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Submission + - Newest YouTube user to fight a takedown is copyright guru Lawrence Lessig (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by onehitwonder
onehitwonder writes: Lawrence Lessig has teamed with the Electronic Frontier Foundation to sue Liberation Music, which recently demanded that YouTube take down a lecture Lessig had posted that features clips from the song "Lisztomania" by the French band Phoenix (on Liberation Music's label). Liberation claimed copyright infringement as the reason it demanded the takedown, but in his countersuit, Lessig is claiming Liberation's "overly aggressive takedown violates the DMCA and that it should be made to pay damages," according to Ars Technica.

Submission + - Solar eruption to reach Earth within three days (space.com)

Submitted by rastos1
rastos1 writes: The solar eruption, called a coronal mass ejection, occurred yesterday at 1:24 a.m. EDT (0524 GMT) and sent charged particles streaking outward at 380 miles per second. That's just over 1.3 million mph (2.2 million km/h). The solar fallout from the sun storm is expected to reach Earth within the next three days. Interestingly an unnamed icy comet from the outer solar system dove into the sun and disintegrated nearly a the same time.

Submission + - The NSA Is Commandeering the Internet (theatlantic.com)

Submitted by Nerdfest
Nerdfest writes: Bruce Schenier writes: 'Bluntly: The government has commandeered the Internet. Most of the largest Internet companies provide information to the NSA, betraying their users. Some, as we've learned, fight and lose. Others cooperate, either out of patriotism or because they believe it's easier that way.

I have one message to the executives of those companies: fight."

Submission + - Could Humanity Really Build 'Elysium'?

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Miriam Kramer writes at Space.com that in the new movie "Elysium," Earth is beyond repair, and the rich and powerful have decided to leave it behind to live in a large, rotating space station stocked with mansions, grass, trees, water and gravity. "The premise is totally believable to me. I spent 28 years working on NASA's International Space Station and retired last summer as the director of ISS at NASA Headquarters. When I took a look at the Elysium space station, I thought to myself, that's certainly achievable in this millennium," says Mark Uhran, former director of the International Space Station Division in NASA's Office of Human Exploration and Operations. "It's clear that the number-one challenge is chemical propulsion." Nuclear propulsion could be a viable possibility eventually, but the idea isn't ready for prime time yet. "We learned an incredible amount with [the International Space Station] and we demonstrated that we have the technology to assemble large structures in space." The bottom line: "If you threw everything you had at it, could you reach a space station of the scale of Elysium in 150 years?" says Uhran. "That's a pretty tall order."

Submission + - Soldiers Looking for Hookups on Craigslist Are Being Warned of a Military Sting (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: Word has it there's a military sting operation to bust soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan who are using Craigslist to find casual hookups, and now troopers are being warned to keep their sexual exploits on the down-low.

It all started when news article published last week in the Army Times suggested undercover military cops were trolling the Craigslist Baghdad personals to catch officers posting lewd photos looking for casual sex. (The Baghdad site is presumably a product of the war in Iraq, though most of the posters now are deployed in Afghanistan.) The story was picked up by the Daily Mail and a subsequent wave of media outlets, exposing the X-rated subculture.

Submission + - Conflicting Views on the Science of Pain

Submitted by ZahrGnosis
ZahrGnosis writes: Popular Science, a stalwart of the scientific literature community, posted a couple of articles about pain research recently that are causing a bit of controversy. First, they posted an article titled Fetal Pain Is A Lie: How Phony Science Took Over The Abortion Debate that argues fetuses don't feel pain at 20 weeks due to a scientific consensus that the nervous system is underdeveloped at that point. Ironically, this argument has been used for years in a different setting: to claim that crustaceans don't feel pain (justifying among other things the live boiling of lobster). But PopSci also posted an article titled Crabs And Lobsters Probably Do Feel Pain, According To New Experiments. And now there's mild internet flaming going on. I know Slashdot doesn't venture into the abortion arena much, and I'm not trying to wade into political territory so much as understand the competing scientific commentaries (in so much as fetuses and lobster can be compared). But mostly I'm just curious what the Slashdot crowd thought.

Submission + - Coffee May Impair Fetal Brain Development (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: It’s often one of the first questions a woman asks her physician when she learns she’s pregnant: Can I keep drinking coffee or caffeinated sodas? Soon-to-be moms are generally told by doctors not to drink more than a cup or two of coffee a day, a recommendation in line with a 2010 review concluding moderate caffeine consumption doesn’t promote premature births or miscarriages or harm fetal growth. But a new study in mice offers the controversial suggestion that at larger doses, caffeine can impair memory and increase the risk of having seizures.

