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Submission + - XKEYSCORE: NSA'S Google for the World's Private Communications (firstlook.org)

Submitted by Advocatus Diaboli
Advocatus Diaboli writes: "The NSA’s ability to piggyback off of private companies’ tracking of their own users is a vital instrument that allows the agency to trace the data it collects to individual users. It makes no difference if visitors switch to public Wi-Fi networks or connect to VPNs to change their IP addresses: the tracking cookie will follow them around as long as they are using the same web browser and fail to clear their cookies. Apps that run on tablets and smartphones also use analytics services that uniquely track users. Almost every time a user sees an advertisement (in an app or in a web browser), the ad network is tracking users in the same way. A secret GCHQ and CSE program called BADASS, which is similar to XKEYSCORE but with a much narrower scope, mines as much valuable information from leaky smartphone apps as possible, including unique tracking identifiers that app developers use to track their own users."

also

"Other information gained via XKEYSCORE facilitates the remote exploitation of target computers. By extracting browser fingerprint and operating system versions from Internet traffic, the system allows analysts to quickly assess the exploitability of a target. Brossard, the security researcher, said that “NSA has built an impressively complete set of automated hacking tools for their analysts to use.” Given the breadth of information collected by XKEYSCORE, accessing and exploiting a target’s online activity is a matter of a few mouse clicks. Brossard explains: “The amount of work an analyst has to perform to actually break into remote computers over the Internet seems ridiculously reduced — we are talking minutes, if not seconds. Simple. As easy as typing a few words in Google.”

Submission + - TracFone Finally Agrees To Allow Phone Unlocking (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: While most Slashdot readers probably enjoy the latest and greatest smartphones and heavy-use data plans, millions of Americans use low-cost, prepaid featurephones, and many of those are sold under various brand names owned by TracFone. Today, after much pressure from the FCC, TracFone admitted that its customers also have the right to an unlocked phone that they can port to a different provider, including those low-income customers who participate in the government-subsidized Lifeline program, widely (though incorrectly) known as "Obamaphone".

Submission + - Soneone is Cutting Fiber Optic Cables in San Francisco

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: USA Today reports that the FBI is investigating at least 11 physical attacks on high-capacity Internet cables in California's San Francisco Bay Area dating back to at least July 6, 2014, including one early this week. "When it affects multiple companies and cities, it does become disturbing," says Special Agent Greg Wuthrich. "We definitely need the public's assistance." The pattern of attacks raises serious questions about the glaring vulnerability of critical Internet infrastructure, says JJ Thompson. "When it's situations that are scattered all in one geography, that raises the possibility that they are testing out capabilities, response times and impact," says Thompson. "That is a security person's nightmare."

Mark Peterson, a spokesman for Internet provider Wave Broadband, says an unspecified number of Sacramento-area customers were knocked offline by the latest attack. Peterson characterized the Tuesday attack as "coordinated" and said the company was working with Level 3 and Zayo to restore service. It’s possible the vandals were dressed as telecommunications workers to avoid arousing suspicion, say FBI officials. Backup systems help cushion consumers from the worst of the attacks, meaning people may notice slower email or videos not playing, but may not have service completely disrupted. But repairs are costly and penalties are not stiff enough to deter would-be vandals. "There are flags and signs indicating to somebody who wants to do damage: This is where it is folks," says Richard Doherty. "It's a terrible social crime that affects thousands and millions of people."

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Is it true that software performance is not important anymore? (blogspot.com) 6

Submitted by DidgetMaster
DidgetMaster writes: Naturally, everyone wants faster hardware and software; but if you had to choose between two software packages, how much emphasis do you place on speed?

I am building a new kind of general-purpose data management system that uses new data objects that I invented. It has some cool new features that other systems lack, but speed is one of its primary selling points. It was originally designed to replace file systems for managing unstructured data; but it handles structured data so well that I think it can replace relational databases and NoSQL solutions too. It also has distributed architecture to compete with Hadoop and other distributed systems. It is able to find things thousands of times faster than a file system and is more than twice as fast as MySQL at basic table operations in my testing without needing an index. (See http://youtu.be/2uUvGMUyFhY for a demo video)

As I approach potential investors for funding, I have had more than one person say "speed is no longer important". They seem to think that everything can be solved with faster hardware or distributed processing. I am "old school" and think that speed is VERY important. Not only is time important, but better algorithms require less hardware (and thus less power and cooling) too. Am I the only one who still thinks this way?

