52927703
submission
colinneagle writes:
Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC), the department of the British government tasked with collecting taxes, is zooming in on the property of those under investigation for tax collection to spot unreported expenses, such as home repairs or expensive vehicles. According to the Daily Mail, HMRC estimates that tax evasion costs the UK government more than $14 million per year.
This isn't the first time Google Earth has been used for this purpose, and it can be fruitful in uncovering tax fraud. In 2010, not long after suffering an economic collapse, the Greek government used Google Earth to find unreported property. It was particularly useful for identifying swimming pools that Greeks declined to report for taxes, discovering more than 16,000 that hadn't been on the books previously
52926953
submission
msm1267 writes:
The hacker behind the MacRumors Forums breach said the attack was “friendly” and that none of the data accessed will be leaked. Editorial Director Arnold Kim confirmed to Threatpost that a post on the forums from the hacker is legitimate.
Kim posted an advisory on the forum on Monday informing users that a breach had occurred, and advising the site’s 860,000-plus members to change their passwords on the forum and anywhere else they might have used the same credential.
The hacker, who posted the portion of Kim’s password hash and salt as proof of his legitimacy, blamed a MacRumors Forums moderator whose credentials were stolen and used to access the password database.
“We’re not going to ‘leak’ anything. There’s no reason for us to. There’s no fun in that. Don’t believe us if you don’t want to, we honestly could not care less,” the hacker wrote. Kim said this afternoon that the site has no further details on the status of the investigation.
52734741
submission
colinneagle writes:
Two security features in Android 4.4 KitKat are particularly notable because they are Linux kernel developments. Security-enhanced Linux (SELinux) policies are fully enabled in KitKat, and dm-verity was added. Both features improve the integrity and trust of the Android operating system.
This builds on Google's earlier work to tighten Android’s defenses against attackers, such as full-disk encryption (dm-crypt) added to Android 3.x and Address Space Layout Randomization (ADLR) and Data Execution Protection (DEP) in Android 4.1.
SELinux policies that were first tested in Jelly Bean are fully enabled in KitKat. A policy limits a program’s use of files, privileges, resources and interaction with other apps and libraries. Consider, for example, an exploit that inserts malicious code into one of Android’s system functions that is designed to misappropriate user data and send it via the internet to the perpetrator. If the system function’s use of the internet is not configured as an SELinux policy, the exploit might run, but it will fail without internet access.
52659483
submission
colinneagle writes:
Western Digital has been at the forefront of high-capacity drives, and it came up with an interesting solution: helium. The company on Monday introduced a 6TB drive called the Ultrastar He6 that packs seven platters into the space usually filled by five. The helium inside the drives keeps them from overheating and minimizes the friction of the heads as they move over the platters. The helium means less drag by the platters, so the motors don't have to burn as much energy spinning them.
The new drive runs quieter and consumes 23% less power when idle. It has to be hermetically sealed to keep the helium in, something the company said was a major challenge. It will be interesting to see how customers use the drive, since there are very few drives on the market that are hermetically sealed. This means a lot of scalability over the old max of 4TB in a 3.5-inch form factor. After all, you are talking about a 50% improvement in capacity in the same space with less power drawn. So you can take up less space, or more likely deploy more storage.
52659393
submission
cold fjord writes:
The Verge reports, "Brazil this week admitted to spying on diplomats from countries including the US, Russia, and Iran as part of a domestic program launched 10 years ago ... The program was first revealed in a Monday report from the newspaper Folha de São Paulo, which obtained documents from the Brazilian Intelligence Agency, commonly known as ABIN. The revelations come at a sensitive time for current Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, who has been among the most outspoken critics of the widespread surveillance conducted by the US National Security Agency (NSA). According to Folha, Brazilian intelligence spied on rooms rented out by the US embassy in Brasilia from 2003 to 2004. ... The report also claims that ABIN targeted Russian and Iranian officials, tracking their movements within the country ... Rousseff's office acknowledged Monday that the spying took place, but stressed that the operations were carried out within the law. The administration added that publishing classified documents is a crime in Brazil, and that those responsible "will be prosecuted according to the law." ....the revelations may put Rousseff in an awkward position. The Brazilian president cancelled a state dinner with Barack Obama earlier this year ... and lashed out against US spying in an impassioned speech to the UN in September."
52659313
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
While Google built its highly profitable search business atop a complex mix of algorithms and machine learning, its latest initiative actually depends on people power: Helpouts, which allows users (for a fee) to video-chat with experts in particular fields. Google has rolled out the service with a few brands in place, such as One Medical and Weight Watchers, and promises that it will expand its portfolio of helpful brands and individuals over the next several months. Existing categories include Cooking, Art & Music, Computers & Electronics, Education & Careers, Fashion & Beauty, Fitness & Nutrition, Health, and Home & Garden. Some Helpouts charge nothing for their time; for example, the “Cooking” section of the Website already features a handful of chefs willing to talk users through baking, broiling, slicing and dicing for free. A few vendors in the Computers & Electronics section, by contrast, charge $2 per minute or even $200 per Hangout session for advice on WordPress setup, Website design, and more. So why is Google doing this? There are plenty of Websites that already dispense advice, although most rely on the written word—Quora, for example, lets its users pose text-based questions and receive answers. There’s also rising interest in Massive Open Online Courses, also known as MOOCs, in which thousands of people can sign online to learn about something new. In theory, Helpouts (if it’s built out enough) could make Google a player in those markets, as well as specialized verticals such as language learning—and earn some healthy revenue in the process. And just as long as some enterprising doctor doesn’t try to conduct a Helpout in organ removal, this latest Google initiative should remain controversy-free.
