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Submission + - DOJ Launches New Cybercrime Unit, Claims Privacy Top Priority (threatpost.com)

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: Leslie Caldwell, assistant attorney general in the criminal division of the Department of Justice announced on Thursday the creation of a new team within its Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) during a talk at a Georgetown Law conference titled, “Cybercrime 2020: The Future of Online Crime and Investigations.” Known as the Cybercrime Unit, the team is tasked with enhancing public-private security efforts.

A large part of the Cybersecurity Unit’s mission will be to quell the growing distrust many Americans have toward law enforcement’s high-tech investigative techniques. Even if that lack of trust, as Caldwell claimed, is based largely on misinformation about the technical abilities of the law enforcement tools and the manners in which they are used.

“In fact, almost every decision we make during an investigation requires us to weigh the effect on privacy and civil liberties, and we take that responsibility seriously,” Caldwell said. “Privacy concerns are not just tacked onto our investigations, they are baked in."

Submission + - NASA Orion Capsule Succesfully Lifts off from Florida Space Coast (nbcnews.com)

Submitted by PaisteUser
PaisteUser writes: NBC News writes: America's most powerful rocket launched a robotic test version of NASA's Orion deep-space capsule on its first flight on Friday, a day after a series of snags forced a scrub of the first attempt. The United Launch Alliance Delta 4 Heavy rocket's liftoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station had to be postponed on Thursday — at first due to gusty winds, and later due to a balky fuel valve. But on Friday, no technical issues or weather snags got in the way of an on-time 7:05 a.m. ET launch, even though the clouds were thick over Florida's Space Coast.

"Liftoff at dawn! The dawn of Orion, for a new era of American space exploration!" launch commentator Mike Curie said as the rocket blasted through the clouds just after sunrise.

Article include a live feed from the NASA TV channel, NTV-1.

Comment Technically, that isn't West (Score 2) 327

by hydrodog (#48511401) Attached to: You're Doing It All Wrong: Solar Panels Should Face West, Not South
The article overstates the difference in angle -- not due west, you mean adjust west of due South. If you are in the northern hemisphere, there is an optimal angle depending on latitude. If you want to shift to later in the day, that is Southwest. If you live in Australia, that would be Northwest.

Submission + - Child abuse database containing millions of images to launch 1

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: Data taken from tens of millions of child abuse photos and videos will shortly be used as part of a new police system to aid investigations into suspected paedophiles across the UK. The obscene material was seized during previous operations. The project, called the Child Abuse Image Database (Caid), will be launched by the Prime Minister at an internet safety event on Thursday 11 December. To help compare the images, Caid makes use of a unique signature assigned to each one — known as a hash value — the equivalent of a "digital fingerprint". Detectives will be able to plug seized hard drives into the system so they can be scanned and their contents similarly encoded to see if the resulting signatures match. Other techniques, including object matching and visual similarity analysis, are also employed. Caid will also be able to use GPS data from photographs to pinpoint where they were taken. Detectives will also be able to upload new, unfamiliar images of child abuse to a central computer server so that colleagues elsewhere in the UK can help try and identify those involved.

Submission + - Open hardware and Software AMD64 Laptop (openlunchbox.com) 24

Submitted by LuxuryYacht
LuxuryYacht writes: Open Lunchbox is an Open Hardware and Software Laptop Project. Some of the problems with other open laptop projects in the past have been either not being x86, not being open or not being an actual laptop.

Open Lunchbox will have all the design and fabrication files open and free. Uses a 4-core AMD64 CPU with HD8400 series graphics. Is an actual laptop mainboard and laptop. It's powerful enough for everyday use and a low cost design without sacrificing quality and reliability. The design is flexible enough to be used in several laptops with different sets of features or as an open development platform. The coreboot source will be hosted at coreboot.org GIT repo. Open Lunchbox will also provide complete assembled mainboards and laptops.

Submission + - Football Concussion Lawsuits Start to Hit High Schools

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Michael Tarm reports that a former high school quarterback has filed a lawsuit against the Illinois High School Association saying it didn't do enough to protect him from concussions when he played and still doesn't do enough to protect current players. This is the first instance in which legal action has been taken for former high school players as a whole against a group responsible for prep sports in a state. Such litigation could snowball, as similar suits targeting associations in other states are planned. "In Illinois high school football, responsibility — and, ultimately, fault — for the historically poor management of concussions begins with the IHSA," the lawsuit states. It calls high school concussions "an epidemic" and says the "most important battle being waged on high school football fields ... is the battle for the health and lives of" young players. The lawsuit calls on the Bloomington-based IHSA to tighten its head-injury protocols. It doesn't seek damages. "This is not a threat or attack on football," says attorney Joseph Siprut, who reached a $75 million settlement in a similar lawsuit against the NCAA in 2011. "Football is in danger in Illinois and other states — especially at the high school level — because of how dangerous it is. If football does not change internally, it will die. The talent well will dry up as parents keep kids out of the sport— and that's how a sport dies."

