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Submission + - Ask SlashDot: What should the NSA be able to do without a warrant? (newamerica.net)

Submitted by LessThanObvious
LessThanObvious writes: We have a general consensus in the U.S. and abroad that says the NSA has overstepped their boundaries in data collection and surveillance. The costs to liberty, free speech, privacy rights as well as economic and foreign policy costs outlined in the New America Open Technology Institute July 2014 Policy Paper — "Surveillance Costs" have been broadly discussed. It seems now that there is enough political inertia post Snowden and enough economic incentive to make changes to protect U.S. competitive position and international trust relationships for real change to come about. It is also pretty much a given that an organization like the NSA with a multibillion dollar budget is not going to simply dry up and blow away.

In a world where we are trying to defend our nation and others around the globe from highly sophisticated cyber-crime, cyber-attack and serious terror threats at home and abroad, it does seem that the NSA and other agencies have a legitimate role to play. Let's imagine a world where the NSA and other agencies rewrite the rules of when and where information could be collected, allowing for adequate transparency and protections for U.S. and foreign individuals rights. How can we find the needle in a stack of haystacks if they are no longer permitted to disturb the haystack?

Now under those circumstances what should the NSA be allowed to do without a warrant?

Submission + - Private Bittorrent Trackers - A Misleading Name (ktetch.co.uk)

Submitted by ktetch-pirate
ktetch-pirate writes: At some point in any P2P story, you will come across a comment saying how 'Private Trackers are better'. Yet Private Tracker users have less privacy than those that use public/open trackers, with the sites logging your activities and then sharing that info in a big database with dozens of other sites.
TorrentFreak's lead researcher explains how they got the name, and why, along with a more appropriate term for these kids of sites, that's more accurate.

Submission + - HP gives OpenVMS new life and path to x86 port (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: Hewlett-Packard has changed its direction on OpenVMS. Instead of pushing its users off the system, it has licensed OpenVMS to a new firm that plans to develop ports to the latest Itanium chips and is promising eventual support for x86 processors. Last year, HP put OpenVMS on the path to extinction. It said it would not validate the operating system to its latest hardware or produce new versions of it. The move to license the OpenVMS source code to a new entity, VMS Software Inc. (VSI), amounts to a reversal of that earlier decision. VSI plans to validate the operating system on Intel's Itanium eight-core Poulson chips by early 2015, as well as support for HP hardware running the upcoming "Kittson" chip. It will also develop an x86 port, although it isn't specifying a timeframe. And it plans to develop new versions of OpenVMS

Submission + - French provider Free could buy US branch of T-Mobile

Submitted by Guybrush_T
Guybrush_T writes: Iliad, the parent company of Free, confirmed today having made an offer to buy 56% of the US branch of T-Mobile. This could be very good news for the US, since the provider reduced significantly the average price of mobile plans in France since they entered the mobile market two years ago. Their disruptive strategy, featuring an all-inclusive €20/month plan and a €2/month plan gathered 11% of the French market in only two years and lowered the price of plans by a 5 to 10 factor.

Submission + - Why TiVo's founders crashed and burned with Qplay (digitaltrends.com)

Submitted by Velcroman1
Velcroman1 writes: Michael Ramsay and Jim Barton created a revolution with TiVo, a device that challenged the notion that we had to watch TV shows when they aired. And they hoped to do it again with Qplay, a device that challenged the notion that short-form videos had to be consumed one at a time, like snacks instead of meals. Qplay streamed curated queues of short-form Internet video to your TV using a small, simple box controlled by an iPad app. So what went wrong? Unlike TiVo, the Qplay box was difficult to justify owning, and thevalue of the service itself is questionable. And as of last week, Qplay is closed.

Submission + - Passport database outage leaves thousands stranded. 1

Submitted by linuxwrangler
linuxwrangler writes: Job interviews missed, work and wedding plans disrupted, children unable to fly home with their adoptive parents. All this disruption is due to a outage involving the passport and visa processing database at the U.S. State Department. The problems have been ongoing since July 19 and the best estimate for repair is "soon."

Submission + - Fotopedia is shutting down

Submitted by Randall Booth
Randall Booth writes: Fotopedia has sent notice to its users that it is shutting down.

"We are sorry to announce that Fotopedia is shutting down. As of August 10, 2014, Fotopedia.com will close and our iOS applications will cease to function.
Our community of passionate photographers, curators and storytellers has made this a wonderful journey, and we’d like to thank you for your hard work and your contributions. We truly believe in the concept of storytelling but don't think there is a suitable business in it yet.