52520157
submission
colinneagle writes:
The latest bit of genius comes from the folks at Microsoft Research, who created the Kinect Sign Language Translator to translate sign language into spoken language and vice versa in real time.
Kinect captures the gestures while machine learning and pattern recognition programming help interpret the meaning. The translation is bidirectional, so a deaf person can converse in sign language with a person who does not read sign but speaks vocally. Although right now the technology only works in Chinese, there are plans to start branching out into different languages.
52459453
submission
colinneagle writes:
Ubuntu won a "Big Brother" award recently, adding to the criticism of a relatively new feature called Dash that allows for quick search of sites like Amazon.com. Previously, Richard Stallman had also taken issue with the feature, calling it "spyware."
But they're both wrong, because Ubuntu has always been straightforward about the integration, and even makes it really easy to turn off for users. Does it gather information? Yes. But you know it does this, and you can opt out at any time with absolutely no negative side effect. You can keep using the rest of your Ubuntu system without any restrictions whatsoever.
52292209
submission
colinneagle writes:
LinkedIn's new feature, called Intro, basically uses Rapportive's technology to insert a banner into emails that show LinkedIn information about the person who sent them. So, users who get an email from a stranger can see the information that person has listed on LinkedIn without navigating away from the email. How this was accomplished seems pretty interesting, though. Rapportive's technology was once a Gmail plugin, but was banned from Gmail after a Google redesign. Making things even more difficult is that Apple's Mail app for iOS does not support plugins or extensions at all.
So LinkedIn built an API that "extends" the iOS mail app. Using a proxy server that speaks the IMAP protocol that most email providers employ, Intro tacks the banner featuring the sender's LinkedIn information onto the top of the message while the message is being forwarded from the device to the email provider. In this process, it also recognizes the specific device used to open it, and adapts its banner to meet its requirements. Then, using a CSS code response that is native on the mobile version of Safari, LinkedIn was able to make the Intro bar interactive, meaning users can click on it to find out more information about the sender.
52292145
submission
minty3 writes:
The Alaskan island formerly known as Rat Island, now named Hawadax Island, has successfully eradicated the invasive Norway rats after a five-year conservation effort, the Associated Press reports.
"We set the island back on its course to being a normal, productive and noisy island full of bird life," Randy Hagenstein, Alaska state director for The Nature Conservancy, said.
52290835
submission
judgecorp writes:
Facebook's links to the NSA's PRISM programme could be investigated in Ireland, thanks to the persistence of some Austrian law students. The group has challenged Facebook in Europe as it has its regional headquarters there for tax reasons.
52289375
submission
jcenters writes:
Joe Kissell reports on the broken way Mail.app works with Gmail accounts in OS X 10.9 Mavericks. You now have to enable the "All Mail" IMAP inbox in Gmail, which forces Mail.app to re-download every message in the account. Seemingly a way to address Google's non-standard IMAP implementation, the new Mail.app seems to break AppleScripts, unread counts, and Smart Mailboxes as well.
52198639
submission
colinneagle writes:
I installed Ubuntu Touch "1.0" on my first-generation Nexus 7 tablet and have been using it as my main tablet system for the last four days. Here's how it went. First off, the installation was surprisingly painless. I followed the official instructions and didn't encounter a single problem. That being said, the installation is really geared toward software developers, power users or people already comfortable on a Linux command line. If you're not in one of those categories, I recommend holding off for the time being. Once installed, Ubuntu Touch booted up rather quickly — in only just a few seconds (a fair bit faster than Android 4.x on the same tablet). And, immediately, I was presented with a short tutorial that appears the first time the system is booted, which, I might add, has got to be one of the slickest, least annoying tutorials I've seen.
But... there were problems. The battery life was, to put it mildly, terrible. Performance has been mixed, and the OS was prone to what I call "The Pulsating Seizure Feature" a few dozen times over the weekend. In a nutshell: launching apps (and, occasionally, moving between apps) can cause the device to freeze and begin flashing the screen rapidly.
The full review can be read here.
52197749
submission
mdsolar writes:
"In a back-to-the-future bet on its energy policy, the British government announced a long-elusive $26 billion deal on Monday to build the first new nuclear power station in Britain since 1995.
But in many ways, it is a move that reaches even further back — beyond the deregulatory and privatization policies of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, to an earlier time when Britain and many other Western countries did not assume that their national energy needs would be served by market forces.
In reaching its nuclear deal with EDF Group, the big French state-controlled utility, and opening the door to financing from China, the British government signaled that whether in terms of environmental concerns, consumer prices or Britain’s long-term energy independence, the free market alone no longer served the national interest."
The deal has resulted in a contract to buy electricity at $0.15/kwh, twice the current wholesale price, for 7.5 years after which the price could be increased. Prices may escalate again at 15 and 25 years into the contract. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/21/britain-nuclear-power-station-hinkley-edf
52166563
submission
colinneagle writes:
After a motorcycle accident in Barcelona, Skully Helmet CEO and founder Marcus Weller discovered that adding a heads-up display to a motorcycle helmet controlled by Android would protect him and other riders from road hazards. The Skully helmet is designed to improve the rider’s focus by reducing the need to turn his or her attention from the road ahead. A compact Android device running Android Jelly Bean 4.1 is integrated into the helmet with a rear-facing camera and an optical combiner that projects onto a virtual heads-up display. The rider wouldn’t know that Android is behind all this, but would just reap the benefits of the helmet’s automatic and voice-operated features.
Android’s openness makes it a first choice for this technology because the source code, device drivers, and a wide range of differently priced hardware are available.
