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Government

Submission + - Federal Goverment Employees retirement plan victim of 'cyber attack' (tsp.gov) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Participants in the Thrift Savings Plan, the 401k-like retirement savings plan for U.S. Federal Government Employees, were informed of a confirmed hacking incident that resulted in unauthorized access to the personal information of 123,201 TSP participants and payees. The incident occurred in July of 2011, when a computer belonging to Serco, a third party service provider used in support of the TSP, was subjected to a "sophisticated hacking incident" resulting in unauthorized access. The FBI informed FRTIB (the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board) and Serco of this incident in April 2012. The 'plan news update' has an FAQ detailing the incident, and the full press release can be found in a PDF here. Affected parties have been notified, and appropriate measures including "credit consultation and continuous credit monitoring" via a third party for one year. Considering the press release indicates data accessed includes "Names, addresses, and Social Security numbers... in some cases... financial account numbers and routing numbers... and some TSP related informaiton..." is this response sufficient? What more could or should be done?
Technology

Submission + - Aging eyes stymie biometric iris scans (nature.com)

Submitted by scibri
scibri writes: The iris scanners that are used to police immigration in some countries, like the UK, are based on the premise that your irises don't change over your lifetime. But it seems that assumption is wrong.

Researchers from the University of Notre Dame have found that irises do indeed change over time, enough so that the failure rate jumps by 153% over three years. While that means a rise from just 1 in 2 million to 2.5 in two million, imagine how that will affect a system like India's — which already has 200 million people enrolled — over 10 years.
Businesses

Submission + - Curt Schilling Fires Entire Staff At Video Game Company (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by
redletterdave
redletterdave writes: "On Thursday, former Boston Red Sox pitcher and tech entrepreneur Curt Schilling fired his entire staff at 38 Studios, his Rhode Island-based video game company, leaving more than 300 employees without jobs because the company couldn't repay its debt to the state. 38 Studios failed to pay Rhode Island's economic development agency $1.1 million, which was due last week, and also failed to meet payroll for its staff in both its Providence office and its Maryland subsidiary, Big Huge Games."
The Military

Submission + - Fire May Leave US Nuclear Sub Damaged Beyond Repair

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "AP reports that a fire that swept through a nuclear-powered submarine in dry dock at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard has caused such extensive extensive damage to its forward compartments that the 22-year-old Los Angeles class attack submarine might have to be scrapped. "These submarines were designed decades ago. So they're no longer state of the art," says analyst Loren Thompson. "If this vessel returns to service, I will be amazed." The fire broke out while the Miami was on a 20-month stay at the shipyard for an overhaul, and it took firefighters from more than a dozen agencies twelve hours to put out the fire, described as intense, smoky, and a "hot scary mess." "It takes a lot of guts to go into a burning building. But the idea of going into a submarine full of hot toxic smoke — that's real courage," said US Rep. Chellie Pingree after meeting with the shipyard commander. Firefighters isolated the flames so they would not spread to nuclear propulsion spaces at the rear of the submarine. There was nuclear fuel on board the sub, but the reactor has been shut down for two months and was unaffected. Rear Admiral Rick Breckenridge says an investigation has been launched into what caused the fire, but he expects that investigation to take a long time to complete and wouldn't say if human error has been ruled out as a cause of the fire, or if the focus is on mechanical issues."
Earth

Submission + - 'Asian Brown Cloud' Threatens U.S. (sciencemag.org) 1

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: China and India are some of the world's top polluters, with countless cars, factories, and households belching more than 2 million metric tons of carbon soot and other dark pollutants into the air every year. The pall hanging over the region has come to be known as "the Asian brown cloud." These pollutants aren't just bad news for the countries themselves. A new study reveals that they can affect climate thousands of kilometers away, warming the United States by up to 0.4C by 2024, while cooling other regions.
Australia

Submission + - Australia and South Africa to share the SKA (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: The battle for the world's largest radio telescope has ended in a draw. As an earlier slashdot story suggested, South Africa and Australia are to split the Square Kilometre Array, a €1.5 billion (US$1.9 billion) project made up of 3,000 15-meter-wide dishes and an even larger number of simple antennas. The decision was announced at a meeting outside of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, following a vote by SKA's international board.

Submission + - Photographer threatened with legal action after asserting his copyright (baldheretic.com)

Submitted by JamieKitson
JamieKitson writes: Photographer Jay Lee got more than he bargained for after sending some DMCA take down notifications out to hosts of sites using one of his pictures. One Candice Shwagger accuses him of everything from conspiracy over local sheriff elections to child abuse. Since Candice is now threatening legal action Jay has said he'll take down the post, so here's a snap shot.

