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Submission + - Enraged Verizon FiOS Customer Seemingly Demonstrates Netflix Throttling (hothardware.com) 1

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: The ongoing battle between Netflix and ISPs that can't seem to handle the streaming video service's traffic boiled over to an infuriating level for Colin Nederkoon, a startup CEO who resides in New York City. Rather than accept excuses and finger pointing from either side, Nederkoon did a little investigating into why he was receiving such slow Netflix streams on his Verizon FiOS connection, and what he discovered is that there appears to be a clear culprit. Nederkoon pays for Internet service that promises 75Mbps downstream and 35Mbps upstream through his FiOS connection. However, his Netflix video streams were limping along at just 375kbps (0.375mbps), equivalent to 0.5 percent of the speed he's paying for. On a hunch, he decided to connect to a VPN service, which in theory should actually make things slower since it's adding extra hops. Speeds didn't get slower, they got much faster. After connecting to VyprVPN, his Netflix connection suddenly jumped to 3000kbps, the fastest the streaming service allows and around 10 times faster than when connecting directly with Verizon. Verizon may have a different explanation as to why Nederkoon's Netflix streams suddenly sped up, but in the meantime, it would appear that throttling shenanigans are taking place. It seems that by using a VPN, Verizon simply doesn't know which packets to throttle, hence the gross disparity in speed.

Submission + - Mesothermy in Dinosaurs (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An article published today in Science (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6189/1268) points to the possibility that dinosaurs were mesotherms more akin to modern Tuna. Their internal temperature would have been warmer than their surrounding environment, conferring on them the ability to move more quickly than any ectotherm (“cold blooded” animal), but wouldn’t have been constant or as warm as any endoderm (“warm blooded” animal). Their energy use and thus their necessary food intake would have been greater than an ectotherm, but much less than an endotherm. In order to arrive at this possibility, bone growth rings in fossilized bone were used to establish growth rates and then compared to modern ectotherms and endotherms. Nature has a write up on this: http://www.nature.com/news/din...

Submission + - Why does light stretch as the Universe expands?

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: On the one hand, galaxies are definitely redshifted, and they're redshifted more severely the farther they are; that's been indisputable since Hubble's data from the 1920s. But spacetime's expansion — the idea that photons get redshfited because expanding space stretches their wavelength — is just one possibility. Sure, it's the possibility predicted by General Relativity, but a fast-moving, receding galaxy could cause a redshift, too. How do we know what the cause is? Here's how.

Submission + - Popular shuttered torrent site Demonoid returns

Submitted by AudioEfex
AudioEfex writes: Demonoid has emailed all registered users that it is back online — at it's original site — in a new "cloud based" back-end. There have been various attempts in the past (including one accused of simply being malware,), but so far this appears to be the original site admins and a legitimate resurrection. User registrations are also open at this time, but as a semi-private tracker, it's unknown how long that will continue.

Submission + - Israel's Aggressive Spying in the U.S. Mostly Hushed Up (newsweek.com)

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: Excellent examination of building push-back against Israel due to their hyper-aggressive spying on the US. A combination of funny and horrifying stories, and of course a look at how the "Israel lobby" in Washington tries to prevent any discussion of the issue.

Submission + - Sign White House Petition to Keep Net Neutrality (whitehouse.gov)

Submitted by Avrice
Avrice writes: The FCC announced yesterday that they are changing the rules on network access killing net neutrality. The petition at Whitehouse.gov on Net Neutrality is up. Sign it. The elected representatives only respond to special interests and an overwhelming show of force. Use what you've got.

