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Submission + - ICANN set to broaden world of domain names (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: ICANN, as a step towards, expanding global top level domain (gTLD) names, has approved a new Domain Name Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) that is expected to bring about waves of continued improvements in the domain name ecosystem. The new agreement is a result of efforts of over a year of negotiations that took place between ICANN and Registrar Stakeholders Group. The new agreement brings about quite a few improvements including making it mandatory for registrars to appoint a point-of contact for reporting abuse, establishment of registrar responsibilities for reseller compliance, enhancement of compliance tools, audit rights, certification requirements among others.

Submission + - Number of federal wiretaps rose 71 percent in 2012 (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes: Looks like last year was pretty busy. I wonder how many were leaks and media? From the Washington Post: "The number of wiretaps secured in federal criminal investigations jumped 71 percent in 2012 over the previous year, according to newly released figures. Federal courts authorized 1,354 interception orders for wire, oral and electronic communications, up from 792 the previous year, ... There was a 5 percent increase in state and local use of wiretaps in the same period. ... There is no explanation of why the federal figures increased so much, and it is generally out of line with the number of wiretaps between 1997 and 2009, which averaged about 550 annually. There was also a large number of wiretaps in 2010, when 1,207 were secured. A single wiretap can sweep up thousands of communications. One 30-day local wiretap in California, for instance, generated 185,268 cellular telephone interceptions, of which 12 percent were incriminating, according to the report. The vast majority of the wiretaps in both federal and state cases were obtained as part of drug investigations, and they overwhelmingly were directed at cellphones,... Only 14 court orders were for personal residences. Most jurisdictions limit the period of surveillance to 30 days, but extensions can be obtained.""

Submission + - Australia Air Force uses math puzzle for job ad that was unsolvable (nydailynews.com) 1

Submitted by KernelMuncher
KernelMuncher writes: Australia's Royal Air Force has been left red-faced after a job ad asked applicants to solve a complex math problem was revealed to be unsolvable. The service posted the puzzle in a bid to attract the country's best minds to its ranks. "If you have what it takes to be an engineer in the Air Force call the number below," it read above a complicated formula which candidates had to crack. But there was a slight difficulty. The problem had typos and ended up not giving potential operatives the correct contact information.

Submission + - NSA Revelation Leads FTC To Propose "Reclaim Your Name" Initiative (ftc.gov)

Submitted by clegrand
clegrand writes: Ms. Julie Brill, a member of the Federal trade Commission, has proposed a voluntary big data industry initiative to allow consumers access to their personal records and the ability to correct them. She has coined it "Reclaim Your Name". While some big data companies such as Acxiom (http://www.acxiom.com/site-assets/privacy-acxiom-marketing-products/) already allow such access, it is not an industry-wide practice. She sees this campaign as a natural extension of the Fair Credit Reporting Act and a logical partner for the ongoing effort of the Do Not Track mechanism currently under standardization review with the W3C. The New York Times has a take on it here: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/26/reclaim-your-name/?nl=technology&emc=edit_ct_20130627 Link to full text of her speech is listed below.

Submission + - Linux Pro Audio Getting Mainstream Attention 2

Submitted by northernalbertapolic
northernalbertapolic writes: Studio 13.37, the ultra-low-latency super-studio, received mainstream attention this month with a mention in the professional publication "Recording" magazine. With a realtime kernel, Ardour 3, and the ability to load itself entirely into RAM (OS and all), has Linux finally eclipsed Mac in the area of pro audio work?

Submission + - How do we explain cloud privacy risks to K12 Teachers?

