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Submission + - Australia's AG Wants the Power to Force Suspects to Hand Over Their Passwords (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: The Australian Attorney General is pushing a new law that would force suspects of computer crimes to disclose the passwords and keys necessary to decrypt their internet communications.

Part of a proposal to revise the country's Telecommunications Interception Act, the law would expand an existing law, section 3LA of the Crimes Act 1914, which already allows Australian authorities to gain access to physically seized computers and hard drives by way of forcing suspects to disclose their decryption passwords.

The proposal would give intelligence agencies even more elbow room, by allowing them to also "issue 'intelligibility assistance notices' requiring a person to provide information or assistance to place previously lawfully accessed communications into an intelligible form," as IT News reported today.

Comment Re:Mexico City tried this... (Score 1) 405

by sidnelson13 (#46510223) Attached to: Paris Bans Half of All Cars On the Road

It's about time they restrict (or at least make it more difficult) for people to have older cars instead of new. Like Japan. The older the car gets, the more expensive it it to keep it with the regulations.

For example, the same thing should be applied to Brazil (where I live). Here, licensing and taxes for older cars are cheaper than newer ones, because it's based percentage of market value. And if the car reaches 20 years-old, it's not even taxed anymore. It's stupid, making it easy for some ignorant douche to keep a dangerous, slow, polluting piece of 80's crap on the street. It should be the other way around.

Submission + - Algorithm Reveals Objects Hidden Behind Other Things In Camera Phone Images (medium.com)

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: Imaging is undergoing a quiet revolution at the moment thanks to various new techniques for extracting data from images. Now physicists have worked out how to create an image of an object hidden behind a translucent material using little more than an ordinary smartphone and some clever data processing. The team placed objects behind materials that scatter light such as onion skin, frosted glass and chicken breast tissue. They photographed them using a Nokia Lumina 1020 smartphone, with a 41 megapixel sensor. To the naked eye, the resulting images look like random speckle. But by treating the data from each pixel separately and looking for correlations between pixels, the team was able to produce images of the hidden objects. They even photographed light scattered off a white wall and recovered an image of the reflected scene--a technique that effectively looks round corners. The new technique has applications in areas such as surveillance and medical imaging.

Submission + - Elon Musk Addresses New Jersey's Tesla Store Ban (teslamotors.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: On Tuesday, we discussed news that New Jersey is trying to ban Tesla stores, which would force the company to sell through car dealerships instead. Now, Elon Musk has prepared a response: 'The reason that we did not choose to do this is that the auto dealers have a fundamental conflict of interest between promoting gasoline cars, which constitute virtually all of their revenue, and electric cars, which constitute virtually none. Moreover, it is much harder to sell a new technology car from a new company when people are so used to the old. Inevitably, they revert to selling what’s easy and it is game over for the new company. The evidence is clear: when has an American startup auto company ever succeeded by selling through auto dealers? The last successful American car company was Chrysler, which was founded almost a century ago, and even they went bankrupt a few years ago, along with General Motors. Since the founding of Chrysler, there have been dozens of failures, Tucker and DeLorean being simply the most well-known. In recent years, electric car startups, such as Fisker, Coda, and many others, attempted to use auto dealers and all failed.'

Submission + - Nanoscale terahertz optical switch breaks miniaturization barrier (vanderbilt.edu) 1

Submitted by Science_afficionado
Science_afficionado writes: There is a general consensus that ultimately photons will replace electrons running through wires in most of our microelectronic devices. One of the current technical barriers to the spread of optoelectronics has been the difficulty in miniaturizing the ultrafast optical switches required. Now a team of physicists at Vanderbilt has made terahertz optical switches out of nanoparticles of vanadium dioxide, a material long known for its ability to rapidly change phase between metallic to semiconducting states. They report in the Mar. 12 issue of Nano Letters that they have created individually addressable switches that are 200 nm in diameter and can switch between transparent and opaque states at terahertz rates.

Submission + - EU Votes for Universal Phone Charger

Submitted by SmartAboutThings
SmartAboutThings writes: The European Union has voted in favor of a draft legislation which lists among the “essential requirements” of electrical devices approved by the EU a compatibility with “universal” chargers . According to a German MEP, this move will eliminate 51,000 tonnes of electronic waste. The draft law was approved by an overwhelming majority of 550 votes to 12 . At the moment, according to estimates, there are around 30 different types of charger on the market, but manufacturers have two years at their disposal to get ready for the new restriction.

Comment As if... (Score 1) 66

'It would be considered as an [incentive] to terrorism and would give precise ideas to terrorists on the know-how (the methodology) and the details regarding the USA (but also how to find weaknesses in other countries).

Should we really believe that the so called terrorists don't already know what he's talking about? And why should we believe that, just because it hasn't been exploited on a large, TERRORIST, scale?

I mean, be them terrorists, but very likely, they're not stupid. If he in 4 months "discovered" this, I see nothing keeping some bright young hacker with a strong motive from finding this out too.

Comment Re:No, not those who don't understand... (Score 1) 921

by sidnelson13 (#46361917) Attached to: Woman Attacked In San Francisco Bar For Wearing Google Glass
Well, for an Oppo N1 user, makes no difference what angle you hold it, you can point the camera anywhere.

And there's also the other point given in the summary: if you want to record people, it's much easier to buy a cheap and small camera from China and conceal it.

Fearing being recorded is just stupid to me, because it can be happening any time, all the time, with or without your knowledge. And that will make you fearful ALL THE TIME, when it doesn't really matter.

I imagine a distant future where we find a way to extract our memories into electronic files. What then? Will you be fighting people that look at you for too long because then your image can be imprinted on their memory?

Comment Re:Goodbye (Score 1) 725

by sidnelson13 (#37701620) Attached to: Dennis Ritchie, Creator of C Programming Language, Passed Away
We are talking about the dimension we seem to exist at this very moment. Unless you are posting from another one, everything our parent poster said holds true to the letter. Without his contributions, the world and industry we know RIGHT NOW would not hove existed. PS: If in fact you are speaking from a parallel universe, then I welcome you into our dimension, and string theorists can rejoice.
Security

Submission + - Russian security firm reveals a flaw a day

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A little known Russian security firm has taken the bold step of releasing details of zero-day exploits in business software every day for the rest of January according to reports. Security expert Brian Krebs revealed that Intevydis will post advisories on products from big name vendors such as IBM, Novell and Sun Microsystems, in protest at a 'responsible disclosure' policy which it regards as a waste of time. The firm has already made good on its threat, posting details of a bug in Sun Directory Server 7.0 on Monday and one in Tivoli Directory Server 6.2 yesterday.
Music

Submission + - 11 Incredible Music Albums you can Download for Fr (imaginaryplanet.net)

Submitted by rjnagle
rjnagle writes: You may have heard about Jamendo , a free and legal music sharing site that offers more than 29,000 music albums for free download. Over the last 3 years I've listened to 2200+ albums and chosen the 11 Best Music Albums from Jamendo which you can download for free . Given the fact that Jamendo is reported to be experiencing financial difficulties , Jamendo may not be around for much longer. Is Jamendo too important to the music community to fail? What can it do to make it more attractive as a business model? And where will listeners go to find free & legal music if Jamendo were to disappear?

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