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Transportation

Google's Waze Jumps Into the Ride-Sharing Business 90

Posted by Soulskill from the now-with-100%-less-profit dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Waze, the online mapping company owned by Google, is testing a ride-sharing service in Israel called RideWith. The service will allow commuters to pay drivers for rides to and from work. This is a hard limit — drivers can give no more than two rides per day. If the restriction remains after the initial test, it could be a simple way to avoid pseudo-professional drivers, and all the taxi-related legal problems that go with them (see: Uber). "RideWith calculates a cost based on the anticipated fuel consumption and 'depreciation' based on mileage, and the driver is free to accept or decline the ride accordingly." One can't help but speculate about future involvement with Google's autonomous car project.

Submission + - The battle between Washington and Silicon Valley over encryption (csmonitor.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The American business community worries a back door policy, if enacted, would threaten the competitiveness of their businesses. Many companies are already trying to estimate the high cost of dealing with any regulation that would mandate access to encryption — including potential losses in revenue and the tougher-to-measure consumer trust. As such, some are already contemplating how to find loopholes and other ways around any new US rules to build back doors, including by taking business overseas.

At a macro level, companies are concerned about the global implications if other countries seek their own channels to access customers’ data using the US policy as a precedent. How the most powerful government in the world decides to proceed on encryption will have a profound effect not just on development of consumer technologies but the rights of Internet users in the future, they say. And the encryption debate comes at a time when the US government and the American tech sector need each other more than ever as advanced computing and digital security become increasingly key for the country’s economy and national defense. The squabble over encryption, however, may end up standing in the way — and the principles each side decides to fight for could set the tone for the future of the Surveillance Age.
Google

YouTube Algorithm Can Decide Your Channel URL Now Belongs To Someone Else 272

Posted by timothy from the spartacus-gets-really-confusing dept.
An anonymous reader writes: In 2005, blogger Matthew Lush registered "Lush" as his account on the then-nascent YouTube service, receiving www.youtube.com/lush as the URL for his channel. He went on to use this address on his marketing materials and merchandise. Now, YouTube has taken the URL and reassigned it to the Lush cosmetics brand. Google states that an algorithm determined the URL should belong to the cosmetics firm rather than its current owner, and insists that it is not possible to reverse the unrequested change. Although Lush cosmetics has the option of changing away from their newly-received URL and thereby freeing it up for Mr. Lush's use, they state that they have not decided whether they will. Google has offered to pay for some of Mr. Lush's marketing expenses as compensation.
Microsoft

Microsoft Attempts To Clarify the Windows 10 For Everyone Rumor 96

Posted by samzenpus from the clear-as-mud dept.
Ammalgam writes: Over the weekend, Microsoft caused a web explosion by seeming to imply that they were going to relax their licensing rules and offer Windows 10 for free to everyone. This caused an uproar of controversy online that Microsoft had to address. The company issued a statement in an attempt to clarify the Windows 10 licensing situation. The language is still a little confusing so on Windows10update.com, Onuora Amobi tries to simplify the language and sort out the distinction between users on the Windows Insider Program and non Windows Insiders.

Submission + - Lawsuit fights Uber's user location tracking plans (betanews.com)

Submitted by Mark Wilson
Mark Wilson writes: Uber has faced numerous complaints since its inception in 2010, including suggestions that drivers are not properly vetted. Now the taxi service is facing legal action over plans to track the location of its customers whether the app is running in the foreground or background on their phones.

The new policy is due to come into force on July 15, but the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has filed a complaint with the FTC saying that the policy change is unfair and should be investigated by the commission. It will be possible to opt out of this location tracking, but EPIC feels this is unreasonable.

