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Science

Scientists Discover First Warm-Blooded Fish 33

Posted by samzenpus from the keeping-it-warm dept.
sciencehabit writes: The opah lives in the dark, chilly depths of the world's oceans, using heated blood to keep warm. It's the first fish found to be fully warm-blooded. Certain sharks and tuna can warm regions of their body such as swimming muscles and the brain but must return to the surface to protect vital organs from the effects of the cold. The opah on the other hand, generates heat from its pectoral muscles, and conserves that warmth thanks to body fat and the special structure of its gills. “It’s a remarkable adaptation for a fish,” says Diego Bernal, a fish physiologist at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.

Comment Re:AH hahaha only 33000 rpm? (Score 1) 72

by NewtonsLaw (#49695781) Attached to: GE Is 3D Printing a Working Jet Engine

Yep, "it idles" woohoo!

Not only that but the parts I saw being modeled and printed were low-stress components such as the stand (wow!) and the exhaust tube.

Were the compressor and turbine wheels printed? Those are the crucial parts and the ones exposed to maximum stress.

A great proof of concept but they tell us that this was made using materials "not available to the hobby industry" so why does it perform so poorly, especially since they claim to have enhanced the design.

I smell marketing department hype here ;-)
Security

Mobile Spy Software Maker MSpy Hacked, Customer Data Leaked 79

Posted by samzenpus from the have-some-information dept.
pdclarry writes: mSpy sells a software-as-a-service package that claims to allow you to spy on iPhones. It is used by ~2 million people to spy on their children, partners, Exes, etc. The information gleaned is stored on mSpy's servers. Brian Krebs reports that mSpy has been hacked and their entire database of several hundred GB of their customer's data has been posted on the Dark Web. The trove includes Apple IDs and passwords, as well as the complete contents of phones that have mSpy installed. So much for keeping your children safe.
Government

Drone Flying Near White House Causes Lockdown 95

Posted by timothy from the just-want-to-keep-tabs-on-the-civil-servants dept.
stowie writes: The White House was placed on lockdown this afternoon after a man allegedly tried to fly a drone near the building, authorities said. The Secret Service detained and is questioning an individual in connection with a drone flying in Lafayette Park, according to a senior official. President Barack Obama is not currently in the White House and is at Camp David. It's the second drone incident at the White House in 2015. Also covered by CNN.
Censorship

Douglas Williams Pleads Guilty To Training Customers To Beat Polygraph 246

Posted by timothy from the but-antipolygraph-is-still-up dept.
For quite a while, we've been following the case of Douglas Gene Williams, accused of and indicted for teaching people to pass polygraph tests that they might otherwise have been unable to, and for the claims he made in advertising this training -- and specifically for showing his techniques to some undercover Federal agents. Now, reports Ars Technica, Williams has pleaded guilty to five charges of obstruction of justice and mail fraud. From the article: Williams isn't the first person prosecuted for these type of allegations. An Indiana man was accused of offering similar services and was sentenced in 2013 to eight months in prison. The judge presiding over the case said the case blended a "gray area" of First Amendment speech and the unlawful act of instructing people to lie on polygraph tests issued by the federal government. Williams' site, Polygraph.com, is now defunct.
Encryption

Online Voting Should Be Verifiable -- But It's a Hard Problem 258

Posted by timothy from the you-did-or-didn't-vote dept.
An anonymous reader writes with a link to a pithy overview at The Conversation of recent uses of (and nagging difficulties with) online voting and asks Regular 'internet voting too risky' arguments don't take some approaches into account like verifiability of votes by voters, observers, and international media. Could we have end-to-end verifiable online voting systems in the future? What are the difficulties? Where is it being done already? From the linked article (which provides at least some answers to those questions), one interesting idea:Another challenge to designing verifiability in online voting is the possibility of malware infection of voters' computers. By some estimates between 30%-40% of all home computers are infected. It’s quite possible that determined attackers could produce and distribute malware specifically designed to thwart or alter the outcome of a national election – for example undetectably changing the way a user votes and then covering its tracks by faking how the vote appears to have been cast to the voter. Whatever verifability mechanisms there are could also be thwarted by the malware.

One way to try to prevent this kind of attack is to make voters use several computers during the voting process. Although this is hardly convenient, the idea is to make it more difficult for an attacker to launch a co-ordinated attack across several computers at once.

