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Submission + - Biden Reverses Trump Decision, Keeps Space Command In Colorado (politico.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: President Joe Biden has determined that Colorado Springs will be the permanent headquarters of U.S. Space Command, reversing a Trump administration decision to move the facility to Alabama, the Pentagon announced Monday. The decision will only intensify a bitter parochial battle on Capitol Hill, as members of the Colorado and Alabama delegations have spent months accusing each other of playing politics on the future of the four-star command.

The command was reestablished in 2019 and given temporary headquarters in Colorado while the Air Force evaluated a list of possible permanent sites. With an eye on Russia and China, its job is to oversee the military’s operations of space assets and the defense of satellites. Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said Biden notified the Department of Defense on Monday that he had made the decision, after speaking with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and weighing the input of senior military leaders. “Locating Headquarters U.S. Space Command in Colorado Springs ultimately ensures peak readiness in the space domain for our nation during a critical period,” Ryder said in a statement. “It will also enable the command to most effectively plan, execute and integrate military spacepower into multi-domain global operations in order to deter aggression and defend national interests.” Austin, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and U.S. Space Command chief Gen. James Dickinson all support Biden’s decision, Ryder added.

Submission + - Employers feeling more pain in return-to-work policies

Submitted by lpq
lpq writes: From the article: "We’re now finding out the damaging consequences of the mandated return to office. And it’s not a pretty picture.
Nearly half of companies polled are seeing higher than expected attrition for such policies, while a third are finding it harder to recruit new employees as reported in https://fortune.com/2023/08/01... .

Submission + - Ask slashdot: Simple Password Manager

Submitted by eggegick
eggegick writes: I use vim to keep my passwords in an encrypted file. I find it simple
and easy to use. My wife is not a Linux geek like I am, and so she is
using keepass. It's relatively simple to install and use, but I seem
to recall it used to be even much simpler: I recall that it used to be
just an executable that you copied to your system and ran. You could
put it on a USB stick along with the database to insure you'd be able
to quickly access you passwords in an emergency on another system.

Now you have run an installer which creates a keepass directory under
"C:\Program Files\" which is full of .dll files and lots of other
stuff. Just another hassel.

Does anybody know of a really simple password manager or encrypting
notepad? I've looked at a number of them and they use Java or
Javascript, or they involve an external web site, or they have way too
many features, or they use an installation program, or windows
defender objects to them.

Submission + - Facebook To Unmask Anonymous Dutch User Accused of Repeated Defamatory Posts (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Starting today, Facebook users may feel a little less safe posting anonymously. The Court of the Hague in The Netherlands ruled that Meta Ireland must unmask an anonymous user accused of defaming the claimant, a male Facebook user who allegedly manipulated and made secret recordings of women he dated. The anonymous Facebook user posted the allegedly defamatory statements in at least two private Facebook groups dedicated to discussing dating experiences. The claimant could not gain access but was shown screenshots from the groups, one with about 2,600 members and one with around 61,000 members. The claimant argued that his reputation had suffered from the repeated postings that included photos of the man and alleged screenshots of his texts.

The claimant tried to get Meta to remove the posts, but Meta responded with an email saying that it would not do so because "it is not clear to us that the content you reported is unlawful as defamation." At that point, Meta suggested that the man contact the anonymous user directly to resolve the matter, triggering the lawsuit against Meta. Initially, the claimant asked the court to order Meta to delete the posts, identify the anonymous user, and flag any posts in other private Facebook groups that could defame the claimant. While arguing the case, Meta had defended the anonymous user's right to freedom of expression, but the court decided that the claimant—whose name is redacted in court documents—deserved an opportunity to challenge the allegedly defamatory statements. Partly for that reason, the court ordered Meta to provide "basic subscriber information" on the anonymous user, including their username, as well as any names, email addresses, or phone numbers associated with their Facebook account. The court did not order Meta to remove the posts or flag any others that may have been shared in private groups, though.

