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Submission + - Police in Slovenia to have "clandestine entry" rights to install spyware. (monitor.si)

Submitted by Vlado
Vlado writes: There is a law in emergency express discussion that, if and when it passes, will grant police in Slovenia rights to enter private premisses in "a clandestine manner" in order to install "monitoring software" on computer equipment at the point before communication channels are encrypted (link to a local article in Slovenian below). Reasoning by the police is that it is not always possible to remotely install spyware when they want to monitor their targeted subjects.
All standard excuses apply: This will only be used in extreme scenarios. This will only be used for the most serious offences (children, saving, think...?).

The law, if enacted will be very problematic on multiple levels:
In Slovenia, currently private property and especially homes are considered fairly inviolate. Police cannot enter a private home without search warrant, or if they're not in direct pursuit of a suspect who flees through private premises, or if they don't suspect that there's an immediate threat to life. Even with search warrant witnesses are required in order to guarantee some level of oversight.
This law will remove that oversight as otherwise it will probably not be very "clandestine" of the police to enter the home in question.

Also, even though the law stipulates, that the spyware in question should only allow for "monitoring" of communications on the affected equipment and does not give permission for the spyware to actively change any content, it's fairly difficult to assume that this will actually work out like that in practice.

It's an extremely disturbing turn of events, which would give local police unprecedented amount of power with virtually no oversight in their actions.

Submission + - ADA Compliance at the ATM – To be or not to be, that is the question. (afsiatms.com)

Submitted by afsiatms
afsiatms writes: In 2011, an amendment to the U.S. Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requiring ATM owners to install audio-based capabilities for easy access of blind and vision impaired customers has caused a debacle in the banking sector. The requirements actually imposed by the Department of Justice on 15 September 2010, took effect in March of 2011, with updates to all ATMs at banks and credit unions required to be in compliance with the ADA guidelines by March 2012.

Submission + - Dark Souls 2: Slaying the curse of the sequel (redbull.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Dark Souls 2 is coming to PS3 and Xbox 360 this March, but it's got a tough act to follow. A really tough one: Dark Souls has the reputation of being this generation's toughest game, with brutal and unforgiving boss after boss. In a new interview published this week, DS2 director Yui Tanimura discusses the tough considerations the team at From Software had to make on what to include, what to introduce, and how to make sure hardcore fans don't find a more accessible game any easier. The trick, he says, is to make the difficulty related precisely to the player's decisions and movements.

"One pillar of our decision making is whether the player will feel as if the results were a result of the player’s choices and actions. We feel that the fun and enjoyment comes from the results coming from the player’s efforts, decisions, successes and failures.”

Tanimura also reveals that there were "never" any plans to bring the game to next-gen consoles, which leaves us wondering — just how epic could Dark Souls 3 look on a PS4 or Xbox One?

Submission + - Standardised laptop charger approved by IEC

Submitted by Sockatume
Sockatume writes: The IEC, the standards body which wrote the phone charger specification used in the EU, has approved a standardised laptop charger. While the "DC Power Supply for Portable Personal Computer" doesn't have a legal mandate behind it, the IEC is still optimistic that it will lead to a reduction in electronics waste and make it easier to find a replacement charger. Unfortunately the technical documentation does not seem to be available yet, but previous comments indicate that it will be a barrel plug of some kind.

Comment Re:Embedded clothing network? (Score 1) 45

by Rande (#45701853) Attached to: Graphene-based Nanoantennas Could Allow WLANs of Nanodevices

Not in the Star Trek universe, no. The computer is never allowed to make suggestions even though it almost always knows the answer if the crew just asks.
And the Self-Destruct....just no.
I think I'd rather go for being a Replicator in the Stargate universe....just a little smarter and realizing that as a machine I could just go colonize some planets that the carbon based lifeforms don't care about.

Submission + - Microsoft joins group seeking to replace passwords (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Microsoft has joined the FIDO Alliance, an industry group attempting to craft industry standards that reduce reliance on passwords, long regarded as a weak point in Web security. Launched in July 2012, FIDO, which stands for Fast IDentity Online, is hoping its specifications for security devices and browser plugins will be widely adopted across the technology industry. FIDO envisions a software client that's installed on computers that employ public key cryptography to authenticate users. All major Web browsers will be supported.

Submission + - British Police Censor The Global Internet (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: A branch of the City of London police seems to be censoring suspected pirates worldwide, using threats. The Police Intellectual Proerty Crime Unit (PIPCU), acts on tip-offs from copyright owners to attempt to close down websites accused of piracy. the process involves cease-and-desist letters, followed by pressure on advertisers not to fund the site, and finally PIPCU uses threats to the domain registrar (not the ISP), all without any sort of court order.

Submission + - Apple Rejecting Bitcoin Apps

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: Techcrunch: Over the past couple of months, there have been a few Bitcoin app rejections by Apple that have made some waves. First, the venture-backed startup Coinbase had its app removed entirely from the App Store. Rob Banagale, writes in a blog post about the rejection for Gliph, a peer-to-peer messaging and payments app. The rejection, Banagale notes, was based largely off of section 22.1 of Apple’s App Store review guidelines. The rule states that “apps must comply with all legal requirements in any location where they are made available to users. It is the developer’s obligation to understand and conform to all local laws.” Bitcoin is not illegal, but it is also not legally recognized by governments as a currency. This gray area is what is leading Apple to reject Bitcoin-transaction apps.