Referring to previous allegations about Uber, EPIC says that the company "regularly abuses its access to customer location data". But it is the proposed changes to user tracking that is now causing concerns.
Security

Cyberattack Grounds Planes In Poland 40

Posted by Soulskill from the upgrade-your-ICE dept.
itwbennett writes: While the alleged hacking of in-flight systems has been much discussed recently, "there are many more areas of vulnerability to address in the aviation industry," says Tim Erlin of security firm Tripwire. "Like most industries today, aviation relies on a wide variety of interconnected systems, from air traffic control to reservations systems." Case in point: LOT Polish Airlines was forced to cancel 10 flights scheduled to depart from Warsaw's Chopin airport on Sunday after hackers attacked its ground computer systems.
Cellphones

Political Polls Become Less Reliable As We Head Into 2016 Presidential Election 292

Posted by Soulskill from the but-how-can-I-know-if-my-team-is-winning dept.
HughPickens.com writes: Cliff Zukin writes in the NY Times that those paying close attention to the 2016 election should exercise caution as they read the polls — election polling is in near crisis as statisticians say polls are becoming less reliable. According to Zukin, two trends are driving the increasing unreliability of election and other polling in the United States: the growth of cellphones and the decline in people willing to answer surveys. Coupled, they have made high-quality research much more expensive to do, so there is less of it. This has opened the door for less scientifically-based, less well-tested techniques.

To top it off, a perennial election polling problem, how to identify "likely voters," has become even thornier. Today, a majority of people are difficult or impossible to reach on landline phones. One problem is that the 1991 Telephone Consumer Protection Act has been interpreted by the Federal Communications Commission to prohibit the calling of cellphones through automatic dialers, in which calls are passed to live interviewers only after a person picks up the phone. To complete a 1,000-person survey, it's not unusual to have to dial more than 20,000 random numbers, most of which do not go to actual working telephone numbers.

The second unsettling trend is rapidly declining response rates, reaching levels once considered unimaginable. In the late 1970s, pollsters considered an 80 percent response rate acceptable, but by 2014 the response rate has fallen to 8 percent. "Our old paradigm has broken down, and we haven't figured out how to replace it," concludes Zukin. "In short, polls and pollsters are going to be less reliable. We may not even know when we're off base. What this means for 2016 is anybody's guess."

Submission + - Report: Open Source Components To Blame for Massively Buggy Software

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: The problem isn't new, but a report released Tuesday by Sonatype, the company that manages one of the largest repositories of open-source Java components, sheds some light on poor inventory practices that are all-too-common in software development. To wit: 'Sonatype has determined that over 6 percent of the download requests from the Central Repository in 2014 were for component versions that included known vulnerabilities and the company’s review of over 1,500 applications showed that by the time they were developed and released each of them had an average of 24 severe or critical flaws inherited from their components.'

Submission + - So much for Whatsapp's "end-to-end encryption" - Belgium Arrests Two in Probe (bloomberg.com) 3

Submitted by Errorcod3
Errorcod3 writes: Belgian arrested two suspects and issued arrest warrants against three others following anti-terror raids Monday.

Police said earlier that they simultaneously raided 21 locations as part of two probes into jihadist Chechen groups, the country’s federal prosecutors’ office said in a statement. Prosecutors said the arrests were based on police information concerning a wounded man who had returned to Belgium after taking part in the jihad in Syria.

Authorities said they had to let go four other people detained earlier on Monday as part of a separate probe into the participation of a Chechen group based in the Belgian city of Leuven in the preparation of a possible terrorist attack in the country.

European law enforcement agencies have grappled with the threat of a domestic terrorism as extremist groups have encouraged followers to carry out attacks on home soil rather than try to travel to the Middle East. Two suspected terrorists were killed in January in a shootout that Belgian police said foiled a possible “major” attack.

Investigators said earlier they had detained 16 people in the anti-terror raids after working with U.S. authorities to monitor suspects’ communications on WhatsApp Inc.’s messaging service.

Submission + - Undetectable NSA-linked hybrid malware hits Intel Security radar (theregister.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Errorcod3
Errorcod3 writes: CTB Locker ransomware attacks rose 165 per cent in the first three months of 2015.

More than a third (35 per cent) of victims were based in Europe, McAfee Labs reported. CTB Locker encrypts files and holds them hostage until the ransom is paid. As such, the crimeware is picking up the baton that dropped with the takedown of the infamous CryptoLocker ransomware scam in May last year.

The latest edition of Intel Security's report, released on Tuesday, reports attacks on firmware for the first time. More specifically, the report details "persistent and virtually undetectable attacks" by the so-called Equation Group that reprogram hard disk drives and solid state drive firmware.

