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Submission + - Researchers Connect 91% of Numbers With Names in Metadata Probe

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: One of the key tenets of the argument that the National Security Agency and some lawmakers have constructed to justify the agency’s collection of phone metadata is that the information it’s collecting, such as phone numbers and length of call, can’t be tied to the callers’ names. However, some quick investigation by some researchers at Stanford University who have been collecting information voluntarily from Android users found that they could correlate numbers to names with very little effort.

The Stanford researchers recently started a program called Metaphone that gathers data from volunteers with Android phones. They collect data such as recent phone calls and text messages and social network information. The goal of the project, which is the work of the Stanford Security Lab, is to draw some lines connecting metadata and surveillance. As part of the project, the researchers decided to select a random set of 5,000 numbers from their data and see whether they could connect any of them to subscriber names using just freely available Web tools.

The result: They found names for 27 percent of the numbers using just Google, Yelp, Facebook and Google Places. Using some other online tools, they connected 91 of 100 numbers with names.

Submission + - Inventor of AK-47 Dies at 94

Submitted by necro81
necro81 writes: Lt. Gen. Mikhail T. Kalashnikov, an arms designer for the Soviet Union, creator of the AK-47, passed away today at age 94. Kalashnikov was born a peasant and entered the Soviet Army as a conscript. However, the self-taught tinkerer had an aptitude that took him far. The AK-47, his best-known creation, was praised for its reliability and low cost; attributes that have made it the most successful firearm ever, seeing use in homeland defense, rebellion, terrorism, and untold massacres. The inventor was himself ambivalent about the uses his creation had seen, but was nevertheless proud of his contribution to his country, where he is praised as a hero.

Submission + - A Short History of Computers in the Movies

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: The big screen has always tried to keep step with technology usually unsuccessfully. Peter Salus looks at how the film industry has treated computing.

For a long time, the "product placement" of big iron was limited to a few brands, primarily Burroughs. For instance:

Batman: The Movie and Fantastic Voyage (both 1966) revert to the archaic Burroughs B205, though Fantastic Voyage also shows an IBM AN/FSQ-7 Combat Direction Central. At 250 tons for each installation (there were about two dozen) the AN/FSQ-7 was the largest computer ever built, with 60,000 vacuum tubes and a requirement of 3 megawatts of power to perform 75,000 ips for regional radar centers. The last IBM AN/FSQ-7, at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, was demolished in February 1984.

Fun reading, I think.

Submission + - NSA Mass Data Collection Dates Back To 9/11 (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: The NSA mass surveillance programme currently receiving criticism dates back to George W Bush's response to the 9/11 attacks, according to newly declassified documents. The agency was first given powers to collect the contents of certain international communications in October 2001;the powers had to be renewed regularly at first, and have since been solidified and extended.

Submission + - Naked self-destructing sexts could be what finally kills Google. No, Seriously. (bgr.com) 1

Submitted by zacharye
zacharye writes: As Google’s share price soars beyond $1,100, it seems like nothing can stop the Internet juggernaut as its land grab strategies continue to win over the eyes of its users and the wallets of its advertising clients. But an analysis published over this past weekend raises an interesting question surrounding a new business model that could someday lead to Google’s downfall. Do we want an erasable Internet?...

Submission + - Airport security is "all bullshit, TSA couldn't protect you from a 6-year-old"

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: ...so says Rafi Sela Airport Head of Security at an Israel airport. Sela has seven major issues with the TSA. First, the TSA "essentially makes its own rules," according to Sela, the TSA is a regulatory agency and a security agency. They essentially make their own rules. No one else — not the FBI, not the CIA, not anyone but a loose-cannon New York cop — gets to do that. I call the TSA the biggest train system in the world, because it's common for much of the floor force to be replaced on a yearly basis. So if the TSA only drills once or twice a year, you've got a ton of screeners who go their entire (short) careers without ever being tested. People need to realize that security can't be treated like a fast food company. These people are tasked with finding bombs, not flipping burgers. Full-body scanners: these scanners were useless. I could strap a bomb capable of taking down a 747 to my body and walk right through a body scanner. Nobody would catch me. Most people pose no threat to anyone, and there's no point in even checking them. The very few terrorists that exist are like needles in a haystack. But the TSA's approach is to check every single piece of hay, in case it might actually be a needle. But if you only check luggage and you don't check the person behind the luggage, how do you know he hasn't camouflaged something into the luggage that you can't find? Trust me: Hiding things is so easy to do, it isn't even funny. At Ben Gurion Airport, we get travelers from their car to their gate in 25 minutes. When was the last time that happened to you in an American airport? Probably never, because a dozen 747s worth of cranky travelers can't take their shoes and coats off, pull their laptops out of their luggage, and queue up for pat downs without chaos.

