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Comment Stolen by the FBI, not sold to them (Score 1, Informative) 67

by Walking The Walk (#48046451) Attached to: How Hackers Accidentally Sold a Pre-Release XBox One To the FBI

From the way the article describes it, the FBI actually stole the group's home-made XBox-like computer. The group used stolen login credentials to get the XBox specs and built a rig to spec with parts bought from NewEgg. Apparently a group of XBox enthusiasts paid $5000 for it (they knew it was a home-made rig), but then the guy who was supposed to send it to them handed it to the FBI instead.

To summarize: Group builds a computer with same specs as XBox. Group agrees to sell it to another group, and is paid $5000. During delivery it instead ends up in the hands of the FBI.
ISS

Robot Arm Will Install New Earth-Facing Cameras On Space Station 40

Posted by samzenpus from the all-the-better-to-see-you-with dept.
A reader writes Canada's robotic Canadarm2 will install the next two Urthecast cameras on the International Space Station, removing the need for astronauts to go outside to do the work themselves. Urthecast plans to place two Earth-facing cameras on the United States side of the station (on Node 3) to add to the two they already have on the Russian Zvezda module. Technical problems with the cameras forced the Russians to do an extra spacewalk to complete the work earlier this year.
Microsoft

Will Windows 10 Finally Address OS Decay? 577

Posted by samzenpus from the dying-slowly dept.
colinneagle (2544914) writes The real question on my mind is whether Windows 10 will finally address a problem that has plagued pretty much every Windows OS since at least 95: the decay of the system over time. As you add and remove apps, as Windows writes more and more temporary and junk files, over time, a system just slows down. I'm sure many of you have had the experience of taking a five-year-old PC, wiping it clean, putting the exact same OS on as it had before, and the PC is reborn, running several times faster than it did before the wipe. It's the same hardware, same OS, but yet it's so fast. This slow degeneration is caused by daily use, apps, device drive congestion (one of the tell-tale signs of a device driver problem is a PC that takes forever to shut down) and also hardware failure. If a disk develops bad sectors, it has to work around them. Even if you try aggressively to maintain your system, eventually it will slow, and very few people aggressively maintain their system. So I wonder if Microsoft has found a solution to this. Windows 8 was supposed to have some good features for maintaining the OS and preventing slowdown. I wouldn't know; like most people, I avoided Windows 8 like the plague. It would be the most welcomed feature of Windows 10 if I never had to do another backup, disk wipe, and reinstall.
Security

Obama Administration Argues For Backdoors In Personal Electronics 575

Posted by samzenpus from the let-us-in dept.
mi writes Attorney General Eric Holder called it is "worrisome" that tech companies are providing default encryption on consumer electronics, adding that locking authorities out of being able to access the contents of devices puts children at risk. “It is fully possible to permit law enforcement to do its job while still adequately protecting personal privacy,” Holder said at a conference on child sexual abuse, according to a text of his prepared remarks. “When a child is in danger, law enforcement needs to be able to take every legally available step to quickly find and protect the child and to stop those that abuse children. It is worrisome to see companies thwarting our ability to do so.”
Open Source

An Open Source Pitfall? Mozilla Labs Closed, Quietly 112

Posted by timothy from the same-people-are-still-smart dept.
mikejuk writes with this excerpt: When Google Labs closed there was an outcry. How could an organization just pull the rug from under so many projects? At least Google announced what it was doing. Mozilla, it seems since there is no official record, just quietly tiptoes away — leaving the lights on since the Mozilla Labs Website is still accessible. It is accessible but when you start to explore the website you notice it is moribund with the last blog post being December 2013 with the penultimate one being September 2013. The fact that it is gone is confirmed by recent blog posts and by the redeployment of the people who used to run it. The projects that survived have been moved to their own websites. It isn't clear what has happened to the Hatchery -the incubator that invited new ideas from all and sundry. One of the big advantages of open source is the ease with which a project can be started. One of the big disadvantages of open source is the ease with which projects can be allowed to die — often without any clear cut time of death. It seems Mozilla applies this to groups and initiatives as much as projects. This isn't good. The same is true at companies that aren't open source centric, though, too, isn't it?
Programming

