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Submission + - Plan To Run Anti-Google Smear Campaign Revealed in MPAA Emails

vivaoporto writes: Techdirt reports a plan to run anti-Google smear campaign via Today Show and WSJ discovered in MPAA Emails.

Despite the resistance of the Hollywood studios to comply with the subpoenas obtained by Google concerning their relationship with Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood (whose investigation of the company appeared to actually be run by the MPAA and the studios themselves) one of the few emails that Google have been able to get access to so far was revealed this Thursday in a filling. It's an email between the MPAA and two of Jim Hood's top lawyers in the Mississippi AG's office, discussing the big plan to "hurt" Google.

The lawyers from Hood's office flat out admit that they're expecting the MPAA and the major studios to have its media arms run a coordinated propaganda campaign of bogus anti-Google stories:

Media: We want to make sure that the media is at the NAAG meeting. We propose working with MPAA (Vans), Comcast, and NewsCorp (Bill Guidera) to see about working with a PR firm to create an attack on Google (and others who are resisting AG efforts to address online piracy). This PR firm can be funded through a nonprofit dedicated to IP issues. The "live buys" should be available for the media to see, followed by a segment the next day on the Today Show (David green can help with this). After the Today Show segment, you want to have a large investor of Google (George can help us determine that) come forward and say that Google needs to change its behavior/demand reform. Next, you want NewsCorp to develop and place an editorial in the WSJ emphasizing that Google's stock will lose value in the face of a sustained attack by AGs and noting some of the possible causes of action we have developed.

As Google notes in its legal filing about this email, the "plan" states that if this effort fails, then the next step will be to file the subpoena (technically a CID or "civil investigatory demand") on Google, written by the MPAA but signed by Hood.

As Google points out, this makes it pretty clear that the MPAA, studios and Hood were working hand in hand in all of this and that the subpoena had no legitimate purpose behind it, but rather was the final step in a coordinated media campaign to pressure Google to change the way its search engine works.

Submission + - Twitter censors plagiarized tweets that repeat copyrighted joke (betanews.com)

Mark Wilson writes: Can a joke be copyrighted? Twitter seems to think so. As spotted by Twitter account Plagiarism is Bad a number of tweets that repeat a particular joke are being hidden from view. The tweets have not been deleted as such, but their text has been replaced with a link to Twitter's Copyright and DMCA policy.

The joke in question? "Saw someone spill their high end juice cleanse all over the sidewalk and now I know god is on my side." Perform a search for the text and, while you will find several tweeted instances of it available at the moment, there are many examples of tweets that have been censored.

Comment call a wahmbulance (Score 0) 272

Oh, cry me a river. Drone operators no longer have an unlimited right to invade people's privacy and endanger their safety. Sorry dude, but the airspace is common property and it's sensible to regulate its use for the common good. Either that, or we can have drone wars, where people who don't want your drones in the skies fly their own to take them down.

Submission + - Get root on an OS X 10.10 Mac: The exploit is so trivial it fits in a tweet

vivaoporto writes: The Register reports a root-level privilege-escalation exploit that allows one to gain administrator-level privileges on an OS X Yosemite Mac using code so small that fits in a tweet.

The security bug, documented by iOS and OS X guru Stefan Esserwhich, can be exploited by malware and attackers to gain total control of the computer.

This flaw is present in the latest version of Yosemite, OS X 10.10.4, and the beta, version 10.10.5 but is already fixed in the preview beta of El Capitan (OS X 10.11)

Submission + - Giving Doctors Grades Has Backfired

HughPickens.com writes: Beginning in the early 1990s a quality-improvement program began in New York State and has since spread to many other states where report cards were issued to improve cardiac surgery by tracking surgical outcomes, sharing the results with hospitals and the public, and when necessary, placing surgeons or surgical programs on probation. But Sandeep Jauhar writes in the NYT that the report cards have backfired. "They often penalized surgeons, like the senior surgeon at my hospital, who were aggressive about treating very sick patients and thus incurred higher mortality rates," says Jauhar. "When the statistics were publicized, some talented surgeons with higher-than-expected mortality statistics lost their operating privileges, while others, whose risk aversion had earned them lower-than-predicted rates, used the report cards to promote their services in advertisements."

