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Submission + - SPAM: LKRG: Linux to Get a Loadable Kernel Module for Runtime Integrity Checking

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Members of the open source community are working on a new security-focused project for the Linux kernel. Named Linux Kernel Runtime Guard (LKRG), this is a loadable kernel module that will perform runtime integrity checking of the Linux kernel. Its purpose is to detect exploitation attempts for known security vulnerabilities against the Linux kernel and attempt to block attacks. LKRG will also detect privilege escalation for running processes, and kill the running process before the exploit code runs. While LKRG will remain an open source project, LKRG maintainers also have plans for an LKRG Pro version that will include distro-specific LKRG builds and support for the detection of specific exploits, such as container escapes. The team plans to use the funds from LKRG Pro to fund the rest of the project.

The first public version of LKRG —LKRG v0.0— is now live and available for download on this page. A wiki is also available here, and a Patreon page for supporting the project has also been set up. LKRG kernel modules are currently available for main Linux distros such as RHEL7, OpenVZ 7, Virtuozzo 7, and Ubuntu 16.04 to latest mainlines.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: It's Good To Be Back On Slashdot or Seven Ways To Say Vomit

Submitted by Earthquake Retrofit
Earthquake Retrofit writes: I must have been temporarily banned from here, probably because I insulted Microsoft or something, but I've been keeping busy. I've made an artificial conscience.

I retired from 17 years in political polling just before the last election, where I had to actually talk to voters so I'm glad that's over. I wanted to know what was going on and boy did I ever find out. So in my continuing quest for the truth, I turned to the dictionary. No lies in the dictionary, right?

There are 6180 words in English that describe something always bad and 3800 words that describe something always good. I counted. I don't know if the ratio is so bad in other languages, but remember there's seven was to say vomit in English and NO word for the feeling you get when cataracts are removed from your eyes just in time to see the first flower of spring blooming. There might not be more bad things, just more words to describe them.

I consulted with my sister who explained that 'brassiere' and 'cleavage' are not ALWAYS good. I haven't yet consulted with spiritual leaders, but there's three churches within crawling distance from my house, a Japanese Baptist, an LDS and a Presbyterian church, so that's a useful resource. The Presbyterians seem the least frightening but I might just wait for a couple of wondering missionaries to spring it on.

The program counts up how many good and bad words are in the dictionary definition of a word:

Input: how do you feel about vomit feeling: 82 Answer: Things are in lousy shape and vomit doesn't help brighten the gloom at all

or Input: how do you feel about cats feeling: 101 Answer: cats is as good as one would expect.

or Input: how do you feel about love feeling: 191 Answer: love might just save the galaxy.

Voila! the dictionary becomes the arbiter of morals.

I printed a copy of the good and bad words as a pamphlet called Religion for Robots and a copy for the White House called Morality for Morons

Comment Re:Who else hacked the Ruskies for proof? Jamaica? (Score 1) 358

by Earthquake Retrofit (#56020637) Attached to: Dutch Intelligence Agents Watched Russia Hack the DNC
For example, Evan Mecham's 'trial' in the Arizona's Republic party controlled legislature was a joke and a circus. Everybody hated him and for good reason, but they found no 'misdemeanors.'
From Wikipedia: "Mecham was removed from office following conviction in his impeachment trial of charges of the obstruction of justice and the misuse of government funds – funds that Mecham maintained were private. A later criminal trial acquitted Mecham of related charges."
Yet, the Republics got rid of him because they wanted too.

Submission + - The Monsters Who Laugh at Injury and Death on YouTube (vortex.com) 2

Submitted by Lauren Weinstein
Lauren Weinstein writes: The monsters are everywhere — self-righteous sickos who laugh at other people’s misfortunes — the same kind of diseased personalities who slow down in traffic to take photos of horrific accidents and urge distressed persons on the edges of buildings to jump to their deaths.
And they’re online as well. Oh man, are they online. Worst of all perhaps, they’re extremely well represented among the tech community where I’ve spent my entire career, such as it’s been.

Perhaps this helps to explain why so many techies are so disdainful of non-techies, why so many software designers call the people using their systems by the pejorative “losers” rather than users or customers.

Comment Re:Mueller (Score 1) 229

Now looky here, everybody knows Hillary Hussein Clinton is the one who's to fault for the plutonium-210 pizzagate poisoning. But that whole Benghazi investigation was just a Republic party plot to distract Fox news's excellent infestigative reporters from the real conspiracy: the Wall Street branch of the Youth International Party's (Yippie$) involvement in the Iraq-Contra affair. You thought Jerry Rubin was dead? Not exactly fool, just more fake news. In a rare instance of cooperation between the Wall Street and Haight Street branches of the increasingly misnamed party, we uncovered Donald 'The John' Trump's actual Nicaraguan birth certificate and used it as leverage to blackmail him into running for president. Ever since then, Jerry has been controlling him and I've been getting free Ganja from the Sandinistas

Comment No more being stuck in a job you hate. (Score 1) 314

As a person who's experienced my job being superseded by machinery I also would welcome this. Robots will do all the work eventually anyway. Everything would be free, so Bill's money would be worthless too. Need or want something? Just tell the robot to get it. Humans being what they are, we would, of course, still need a government but one thing at a time...

Submission + - What are the FLOSS community's answers to Siri and AI? (upon2020.com)

Submitted by jernst
jernst writes: A decade ago, we in the free and open-source community could build our own versions of pretty much any proprietary software system out there, and we did. Publishing, collaboration, commerce, you name it. Some apps were worse, some were better than closed alternatives, but much of it was clearly good enough to use every day.