Submitted by hyperorbiter
hyperorbiter writes: [* Google Apps is just an example here, I think it applies to many cloud services]
With the advent of Google Apps for Education, there has been a massive uptake by the K12 schools I deal with on signing students up with their own Google powered email address under the school domain. This combined by the fact that the students' work when using Google Apps is stored offshore and out of our control—with no explicit comeback if TOC are breached by Google—it seems to me that the school cannot with integrity maintain it has control over the data and its use. I have expressed a concern that it is unethical to use these services without informing the students' parents of what is at stake e.g. the students are getting a digital footprint from the age of seven AND are unaware of the implications this may have later in life. The response has often been that I'm over-reacting and that the benefits of the services far outweigh the concerns, so rather than risk knee jerk reactions by parents (a valid concern) and thereby hampering 'education', it's better to not bring this stuff up. My immediate issue isn't so much about the use of the cloud services now, but the ethics over lack of disclosure in the parental consent process. Does anyone have ideas about defining the parameters of "informed consent" where we inform of risks without bringing about paranoia?

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: HIPAA Privacy Compliance in the Snowden Age

Submitted by Motard
Motard writes: For much of my career, I've worked in organizations subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Among other things, HIPAA prescribes government-mandated regulations regarding the security surrounding Protected Health Information, or PHI.

In smaller companies, where I've been able to talk directly to the equivalent of a General Counsel, it has been interpreted as a requirement to employ reasonable measures to protect the information. In larger corporations — especially those that had found themselves entertaining representatives of The Office of The Inspector General — there are generally dedicated Risk Management or Security officers dedicated to eliminating risk — often without regard to practicality (since that isn't their charge).

So I ask this question: When it is demonstrated that a government contractor can flee to Hong Kong with classified secrets from the NSA (of all things), what chance does 'The Main Street Clinic' have of meeting the requisite data security requirements? At what point to we have to throw up our hands exclaiming "If the freaking NSA can't do it, how can we?"

Submission + - FBI paid informant inside WikiLeaks (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: On an August workday in 2011, a cherubic 18-year-old Icelandic man named Sigurdur âoeSiggiâ Thordarson walked through the stately doors of the U.S. embassy in ReykjavÃk, his jacket pocket concealing his calling card: a crumpled photocopy of an Australian passport. The passport photo showed a man with a unruly shock of platinum blonde hair and the name Julian Paul Assange.
Thordarson was long time volunteer for WikiLeaks with direct access to Assange and a key position as an organizer in the group. With his cold war-style embassy walk-in, he became something else: the first known FBI informant inside WikiLeaks. For the next three months, Thordarson served two masters, working for the secret-spilling website and simultaneously spilling its secrets to the U.S. government in exchange, he says, for a total of about $5,000. The FBI flew him internationally four times for debriefings, including one trip to Washington D.C., and on the last meeting obtained from Thordarson eight hard drives packed with chat logs, video and other data from WikiLeaks.

Submission + - The Los Angeles Schools buy iPad Trojan Horses for 30,000 students

Submitted by lpress
lpress writes: The Los Angeles Unified School District will spend $30 million over the next two years on iPads for 30,000 students. Coverage of the announcement has focused on Apple winning over other tablets, but that is not the key point. The top three proposals each included an app to deliver Pearson's K-12 Common Core System of Courses along with other third-party educational apps.

The Common Core curriculum is not yet established, but many states are committed to it, starting next year. The new tablets and the new commitment to the Common Core curriculum will arrive around the same time, and busy faculty (and those hired to train them) will adopt the Pearson material. The tablets will be obsolete in a few years and the hardware platform may change, but lock-in to Pearson's default curriculum may last for generations.

Submission + - 16-Yr-Old Student Has Developed a Way to Turn Banana Peels Into Bioplastic (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by formaggio
formaggio writes: A sixteen-year-old Turkish student recently discovered that the starches and cellulose contained in a banana peel can also be used to create materials that insulate wires and form medical protheses. Bilgin developed a chemical process that turns the peels into a non-decaying bioplastic. She hopes that it will help replace the need for petroleum and combat pollution.

Submission + - D-Wave large-scale quantum chip validated (scienceblog.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A team of scientists says it has verified that quantum effects are indeed at work in the D-Wave processor, the first commercial quantum optimization computer processor. The team demonstrated that the D-Wave processor behaves in a manner that indicates that quantum mechanics has a functional role in the way it works. The demonstration involved a small subset of the chip’s 128 qubits, but in other words, the device appears to be operating as a quantum processor.

