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Submission + - Newest Stealth Fighter's Ground Attack Sensors are 10 Years Behind Older Jets (thedailybeast.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: America’s $400 billion, top-of-the-line aircraft can’t see the battlefield all that well. Which means it’s actually worse than its predecessors at fighting today’s wars.

The problem stems from the fact that the technology found on one of the stealth fighter’s primary air-to-ground sensors—its nose-mounted Electro-Optical Targeting System (EOTS)—is more than a decade old and hopelessly obsolete. The EOTS, which is similar in concept to a large high-resolution infrared and television camera, is used to visually identify and monitor ground targets. The system can also mark targets for laser-guided bombs.

Older jets currently in service with the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps can carry the latest generation of sensor pods, which are far more advanced than the EOTS sensor carried by the F-35.

The end result is that when the F-35 finally becomes operational after its myriad technical problems, cost overruns, and massive delays, in some ways it will be less capable than current fighters in the Pentagon’s inventory.

Submission + - Judge Rejects HP's Settlement of Shareholder Suit Over Autonomy (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Slashdot readers will remember that back in August, Autonomy's ex-CFO was trying to block the settlement between Hewlett-Packard and shareholders of a lawsuit centering on the 2012 botched Autonomy acquisition, saying that HP wanted to hide its 'own destruction of Autonomy's success after the acquisition.' On Friday last week the settlement hit another snag, when a federal judge rejected HP’s proposal for being too broad, potentially releasing the company from potential liabilities beyond Autonomy. 'The shareholders appear to be relinquishing a whole universe of potential claims regarding HP governance and practices with no factual predicates that overlap the Autonomy acquisition,' wrote Charles Breyer, judge for the U.S. District Court for Northern California.

Submission + - The Joys and Hype of Hadoop

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "Investors have poured over $2 billion into businesses built on Hadoop," writes the WSJ's Elizabeth Dwoskin, "including Hortonworks Inc., which went public last week [HDP], its rivals Cloudera Inc. and MapR Technologies, and a growing list of tiny startups. Yet companies that have tried to use Hadoop have met with frustration." Dwoskin adds that Hadoop vendors are responding with improvements and additions, but for now, "It can take a lot of work to combine data stored in legacy repositories with the data that’s stored in Hadoop. And while Hadoop can be much faster than traditional databases for some purposes, it often isn’t fast enough to respond to queries immediately or to work on incoming information in real time. Satisfying requirements for data security and governance also poses a challenge." So, how does this jibe with the experience of you Big Data practitioners?

Submission + - Manufacturer's Backdoor Found on Popular Chinese Android Smartphone

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: A popular Android smartphone sold primarily in China and Taiwan but also available worldwide, contains a backdoor from the manufacturer that is being used to push pop-up advertisements and install apps without users’ consent.

The Coolpad devices, however, are ripe for much more malicious abuse, researchers at Palo Alto Networks said today, especially after the discovery of a vulnerability in the backend management interface that exposed the backdoor’s control system.

Ryan Olson, intelligence director at Palo Alto, said the CoolReaper backdoor not only connects to a number of command and control servers, but is also capable of downloading, installing and activating any Android application without the user’s permission. It also sends phony over-the-air updates to devices that instead install applications without notifying the user. The backdoor can also be used to dial phone numbers, send SMS and MMS messages, and upload device and usage information to Coolpad.

Submission + - Deep neural networks are easily fooled: Is this Snowcrash for AI? (youtube.com) 1

Submitted by anguyen8
anguyen8 writes: Deep neural networks (DNNs) trained with Deep Learning have recently produced mind-blowing results in a variety of pattern-recognition tasks, most notably speech recognition, language translation, and recognizing objects in images, where they now perform at near-human levels. But do they see the same way we do?

Nope. Researchers recently found that it is easy to produce images that are completely unrecognizable to humans, but that DNNs classify with near-certainty as everyday objects. For example, DNNs look at TV static and declare with 99.99% confidence it is a school bus. An evolutionary algorithm produced the synthetic images by generating pictures and selecting for those that a DNN believed to be an object (i.e. “survival of the school-bus-iest”). The resulting computer-generated images look like modern, abstract art. The pictures also help reveal what DNNs learn to care about when recognizing objects (e.g. a school bus is alternating yellow and black lines, but does not need to have a windshield or wheels), shedding light into the inner workings of these DNN black boxes.

