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Submission + - New National Database will house all your personal and financial information (washingtonexaminer.com)

Submitted by Bodhammer
Bodhammer writes: The Washington Examiner is reporting that the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are building a massive database to hold all of Americans mortgage and financial information.

"But under the April register notice, the database expansion means it will include a host of data points, including a mortgage owner’s name, address, Social Security number, all credit card and other loan information and account balances.
The database will also encompass a mortgage holder’s entire credit history, including delinquent payments, late payments, minimum payments, high account balances and credit scores, according to the notice.
The two agencies will also assemble “household demographic data,” including racial and ethnic data, gender, marital status, religion, education, employment history, military status, household composition, the number of wage earners and a family’s total wealth and assets."


What could go wrong? They have done so well with Heathcare.gov...

Submission + - NSA "Knows the way you think" (siliconbeat.com)

Submitted by mspohr
mspohr writes: “As you write a message, you know, an analyst at the NSA or any other service out there that’s using this kind of attack against people can actually see you write sentences and then backspace over your mistakes and then change the words and then kind of pause and — and — and think about what you wanted to say and then change it. And it’s this extraordinary intrusion not just into your communications, your finished messages but your actual drafting process, into the way you think.”

More information here:
http://www.nbcnews.com/feature...

Submission + - The World's Worst Planes: Aircraft Designs That Failed (bbc.com)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: The BBC reports: 'It's more than 110 years since mankind first took to the air in a powered aircraft. During that time, certain designs have become lauded for their far-sighted strengths – the Supermarine Spitfire; Douglas DC-3 Dakota; or the Anglo-French Concorde supersonic airliner, to name a few. But then there are planes like the Christmas Bullet. Designed by Dr William Whitney Christmas, who was described by one aviation historian as the "greatest charlatan to ever see his name associated with an airplane", this ”revolutionary” prototype biplane fighter had no struts supporting the wings; instead, they were supposed to flap like a bird’s. Both prototypes were destroyed during their first flights – basically, because Christmas's "breakthrough" design was so incapable of flight that the wings would twist off the airframe at the first opportunity. Just as many of the world's most enduring designs share certain characteristics, the history of aviation is littered with disappointing designs. Failures like Christmas's uniquely unflyable aircraft often overlooked some fairly simple rules: The Douglas TBD Devastator was a death-trap; it could only release its torpedo flying in a straight line whilst dawdling at 115mph – making it easy to shoot down. The short-lived Brewster Buffalo was shot down in droves when it encountered Japanese fighters in the early years of World War II, proving too slow and cumbersome. The Fairey Albacore was intended to become the Royal Navy’s standard torpedo bomber; it ended up being edged out by the plane it was supposed to replace. A flaw in the design of the De Havilland Comet’s cabin windows led to several crashes which ended the plane’s promising airline career. The Douglas DC-10 suffered several early crashes due to the flawed design of its cargo doors, which caused them to open mid-flight.'

Submission + - Does Common Core Suffer From What Ails Obamacare?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: If you listen to Common Core cheerleader Bill Gates, the new academic standards promised by the initiative are the best way to fix school for our kids. But the devil is in the detail, and therein lies the problem. "My conversations with several Core proponents over the past few weeks," writes the WSJ's Peggy Noonan in The Trouble With Common Core, "leave me with the sense they fell in love with an abstraction and gave barely a thought to implementation. But implementation — how a thing is done day by day in the real world — is everything. There is a problem, for instance, with a thing called 'ObamaCare.' That law exists because the people who pushed for it fell in love with an abstract notion and gave not a thought to what the law would actually do and how it would work." With criticism of Common Core hitting new heights, Noonan suggests its advocates take a look at their ill-thought-out creation instead of summarily dismissing the "dangerous misconceptions" of those who oppose Common Core in its present incarnation. "The irony," notes Noonan, "is that Core proponents’ overall objective — to get schools teaching more necessary and important things, and to encourage intellectual coherence in what is taught — is not bad, but good."