After reading the story I checked for use of my own pictures and found one of them being used on a review site without even a credit. Here's a snap shot of that page.
Google

Submission + - Who sends Google the most takedown notices? Microsoft (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by
nk497
nk497 writes: "Google has released details on the copyright takedown notices its received over the past year, and the most requests by far have been from Microsoft. Over the past year, Google has received DMCA takedown notices for 2,544,209 URLs over Microsoft-related piracy, with NBC and the RIAA ranking second and third. Many of the reports do not come directly from companies such as Microsoft, but via firms set up only to chase copyright issues. The most popular targets appear to be file-sharing sites. "These days it’s not unusual for us to receive more than 250,000 requests each week, which is more than what copyright owners asked us to remove in all of 2009," said Fred von Lohmann, Google senior copyright counsel, adding it takes on average 11 hours for Google to take action."
Technology

Submission + - Bessel beam "tractor beam" concept theoretically demonstrated (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: Last year, NASA revealed it was evaluating three potential “tractor beam” technologies to deliver planetary or atmospheric particles to a robotic rover or orbiting spacecraft. At the time, the third of these, which involved the use of a Bessel beam, only existed on paper. Researchers at Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) have now proven the theory behind the concept, demonstrating how a tractor beam can be realized in the real world – albeit on a very small scale.
Australia

Submission + - IT price hike inquiry kicks off: Submissions wanted (delimiter.com.au)

Submitted by wirelessduck
wirelessduck writes: After some recent complaints from a Labor MP about price markups on software and technology devices in Australia, Federal Government agencies decided to look in to the matter and an official parliamentary inquiry into the issue was started.

"The Federal Parliament’s inquiry into local price markups on technology goods and services has gotten under way, with the committee overseeing the initiative issuing its terms of reference and calling for submissions from the general public on the issue."
Games

Submission + - Dungeons and dragons playtest released (wizards.com)

Submitted by thuf1rhawat
thuf1rhawat writes: for a certain type of geek, nothing is more important than dungeons and dragons, with the announcement last year of the new edition and the announcement that an open playtest will occur. finally it's available ( subject to usual nda's etc)
Australia

Submission + - Court ruling shuts down Australian cloud TV recorders (zdnet.com.au)

Submitted by joshgnosis
joshgnosis writes: In the wake of an Australian Federal Court ruling last month that free-to-air TV recording app Optus TV Now was infringing on the copyright of some of the country's biggest sports broadcasts, two other services — Beem and MyTVR have also been forced to suspend their services.

Beem lashed out at the ruling, telling customers that their rights had been "diminished' by the judgment and rights owners were "scared" of cloud-based TV recording services in the same way they once were of VCRs.

Submission + - Lib-ray: Non-DRM, Open, HD Video Standard (kickstarter.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Terry Hancock wants to create a new HD Video Standard for MMC solid state devices (SDHC, for instance). It employs HTML5 for interaction, VP8 video (up to 4k), FLAC/Vorbis audio, in the MKV container.
Its focus is to provide a standard for free-culture artists, absent the commercial trappings of DRM/TPM, so that their work can reach people without having to pay the corporate tithe(s) associated with the gates on (for instance) playback equipment.
Science

Submission + - Faculty vote for open access policy at UC San Francisco (ucsf.edu)

Submitted by Marian the Librarian
Marian the Librarian writes: UCSF is among the first public institutions to adopt an open access policy and the largest scientific institution to have such a policy. The policy, voted unanimously by the faculty, will allow UCSF authors to put electronic versions of their published scientific articles on an open access repository making their research findings freely available to the public.

Submission + - BitTorrent Traffic Falls In The U.S. (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by CAKAS
CAKAS writes: After legal actions taken by several industry outfits, BitTorrent traffic has fallen in the United States to the all time low of 12.7 percent of internet traffic. However, this trend seems to be unique to the U.S. — In other parts of the world, like Europe and Asia, BitTorrent traffic continues to rise. "According to Sandvine, the absence of legal alternatives is one of the reasons for these high P2P traffic shares". In the U.S. legal content delivery has flourished and provided customers easy access to content. This seems to suggest that due to these alternatives, people are less willing to pirate and pay the publishers for entertainment.
Google

Submission + - Call for DOJ to reopen Google Wi-Fi spying investigation (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes: "Two U.S. lawmakers have called on the U.S. Department of Justice to reopen its investigation into Google's snooping on Wi-Fi networks in 2010 after recent questions about the company's level of cooperation with federal inquiries. Representatives Frank Pallone Jr., a New Jersey Democrat, and John Barrow, a Georgia Democrat, called on the DOJ to fully investigate Google's actions for potential violations of federal wiretapping laws. In light of a recently released U.S. Federal Communications Commission report on Wi-Fi snooping by Google Street View cars, the DOJ should take a new look at the company's actions, wrote the lawmakers in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder."
Science

Submission + - Sound increases the efficiency of boiling (phys.org)

Submitted by
hessian
hessian writes: "Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology achieved a 17-percent increase in boiling efficiency by using an acoustic field to enhance heat transfer. The acoustic field does this by efficiently removing vapor bubbles from the heated surface and suppressing the formation of an insulating vapor film."

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