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Submission + - Wikileaks Foreshadows Russian Instigation Of Ukrainian Crisis / Military Action (slate.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Joshua Keating writes in Slate: "Given the degree to which this weekend’s events in Crimea seem to have caught the world off guard, I was curious to see if the Wikileaks cables contained any discussions by U.S. diplomats of a scenario like this one. Indeed, there is some now ominous foreshadowing to be found. ... — "... pro-Russian forces in Crimea, acting with funding and direction from Moscow, have systematically attempted to increase communal tensions in Crimea in the two years since the Orange Revolution. They have done so by cynically fanning ethnic Russian chauvinism towards Crimean Tatars and ethnic Ukrainians, through manipulation of issues like the status of the Russian language, NATO, and an alleged Tatar threat to "Slavs," in a deliberate effort to destabilize Crimea, weaken Ukraine, and prevent Ukraine's movement west into institutions like NATO and the EU." -- ... the embassy in Kiev issued another cable, titled “Ukraine-Russia: Is Military Conflict No Longer Unthinkable?” It discusses the views of defense analysts Volodymyr Horbulin, ... “internal Russian considerations are pushing Russia toward a confrontation with Ukraine prior to the expiration of the Black Sea Fleet basing agreement in 2017.”

Submission + - Face Masks Provide Chinese With False Hope Against Pollution

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Emily Sohn reports at Discovery Magazine that high levels of air pollution in Beijing, where levels of pollution have spiked above 750 micrograms per cubic meter, have caused a run on face masks as people look for ways to protect themselves from the smog while the capital is on its sixth day of an "orange" smog alert — the second-highest on the scale — with the air tasting gritty and visibility down to a few hundred meters. But experts say that under the hazards they’re facing the masks are unlikely to help much. In fact, images of masked citizens navigating the streets of Beijing highlight the false confidence that people put in face masks in all sorts of situations, including flu outbreaks and operating rooms . “For so long, people have worn these and believed they are effective,” says industrial hygienist Lisa Brosseau. “But I believe they give people a false sense of protecting themselves when they are really not getting much protection.” For a step up in protection, consumers can buy a category of mask known technically as N95 respirators, which are generally available at hardware stores. N95 facemasks are often used in industrial workplace situations to protect against things like lead dust and welding fumes, and they are certified by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health to trap 95 percent of particles sent through them in testing situations. But in order to work N95 respirators need to be professionally fitted to each person’s individual face (PDF) to make sure there is a tight seal with no leaks and if they truly fit right, they are uncomfortable to wear. “If it’s going to work, it has to fit your face,” says Donald Milton. “If you buy a box of these things at the hardware store, it’s not clear you’re getting anything that’s going to work for you.”

Submission + - Apple Closes OpenNI The Open Source Kinect Framework (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: The OpenNI website, home to the widely used framework for 3D sensing, will be shutdown in April.
When, in November 2013, Apple bought PrimeSense for $350 million, people speculated how this would affect the Capri mobile technology but no mention was made of what would happen to OpenNI, the open source SDK most often used as an alternative to Microsoft's closed SDK for the Kinect..
After Apple acquired PrimeSense, its website quickly shut, but the Developers link still points to Open NI.
The status of OpenNI is a not-for-profit whose framework allows developers to create middleware and applications for a range of devices, including the Asus Xtion Pro. It claims to be a widely used community with over 100,000 active 3D developers.
Surely that, together with the "open" nature of its software could have guaranteed it a longer future?
It seems not.

