Sony suffers second data breach with theft of 25m more user details
Sony has suffered a second enormous data breach with nearly 25m customers’ details from its SOE network stolen. Photograph: Nick Rowe/Getty Images
The crisis at Sony deepened on Tuesday as it admitted that an extra 25 million customers who played games on its Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) PC games network have had their personal details stolen – and that they were taken before the theft of 77 million peoples’ details on the PlayStation Network (PSN).
The electronics giant said the names, addresses, emails, birth dates, phone numbers and other information from PC games customers were stolen from its servers as well as an “outdated database” from 2007 which contained details of around 23,400 people outside the US. That includes 10,700 direct debit records for customers in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, Sony said.
The dataset was stolen on 16 and 17 April, before the PSN break-in, which occurred from 17 to 19 April. Sony said that it had not previously thought that the data was copied by the hackers who broke into its systems.
A Sony spokeswoman in Tokyo admitted that the company was unable to predict where or how or when the next attack would come. “They are hackers. We don’t know where they’re going to attack next,” Read more…
Deadliest tornado days in U.S. history
PRATT CITY, Ala., May 1 (Reuters) – Federal officials vowed urgent support on Sunday for a region devastated by the deadliest U.S. natural disaster since Hurricane Katrina, even as they acknowledged recovery would not be quick or easy.
President Barack Obama’s administration is trying to show an effective response to the storms and twisters that killed about 350 people last week in seven southern states, reduced neighborhoods to rubble and caused damage expected to run into billions of dollars.
Obama visited Alabama on Friday and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Craig Fugate, toured damage on Sunday.
“I don’t think words can fairly express the level of devastation here. I am not articulate enough,” Napolitano said after seeing how killer storm winds had torn through Pratt City, Alabama.
Later in Smithville, Mississippi, Napolitano said the visit had offered an acute sense of urgency about the need to help Read more…
Texas Drought worst since 1895
The drought in Texas, during March, was the worst since 1895.
That is about the time my parents were born 120 years ago.
I never thought it could be worse than the drought of the 1950s, but it is. Drive out into grazing country where mesquite aren’t too thick and all you can see is dry, cracked soil with an occasional fire ant or a gopher mound in the sandier soil.
Comparing the current drought with the seven-year drought in the 1950s, old-timers say the current drought sapped the soil of moisture faster than it did in the 1950s.
It just stopped raining last July, and pasture after pasture was hit by wildfires.
Right now, there is no potential to produce hay, harvest wheat or plant cotton or grain sorghum this May. Unless there is a week of rain fairly soon there is no hope for agriculture this year.
The Texas Ag Extension Service says that, despite a few recent showers in some areas, the cotton growing in Texas and Oklahoma is still in a drought. Any crop planted in southern Texas earlier in the year that got up out of the ground is now being sand blasted by hot, dry winds.
Wildfires have burned at least 1.5 million acres in the state since Jan. 1.
In addition to grazing losses, ranchers are facing rangeland stock water tanks that are dry or nearly dry. Streams are not flowing and lakes and big tanks are turning to deep mud.
Future of forensic science: New laser beam that analyses a single hair can reveal what you had for breakfast
A new laser can tell scientists what you ate for breakfast – just by looking at one of your hairs.
The beam gives unprecedented sensitivity to chemical analysis and allows researchers to create an hour-by-hour picture of what an individual has eaten.
They can even tell where a person has been by examining the chemicals which are in their hair.
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Breakthrough: A laser beam that ‘hole punches’ a single strand of hair has given scientists unprecedented sensitivity to chemical analysisPrevious techniques had burned hair samples but the new method breaks them down instead and Read more…
Scientists Seek More Accurate Cargo Scanners
Scientists in North Carolina are pursuing new cargo scanning technology capable of more accurately identifying nuclear- and radiological-weapon ingredients by making use of newly discovered atomic “fingerprints,” Duke University said on Thursday (see GSN, April 28).