Submission + - Larry Ellison and Marc Benioff Suddenly Playing Nice, Weirding Everyone Out (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Once upon a time, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison took what seemed like inordinate amounts of pleasure in firing off verbal broadsides at each other. In 2011, for example, Ellison referred to Salesforce as “the roach motel of clouds” and “a very bad security model.” But Benioff’s given as good as he's gotten, swiping at Oracle’s early cloud efforts as “cloud in a box” and “just another server." But oh, how things change: Ellison and Benioff have revealed that their firms would come together in a joint effort. They were on their best behavior during a conference call this week. “The Oracle database has been a key part of Salesforce ‘s infrastructure from the very beginning of our company 14 years ago,” Benioff told Ellison at one point, according to a transcript posted on ZDNet. “Absolutely the best decision we ever made was to go with Oracle.” Why the sudden reversal? Simply put, after years of sticking with a hardware-and-software model, Oracle now has cloud religion. For Salesforce, the benefits are a little murkier, but some analysts think that Salesforce will be able to leverage Oracle's name to gain a heightened profile with businesses. But can Benioff and Ellison continue to play nice? What do you think?

Submission + - Seismic Data Set Could Improve Earthquake Forecasting (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Geoscientists still can't predict when a major quake will strike, and many have given up trying. But many do try to issue more general forecasts of hazards and potential damage. This week, researchers added a potentially powerful new tool to their kit: the largest seismic database of its kind ever constructed, based on tens of thousands of earthquake records stretching back more than 1000 years. Together with a new global map of strain accumulation at plate boundaries, the data sets will form the core of an international public-private partnership intended to reshape the science of earthquake forecasting.

Submission + - DARPA-Funded Software Could Usher in the Era of Open-Source Robotics (popsci.com)

Submitted by malachiorion
malachiorion writes: The best thing to come out of the DARPA Robotics Challenge, so far, isn't the lineup of nifty rescue bots being developed by teams around the world, or even Boston Dynamics' incredible Atlas humanoid. It's the pumped-up version of Gazebo, the free, open-source robotics simulation software whose expansion and further development is being funded by DARPA. Here's a quick look at how the software was used in the recent virtual leg of the competition, as well as how it could change the way robotics R&D is conducted (and create more roboticists, with its low-cost, cloud-based architecture).

Submission + - AT&T Gets Patent to Monitor and Track File-Sharing Traffic (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Internet provider AT&T has patented a new technology that allows the company to accurately track content being shared via BitTorrent and other P2P networks. The company explains that the technology can be utilized to detect pirated downloads and combat congestion on its network. Whether the company is already using the system to track infringing content, or has plans to do so, is unknown.

Submission + - "Shields to Maximum, Mr. Scott"

Submitted by aarondubrow
aarondubrow writes: Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin developed a fundamentally new way of simulating fabric impacts that captures the fragmentation of the projectiles and the shock response of the target. Running hundreds of simulations on supercomputers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center, they assisted NASA in the development of ballistic limit curves that predict whether a shield will be perforated when hit by a projectile of a given size and speed. The framework they developed also allows them to study the impact of projectiles on body armor materials and to predict the response of different fabric weaves upon impact.

Submission + - Immigration Bill Passes the Senate, Includes More H-1B Visas (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: While the landmark immigration bill (full text PDF) which recently passed the U.S. Senate is being hailed as bringing crucial reforms that will vastly improve the state of immigration in this country, there is a provision in it that is seeing relatively little discussion: section 4101, a "market-based" increase in the amount of H-1B visas for skilled workers.

Submission + - What Would You Choose to Update Your Technical Skills Inventory this Summer

Submitted by Proudrooster
Proudrooster writes: As technologists, developers, and programmers it is essential to keep moving forward as technology advances so that we do not find ourselves pigeonholed, irrelevant, or worse unemployed. If you had to choose a new technology skill to add to your personal inventory this summer what would it be and why? Also, where would you look for the best online training (iTunesU, Lynda.com)? The technologies that immediate jump out as useful are HTML5, XCODE, and AJAX. Thank you for sharing.

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