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Submission + - Court Order: Butterfly Labs Bitcoins to be sold. (qntra.net)

Submitted by MrBingoBoingo
MrBingoBoingo writes: In a new development in the Case against Butterfly Labs, the Court overseeing the case has ordered bitcoins held by Butterfly Labs to be turned over to the Court appointed temporary receiver. The order also gives the receiver authorization to convert the bitcoins "to cash on a systematic and reasoned basis." The justification for this measure is at least to ostensibly create reserves with which refunds for Butterfly Labs customers may be paid from.

Submission + - Trisquel 7 Released

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Trisquel 7.0 Belenos has been released. Trisquel is a “free as in freedom” GNU/Linux distribution endorsed by the FSF. This latest release includes Linux-libre 3.13, GNOME 3.12, Abrowser 33 (based on Firefox), the Electrum Bitcoin client and many more new features and upgrades. Trisquel 7.0 will be supported until 2019.

Interested users can check out the screenshots and download the latest release. The project also accepts donations.

Submission + - Photon interaction has been created in the fiber (phys.org)

Submitted by Trachman
Trachman writes: Austrian scientists discovered a way to couple photon pairs. During the coupling for two identical photons, under analysis, a phase is changed in one and, using the magic of the world of quantum mechanics, the phase of other photon also changes. Scientists predict that this can advance quantum optics, quantum computations and, in the nearest future, secure fiber networks from NSA and other self appointed nosy rulers of the world.

The question to the community is following: Is there anyone who can explain in simple terms the essence of the discovery and associated potential practical applications.

Submission + - The Mythical Made Up 'Legend' Of Walter O'Brien Continues To Grow .. (techdirt.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A few weeks ago, we wrote about "Walter O'Brien," the guy who is supposed to be the basis of the CBS TV show Scorpion. The problem we had was that O'Brien made a ton of absolutely fantastical claims and, after doing a little fact checking, none of them seemed to check out ..

What concerns me about the bogus Walter O'Brien story is twofold: (1) Gullible reporters simply repeat his claims without even the slightest bit of skepticism, which is just shameful reporting and (2) O'Brien and his friends aren't just making a TV show: they're trying to spin the TV show .. into a way to promote O'Brien's "business" with claims that are wholly unbelievable ...

Submission + - Photographs of Sellafield (UK) nuclear plant prompt fears over radioactive risk (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: Previously unseen pictures of two storage ponds at Sellafield nuclear plant containing hundreds of highly radioactive fuel show cracked concrete, seagulls bathing in the water and weeds growing around derelict machinery. The two ponds were built in the 50s and used for short-term storage of spent fuel until the 70s. Stellafied Ltd says the images are dated, but but that they do indicate the scale of the clean up required.

Submission + - US Company Seeks to offer Regulator Approved Bitcoin Options Market 1

Submitted by MrBingoBoingo
MrBingoBoingo writes: Startup LedgerX has submitted applications to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commisions to begin offering options based on Bitcoin prices which will be bought and sold in US Dollars. This comes after last major options market in Bitcoin announced they were discontinuing Bitcoin/Dollar options sold and settled in Bitcoin back in February due to poor price signal and the daunting challenge of insuring Put options.

Comment Re:Am I paranoid? (Score 2) 87

by MrBingoBoingo (#48274223) Attached to: Vulnerabilities Found (and Sought) In More Command-Line Tools
Well the way this probably works is they submit patches to be helpful. They encourage work on certain things to distract from things they already know are vulnerable. Bash had that bad behavior at a time when some people may have lobbied for it as a feature. On the other hand you have outright turds like OpenSSL which are developed by people who jsut slap shit in and avoid starvation by consulting for the Feds. The only solution is more people reading old code.

Comment Re:tnftp (Score 4, Insightful) 87

by MrBingoBoingo (#48274161) Attached to: Vulnerabilities Found (and Sought) In More Command-Line Tools
Well the difference is... reading, and reading is nothing if not for rereading. A billion, thousand, or even three eyes mean nothing if they're aimed at cat videos. Instead of reineventing every API to keep it fresh a la the GNOME model, to get actual tools you have to instead make sure what you're already working with... works.

Submission + - Brazil Is Keeping Its Promise to Avoid the U.S. Internet - US to lose 35 Billion (gizmodo.com) 1

Submitted by bricko
bricko writes: Brazil Is Keeping Its Promise to Avoid the U.S. Internet

http://gizmodo.com/brazils-kee...

