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Submission + - The sudden policy change in Truecrypt explained (ath0.com)

Submitted by X10
X10 writes: I use Truecrypt, but recently someone pointed me to the sourceforge page of Truecrypt that says it's out of business. I found the message weird, but now there's an explanation: Truecrypt has received a letter from the NSA.

Submission + - Apple's Spotty Record Of Giving Back To The Tech Industry (itworld.com)

Submitted by chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: One of the meta-stories to come out of the Heartbleed (http://heartbleed.com/) debacle is the degree to which large and wealthy companies have come to rely on third party code (http://blog.veracode.com/2014/04/heartbleed-and-the-curse-of-third-party-code/) — specifically, open source software maintained by volunteers on a shoestring budget. Adding insult to injury is the phenomenon of large, incredibly wealthy companies that gladly pick the fruit of open source software, but refusing to peel off a tiny fraction of their profits to financially support those same groups.

Exhibit 1: Apple Computer. On Friday, IT World ran a story that looks at Apple's long history of not giving back to the technology and open source community. The article cites three glaring examples: Apple's non-support of the Apache Software Foundation (despite bundling Apache with OS X), as well as its non-support of OASIS and refusal to participate in the Trusted Computing Group (despite leveraging TCG-inspired concepts, like AMDs Secure Enclave in iPhone 5s).

Given Apple's status as the world's most valuable company and its enormous cash hoard, the refusal to offer even meager support to open source and industry groups is puzzling. From the article:

"Apple bundles software from the Apache Software Foundation with its OS X operating system, but does not financially support the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) in any way. That is in contrast to Google and Microsoft, Apple's two chief competitors, which are both Platinum sponsors of ASF — signifying a contribution of $100,000 annually to the Foundation. Sponsorships range as low as $5,000 a year (Bronze), said Sally Khudairi, ASF's Director of Marketing and Public Relations. The ASF is vendor-neutral and all code contributions to the Foundation are done on an individual basis. Apple employees are frequent, individual contributors to Apache. However, their employer is not, Khudairi noted.

The company has been a sponsor of ApacheCon, a for-profit conference that runs separately from the Foundation — but not in the last 10 years. "We were told they didn't have the budget," she said of efforts to get Apple's support for ApacheCon in 2004, a year in which the company reported net income of $276 million on revenue of $8.28 billion."

Carol Geyer at OASIS is quoted saying her organization has done "lots of outreach" to Apple and other firms over the years, and regularly contacts Apple about becoming a member. "Whenever we're spinning up a new working group where we think they could contribute we will reach out and encourage them to join," she said. But those communications always go in one direction, Geyer said, with Apple declining the entreaties.

Today, the company has no presence on any of the Organization's 100-odd active committees, which are developing cross-industry technology standards such as The Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) and the Public-Key Cryptography Standard (PKCS).

Submission + - Microsoft Could Be Required to Ensure Support For Windows XP After April 8 (ssrn.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: If Windows XP were a photocopier, Microsoft would have a duty to deal with competitors who sought to provide aftermarket support. A new article in the Michigan Law Review argues that Microsoft should be held to the same duty, and should be legally obligated to help competitors who wish to continue to provide security updates for the aging operating system, even if that means allowing them to access and use Windows XP's sourcecode.

Submission + - How the Internet Is Taking Away America's Religion (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by pitchpipe
pitchpipe writes:

Using the Internet can destroy your faith. That’s the conclusion of a study showing that the dramatic drop in religious affiliation in the U.S. since 1990 is closely mirrored by the increase in Internet use.

I attribute my becoming an atheist to the internet, so what the study is saying supports my anecdote. If I hadn't been exposed to all of the different arguments about religion, etc., via the internet I would probably just be another person who identifies as religious but doesn't attend services. What does Slashdot think? Have you become more religious, less religious, or about the same since being on the internet? What if you've always had it?

Submission + - Federal Revenge Porn Bill Will Look To Criminalize Websites (techdirt.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: My own representative in Congress, Jackie Speier, has apparently decided to introduce a federal "revenge porn" bill, which is being drafted, in part, by Prof. Mary Anne Franks, who has flat out admitted that her goal is to undermine Section 230 protections for websites (protecting them from liability of actions by third parties) to make them liable for others' actions. Now, I've never written about Franks before, but the last time I linked to a story about her in a different post, she went ballistic on Twitter, attacking me in all sorts of misleading ways. So, let me just be very clear about this. Here's what she has said:

"The impact [of a federal law] for victims would be immediate," Franks said. "If it became a federal criminal law that you can't engage in this type of behavior, potentially Google, any website, Verizon, any of these entities might have to face liability for violations."

That makes it clear her intent is to undermine Section 230 and make third parties — like "Google, any website, Verizon... face liability."