Surveys of cardiac surgeons in The New England Journal of Medicine have confirmed that reports like the Consumer Guide to Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery have limited credibility among cardiovascular specialists, little influence on referral recommendations and may introduce a barrier to care for severely ill patients. According to Jauhar, there is little evidence that the public — as opposed to state agencies and hospitals — pays much attention to surgical report cards anyway. A recent survey found that only 6 percent of patients used such information in making medical decisions. "Surgical report cards are a classic example of how a well-meaning program in medicine can have unintended consequences," concludes Jauhar. "It would appear that doctors, not patients, are the ones focused on doctors’ grades — and their focus is distorted and blurry at best."

Comment Re:Works for me - whatever that is worth (Score 2, Insightful) 136

Seems like people running mailing lists need to take a look at how spam filters work, rather than mail providers changing anything.

No, you're backwards. It's up to spam filter developers to understand how mailing lists work and not falsely flag legitimate traffic. If your filter breaks a mailing list, your filter is broken.

Submission + - Comet lander falls silent, scientists fear it has moved

vivaoporto writes: European scientists said that the Philae comet lander has fallen silent on Monday, raising fears that it has moved again on its new home millions of miles from Earth.

Over the last few weeks, Rosetta has been flying along the terminator plane of the comet in order to find the best location to communicate with Philae. However, over the weekend of 10-11 July, the star trackers struggled to lock on to stars at the closer distances. No contact has been made with Philae since 9 July. The data acquired at that time are being investigated by the lander team to try to better understand Philae’s situation.

One possible explanation being discussed at DLR’s Lander Control Center is that the position of Philae may have shifted slightly, perhaps by changing its orientation with respect to the surface in its current location. The lander is likely situated on uneven terrain, and even a slight change in its position – perhaps triggered by gas emission from the comet – could mean that its antenna position has also now changed with respect to its surroundings. This could have a knock-on effect as to the best position Rosetta needs to be in to establish a connection with the lander.

The current status of Philae remains uncertain and is a topic of on-going discussion and analysis. But in the meantime, further commands are being prepared and tested to allow Philae to re-commence operations. The lander team wants to try to activate a command block that is still stored in Philae’s computer and which was already successfully performed after the lander’s unplanned flight across to the surface to its final location.

"Although the mission will now focus its scientific priority on the orbiter, Rosetta will continue attempting – up to and past perihelion – to obtain Philae science packets once a stable link has been acquired," adds Patrick Martin, Rosetta mission manager.

Comment Re:Good thing I used CmdrTaco's info (Score 4, Informative) 446

From The Guardian article (as the krebsonsecurity seems to be slashdotted):

The site, which encourages married users to cheat on their spouses and advertises 37 million members, had its data hacked by a group calling itself the Impact Team. At least two other dating sites, Cougar Life and Established Men, also owned by the same parent group, Avid Life Media, have had their data compromised.

"Avid Life Media has been instructed to take Ashley Madison and Established Men offline permanently in all forms, or we will release all customer records, including profiles with all the customers' secret sexual fantasies and matching credit card transactions, real names and addresses, and employee documents and emails. The other websites may stay online," the group's statement reads.

The hackers' main point of contention is with the fact that Ashley Madison charges users a fee of 15 pounds to carry out a "full delete" of their information if they decide to leave the site. Although users have the option of permanently hiding their profile free of charge, the company's advertisements claim that the full delete service is the only way to completely remove their information from the servers.

But the hackers say that that claim is âoea complete lieâ.

"Users almost always pay with credit card; their purchase details are not removed as promised, and include real name and address, which is of course the most important information the users want removed," they allege.

Submission + - Robot passes self-awareness test (techradar.com)

vivaoporto writes: Techradar reports that roboticists at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York have built a trio of robots that were put through the classic 'wise men puzzle' test of self-awareness — and one of them passed.

As described in the New Scientist article (paywalled):

"They are told that two of them have been given a 'dumbing pill' that stops them talking. In reality the push of a button has silenced them, but none of them knows which one is still able to speak. That’s what they have to work out.

