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Submission + - Researchers find online behavioral profiles highly inaccurate

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at CMU find that nearly 40% of behavioral profiles created by data aggregator/broker companies contain high level of inaccuracies (up to 80%). The researchers looked at behavioral profiles that a top data broker company created about individual users, and found that profiles contain personal and sensitive information (full name, address, bankruptcy score, credit card interest score, medication purchases, religion, personality type etc.). The researchers, who will be presenting their work at a privacy and big data conference, caution that these profiles are routinely used for fraud detection and background checks, and high level of inaccuracies are a concern.

Submission + - Warrantless surveillance validated by UK judges (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The UK’s Investigatory Power Tribunal (IPT), has today ruled that authoritative bodies tapping major internet cables in the UK is a legal practice and is not in breach of human rights. The case focused on the U.S. Prism and the British Tempora schemes, as revealed by whistle-blower Edward Snowden. Tempora reportedly involved GCHQ, the British spy agency, tapping into global communications via national infrastructures. "The ‘Snowden revelations’ have led to the impression voiced in some quarters that the law in some way permits the Intelligence Services carte blanche to do what they will. We are satisfied that this is not the case," the statement reads.

Submission + - IBM Researchers: Old Laptop Batteries Can Power Slums

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: Old laptop batteries still have enough life in them to power homes in slums, researchers have said. An IBM study analysed a sample of discarded batteries and found 70% had enough power to keep an LED light on more than four hours a day for a year. Researchers said using discarded batteries is cheaper than existing power options, and also helps deal with the mounting e-waste problem. The concept was trialled in the Indian city of Bangalore this year. The adapted power packs are expected to prove popular with street vendors, who are not on the electric grid, as well as poor families living in slums. The IBM team created what they called an UrJar — a device that uses lithium-ion cells from the old batteries to power low-energy DC devices, such as a light. The researchers are aiming to help the approximately 400 million people in India who are off grid.

Submission + - scientists discover diamond nanothreads (cnn.com)

Submitted by sokol815
sokol815 writes: Penn State University scientists discovered diamond nanothreads can be created from benzene when compressed. The compression brings the benzene molecules into a highly reactive state. It was expected that the molecules would create a non-ordered glass-like material, but due to the slow speed of decompression used, the benzene molecules ordered themselves into a naturally repeating crystal. The experiment took place at room-temperature. Early results indicate that these nanothreads are stronger than previously produced carbon nanotubes, and may have applications throughout the engineering industry.

Submission + - U.K. Terror Threat Level Raised to Severe (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: U.K. Home Secretary Theresa May said the government was raising the terror threat level to Severe, the second-highest level, based on new intelligence from Syria and Iraq. "The increase in the threat level is related to developments in Syria and Iraq where terrorist groups are planning attacks against the West," May said in a statement in London. "Some of those plots are likely to involve foreign fighters who have traveled there from the U.K. and Europe to take part in those conflicts." Prime Minister David Cameron is to make a further statement later today.

Submission + - IEEE Guides Software Architects Toward Secure Design (threatpost.com)

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: The IEEE's Center for Secure Design debuted its first report this week, a guidance for software architects called "Avoiding the Top 10 Software Security Design Flaws." Developing guidance for architects rather than developers was a conscious effort the group made in order to steer the conversation around software security away from exclusively talking about finding bugs toward design-level failures that lead to exploitable security vulnerabilities.
The document spells out the 10 common design flaws in a straightforward manner, each with a lengthy explainer of inherent weaknesses in each area and how software designers and architects should take these potential pitfalls into consideration.

Comment Remove the ransom note excuse with Deparse (Score 5, Interesting) 536

If you don't like ransom notes (which perl programs may become over time) use this trick: get perl to reformat the code with a this command:

$ perl -MO=Deparse ransom.pl >better.pl

Most of the time that removes the crazy from the script. I just got a large legacy code-base and that little trick made my life much better. If the perl code works, then you are just looking for work to do. Newer is not always better.

Submission + - Evidence Of A Correction To The Speed of Light

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: In the early hours of the morning on 24 February 1987, a neutrino detector deep beneath Mont Blanc in northern Italy picked up a sudden burst of neutrinos. Three hours later, neutrino detectors at two other locations picked up a second burst. These turned out to have been produced by the collapse of the core of a star in the Large Magellanic Cloud that orbits our galaxy. And sure enough, some 4.7 hours after this, astronomers noticed the tell-tale brightening of a blue supergiant in that region, as it became a supernova, now known as SN1987a. But why the delay of 7.7 hours from the first burst of neutrinos to the arrival of the photons? Astrophysicists soon realised that since neutrinos rarely interact with ordinary matter, they can escape from the star's core immediately. By contrast, photons have to diffuse through the star, a process that would have delayed them by about 3 hours. That accounts for some of the delay but what of the rest? Now one physicist has the answer--the speed of light through space requires a correction. As a photon travels through space, there is a finite chance that it will form an electron-positron pair. This pair exists for only a brief period of time and then goes on to recombine creating another photon which continues along the same path. This is a well-known process called vacuum polarisation. The new idea is that the gravitational potential of the Milky Way must influence the electron-positron pair because they have mass. This changes the energy of the virtual electron-positron pair, which in turn produces a small change in the energy and speed of the photon. And since the analogous effect on neutrinos is negligible, light will travel more slowly than them through a gravitational potential. According to the new calculations which combine quantum electrodynamics with general relativity, the change in speed accounts more or less exactly for the mysterious time difference. Voila!

Comment Asymmectric networks would be very useful. (Score 1) 79

by ksbraunsdorf (#43393283) Attached to: German Scientists' Visible Light Network Hits 3Gbps
At the library I want to see a list of all the titles in print from my favorite authors, I just use the local WiFi to get the data. For larger downloads I ask on the WiFi, but get the data over the visible light network. So I can see the text of all those books, DRM allowing. Or watch a lecture on the Great Bustard. At airports, my PDA/phone gets all the flight updates on an endless loop, via the visible light network. At Home Depot I'm offered product information and How To videos. I'd love to see the view from the cockpit in real-time while I was flying. If we build really high capacity broadcast networks (like the over-the-air TV used to be), then we'll find uses for them we've never thought about at all. This may even make a computer useful in a class room. I don't believe most of this requires encryption. Mostly an asymmetric network gets us video and large data requests over a cheap, local, and very limited range network. If you want encryption for small slices of data, us the WiFi to do a key exchange.

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