If you submitted photos and stories to Fotopedia, your data will be available to download until August 10, 2014. After this date, all photos and data will be permanently deleted from our servers."

Submission + - iFixit Takes Apart the Oculus Rift DK2, Finds Galaxy Note 3 Display Inside (ifixit.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: iFixit's teardown reveals lots of interesting hardware within, including 40 infrared LEDs, a well-organized motherboard, and a display panel lifted directly from a Samsung Galaxy Note 3. They also took apart the IR tracking camera for good measure.

Submission + - Are Tesla and Panasonic already secretly building the gigafactory?

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes: Earlier in the week we heard that Tesla and Panasonic had reached an agreement to build the gigafactory together, and today that became official. Now it seems that things are farther along than anyone thought. In fact, construction of the plant might already be secretly underway in Nevada. This is of course interesting as Tesla hasn't officially announced where the gigafactory will be built. Something called Project Tiger is currently underway east of Reno, and there's a lot of construction workers, heavy equipment, and a heavily guarded fenced barrier around the site. The volume of dirt being moved is 140,000 cubic yards, which matches the gigafactory dimensions given earlier this year by Tesla. Is it possible that Tesla's actually building the gigafactory before even announcing its location? It seems so, yes.

Submission + - Grad Student Rigs Cheap Alternative to $1,000 Air Purifiers in Smoggy China (scienceblog.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: University of Virginia grad student Thomas Talhelm was living in Beijing on a Fulbright Scholarship during the winter of 2012-13, when air pollution was so bad scientists likened it to a nuclear winter. Those who could afford it were resorting to an expensive solution: air filters costing up to $1,000. Talhem built his own on the cheap, getting comparable particulate count results, and has started a company that both markets the product to middle class Chinese and shows others how to DIY.

Submission + - Winners of Raspberry Pi Photography Award Contest 2014 (adafruit.com)

Submitted by coop0030
coop0030 writes: Adafruit held a 2014 Raspberry Pi Photography contest that has completed with the winners selected. You can see the winning photographs as well as all of the entries. Andrew Mulholland, using a Raspberry Pi powered LEGO panobot, is the winning photographer. He's also provided a video of how his winning photographs were put together.

Submission + - NASA's JPL develops multi-metal 3D printing process (design-engineering.com)

Submitted by yyzmcleod
yyzmcleod writes: The technology to 3D print a single part from multiple materials has been around for years, but only for polymer-based additive manufacturing processes. For metals, jobs are typically confined to a single powdered base metal or alloy per object. However, researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory say they have developed a 3D printing technique that allows for print jobs to transition from one metal to another in a single object.

Submission + - This thumbdrive hacks computers. "BadUSB" exploit makes devices turn "evil" (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: When creators of the state-sponsored Stuxnet worm used a USB stick to infect air-gapped computers inside Iran's heavily fortified Natanz nuclear facility, trust in the ubiquitous storage medium suffered a devastating blow. Now, white-hat hackers have devised a feat even more seminal—an exploit that transforms keyboards, Web cams, and other types of USB-connected devices into highly programmable attack platforms that can't be detected by today's defenses.

Dubbed BadUSB, the hack reprograms embedded firmware to give USB devices new, covert capabilities. In a demonstration scheduled at next week's Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, a USB drive, for instance, will take on the ability to act as a keyboard that surreptitiously types malicious commands into attached computers. A different drive will similarly be reprogrammed to act as a network card that causes connected computers to connect to malicious sites impersonating Google, Facebook or other trusted destinations. The presenters will demonstrate similar hacks that work against Android phones when attached to targeted computers. They say their technique will work on Web cams, keyboards, and most other types of USB-enabled devices.

Submission + - Unesco probing Star Wars filming in Ireland (bbc.com)

Submitted by wijnands
wijnands writes: Star Wars crews have started filming on the small Irish Island of Skellig Michael. This island, listed as a Unesco world heritage site, features the remains of a 6th century monastery as well as breeding populations of puffins , manx shearwaters, storm petrels, guillemots and kittiwakes.
Currently the Irish navy has deployed one vessel to maintain a 2 mile exclusion zone around the island. Unesco is now concerned about what is going on the island, which is only visited 13 times a year by tourist groups, and has asked the Irish government for an explantion.

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