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The Internet

Eric Schmidt: Our Perception of the Internet Will Fade 228

Posted by Soulskill from the augmenting-our-reality dept.
Esra Erimez writes: Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt on Thursday predicted a change in how we perceive the internet. Schmidt says, "There will be so many IP addresses, so many devices, sensors, things that you are wearing, things that you are interacting with that you won't even sense it. It will be part of your presence all the time. Imagine you walk into a room, and the room is dynamic. And with your permission and all of that, you are interacting with the things going on in the room."
Earth

Doomsday Clock Could Move 145

Posted by samzenpus from the closer-to-midnight dept.
Lasrick writes The ominous minute hand of the 'Doomsday Clock' has been fixed at 5 minutes to midnight for the past three years. But it could move tomorrow. The clock is a visual metaphor that was created nearly 70 years ago by The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, whose Board of Governors boasts 18 Nobel laureates. Each year, the Bulletin's Science and Security Board assesses threats to humanity — with special attention to nuclear warheads and climate change — to decide whether the Doomsday Clock needs an adjustment. The event will be streamed live from the Bulletin's website at 11 am EST.

Comment Re:Want one, with signature checking (Score 1) 229

by Burz (#48869763) Attached to: Librem: a Laptop Custom-Made For Free/Libre Software

But using my signature.

I want secure boot from beginning to desktop, with the knowledge that the NSA has not dicked with my computer beyond its initial state.

They are looking into it... https://groups.google.com/d/ms...

The Qubes OS community is interested in this laptop, but without a TPM chip Qubes' AEM firmware guarding feature won't work on the Librem. So they are looking at accommodating us in another way by employing some kind of user-generated cert to protect the system firmware.

Purism did, however, switch their CPU to an i7-770HQ (along with HM87 chipset) specifically to satisfy Qubes' requirement for I/O virtualization. Pending proper support in Coreboot, Qubes should run and provide great protection from remote exploits on the Librem.
Debian

SystemD Gains New Networking Features 553

Posted by samzenpus from the making-things-better dept.
jones_supa writes A lot of development work is happening on systemd with just the recent couple of weeks seeing over 200 commits. With the most recent work that has landed, the networkd component has been improved with new features. Among the additions are IP forwarding and masquerading support (patch). This is the minimal support needed and these settings get turned on by default for container network interfaces. Also added was minimal firewall manipulation helpers for systemd's networkd. The firewall manipulation helpers (patch) are used for establishing NAT rules. This support in systemd is provided by libiptc, the library used for communicating with the Linux kernel's Netfilter and changing iptables firewall rulesets. Those wishing to follow systemd development on a daily basis and see what is actually happening under the hood, can keep tabs via the systemd Git viewer.
United Kingdom

MI5 Chief Seeks New Powers After Paris Magazine Attack 319

Posted by samzenpus from the let-us-look dept.
An anonymous reader writes with news that the head of MI5 is asking for more snooping powers following the attack at Charlie Hebdo. "The head of MI5, Andrew Parker, has called for new powers to help fight Islamist extremism, warning of a dangerous imbalance between increasing numbers of terrorist plots against the UK and a drop in the capabilities of intelligence services to snoop on communications. Parker described the Paris attack as "a terrible reminder of the intentions of those who wish us harm" and said he had spoken to his French counterparts to offer help. Speaking to an invited audience at MI5 headquarters, he said the threat level to Britain had worsened and Islamist extremist groups in Syria and Iraq were directly trying to orchestrate attacks on the UK. An attack on the UK was "highly likely" and MI5 could not give a guarantee it would be able to stop it, he said."
Transportation

Why We're Not Going To See Sub-orbital Airliners 300

Posted by Soulskill from the cloaking-devices dept.
glowend writes: Sci-fi author Charlie Stross has an article about sub-orbital flight, and why we'll never see it as a common mode of transportation. Quoting: "Yes, we can save some fuel by travelling above the atmosphere and cutting air resistance, but it's not a free lunch: you expend energy getting up to altitude and speed, and the fuel burn for going faster rises nonlinearly with speed. Concorde, flying trans-Atlantic at Mach 2.0, burned about the same amount of fuel as a Boeing 747 of similar vintage flying trans-Atlantic at Mach 0.85 ... while carrying less than a quarter as many passengers. Rockets aren't a magic technology. Neither are hybrid hypersonic air-breathing gadgets like Reaction Engines' Sabre engine. It's going to be a wee bit expensive."

Stross also makes a more general proposition that's particularly interesting to me: "One of the failure modes of extrapolative SF is to assume that just because something is technologically feasible, it will happen. ... Someone has to want it enough to pay for it—and it will be competing with other, possibly more attractive options."
Science

WSJ Refused To Publish Lawrence Krauss' Response To "Science Proves Religion" 556

Posted by samzenpus from the it's-our-playpen dept.
First time accepted submitter Kubla Kahhhn! writes Recently, the WSJ posted a controversial piece "Science Increasingly Makes a Case for God", written by non-scientist Eric Metaxas. Noted astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss wrote a simple and clear retort in a letter to the editor, which the WSJ declined to publish, but Richard Dawkins did.
Privacy

Doppler Radar Used By Police To Determine Home Occupancy 139

Posted by Soulskill from the partly-sunny-with-a-chance-of-people dept.
schwit1 sends an article by Orin Kerr about a court case where a judge has had to weigh Fourth Amendment protections against law enforcement's ability to use a Doppler radar device to tell whether people are present within a home. Kerr writes: If the government has the burden of proving reasonable suspicion, should the court treat the absence of information in the record on this point as not changing its otherwise-reached view that there is reasonable suspicion (as it does), or should that be treated as a potentially serious deficiency in getting to reasonable suspicion that the government has to overcome? I’m not sure of the answer. We don’t normally encounter this question because we normally understand the uses and limits of investigatory tools. If the officer looked through the window and didn’t see any other people, for example, we could intuitively factor that into the reasonable suspicion inquiry without having to think about burdens of proof. I’m less sure what we’re supposed to do when the government use a suspicion-testing technological device with unknown capabilities." The judge in the court case wrote, "New technologies bring with them not only new opportunities for law enforcement to catch criminals but also new risks for abuse and new ways to invade constitutional rights (PDF). ... Unlawful searches can give rise not only to civil claims but may require the suppression of evidence in criminal proceedings. We have little doubt that the radar device deployed here will soon generate many questions for this court and others along both of these axes."

Comment Re:The criticism is fundamentally dishonest. (Score 1) 201

by Burz (#48671097) Attached to: Investigation: Apple Failing To Protect Chinese Factory Workers

You obviously didn't read the website.

But I get your reasoning... Shiny pocket computers are more important than dealing with servitude.

I don't have to read the whole website to see that all I said was correct.

My hero!!! His Xray vision even works over the Internet.

What is your fucking point anyway? That you are morally superior to me because you have a fair phone - no wait, you said you could get one if you wanted to.

My point (if you read it) is that choices exist out there that the Android market at least makes possible.
 
 

Me, I don't have any shiny pocket computers unlike you hypocrite. Fuck you.

You presume too much, kemosabe... I'm going on 8 years with the same dumb-phone now.

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