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Submission + - 'Crypto Wars' Timeline: A Complete History Of The New Encryption Debate

Submitted by blottsie
blottsie writes: The latest debate over encryption did not begin with a court order demanding Apple help the FBI unlock a dead terrorist's iPhone. The new "Crypto Wars," chronicled in an comprehensive timeline by Eric Geller of the Daily Dot, dates back to at least 2003, with the introduction of "Patriot Act II." The battle over privacy and personal security versus crime-fighting and national security has, however, become a mainstream debate in recent months.

Submission + - Things Sysadmins and Developers Would Change About One Another

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: Even in the best of organizations, the development and operations departments have friction. Each has its own goals, metrics for success, and team culture. Plus, ops is in the business of making things predictable and unchanging, while developers are in the business of changing everything. Those opposing priorities make it harder for dev and ops to communicate freely. Despite the industry’s ongoing efforts to bring the communities together, developers continue to grumble about ops, who simultaneously grumble about devs.

Grumbling doesn’t help to resolve the tension (or desire to throttle someone). Understanding does. So both developers and sysadmins were asked to imagine that they were granted a single wish: You have the power to give your company’s [ops team | development team] an understanding of one thing — just one thing — that currently irks you. What spell would you cast with that magic wand?

The results are in two articles: 3 Way Ops Can Help Devs: A Developer Perspective and 3 Ways Devs Can Help Ops: An Operations Perspective. Maybe it's not surprising that the shared component is: Listen to each other more. Share what you're up to, and what the goal is. (Kumbaya optional.)

But maybe some of the specifics can help you grok where the other folks are coming from. For instance:

As a developer named John writes, “Software development sometimes needs to be allowed to bend the rules/regulations in order to operate efficiently/quickly. Too many times, the rules (e.g., who has access, when, what can be installed, etc.) cause ridiculous delays in cycle time for development or support.”

and

A classic example is when developers assume always-on connectivity. “The network is not a static monolith that never changes,” one ops staffer noted. “We’re planning a data center network upgrade. It will require disconnecting every server and reconnecting them to the new switches.” That could cause some apps to think the entire world has ended and crash in an untidy heap.

Would you have included different magic spells?

Submission + - Malware Shuts Down German Nuclear Power Plant on Chernobyl's 30th Anniversary (softpedia.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A routine security audit discovered malware on the computer systems of the Gundremmingen nuclear power plant in Germany. RWE, the plant's operator, shut down the power plant for precaution, despite saying it was nothing serious. The malware affected computers used for the fuel loading and unloading process, but did not affect any of the sensitive ICS/SCADA equipment.

The incident was discovered Sunday, but two days later, the power plant is still offline. Today also marks 30 years since the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster.

Submission + - Great Computers Never Die (ieee.org)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The Vintage Computer Festival East (VCF East) took place from 15-17 April at the InfoAge Science Center in Wall, New Jersey. Computers on display included: a fully restored and working Apple 1;an Altair 8800;and a host of 8- and 16-bit machines, including a collection of (mostly unlicensed) Apple II clones from around the world, and an array of Commodore 64s upgraded to do things like control the lights in your home. Speakers at the festivalincluded the legendary Ted Nelson, the man who coined the words hypertext, hypermedia, andother additions to our modern digital lexicon. We sent IEEE Spectrum’sSenior Editor Stephen Cass out to New Jersey to give us a dose of nostalgia and some inspiration from the dawn of the Digital Age.

Submission + - Rep. Ted Lieu Calls On Congress To Investigate SS7 Flaw In Global Phone Networks

Submitted by blottsie
blottsie writes: U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Cali.) on Monday called for a full congressional investigation into a widespread flaw in global phone networks that allows hackers to track anyone's location and spy on their phone calls and text messages.

The security flaw in Signaling System No. 7 (SS7), which is a broker between most of the world's phone networks, affects hundreds of millions of mobile-phone users around the world. A hacker only needs to know your phone number to perform the attack.

Submission + - FBI Director James Comey Warns Against Unbreakable Encryption, Absolute Privacy

Submitted by blottsie
blottsie writes: In an interview with the Daily Dot on Wednesday, Comey suggested Apple should weaken its encryption on its products to the level of iCloud, which the company can decrypt. “Today, Apple encrypts the iCloud but decrypts it in response to court orders,” he said. “So are they materially insecure because of that?”

Comey also warned against "absolute privacy," saying, "I love strong encryption. It protects us in so many ways from bad people. But it takes us to a place—absolute privacy—that we have not been to before.”

Submission + - The supernovae that fertilized the Earth (skyandtelescope.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A new study has pinned down the dates of two recent supernovae that showered the Earth with the heavier elements that make life here possible.

Many mainstream articles about this story have been implying that this research has discovered the existence of supernovae near the primordial Earth. This is false. Scientists have had evidence of these early supernovae for decades, from asteroids, in isotopes on Earth, and in the existence of the Local Bubble in which the Sun is presently traveling. What this study has done is narrow the location and the time of at least two of these supernovae, a significant discovery, though not the one much of the ignorant press is pushing.
Google

Submission + - Google Ventures: Not Just Another VC Firm (venturebeat.com)

Submitted by
AmyVernon
AmyVernon writes: "Jolie O'Dell takes a hard look at Google Ventures and what makes it a different kind of VC firm — one that doesn't believe it's how the companies are picked inasmuch as how the companies are nurtured:

"Google Ventures is a separate entity from Google, Inc. It operates on the same campus but in different buildings, and while it pulls its talent and knowledge resources from the Google pool, it’s very much its own beast. The fund kicked off in 2009 with a goal of investing $100 million each year. Its known portfolio companies currently number 115; if you look for themes among them, you’ll find they range so widely across any criteria you choose that finding such themes is nearly impossible.

