blottsie writes: Newly unsealed court transcripts from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York show that Apple now refuses to unlock iPhones for law enforcement, saying "In most cases now and in the future, the government’s requested order would be substantially burdensome, as it would be impossible to perform." “Right now Apple is aware that customer data is under siege from a variety of different directions. Never has the privacy and security of customer data been as important as it is now,” Apple lawyer Marc Zwillinger said at the hearing. “A hypothetical consumer could think if Apple is not in the business of accessing my data and if Apple has built a system to prevent itself from accessing my data, why is it continuing to comply with orders that don’t have a clear lawful basis in doing so?”

HughPickens.com writes: In 1992 there were 847 bank robberies in the UK; by 2011 that had dropped to just 66. Now Lawrence Dobbs writes in the Telegraph about how technology is killing off this age old profession. "The development of more sophisticated alarm systems and CCTV, as well as supporting forensic developments such as DNA analysis and facial recognition software, all serve to assist police," says Jim Dickie, a former detective who spent more than 30 years with the Metropolitan Police. Those who do try are either feckless opportunists or "serial offenders" who have already served time and are easily found on police databases. "Hands-on heists are a dying art, because those who have a background in it are literally dying off."

In 2015 a gang of aging jewel thieves pulled off one last spectacular job. Using a diamond-tipped drill and a 10-ton hydraulic ram, they broke into the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Ltd vault and made off with at least £14million in precious stones, gems, bullion and jewelry in the largest burglary in English history. But the Hatton Garden burglars were caught because they used one of their own cars within view of a security camera. According to David Kelly, it's CCTV which has changed things most. "It's now virtually impossible to travel through any public space in a major metropolitan area without being captured. They're everywhere, the image quality is better, and the ability to store images for longer has increased." Then there are your physical alarm devices: motion sensors, window monitors which detect glass shattering, or devices which trigger when a door is opened. "These devices can now be deployed wirelessly – in an older building, where you might not have wires in place," says Kelly. "There are also tools at the disposal of the private sector, in cooperation with the public sector, which are perhaps not matters of common knowledge, and there's a tactical advantage to our clients in them remaining that way." Add to this the various technologies used to protect or track the loot itself – dye packs hiding inside stacks of banknotes, which explode when they leave a certain range; GPS tracking on security vans and inside cash containers – and you can see why even a hardened criminal might prefer to stay in bed.

coondoggie writes: There was a 20% increase in firearm discoveries at TSA airport checkins from 2014's total of 2,212. It's an astounding number really, but the details get worse. The TSA goes onto say 2,653 firearms were discovered in carry-on bags at checkpoints across the country, averaging more than seven firearms per day. Of those, 2,198 (83%) were loaded. Firearms were intercepted at a total of 236 airports; 12 more airports than last year. Last year a TSA spokesman, when asked of the TSA has a theory on why so many more guns are being brought onboard airlines, Tweeted “The vast majority of passengers just tell law enforcement, ‘I forgot.’ We continue to remind passengers they can check them.”

An anonymous reader writes: FACC Operations GmbH, an Austrian company that produces various airplane parts for companies like Airbus and Boeing, has announced a cyber-incident during which cyber-fraudsters managed to steal around €50 million from their bank accounts. While CEO Fraud attacks manage to steal a few thousand dollars here and there, never has a company lost so much cash liquidity in one incident. Stock price took a tumble immediately.

An anonymous reader writes: Apple has announced plans to launch its first iOS app development center in Europe. The location will be in Naples, Italy, with the center aiming to teach youngsters how to code. The announcement was made 21 January and explained how the center would provide students (children and young adults) the practical skills and training required for developing iOS apps for "the world's most innovative and vibrant app ecosystem". The center will support teachers and provide a specialized curriculum that will prepare the youths to be a part of Apple's developer community.

campuscodi writes: Microsoft has submitted an official pull request to the Node.js project, through which it's asking the project's maintainers to enable support for ChakraCore, the JavaScript engine packed inside Microsoft's Edge browser, as an alternative to Node's built-in V8 engine, developed by Google. Earlier in December 2015, Microsoft open-sourced ChakraCore. Microsoft has also been one of the biggest companies to adopt Node.js early on, and is also part of the Node.js Foundation's Board o Directors. The main reason to add ChakraCore support in Node.js will help the IoT version of Windows 10 to run JS apps on IoT devices, just like Samsung is also thinking about.

