Life is an inordinately complex unsolved puzzle. Despite significant theoretical progress, experimental anomalies, paradoxes, and enigmas have revealed paradigmatic limitations. Thus, the advancement of scientific understanding requires new models that resolve fundamental problems. Here, I present a theoretical framework that economically fits evidence accumulated from examinations of life. This theory is based upon a straightforward and non-mathematical core model and proposes unique yet empirically consistent explanations for major phenomena including, but not limited to, quantum gravity, phase transitions of water, why living systems are predominantly CHNOPS
(carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur), homochirality of sugars and amino acids, homeoviscous adaptation, triplet code, and DNA mutations. The theoretical
framework unifies the macrocosmic and microcosmic realms, validates predicted laws of nature, and solves the puzzle of the origin and evolution of cellular life in the universe.

Erik D Andrulis

via Life | Free Full-Text | Theory of the Origin, Evolution, and Nature of Life.

Enyo JavaScript Application Framework.

Asthma rate and costs from traffic-related air pollution are much higher than once believed.

CamStudio – Free Screen Recording Software.

To be released tomorrow!

SOL: Exodus – A space shooter from Seamless Entertainment.

Want to think outside the box? Try actually thinking outside of a box. In a study to be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, researchers had students think up solutions to problems while acting out various metaphors about creative thinking and found that the instructions actually worked.

via To 'think outside the box', think outside the box.

The landscape for car HUDs has changed dramatically over the last year, so here is a short overview for what’s possible.

Microvision: Head Up Displays.

Microvision supplies a Pico projector which uses laser projection to project onto a car. It works during daytime and doesn’t need a film to be added to the glass.

AAXA also delivers a pico projector, which it claims is the worlds’ brightest.

Superimaging has a windscreen soluiton, using an emissive projection display. It doesn’t use pixels, which gives an interesting look to it, no idea how the image is generated though. Some more information here.

Wikipedia also has an interesting article on HUD’s including the different generations.

Virtual Cable is an interesting system that puts loads of information on the windscreen, but nothing on how the hardware works. They overlay the route as a cable op the windsreen, and overlay other information on the windscreen too.

Smart HUD uses Android and the Microvision pico projector to turn your smartphone into a HUD solution. A tracker device is added to the steering wheel, allowing you to safely operate the device.

By far the best software is Atoll Ordenadores ASmartHud series of apps, which are unfortunately iphone only

Yup, they’re going to re-copyright works for people who are long dead. To create money from thin air. Can’t people just think up new stuff?!

How to destroy project Gutenberg and all. When is someone going to take the plunge and copyright the Illiad?

Supreme Court rules Congress can re-copyright public domain works.

The European digital rights organisation has launched a website with 5 one page flyers explaining in a nutshell what’s wrong with ACTA.
It looks pretty complete to me, even though it’s only 5 pages out of whole essays one could write about what’s wrong with ACTA.

What's Wrong with ACTA Week | EDRI.

Basically SCADA systems are so poorly secured you can find their logins on Google. In a protest that people are uncovering vulnerabilities but the suppliers aren’t fixing the problem but rather trying to silence the exploiters entirely, this twitter account is posting links to loads of SCADA systems. So if you want to play with some systems, now is your chance

Someone unnumbered ntisec on Twitter.

Multicellular Life Evolves in Laboratory | Wired Science | Wired.com.

They can use the maths to predict fairly well when and where a serial killer will strike again.

Scientists Uncover The Mathematics Of Serial Killers – Forbes.

Waldo Stakes is building a rocket car he hopes will go 2000 mph – using the rockets from the Bell X-15, which holds the air speed record. It’s a one man operation, who knows what’s possible!

Is a 2000 Mph Car Actually Possible? – Popular Mechanics.

Open Mesh sells access nodes and gateways to create WiFi coverage over large areas or inside buildings. The management software is cloud based and it’s all quite affordable and feature rich.

Open Mesh | Cloud-Managed Wireless Networks.

An excellent plan to make the future generations more than just users of software, but makers of software is being launched in the UK, where schoolkids will make 2D animations, program smartphone apps, etc. Sounds like they’ll have a lot more fun than they do now as well as learning something very very useful.

Kids should be making software, not just using it – Gove • The Register.

Ziggo and XS4ALL, two ISP’s in NL, have been forced by the courts to dissallow users to get to the pirate bay. Of course, users will still be able to get there using VPNs so it’s not very effective, but more worrying is that the Dutch courts seem to think that not only do they have the right to filter content viewed by Dutch web surfers, but also that the ISP is the right body to act as an internet cop.

Of course, this does set precedence, so expect to see politics and the courts follow their own agenda’s soon and revoke our freedoms for loads of other websites.

Rechtspraak.nl – LJN: BV0549.

i’m Watch.

How to Crack a Wi-Fi Network’s WPA Password with Reaver.

Fit females make more daughters, mighty males get grandsons.

An insect’s internal chemicals can be converted to electricity, potentially providing power for sensors, recording devices or to control the bug, a group of researchers at Case Western Reserve University report.

via Implanted biofuel cell converts bug’s chemistry into electricity: Scientists take step toward cyborgs.

The CCC has published all the talks from the 28th Annual Chaos Communications Congress.

Watch all of the freshly published talks from 28c3 – Hack a Day.

Which means the money you spent on that Stradivarius was basically wasted on a myth.

Study shows even professional musicians can’t tell old master violins from new.