Aside from the Google connection, the firm and its partners are obviously different from anything else in their league in a few major ways.

For one thing, Google Ventures partners don’t really put as much emphasis on the almighty picker: the magic 8-ball in every VC’s back pocket that tells him whether or not a company is a good bet. Primarily because such a device doesn’t exist.

“Picking plays a role, don’t get me wrong. But people walk around the venture world thinking they’re such good pickers,” Kraus says. “It’s like Lake Woebegone, where everyone thinks their children are above average.

“We believe helping companies plays more of a role than most people give it credit for.”"
NASA

Submission + - THIS should be (a big part of) the future of space exploration! (nytimes.com)

Submitted by wisebabo
wisebabo writes: As long as we are still in debt to the Chinese and can't afford an ambitious space program, we should be developing THESE (humanoid telerobots). Just get the astronaut NEAR the Moon or Mars (or someday Titan!) and operate these without that stupid speed-of-light time delay. A huge proportion of the weight and complexity of going to these places is that last 100 miles so while times are lean this is the way to go.

Maybe James Cameron can be persuaded to do a pre-quel of Avatar, unfortunately I don't think he'll find a planet full of sexy tele-robots!
Movies

Submission + - Could 'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter' Be the Start of a Genre? (yahoo.com)

Submitted by
MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: "One can only imagine what the pitch session for the movie version of "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" was like. "It's sort of like 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' only Buffy is the 16th president of the United States." Apparently while freeing the slaves and seeing the United States through the Civil War, Honest Abe was giving undead blood suckers the true death. Could this be the start of a new movie genre of history/horror mash ups?"
Open Source

Submission + - Why Open APIs Fall Far Short of Open Source (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "451 Group analyst Jay Lyman opined in a LinuxInsider column that because of open APIs, 'non-open source software is often open enough.' Not so, says ITworld blogger Brian Proffitt. Sure, open APIs are an easy way for a small developer to 'plug into a big software ecosystem,' but it's a trap. 'If open APIs are the only connector to a software project, the destiny of that code lies solely in the hands of the owners,' says Proffitt. 'Which means that anyone connecting into the application will have to deal with the changes imposed from the top down.'"
AMD

Submission + - AMD Launches Radeon HD 7770 and 7750 Graphics (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "AMD is launching two more Radeon HD 7000 series products today, the Radeon HD 7770 and 7750. Unlike their high-end 7970 and 7950 cards, these two new cards are based on a fresh GPU codenamed "Cape Verde". Cape Verde has essentially the same feature set as AMD's more powerful Tahiti, but is pared down to target a totally different market segment, and be more affordable and power friendly too. With typical board power of 55 watts (Radeon HD 7750) and 80 watts (Radeon HD 7770), these cards are targeted at mainstream users or casual gamers looking to upgrade from integrated graphics. Performance-wise, they still can handle just about any game on the market currently but at more modest resolutions and image quality settings."
Security

Submission + - Symantec Confirms Leak of pcAnywhere Source Code (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: Symantec confirmed that following claims from Anonymous that additional Symantec product source code would be released, the claims are true, and the said files are in fact the legitimate source code from its pcAnywhere product. Not only that, but Symantec says source code from other products is likely to be released as well.

"We can confirm that the [released] source code is legitimate," Symantec said. "It is part of the original cache of code for 2006 versions of the products that Anonymous has claimed to have been in possession during the last few weeks.”

A Symantec spokesperson also said the company anticipates Anonymous to post the rest of the code they have claimed have in their possession. “So far, they have posted code for the 2006 version of Norton Internet Security and pcAnywhere. We also anticipate that at some point, they will post the code for Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition and Norton Systemworks. Both products no longer exist.”

The code release comes after what Symantec said was a failed extortion attempt to get Symantec to pay $50,000 for the hacker not to release the code.

Submission + - Should Next-Gen Game Consoles Be Upgradeable? (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "Historically, console add-ons that boosted the performance of the primary unit haven't done well. Any attempt to upgrade a system's core performance risks bifurcating the user base and increases work developers must do to ensure that a game runs smoothly on both original and upgraded systems. The other reason is that a number of games rely on very specific hardware characteristics to ensure proper operation. In a PC, swapping a CPU with 256K of L2 for a chip with 512K of L2 is a non-issue assuming proper platform support. Existing software will automatically take advantage of the additional cache. The Xbox 360, on the other hand, allows programmers to lock specific cache blocks and use them for storing data from particular threads. In that case, expanding the amount of L2 cache risks breaking previous games because it changes the range of available cache addresses. The other side of the upgrade argument is that the Xbox 360 has been upgraded more effectively than any previous console; current high-end versions ship with more than 10x the storage of the original, as well as support for HDMI and integrated WiFi. It would also forestall the decline in comparative image quality between console and PC platforms. Here's Battlefield 3 on the PC as compared to the PS3. The PS3 version of the game looks like it's being lit by Spike Lee, with high-powered flood lights just out of view. Textures are minimal and the concrete wall at the left might have been drawn using MS Paint."
Science

Submission + - Smartphone reads mood, suggests activities (northwestern.edu)

Submitted by
garthsundem
garthsundem writes: "A new smartphone by researchers at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine "harnesses all the sensor data within the phone to interpret a person's location, activity level (via an accelerometer), social context and mood."

The phone learns your usual patterns of calls and text messages, and then if it senses you are isolated, it will send you a suggestion to call or see friends. In a pilot study, the technology reduced symptoms of depression."

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