69680363
submission
itwbennett writes:
A U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration program set up in 2008 to keep tabs on cars close to the U.S.-Mexican border has been gradually expanded nationwide and is regularly used by other law enforcement agencies in their hunt for suspects. The extent of the system, which is said to contain hundreds of millions of records on motorists and their journeys, was disclosed in documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union as part of a Freedom of Information Act request.
69676041
submission
itwbennett writes:
As the first step in investigating Silk Road, IRS agent Gary Alford, who was part of an agency task force investigating organized crime, simply entered 'Silk Road' into Google and looked for the oldest mention on the site. The details he found would ultimately lead to the arrest of Ross Ulbricht in October 2013, as well as to the forfeiture of all the assets of Silk Road itself.
69668073
submission
itwbennett writes:
The promise of modular smartphones like Google’s Project Ara is that buyers will be able to upgrade components at will — and now Finnish company Circular Devices has come up with a use for discarded computing modules, which they're calling Puzzlecluster. Drawings of the Puzzlecluster architecture show a chassis with slots for the reused modules, which can then be interconnected with others to create the cluster. Just one unit could also be used as a desktop computer.
69663247
submission
itwbennett writes:
IBM is expected to go through a massive reorg next month that will see 26% of its 430,000-strong work force let go, or 111,800 people, according to a report by long-time Silicon Valley journalist Robert X. Cringely. If that figure holds true, that would make it far and away the largest corporate layoff event in history, breaking the record previously held by IBM, when it cut 60,000 in 1993.
69567733
submission
itwbennett writes:
They of the square jaws and famous dispute with Mark Zuckerberg over the origins of Facebook, are also believed to be among the largest holders of Bitcoin in the world. Now they want to launch a regulated Bitcoin exchange—named Gemini, of course. To bolster confidence, they said they have formed a relationship with a chartered bank in the state of New York. 'This means that your money will never leave the country,' the twins wrote in a blog post. 'It also means that U.S. dollars on Gemini will be eligible for FDIC insurance and held by a U.S.-regulated bank.'
69567365
submission
itwbennett writes:
Automated tank gauges (ATGs), which are used by gas stations in the U.S. to monitor their fuel tank levels can be manipulated over the Internet by malicious attackers, according to security firm Rapid7. 'An attacker with access to the serial port interface of an ATG may be able to shut down the station by spoofing the reported fuel level, generating false alarms, and locking the monitoring service out of the system,' said HD Moore, the chief research officer at Rapid7.
69535777
submission
itwbennett writes:
According to a story in the Beijing News, Apple CEO Tim Cook has agreed to let China’s State Internet Information Office to run security audits on products the company sells in China in an effort to counter concerns that other governments are using its devices for surveillance.
69524947
submission
itwbennett writes:
You can now download and install an official LibreOffice Viewer for Android — the very first release of LibreOffice Viewer that is capable of handling text documents and presentations. Unfortunately, its newness shows. LibreOffice, in its current state, is not solving any problems that Android face. There are already a few document readers for Android that can open ODF files. Open source apps such as OpenDocument Reader can even edit and save ODF files.
69523273
submission
itwbennett writes:
Fujitsu Laboratories is developing an enterprise tool that can identify and advise people who are more vulnerable to cyberattacks, based on certain traits. For example, the researchers found that users who are more comfortable taking risks are also more susceptible to virus infections, while those who are confident of their computer knowledge were at greater risk for data leaks. Rather than being like an antivirus program, the software is more like 'an action log analysis than looks into the potential risks of a user,' said a spokesman for the lab. 'It judges risk based on human behavior and then assigns a security countermeasure for a given user.'
69497055
submission
itwbennett writes:
Here's a good bit of follow-up for Slashdot readers: Turn, the advertising company that was found last week to be using Verizon's Unique Identifier Header (UIDH) to recreate deleted cookies in order to track users' movements across the Web, said on Friday that it will stop using the controversial tracking method.
69478191
submission
An anonymous reader writes:
VentureBeat is running an indictment of the tech industry's penchant for laying off huge numbers of people, which they say is responsible for creating a culture of "disposable employees." According to recent reports, layoffs in the tech sector reached over 100,000 last year, the highest total since 2009. Of course, there are always reasons for layoffs: "Companies buy other companies and need to rationalize headcount. And there’s all that disruption. Big companies, in particular, are seeing their business models challenged by startups, so they need to shed employees with skills they no longer need, and hire people with the right skills."
But the article argues that this is often just a smokescreen. "The notion here is that somehow these companies are backed into a corner, with no other option than to fire people. And that’s just not true. These companies are making a choice. They’re deciding that it’s faster and cheaper to chuck people overboard and find new ones than it is to retrain them. The economics of cutting rather than training may seem simple, but it’s a more complex calculation than most people believe. ... Many of these companies are churning through employees, laying off hundreds on one hand, while trying to hire hundreds more."
69477007
submission
itwbennett writes:
Internet connections in the South East Asian nation have been affected by problems with the Asia America Gateway (AAG) submarine cable system for the fourth time in a year, according to local news outlets. The cause of the outages is as yet unknown, but that's not stopping online reports for pinning the blame on sharks. The more likely, but less dramatic cause of the damage was ship anchors or fishing, says Michael Costin, Chairman of the AAG Cable Consortium.
69445025
submission
IsoQuantic writes:
A new report from the tech career site Gooroo sheds light on which programming skills are most in demand for which tech positions. Its recently released International Tech Careers and Salary Index is based on an analysis of 3 million tech job listings from the United States, Great Britain and Australia from January through September, 2014. For a number of common tech job titles, Gooroo analyzed which skills are mentioned the most in listings for that position.
The bottom line is that different kinds of programming skills are better suited for different kinds of software development jobs. For example, if you want to be an iOS developer, being able to code in Objective-C will help you a lot more than other skills. Also, some programming skills will make you a more attractive candidate for non-developer positions. Being able to write SQL, for instance, comes in handy for system administrators, data scientists and Web designers.
By analyzing the numbers about available programming jobs, it's possible to see which skills are most in demand in the tech world. For example, the five skills most often mentioned in tech job listings were: SQL (24.3%), Java (14.5%), JavaScript (13.1%), C# (10.4%), and CSS (9.9%). In terms of salary, the five most popular tech job listings were: Python ($95,948), Java ($93,668), JavaScript ($89,101), SQL ($87,502) and C# ($87,446).
See slide show and comments below the same at the link below.
69437581
submission
itwbennett writes:
It's a basic truth that when people use a medium owned or operated by a third party, such as the Internet, an elevator with a camera or a mobile app that requires connectivity, there is no privacy. So the best thing you can do, is to place some value on your personal information and then lie, lie, lie your way into obscurity, says Frank Ahearn, a privacy expert and author of the book 'How to Disappear.'
69321617
submission
jfruh writes:
Since a smartphone is an easily portable — and easily losable, and easily stealable — device that contains all sorts of personal data, the idea of a remote "kill switch" or wipe solution is a popular one. Now Qualcomm is looking to build the concept right into their next-gen Snapdragon chip, preventing any OS-level workarounds.
