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Security

Submission + - Aaron Swartz Charged With Hacking MIT Network (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: A 24 year-old entrepreneur and star programmer has been indicted by the federal authorities in Boston following and accused of hacking into the network of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and making off with millions of pages of copyrighted documents.

Aaron Swartz, who is best known as an early collaborator on the news site Reddit.com, turned himself in and was arraigned in U.S. District Court in Boston on Tuesday morning. He was charged with wire fraud, computer fraud,unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer, according to a statement released by Carmen Ortiz, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts.

According to the U.S. Attorney, Swartz, who was let go from Reddit in 2007, allegedly broke into a wiring closet in a basement at MIT and used a switch within that closet to get unauthorized access to MIT's network. He then allegedly used that access to copy four million articles from JSTOR, an online document archiving service for academic journals.
Crime

Submission + - Law enforcement to begin iPhone iris scans (reuters.com)

Submitted by
cultiv8
cultiv8 writes: "Dozens of police departments nationwide are gearing up to use a tech company's already controversial iris- and facial-scanning device that slides over an iPhone and helps identify a person or track criminal suspects.

The smartphone-based scanner, named Mobile Offender Recognition and Information System, or MORIS, is made by BI2 Technologies in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and can be deployed by officers out on the beat or back at the station.

An iris scan, which detects unique patterns in a person's eyes, can reduce to seconds the time it takes to identify a suspect in custody. This technique also is significantly more accurate than results from other fingerprinting technology long in use by police, BI2 says.

When attached to an iPhone, MORIS can photograph a person's face and run the image through software that hunts for a match in a BI2-managed database of U.S. criminal records. Each unit costs about $3,000."

Submission + - Genitalia Size &Sexual Orientation May Be Link (throckmorton.me)

Submitted by
Dr Darknuss
Dr Darknuss writes: "In the Archives of Sexual Behavior, two PhDs published some research comparing the average size penis between 2 groups: heterosexuals & homosexuals.The researchers compared measured length and circumference of both the flaccid and erect "members". What did they find? The penises of homosexual men were larger than heterosexual men in every category (p less than 0.001 in all size categories). What does this mean? One of a couple possible conclusions.
1) Prenatal hormones (or lack of) may influence both penis size and sexual orientation
2) Sexual orientation & penis size are inherent in DNA and possibly inherited together
3) A combination of the two (or possibly neither)"

Submission + - Earthquake Causes River to Disappear (yahoo.com)

Submitted by Endoflow2010
Endoflow2010 writes: Following a series of moderate earthquakes that struck the country Tuesday, residents around the Guacalito River in Costa Rica discovered that the river had disappeared. Earthquake-report.com reported that sometime after the earthquakes, villagers living near the river, which is located near Armenia de Upala, discovered that the river was dry.

It was not immediately known if the waters of the river had disappeared due to sinkhole activity that can occur after earthquakes or if the earth shaking caused damming that dried up the river near the Miravalles volcano. The quakes were centered near the Nicaragua and Costa Rica border in the same vicinity as the Miravalles volcano.

UPDATE 13/07 – 14:31 UTC : Just after the earthquake, villagers living near the Río Guacalito at Armenias de Upala were surprised that the river was suddenly dry! Villagers believe that a dam was created on the slopes of of the Miravalles volcano which dried up the river.
Games

Submission + - PS3 Loses Another Feature (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by _xeno_
_xeno_ writes: The PS3 may be running out of features to lose, but Sony is still finding them: the newest version of the console will no longer output Blu-ray movies over component cables. Right now this appears to be limited to only the newer models, but if you're using your PS3 to watch Blu-ray movies on a TV without HDMI, you may want to disconnect it from your network.
Security

Submission + - Moody's Website Hacked by Portuguese Anonymous Hac (blogspot.com)

Submitted by daem0n1x
daem0n1x writes: Under the pressure of the finantial rating agencies, Portugal issued several austerity plans to cut down spending and raise taxes, causing great pain to Portuguese population and businesses. No austerity plan ever satisfied the infamous agencies, that kept downgrading the country's rating no matter what measures would be taken. Looks like Portugal was marked for bankrupcy, and maybe someone is trying its best for it to happen, no matter what the country does.

At this moment, after the Socialist government fell and gave place to a right-wing governmet, after a loan was requested to the IMF to rescue the country's finances, after yet another austerity plan have been forced by the IMF and European Commmission, the Moody's rating agency decided to cut the nation's rating by 4 levels, putting it in the "trash" category. This caused outrage almost everywhere. The cut is considered unjustified and unfair by almost every finantial authority, and can have very serious consequences in Portugal's shaken economy.

Some unknown Portuguese hackers decided to get even and exploited a security vulnerability in Moody's website to make it load a fake page making fun of Moody's. Looks like the agency's rating in web security is not so shiny, after all.
Medicine

Submission + - Who Wants to Live Forever?