Submission + - A Third of Consumers Who Bought Wearable Devices Have Ditched Them (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Guardian reports on research into the (alleged) wearable device trend which found that fully one third of customers who bought one stopped using it within six months. Activity trackers fared even worse: half of them are collecting dust. 'For comparison, you wouldn't find people from the early days of the smartphone saying that they'd abandoned their BlackBerry, Treo or Windows Mobile or Symbian phone. They were the early adopters, and they found utility in having email and (sometimes) web pages on the move. The idea of giving them up just wouldn't occur to them. ... So far, there aren't clear signs of quite what it is that smartwatches and fitness trackers are replacing, in the way that [early] music players did. Useful new technology has to replace or simplify some function, ideally; otherwise it has the challenge of persuading us that we need this entirely new thing. Smartphones are simpler ways to collect your email – and also make phone calls and surf the web (and so on). Fitness trackers... let you track your fitness. But given that 41% of people run with their smartphones, you might get by with a movement tracking app instead. The trouble with devices that claim to track your steps is they're so easily hoaxed by waving your arms around.'

Submission + - FWD.us Wants More H-1B Visas, But 50% Go To Offshore Firms

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: On the day the U.S. began accepting H-1B visa applications for FY2015, Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us PAC stepped up its lobbying efforts for more tech visas even as ComputerWorld reported that the major share of H-1B visas go to offshore outsourcing firms that use visa holders to displace U.S. workers. "The two largest H-1B users," notes ComputerWorld, "are Indian-based, Infosys, with 6,298 visas, and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), with 6,258." ComputerWorld adds that food and agricultural company Cargill is outsourcing IT jobs to TCS, including 300 in Minnesota, the home of Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a friend-of-Zuck and sponsor of the I-Squared Act of 2013, which would allow H-1B visa caps to rise to 300,000 annually.

Submission + - GLONASS (Russian GPS) offline (amerisurv.com)

Submitted by BevanFindlay
BevanFindlay writes: News is that the Russian-operated GLONASS satellites are inoperative, apparently due to having an "illegal ephemeris" (monitor site: http://glonass-iac.ru/en/GLONA...). While this won't affect most of us much (as the US DoD-operated GPS is still fine), it does beg the question of what caused the problem — is it related to the recent issues Russia has been having with its neighbours, did someone hack the GLONASS satellites, or is it just a bug? News via a surveyor friend (email quoting the Australian GPSNet) is that the satellites have to wait until they pass back over the base stations in the northern hemisphere to be reset, possibly taking as long as 12 hours.

Article here: http://www.amerisurv.com/conte...

Submission + - Social Media Becomes the New Front in Mexico's Drug War (theverge.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The drug cartels operating in Mexico have often been compared to large corporations, with their own codified leadership hierarchy, recruitment methods, and accounting methods. But part of any big corporation's playbook is a marketing/PR arm, and the cartels have long operated a version of those, too — threatening journalists and killing civilians who speak up. Like any corporation these days, the drug cartels have recognized the power of social media, and they're using it more and more to propagate their messages of intimidation and violence. Quoting: 'Six days after Beltran Leyva’s death, gunmen murdered family members of the only Mexican marine killed in the apartment complex siege — including the marine’s mother. That same day, a fire was set at a nearby school where a banner was flown, warning that more killings would follow if the federal government made any further attempts to interfere in cartel actions. Photos of the school were then tweeted and shared in status updates — a reply to images of Beltran Leyva’s corpse being shared on social media.'

Submission + - Some Mozilla Employees Demand New CEO Step Down

Submitted by _xeno_
_xeno_ writes: Mozilla recently named a new CEO, Brendan Eich, and as commentators in that article noted, there could be some backlash over his private contributions to political campaigns. Well, it turns out that they were correct, and despite a statement from Brendan Eich pledging to continue Mozilla's inclusiveness, some Mozilla employees are calling for him to step down. Should private beliefs be enough to prevent someone from heading a project they helped found?

Submission + - UK Bans Sending Books to Prisoners

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Alan Travis and Mark Tran report in The Guardian that new rules introduced by the justice secretary in the UK ban anyone sending in books to prisoners as part of a new earned incentives and privileges scheme which allows better behaved prisoners getting better access to funds to buy their own books. But members of Britain's literary establishment have combined to condemn Justice Secretary Chris Grayling's ban on sending books to prisoners. "While we understand that prisons must be able to apply incentives to reward good behavior by prisoners, we do not believe that education and reading should be part of that policy," says a letter signed by more than 80 leading authors. "Books represent a lifeline behind bars, a way of nourishing the mind and filling the many hours that prisoners spend locked in their cells. In an environment with no internet access and only limited library facilities, books become all the more important." Prime Minister David Cameron's official spokesman says the prime minister backs the ban on receiving books and entirely supports Grayling, whose department imposed the ban to preserve a rigid system of rewards and punishments for prisoners and said there was no need for prisoners to be sent books as prisoners could borrow from prison libraries and keep some reading material in their cells. However a former prisoner told the Guardian that although libraries existed, access could be severely restricted, particularly in closed prisons. "I've been in places where prisoners only get 20 minutes a week to visit the library and change books."

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