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Submission + - NASA sets asteroid mission, demo technologies (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: NASA officials today said they have picked the specific asteroid mission and offered new details for that mission which could launch in the 2020 timeframe. Specifically, NASA’s associate administrator Robert Lightfoot said the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) will rendezvous with the target asteroid, land a robotic spacecraft on the surface, grab a 4 meter or so sized boulder and begin a six-year journey to redirect the boulder into orbit around the moon for exploration by astronauts.

Submission + - NASA's ARM will take a boulder from an asteroid and take it to lunar orbit (examiner.com)

Submitted by MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: NASA announced more details of its controversial asteroid redirect mission. The space agency has chosen to not snag an asteroid in deep space and move it to a retrograde orbit around the moon. Instead, an uncrewed spacecraft with a solar electric propulsion system will snag a boulder off of a larger asteroid and bring it to lunar orbit for an Orion spacecraft to visit.

Submission + - Comcast's incompetence, lack of broadband competition force homeowner to sell 1

Submitted by BUL2294
BUL2294 writes: Consumerist has an article about a homeowner in Kitsap County, Washington who is unable to get broadband service. Due to inaccurate broadband availability websites, Comcast's corporate incompetence, CenturyLink's refusal to add new customers in his area, and Washington state's restrictions on municipal broadband, the owner may be left with no option but to sell his house 2 months after he bought it, since he works from home as a software developer.

To add insult to injury, BroadbandMaps.gov says he has 10 broadband options in his zip code, some of which are not applicable to his address, have exorbitant costs (e.g. wireless), or are for municipal providers that are prevented from doing business with him by state law. Yet, Comcast insists in filings that “the broadband marketplace is more competitive than ever,” which appear to be very carefully chosen words...

Submission + - How nuclear weapon modernization makes it more likely that nukes will be used (foreignpolicy.com) 2

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: John Mecklin has an astonishingly good piece detailing exactly how nuclear weapons modernization is kick-starting a new arms race, and how modernizing these weapons to make them more accurate and stealthy puts the world at even greater risk of nuclear war: 'Their very accuracy increases the temptation to use them.' The issue is not getting very much attention, but the patience of the non-nuclear states is wearing thin, and a breakthrough in public awareness may be on the horizon: 'The disarmament debate is likely to make this spring’s NPT conference a contentious one and just might be loud enough to make the public aware that a new type of nuclear arms race is unfolding around the world.' If you read nothing else on nuclear weapons, read this.

Submission + - The Jobless Future

Submitted by BarbaraHudson
BarbaraHudson writes: It’s now possible to sell a new product to hundreds of millions of people without needing many, if any, workers to produce or distribute it. Robert Reich points out that this is a huge divergence from the past, where workers were consumers; consumers were workers. As paychecks rose, people had more money to buy all the things they and others produced. That resulted in more jobs and even higher pay.

That virtuous cycle is now falling apart. A future of almost unlimited production by a handful, for consumption by whoever can afford it, is a recipe for economic and social collapse. Our underlying problem won’t be the number of jobs. It will be — it already is — the allocation of income and wealth. What to do?

Submission + - Privacy for me but not for thee

Submitted by Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes: Tech titans want their home contractors to sign non-disclosure agreements

These powerful documents, demanding the utmost secrecy, are being required of anyone associated with the homes of a small but growing number of tech executives, according to real estate agents, architects and contractors. Sometimes the houses themselves are bought through trusts or corporate entities so that the owners’ names are not on public deeds.

Submission + - Dun & Bradstreet looks to expand the value of Location Intelligence

Submitted by Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes: D&B plans to integrate GPS and GIS data with its existing data bases

Today, Dun & Bradstreet’s global commercial database brings together data from 35,000 sources to provide information on 235m businesses, across 1,000 industries, in more than 220 countries. That information is updated 5m times a day, providing high rates of data quality and accuracy.

Our Location Intelligence partners use this global business data to fuel many applications from GPS to GIS, providing insight into everything from the basics, like names and addresses, to industry classifications, professional contacts, diversity indicators and corporate family tree linkages. And that’s just the start.

Can't say that I am thrilled with this development.

Submission + - FBI's Big Plan To Expand Its Hacking Powers

Submitted by Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes: DefenseOne reports:

the rule change, as requested by the department, would allow judges to grant warrants for remote searches of computers located outside their district or when the location is unknown.

The government has defended the maneuver as a necessary update of protocol intended to modernize criminal procedure to address the increasingly complex digital realities of the 21st century. The FBI wants the expanded authority, which would allow it to more easily infiltrate computer networks to install malicious tracking software. This way, investigators can better monitor suspected criminals who use technology to conceal their identity.

But the plan has been widely opposed by privacy advocates, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as some technologists, who say it amounts to a substantial rewriting of the rule and not just a procedural tweak. Such a change could threaten the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable search and seizures, they warn, and possibly allow the FBI to violate the sovereignty of foreign nations. The rule change also could let the agency simultaneously target millions of computers at once, even potentially those belonging to users who aren’t suspected of any wrongdoing.