Submission + - H1-B Visas to companies in real need, not outsourcers 4

Submitted by nomad63
nomad63 writes: When was the last time you have seen an H1-B sponsored worker, working directly at a company like Facebook, Microsoft or Google ? And all of these companies cry to uncle Sam about not being able to find any qualified candidates for filling up positions. For some reason, it doesn't add up. They can find the candidates but they don't want to do the work necessary to find them. If there is a real need, a seat really needs to be filled out but goes empty for a while, why not invest few thousand dollars with your legal team and hire the person directly, sponsoring his or her H1-B ? The picture is quite the opposite in my opinion. The seat is actually full or can be filled very easily, albeit, they want to fill it cheaper. And the H1-B regulation clearly states, they can not use this to drive the salaries of US personnel down, i.e., these people should be offered compensation in line with the industry average. And why pay 50% more for the same person to an outsourcer but not to the person who deserves it ? What service does these Tatas and Infosyses are providing to the actual employers other than being glorified book keepers ? Isn't it time to kick outsourcers to the curb and give the jobs to those who actually deserve it and pay accordingly ?

Submission + - OpenSSL: The New Face Of Technology Monoculture (securityledger.com)

Submitted by chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: In a now-famous 2003 essay, “Cyberinsecurity: The Cost of Monopoly” (http://cryptome.org/cyberinsecurity.htm) Dr. Dan Geer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Geer) argued, persuasively, that Microsoft’s operating system monopoly constituted a grave risk to the security of the United States and international security, as well. It was in the interest of the U.S. government and others to break Redmond’s monopoly, or at least to lessen Microsoft’s ability to ‘lock in’ customers and limit choice. “The prevalence of security flaw (sp) in Microsoft’s products is an effect of monopoly power; it must not be allowed to become a reinforcer,” Geer wrote.

The essay cost Geer his job at the security consulting firm AtStake, which then counted Microsoft as a major customer.(http://cryptome.org/cyberinsecurity.htm#Fired) (AtStake was later acquired by Symantec.)

These days Geer is the Chief Security Officer at In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital arm. But he’s no less vigilant of the dangers of software monocultures. Security Ledger notes that, in a post today for the blog Lawfare (http://www.lawfareblog.com/2014/04/heartbleed-as-metaphor/), Geer is again warning about the dangers that come from an over-reliance on common platforms and code. His concern this time isn’t proprietary software managed by Redmond, however, it’s common, oft-reused hardware and software packages like the OpenSSL software at the heart (pun intended) of Heartbleed.(https://securityledger.com/2014/04/the-heartbleed-openssl-flaw-what-you-need-to-know/)

“The critical infrastructure’s monoculture question was once centered on Microsoft Windows,” he writes. “No more. The critical infrastructure’s monoculture problem, and hence its exposure to common mode risk, is now small devices and the chips which run them," Geer writes.

What happens when a critical and vulnerable component becomes ubiquitous — far more ubiquitous than OpenSSL? Geer wonders if the stability of the Internet itself is at stake.

“The Internet, per se, was designed for resistance to random faults; it was not designed for resistance to targeted faults,” Geer warns. “As the monocultures build, they do so in ever more pervasive, ever smaller packages, in ever less noticeable roles. The avenues to common mode failure proliferate.”

Submission + - How Apple's billion dollar sapphire bet will pay off (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Apple is making a billion dollar bet on sapphire as a strategic material for mobile devices such as the iPhone, iPad and perhaps an iWatch. Though exactly what the company plans to do with the scratch-resistant crystal – and when – is still the subject of debate. Apple is creating its own supply chain devoted to producing and finishing synthetic sapphire crystal in unprecedented quantities. The new Mesa, Ariz., plant, in a partnership with sapphire furnace maker GT Advanced Technologies, will make Apple one of the world’s largest sapphire producers when it reaches full capacity, probably in late 2014. By doing so, Apple is assured of a very large amount of sapphire and insulates itself from the ups and downs of sapphire material pricing in the global market.

Submission + - Did Israel steal bomb-grade uranium from the United States? (thebulletin.org)

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: Victor Gilinsky and Roger J. Mattson update their story on the NUMEC affair to take into account the recent release of hundreds of classified documents that shed additional light on the story. In the 1960s, the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) was found to be missing about a 100 pounds of bomb-grade uranium. Based on available evidence, Gilinsky and Mattson are convinced that the material ended up in Israel nuclear bombs. The newly release documents add more to the story, and Gilinsky and Mattson are calling on President Obama to declassify the remainder of the file.