itwbennett writes: Google has developed a patch for Android in response to a flaw in the Linux kernel and has shared it with device manufacturers. That doesn't mean the patch will hit users' phones right away, though. It might take weeks. But that's ok, says Google, because most Android devices are unlikely to run vulnerable kernel versions, and those that do are protected by SELinux.

dcblogs writes: MIT is offering an online course about the Internet of Things, and this is what you need to know up front: It's going to require, perhaps, six to eight hours of study time a week, which includes watching videos of lectures, engaging with faculty and fellow students in forums and taking tests. It begins April 12 and continues through May 24. It costs $495, and unlike some online courses, there is no free option. Students who complete the program and pass the tests earn a certificate of completion and 1.2 Continuing Education Units (CEUs) in MIT's professional education program. In exchange for their time and money, students will get an introduction, a roadmap, into the IoT and hear from some of the university's top professors, including Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web. This professional program is a relatively new effort for the university.

gthuang88 writes: Virtual digital assistants are gaining popularity with the rise of Siri, Google Now, and Facebook's M service. Now startups are using related artificial intelligence techniques to solve business problems. Talla is building an interactive bot on Slack and HipChat for handling workflows in recruiting and human resources. The software uses natural language processing, word vectors, and some deep learning. Other startups, such as Gamalon, DataRobot, and Sentenai, are focused on probabilistic programming, data science, and machine learning for the Internet of things. Working with private data sets and business apps could help these startups avoid competing with the big players, at least for now.

joabj writes: Earlier today, Docker announced that it had purchased the Cambridge, U.K.-based Unikernel Systems, makers of the OCaml-based MirageOS, a unikernel or "virtual library-based operating system." Unikernels go beyond containers in stripping virtualization down to the bare essentials in that they only include the specific OS functionality that the application actually needs. Their design builds on decades of research into modular OS design. Although unikernels can be complex to deploy for developers, Docker aims to make the process as standardized as possible, for easier deployment.

alphadogg writes: Verizon says it will have the first 5G network in the U.S., a promise it probably can't fulfill until 2020 but will start working at this year. Verizon Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo made the pledge Thursday on the company's fourth-quarter financial results call. He also repeated the company's plans for so-called 5G trials this year.

An anonymous reader writes: Earlier today, the team of Pluto-killer Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin announced that they had found evidence of a ninth planet in our Solar System beyond the orbit of Pluto, larger and more massive than even Earth. However, a closer inspection of the work shows that they predict a few things that haven't been observed, including a population of Kuiper belt objects with large inclinations and retrograde orbits, long-period Kuiper belt objects with opposite ecliptic latitudes and longitudes, and infrared data showing the emission from such an outer world. There are many good reasons to be skeptical, and not conclude that there's a ninth planet without more (and better) evidence.

New submitter AnneMackay451 writes with news that the Nielsen media audience measuring company will now include social media buzz into its ratings. From the article: "Nielsen wants to know what TV shows are getting the biggest buzz on Facebook. The measurement firm is expanding its Twitter TV Ratings to include data from Facebook and, eventually, Instagram. The new reports are being rebranded as Nielsen's Social Content Ratings. The new ratings will measure online buzz about TV programs and streaming originals when they launch later this year. Social conversations will be measured both during a show's airtime and 24-hours-a-day."

An anonymous reader writes: An upcoming report by the Higher Education Commission, a UK group of MPs, business and academic professionals, will paint a picture of a higher education system that, thanks to the increasing use of data, may undergo radical change, sometimes with painful ethical considerations. Among their visions: an Amazon-style recommendation service on courses and work experience based on individuals' backgrounds, and similar profiles. Or a system in which students at risk of failure can be identified from their first day so that they receive instant feedback and performance measuring. It is envisioned that the system will include knowing whether they are in lectures, at the gym or in the bar, and in an effort to boost their results, students may also want to share data on their fitness, sleeping patterns, and their academic and semi-academic interactions online.