Submission + - 79% of Airbnb listings in Barcelona are illegal

Submitted by dkatana
dkatana writes: Barcelona has more than 16,000 Airbnb listings and, according to reports on Cities of the Future, 79% could be illegal.

In April, Airbnb’s European General Manager Jeroen Merchiers confirmed, during the Student Tourism Congress in Barcelona, that the platform has more than 85,000 listings in Spain alone.

But most Airbnb hosts do not apply for a permit, fail to pay insurance and tourist tax, and ignore Catalonian law that forbids short-term rentals of rooms in private homes.

Residents had been complaining about the rising number of tourist apartments and the conduct of the mostly student-age renters. The majority from Italy, Germany and the UK were partying all night, some running around naked, and generally trashing their neighborhoods.

Submission + - Researchers train computer to create games by watching videos

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have developed a computing system that views gameplay video from streaming services like YouTube or Twitch, analyzes the footage and then is able to create original new sections of a game.
The team tested their discovery, the first of its kind, with the original Super Mario Brothers, a well-known two-dimensional platformer game that will allow the new automatic-level designer to replicate results across similar games.

The system focuses on the gaming terrain (not the playable character) and the positioning between elements on-screen – be it pipes, blocks, coins or Goombas – and it determines the required relationship or level design rule.
For example, pipes in the Mario games tend to stick out of the ground, so the system learns this and prevents any pipes from being flush with grassy surfaces. It also prevents “breaks” by using spatial analysis – e.g. no impossibly long jumps for the hero.

Comment Re:Fear of the past (Score 4, Funny) 136

And it would be much better to worry about the real problems, - the global pollution, mass unemployment, the life extinction on the planet, etc. But not the ridiculous ghosts of the past.

I beg to differ. We must prevent the French from transferring top secret guillotine technology to ISIS.

Submission + - NSA eavesdropped on the last three French presidents: WikiLeaks (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Earthquake Retrofit
Earthquake Retrofit writes: The New York Times is reporting that WikiLeaks has released "...material which appeared to capture officials in Paris talking candidly about Greece's economy, relations with Germany — and, ironically, American espionage... It came a day before the French Parliament is expected to definitively pass a controversial security bill legalizing broad surveillance, particularly of terrorism suspects."

Submission + - Voat overloaded as people abandon Reddit .. (independent.co.uk)

Submitted by nickweller
nickweller writes: So many people are leaving Reddit that its closest competitor crashed and had to ask for donations to stay up.

Many users of the site protested and left when last week it banned five subreddits for harassment. And since, users have been making good on threats to leave the site — going instead to a Swiss clone of the site, Voat.

Submission + - HBO's 'Game of Thrones' Has 'Lost' its Way

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Mike Hale writes in the NYT that after Sunday night’s Season 5 finale the wildly popular show seems to have lost its way, and to be losing faith with a growing number of its viewers. After two or three seasons of coherent and satisfying action, the show is spinning in place, stalling for time as it crawls toward an ending that will be more disappointing the longer it’s delayed. Sound familiar? As with “Lost,” there may be a blueprint, but it’s not looking very sound. According to Hale, the escalating series of shocks in the season finale was a prime example of substituting sensation for imagination, busyness for drama. "Not content to kill off a mid-major character, the episode moved on to whipping girls, putting a major female character through an excruciatingly long, nude walk of shame and, in its closing seconds, assassinating a fan favorite who was one of the few wholly sympathetic figures in the show."

Amy Sullivan says that the problem is that it's incredibly hard to craft a epic series without getting necessarily bogged down in the middle installments. "Your protagonists are usually in some long-term predicament or up against an enemy who will keep winning until some resolution is reached in the finale," says Sullivan. "So the need to throw in a few shocking moments for the sake of surprise and to keep readers/audiences off-balance is understandable." According to Hale when you look at the overall framework, nearly all the characters are where they were when the season began. "The usurping Boltons are still in Winterfell; Sansa is still on the run; Arya is still hiding in Braavos; the dragon queen Daenerys Targaryen and the sly dwarf, Tyrion, are still marooned in Essos; the Lannisters still occupy the castle in King’s Landing," concludes Hale. "This can be blamed on the show’s semidependent relationship with Mr. Martin’s novels, but viewers (like me) who haven’t read the books don’t care about that. The question is how much longer we’ll care at all."

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