Submission + - D-Link Releases Router Firmware Updates for unauthorized vulnerability (thehackernews.com)

Submitted by Mohit Kumar
Mohit Kumar writes: D-Link has Releases Router Firmware Updates for unauthorized vulnerability, that was discovered back in October. The flaw allows an attacker to access the Router as administrator if the browser's user agent string is set to xmlset_roodkcableoj28840ybtide. The company advised users to do not enable the Remote Management feature, since this will allow malicious users to use this exploit from the internet and also warned to ignore unsolicited emails.

Submission + - Government Chemist Tampered With 34000 Cases, Mass legal system in turmoil (npr.org)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: In a maddening scandal that is rocking the state of Massachusetts, a government crime lab chemist has been caught intentionally forging signatures and tampering with evidence from thousands of cases, destroying the lives of countless innocent Americans.

Annie Dookhan worked as a chemist for the State of Massachusetts, and it turns out she had close relations with prosecutors.

These prosecutors were able to successfully convict innocent Americans because Dookhan would chemically taint the “evidence,” resulting in career boosts for the prosecutors while innocent men and women were torn from their families and locked in cells.

Prosecutors praised Dookhan’s work and depended on her to get the convictions they wanted. Hundreds of “convicts” and defendants have already been released, and there are potentially thousands more waiting to be set free.

Submission + - Computer Model Reveals Escape Plan From Poverty's Vicious Circle (medium.com)

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: Infectious disease condemns poor countries to an endless cycle of ill health and poverty. Now a powerful new model of the link between disease and economic growth has revealed why some escape plans work while others just make matters worse. The problem is that when workers suffer from poor health, economic output goes down. And if economic output goes down, there is less to spend on healthcare. And if spending on healthcare drops, workers become less healthy. And so on. So an obvious solution is for a country to spend more on healthcare. But the new model says governments must take care since the cost to a poor country can send the economy spiralling into long term decline. By contrast, an injection of capital from outside the country allows spending on healthcare to increase without any drop in economic output. "“We find that a large influx of capital is successful in escaping the poverty trap, but increasing health spending alone is not,” say the authors. And the amount required is relatively little. The model suggests that long term investment needs only to be more than 15 per cent of the cost of healthcare. But anything less than this cannot prevent the vicious circle of decline.

Submission + - Rivals can legally create copycat software says UK Court (out-law.com)

Submitted by eionmac
eionmac writes: Decision byy UK Appeal Court. Businesses can replicate the way a rivals' computer program operates by interpreting how it functions from reading user manuals or other accompanying documents their rivals produce without infringing copyright, the Court of Appeal has ruled

Submission + - ASICMINER's Immersion Bitcoin Miner - How Far It Has Gone (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: If you think that Bitcoin mining is something you can do with a spare GPU, or even a rack of spare GPUs, then it's time to rethink. The day of the dedicated hash computing hardware is with us and people pay thousands of dollars for hardware that does nothing but mine Bitcoin. However, it seems that it is time to upgrade your expectations once again because there are mining operations that use racks of liquid cooled ASIC devices to do the job.
The ASICMINER construction was started in August 2013 and its hash rate started to ramp up in October. The whole unit is installed on the roof of the company that makes the ASIC chips. The ASIC cards are fitted to racks inside a glass tank containing a fire retardant liquid normally used in extinguishers. The liquid is cooled and pumped around using Chinese hardware. Each tank has 92 blades with 200cc of liquid providing 4kw of cooling.
How much of an impact on the difficulty of Bitcoin mining such super miners will have is difficult to say. The Bitcoin algorithm adjusts the difficulty every 2016 blocks to keep the rate at about 10 minutes to solve a block. It the hardware improves then the difficulty goes up to keep the rate constant. So introducing super hash farms, such as this one, will make the problem harder and make it increasingly difficult for less well equipped miners to succeed.
Of course, this is another potential mechanism whereby the Bitcoin algorithm could become compromised. A single mining faculty such as this could end up in control of most of the block validations in the world, with the resulting loss of decentralised processing that Bitcoin depends on.

Submission + - Japan Wants To Turn The Moon Into A Giant Power Plant Read more: http://www.bus

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: Shimizu Corporation, a Japanese architecture and engineering firm, has a plan to effectively turn the moon into a giant solar power plant, reports Inhabitat. It proposes building a massive collection of solar panels (a "Luna Ring") 6,800 miles long by 12 miles wide on the moon's surface. That's certainly a heavy-duty construction job for human beings, so Shimizu plans to get the work done with robots, only involving humans in supervisory roles. Once complete, this hypothetical plant could continuously send energy to "receiving stations" around the globe by way of lasers and microwave transmission. This idea gets around two major hurdles for solar power, as there is no weather or darkness to curb electricity production on the moon. If operating in ship-shape, Shimizu says it could continuously send 13,000 terawatts of power back to Earth. By comparison, the total installed electricity generation summer capacity in the United States was 1,050.9 gigawatts.

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