But is this still true? For example, voice control is clearly going to be a primary way we interact with our gadgets in the future. Speaking to an Amazon Echo-like device while sitting on my couch makes a lot more sense than using a web browser. Will we ever be able to do that without going through somebody’s proprietary silo like Amazon’s or Apple’s? Where are the free and/or open-source versions of Siri, Alexa and so forth?

The trouble, of course, is not so much the code, but in the training. The best speech recognition code isn’t going to be competitive unless it has been trained with about as many millions of hours of example speech as the closed engines from Apple, Google and so forth have been. How can we do that?

The same problem exists with AI. There’s plenty of open-source AI code, but how good is it unless it gets training and retraining with gigantic data sets? We don’t have those in the FLOSS world, and even if we did, would we have the money to run gigantic graphics card farms 24×7? Will we ever see truly open AI that is not black-box machinery guarded closely by some overlord company, but something that “we can study how it works, change it so it does our computing as we wish” and all the other values embodied in the Free Software Definition?

Who has a plan, and where can I sign up to it?

Submission + - mechanics of the rejection of science (theguardian.com) 2

Submitted by Layzej
Layzej writes: Science strives for coherence. For example, the findings from climate science form a highly coherent body of knowledge that is supported by many independent lines of evidence. Those who reject climate science often rely on several mutually contradictory ideas. Hence, claims that the globe “is cooling” can coexist with claims that the “observed warming is natural” and that “the human influence does not matter because warming is good for us.” A recent study examines this behavior at the aggregate level, but gives many examples where contradictory ideas are held by the same individual, and sometimes are presented within a single publication.

The common denominator among contrarian positions is the conviction that climate change either does not exist or is not human caused, and that either way it does not present a risk (or if it does, then adaptation will deal with the problem). In a nutshell, the opposition to GHG emission cuts is the unifying and coherent position underlying all manifestations of climate science denial. Climate science denial is therefore perhaps best understood as a rational activity that replaces a coherent body of science with an incoherent and conspiracist body of pseudo-science for political reasons and with considerable political coherence and effectiveness.

Submission + - Lenovo denies claims it plotted with Microsoft to block Linux installs (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by kruug
kruug writes: Several users noted certain new Lenovo machines' SSDs are locked in a RAID mode, with AHCI removed from the BIOS. Windows is able to see the SSD while in RAID mode due to a proprietary driver, but the SSD is hidden from Linux installations — for which such a driver is unavailable.

Speaking to The Register today, a Lenovo spokesperson claimed the Chinese giant "Does not intentionally block customers using other operating systems on its devices and is fully committed to providing Linux certifications and installation guidance on a wide range of products."

Complaints on Lenovo's forums suggest that users have been unable to install GNU/Linux operating systems on models from the Yoga 900S to the Ideapad 710S, with one 19-page thread going into detail about the BIOS issue and users' attempts to work around it.

Submission + - Brain's graphic processors repurposed for math in visually impaired (npr.org)

Submitted by Earthquake Retrofit
Earthquake Retrofit writes: A functional MRI study of 17 people blind since birth found that areas of visual cortex became active when the participants were asked to solve algebra problems, a team from Johns Hopkins reports in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Link in article.)

"And as the equations get harder and harder, activity in these areas goes up in a blind person," says Marina Bedny, an author of the study and an assistant professor in the department of psychological and brain sciences at Johns Hopkins University.

In 19 sighted people doing the same problems, visual areas of the brain showed no increase in activity.

"That really suggests that yes, blind individuals appear to be doing math with their visual cortex," Bedny says.

Submission + - Dry ice -- the new weapon against rats (usatoday.com) 1

Submitted by mi
mi writes: Earlier this week, USA TODAY observed Chicago sanitation department workers at one of the city’s oldest parks scoop chunks of smoking dry ice into a burrow before quickly covering the entry and exit holes with dirt and newspaper to stop any rats from escaping as the -109.3-degree Fahrenheit gas dissipated. Sanitation workers say they treat burrows during morning hours, when rats are less active and most likely to be huddled inside the burrows.

The asphyxiated dead rats then decompose in place and out-of-sight of city denizens who count the disease-carrying vermin among the vilest of indignities of urban living.

“We are seeing 60% fewer burrows in areas where we are using the dry ice,” said Charles Williams, Chicago’s streets and sanitation commissioner. “It’s more environmentally friendly, and it’s very humane on the rodents as well.”

Humane or not, what is so especially "undignified" about rats? What makes them worse, than, for example, cats, deer or wild horses?

Submission + - Homo Deus – How data will destroy human freedom (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Strudelkugel
Strudelkugel writes: At the heart of this spellbinding book is a simple but chilling idea: human nature will be transformed in the 21st century because intelligence is uncoupling from consciousness. We are not going to build machines any time soon that have feelings like we have feelings: that’s consciousness. Robots won’t be falling in love with each other (which doesn’t mean we are incapable of falling in love with robots). But we have already built machines – vast data-processing networks – that can know our feelings better than we know them ourselves: that’s intelligence. Google – the search engine, not the company – doesn’t have beliefs and desires of its own. It doesn’t care what we search for and it won’t feel hurt by our behaviour. But it can process our behaviour to know what we want before we know it ourselves. That fact has the potential to change what it means to be human.

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