Unable to solve the problem, the robots all attempt to say 'I don’t know'. But only one of them makes any noise. Hearing its own robotic voice, it understands that it cannot have been silenced. 'Sorry, I know now! I was able to prove that I was not given a dumbing pill,' it says. It then writes a formal mathematical proof and saves it to its memory to prove it has understood."

It might sound a pretty simple task for a human, but it's not for a robot — the bot must listen to and understand the question, then hear their own voice saying "I don't know" and recognise it as distinct from another robot's voice, then connect that with the original question to conclude that they hadn't been silenced.

Logical puzzles requiring an element of self-awareness like this are essential in building robots that can understand their role in society. By passing many tests of this type, it's hoped that robots will be able to build up a group of human-like abilities that become useful when combined.

Selmer Bringsjord (the scientist that set up the experiment) will present the work at the RO-MAN conference in Japan, which runs from 31 August to 4 September 2015.

Submission + - OPM hack included fingerprints (nationaljournal.com)

schwit1 writes: The Office of Personnel Management announced last week that the personal data for 21.5 million people had been stolen. But for national security professionals and cybersecurity experts, the more troubling issue is the theft of 1.1 million fingerprints.

Much of their concern rests with the permanent nature of fingerprints and the uncertainty about just how the hackers intend to use them. Unlike a Social Security number, address, or password, fingerprints cannot be changedâ"once they are hacked, they're hacked for good. And government officials have less understanding about what adversaries could do or want to do with fingerprints, a knowledge gap that undergirds just how frightening many view the mass lifting of them from OPM.

"It's probably the biggest counterintelligence threat in my lifetime," said Jim Penrose, former chief of the Operational Discovery Center at the National Security Agency and now an executive vice president at the cybersecurity company Darktrace. "There's no situation we've had like this before, the compromise of our fingerprints. And it doesn't have any easy remedy or fix in the world of intelligence."

Comment A more complete summary of the situation (Score 5, Informative) 581

A more complete summary of the situation below, based on a rejected submission of the same story.

Reddit policy to be updated, CEO says site was not created "to be a bastion of free speech"

After a string of dramatic events like the removal of the Fappening and FatPeopleHate subreddits, the dismissal of Victoria Taylor and the subsequent AMAgeddon culminating in the resignation of the former CEO Ellen Pao, the recently returned Reddit CEO and site founder Steve Huffman announces that a comprehensive Content Policy and the tools to enforce it are currently in development motivated in part by the media and internal repercussion of "the more offensive and obscene content" on their platform.

Mentioning without specifying some communities "whose purpose is reprehensible" and disclaiming that they "don't have any obligation to support them" the CEO announces an AMA (Ask me Anything) next Thursday 1pm where they "as a community need to decide together what our values are".

The CEO states that "Neither Alexis nor I created reddit to be a bastion of free speech, but rather as a place where open and honest discussion can happen.".

In a top comment in the announcement a site user refutes this claim point to a Forbes article from 2012 where Ohanians, answering a question of what the founding fathers would think of Reddit, replies: "A bastion of free speech on the World Wide Web? I bet they would like itâ. Alexis himself, in a Google Plus post from 2012 (archived version), says that he is "really, really proud of these quotes".

Submission + - Reddit policy to be updated, CEO says site was not created "to be a bastion of f

vivaoporto writes: After a string of dramatic events like the removal of the Fappening and FatPeopleHate subreddits, the dismissal of Victoria Taylor and the subsequent AMAgeddon culminating in the resignation of the former CEO Ellen Pao, the recently returned Reddit CEO and site founder Steve Huffman announces that a comprehensive Content Policy and the tools to enforce it are currently in development motivated in part by the media and internal repercussion of "the more offensive and obscene content" on their platform.

Mentioning without specifying some communities "whose purpose is reprehensible" and disclaiming that they "don’t have any obligation to support them" the CEO announces an AMA (Ask me Anything) next Thursday 1pmm where they "as a community need to decide together what our values are".

The CEO states that "Neither Alexis nor I created reddit to be a bastion of free speech, but rather as a place where open and honest discussion can happen.".

In a top comment in the announcement a site user refutes this claim point to a Forbes article from 2012 where Ohanians, answering a question of what the founding fathers would think of Reddit, replies: "A bastion of free speech on the World Wide Web? I bet they would like it”. Alexis himself, in a Google Plus post from 2012 (archived version), says that he is "really, really proud of these quotes".

