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Submission + - NASA pondering two public contests to build small space exploration satellites (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: NASA today said it was looking into developing two new Centennial Challenge competitions that would let the public design, build and deliver small satellites known as Cubesats capable of operations and experiments near the moon and beyond. The first challenge will focus on finding innovative ways to allow deep space communications with small spacecraft, while the second focuses on primary propulsion for small spacecraft.

Submission + - Judge orders professor removed from no-fly list (seattletimes.com) 1

Submitted by Okian Warrior
Okian Warrior writes: In a followup to Slashdot's previous article, a federal judge has ordered Rahinah Ibrahim removed from the U.S. government's no-fly list.

Rahinah Ibrahim eventually won the no-fly list ruling after her daughter, a US citizen, was prevented from returning to the country to testify at the trial.

Here's hoping this is the first of many successful challenges to the no-fly list.

Submission + - Build An Open-Source Electric Car In One Hour, For $4,000 1

Submitted by joe5
joe5 writes: Like what Elon Musk has done building an electric car and want to go all Etsy and build your own? That's apparently now possible now thanks to the OSVehicle Tabby — dubbed the first "Open source vehicle" (memo: it may be cool, but it ain't the first). The OSV guys are taking pre-orders for the Tabby starter kit, with both the two-seater or four-seater configurations going for €500. Then you click to add options (Note: seats is an "option" so that's the level of luxury you are dealing with here) When the transactions complete, OSV sends the parts to your home and you can download the plans and start building. Since the Tabby is open source, OSVehicle will also look to a community of owners and tinkerers for suggestions and recommendations.

Submission + - Google 'Mob Sourcing' Patent Uses Video Metadata To Identify Public Gatherings (securityledger.com)

Submitted by chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: File this one in your (bulging) 'creepy big data applications' folder: Google has applied to the US government for a patent on what is described as a method for “inferring events based on mob source video,” according to the Web site Public Intelligence. (http://info.publicintelligence.net/GoogleMobVideoPatent.pdf)

According to the application, Google has developed the ability to mine metadata from videos, photos or audio submitted by Google users (to YouTube, etc.) to infer that “an event of interest has likely occurred.” The technology surveys time- and geolocation stamps on the videos and other data to correlate the activities of individuals who might be part of a gathering, The Security Ledger reports.

The Patent, US2014/0025755 A1, was published on January 23, 2014. The technology, dubbed “mob sourcing” will allow Google to correlate video and images to infer the existence of groups (i.e. a public gathering, performance or accident), then send notifications to interested parties.

“Embodiments of the present invention are thus capable of providing near real-time information to pertinent organizations when users of wireless terminals (aka ‘mobile phones’) upload video clips to the repository upon being recorded,” the application reads.

The mob sourcing capability could be used to analyze and correlate video clips submitted by users either with the user’s permission or without it, Google claims. Consumer applications could allow YouTube users who upload a video to associate it with an ongoing event –say “South by Southwest Festival 2014 – making it easier for others to enjoy a crowd-sourced view of events. As for the non-consumer applications? Well...we know what those are.

Submission + - Judge Says You Can Warn Others About Speed Traps

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes: Speeding is against the law, and yes, even going 5 mph over the speed limit is breaking the law. But everyone does it, right? You do it, your friends do it, heck, your grandmother does it. But what about when you see a cop? Some cops are ticketing people for notifying fellow motorists about speed traps. In Florida, Ryan Kintner simply flashed his high-beams to warning oncoming cars that there was a cop ahead. He was given a ticket for doing so. He went to court to fight the ticket, and a judge ruled that flashing lights are the equivalent of free speech, thus he had every right to flash his lights to warn oncoming cars. So what have we learned here? Basically, if you are a good Samaritan, flash your lights and warn oncoming traffic of speed traps, because this is America ,and we are allowed freedom of speech.

Submission + - US Secret Service: Stronger laws could help fight sophisticated cybercrime (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: In the face of the recent Target and Neiman Marcus data breaches the US Secret Service says new laws could help bolster the country's cybersecurity shield.

Testifying before a Congressional hearing entitled: "Protecting Consumer Information: Can Data Breaches Be Prevented?" US Secret Service Criminal Investigative Division Deputy Special Agent in Charge William Noonan said: "While there is no single solution to prevent data breaches of U.S. customer information, legislative action could help to improve the Nation's cybersecurity, reduce regulatory costs on U.S. companies, and strengthen law enforcement's ability to conduct effective investigations."

