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Permanent LTE exploits steer users to rogue websites
LTE was theoretically supposed to fix the security holes baked into earlier wireless standards, but it isn't completely immune. An international team of researchers has discovered a attack methods (nicknamed aLTEr) that takes advantage of inherent flaws in LTE to direct users to hostile websites. An active exploit uses the lack of integrity checks in LTE's lower layers to modify the text inside a data packet. Since that's easy to determine with DNS packets, which direct traffic to website addresses, you can steer requests to malicious DNS servers and thus take the user to a website of your choice.
Japan's latest humanoid robot makes its own moves
Japan's National Science Museum is no stranger to eerily human androids: It employs two in its exhibition hall already. But for a week, they're getting a new colleague. Called "Alter," it has a very human face like Professor Ishiguro's Geminoids, but goes one step further with an embedded neural network that allows it to move itself. The technology powering this involves 42 pneumatic actuators and, most importantly, a "central pattern generator." That CPG has a neutral network that replicates neurons, allowing the robot to create movement patterns of its own, influenced by sensors that detect proximity, temperature and, for some reason, humidity. The setup doesn't make for human-like movement, but it gives the viewer the very strange sensation that this particular robot is somehow alive. And that's precisely the point.
Joyswag Photochop: Lost Planet, found entries - Day Three
It was hard to tear ourselves away from watching video repeats of Steve Jobs' Apple keynote that took place this morning, but we managed to do it so we could judge the Lost Planet entries that keep pouring in. We're going to eventually have to put up a gallery of these, because we have a lot more than ten awesome entries. Thanks so much for giving us such great stuff to look at and choose from. Hopefully some of you are pursuing careers in graphic design with those mad skillz.Our first winning entry comes to us straight out of the annals of history, bringing you an extremely retro gaming dosage of John Milton. This has to be the most highbrow entry we've received yet, and that's including the large number of Lost Pants entries we're getting (some of which have been great). Nice work Shaun, you've both impressed and shamed us at the same time, since we read the Cliff's Notes version of this in high school.Check out the second winner after the jump, and refresh your memory on all the contest details. Keep 'em coming, because we're loving everything you've been sending.
Bored with Mail.app's icon? Roll your own
Are you getting tired of other good icons? Hawk Wings, obsessed with all things Mail.app, has tracked down a Photoshop template for creating your own Mail.app icon. Courtesy of John Godfrey, this Photoshop template contains instructions for inserting your own images into a Mail.app icon, and Tim Gaden also recommends rotating your inserted image to 11.2 degrees counter-clockwise, as well as using an 85 x 90 size to get just the right fit.But, "how do I turn an image into a Mail.app icon?" you ask. Hawk Wings has a solution for that step too: img2icns is a Universal Binary freeware app that can convert JPEGs, PNGs, TIFs and GIFs to the ICNS format, ripe for using a previous (and simple) TUAW Tip for replacing Mail.app's icon with your much more exciting new creation.