Submission + - U.S. Students Carrying Over $1 Trillion In Debt (time.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Time reports that American students and grads were carrying $1.08 trillion in student loan debt at the end of 2013. This compares to just $253 billion a decare earlier, and aggregate debt grew 10% in the past year alone. 'By comparison, overall debt grew just 43% in the last decade and 1.6% over the past year.' About 70% of students graduate with some amount of debt, and the average amount owed is $29,400. 'Delinquencies on student loans have risen dramatically over the past decade: 11.5 percent of graduates were at least 90 days late on paying back their loans at the end of 2013, compared with 6.2 percent delinquencies on student loans in 2003. Moreover, the Fed’s figures on delinquencies hide more stark data: nearly half of all students with debt aren't currently in repayment thanks to deferments and forbearances and the fact that students are not expected to pay while they're in school.' An attached graph shows an alarming spike in delinquent loans that looks a bit like mortgage delinquencies did at the beginning of the subprime crisis.

Submission + - Tech Industry: Completely Ridiculous. Let's Hope It Stays That Way. (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Columnist Jon Evans points out that the tech industry has been slowly getting stranger over the past several years. When you look at the headlines individually, they all seem to make sense, but putting them together and trying to imagine them popping up a decade ago really illustrates how odd it has become. Quoting: 'In Japan, some half-billion dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency vanished from a site founded to trade Magic: The Gathering cards. In New Zealand, the world’s greatest Call of Duty player has launched a political party to revenge himself on those who had him arrested and seized his sports cars. In Britain, the secret service is busy collecting and watching homegrown porn. Here in Silicon Valley, mighty Apple just revealed that a flagrant, basic programming error gutted the security of all its devices for years. Google, "more wood behind fewer arrows" Google, now has its own navy, to go with its air force and robot army.'

Submission + - Hacker Intercepts FBI and Secret Service calls .. (gawker.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Earlier this week, Bryan Seely, a network engineer and one-time Marine, played me recordings of two phone calls (embedded below.) The calls were placed by unwitting citizens to the FBI office in San Francisco and to the Secret Service in Washington, D.C. Neither the callers nor the FBI or Secret Service personnel who answered the phone realized that Seely was secretly recording them. He used Google Maps to do it.

Submission + - Snowden's NSA leaks gave IETF a needed security wake-up call, Chairman says (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Security and how to protect users from pervasive monitoring will dominate the proceedings when members of Internet Engineering Task Force meet in London starting Sunday. For an organization that develops the standards we all depend on for the Internet to work, the continued revelations made by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have had wide-ranging repercussions. "It wasn't a surprise that some activities like this are going on. I think that the scale and some of the tactics surprised the community a little bit. ... You could also argue that maybe we needed the wake-up call," said IETF Chairman Jari Arkko. Part of that work will also be to make security features easier to use and for the standards organization to think of security from day one when developing new protocols.

Submission + - ReactOS Finally on Kickstarter (kickstarter.com)

Submitted by jeditobe
jeditobe writes: Aleksey Bragin, along with Steven Edwards (Present and former ReactOS Project Coordinators) have just launched ReactOS to Kickstarter under the name "Thorium Core Cloud Desktop".

"Thorium Core" is a commercial distribution of ReactOS, the Open Source Windows compatible operating system, targeted for cloud computing

Thorium Core will allow you to configure an optimized, virtualized or embedded system tailored to run Windows-compatible applications using fewer resources than a modern version of Windows would require, without the licensing costs and complexity associated with Microsoft products and giving the user the Freedom that comes with Open Source software."

Submission + - Samsung Galaxy S4 Security Vulnurability (bgu.ac.il)

Submitted by olsmeister
olsmeister writes: The Samsung KNOX enterprise security system (presumably a play on Ft Knox, the location of the United States Bullion Depository) contains a security vulnurability that could put both personal and business data at risk. This is according to a discovery by a Ph.D. student at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. This is the security system used in Samsung's flagship Galaxy S4 phone, which Samsung hopes will allow it to compete with BlackBerry in government and enterprise applications. The flaw could allow attackers to access secure data, as well as load malicious applications.

Submission + - Who's Selling Credit Cards from Target? (krebsonsecurity.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Brian Krebs does some detective work to determine who is behind the recent Target credit card hack. Krebs sifted through posts from a series of shady forums, some dating back to 2008, to determine the likely real-life identity of one fraudster. He even turns down a $10,000 bribe offer to keep the information under wraps.