Submission + - Why Only One Top Banker Went to Jail for the Financial Crisis

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: After the savings-and-loan scandals of the 1980s, the FBI opened 5,490 criminal investigations, 1,100 people were prosecuted, and 839 were convicted, including top executives at many of the largest failed banks. But Jesse Eisinger writes in the NYT that the largest man-made economic catastrophe since the Depression resulted in the jailing of a single investment banker, Kareem Serageldin, to 30 months in jail. Many assume that federal authorities simply lacked the guts to go after powerful Wall Street bankers but according to Eisinger, the truth is more complicated. "During the past decade, the Justice Department suffered a series of corporate prosecutorial fiascos, which led to critical changes in how it approached white-collar crime. The department began to focus on reaching settlements rather than seeking prison sentences, which over time unintentionally deprived its ranks of the experience needed to win trials against the most formidable law firms."

From 2004 to 2012, the Justice Department reached 242 deferred and nonprosecution agreements with corporations, compared with 26 in the previous 12 years, and while companies paid huge sums in the settlements, several veteran Justice Department officials say that these settlements emboldened defense lawyers. More crucially, they allowed the Justice Department’s lawyers to “succeed” without learning how to develop important prosecutorial skills. The erosion of the department’s actual trial skills soon became apparent. In November 2009, the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn lost the first criminal case of the crisis against two Bear Stearns executives accused of misleading investors. The prosecutors rushed into trial, failing to prepare for the exculpatory emails uncovered by the defense team. After two days, the jury acquitted the two money managers. “For sure, it put a chill” on investigations says one former prosecutor. “Politicos care about winning and losing.” Federal prosecutors have their own explanation for how only one Wall Street executive landed in jail in the wake of the financial crisis, says Eisinger. "The cases were complex to investigate and would have been infernally difficult to explain to juries."

Submission + - U-2 Caused Widespread Shutdown of US Flights out of LAX 2

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Reuters reports that last week's computer glitch at a California air traffic control center that led officials to halt takeoffs at Los Angeles International Airport was caused by a U-2 spy plane still in use by the US military, passing through air space monitored by the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center that appears to have overloaded ERAM, a computer system at the center. According to NBC News, computers at the center began operations to prevent the U-2 from colliding with other aircraft, even though the U-2 was flying at an altitude of 60,000 feet and other airplanes passing through the region's air space were miles below. FAA technical specialists resolved the specific issue that triggered the problem on Wednesday, and the FAA has put in place mitigation measures as engineers complete development of software changes,” said the agency in a statement. “The FAA will fully analyze the event to resolve any underlying issues that contributed to the incident and prevent a reoccurrence.” The U.S. Air Force is still flying U-2s, but plans to retire them within the next few years. The U-2 was slated for retirement in 2006 in favor of the unmanned Global Hawk Block 30 system, before the Air Force pulled an about-face two years ago and declared the Global Hawk too expensive and insufficient for the needs of combatant commanders.

Submission + - NASA Space Network facing critical technical, cost challenges (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: The network used to secure connectivity between spacecraft operating in low Earth orbit, such as the International Space Station, Hubble Space Telescope and a variety of other commercial and government spacecraft, faces a number of technical and monetary challenges in the next few years.

Submission + - Nasty Security Flaw In OAuth, OpenID Discovered (cnet.com)

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: Notable security vulnerability has been discovered which impacts both OAuth and OpenID, which are software packages that provide a secure delegated access to websites. Wang Jing, a Ph.D student at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, discovered that the 'Covert Redirect' flaw can masquerade as a login popup based on an affected site's domain. Covert Redirect is based on a well-known exploit parameter. For example, someone clicking on a malicious phishing link will get a popup window in Facebook, asking them to authorize the app. Instead of using a fake domain name that's similar to trick users, the Covert Redirect flaw uses the real site address for authentication. If a user chooses to authorize the login, personal data will be released to the attacker instead of to the legitimate website. Wang did already warn a handful of tech giants about the vulnerability, but they mostly dodged the issue. In all honesty, it is not trivial to fix, and any effective remedies would negatively impact the user experience. Users who wish to avoid any potential loss of data should be careful about clicking links that immediately ask you to log in to Facebook or Google, and be aware of this redirection attack.

