Mike Prawicki

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Archive for June, 2009

Firefox 3.5 released, ready to “upgrade” the Web

Jun 30

Posted by Mike Prawicki in News, Tech | No Comments

Mozilla has officially released Firefox 3.5, the next major version of its popular open source Web browser. Ars takes a close look at the new version and evaluates its enhancements. Support for HTML 5 video and other important emerging Web standards make this one of the most significant Firefox releases ever.
First look: Firefox 3.5 released, ready to "upgrade" the Web

Mozilla has announced the official release of Firefox 3.5, the next major version of its popular open source Web browser. The new version boosts performance, introduces useful new features, and delivers strong support for emerging Web standards.

Mozilla aims to “upgrade the Web” by improving the Firefox user experience and expanding the range of tools that are available to Web developers. The company boasts that Firefox 3.5 includes over 5,000 enhancements that span nearly every aspect of the browser’s functionality and behavior. Among the most compelling advancements in this release is support for the HTML 5 video element, which enables native video playback in the browser without requiring proprietary plugins such as Flash.

We got our earliest insight into the roadmap for the new version shortly before the release of Firefox 3.0 last June. Mozilla was planning to adopt a more incremental development model and tentatively aimed to have a 3.1 release ready to ship in late 2008. As the roadmap increased in complexity and more sophisticated features began to land, they pushed the planned release date back into mid-2009 and changed the target version number to 3.5. That version arrived this morning, after 12 months of intensive development.

Although it is not as radical as the broad architectural overhaul that was undertaken for the 3.0 release, the development effort for 3.5 has brought many important changes to the browser. It includes a lot of features that leverage the 3.0 architectural enhancements and it also includes a lot of features that were originally planned for 3.0 but were deferred for various reasons. Read the rest of this entry »

World’s first ever ’self-watering’ plant discovered in Israel

Jun 30

Posted by Mike Prawicki in Health, News | No Comments

Scientists have discovered the world’s first ’self-watering’ plant in Israel’s Negev desert is one of the driest regions on earth.

The Desert Rhubarb can hold 16 times more water than its rivals and has developed a unique ability to effectively water itself in its barren habitat.

Researchers were confounded by the meter-wide plant’s giant leaves, compared to its desert counterparts, whose tiny leaves stop dangerous moisture loss.

But they found the plant’s large leaves are the key to its success, because they are covered in microscopic streams through which water can be channeled.

Scientists claim ridges in the leaves act like mountain valleys, funneling the water slowly and directly into the plant while stopping it evaporating.

A team from the Department of Science Education-Biology at the University of Haifa-Oranim, in Israel, said the leaves act like a mini irrigation system.

Lead researcher Professor Gidi Ne’eman said “We know of no other plant in the deserts of the world that functions in this manner.

“We have managed to make out the ’self-irrigating’ mechanism of the desert rhubarb, which enables it to harvest 16 times the amount of water than otherwise expected for a plant in this region based on the quantities of rain in the desert.

“These deep and wide depressions in the leaves create a “channeling” mountain-like system by which the rain water is channeled toward the ground surrounding the plant’s deep root.

“Other desert plants simply suffice with the rain water that penetrates the ground in its immediate surroundings.”

Results of experiments and analysis of the plant’s growth – in an area with an average annual rainfall of 75mm – showed that the desert rhubarb is able to harvest quantities of water that are closer to that of Mediterranean plants, reaching up to 426mm per year.

That is 16 times the amount of water harvested by the small-leafed plants of the Negev desert region.

The Negev makes up more than 50 per cent of Israel’s land area to the south of the country near it’s border with Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula.

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ATM Vulnerability

Jun 30

Posted by Mike Prawicki in News, Tech | No Comments

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An ATM vendor has succeeded in getting a security talk pulled from the upcoming Black Hat conference after a researcher announced he would demonstrate a vulnerability in the system.