The High Intensity Gamma-Ray Source generates beams that interact in specific ways with radioactive materials including uranium and plutonium. Such interactions might someday be used to identify weapon-grade uranium and other dangerous atomic materials amid benign radiation sources, Duke University nuclear physicist Mohammad Ahmed said in a press release. Ahmed’s team is examining the distinct patterns in which the atomic nuclei of different materials emit neutrons when exposed to the beam. Read more…
The Strange World of NSA Mind Control
SARTRE, Contributing Writer
“The National Security Agency (NSA) is a combat support agency within the Department of Defense (DOD) established by presidential directive in 1952. NSA has two separate missions: signals intelligence and communications security. For signals intelligence, NSA manages all U.S. signal collection and processing and produces signals intelligence in accordance with DOD and DCI priorities. For communications security, NSA provides leadership, products, and services to U.S. agencies that need to protect their information and communication systems from foreign exploitation. NSA is headed by a three-star flag officer, who reports to the Secretary of Defense. About 80 percent of the NSA workforce is civilian.”
Why Investors Are Buying Silver As If There Is No Tomorrow
The price of silver has been absolutely exploding lately. It has reached heights not seen since the Hunt Brothers attempted to corner the silver market over three decades ago. But this time there are no Hunt Brothers to blame for the stunning rise in the price of silver. So exactly why are investors buying silver as if there is no tomorrow right now? Well, the truth is that there are a lot of reasons. Investors have been flocking to precious metals such as gold and silver as the value of paper currencies has declined. The euro is incredibly weak right now and the U.S. dollar appears to be on the verge of a major collapse. In fact, the entire financial system is highly unstable right now. In such an environment, investors seek some place safe to park their money, and right now gold and silver are seen as safe harbors. But gold and silver have not been going up in price at the same pace. So why is silver outperforming gold so significantly?
The price of silver has increased by more than 150% over the past 12 months. But the price of gold has only gone up about 30%.
If you invested $100 in the S&P 500 ten years ago it would be worth about Read more…
China unveils rival to International Space Station
Less than a decade ago, it fired its first human being into orbit. Now, Beijing is working on a multi-capsule outpost in space. But what is the political message of the Tiangong ‘heavenly palace’?
Visitors to the Airshow China exhibition look at a model of the Tiangong-1 space station. Photograph: Ranwen/Imaginechina
China laid out plans for its future in space yesterday, unveiling details of an ambitious new space station to be built in orbit within a decade.
The project, which one NASA adviser describes as a “potent political symbol”, is the latest phase in China’s rapidly developing space programme. It is less than a decade since China put a human into orbit for the first time, and three years since its first spacewalk.
The space station will weigh around 60 tonnes and consist of a core module with two laboratory units for experiments, according to the state news agency, Xinhua.
Officials have asked the public to suggest names and symbols for the unit and for a cargo spacecraft that will serve it.
Professor Jiang Guohua, from the China Astronaut Research and Training Centre, said the facility would be designed to Read more…
QE2 Is Damaging The Economy And Reducing GDP Growth
QE2 is going to go down as one of the worst monetary policy initiatives in the history of the modern Federal Reserve era. On almost any metric applied, QE2 ends up not only falling well short of its proposed goals, but actually turns certain metrics like GDP growth negative compared with the prior quarter, and heading in the wrong direction.
Costs Eat into Corporate Profits = No Hiring
Analysts all over Wall Street are starting to revise their 2nd quarter GDP forecasts down, and some like Goldman Sachs have made several downward revisions as higher input costs due to a weak dollar are creating an additional burden on businesses and consumers and thus slowing economic growth.
A weak dollar (Fig. 1) to a point can help exports, but an extremely weak dollar which in combination with QE2 liquidity juicing up commodities even further, turns out to be a net negative on the economy, and risks sending the Read more…
Bat disease could allow insects to destroy crops
A deadly disease to bats could become a major financial headache for agriculture, costing Ohio farmers as much as $1.7 billion a year.
A new study is the first to tie a dollar value to the millions of crop-damaging insects that bats routinely devour each year. Now, the night-flying hunters face the threat of a fungal disease that kills most of the bats it infects.
White-nose syndrome, named for the fungus that spreads over bats while they hibernate, has killed at least 1 million bats in 15 states and Canada since it was discovered in New York in 2006.
On March 30, Ohio officials announced that they found the disease among bats hibernating in an abandoned limestone mine in the Wayne National Forest. They fear it will march through Ohio as it has Read more…
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