100 Must-Have Skills for Geeks

Small but significant number of cases vulnerable

(NEWSER) - Oops. Now that millions of people have downloaded encrypted information like credit card and bank account numbers onto the Internet, a team of mathematicians and cryptographers have located a crucial flaw in online encryption. The flaw concerns the way the system generates random numbers to create a code critical to protecting digital information. In the system, randomly-generated prime numbers are used to create a public "key," which is used in a formula to encrypt information. The original, randomly generated numbers are kept secret. But in a small but significant number of cases, the random-number key generation system failed to work properly. The researchers found in certain cases that numbers were not truly random, making it possible to determine the secret keys used to generate the public key. The problem can only be fixed by software and Internet operations, not consumers. More»

Rumor mill heats up that company is going public soon

(NEWSER) - Here come the Facebook IPO rumors again. An insider tells Business Insider that employees expect the company to go public soon, possibly next month. "The IPO talk inside Facebook has ramped up the past 6 weeks and Zuckerberg repeatedly has said that it is 'coming,' which he *never* said in the history of Facebook," says the source's email. More»

Giants will test longer Internet Protocol address system

(NEWSER) - Scientific American posing a jarring question as headline today: "Will the Internet Stop on June 8?" And the answer is: Er, no. But the Internet will start to grow up a little. Tomorrow is World IPv6 Day, when Google, Facebook, YouTube, and other giants will conduct a 24-hour test of a new Internet Protocol address system. As SA explains, the current IP address system (IPv4) allows for 32-digit binary numbers. When it became the standard in 1977, the 4.3 billion addresses possible seemed way more than the world would ever need. Now they're just about gone. More»

IP address shortage could be Y2K 2.0

(NEWSER) - Don’t panic or anything, but a massive crisis is looming with the potential to shut down the Internet. The world is on the verge of using up all 4.3 billion possible IP addresses, explains Thomas Weber of the Daily Beast —which means that effectively the Internet is running out of room to connect new devices. “We expect that sometime in the first half of next year, the central pool will run out,” says the CEO of the American Registry for Internet Numbers. More»

If you can solve a Rubik's Cube in under 7 seconds, prepare for glory

(NEWSER) - You may not have realized it, but last weekend people got together in Europe to compete at "speedcubing." To the uninformed, that's the act of solving a Rubik's Cube—really fast. (The current record? 7.08 seconds.) Time lists nine more extremely geeky competitions:

• Muggle Quidditch: Yes, this exists. You might think sport immortalized in Harry Potter wouldn't be possible without flying brooms, but you'd be wrong—people still play it, by running around on brooms instead.