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Submission + - Ubuntu Wants to Enable SSD TRIM by Default (phoronix.com)

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: During the first day of the latest virtual Ubuntu Developer Summit, Canonical developers finally plotted out the enabling of TRIM/DISCARD support by default for solid-state drives on Ubuntu 14.04. Ubuntu developers aren't looking to enable discard at the file-system level since it can slow down delete operations, so instead they're wanting to have their own cron job that routinely runs fstrim for TRIMing the system. In the past there has been talk about the TRIM implementation being unoptimized in the kernel. Around when Linux 3.0 was released, OpenSUSE noted that the kernel performs TRIM to a single range, instead of vectorized list of TRIM ranges, which is what the specification calls for. In some scenarios this results to lowered performance.

Submission + - Critical flaws found in Aussie traffic systems ahead of G20 Summit (scmagazine.com.au)

Submitted by mask.of.sanity
mask.of.sanity writes: Two critical networks managing traffic systems of a major Australian capital city contain gaping holes that render it vulnerable to attack.

The flaws were found during penetration tests by the government a year ahead of the G20 Summit, the most significant gathering of world leaders ever held in Australia.

The tests found the agencies messed up security zoning, didn't remove staff logins as they resigned, and had inconsistent patching.

Submission + - Mikko Hyppönen Warns Parents Over Google ID Demands (yle.fi)

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: Google has started to close email accounts for children aged under-13 unless a parent sends a copy of their ID to Google in the United States. Online safety and security came into sharper focus when a 12-year-old received a notice from Google that warned her email account would be closed within a week. The only way she could prevent closure of the account, which she had used for more than a year, was to ask a parent to send a copy of their official ID to Google. Mikko Hyppönen, information security expert from F-Secure, is extremely cautious about the practice. 'I don’t recommend sending ID anywhere, in any way,' said Hyppönen. The age limit is not an insurmountable obstacle for internet-curious youngsters. Many children now receive an email address via their school, so they are able to communicate online without compromising data security by sending personal information on the internet.

Submission + - Australian Intelligence Auditing To Determine What Snowden May Have Taken (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Guardian reports, "Australia's top spy agency has expressed "great concern" over material leaked by the fugitive US intelligence worker Edward Snowden and has carried out an audit to ascertain what Australian information Snowden might have. Top-secret documents from the Defence Signals Directorate, now known as the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), show Australian spies targeted the mobile phones of Indonesia's president, his wife and senior officials in 2009. The ASD slide, published by the ABC and Guardian Australia, has prompted Indonesia to recall its ambassador to Australia in protest. "Certain material that has been released by Snowden that is now in the public realm is of very great concern," the director general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio), David Irvine, told a Senate estimates hearing on Monday. ... Asio had conducted an audit of intelligence it has shared with foreign agencies to assess what sort of Australian material Snowden might have."

Submission + - Dropbox CEO: Email's creators would "cry" if they knew how little it would evolv (citeworld.com)

Submitted by mattydread23
mattydread23 writes: At Dreamforce yesterday, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston talked about his company's acquisition of Mailbox, noting that email has barely changed since it first emerged — it's still a list of items. This is Dropbox's product philosophy: solve problems that hiding in plain sight. He also talked about what happened when he met Steve Jobs — the Apple founder said he'd build a competitor to Dropbox once he found out Houston wasn't interested in the sale.

Submission + - Affordable Blood Work In Four Hours Coming To Walgreens (singularityhub.com) 4

Submitted by kkleiner
kkleiner writes: With the cost of healthcare services increasing, it's welcome news that a recent deal between Walgreens and Theranos will bring rapid, accurate, low-cost blood testing to the local pharmacy. A pinprick of blood from a finger is enough to run any number of a la carte diagnostic tests with results in four hours or less. The automation of blood testing in one convenient machine may mean that the demand for clinical technicians may decline, but the benefits of making blood analysis more accessible to everyone is enormous.

Submission + - Pee Analyzer and RFID to stop drunk drivers (darkdaily.com)

Submitted by mspohr
mspohr writes: A Singapore nightclub has installed devices in their urinals which test for drunk patrons. When a patron is over the limit, the device identifies him by the RFID card in his pocket and tags the card. It also displays a warning above the urinal. When he goes to pick up his car, the warning is displayed and there is another opportunity to take a cab.
Apparently they don't prevent claiming the car but about 2/3 of patrons decide to take a cab.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2OdA7DUOAQ

Submission + - The ultimate open source gift guide for 2013

Submitted by Lemeowski
Lemeowski writes: From a 3D printer that carries the Free Software Foundation's Respect Your Freedom Certification to an open hardware kit that will let you build your own version of the classic game Simon Says, this open source gift guide highlights 20 of the coolest open source-related gifts for the holidays.