Meta has already agreed to comply with the order, the court's ruling said. However, if Meta fails to provide the Facebook user's identifying information, the social media company risks a penalty of approximately $1,200 daily. The maximum fine that Meta could face is less than $130,000. [...] Meta's defense of the anonymous user's right to free speech failed, the court said, because freedom of speech is not unlimited. "Someone who, without evidence, repeatedly makes serious and clearly traceable accusations, must take into account, partly in the light of the conditions applied by Facebook, that he or she may be confronted with a measure whereby his or her anonymity is lifted," the court order said. Although the key concern for The Court in the Hague appeared to be that the statements posted anonymously were plausibly defamatory, the order also noted that the content would not have to necessarily be unlawful for Facebook to be ordered to identify the user posting it. "According to settled case law, under certain circumstances Meta has an obligation to provide identifying data, even if the content of the relevant messages is not unmistakably unlawful," the court order said.

Submission + - Google's Jigsaw was fighting toxic speech with AI. Then the AI started talking (fastcompany.com)

Submitted by tedlistens
tedlistens writes: All large language models are liable to produce toxic and other unwanted outputs, either by themselves or at the encouragement of users. To evaluate and "detoxify" their LLMs, OpenAI, Meta, Anthropic, and others are using Perspective API—a free tool from Google's Jigsaw unit designed to flag toxic human speech on social media platforms and comment sections. But, as Alex Pasternack reports at Fast Company, researchers and Jigsaw itself acknowledge problems with Perspective and other AI classifiers, and worry that AI developers using them to build LLMs could be inheriting their failures, false positives, and biases. That could, in turn, make the language models more biased or less knowledgeable about minority groups, harming some of the same people the classifiers are meant to help. “Our goal is really around humans talking to humans,” says Jigsaw's Lucy Vasserman, “so [using Perspective to police AI] is something we kind of have to be a little bit careful about.”

Submission + - SPAM: More than 2,000 families suing social media companies over kids' mental health

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: When whistleblower Frances Haugen pulled back the curtain on Facebook in the fall of 2021, thousands of pages of internal documents showed troubling signs that the social media giant knew its platforms could be negatively impacting youth, and were doing little to effectively change it. With around 21 million American adolescents on social media, parents took note.

Now, families are suing social media. Since we first reported this story last December, the number of families pursuing lawsuits has grown to over 2,000. More than 350 lawsuits are expected to move forward this year against TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Roblox and Meta — the parent company to Instagram and Facebook.
Link to Original Source

Comment mRNA still has a long way to go (Score 1) 283

by Dark Coder (#63081686) Attached to: Universal Flu Vaccine May Be Available Within Two Years, Says Scientist

COVID mRNA-based vaccines apparently are not stopping the spread of COVID-19:one bit.

As evidenced by 800 vaccinated cruise passenger getting PCR-tested positive for COVID-19 out of 4,600 vaccinated passengers.

Entire cruise ship was 100% vaccinated by policy and by force.

So, either the PCR test is failing, or the COVID vaccines are not terribly efficient.

https://www.skynews.com.au/aus...

Comment 800 vaccinated cruise passengers infected COVID (Score 1) 283

by Dark Coder (#63081674) Attached to: Universal Flu Vaccine May Be Available Within Two Years, Says Scientist

At dinner last night my parents told me they read on Fox news that more vaccinated people died from covid than unvaccinated. I rolled my eyes and changed the subject. Fox won’t report that everyone in the studio had to be vaccinated.

In a cruise ship with 100% vaccination, 800 were tested positive for COVID-19 out of 4,600 vaccinated passengers.

A declared Tier-3 epidmic and not one unvaccinated got COVID,

You were saying?

https://www.skynews.com.au/aus...

https://www.marineinsight.com/...

Reply to This

Submission + - Thousands of Xcel customers locked out of thermostats during 'energy emergency' (thedenverchannel.com) 2

Submitted by drewsup
drewsup writes: During the dog days of summer, it's important to keep your home cool. But when thousands of Xcel customers in Colorado tried adjusting their thermostats Tuesday, they learned they had no control over the temperatures in their own homes.
Temperatures climbed into the 90s Tuesday, which is why Tony Talarico tried to crank up the air conditioning in his partner's Arvada home.