Barnaby Jack, a researcher with Juniper Networks, was to present a demonstration showing how he could “jackpot” a popular ATM brand by exploiting a vulnerability in its software.

Jack was scheduled to present his talk at the upcoming Black Hat security conference being held in Las Vegas at the end of July.

But on Monday evening, his employer released a statement saying it was canceling the talk due to the vendor’s intervention.

“Juniper believes that Jack’s research is important to be presented in a public forum in order to advance the state of security,” the statement read. “However, the affected ATM vendor has expressed to us concern about publicly disclosing the research findings before its constituents were fully protected. Considering the scope and possible exposure of this issue on other vendors, Juniper decided to postpone Jack’s presentation until all affected vendors have sufficiently addressed the issues found in his research.”

In the description of his talk on the conference web site, Jack wrote that, “The most prevalent attacks on Automated Teller Machines typically involve the use of card skimmers, or the physical theft of the machines themselves. Rarely do we see any targeted attacks on the underlying software. This presentation will retrace the steps I took to interface with, analyze, and find a vulnerability in a line of popular new model ATM’s. The presentation will explore both local and remote attack vectors, and finish with a live demonstration of an attack on an unmodified, stock ATM.”

Jack did not disclose the ATM brand or discuss whether the vulnerability was found in the ATM’s own software or in its underlying operating system. Diebold ATMs, one of the most popular brands, runs on a Windows operating system, as do some other brands of ATMs.

Diebold did not respond to a call for comment.

Earlier this year, Diebold released an urgent alert announcing that Russian hackers had installed malicious software on several of its Opteva model ATMs in Russia and Ukraine. A security researcher at SophosLabs uncovered three examples of Trojan horse programs designed to infect the ATMs and wrote a brief analysis of them. Last month another security research lab, Trustwave’s SpiderLabs, provided more in-depth analysis of malware used to attack 20 ATMs in Russia and Ukraine of various brands.

According to SpiderLabs, the attack required an insider, such as an ATM technician or anyone else with a key to the machine, to place the malware on the ATM. Once that was done, attackers could insert a control card into the machine’s card reader to trigger the malware and give them control of the machine through a custom interface and the ATM’s keypad.

The malware captured account numbers and PINs from the machine’s transaction application and then delivered it to the thief on a receipt printed from the machine in an encrypted format or to a storage device inserted in the card reader. A thief could also instruct the machine to eject whatever cash is inside the machine. A fully loaded ATM can hold up to $600,000.

It’s unclear if the talk Jack was scheduled to give addresses the same vulnerability and malware or a new kind of attack.

It’s not the first time that a vendor has intervened to halt a security talk discussing a vulnerability with its system. In 2005, Cisco tried to prevent researcher Mike Lynn from presenting his talk on a serious security hole in the operating system that runs its routers.

Lynn had received approval from both Cisco and his employer Internet Security Systems (ISS) to present the talk at Black Hat that year. But Cisco changed its mind at the last minute, pressuring the conference to cancel the talk and rip out pages of the presentation from the conference catalogue. Cisco and ISS threatened to sue Lynn and conference organizers if the talk proceeded. Lynn resigned from his job hours before the scheduled talk and gave his demonstration anyway. He was roundly praised by security professionals, including administrators of military and government networks, for defying the threats and disclosing the important vulnerability.

At the end of his talk, Lynn asked the audience if anyone wanted to give him a job. Juniper Networks, the company now responsible for pulling the Barnaby Jack talk, hired Lynn shortly thereafter.

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Dark Matter Lab Dedicated 5,000 Feet Underground

Jun 29

Posted by Mike Prawicki in Tech, construction | No Comments

This week, the Sanford Lab dedicated an underground science fortress to research dark matter. The lab is 5,000 feet underground in the mountains of South Dakota, shielded from cosmic radiation.

