netbuzz writes "The National Association of Attorneys General met in Boston this week and one panel focused on the 'safe harbor' provision of 1996 Communications Decency Act. Within that broader discussion, Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood cited the autocomplete feature in Google search as evidence the company has more control over content than it contends. 'We know they manipulate the autocomplete feature,' Hood said, with his point being that there should be more such manipulation, not less. His primary example: a search on 'prescription drugs online' presents an autocomplete suggestion of 'prescription drugs online without a prescription.'"

For around a decade programming was not part of the computer curriculum in the U.K.. Through a lot of hard work from advocates and the industry this will soon change, but a large skills gap still exists. Tim Gurney is just one of many working on closing that gap. His Coding in Schools initiative aims to "work with schools and students and inspire the next generation of computer programmers and software engineers by creating and spearheading schools based programming clubs." I recently sat down with Tim to talk about who's working on the problem and what yet needs to be done. Read below to see what he's doing to change the state of things.

knwny writes "The Times of India reports that 'India has launched a wide-ranging surveillance program that will give its security agencies and even income tax officials the ability to tap directly into e-mails and phone calls without oversight by courts or parliament, several sources said.'" Adds an anonymous reader: "What's chilling is the comments from senior officials indicating that parts of the program are already live, without absolutely any discussion in public about it."

McGruber writes "Carl Fiorentino, known to many slashdotters for his regular hyperbole-filled emails advertising 'unbelievable' blowout pricing on memory, storage, other components, and overclocker specials, has been indicted in New York federal court on seven counts of fraud and money laundering charges. Fiorentino allegedly took more than $7 million in bribes and kickbacks in exchange for steering more than $230 million in business to the Taiwanese and California companies that made the payments."

recoiledsnake writes "Following up on our previous discussion of Microsoft selling discounted SurfaceRT tablets to schools (which fueled speculation about the future of Surface RT), Bloomberg is now reporting that Microsoft is fast at work on the next Surface RT which will replace the current Tegra 3 with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chip which has stellar benchmarks against the likes of the upcoming Tegra 4, Apple A6X, and Exynos processors, especially in the GPU and graphics department. Since the SoC comes with 3g/LTE, this might be the first Surface to support integrated cellular data. There are also indications that there could be an 8" version, and that the new versions might be revealed alongside the Windows 8.1 preview bits at the upcoming BUILD conference, starting on June 26."

An anonymous reader writes "Gottfrid Swartholm Warg — known also as Anakata — was on June 20th sentenced to two years imprisonment for data breaches and aggravated fraud by the District Court of Nacka in his native Sweden. It is unclear at this time wether the decision will be appealed to a higher court. Prison time in Sweden is generally served for two thirds of the time sentenced, if the person behaves well and the court finds no reason to abstain from the norm. Also, time spent in pre-trial confinement (swe: 'häkte') is deducted from the time sentenced. Warg was arrested in Cambodia in september of 2012, transferred to Sweden and ordered by court to remain in pre-trial confinement from September 14th, 2012."

An anonymous reader writes "Stanford Law School has kicked off a 'Cookie Clearinghouse' web privacy initiative that brings together researchers and browsers. The project aims to provide a centralized and trusted repository for whitelist and blacklist data on web tracking, much like StopBadware does for malware. Mozilla and Opera are collaborating on the initiative, and Mozilla plans to integrate it into Firefox's new default third-party cookie blocking. The leader of an advertising trade group has, of course, denounced the participating browsers as 'oligopolies.'"

sciencehabit writes "The next time you hear extended applause for a performance you didn't think was that great, don't feel like a snob. A new study reveals that audience response has more to do with the people in the seats than those up on stage. Applause, it turns out, is a bit like peer pressure. In a study of college students, individuals were more likely to start clapping if a larger percentage of the audience had already started. If 50% of the audience was clapping, for example, individuals were 10 times more likely to start clapping than if 5% of the audience was clapping. People stop clapping for the same reason. Even more surprising, the applause for a bad presentation could be just as long as applause for a good one. Random interactions in the audience can result in very different lengths of applause regardless of the quality of the talk."

An anonymous reader writes "The LA Times mentions that after visiting well known sites such as ADP, Verizon Wireless, Scottrade, Geico, Equifax, PayPal and Allstate, sensitive data remains in the browser disk cache despite those sites using SSL. This included full credit reports, prescription history, payroll statements, partial SSNs, credit card statements, and canceled checks. Web servers are supposed to send a Cache-Control: no-store header to prevent this, but many of the sites are sending non-standard headers recognized only by Internet Explorer, and others are sending no cache headers at all. While browsers were once cautious about writing content received over SSL to the disk cache, today, most do so by default unless the server specifies otherwise."

judgecorp writes "In a move reminiscent of the 1960s Cold War days, Presidents Obama and Putin have set up a hotline between their respective cyber-security authorities, to defuse any possible crises and prevent them from escalating into an online equivalent of the Cuban Missile Crisis. 'We recognise that threats to or in the use of ICTs include political-military and criminal threats, as well as threats of a terrorist nature, and are some of the most serious national and international security challenges we face in the 21st Century,' a joint statement from the presidents read."

itwbennett writes "Speaking at a cloud panel discussion hosted by Reuters on Wednesday, Terry Wise, head of global partner ecosystem for Amazon Web Services, explained how the company handles government requests for data stored on Amazon's cloud: 'If a U.S. entity is serving us with a legally binding subpoena, we contact our customer and work with that customer to fight the subpoena.' But Wise's best advice to customers is to encrypt their data: 'If the data is encrypted, all we'd be handing over would be the cypher text,' he said."