Submission + - House Democrats angry over Obama's classified trade meeting

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: House Democrats are criticizing President Obama's administration for holding a classified briefing on trade with top administration officials, saying it's an attempt to push a trade program in secret.

Labor Secretary Thomas Perez and U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Michael Froman will meet with House Democrats on Wednesday in a classified briefing to discuss the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

In an interview with The Hill earlier this year, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Obama could attract a lot of Democratic votes on trade — if handled in the right and "transparent" way.

Submission + - A tale of industrial espionage (cw.com.tw)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: First, the links -

http://english.cw.com.tw/artic...

http://www.eetimes.com/documen...

http://www.extremetech.com/ext...

This tale of an industrial turncoat ought to be a lesson to all high-tech captains

An employee of TSMC defected to Samsung is the focus of this tale of industrial espionage

TSMC has paid dearly due to their inaction and is losing clients, including Apple, Qualcomm and Nvidia, to Samsung, as a result

TSMC's blind trust on its former employee, and the resultant loss of business should become a case study for all industrial captains, especially those running high-tech companies

Here's a very brief quote

Many people were puzzled why the normally decisive TSMC had suddenly gone soft. In fact, in May 2010, the vice president of TSMC's human resources division at the time, Tu Long-chin, sent an e-mail to Liang saying he had seen reports that Liang was already employed by Samsung. That, Tu warned, would constitute a violation of the non-compete clause and lead to the forfeiture of his shares, which would be handed over to the TSMC Education and Culture Foundation.

Liang immediately replied, writing: "I have never, am not now and will never in the future do anything to let down the company."

A month later Tu and Richard Thurston, then general counsel and vice president of TSMC's legal division, held a meeting with Liang at which he promised that he "will not join Samsung now or in the future." The next day, he even sent a letter to Thurston, with whom he had been close, saying that he was thinking of resigning his position at Sungkyunkwan University.

During that time, Liang even wrote a letter to Morris Chang, insisting on his innocence and saying that he had TSMC blood in his system.

Ultimately, TSMC executives decided to believe their old comrade who had fought alongside them for more than a decade and pay him the more than NT$100 million his 738,000 withheld shares were worth in three installments.

But on July 13, 2011, just two months after collecting the final installment of the stock payout, Liang formally became the chief technology officer of Samsung Electronics' System LSI division. When the news spread, it came as a slap in the face to those who trusted him

To do justice to the story, you just gotta read it yourself

Submission + - Summary of Past Email Scandals

Submitted by Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes: lambert strether reviews the recent email scandals concerning Hillary Clinton, John Kitzharber, Scott Walker, Mitt Romney, and George Bush. He concludes that none of them paid any political price for their misconduct concerning email. (Kitzharber was forced to resign for other reasons and the email controversy was sidelined by the larger scandals). He observes:

One detail that does stand out: Romney was brilliantly ruthless: He clearly had the sort of plan one would expect of a high-grade consultant, and the idea of having his aides privatize their own data by purchasing their hard drives as surplus equipment shows the type of lateral thinking one seeks in a President. However, Clinton’s concept of privatizing the entire server from the beginning is even more brilliant, and even more ruthless. By contrast, Bush, Walker, and Kitzhaber don’t seem to have had any disaster planning in place, and improvised what to do with the hardware and the data only after the scandal broke. However, the blurred lines between public and private apply in each of these scandals, and in all the email episodes that don’t rise to the level of scandal.

Proposal and Conclusion

Zephyr Teachout knows a thing or two about corruption, and has this to say:

Corruption exists when institutions and officials charged with serving the public serve their own ends.

And that’s why we should avoid mixing public and private communications together when doing email as official business. Again:

Corruption is about greed and private interests put ahead of the public good.

And that’s exactly what privatizing email is all about. If the person who owns the server determines what the public can see, how is the public to be certain that the public good has not been placed second to private gain?

He goes on to offer examples of how public officials could use their private email for private gain and the public would never be the wiser.

Submission + - Why Apple Won't Adopt A Wireless Charging Standard (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: As the battle for mobile dominance continues among three wireless charging standards, with many smartphone and wearable makers having already chosen sides, Apple continues to sit on the sideline. While the new Apple Watch uses a tightly coupled magnetic inductive wireless charging technology, it still requires a cable. The only advantage is that no port is required, allowing the watch case to remain sealed and water resistant. The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, however, remain without any form of wireless charging, either tightly coupled inductive or more loosely coupled resonant charging. Over the past few years, Apple has filed patents on its own flavor of wireless charging, a "near field" or resonant technology, but no products have as yet come to market. If and when it does select a technology, it will likely be its own proprietary specification, which ensures accessory makers will have to pay royalties to use it.

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