Submission + - MIT Study: Only 3.1% of USA Used Electronics "e-waste" Were Exported (recyclingtoday.com)

Submitted by retroworks
retroworks writes: The MIT Materials Systems Laboratory, EU's StEP, and the U.S. National Center for Electronics Recycling (NCER) have released a study, Quantitative Characterization of Domestic and Transboundary Flows of Used Electronics, that analyses collection and export of obsolete electronics generated in the United States. It is the fifth study to debunk a widely reported statistic that "80 percent" of used electronics are dumped abroad. Last year, the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) released studies of 279 sea containers, seized as "e-waste" in African ports of Lagos and Accra, and found 91% of the goods were reused. According to the UN, most of the junk at Chinese and African dumps was generated in African cities (Lagos had 6.9M households with TV in 2007, World Bank). The UNEP study also bolsters African traders claims that used product purchased from nations with strong warranty laws outperform "affordable" new product imported from Asia.

Where did the "original" widely reported statistic of 80% dumping (see /. slashdot dumping story) originate? Last May, in response to an editorial by Junkyard Planet author Adam Minter in Bloomberg, the source of dumping accusations (Basel Action Network) claimed "never, ever" to have cited the statistic.

The new studies have not slowed USA legislation aimed at banning trade of used electronics for repair, reuse and recycling overseas. This month, the Coalition for American Electronics Recycling (CAER.org) announced 13 republicans and 5 democrats had signed on to support the bill 2791 to criminalize exports of non-shredded displays, cell phones, and computers. Interpol announced a new "Project Eden" targeting African geek importers in November 2013.

Submission + - Rise Of The Super High Res Notebook Display (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Mobile device displays continue to evolve and along with the advancements in technology, resolution continues to scale higher, from Apple's Retina Display line to high resolution IPS and OLED display in various Android and Windows phone products. Notebooks are now also starting to follow the trend, driving very high resolution panels approaching 4K UltraHD even in 13-inch ultrabook form factors. Lenovo's Yoga 2 Pro, for example, is a three pound, .61-inch thick 13.3-inch ultrabook that sports a full QHD+ IPS display with a 3200X1800 native resolution. Samsung's ATIV 9 Plus also boast the same 3200X1800 13-inch panel, while other recent releases from ASUS and Toshiba are packing 2560X1440 displays as well. There's no question, machines like Lenovo's Yoga 2 Pro are really nice and offer a ton of screen real estate for the money but just how useful is a 3 or 4K display in a 13 to 15-inch design? Things can get pretty tight at these high resolutions and you'll end up turning screen magnification up in many cases so fonts are clear and things are legible. Granted, you can fit a lot more on your desktop but it begs the question, isn't 1080p enough?

Submission + - Rackspace Email Customers Notified of Potential Vulnerability

Submitted by latuZimZactly
latuZimZactly writes: Rackspace has asked customers of its email service to reset account passwords.

Dear Rackspace Customer — We have recently corrected a potential vulnerability that may have allowed external access to some of your end-user's credentials. To be safe, we've reset the passwords for the mailboxes identified below. Please log in to your Admin Control Panel to change the password and to allow access to your user once again. Please note that your admin credentials were not at risk.

The notification originated from mailtrust.com, a service acquired by Rackspace in October 2007, and was confirmed by Rackspace support.

Yes this was sent out by the Email and Apps Department. We understand that it was not a normal means of communication but generating a ticket would of taken longer. Due to the security issue involved on this issue emails was the quickest way to reach our administrators to address this issue. A ticket will be created shortly documenting this issue in your ticket history.