Submission + - Twitter Stock Jumps Nearly 8 Percent on Fake Bloomberg News Post

vivaoporto writes: As posted on Re/code an repercuted in many other outlets Twitter stock jumped nearly 8 percent after a bogus report, attributed to Bloomberg News, said Twitter had received a $31 billion buyout offer.

The fake story, which cited "people with knowledge of the situation," appeared on a website (Google Cache version) made to look like Bloomberg's business news page and claimed that the company had received a takeover offer worth $31 billion.

The website domain, bloomberg.market (now suspended) was registered Friday, according to a search of the nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, and the identity of the person or company who registered it is not publicly available.

Close scrutiny flagged a number of questionable elements like the name of Twitter’s former chief executive, Richard Costolo being misspelled.

A search of Internet records showed that the bloomberg.market Internet address was registered on Friday through a Panamanian service meant to keep its customers anonymous.

By late afternoon, the web page for bloomberg.market was no longer operable. A message posted on the page said, “account suspended.”

In May, a fake bid for another company, Avon Products, sent its shares as much as 20 percent higher. That offer involved a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Last month the SEC sued a Bulgarian man, Nedko Nedev, and said he and five others worked together to violate securities laws by creating fake takeover offers. The SEC said Nedev made fake bids for Tower Group International and Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory as well as Avon.

Robert Heim, a former lawyer at the SEC, said these kinds of schemes will probably persist because news spreads so fast over social media and traders have to react so quickly.

A spokesman for Bloomberg, Ty Trippet, confirmed that the takeover article was fake.“ The story was fake and appeared on a bogus website that was not affiliated with Bloomberg,” Mr. Trippet said in a statement.

Comment Re:Very important link left out: the agreement tex (Score 5, Informative) 485

Yes, why not. Play by play below, italicizes are my asides. Sorry but no TL;DR of the TL;DR, it was hard enough to summarize the whole thing.

1st paragraph: asks Greece to keep their promise this time.
To be read with German accent as it was most likely added by Germany. It echoes the statement by Merkel this weekend that says "The most important currency has been lost and that is trust".

2nd paragraph: tell Greece it is either both ESF and IMF or nothing.
Meaning Greece will most likely have to agree to another set of measures imposed by IMF.

3rd paragraph, pages 2 and 3, first item on page 4: sets the first measures to be taken and its deadlines.
Some must be voted into law by 15 July (72 hours after the meeting) and some by 22 July, next week. They are more or less the same measures that triggered the referendum last week but with a notable absence: cuts in the military

pages 4 and 5, aditional measures:
- model for privatization.
Instead of going to the public coffers it will go to a fund (managed by Greece, supervised by Europe). The assets (estimated 50B) will be split: 50/25/25. 50% to recapitalize the banks, 25B to repay loans, 25B for investiments.
- model for the supervision: all draft legislation will be subject of their (EU and IMF) consult and agreement. Greece has until 20 July to ask to be helped.
- reversal of anti austerity legislation: all of them, except the humanitarian crisis bill, must be reexamined and either reversed or replaced by an equivalent measure.
SOP for "troika" (as in group of three, EU, ECB and IMF) technicians to become the fourth power in the country during the program duration. Happened in Portugal and Ireland

end of page 5: states that Greece will need between 82 and 86B, unless it can collect more taxes or privatize better. 7 of those billion euros are needed before 20 July and 5 more before mid August. Also states that greece needs to "clear its arrears" to IMF and Bank of Greece
Sibling post has it right, this part is "Greece, pay denbts"

page 6: states that Greece either accepts the deal or banks won't reopen. Also, that it is syriza's )and whoever was its predecessor) fault by easing the policies during the last 12 months and that Eurozone can reconsider "longer grace and payment periods" but that will be "no haircuts"
Again, "Greece, stop screwing up, pay denbts, all of it"

page 7: states that if Greece accepts the deal the deal will go forward. Also, that in the next 3-5 years 35B will be mobilized to fund investment and economic activity (including SME) via EU programmes
This must be the concession Tsipras is talking about, 35B for investment including small and medium-sized entrerprises not counting towards the loan but via EU investment.

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