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Encryption

Prosecutors Op-Ed: Phone Encryption Blocks Justice 392

Posted by Soulskill from the completely-unbiased-source dept.
New submitter DaDaDaaaaa writes: The New York Times features a joint op-ed piece by prosecutors from Manhattan, Paris, London and Spain, in which they decry the default use by Apple and Google of full disk encryption in their latest smartphone OSes (iOS 8 and Android Lollipop, respectively). They talk about the murder scene of a father of six, where an iPhone 6 and a Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge were found.

"An Illinois state judge issued a warrant ordering Apple and Google to unlock the phones and share with authorities any data therein that could potentially solve the murder. Apple and Google replied, in essence, that they could not — because they did not know the user's passcode. The homicide remains unsolved. The killer remains at large."

They make a case for lawmakers to force Apple and Google to include backdoors into their smartphone operating systems. One has to wonder about the legitimate uses of full disk encryption, which can protect good people from harm, and them from having their privacy needlessly intruded upon.
Social Networks

Ellen Pao Leaves Reddit; Site Founder Steve Huffman Makes a Triumphant Return 467

Posted by timothy from the to-spend-time-with-family dept.
Deathspawner writes: To say that it's been a tumultuous month for reddit is an understatement. While multiple events have occurred in recent months that have caused an uproar, such as the banning of popular "hate" subreddits, nothing impacted the site quite like the out-of-nowhere firing of "Ask Me Anything" admin Victoria Taylor last week. Following that, other minor revelations surfaced, and finally, this past Monday, reddit CEO Ellen Pao came out from hiding to issue an apology. While her message instilled a bit more confidence in the future of the site, it wasn't enough. Today, it's been announced that Ellen Pao has left the company she joined last fall, and will be superseded by someone who knows what he's getting into: founder Steve Huffman.
The Almighty Buck

Video Leased LEDs and Energy Service Contracts can Cut Electric Bills (Video) 53

Posted by Roblimo from the my-momma-told-me-you'd-better-shop-around dept.
I first heard of Consumer Energy Solutions from a non-profit's IT guy who was boasting about how he got them to lease him LED bulbs for their parking lot and the security lights at their equipment lot -- pretty much all their outdoor lighting -- for a lot less than their monthly savings on electricity from replacing most of their Halogen, fluorescent, and other less-efficient lights with LEDs. What made this a big deal to my friend was that no front money was required. It's one thing to tell a town council or non-profit board, "If we spend $180,000 on LEDs we'll save it all back in five years" (or whatever). It's another thing to say, "We can lease LEDs for all our outdoor lighting for $4,000 per month and save $8,000 on electricity right away." That gets officials to prick up their ears in a hurry.Then there are energy service contracts, essentially buying electricity one, two or three years in advance. This business got a bad name from Enron and their energy wholesaling business, but despite that single big blast of negative publicity, it grows a little each year. And the LED lease business? In many areas, governments and utility companies actually subsidize purchases of anything that cuts electricity use. Totally worth checking out.

But why, you might ask, is this on Slashdot? Because some of our readers own stacks of servers (or work for companies that own stacks of servers) and need to know they don't have to pay whatever their local electric utility demands, but can shop for better electricity prices in today's deregulated electricity market. And while this conversation was with one person in this business, we are not pushing his company. As interviewee Patrick Clouden says at the end of the interview, it's a competitive business. So if you want the best deal, you'd better shop around. One more thing: the deregulated utility market, with its multitude of suppliers, peak and off-peak pricing, and (often) minute-by-minute price changes, takes excellent software (possibly written by someone like you) to negotiate, so this business niche might be one an entrepreneurial software developer should explore.
Earth

As Drought Worsens, California Orders Record Water Cuts 599

Posted by timothy from the your-long-showers-probably-aren't-the-problem dept.
New submitter GordonShure.com writes: The State of California has made an unprecedented move by uniformly restricting water supplies across the entire state as demand outstrips supply. Farms are most affected, though food prices aren't anticipated to rise in any hurry: imports from out of state continue apace. Notably, this is a problem Silicon Valley hasn't much helped to solve.

Will this move induce meaningful modernization upon the infrastructure supporting the state's thirty-eight million residents? Or will things continue to be corn, corn, corn for the time being?
Hardware

Russian Company Unveils Homegrown PC Chips 268

Posted by timothy from the in-formerly-soviet-russia dept.
Reader WheatGrass shares the news from Russia Insider that MCST, Moscow Center of SPARC Technologies, has begun taking orders for Russian-made computer chips, though at least one expert quoted warns that the technology lags five years behind that of western companies; that sounds about right, in that the chips are described as "comparable with Intel Corp’s Core i3 and Intel Core i5 processors." Also from the article: Besides the chips, MCST unveiled a new PC, the Elbrus ARM-401 which is powered by the Elbrus-4C chip and runs its own Linux-based Elbrus operating system. MCST said that other operating systems, including Microsoft’s Windows and other Linux distributions, can be installed on the Elbrus ARM-401. Finally, the company has built its own data center server rack, the Elbrus-4.4, which is powered by four Elbrus-4C microprocessors and supports up to 384GB of RAM.

Comment Re:So what online storage is safe? (Score 1) 23

If you' are not encrypting the stuff before they get it. You're a fool.

I don't see the point when my NAS is available, I use Openvpn and it's trivial to setup securely. Changes are encrypted and stored on that miraculous thing called a server I own that is co-located on a remote island. It is cheap and I only store encrypted backups on it.

I am taking notes on what else I should do to protect that stuff further. ;)

Comment Re:Heh. (Score 1) 143

It could be
done by
1) them
2) a fan without their knowledge to whip up the skeer or
      a) just as a prank
3) It could be done by a bewildering number of government, quasi-government, eiteh at the national, regional or local level.
4) A vigilante
5) their ex.
6) a crazy person targeting them for kidnapping because they know how well they will taste with carrots.

i.e. apropos of nothing

Comment Re:Overstamp First? (Score 1) 133

by mrmeval (#49100379) Attached to: Crystal Pattern Matching Recovers Obliterated Serial Numbers From Metal

The serial is usually in a non critical spot. Just drill it out and fill it with silver solder.

If you want a perfect solution, live in a state in the US which isn't a liberal distopia you can build your own firearm legally as long as it's not covered under the NFA.

If it's one of the cast zinc firearms have your cat pee on it. It will be destroyed within days. ;)

Comment Re:Do it yourself? (Score 1) 130

by mrmeval (#47846965) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Best Service To Digitize VHS Home Movies?

I used a video capture card with Svideo input. I found after many trials that VLC worked well in capture mode with a tape that had issues. I had to manually clean the video and audio heads in the thrift store VCR and used another tape to verify the VCR worked wel mechanically. It still took two attempts. I then transfered it from the Windows 7 box to a Linux box and had FFmpeg transcode it after bleeding the docs for a couple hours and fumbling with several attempts.

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