Kill Lung Cancer!

There is an old saying “Fight fire with fire.” Well that may be the new way to fight lung cancer!
According to Medgadget:

At Argonne National Laboratory scientists have deciphered the structure of a virus that seems to selectively infect small-cell lung cancer cells.

One of the many huge upsides is that “the virus demonstrates cancer-killing specificity 10,000 times higher than seen in traditional chemotherapeutics, with no overt toxicity.”

Sometimes those old sayings are good for more than just the inside of your fortune cookie.

Via Medgadget

WPA Hacked, Now Protect Yourself

As reported earlier, the WPA router can be hacked in just a few minutes. But that does not mean you are doomed. Lifehacker has  posted a practical way to protect yourself.

The key: Just log into your router, switch off Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) as an encryption mode, and use Advanced Encryption System (AES) only. TKIP is the only protocol that the hack applies to, so switching to AES-only will ensure that your Wi-Fi network is safe again. It’s quick and easy, so do yourself a favor and make the adjustment now so you don’t run into any problems in the future.

Here are some other things you could try;

1)  Have a MAC level filtering at your router.

2)  Change the default settings of your router’s Web-based administration

3)  Turn off broadcasting of your SSID.

4)  Setup WPA-AES that uses a radius server to generate dynamic keys for you.

Then again you could just share!

AT&T Acquires Centennial Communications

AT&T is dropping $944 million on Centennial Communications in an effort to improve coverage in the Midwest and Southeast United States. Centennial is a fairly small regional wireless provider, but if the deals passes all the legal mumbo jumbo it will add about 1.1 million subscribers to AT&T. AT&T issued a release yesterday outlining the deal.

This all comes shortly after Verizon, AT&T bought All-Tel.

Guess the battle rages on!

Via Engadets & NYT

iPhone Tethering Coming Soon!

According to Mobile Crunch AT&T has sanctioned tethering of the iPhone. Tethering is the process by which you allow the iPhone to act as a 3G modem for your laptop. This would allow you to share the iPhone’s cellular connection with your laptop.  While although Mobile Crunch had no pricing info on the tethering, AT&T usually charges $30 a month for this service on other phones.

As if those iPhone plans were not expensive enough!

Mac Rumors has heard that this tethering capability is expected to be built into the 2.2 firmware.

All of this may not be monumental news since this can be done with out paying $30 a month on a jailbroken iPhone.

But we will see.

Apple’s New Patent

Apple’s patents sometimes confuse me and this new one is one of those patents.. It’s for a goggle-like display system with an in-built head tracking system that changes the display from a somewhat boring “normal” static one into a dynamic view the recreates the feeling of being in an auditorium, baseball park or movie theater. It could even track the viewer’s eye movements to calculate their intended gaze and overlay fake audiences in front of the “screen” with accompanying audio effects.

This just makes me think of Knotting Hill, are we all gonna look like we are snorkeling to have the theater experience in our home?

Via Electronista

WPA Routers Hacked!

We all knew it could be done; that a hacker with enough time and processing power could watch your WPA-protected wireless network and, eventually, decrypt your precious datas. But did anyone guess it could be done in under 15 minutes? Not I! Well WiFi wizard Erik Tews has done just that, he’ll be giving a presentation next week at the PacSec Conference in Tokyo, describing the “mathematical breakthrough” that, he says, enables him to crack WPA-TKIP in 12 to 15 minutes.

There are some limitations, as the data sent from a connected device to the compromised router is apparently still safe, but anything headed the other way is wide open. Tews was the guy able to crack WEP in under a minute last year, ironically advising people to switch to WPA ASAP at the time.

So what should you do to secure your network? Switch to WPA2, which is still uncracked,at-least until this Tews sets his sight on that also.

Good thing I don’t have anything worth looking at on my computer.

Via PC World

Update here is a brand new Youtube How to on the hack.

Fish Tank Toilets, WHY?

Researchers say that staring at fish for a couple of minutes each day can keep your blood pressure normal. A Chinese company, Runto, has developed a toilet that comes with an integrated fish tank.

I am no genius, just ask my family, but I can’t quite figure out how women are supposed to “watch the fish while taking care of business.”

The toilet has three tanks – one for water flowing in, one for water flowing out and a third for fish and other underwater plants. This design makes sure that you don’t lose some of the fish in the tank every time you use the toilet. The company’s main claim is that the integration of a fish tank reduces the amount of water that flushes down.

I still ask WHY?

Via Telegraph

Fast, Beautiful, Clean!

Love motorcycles but worry about the environment? (I’m sure there are a few out there) Well, don’t sacrifice the thrill of cruising, because you now can get your ride modified just like the Kawasaki ZX-10 owned by Jason and Jeremy Cantwell. The duo got their ZX-10 retrofitted with an ecofriendly gasoline/hydrogen engine. These brothers are still able to churn out 170 hp from the engine but as an added benefit they doubled the mileage of this beast.

Now there is a eco-friendly vehicle you can still feel like a real man on!

Via Faster and Faster

Astronomers find Ghost

 

Ghost of Mirach

Ok so it really isn’t a ghost, but that is what they have been calling NGC 404. NGC 404 is a lenticular galaxy.  Lenticular galaxies are disc galaxies (like spiral galaxies) which have used up or lost most of their interstellar matter and therefore have very little ongoing star formation. As a result, they consist mainly of aging stars (like elliptical galaxies). The dust in most lenticular galaxies is generally found only near the nucleus and generally follows the light profile of the galaxies’ bulges. Because of their ill-defined spiral arms, if they are inclined face-on it is often difficult to distinguish between them and elliptical galaxies.

 

 

Get all that?

Well I hardly do and I have been reading about the things for the past couple hours!

Bottom line is, that the closest example of one of these lenticular galaxies is this NGC 404. The problem is it lies hidden in the glare from a red giant star called Mirach. So that is why NGC 404 became known to astronomers as the “Ghost of Mirach.” 

When the Galaxy Evolution Explorer spied the galaxy in ultraviolet light, a spooky ring materialized. 

“We thought this celestial ghost was essentially dead, but we’ve been able to show that it has an extended ring of new stars. The galaxy has a hybrid character in which the well-known, very old stellar population tells only part of the story,” said David Thilker of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “It’s like the living dead.”  NASA

It is pretty amazing when you look at all the things around us. Man has been here for years studying and yet we are constantly learning, usually that we truly know very little.

Mac Download

If you like searching for music in the iTunes Music Store but would prefer to buy DRM-free MP3s encoded in a higher bit rate, then check out Advantageous, a script for iTunes 8. Once you’ve downloaded and installed it, which is completely free, just click the script icon and select Get MP3 from Amazon while viewing a track listing in iTunes.

Your browser will open the relevant page for the artist or album at Amazon’s MP3 download store.

My question: how long will Jobs allow this one?

Via BoingBoing