"I mean, it was 90 out, and it was right during the peak period," Talarico said. "It was hot."

That's when he saw a message on the thermostat stating the temperature was locked due to an "energy emergency."
Normally, when we see a message like that, we're able to override it," Talarico said. "In this case, we weren't. So, our thermostat was locked in at 78 or 79."
Xcel confirmed to Contact Denver7 that 22,000 customers who had signed up for the Colorado AC Rewards program were locked out of their smart thermostats for hours on Tuesday.

Submission + - Police investigating how Michigan voting machine wound up for sale online (cnn.com)

Submitted by Joe_Dragon
Joe_Dragon writes: A Michigan voting machine showed up on eBay last month for $1200. Police are investigating.

Cadillac, Michigan (CNN)Authorities in Michigan are investigating how a missing voting machine from the state wound up for sale on eBay last month for $1,200.
The machine was purchased by a cybersecurity expert in Connecticut who alerted Michigan authorities and is now waiting for law enforcement to pick up the device. CNN determined the machine was dropped off at a Goodwill store in Northern Michigan, before being sold last month on eBay by a man in Ohio.
In an interview with CNN, the Ohio man said he purchased the machine online at Goodwill for $7.99 before auctioning it on eBay for $1,200.

Election machines are part of the United States' critical infrastructure and are supposed to be kept under lock and key. It's an issue that has become increasingly important in recent years as people have sought to gain unauthorized access to election systems in a futile attempt to prove the false notion that the 2020 election was stolen.

News of the sold machine comes as authorities in Michigan, Colorado and Georgia are probing apparent efforts to gain unauthorized access to voting machines or obtain data from them following the 2020 election.

Michigan's Democratic attorney general has called for a special prosecutor to investigate her Republican challenger, Matthew DePerno, after finding evidence that allegedly links him to a plot to tamper with voting machines used in the 2020 election. DePerno has denied the allegations.
A bargain at the Goodwill