Previous research has shown that far from innocuous, invisible injuries, concussions confer tremendous brain damage. Individuals with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) may show symptoms of dementia, such as memory loss, aggression, confusion and depression, which generally appear years or many decades after the trauma. "The idea that you can whack your head hundreds of times in your life and knock yourself out and get up and be fine is gone," says Chris Nowinski. "We know we can't do that anymore. This causes long-term damage."

Submission + - Black Friday: E-commerce Pages Were 20% Slower On Desktop, 57% Slower On Mobile

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Black Friday news kicked off this weekend quite early when Best Buy was hit with a massive outage, but it turns out that was only half the story. The top 50 e-commerce websites were slower overall this year compared to last, suggesting customers were frustrated even if they could get to their favorite shopping site. Web performance monitoring company Catchpoint Systems looked at aggregate performance this weekend and compared it to the same timeframe in 2013. The results are notable: desktop webpages were 19.85 percent slower, while mobile webpages were a whopping 57.21 percent slower.

Submission + - Science Confirms The Bigger The Belly, The Better The Lover (thescienceworld.com)

Submitted by Diggester
Diggester writes: Researchers at Erciyes University in Kayseri, Turkey have just completed a yearlong study that looked at the correlation between body mass index (BMI) and male sexual performance. Their findings: Overweight men with obvious bellies lasted an astounding five minutes — five minutes! — longer in the sack than their thinner brethren.

A total of 200 men were surveyed. Researchers ultimately found that men with a higher BMI (i.e. bellies) lasted an average of 7.3 minutes in bed. The slimmer of the group barely lasted two minutes, and were more likely to suffer from premature ejaculation.

Submission + - Game Theory Analysis Shows How Evolution Favors Cooperation's Collapse (upenn.edu)

Submitted by Ugmug
Ugmug writes: Last year, University of Pennsylvania researchers Alexander J. Stewart and Joshua B. Plotkin published a mathematical explanation for why cooperation and generosity have evolved in nature. Using the classical game theory match-up known as the Prisoner’s Dilemma, they found that generous strategies were the only ones that could persist and succeed in a multi-player, iterated version of the game over the long term.

But now they’ve come out with a somewhat less rosy view of evolution. With a new analysis of the Prisoner’s Dilemma played in a large, evolving population, they found that adding more flexibility to the game can allow selfish strategies to be more successful. The work paints a dimmer but likely more realistic view of how cooperation and selfishness balance one another in nature.

Submission + - 10-Year-Old Runs for Job of Town Council Chief (yle.fi)

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: A little girl with red eyeglasses has applied for job of town council chief in Finland. The application deadline for the job of leader of Kemijärvi municipality passed on Friday last week, and among the candidates vying for the top spot was 4th grader Mili Kasurinen. If she gets the post, half of her day would be dedicated to her municipal tasks, and the other half attending school. In the name of fairness, she would thus also accept a part-time salary. Mili says she holds environmental issues close to her heart. "If the town's kept clean, tourists are likely to be happier here", she says, and adds that fishing is a great way for visitors to enjoy their time in the town. She also believes old people deserve respect. Her granny lives nearby and they have a nice time together. So is she worried about missing out on the job because of her age? "Yes it's a worry, but I'm not going to start complaining about it", she says. "I would get on and do my job, and I definitely wouldn't let the town down", she insists.

Submission + - A survey of RAND's contributions to computer science

Submitted by lpress
lpress writes: RAND Corporation was formed after World War II to do research and development for the Air Force. Perhaps the first "think tank," RAND was instrumental in many computer science developments. They did important early work on communication satellites, artificial intelligence and operations research and RAND's JOHNNIAC was one of the first stored program (Von Neumann architecture) research computers. IPL, the first list processing language, the SIMSCRIPT simulation programming language and JOSS, one of the first interactive time-sharing systems, were developed at RAND. The RAND tablet was the great grandfather of the iPad and its graphical input language (GRAIL) featured object-oriented drawing and character recognition. Paul Baran's work on the design and feasibility of large, distributed, packet-switched networks was RAND's most important theoretical work — leading to the ARPANET.

