Team X101 USB 3.0 Flash Drive

Team Group Incorporation is introducing its new x101 USB 3.0 memory drive. It measures 90mm x 23mm x 13mm and weighs 8 grams. This USB 3.0 device provides a transfer speed of 5Gbps which is ten times faster than the old USB 2.0. The X101 USB drive is available in 32GB, 64Gb and 128GB of storage and support multiple operating systems. No word on pricing and availability.

Read More

EFF Proposes New Bill Of Rights For Facebook Users

As we now know, Facebook and its users have different opinions on the appropriate levels of privacy for the site. Users want more, Facebook wants less. While Facebook already has their own bill of rights for users, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is proposing their own Bill of Rights for users.

Now, a little history lesson. Back in the good old days, when the union was new and the government was young, people created a Bill of Rights to protect certain universal individual liberties. This Bill of Rights has become the foundation of our society, and every day we fight to protect our ideals of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, due process, equal protection, etc. The framers of the Constitution felt that unless these rights were specifically spelled out in a separate and binding document, they would never be properly protected. And they were important enough to stand apart on their own in what is arguably the most meaningful document that has ever been created in this country.

Presently we find ourselves amidst a similar situation with Facebook. Users have expressed that they don’t feel as though they and their data are being adequately protected. They feel as though they are at the mercy of Facebook, and they just have to roll with whatever privacy controls are thrown at or taken away from them, or take their profiles elsewhere. Of course, there is always the caveat that Facebook is a private site, and can run its business as it pleases as long is it does so legally. It is not a government and it does not owe its users the same consideration that our government owes to us. But some are calling for a Bill of Rights of sorts to protect users, their information and their interests.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has begun by proposing three basic principles that all social network users should demand. First they call for the right to informed decision making whereby users can “make informed choices about who sees their data and how it is used.” They also want users to be notified when a government or private party uses a legal process to obtain information about them. Second, they want the right to control “the use and disclosure of their own data,” such that users must opt in or opt out of any secondary data sharing. Last, users should have the right to delete their information completely should they decide to deactivate from the site. Others have proposed similar breakdowns of these principles, basically calling for user data control and transparency about what of their data is shared and with whom.

Facebook does have a set of “Facebook Principles” which states that people should own their own information, have the freedom to share it with whoever they want, and set privacy controls to protect their choices in this respect. Why does it seem like Facebook isn’t practicing what they preach?

Read More

This can explain well the frequent Internet interruption!

Researchers are urging better security for our deep-sea cables, as they claim it to be very vulnerable to threads, be it natural disasters or human factor accidents.

“As global Internet and communication links 99 per cent relies on undersea cables instead of satellite, our global economics might get choked all of a sudden if it get sabotaged” – says Alan Mauldin, an analyst at Telegeography Research.

Karl Rauscher, for Bell Labs engineer who compiled the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE) publicly request for better security towards submarine cables, at the Worldwide Cybersecurity Summit in Dallas, Texas, last week.

The report stated that many of the cables passing through choke points, such as the Strait of Malacca near Singapore, the Luzon Strait between Taiwan and the Philippines, and the Suez Canal, are extremely vulnerable. Damage to the cables at these points could lead to phone networks becoming jammed and internet traffic slowing to a crawl, which means economy might crawl leading to many issues.

Examples would be incidents like the Howard Street tunnel running beneath downtown Baltimore, where a freight train derailed and spilled 20,000 liters of hydrochloric acid, thus destroying undersea fibre-optic cables. Other incidents like cables getting caught in fishing nets, and those that got damaged by ships’ anchors.

The report not only urge for tighter security on submarine fibre-optic cables, but also calls for new cables built on alternative routes to provide back-up to vulnerable points in the gigantic network.

Read More

Google Pac-Man Game

Hmmm :D head to Google search page today and enjoy the Pac-Man game. Apparently, Google is celebrating 30-years of Pac-Man. The Pac-Man was released in Japan back in May 22, 1980.

Read More

Fancy an oversized touchscreen PSP on droid?

8.9” and comes with somewhat multitouch, this is Nvidia’s answer to iPad. Round edge, white plastic-like back plate, and supposedly powered by Android. Though according to Gizmodo, the looks does not justify its capability.

Obviously it is powered by Nvidia’s upcoming Tegra 2, which is actually a dual-core ARM Cortex A9, somewhat more powerful than iPad’s A4 processor. Now, why is it gonna win Apple’s iPad? Because on the paper it has better muscle, and a gig of RAM, while cheapskate Apple’s iPad only got a puny 256MB RAM. What’s more, it has USB ports, and a good damn integrated front cam!

According to Gizmodo, “Given that both of the units we handled were running just one app each—pretty snazzy looking games—it’s hard to tell what it’ll be like to use generally, like with the front-facing camera and how the widescreen aspect ratio feels outside of a game, but the games did feel and look great, as you’d expect from the kind of horsepower inside. I wish the screen, which is capacitive for multitouchness, wasn’t quite as glossy as the iPad though. Oh well.”

Read More

iPhones and Android, meet your challenger!

Yep, it’s named the Gunpla alright. As you can see in the screen, it’s a flip phone, with the gigantic camera at the back. It even comes with EFSF (*Earth Federation Space Force in the U.C.). But the most important thing to all gunplas is that it comes with a 1:100 RX-78-2 Gundam!

Read More

Fancy Windows 7 might not be so save after all

Well looks like someone has found serious security vulnerability in Bill Gate’s latest money-milking operating system the Windows 7. Apparently users may be exposed to code execution and denial-of-service attacks, Microsoft warned in an advisory issued on Tuesday.

The threat, which was openly discussed ahead of Microsoft’s advisory, only affects the latest Windows 7 and windows Server 2008 R2, though was denied of any forms of attacks attempted related to exploiting this flaw.

This issue was found in the Canonical Display Driver (cdd.dll), which is used by Windows 7 to unify the Windows Graphics Device Interface (GDI) and DirectX drawing.

MSRC blog:

Code execution, while possible in theory, would be very difficult due to memory randomization both in kernel memory and via Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR). Additionally, this vulnerability only affects Windows systems if they have the Aero theme installed; Aero is not switched on by default in Windows Server 2008 R2, nor does 2008 R2 include Aero-capable graphics drivers by default.

Microsoft believes that, in case where the attacker successfully exploited this vulnerability, the affected system would stop to respond, and automatically restart. Therefore, the Windows 7 teams are now standing by for processing the patches need once investigations are complete.

So I guess this is a good time to disable that Windows Aero Theme huh?

Read More