McAfee Labs assessed the reprogramming modules exposed in February and found that they could be used to reprogram the firmware in SSDs in addition to the previously-reported HDD reprogramming capability.
Once reprogrammed, the HDD and SSD firmware can reload associated malware each time infected systems boot and the malware persists even if the drives are reformatted or the operating system is reinstalled.

Once infected, security software cannot detect the associated malware stored in a hidden area of the drive.

Submission + - 5G is coming...in five years...and maybe not from U.S. (computerworld.com)

Submitted by CarlottaHapsburg
CarlottaHapsburg writes: Ericson and Nokia are leading the pack but there are aspects to 5G we can't imagine. Flexible architecture, functioning key standards, the US's lethargy in expanding mmWave and even the definition of what 5G is and can do are at stake. The FCC's Tom Wheeler says 5G is different for every manufacturer, like a Picasso painting. It should be an exciting five years of further developments and definitions — and, hopefully, American preparedness.
Space

Pluto's Outer Moons Orbit Chaotically, With Unpredictable Sunrises and Sunsets 92

Posted by samzenpus from the trying-to-get-some-sleep dept.
StartsWithABang writes: Few things in this world are as regular as sunrise and sunset. With the application of a little physics, you can predict exactly where and when the sun will rise or set from any location on Earth. Thus far, every world in our Solar System — planet, moon and asteroid — has had the exact same experience as us. But out in the Kuiper belt, Pluto is different. The only known world in the Solar System where a significant fraction of the system's mass is not in a single component, the outer moons of the Pluto-Charon system provide a unique environment to study how planets might behave in orbit around binary stars. The amazing takeaway? The rotational part of the orbit is chaotic; the worlds tumble, and hence sunrises and sunsets are no longer predictable.
Businesses

Disney Making Laid-Off US Tech Workers Train Foreign H1-B Replacements 614

Posted by samzenpus from the adding-insult-to-injury dept.
WheezyJoe writes: The NY Times brings us a story on the Disney Corporation laying off U.S. tech workers and replacing them with immigrants visiting the country under H1-B visas. The twist is that the immigrant workers are not your nice local visiting foreign guy from the university who wants to stick around 'cause he likes the people here... they are employees of foreign-based consulting companies in the business of collecting H1-B visas and "import[ing] workers for large contracts to take over entire in-house technology units." The other twist? The U.S. tech workers are required to train their replacements before vacating their jobs, or risk losing severance benefits (excerpts of the Disney's layoff notice are included in the article).

Submission + - Intel Adopts USB-C Connector For 40Gbps Thunderbolt 3, Supports USB 3.1, DP 1.2 (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: The high speed Thunderbolt intereface standard, which is used for everything from hyper-fast external storage solutions to external graphics cards, has been slow to take off. You can blame the high-priced Thunderbolt peripherals and the uber-expensive cables (at last when compared to your garden variety USB cables).For most people, USB 3.0 is "good enough" and making a huge investment into the Thunderbolt ecosystem has been reserved for those in the professional video editing arena. However, Intel is looking to change all of that with Thunderbolt 3. Thunderbolt 3 once again doubles the maximum bandwidth, this time jumping from 20Gbps to a whopping 40Gbps. While that is impressive in its own right, the truly big news is that Thunderbolt 3 is moving away from the Mini DisplayPort connector and is instead adopting the USB-C connector. As a result Thunderbolt will also support USB 3.1 (which is currently spec'd at 10Gbps) and can optionally provide up to 100W of power (in compliance with the USB Power Delivery spec) to charge devices via USB-C (like the recently introduced 12-inch Apple MacBook).

Submission + - DARPA wants to make complex 3D printing trustworthy, dependable, safe (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: If additive manufacturing technologies like 3D printing are to become mainstream for complex engineering tasks – think building combat fighter aircraft wings or complete rocket engines – there needs to be a major uptick in the reliability and trustworthiness of such tools. That’s what researchers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) aim to do with its Open Manufacturing program which this week announced new labs and other facilities that will be used to develop these additive technologies and prove whether or not they can be trusted for widespread use in complicated applications.

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