Submission + - Intel Linux Driver Now Nearly As Fast As Windows OpenGL Driver (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Intel's open-source Linux graphics driver is now running neck-and-neck with the Windows 8.1 driver for OpenGL performance between the competing platforms when using the latest drivers for each platform. The NVIDIA driver has long been able to run at similar speeds between Windows and Linux given the common code-base, but the Intel Linux driver is completely separate from their Windows driver due to being open-source and complying with the Linux DRM and Mesa infrastructure. The Intel Linux driver is still trailing the Windows OpenGL driver in supporting OpenGL4.

Submission + - Bitcoin miners bundled with PUPs in legitimate applications backed by EULA (techienews.co.uk)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Bitcoin miners are being integrated with third party potentially unwanted programs (PUPs) that come bundled with legitimate applications. These miners surreptitiously carry out Bitcoin mining operations on the user’s system consuming valuable CPU time without explicitly asking for user’s consent. Malwarebytes, the company which found evidence of these miners, first came across such an instance of a Bitcoin miner when one of the users of its software requested for assistance on November 22 through a forum post. The user revealed that “jh1d.exe” was taking up over 50 percent of the CPU resource and even after manual deletion the executable was re-appearing. Malwarebytes dug deeper into this and found traces of a miner “jhProtominer”, a popular mining software that runs via the command line”. However, it seems that the company behind the application has a specific clause 3 in EULA that talks about mathematical calculations similar to Bitcoin mining operation. This means that the company behind the software can and will install Bitcoin miners and use system resources to perform operations as required to mine Bitcoins and keep the rewards for themselves.

Submission + - The Dismantling of POTS: bold move or grave error? 2

Submitted by TheRealHocusLocus
TheRealHocusLocus writes: The FCC is drafting rules to formalize the process of transition of "last-mile" subscriber circuits to digital IP-based data streams. The move is lauded by AT&T Chairman Tom Wheeler who claims that significant resources are spent to maintain 'legacy' POTS service, though some 100 million still use it. POTS, or 'Plain Old Telephone Service' is the analog standard that allows the use of simple unpowered phone devices on the wire, with the phone company supplying ring and talk voltage. I cannot fault progress, in fact I'm part of the problem: I gave up my dial tone a couple years ago because I needed cell and could not afford to keep both. But what concerns me is, are we poised to dismantle systems that are capable of standing alone to keep communities and regions 'in-touch' with each other, in favor of systems that rely on centralized (and distant) points of failure? Despite its analog limitations POTS switches have enforced the use of hard-coded local exchanges and equipment that will faithfully complete local calls even if its network connections are down. But do these IP phones deliver the same promise? For that matter, is any single local cell tower isolated from its parent network of use to anyone at all? I have had a difficult time finding answers to this question, and would love savvy /. folks to weigh in: In a disaster that isolates the community from outside or partitions the country's connectivity — aside from local Plain Old Telephone Service, how many IP and cell phones would continue to function? Are we setting ourselves up for a 'fail'?

Comment Re: Mulefeathers! (Score 1) 346

by LandGator (#45559877) Attached to: The Burning Bridges of Ubuntu
Whereas it was necessary to release 12 Ubuntu versions to keep up with the every-six-months releases of Ubuntu, for each of the Desktops, here's the track record of Debian based distros by Mint: six releases of Debian, three of those supporting multiple Desktops. So, Anonymous Coward, you seem to overlooked 83% of the Debian based releases of Mint. 2013.03.22: LMDE 201303 (MATE and Cinnamon) was released. 2012.04.24: LMDE 201204 (MATE/Cinnamon and Xfce) was released. 2011.09.16: LMDE 201109 (Gnome and Xfce) was released. 2011.04.06: LMDE 201104 Xfce was released. 2011.01.02: LMDE 201101 32-bit re-spin. 2010.12.24: LMDE 201012 was released.

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