Facebook has been hit now for two days in a row by a phishing scam. Facebook monitors their network for URL’s that are distributed in mass to users and relies on users to inform them of these scams. In the newest scam, after receiving a message from a friend to “check this out” users are directed to a page that asks them to log into Facebook a second time. When the user id and password are entered into the page, the information is stolen. Each member in the user’s friends list then receives the same message. Facebook officials are unsure if the two scams are related.
Official believe that both scams have been stopped by measures that they have already taken. It is important for members to realize that once signed in they are not usually asked to sign in again. Users should check the URL of the sign in page to be sure that it says www.facebook.com. If it does not, do not give your information out. Passwords of accounts used to spread spam have been reset. Officials say that Facebook is working diligently to protect the social network. If you think you have been infected you should change your password. When the same password is used on other sites, it should also be changed as a safety precaution.
The manufacturer of Hydroxy cut products has voluntarily recalled the product and the FDA has advised that persons stop taking the dietary suppliment immediately. The cause for the recall is that several persons using the product as directed have developed liver damage. Signs of liver damage include brown urine, stomach pain, nausia, and vomiting. Hydroxycut is sold as a suplement. The FDA can take action against companies producing supliments once it is on the market. For the past two years, manufacturers must report any adverse side effects to the FDA within 15 days of learning ot them. Hydroxycut is believed to have caused the death of one young man. The FDA is still trying to determine what causes the liver damage in some but not all persons who use the product.
The task is made more difficult since the supplement contains sever herbal elements. The leading trade association for nutritional suppliments, The Council for Responsible Nutrition, has said the both the FDA and manufacturer of Hydorxycut have taken appropiate measures in the recall and wanring to stop taking the product. Once the ingrediant that causes the liver damage has been identified, the manufacturer may choose to begin selling the product after reformulating it so that the offencing ingredient is no longer included.
In an effort to “pay them back for their service”, astronauts Bob Crippen and Scott Carpenter recently visited a Florida island rescue sanctuary for chimpanzees. While some of the chimps in the sanctuary were involved in the space program or are their descendants, many others have been involved in medical research. Until this sanctuary was developed, many such research chimps have lived their lives out in cages after serving the purpose of researchers. Before coming to the sanctuary, one chimp, Gromek, who had been used in blood studies, had been in his cage for over 40 years without ever leaving.
Other space chimps living at the compound include Gogi, Dana, and Lil’ Mini, daughter of the back up chimp, Mini. The sanctuary allows the chimps to live in social groups of about twenty-five. Because they cannot swim, water around the islands keeps them contained. The so called “space chimps” were sent into space in the Mercury space program of 1950’s and 1960’s to see if sending men into space was safe. At the time, there were fears that man could not outside of the earth’s atmosphere. The work of the chimps allowed the space program to continue. There are currently about 150 chimps at the compound and room for 300.
At the university of Georgia, scientist are working in research on a product called Biochar as a possible solution. This process takes all kinds of animal and plant waste and instead of allowing them to rot in a land fill, heats them to a to tempratures as high as 1000 degrees farinheight where they give off gases and result in a porus charcoal. The gases given off are trapped and used as fuel for cars or generation of electricity. The biochar is in fields to help slow water evaporation and encourage naturel enhancement of the soil.
Estimates ar that use of this procedure could reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 8% over a corse of 50 years. Farmers in the Amazon have used the process for many years and it has resulted in a fertil soils that need no fertilizer even 500 years later. Enriching the soil has the added advantage of allowing increased production without having to cut more forestland in the rainforest. Trees in the rainforest are significantly important in stopping global warming as they use carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the production of glucose. Cutting these trees is thought to have significantly increased the greenhouse gases that have contributed to global warming.
On Sunday evening Facebook had a big announcement. On the blog of its developer a post informed everyone that the major standard on which the Facebook people have been working for the last several months is ready to go. The “Open Stream” API (Activity Streams) is the first time that this huge new standard will be used.
In simpler terms, this will let third party operators see content that is posted to feeds, such as videos, notes and links. It will also allow them to view what’s going on in the social network’s other built in applications.
One of the developers of this new type of stream, says that this will put the days of just posting blogs on the Web, in the past. Until now, the other developers could just get updates on the status of their stream. Now they will actually be able to interact with them using these new Activity Streams’ applications. Quicker changes and other issues can be handled now using this technology.
Those who developed this hope that this will make communication the way it should be. Fast and efficient messages between people and their servers is the goal. Like e-mail or chat, this will soon become a very widely used tool.
It is getting harder to deal with this economic crisis in places where there at least some employment opportunities. Imagine living an area where the businesses are just leaving or downsizing so much that the chances of getting work are nearly impossible. Such is the case in a small county in North Carolina. In the little town of Spruce Pine, the unemployment rate is not just a problem, it is nearing catastrophe. One couple shared their story of struggle with CNN. They both have lost their jobs. He returned to school to get his GED and then got new job training. In his new field of expertise, he got a job again, only to lose it quickly due to downsizing. She has also taken the learning a new skill route, but has little hope of finding employment.
Their county has just over 15,000 residents, two thousand of which have lost their jobs within the last 3 years. The mill that once employed a large number of the residents, now serves as a food pantry. The organizer of the pantry says that it is barely meeting the needs of the community as the jobless rate skyrockets. The town has decided to take some action, though. They are preparing to become a tourist attraction by selling locally crafted goods. The leaders believe that this will breathe new life into a dying community. They only hope that the people can hold on until business starts coming in.
Edo Berger heard an alarm Thursday morning as a satellite sensed a ten second energy blast called a “gamma ray burst” originating from space. Once the alert was recorded, telescopes the world over pointed towards the blast and soon became aware of infrared radiation. Then Berger got ready to see the light which should have come next. It didn’t come.
Berger said, in a phone interview, “We were kind of blown away. We immediately knew what that meant,”
It means that he found the oldest thing that has been seen so far — a gigantic star blowing up thirteen billion years ago. He calculates that at the time the star exploded, the universe was a mere six hundred million years old. He went on to explain that in simpler terms. What he saw on that early morning was a glimpse of about ninety-five percent back into the beginning of all time as we know it.
Berger, who is an astronomy assistant professor at Harvard University, said the when the star, known now as GRB 090423, blew up it emitted a million times more energy than our sun will throughout it’s entire existence. To the nearest approximation, the star was between thirty to one hundred times bigger than the sun at the time it exploded.
Its gamma radiation was sensed by the NASA satellite, Swift. Hawaii’s Gemini Observatory detected its infrared radiation.
For many years now users of Macs have felt relatively safe using their computers. While pc users have suffered though viruses, worms and Trojans, Mac users have had virtually no such problems. Computer security researchers warn that the protection Mac users have enjoyed may soon be changing. These researchers feel that the immunity may have simply have been a numbers game. There are far more PC’s than there are Mac’s. Just as a company wants to use its advertising dollars to reach the greatest audience, designers of the computer infections have simply ignored Mac’s-until now. This new threat is a Trojan horse. It sneaks into your computer with anther program that the user installs into his computer.
This particular program infected only those machines which had installed a pirated version of iWork. Once installed the program, a botnet, allows you’re the programmer to take control of you Mac. Files can be opened and the security of your system compromised. Although this attack affected very few Mac’s (Conflicker by contrast was infected up to 10 million computers) it shows that Mac users are no longer immune to such infections. Although Apple is diligently seeking to prevent more compromises of user’s systems, the attacks will continue, just as the attackers have continued to work around PC virus protection.