Submission + - Anti-tech protests in San Francisco turn out to be underhanded ploy by union

Submitted by execthis
execthis writes: In the news over past weeks and months have been stories about protests in San Francisco in which buses for Google have been blocked by protesters. Today it is revealed that a union is behind these protests, which amount to a dirty tactic on their part to attempt to humiliate the City and County of San Francisco government into giving raises to their employees. In other words, they have been faux protests staged by the Service Employees International Union as an underhanded attempt to gain leverage and force the city to give them wage increases. Its interesting to note that there recently were other seemingly faux protests in front of Staples stores, this time by the postal workers (I say seemingly because they did not appear to openly reveal that they were in fact postal workers).

Submission + - San Francisco's Housing Crisis Explained (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We've heard a few brief accounts recently of the housing situation in San Francisco, and how it's leading to protests, gentrification, and bad blood between long-time residents and the newer tech crowd. It's a complicated issue, and none of the reports so far have really done it justice. Now, TechCrunch has posted a ludicrously long article explaining exactly what's going on, from regulations forbidding Google to move people into Mountain View instead, to the political battle to get more housing built, to the compromises that have already been made. It's a long read, but well-researched and interesting. It concludes: 'The crisis we’re seeing is the result of decades of choices, and while the tech industry is a sexy, attention-grabbing target, it cannot shoulder blame for this alone. Unless a new direction emerges, this will keep getting worse until the next economic crash, and then it will re-surface again eight years later. Or it will keep spilling over into Oakland, which is a whole other Pandora’s box of gentrification issues. The high housing costs aren't healthy for the city, nor are they healthy for the industry. Both thrive on a constant flow of ideas and people.'

Submission + - The FAA Thinks It Can Regulate Paper Planes and Baseballs (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: Ever throw a baseball? Or a paper plane? Watch out—the Federal Aviation Administration thinks that anything that flies through the air might be aircraft that it can regulate.

That’s a bit hyperbolic, but not by much. Last month, a federal judge ruled that the Federal Aviation Administration didn’t correctly regulate drones, so anyone could fly them legally. In that case, the judge decided two things: The FAA never made drone regulations and standard aircraft regulations the FAA has do not apply to drones because they aren’t “aircraft” in the traditional sense (at least as far as the FAA has traditionally defined them). In their original argument, the FAA said that it has the right to regular anything that flies through the air—and, in an appeal to that decision, they’ve decided to double down on the whole thing.

We’ve covered that case plenty, so if you need anything more than a quick primer, you can check out the specifics here. Basically what happened was, a couple years ago, a drone pilot named Raphael Pirker flew his 5 pound, styrofoam drone around the University of Virginia, and got paid to do it. That angered the FAA, who has been trying to keep commercial drone flights grounded. But, because they never actually made regulations, they went after Pirker for the “reckless operation of an aircraft,” which turned out to be a really bad idea, because the FAA has always specifically referenced “model aircraft” when it wants to talk about RC aircraft or drones. Furthermore, the statute they tried to get Pirker on references things like pilots walking around the cabin and flight attendants being distracting—clearly not something you can do on a foam drone.

Submission + - Why is SlashDot serving 480x400 'ads' claiming 'drivers are out of date' ? (slashdot.org)

Submitted by easyTree
easyTree writes: It's not enough that these are blatantly a malware delivery vector but they are HUGE and placed above the site's navigation bar, thus pushing the site itself so far down the page as to be almost off the screen when the site load.

Seriously? This makes the whole beta thing pale into insignificance.

Also, the poor grammar is making my eyes hurt. The least you could do is to take some basic style-tips on use of capitalization within your trojan-delivery ads — it would make them OH so much more appealing.

Thanks.

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