The lab is on a site that used to do physics research, and was a gold mine before that. The current Sanford Lab, in collaboration with the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL), is the deepest underground lab in the world. It’s divided into three levels: the shallow lab, the mid-level, and the deep campus. The deep campus is 6 and a half Empire State Buildings deep, or around 8,000 feet.

Experiments are already underway at the 5,000 foot level, but the lab intends to run its dark matter experiments as deep as possible in a lab called the Xenon detector experiment, or LUX. Doing the experiments deep inside the earth isn’t just a demonstration in mad science; it’s also a way to keep out interfering cosmic radiation.

The effects of dark matter in these experiments are so minuscule that any interfering radiation could throw off any experiments done at ground level. To get any real data, these experiments require a lot of shielding. Thousands of feet of earth should do the job just fine.

This $550 million project should be up and running by 2016.

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San Francisco – A good place to be in bad times

Jun 29

Posted by Mike Prawicki in News, construction | No Comments

10 Pricey Cities That Pay Off

When you pay a lot of money for something, you hope to get a lot of value in return. Despite the housing downturn and the number of cheap houses it has left in its wake, there is still plenty of expensive land left. According to the Global Property Guide, an online real estate investor’s guide, New York might have slipped from the second-most-expensive city in the world in 2008 to the sixth most expensive in 2009, but an average 120-square-meter (373-square-foot) apartment in the central business district will still cost you a hefty $14,898 per square meter.

So why are people willing to pay a fortune to live in certain places? And what are they getting in return for their money? According to a recent working paper from University of Michigan economist David Albouy, there’s a great deal of value to be found in those high prices.

Economists look at every asset as having an “amenity value,” which measures the amount of satisfaction the asset brings to its owner. For example, your home has an asset value that is worth much more than the roof it puts over your head. The land where you live brings with it a certain quality of life: How nice is the weather where you live? How close are you to the coast? How many cultural and recreational opportunities are nearby? These quality-of-life factors contribute heavily to the amenity value of a city, and they help explain why housing costs are so high in some places.

Another big component of a city’s amenity value — trade productivity — is essentially, how many goods does the city produce that other people value? The San Francisco area has Silicon Valley. New York has Wall Street. But productivity boosters can come in other forms, such as universities that produce an educated workforce, easy access to water or other transportation, or proximity to natural resources. How do these factors create amenities? Residents of highly trade-productive cities tend to enjoy higher wages. What’s more, businesses flock to these cities to enjoy the advantages. As incomes and employment go up, so do housing costs.

It’s important to note that amenity value is not the only driver of a city’s housing costs, just a very important one. It takes some finessing to figure out exactly how amenities make cities pricey. Drawing from data on wages and housing costs in the country’s metropolitan areas, Albouy used statistical analysis to make an educated guess about the amenity values of these cities.

The question of why some cities become great places to live and work is like asking which came first: the chicken or the egg? Did jobs and cultural opportunities follow the people who started living in these cities, or do people move there because of the jobs and cultural opportunities? Albouy says the answer to the riddle is clear: “People are following the amenities.”

Here are the top productive and valuable cities and some reasons why they give their residents such a premium for the price:

1. San Francisco. With the fourth-highest quality of life and the highest trade productivity on Albouy’s list, the San Francisco area — which includes Silicon Valley — comes in first on the list of most valuable cities. There are high wages, but even higher housing costs. Albouy found that housing costs are pushed so much above the wage level because San Francisco residents enjoy a premium beyond income, such as great weather, a thriving local arts community, and lively neighborhoods. But the business aspects of San Francisco outshine even the quality of life. Albouy says it’s often thought that small cities where workers earn lower wages, like Boise, Idaho, are where businesses should start because costs like hiring and renting a building are so low there, relative to cities like San Francisco. But low prices also mean low quality. “Boise is a terrible place to do business, and the low wages are a sign of that,” he says. Compared to Boise, “San Francisco has a highly productive workforce,” he says.