Ask Slashdot: Have You Experienced Fear Driven Development? 232

Posted by Soulskill from the sunk-cost-fallacy-is-a-thing dept.
nerdyalien writes: A few years back, I worked for a large-scale web development project in southeast Asia. Despite formally adopting Agile/Scrum, development was driven based on fear imposed by managers. Scott Hanselman defines Fear-Driven-Development as having three parts. 1) Organizational fear has "worried about making mistakes, breaking the build, or causing bugs that the organization increases focus on making paper, creating excessive process, and effectively standing in the way of writing code." 2) There's also fear of changing code, which comes from a complex, poorly-understood, or unmaintainable codebase. 3) The most common one is fear of losing your job, which can lead to developers checking in barely-functioning code and managers committing to a death march rather than admit failure. My project ran four times its initial estimation, and included horrendous 18-hour/day, 6 day/week crunches with pizza dinners. Is FDD here to stay?

Submission + - SNMP DDoS Scans Spoof Google DNS Server (threatpost.com)

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: The SANS Internet Storm Center is seeing SNMP scans spoofed from Google’s public recursive DNS server seeking to overwhelm vulnerable routers and other devices that support the protocol with DDoS traffic.

“The traffic is spoofed, and claims to come from Google’s DNS server. The attack is however not an attack against Google. It is likely an attack against misconfigured gateways,” said Johannes Ullrich, dean of research of the SANS Technology Institute and head of the Internet Storm Center.

Ullrich said the ISC is still investigating the scale of the possible attacks, but said the few packets that have been submitted target default passwords used by SNMP. In an update posted last night, Ullrich said the scans are sequential, indicating someone is conducting an Internet-wide scan looking for vulnerable routers and devices that accept certain SNMP commands.

Submission + - AT&T's Proposes Net Neutrality Compromise (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The net neutrality debate has been pretty binary of late. ISPs want the ability to create so-called "fast lanes," and consumers want all traffic to be treated equally. Now, AT&T is proposing another alternative: fast lanes under consumer control. Their idea would "allow individual consumers to ask that some applications, such as Netflix, receive priority treatment over other services, such as e-mail or online video games. That's different from the FCC's current proposal, which tacitly allows Internet providers to charge content companies for priority access to consumers but doesn't give the consumers a choice in the matter." AT&T sayd, "Such an approach would preserve the ability of Internet service providers to engage in individualized negotiations with [content companies] for a host of services, while prohibiting the precise practice that has raised 'fast lane' concerns." It's not perfect, but it's probably the first earnest attempt at a compromise we've seen from either side, and it suggests the discussion can move forward without completely rejecting one group's wishes.

Comment Chip and PIN cards affected too (Score 2) 111

by Walking The Walk (#47861295) Attached to: Home Depot Confirms Breach of Its Payment Systems

I'm in Canada, and we've been using chip cards for a few years now. I just called my bank 45 minutes ago after noticing a fraudulent charge on my credit card from August 30th. Since I bought a bunch of stuff at Home Depot in May/June, I'm assuming they managed to clone my card from the stolen data. The charge was only $4.56, at a gas station halfway across the country, so I would guess that someone was testing the clone to see if it was a valid card number (maybe testing one number from a batch of 100s or 1000s, to see if the numbers were legit.)

Just so we're clear, I'm not saying the fraudulent purchase itself was made using the chip. I only ever use chip + pin when making purchases, but I suppose a cloned card could use NFC (eg: PayWay) for a purchase that small, or even just the magstripe, neither of which requires them to have compromised my pin. My point is that I thought I was being safe using chip + pin, but still got hit regardless. Fortunately, banks seem to be good about this sort of thing, and my new card is on its way.

Comment Re:just a little bigger... (Score 2) 147

by Walking The Walk (#47851107) Attached to: Restoring Salmon To Their Original Habitat -- With a Cannon
Goddamn it - Funny and Overrated shouldn't be next to each other in the moderation drop-down. Now I have to post here just to undo my mistake. Is there a way I could suggest to Slashdot devs that Overrated be moved up to be with all the other downmods at the top of the drop-down list, rather than tucked in between Funny and Underrated, so I don't hit it by mistake?
Earth