Due to poor implementation a brute force attack can be mounted which only has to guess the first half of the pin. This means there are only 11000 combinations to guess in total and each guess takes around 1.3 seconds. There is no mechanism in routers to disconnect a user after so many failed login attempts.
The PDF shows how it works. There is an unreleased proof of concept tool (Stefan Viehbock is cleaning up the code) but using the paper you should be able to implement it yourself.

viehboeck_wps.pdf (application/pdf Object).

Karsten Nohl / Luca Melette explained how it works at the Chaos Computer Club Communication Camp 2011.

Camp 2011: GPRS Intercept.

A simpler tutorial can be found here

- Download sources into ~/gprs_sniffer

git clone git://git.osmocom.org/osmocom-bb.git
git clone git://git.osmocom.org/libosmocore.git
git clone git://git.srlabs.de/gprsdecode.git
wget http://srlabs.de/dl/gprs_multi.patch

- Download ARM cross compiler

wget http://gnuarm.com/bu-2.15_gcc-3.4.3-c-c++-java_nl-1.12.0_gi-6.1.tar.bz2
tar xf bu-2.15_gcc-3.4.3-c-c++-java_nl-1.12.0_gi-6.1.tar.bz2

- Compile and install libosmocore

cd ~/gprs_sniffer/libosmocore
autoreconf -i
./configure
make
sudo make install

- Compile gprsdecode

cd ~/gprs_sniffer/gprsdecode
make

- Prepare OsmocomBB’s burst_ind branch

cd ~/gprs_sniffer/osmocom-bb
git checkout origin/sylvain/burst_ind
git checkout d1cb8ea9b784c7acbafbb2fdcedbdf4655c2f6f5
patch -p1 < ~/gprs_sniffer/gprs_multi.patch

- Compile OsmocomBB

cd src
export PATH=$PATH:~/gprs_sniffer/gnuarm-3.4.3/bin
make

- Run OsmocomBB firmware

# Conect Motorola phone with USB cable
cd ~/gprs_sniffer/osmocom-bb/src
./host/osmocon/osmocon -m c123xor -p /dev/ttyUSB0 ./target/firmware/board/compal_e88/layer1.compalram.bin
# Switch on Motorola phone

- Run OsmocomBB host software (in 2. terminal)

cd ~/gprs_sniffer/osmocom-bb/src
./host/layer23/src/misc/cell_log

- Adjust to active network

# look for active networks in the output:
cell_log.c:334 Sync ARFCN 29 (rxlev -52, 289 syncs left)
cell_log.c:190 Cell: ARFCN=29 MCC=222 MNC=01 (Italy, TIM)
# in this case, network is TIM, and ARFCN is 29
# kill cell_log with ctrl-c, and rerun with correct ARFCN:
./host/layer23/src/misc/layer23 -a 29

# Data channel assignments look like this
layer3.c:243 GSM48 IMM ASS (ra=0×72, chan_nr=0x0a, HSN=44, MAIO=0,
TS=2, SS=0, TSC=0) l1ctl.c:506 Tx Dedic.Mode Est Req (maio=0,
hsn=44, chan_nr=0x0a)

# Red lines indicate signal strength
# In this case 3 out of 4 slots are used:
l1ctl.c:261 BURST IND: @(2064231 = 1556/13/06) ( -50 dBm, SNR 255)
l1ctl.c:261 BURST IND: @(2064231 = 1556/13/06) ( -50 dBm, SNR 1)
l1ctl.c:261 BURST IND: @(2064231 = 1556/13/06) ( -50 dBm, SNR 255)
l1ctl.c:261 BURST IND: @(2064231 = 1556/13/06) ( -50 dBm, SNR 255)

# wait for session end or kill with ctrl-c
# A file like “bursts_20110821_1648_29_2094723_0a.dat” is produced

- Run GPRS decoder

# Start Wireshark, capturing on interface “lo”
~/gprs_sniffer/gprsdecode/gprsdecode bursts_20110721_1648_29_2094723_0a.dat

- Optional: Test with sample data
wget http://srlabs.de/dl/gprs_262_80_0001_0000_20110710_2251_875_494777_0f.dat
~/gprs_sniffer/gprsdecode/gprsdecode gprs_262_80_0001_0000_20110710_2251_875_494777_0f.dat
wget http://srlabs.de/dl/gprs_262_80_0001_0000_20110710_2252_875_514147_0f.dat
~/gprs_sniffer/gprsdecode/gprsdecode gprs_262_80_0001_0000_20110710_2252_875_514147_0f.dat

- Optional: Build Wireshark from source

svn co http://anonsvn.wireshark.org/wireshark/trunk wireshark
cd wireshark
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
sudo make install

- Optional: Uplink sniffing

# the default firmware captures 4 downlink slots,
# for uplink you need to compile a different firmware.
# open “osmocom-bb/src/target/firmware/layer1/prim_sniff.c”
# at line 288, modify #if 1 to 0
# go back to ‘Compile and install libosmocore’

Being able to breathe is a big issue and unfortunately the pollution levels in our cities is so high that going out for a run or cycling is more harmful than the health benefits.

So to counter this, there are a few filters available.

Pollution China has a nice article on how to choose the right facemask from Respro.

This is the sport mask, but there are many different products offering different protections and comforts.
Respro: Sports & Leisure – Cycling – Sportsta Mask.

Sanspira also offers nasal filters which are much much smaller but obviously don’t offer much in the way of filtration when breathing through the mouth. here

here