Submission + - Some Tor Exit Nodes Try To Spy On Encrypted Traffic (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Philipp Winter and Stefan Lindskog, researchers in the PriSec (Privacy and Security) group at Karlstad University in Sweden have found exit relays in the Tor anonymity network that attempted to spy on users' encrypted traffic using man-in-the-middle techniques. The researchers built a scanning tool called exitmap that can identify exit relays behaving maliciously or abnormally and ran it on the Tor network. Over a four-month period they identified 25 bad relays that were subsequently reported to the Tor Project and blacklisted. Fourteen relays engaged in man-in-the-middle HTTPS traffic sniffing using fake certificates, four relays did both HTTPS and SSH sniffing and one attempted only SSH sniffing. Two other relays used the sslstrip tool to force HTTPS connections over plain HTTP, one relay injected HTML code in HTTP traffic and three relays engaged in Internet censorship by blocking access to certain websites at the DNS level, intentionally or because of misconfiguration.

Submission + - Universities Face a Coming 'Avalanche' (pearson.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Sir Michael Barber, Katelyn Donnelly and Saad Rizvi have written a provocative report, "An Avalanche is Coming: Higher Education and the Revolution Ahead." For it and other work, Donnelly and Rizvi have just been named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in education. Their argument: As tuition rises, the traditional four-year degree is being replaced by less costly, more flexible alternatives, and MOOCs are only part of it. Future students will pick and choose to save money, getting only the education they need or want. Universities can still thrive, but only if they change dramatically.

Submission + - State Of Illinois Proposed Medical Marijuana Rules: Your Pot Or Your Gun (chicagotribune.com) 1

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes: The Chicago Tribune reports, "Patients who want to qualify for medical marijuana in Illinois would have to be fingerprinted for a background check and pay $150 a year — and give up their right to own a gun, state officials proposed Tuesday. The plan outlines how adults who have any of 41 specified medical conditions ... may apply to get a patient registry identification card to purchase medical pot. The proposed rules are the first in a series of parameters expected to be outlined over the course of the year to govern how medical marijuana can be legally grown, sold and purchased. The Illinois Department of Public Health will take public comment on this set of rules until Feb. 7 and then submit them to a legislative panel for approval by the end of April. ... One new proposal states that a qualifying patient or caregiver may not possess a firearm, even if they have a state firearm owner's identification card or concealed carry permit..."

Submission + - ESR on Clang and GCC no plugin policy (gnu.org)

Submitted by lister king of smeg
lister king of smeg writes: Eric S Raymond writes in the GCC mailing list that GNU's GCC no plug-in policy may have been a good idea before open source won the compiler war but it now acts as an artefact of the past and that is now hindering its adoption in the face of more open compilers such as Clang. He argues that GCC should adopt to more current needs so it may be more closely integrated into other tools so it can stay competitive.

Submission + - Made in China: Up to a quarter of California smog (newscientist.com)

Submitted by wabrandsma
wabrandsma writes: What goes around comes around – quite literally in the case of smog. The US has outsourced many of its production lines to China and, in return, global winds are exporting the Chinese factories' pollution right back to the US.

Submission + - Yep, People Are Still Using '123456' and 'Password' as Passwords in 2014 (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Earlier this week, SplashData released its annual list of the 25 most common passwords used on the Internet—and no surprise, most are so blindingly obvious it’s a shock that people still rely on them to protect their data: '12345,' 'password,' 'qwerty' '11111,' and worse. There were some interesting quirks in the dataset, however. Following a massive security breach in late 2013, a large amount of Adobe users’ passwords leaked onto the broader Web; many of those users based their password on either ‘Adobe’ or ‘Photoshop,’ which are terms (along with the ever-popular ‘password’) easily discoverable using today’s hacker tools. “Seeing passwords like ‘adobe123 and ‘photoshop’ on this list offers a good reminder not to base your password on the name of the website or application you are accessing,” Morgan Slain, CEO of SplashData, wrote in a statement. Slashdotters have known for years that, while it's always tempting to create a password that’s easy to remember—especially if you maintain profiles on multiple online services—the consequences of an attacker breaking into your accounts are potentially devastating. As you know, complex passwords with a mix of numbers, letters and special characters (#,$,%,&, etc.) are best; avoid passwords based on dictionary words, numerical sequences (“1234567”), or personal information (such as your birthday).

Submission + - South Korea holds the answer to the Iranian enrichment question (thebulletin.org)

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: Siegfried Hecker and Abbas Milani have a solution to the Iranian enrichment question: adopt instead a model for civilian nuclear development similar to the one South Korea has successfully pursued. The authors argue that Iran has gotten embarrassing little from its much-touted centrifuge program, other than the suspicions of the rest of the world that it is pursuing a bomb. The authors write: 'Over the past three decades, South Korea has become one of the world's most advanced and successful nuclear energy vendors by focusing development on the economically profitable parts of the nuclear fuel cycle—reactor component fabrication, fuel fabrication, and reactor construction—while eschewing the proliferation-sensitive steps of uranium enrichment and spent-fuel reprocessing.' South Korea's model could make everyone happy, including Iran.

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