Restoring Salmon To Their Original Habitat -- With a Cannon 147

Posted by timothy from the going-up? dept.
StartsWithABang writes Hydroelectric dams are one of the best and oldest sources of green, renewable energy, but — as the Three Gorges Dam in China exemplifies — they often cause a host of environmental and ecological problems and challenges. One of the more interesting ones is how to coax fish upstream in the face of these herculean walls that can often span more than 500 feet in height. While fish ladders might be a solution for some of the smaller dams, they're limited in application and success. Could Whooshh Innovations' Salmon Cannon, a pneumatic tube capable of launching fish up-and-over these dams, finally restore the Columbia River salmon to their original habitats?
Transportation

After Weeks of Delay, SpaceX Falcon Launches Communications Satellite Payload 32

Posted by timothy from the people-one-day dept.
After several weeks of delay, SpaceX has successfully launched from Cape Canaveral AsiaSat's communications satellite, AsiaSat 6. This launch was originally intended to occur on August 27. However, due to a failure of an experimental SpaceX rocket during a test flight, the launch was delayed. The experimental rocket apparently malfunctioned because of a sensor error. The company stated that the same error wasn’t likely to occur in its regular Falcon 9 rocket, but wanted to "triple-check" its systems to be certain. SpaceFlightInsider has a play-by-play on the launch process and more details on the communications satellites aboard. They note: [This] marked the fifth flight of the Falcon 9 in 2014. Since the company began using the booster, it had only been able to carry out about two launches annually of the rocket – until now. With the United States Air Force considering the rocket for use under the lucrative Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program and NASA already utilizing it to deliver cargo (and potentially crew) to the International Space Station, the rocket has become a popular player in terms of launch services. The next mission that SpaceX should use the propulsive descent landing system on, is the launch of one of the firm’s Dragon spacecraft carrying out NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services 4 (SpX-4) mission – currently scheduled to take place on Sept. 19.

Why Phone Stores Should Stockpile Replacements 253

Posted by Soulskill from the easier-than-having-mcdonalds-stock-replacements dept.
Bennett Haselton writes: I would be in favor of a regulation requiring cell phone stores to have replacement phones on hand, for any phone model covered by a customer's insurance policy. Then customers who have insurance protection on their phones could get the damaged phones replaced instantly, and the replacement phones that are normally mailed out by overnight mail to customers under their protection plan, could instead be mailed to the stores to replace the one they just gave out to the customer. Read on for the rest of Bennett's thoughts
Earth

Cause of Global Warming 'Hiatus' Found Deep In the Atlantic 465

Posted by samzenpus from the biggest-heatsink dept.
vinces99 writes with news about a study that may account for a slowdown in air temperature rises. Following rapid warming in the late 20th century, this century has so far seen surprisingly little increase in the average temperature at the Earth's surface. More than a dozen theories have now been proposed for the so-called global warming hiatus, ranging from air pollution to volcanoes to sunspots. New research from the University of Washington shows the heat absent from the surface is plunging deep in the north and south Atlantic Ocean, and is part of a naturally occurring cycle. The study is published in Science. Subsurface ocean warming explains why global average air temperatures have flatlined since 1999, despite greenhouse gases trapping more solar heat at the Earth's surface. "Every week there's a new explanation of the hiatus," said corresponding author Ka-Kit Tung, a UW professor of applied mathematics and adjunct faculty member in atmospheric sciences. "Many of the earlier papers had necessarily focused on symptoms at the surface of the Earth, where we see many different and related phenomena. We looked at observations in the ocean to try to find the underlying cause." What they found is that a slow-moving current in the Atlantic, which carries heat between the two poles, sped up earlier this century to draw heat down almost a mile (1,500 meters). Most previous studies focused on shorter-term variability or particles that could block incoming sunlight, but they could not explain the massive amount of heat missing for more than a decade.
Security

51% of Computer Users Share Passwords 117

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the rm-rf-/-of-shame dept.
An anonymous reader writes Consumers are inadvertently leaving back doors open to attackers as they share login details and sign up for automatic log on to mobile apps and services, according to new research by Intercede. While 52% of respondents stated that security was a top priority when choosing a mobile device, 51% are putting their personal data at risk by sharing usernames and passwords with friends, family and colleagues. The research revealed that consumers are not only sharing passwords but also potentially putting their personal and sensitive information at risk by leaving themselves logged in to applications on their mobile devices, with over half of those using social media applications and email admitting that they leave themselves logged in on their mobile device.

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