter Cities program, is to build a data centre in the remote Western Australian town of Geraldton.
Geraldton has found itself becoming something of a surprise high-tech hub over recent years, partly courtesy of its proximity to …
CSIRO, Macquarie University, on helium-saving crusade
Rather than sending out dire warnings about the dangers of party balloons wasting helium, it's probably better to stem the losses from the world's largest users. That's the approach being taken by the CSIRO and Sydney's Macquarie University.
Cryogenics, as The Register noted here, is a big consumer of helium. In 2005, the US …
Russia's post-Snowden spooks have not reverted to type
Back on 12 July, world media uncovered a minor sensation: Russia's Federal Protective Service (aka Federalnaya Sluzhba Okhrany, Федеральная служба охраны or FSO in English) had issued a tender for typewriters to help keep its secrets, presumably since a typewriter can't be hacked. As the tender came to light not long after …
MS brandishes 'Katana' HTTP/2.0 server
Microsoft has gone public with a prototype HTTP/2.0 server.
The server is designed to implement the version 4 HTTP/2.0 implementable draft published by the IETF earlier in July. The idea, according to IETF HTTPBIS chair Mark Nottingham, is that progressive implementations of HTTP/2.0 will feed back into the standard.
“We're …
Foxtel farewells 3D TV, citing lack of content
3D TV continues its nation-by-nation slide into obscurity and irrelevance, with Foxtel in Australia joining the long list of TV broadcasters and Pay TV providers making the weary and footsore slog to the woodshed with its once-favourite pet.
The Pay TV provider has decided that its 3D channel 201 will run down the curtain and …
Bugs in beta weather model used to trash climate science
Development work on a not-yet-prime-time weather forecasting model has been seized on as proof that climate models can't be trusted.
The reason? Folks who aren't keen on climate change discovered this paper in the journal of the American Meteorological Society, in which Song-You Hong of South Korea's Yonsei University Department …
A drone that can walk home
Here's a neat-but-creepy way to get an aerial drone to move at ground level: teach it to walk on its wings.
That's what researchers from Switzerland's Lausanne Polytech are showing off: in the air, their prototype drone is a straightforward and familiar configuration, with a rear-facing propeller. On the ground, however, the …
British boffin muzzled after cracking car codes
Here is a tale of two security research presentations, both looking at motor vehicle security in a world in which even the humblest shopping trolley now has more brainpower than a moonshot.
Flavio Garcia, a University of Birmingham lecturer familiar with insecurity in car systems – here, for example, is a paper he co-authored …
Kiwis rally against 'snoops' charter' law
New Zealanders have mobilised against the country's “spooks' charter”, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) bill that's been criticised for legitimising formerly-illegal snooping on NZ residents.
Last week, The Register reported that a deal between the country's minority government and Peter Dunne made it nearly …
Android 'Master Key' DEMON APPS sniffed out in China
Virus-hunter Symantec says the Android master key vulnerability is being exploited in China, where half-a-dozen apps have showed up with malicious content hiding behind a supposedly-safe crypto key.
The simple, straightforward and utterly stupid vulnerability arises because, as Bluebox Security demonstrated recently, someone …
World+Dog hates PRISM: Cloud Security Alliance
Edward Snowden's PRISM revelations will soon impact the balance sheets of US cloud vendors, according to the Cloud Security Alliance.
The group claims the latest survey (PDF) of its 500 members suggests the NSA leaks would make more than half non-US the respondents think twice about hosting their data with American-based …
Swisscom chief dead in apparent suicide
Swisscom has appointed an interim CEO, after announcing that 49-year-old Carsten Schloter was found dead in his flat in Fribourg on July 23.
While a police investigation is ongoing, police has describing his death as “an apparent suicide”, according to Reuters.
Urs Schaeppi has been appointed interim CEO.
Prior to joining …
Music royalty war spreads to aggregator MediaNet
Singer-songwriter Aimee Man has become the latest recording artist to take aim at the coupon-clippers and parasites of Internet music distribution, hauling a little-known intermediary into court for distributing her work without a license.
Unlike the retail names savaged by the likes of Radiohead's Thom Yorke (who pulled his …
SKA precursor starts streaming firehosing astrodata to the world
Hard on the heels of yesterday's discussion of high-performance computing with the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research and the National Computational Infrastructure comes the announcement that real data has started to stream out of Western Australia's Murchison Widefield Array.
In fact, to anybody but the biggest …
Boffins flip optics to make booster-free superfast fibre
A group of researchers led by a Monash Univeristy PhD student has demonstrated an all-optical technique for dealing with nonlinearity – something that considerably boosts the throughput of an optical system.
The demonstration is important for two reasons. One is that fibre optic cables used to transport signals over long …
New Kiwi spook law allows domestic prying
New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), which illegally spied on resident Kim Dotcom, is on the cusp of gaining sweeping new powers that include wiretapping NZ citizens.
The GCSB's domestic spying first came to light last year when it mistakenly tapped Dotcom's communications, not realising that his …