Brazil was not bluffing last year, when it said that it wanted to disconnect from the United States-controlled internet due to the NSA's obscenely invasive surveillance tactics. The country is about to stretch a cable from the northern city of Fortaleza all the way to Portugal, and they've vowed not to use a single U.S. vendor to do it.

Brazil made a bunch of bold promises, ranging in severity from forcing companies like Facebook and Google to move their servers inside Brazilian borders, to building a new all-Brazilian email system—which they've already done. But the first actionable opportunity the country was presented with is this transatlantic cable, which had been in the works since 2012 but is only just now seeing construction begin. And with news that the cable plan will not include American vendors, it looks like Brazil is serious; it's investing $185 million on the cable project alone. And not a penny of that sum will go to an American company.

The implications of Brazil distancing itself from the US internet are huge. It's not necessarily a big deal politically, but the economic consequences could be tremendously destructive. Brazil has the seventh largest economy in the world, and it continues to grow. So when Brazil finally does divorce Uncle Sam—assuming things continue at this rate—a huge number of contracts between American companies and Brazil will simply disappear.

On the whole, researchers estimate that the United States could lose about $35 billion due to security fears. That's a lot of money.

Submission + - NSA CTO Patrick Dowd Moonlighting for Private Security Firm (theguardian.com)

Submitted by un1nsp1red
un1nsp1red writes: Current NSA CTO Patrick Dowd has taken a part-time position with former-NSA director Keith Alexander's security firm IronNet Cybersecurity — while retaining his position as chief technology officer for the NSA. The Guardian states that "Patrick Dowd continues to work as a senior NSA official while also working part time for Alexander’s IronNet Cybersecurity, a firm reported to charge up to $1m a month for advising banks on protecting their data from hackers. It is exceedingly rare for a US official to be allowed to work for a private, for-profit company in a field intimately related to his or her public function." Some may give Alexander a pass on the possible conflict of interests as he's now retired, but what about a current NSA official moonlighting for a private security firm?

Submission + - FBI: backdoors in software may need to be mandatory (nytimes.com)

Submitted by wabrandsma
wabrandsma writes: The New York Times:

The director of the F.B.I., James B. Comey, said on Thursday that the "post-Snowden pendulum" that has driven Apple and Google to offer fully encrypted cellphones had "gone too far." He hinted that as a result, the administration might seek regulations and laws forcing companies to create a way for the government to unlock the photos, emails and contacts stored on the phones.

But Mr. Comey appeared to have few answers for critics who have argued that any portal created for the F.B.I. and the police could be exploited by the National Security Agency, or even Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies or criminals. And his position seemed to put him at odds with a White House advisory committee that recommended against any effort to weaken commercial encryption.

Submission + - Microsoft, Facebook Declare European Kids Clueless About Coding, Too

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Having declared U.S. kids clueless about coding, Facebook and Microsoft are now turning their attention to Europe's young 'uns. "As stewards of Europe's future generations," begins the Open Letter to the European Union Ministers for Education signed by Facebook and Microsoft, "you will be all too aware that as early as the age of 7, children reach a critical juncture, when they are learning the core life skills of reading, writing and basic maths. However, to flourish in tomorrow's digital economy and society, they should also be learning to code. And many, sadly, are not." Released at the launch of the European Coding Initiative — aka All You Need is Code! — in conjunction with the EU's Code Week, the letter closes, "As experts in our field, we owe it to Europe's youth to help equip with them with the skills they will need to succeed — regardless of where life takes them." Hopefully, life won't take them to a massive layoff, like the one that left 12,500 Nokia workers jobless just three months after joining Microsoft. By the way, the "All You Need is Code" initiative, explained an SAP press release, was conceived at the 2014 World Economic Forum, where EU Commission vice president Neelie Kroes — who yukked-it-up at the event with former nemesis Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith — called on the private sector to endorse the Davos Declaration to deepen support for the Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs.

Submission + - WordPress Defaults Preserve Avenue For Denial of Service Attacks (thedrinkingrecord.com)

Submitted by MrBingoBoingo
MrBingoBoingo writes: As bad as the Bash shell behavior was, giving attackers a shell on your server This WordPress XMLRPC Pingback hole is just as bad to your fellow internet residents. Sure Shell Shock was worse for you since it offered a shell on your machine, but to your friendly Internet neighbors the WordPress bullshit is just as bad. And much like WordPress there were Bash scripts that had been functional since 1992 which no longer work on patched versions of Bash, but for WordPress Backwards compatibility is still more important.

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