Submission + - Risk Calculator for Cholesterol Appears Flawed (nytimes.com)

Submitted by g01d4
g01d4 writes: From the NYT: "Last week, the nation’s leading heart organizations released a sweeping new set of guidelines for lowering cholesterol, along with an online calculator meant to help doctors assess risks and treatment options. But, in a major embarrassment to the health groups, the calculator appears to greatly overestimate risk, so much so that it could mistakenly suggest that millions more people are candidates for statin drugs. [It seems] the problem might have stemmed from the fact that the calculator uses as reference points data collected more than a decade ago, when more people smoked and had strokes and heart attacks earlier in life. For example, the guideline makers used data from studies in the 1990s to determine how various risk factors like cholesterol levels and blood pressure led to actual heart attacks and strokes over a decade of observation."

Submission + - NASA and Amazon Launch Earth Data Repository (informationweek.com)

Submitted by CowboyRobot
CowboyRobot writes: Amazon has established a public repository of climate and geological information collected by NASA for public use. The placement of the data on Amazon Web Services will give it proximity to what are expected to be many researcher applications that can avoid data transfer charges if they also are located on AWS. "By bringing these NASA public data assets into the AWS cloud, we help NASA engage a larger community for global change impact modeling and analysis," said Jamie Kinney, AWS senior manager for scientific computing, in the announcement of the repository. The data is expected to be used in research on climate change, weather forecasting, and earth's surface conditions. Applications tracking regional rainfall, ice cap shrinkage, and other features of the globe will be made possible through the availability of the data. The centralized, public repository will be located at http://aws.amazon.com/datasets.

Submission + - Assassination Market Offers Bitcoin Bounties to Kill Bernanke and Obama (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by DavidGilbert99
DavidGilbert99 writes: An underground website has been set up to offer bitcoin bounties for the assassination of leading figures from around the world. Assassination Market, which is only accessible through the deep web, is currently offering bounties ranging from £400 to almost £50,000 to anyone willing to kill. The highest bounty is for the assassination of chairman of the federal reserve Ben Bernanke, while Barack Obama has £15,000 on his head. The anonymous founder of the site has said he set up the website following the Edward Snowden revelations earlier this year.

Submission + - Yahoo Encrypting Data in Wake of NSA Revelations (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Following reports that the NSA aggressively targets Google and Yahoo servers for surveillance, Yahoo is working to encrypt much of the data flowing through its datacenters. “As you know, there have been a number of reports over the last six months about the U.S. government secretly accessing user data without the knowledge of tech companies, including Yahoo,” Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer wrote in a Nov. 18 blog posting. “I want to reiterate what we have said in the past: Yahoo has never given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency.” In order to make Yahoo’s systems more secure, she added, the company is introducing SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption to Yahoo Mail with a 2048-bit key. That security measure will supposedly be in place by January 8, 2014. Beyond that, Yahoo plans on encrypting all information that moves between its datacenters by the end of the first quarter of 2014. Around that same time, the company will give users the option to encrypt all data flowing to and from Yahoo; it will also “work closely with our international Mail partners to ensure that Yahoo co-branded Mail accounts are https-enabled,” Mayer wrote. (While it’s not a crushing expense for massive companies such as Yahoo, introducing this sort of security does add to infrastructure and engineering costs, and takes time to actually put in place.)

Submission + - Supreme Court Refuses to Hear EPIC Challenge to NSA Surveillance 1

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: The challenge to the NSA’s domestic surveillance program filed with the Supreme Court by the Electronic Privacy Information Center ended Monday, with the court refusing to consider the challenge at all. EPIC had filed the challenge directly with the Supreme Court rather than going through the lower courts.

EPIC, a non-profit organization involved in privacy policy matters, had asked the court to vacate an order from a judge in the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Court that had enabled the NSA’s collection of hundreds of millions of Verizon call records under the so-called metadata collection program. The challenge hinged on the idea that the FISC had gone outside of its authority in granting the order.

Submission + - Fuel Rod removal operation begins at Tsunami-hit Fukushima

Submitted by rtoz
rtoz writes: TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) has started removing fuel rods from a storage pond at the Unit 4 reactor building of Tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear power station in Japan.

The first of the fuel-rod assemblies at the plant’s No. 4 reactor building was transferred from an underwater rack on the fifth floor to a portable cask. This step is an early milestone in decommissioning the facility amid doubts about whether the rods had been damaged and posed a radiation risk.

22 unused fuels will be moved to the cask a task which is planned to be completed by November 19. After being filled with fuel, the cask will be closed with a lid, and following decontamination, will be taken down to ground level and transported to the common spent fuel pool on a trailer. It is planned to take approximately one week from placing the fuel into the cask at the spent fuel pool to storing it in the common pool. The entire removal of all fuel inside the Unit 4 spent fuel pool is planned to take until the end of 2014.

Submission + - British Spies Monitor Hotel Bookings of Diplomats (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: According to a report in Der Spiegel, based on documents leaked by former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, the U.K.'s intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has built an automated system to track the hotel bookings of foreign diplomats. The program, which was launched in 2010 and is described internally as an "innovation," automatically monitors booking confirmation messages sent by 350 upscale hotels from around the world to email addresses hosted on government domains (gov.cctld) and alerts GCHQ analysts in advance of what cities and hotels foreign diplomats intend to visit.

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