Submission + - Member Of President Obama's NSA Panel Recommends Increased Data Collection (nationaljournal.com)

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes: National Journal reports, "Michael Morell, the former acting director of the CIA and a member of President Obama's task force on surveillance, said ... that a controversial telephone data-collection program conducted by the National Security Agency should be expanded to include emails. He also said the program, far from being unnecessary, could prevent the next 9/11. Morell, seeking to correct any misperception that the presidential panel had called for a radical curtailment of NSA programs, said he is in favor of restarting a program that the NSA discontinued in 2011 that involved the collection of "meta-data" for internet communications. ... "I would argue actually that the email data is probably more valuable than the telephony data," ... Morell also said that while he agreed with the report's conclusion that the telephone data program, conducted under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, made "only a modest contribution to the nation's security" so far, it should be continued under the new safeguards recommended by the panel. "I would argue that what effectiveness we have seen to date is totally irrelevant to how effective it might be in the future," he said. "This program, 215, has the ability to stop the next 9/11 and if you added emails in there it would make it even more effective. Had it been in place in 2000 and 2001, I think that probably 9/11 would not have happened."" — More at Politico and National Review. Some members of Congress have a different view. Even Russian President Putin has weighed in with both a zing and a defense.

Submission + - The UK "Porn" Filter Blocks Kids' Access To Tech, Civil Liberties Websites (blogspot.ca)

Submitted by badger.foo
badger.foo writes: It fell to the UK Tories to actually implement the Nanny State. Too bad Nanny Tory does not want kinds to read up on tech web sites such as slashdot.org, or civil liberties ones such as the EFF or Amnesty International. Read on for a small sample of what the filter blocks, from a blocked-by-default tech writer.

Submission + - The economic decline of the Soviet Union reduced mercury concentration in fish (newswise.com)

Submitted by Accordion Noir
Accordion Noir writes: Virginia tech researchers and a team from the US, Canada, and Russia have released a study indicating that the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 may have had positive environmental results in fish. Reduced mercury releases from mining in areas effected by the economic disarray in Russia led fish to have lower levels of methyl mercury than those in rivers on the Norwegian border or in Canada, where mining continued.

Ice-fishing was used to take samples during November and December, prime season for burbot, a "cod-like" fish at the top of the food-chain in its fresh-water habitat. Research began in Russia between 1980 and 2001, when funding was cut. “More studies are needed in the Russian Arctic if we are to better understand how mercury moves through this type of environment,” said study co-author Leandro Castello.

The article, “Low and Declining Mercury in Arctic Russian Rivers,” is published in today’s (Dec. 20) issue of Environmental Science & Technology, a journal of the American Chemical Society.

Submission + - Run Netflix on openSUSE (muktware.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: Ironically while Netflix’s infrastructure runs on Linux and Open Source technologies, the service doesn’t support Linux, the platform. Netflix is available for Mac, Windows, iOS, Android and Chrome OS but not for desktop Linux. One of the reasons could be that Netflix still uses Microsoft’s Silverlight which is not supported on Linux. However Linux users have managed to get it to work on their distros. Now openSUSE users can also run Netflix using Pipelight.

Submission + - Evad3rs announce iOS 7 jailbreak for iPhone 5S, iPhone 5C, iPad Air (techienews.co.uk)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Evad3rs, the famous iOS jailbreak team, has announced iOS 7 jailbreak that will work in all iDevices including iPhone 5S, iPhone 5C and iPad Air running iOS 7.0 through to iOS 7.0.4. The iOS 7 jailbreak was announced without much of a hype unlike iOS 6. “Merry Christmas! The iOS 7 jailbreak has been released at http://evasi0n.com/ ! All donations will go to @publicknowledge, @eff and @ffii” tweeted evad3rs.

Submission + - The FBI's Secret Interrogation Manual: Available for checkout at the Library (motherjones.com)

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: The FBI Supervisory Special Agent who authored the FBI's interrogation manual submitted the document for copyright protection — in the process, making it available to anyone with a card for the Library of Congress to read.

The story is particularly mind-boggling for two reasons. First, the American Civil Liberties Union fought a legal battle with the FBI over access to the document. When the FBI relented and released a copy to the ACLU, it was heavily redacted — unlike the 70-plus page version of the manual available from the Library of Congress.

Second, the manual cannot even qualify for a copyright because it is a government work. Anything "prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties" is not subject to copyright in the United States.

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"The fundamental principle of science, the definition almost, is this: the sole test of the validity of any idea is experiment." -- Richard P. Feynman

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