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Reuters reports that if biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey's predictions are right, the first person who will live to see their 150th birthday has already been born and the first person who will live to 1,000 is likely to be born less than 20 years after the first person to reach 150. De Grey, chief scientist of the non-profit California-based "Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence" Foundation sees a time when people will go to their doctors for regular "maintenance," which by then will include gene therapies, stem cell therapies, immune stimulation and a range of other advanced medical techniques to keep them in good shape. "I'd say we have a 50/50 chance of bringing aging under what I'd call a decisive level of medical control within the next 25 years or so," says de Grey. De Grey's ideas may seem far-fetched, but in 2005 MIT Technology Review journal offered $20,000 to any molecular biologist who showed that de Grey's SENS theory was "so wrong that it was unworthy of learned debate" — a prize that has never been won. But for some, a world composed of healthy, powerful, composed, careful people in their seventies, eighties, nineties, or hundreds, or the prospect of living for hundreds of years is not particularly attractive, as it conjures up an image of generations of sick, weak old people and societies increasingly less able to cope. "This is absolutely not a matter of keeping people alive in a bad state of health," says de Grey. "This is about preventing people from getting sick as a result of old age. The particular therapies that we are working on will only deliver long life as a side effect of delivering better health.""

Submission + - Arizona Woman Arrested For Speaking At Council (infowars.com)

Submitted by
SoVi3t
SoVi3t writes: "Quartzsite, AZ – The Mayor is challenged under a recall election beginning next month. Accusations have been made. The city council is persecuting the Mayor for giving the people a voice. The Chief of Police is also involved in the scandal.
Jennifer Jones is given the floor at a city council meeting open to the public. While she is speaking the council realizes she’s about to air their dirty laundry and quickly beckons their henchman to cart her off.

Videos are being taken down from Youtube mighty fast, for "Copyright Infringement""
Music

Submission + - RIAA Math: Sell 1 Million Albums, Still Owe $500k (techdirt.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For all the complaints from the RIAA about "pirates," who are the real pirates in this scenario, when through a variety of contractual tricks, it's nearly impossible for artists signed to major labels to get paid. The article and video detail how an artist who thinks he's getting a 10% royalty, in reality is probably getting closer to 2.5% through various tricks placed in the contract. The labels, then, end up with 97.5% of the gross revenue, and anything they "spend" on the artist continues to come out of the royalties, not the labels' cut.

Submission + - Major ISPs agree to "six strikes" copyright enforc (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: American Internet users, get ready for three strikes "six strikes." Major US Internet providers—including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Cablevision, and Time Warner Cable—have just signed on to a voluntary agreement with the movie and music businesses to crack down on online copyright infringers. But they will protect subscriber privacy and they won't filter or monitor their own networks for infringement. And after the sixth "strike," you won't necessarily be "out."

Submission + - Don't fly if you just had surgery!

Submitted by
mcgrew
mcgrew writes: "The Chigago Tribune is reporting that the TSA is now worried about surgically implanted bombs.

Are they trying to get everyone to stop flying entirely? I know there's no way they'd get me in an airliner these days. I'll drive, even though it is far, far more dangerous."

Submission + - Photographer booted off flight for taking picture (pixiq.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A Miami photographer was escorted off a US Airways plane and deemed a “security risk” after she snapped a photo of an employee’s nametag at Philadelphia International Airport Friday.

Sandy DeWitt said the employee, whose name was Tonialla G., was being rude to several passengers in the boarding area of the flight to Miami.

So DeWitt snapped a photo of her nametag with her iPhone because she planned to complain about her in a letter to US Airways. But the photo didn’t come out because it was too dark.

However, once DeWitt was settled in her seat, preparing for take-off, Tonialla G. entered the plane and confronted her.

“She told me to delete the photo,” DeWitt said in an interview with Photography is Not a Crime Saturday morning.

DeWitt, who already had her phone turned off in preparation for take-off, turned the phone back on to show her that it didn’t come out, but deleted the photo anyway.

“I complied with her wishes but it’s not something I would normally do,” she said. “It just wasn’t usable.”

But Tonialla G. wouldn’t let the issue go. She then walked into the cockpit to inform the pilot that DeWitt was a “security risk.”

Next thing DeWitt knew, she was being escorted off the plane by two flight attendants. Her husband followed.

Submission + - Law Professors vs PROTECT IP Act (volokh.com)

Submitted by Freddybear
Freddybear writes: Along with 90 (and still counting) other Internet law and IP law professors, [David Post of the Volokh Conspiracy law blog] have signed a letter (drafted by Dave Levine, Mark Lemley, and me) in opposition to Sen. Leahy’s “PROTECT IP Act.”

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