2. Santa Barbara, Calif. With a population of 400,000, the Santa Barbara metro area has the second-highest quality of life and third-highest trade productivity. Why do California cities appear so high on this list? Santa Barbara is a perfect example of how built-in advantages boost a California city’s amenity value. Albouy found that, generally speaking, the number of days of sunshine a city has each year, the higher its land rent. Santa Barbara’s Southern California locale gives it plenty of sun. Another good predictor of land rent: proximity to a coast. Santa Barbara’s beaches — the city has been dubbed the “American Riviera” — are very likely another reason it has such a high quality of life.

3. Salinas, Calif. The Northern California city of Salinas isn’t nearly as big a business mecca as nearby San Francisco, yet it has the eighth-highest trade productivity of the areas Albouy examined. Again, the California climate is a big contributor to this city’s high quality of life (the third highest on the list). But it’s not just the sunshine and access to the coast that make Salinas and other California cities so amenable; their summers don’t reach the same brutal temperatures as other warm parts of the country such as Arizona or the Southeast. Albouy points out that very hot weather tends to reduce the productivity of businesses and thus drive down value — possibly because high temperatures limit the ability to work. Salinas strikes the right balance of comfort.

4. Honolulu. It’s no surprise that Albouy finds Honolulu to be an especially nice place to live, and its high housing costs show just how nice people think it is. It has the highest quality of life of any metropolitan area on Albouy’s list. That quality of life compensates for trade productivity that is lower than in cities such as Washington and Philadelphia, which don’t have as much amenity value overall.

5. San Diego. This Southern California city has the seventh-highest quality of life and trade productivity that’s on par with Philadelphia. San Diego’s high value in Albouy’s study is probably a product of not only its location but also the presence of many institutions of higher learning, with the University of California-San Diego, the University of San Diego, and San Diego State University all located within the city. Albouy found a strong relationship between the city’s quality of life and the share of residents who have college degrees. College students and graduates “support the local arts, and they support walkable, cool downtowns,” he says.

6. New York. Of course, the business capital of the country has great trade productivity, trailing only San Francisco. The large number of high-paying jobs, a unique culture, a highly educated workforce, and a coastal location are all major amenities for New York. But the city rates lower for quality of life than cities like Portland or Washington and far below the aforementioned California cities. New York has the 39th-highest quality of life of all cities. As much as New Yorkers love their city, the sometimes cold climate appears to make it less valuable.

7. Los Angeles. Los Angeles lands in the top 10 despite having a lower quality of life than any of the other California cities on this list. It’s sandwiched between Wilmington, N.C., and Grand Junction, Colo., by that measure. But L.A. has the fifth-highest trade productivity, ranking just above Boston.

8. San Luis Obispo, Calif. The San Luis Obispo metro area, with a population of 246,681, sits between Los Angeles and San Francisco and thus shares many of the advantages of both cities. It has the fifth-highest quality of life. Why don’t more people live in smaller California cities like San Luis Obispo? Albouy says that his study does not take into account building regulations that might make it difficult for the supply of housing to increase, and thus keep housing prices up. “California would have a lot more people if you can build more houses there. And that would probably be good for the country,” he says, because more people could benefit from its high quality of life.

9. Boston. Like New York, the only other East Coast city to rank highly in value, Boston’s weather lowers its quality of life far below some of the other cities on this list. It has the 30th-highest quality of life in Albouy’s ranking. But also like New York, Boston has significant trade productivity — the fourth highest on the list. These cold-weather cities boost their value by offering well-paying jobs and very productive businesses. Innovation stemming from the high level of education among Boston’s residents is just one reason the city is so productive.

10. Naples, Fla. This city on the southwest coast of Florida has the eighth-highest quality of life. But it ranks 10th in amenity value because it’s not very productive. A larger population tends to mean higher trade productivity, since businesses can draw employees from a bigger base. Smaller metro areas like Naples, which has a population of 251,377, are at a disadvantage.

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