In 1957, RAND spun off its research division, creating the System Development Corporation (SDC) to build the SAGE air-defense system. SAGE was the first computer network and a huge project that trained most of the system programmers in the US. Those programmers invented many programming and project management techniques and went on to productive careers. SDC also developed the most advanced time-sharing and software development system of its time, which was used in dozens of man-machine research projects.

Submission + - IT career path after 35?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: All my friends seem to be moving towards a managerial role, and I'm concerned about my increasing age in a business where, according to some, 30 might as well be 50.
But I still feel young, and feel like I have so much to learn. So many interesting technical challenges cross my path, as I manage to move towards larger and more complex projects. I am in higher demand than ever, often with multiple headhunters contacting me in the same day. But will it last?
Is age discrimination a myth? Are there statistics on how many IT people move into management? I know some older programmers who got bored with management and successfully resumed a tech-only career. Others started their own small business.
What has been your experience? Do you/have you assumed a managerial role? Did you enjoy it? Have you managed to stay current and marketable long after 35?

Submission + - U.K. Police Force "Accidentally" Admits It Spied on Journalists (dailydot.com)

Submitted by Zanadou
Zanadou writes: A U.K. police force has accidentally released documents revealing that it has used controversial anti-terror laws to spy on journalists who had not committed any crimes.

The Cleveland Police force (U.K.) “erroneously” sent information to The Press Gazette, a British media trade magazine dedicated to journalism and the press, that indicated that the police force had used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) to obtain telecoms data while searching for a journalist’s source, the Press Gazette reports—and asked the publication to delete the documents when they realised what they had done.

Press Gazette refused to do so, arguing that “there is a strong public interest in disclosing it.”

Submission + - With Tumbling Oil Prices, Who Wins and Who Loses?

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: The price of oil is now under $70 a barrel after OPEC decided it would not cut back production significantly in the months ahead and the latest OPEC move suggests that it isn’t going to reverse course anytime soon.. Now Neil Irwin reports in the NYT that the falling price of oil looks likely to be one of the dominant forces shaping the global economy in 2015. So who wins and who loses? Winner: Global consumers as anybody who drives a car or flies on airplanes gets lower prices for gasoline and jet fuel. Loser: American oil producers — One of the big open questions is just how many of the small, independent producers in the American heartland will still be viable with oil prices in the $60s rather than the $100s. Many have relied on borrowed money, and bankruptcies are possible. Loser: Vladimir Putin — Russia’s economy is already facing its sharpest challenges in years, as Western sanctions imposed after Russian aggression toward Ukraine crimp the nation’s ability to be integrated in the global economy. Russia is a major energy producer, and the falling price of oil compounds the challenge facing its president, Vladimir Putin.

Potential Loser: The environment. As a general rule, the cheaper fossil fuels become, the more challenging it will be for cleaner forms of energy like solar and wind power to be competitive on price. But solar and wind power are sources for electricity, whereas fluctuations in oil prices most directly affect the price of transportation fuels like gasoline and jet fuel. Unless or until more Americans use electric cars, they are largely separate markets, so there’s no reason that cheaper oil should cause a major reduction in investment in renewables. The average pump price of a gallon of regular gasoline in the United States was $3.12 this week, down from $3.80 in October 2012 and down from $3.70 just four months ago. In the past, cheaper gasoline has two environmentally problematic effects: It leads people to drive thirstier cars and trucks and to drive them more miles. This time may be different. The number of miles Americans drive per capita has declined for nine straight years dropping from roughly 10,100 miles in 2004 to about 9,400 miles in 2013. A change that significant suggests a change in lifestyle—one that would be hard to upend. In addition, the average fuel economy of new cars and trucks sold in the United States has increased markedly over the past decade—in contrast to the 1990s, when new-vehicle fuel economy essentially flat-lined. Today, the average new car sold in this country goes 36 miles on a gallon of gasoline, up from 29.5 mpg in 2004. "Times have changed since the dawn of the last era of cheap oil," says Jeffrey Ball. "Even assuming low oil prices are the new normal, a cleaner energy system probably is too."

Submission + - SKA space telescope to offer neighbours cheap broadband (htxt.co.za)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Square Kilometer Array is a giant space telescope currently being built in the middle of the Karoo in South Africa, which when complete will be 50 times more sensitive than any existing Earth-based telescope. The problem is that it's so sensitive, the thousands of antennas need to be protected from terrestrial radio interference. Given that cell masts and technologies like TB white spaces are the only way people living in the remote areas near SKA are going to be able to get affordable net access, this is a bit of a problem.
In order that its neighbours aren't completely cut-off, SKA is offering them subsidised satellite broadband instead. Which is nice.

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