Submission + - Answering (and asking) dumb IT job interview questions (smartbear.com)

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: Really, if I ever have to answer "What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses?" in a job interview, ever again, it'll be too soon.

And certainly there are equally dumb questions asked in an IT or developer setting, from arcane technical facts to "just to know how you think" questions ("If you were an animal, what would you be?"). The only thing worse than being asked such things is knowing that you have to give some kind of answer that does not eliminate you from consideration for the job. Which is why Andy Lester wrote Bad Tech Job Interview Questions (and How to Answer Them). So when you're asked for a "pop quiz" arcane fact, he suggests:

Whatever you answer, don't just give facts. The interviewer may ask you questions off a checklist, but you don't have to answer like it's a test in school. The interviewer should be finding out if you know how to do the work, but if he's not, then help him along.

For example, if the interviewer asks, "What is a reference in C++?" don't answer by parroting, "A reference is a quantity that holds the address of an object but behaves syntactically like that object." You can start with that definition, but then explain why you use references, and how you know when to use a reference and when to use pointers.

But in reality: It isn't always that easy to be on the interviewing side of the desk, either. There's a reason people ask less-than-ideal questions of candidates: They aren't sure what they should ask. Which was the motivation behind Andy Lester's companion article, What To Ask Candidates In Job Interviews (Without Being Insulting and Wasting Your Time). "Before you consider the questions to ask, you have to know what you're looking for. Going into the interview without knowing what you want is like starting a programming project without software requirements or user stories," he says.

Which dumb questions would you add to his lists? And how do you answer them (assuming you want the job)?
Idle

Submission + - ROT13 challange (slashdot.org)

Submitted by ByOhTek
ByOhTek writes: Seeing as how the trolls... err... editors have decided to ROT13 the stories on slashdot for April Fools, why not add some fun to the tedium — a challange. Can you make a sentance that is readable (not necessarily having the same meaning) in ROT13?

Frrvat nf ubj gur gebyyf... ree... rqvgbef unir qrpvqrq gb EBG13 gur fgbevrf ba fynfuqbg sbe Ncevy Sbbyf, jul abg nqq fbzr sha gb gur grqvhz — n punyynatr. Pna lbh znxr n fragnapr gung vf ernqnoyr (abg arprffnevyl univat gur fnzr zrnavat) va EBG13?
China

Submission + - NASA Tightens Security in Response to Insider Threat (informationweek.com) 1

Submitted by
CowboyRobot
CowboyRobot writes: "NASA has closed down its technical reports database and imposed tighter restrictions on remote access to its computer systems following the arrest of a Chinese contractor on suspicion of intellectual property theft. NASA administrator Charles Bolden outlined those and other security measures in March 20 testimony before a congressional subcommittee. Bolden said he had ordered a review of the access that foreign nationals from designated countries — including China, Iran and North Korea — are given to NASA facilities and a moratorium on providing new access to citizens of those countries. The agency's actions follow the March 16 arrest of Bo Jiang, a Chinese citizen, at Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C., as he prepared to leave the United States. The FBI, in its application for an arrest warrant, said it was investigating violations of the Arms Export Control Act."
Hardware

Submission + - Swedish authorities raid on PRQ prompts new cyber attack from Anonymous (thehackernews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Computer hackers claiming to be from the Anonymous network took over the official website of Sweden's National Board of Health and Welfare. The attacks come just days after police on Monday raided a Stockholm-based webhosting company, PRQ, and a video was posted on YouTube — allegedly made on behalf of the hacker group Anonymous — warning Swedish authorities of repercussions. Hacktivist network Anonymous has warned that Sweden’s Riksbank will suffer a cyber-attack on Wednesday night. “It’s come to our attention that Swedish government raided PRQ servers in order to shut down numerous file sharing and torrent websites,”
Google

Submission + - Google Alerts Users About New State-Sponsored Attacks (net-security.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Remember when in June Google announced its intention to start warning Gmail users that their account might be targeted by state-sponsored attackers? A clear warning above the Gmail inbox would pop up no matter what browser the users used, and it was not limited only to those whose accounts have been hijacked, but were also seen by users the Google believed might be targets. Mike Wiacek, a manager on Google’s information security team, said to the NYT that since then, Google has improved its knowledge on attack methods and the groups behind them, and has started pushing out new alerts on Tuesday — as evidenced by a slew of U.S. journalists, researchers and foreign policy experts who said they already received the warning.

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