Ean Hutchison, a 35-year-old Uber driver in Miamisburg, Ohio, has an eye for technology and a stellar record as a seller on eBay. He trawls the web looking for deals on computer parts, like motherboards and graphic cards, and then re-sells them for a profit on eBay, often to similarly technically inclined people who are building or upgrading their own computers.
"I have a knack for finding hidden gems really cheap and turning a quick profit," Hutchison said, and often finds those gems in online thrift stores and Goodwill.
A Goodwill donation center in Cadillac, Michigan, where the voting machine was first dropped off.
A Goodwill donation center in Cadillac, Michigan, where the voting machine was first dropped off.
It was on a recent trawl of a Goodwill website in Michigan that Hutchison said he came across one of those gems.
"AVALUE TECHNOLOGY Touch Panel SID-15V-Z37-B1R," was all the ad read. The pictures accompanying the ad showed a large monitor, possibly a touch screen, with what looked like a slot for a keycard or credit card. A hand-written sticker on the base of the monitor read "Colfax." Goodwill was selling it for $7.99.
To the uninitiated, it would be hard to know what this product was. A monitor that maybe could plug into a computer, perhaps. But why the slot for a card?
Hutchison knew what he was looking at.
It was a piece of election hardware that, he reasoned given where it was listed, had been used in Michigan's elections.
"I wasn't even aware that they were supposed to be sold, let alone donated to Goodwill," Hutchison told CNN.
"Own a piece of history!"
The machine — a ballot-marking device — arrived in the mail and Hutchison later posted it on eBay. He set the eBay auction bidding to start at $250 but gave potential buyers the option of skipping the auction if they paid $1,200 upfront.
"Own a piece of history!" Hutchison's eBay listing read. "This voting machine was one of thousands used in the 2020 United States presidential election and included in one of the many lawsuits against Dominion that were thrown out."
Dominion Voting Systems was the subject of baseless claims after the 2020 election that its voting machines were hacked as part of a plot to throw the election in favor of President Joe Biden. Dominion is currently engaged in a billion-dollar defamation suit against a handful of defendants, including Fox News, who amplified baseless claims its machines were hacked in the 2020 election.
Seven hundred miles away, in his apartment in Connecticut, Harri Hursti saw the ad.
Hursti is regarded as one of the foremost election machine security experts and organizes an event every August in Las Vegas where hackers are given access to voting machines in a bid to identify and remedy potential vulnerabilities. As a result, Hursti has become essentially a voting machine collector — but the machines he can normally buy are old and retired.
Harri Hursti, an election machine security expert, purchased the voting machine on eBay for $1,200.
Harri Hursti, an election machine security expert, purchased the voting machine on eBay for $1,200.
This ad was unusual, Hursti said, because it claimed to sell a device that he thought still might be in use in Michigan.
Hursti bought the machine outright for $1,200. After it was delivered to his home last week, he contacted the Michigan secretary of state's office which oversees elections in the state. He says he was instructed not to open the box the machine came in, to preserve it for law enforcement who may need to wipe it for fingerprints.
A few days later, an official from the secretary of state's office emailed Hursti. "Thank you again for bringing this to our attention," the email read. "We have determined this device originated in one of our jurisdictions. The jurisdiction has now reported the device to law enforcement as stolen."
It's unclear how the voting machine ultimately ended up at Goodwill. It was delivered to Goodwill Northern Michigan's e-commerce division from a Goodwill location in Cadillac, Michigan, a Goodwill spokesperson told CNN. Goodwill said in a statement that its team members process thousands of donations a week in Northern Michigan and that they are cooperating with authorities on the investigation of the device.
Michigan State Police seizes voting machine as it expands investigation into potential breaches tied to 2020 election
Michigan State Police seizes voting machine as it expands investigation into potential breaches tied to 2020 election
The clerk for Wexford County, which covers Cadillac and includes a town called Colfax, like the label on the machine in question, told CNN Thursday she was searching for answers.
"I am just as concerned, if not more so," said Clerk Alaina Nyman when asked about security concerns expressed by state officials.
The clerk of Colfax Township, Becky Stoddard, declined to comment on the device specifically, citing an ongoing police investigation, though she said she keeps elections equipment locked up and added that she does not believe conspiracy theories about Dominion voting machines.
"I've never had any trouble with anything," said Stoddard, who said she has served as clerk for 22 years.
Security and conspiracy theories
In some states, voting machines might only be in use a couple of days a year, or every other year. But their secure storage is crucial to ensuring integrity in America's elections. This can be a challenge given the decentralized nature of voting systems in this country.
In Michigan, for instance, there are more than 1,500 different voting jurisdictions across 83 counties, each with its own clerk who is responsible for the security of its voting machines, according to the secretary of state's office.
Jocelyn Benson, Michigan's secretary of state, told CNN in an interview in Detroit on Thursday that voters should rest assured that the state's elections are secure.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson
She said her team contacted law enforcement as soon as they learned about the machine on eBay, and she also pointed out that there are multiple checks of machines both before and after Election Day to ensure accurate results.
That's a point that was echoed by Hursti, who tries to find vulnerabilities in election systems for a living.
He told CNN that while the appearance of a Michigan voting machine on eBay raises concerns about how machines are stored, the real threat is what election conspiracy theorists could do.
Misinformation, not machines, biggest election vulnerability, hackers say

Misinformation, not machines, biggest election vulnerability, hackers say 04:10
Over the past two years, people trying to prove the false claim the 2020 election was stolen have sought or gained unauthorized access to election systems.
Michigan State Police have been investigating a series of voting machine breaches that occurred last year in multiple counties in the state.

"What you really have is individuals who don't seem to understand the technicalities of the elections process or election security trying to gain access to machines to keep the misinformation alive," Benson said.
As for the machine that showed up at the Goodwill, how it got there is a mystery police are trying to solve — as of Thursday evening, Hursti still had this piece of critical infrastructure in his home, waiting for someone to pick it up.

CNN's Sean Lyngaas contributed to this report.

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