Comment Re:Google's YouTube no different (Score 1) 90

by NewtonsLaw (#49662705) Attached to: How To Set Up a Pirate EBook Store In Google Play Books

Yeah, I watermark my videos but on several occasions these script-kiddies have copied my *entire* channel -- every single video!

In that case I can't see any upside to what they're doing ;-!

And in those cases I had filed over 24 copyright strikes against each channel -- and all that YouTube did was remove each video as I flagged it -- but the channels were still operating -- until several weeks later -- after I had *laboriously* filed even more complaints about the remaining videos. That's a hell of a lot of work so I ask again... what happened to the 3-strikes policy in such cases?

Comment Re:Opposite of Youtube? (Score 2) 90

by NewtonsLaw (#49662693) Attached to: How To Set Up a Pirate EBook Store In Google Play Books

That's what Google *claim* but, as I mentioned in a previous post, there are some channels against which I've filed up to a *dozen* copyright complaints against and they're still there -- still carrying content for which they do not have copyright (ie: stuff from other channels they've downloaded and then re-uploaded without permission.

They seem *VERY* selective about when they actually enforce their copyright strikes in my experience.

Here's another of the script-generated channels that are being created by downloading and re-uploading other people's popular YouTube videos

Mavi Kocaeli

Now you *KNOW* that this channel has been generated by a download/re-upload script and people will file copyright complaints but chances are that it will still be there in a month's time and by then the videos will have been monetized and earning the script-user a small but useful amount of cash -- money that should have been going into the pockets of the original creators/uploaders.

And here's another one that is already monetizing other people's re-uploaded videos: Kasandra Sahr.

Where's the "three strikes" policy now?

And why hasn't YouTube automatically flagged new channels that upload large numbers of videos within a few hours -- because most people don't do that -- only scripts do that.

Comment How? (Score 3, Insightful) 125

And how are they going to collect this GST from overseas companies?

There's no way to ensure that every mom and pop online business selling digital media/games over the Net into Australia will comply with a "request" from the Aussie government (because they have no legal power to force them) to collect GST on their behalf for free.

Will they be asking credit card companies to automatically levy the GST on overseas purchases? If they do then they're opening a pandora's box that they really ought to keep closed.

I could see Bitcoin getting a new lease of life for Aussies :-)

Comment Google's YouTube no different (Score 5, Interesting) 90

by NewtonsLaw (#49659739) Attached to: How To Set Up a Pirate EBook Store In Google Play Books

As a regular YouTube uploader and "Channel Partner", I often find my videos have been copied and re-uploaded (with monetization) by "pirates".

There are now obviously scripts out there that can be run to automatically create a new channel which consists of nothing but re-uploads of other people's popular videos.

On countless occasions I have laboriously filled out YT's copyright complaint form, listing a dozen or more instances where a single channel has pilfered my hard work. I always get the standard response "the offending content has been removed" -- but the channels are often still operating. What happened to the "three strikes" for copyright infringement?

And just as importantly... since *my* videos were clearly being leveraged by someone else to generate revenue... what happens to that money?

I bet Google still charges the advertiser but no doubt they won't be paying the pirate -- so do they just pocket this money without the need to pay a share to the genuine copyright holder? It would seem so.

This probably explains why they have made NO EFFORT at all to circumvent these script-created channels that contain nothing but other people's content re-uploaded in clear violation of YouTube's Terms of Service.

What an earner for Google -- no wonder they don't bother enforcing their "three strikes" policy on channels for which they effectively get to keep *ALL* the ad revenues and no wonder they don't flag (for inspection) new channels which suddenly appear and upload several hundred videos within 24 hours.

Do no evil? Yeah... right!
The Almighty Buck

28-Year-Old Businessman Accused of Stealing $1 Billion From Moldova 133

Posted by Soulskill from the must-have-been-an-EVE-online-player dept.
An anonymous reader writes: You could be excused for not knowing much about Moldova — the small, Eastern European country has a population of around 3 million and occupies about 13,000 square miles of territory. Its GDP is just over $6 billion — which makes accusations that 28-year-old Ilan Shor stole close to a billion dollars from the country's banks quite interesting. A recent report (PDF) says Shor led a group that bought controlling stakes in three Moldovan banks and then passed transactions between them to increase their liquidity. The banks then issued massive loans to companies owned or related to Shor. $767 million disappeared from the banks, and the country's central bank thinks that total will rise to $1 billion. It was forced to bail out the banks to keep the economy from crashing. Widespread corruption led to many records of Shor's actions being "lost" or outright deleted. He's now charged and placed under house arrest while the investigation continues.

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