Submission + - What is 'computational thinking'? Your future job may depend on it (robohub.org)

Submitted by Hallie Siegel
Hallie Siegel writes: Behavioural economist Colin Lewis explains why skills such as the ability to recognize patterns, to filter out unnecessary information, or to break down a task into minute details so that we can clearly explain a process to another person or to a computer, will be critical to the next generation of workers.

Submission + - An MIT Dean's Defense of the Humanities

Submitted by AthanasiusKircher
AthanasiusKircher writes: Deborah Fitzgerald, a historian of science and dean of MIT's School of the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, speaks out in a Boston Globe column about the importance of the humanities, even as STEM fields increasingly dominate public discussion surrounding higher education. '[T]he world’s problems are never tidily confined to the laboratory or spreadsheet. From climate change to poverty to disease, the challenges of our age are unwaveringly human in nature and scale, and engineering and science issues are always embedded in broader human realities, from deeply felt cultural traditions to building codes to political tensions. So our students also need an in-depth understanding of human complexities — the political, cultural, and economic realities that shape our existence — as well as fluency in the powerful forms of thinking and creativity cultivated by the humanities, arts, and social sciences.' Fitzgerald goes on to quote a variety of STEM MIT graduates who have described the essential role the humanities played in their education, and she concludes with a striking juxtaposition of important skills perhaps reminscent of Robert Heinlein's famous description of an ideal human being: 'Whatever our calling, whether we are scientists, engineers, poets, public servants, or parents, we all live in a complex, and ever-changing world, and all of us deserve what’s in this toolbox: critical thinking skills; knowledge of the past and other cultures; an ability to work with and interpret numbers and statistics; access to the insights of great writers and artists; a willingness to experiment, to open up to change; and the ability to navigate ambiguity.' What other essential knowledge or skills should we add to this imaginary 'toolbox'?

Submission + - SpaceX Wins Injunction Against Russian Rocket Purchases

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: Reuters is reporting that Space Exploration Technologies, aka SpaceX, has won a Federal Claims Court temporary injunction against the purchase by United Launch Alliance of Russian-made rocket boosters, intended for use by the United States Air Force. In her ruling Judge Susan Braden prohibited ULA and the USAF, 'from making any purchases from or payment of money to [Russian firm] NPO Energomash.' United Launch Alliance is a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Submission + - 13th century multiverse unearthed (economist.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: Robert Grosseteste, an English scholar who lived from about 1175 to 1253, was the first thinker in northern Europe to try to develop unified physical laws to explain the origin and form of the geocentric medieval universe of heavens and Earth.
Tom McLeish, professor of physics and pro-vice-chancellor for research at Britain’s Durham University, and a multinational team of researchers found that Grosseteste’s physical laws were so rigorously defined that they could be re-expressed using modern mathematical and computing techniques—as the medieval scholar might have done if he had been able to use such methods. The thinking went that the translated equations could then be solved and the solutions explored.
The 'Ordered Universe Project' started six years ago and has now reported some of its findings. Only a small set of Grosseteste's parameters resulted in the “ordered” medieval universe he sought to explain, the researchers found; most resulted either in no spheres being created or a “disordered” cosmos of numerous spheres. Grosseteste, then, had created a medieval “multiverse”. De Luce suggests that the scholar realized his theories could result in universes with all manner of spheres, although he did not appear to realize the significance of this. A century later, philosophers Albert of Saxony and Nicole Oresme both considered the idea of multiple worlds and how they might exist simultaneously or in sequence.

Submission + - Scientists Solve Mystery of Quacking Noises in Antarctic Waters (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Since the 1960s, marine scientists have puzzled over the strange quacking sounds they often heard in the icy waters of Antarctica’s Southern Ocean. Submarine personnel first described the oddly repetitive call, which is one of the most common sounds in that ocean during the austral winter. They gave it the name “bio-duck.” The sound consists of a series of pulses with a 3.1-second interval between two series. The sound further stumped scientists when they discovered some years ago that it occurred each winter and spring simultaneously in the eastern Weddell Sea and off Western Australia. Now, cetacean researchers are declaring the mystery solved: Antarctic minke whales produce the calls. The discovery is already providing new insights into the behaviors of this little-known cetacean species, which is the primary target for Japanese “scientific” whale hunts.

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