Submission + - Apple and Samsung Already Working On A9 Processor (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: According to a report in Korean IT Times, Samsung Electronics has begun production of the A9 processor, the next generation ARM-based CPU for iPhone and iPad. Korea IT Times says Samsung has production lines capable of FinFET process production (a cutting-edge design for semiconductors that many other manufacturers, including AMD, IBM and TSMC, are adopting) in Austin, Texas and Giheung, Korea, but production is only taking place in Austin. Samsung invested $3.9 billion in that plant specifically to make chips for Apple. So now Apple can say its CPU is 'Made in America'.

Submission + - Govt Docs Reveal Canadian Telcos Promise Surveillance Ready Networks (michaelgeist.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Michael Geist reports that Canadian telecom and Internet providers have tried to convince the government that they will voluntarily build surveillance capabilities into their networks. Hoping to avoid legislative requirements, the providers argue that "the telecommunications market will soon shift to a point where interception capability will simply become a standard component of available equipment, and that technical changes in the way communications actually travel on communications networks will make it even easier to intercept communications."

Submission + - Neil deGrasse Tyson causes social media firestorm with tweet on aliens & hum (examiner.com)

Submitted by MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: Twitchy, a site that monitors interesting traffic on Twitter, took note on Sunday of a tweet by the celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson over how aliens might regard humans. He tweeted, “Aliens, seeing Humans kill over land, politics, religion, & skin color, would surely ask, ‘What the f*%k is wrong with you?’” As far as can be determined, Tyson is not personally in contact with aliens and does not have any basis to suggest that they are appalled at human behavior or that they used salty language. However, his views on morally superior aliens looking down on humans seem to track with those of C.S. Lewis, a Christian apologist.

Submission + - Eric Schmidt: To Avoid NSA Spying, Keep Your Data In Google's Services (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: Google Chairman Eric Schmidt told a conference on surveillance at the Cato Institute that Edward Snowden's revelations on NSA spying shocked the company's engineers — who then immediately started working on making the company's servers and services more secure. Now, after a year and a half of work, Schmidt says that Google's services are the safest place to store your sensistive data.

Submission + - Fake GSM Towers Used to Spy on Norwegian Government

Submitted by Novus
Novus writes: Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten has uncovered fake GSM base stations in central Oslo capable of eavesdropping on calls, collecting information on phones and even installing spyware in an area containing several important Norwegian state institutions, including Stortinget (the Norwegian parliament), the Prime Minister's office and the Ministry of Defence. It is still unclear who has set up the IMSI catchers that were found, but the cost and limited availability of the equipment involved suggests a major intelligence operation.

Submission + - Marines swap Microsoft for Linux OS on Northrop Grumman radar .. (capitalgazette.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Department of Defense announced a $10.2 million contract modification Wednesday to change the operator command and control software on its G/ATOR radar system Microsoft Windows XP to a Defense Information Systems Agency compliant Linux OS.

Submission + - Fury at Airbus after it hints the A380 may be mothballed (independent.co.uk) 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Airbus plunged deeper into crisis yesterday as customers reacted with fury to its suggestion that it may stop producing the fabled A380 super-jumbo in 2018 because of poor sales. The prospect of the European plane-maker, which employs thousands of workers in the UK, mothballing the giant passenger airliner sent shockwaves through the aviation industry yesterday and triggered a major fall in the company’s share price.

Sales of the A380 have been sluggish because of a limit to the number of routes where a 500-seater is needed. No airline has ordered A380s at all this year, while in July, the Japanese carrier Skymark Airlines cancelled the six it had ordered.

Chief financial officer Harald Wilhelm started the speculation frenzy when reports emerged that he had told investors Airbus might have to discontinue the plane unless it can invest in improvements to make it more attractive to customers. Although analysts and rivals have suggested it for some time, it was the first time the manufacturer had talked publicly about the humiliating possibility.

He said the A380 manufacturing programme would break even next year but not into 2018 without new engine types. That decision on the engine has to be made soon, because it would normally take about four years – and $2bn – to develop.

Submission + - HR 4681, Section 309: Hello NSA, Goodbye America. (nationaljournal.com)

Submitted by TheRealHocusLocus
TheRealHocusLocus writes: Stick a fork in the Republic, it's done. Hidden in the final version of the Intelligence Authorization Act HR 4681, passed by contemptuous "voice vote", is a section that, for the first time, codifies and implicitly authorizes the collection of communications (not just 'metadata') of Americans.

It seems that the NSA's backbone voice and Internet tap apparatus is chock-full of "Incidental Communications" — that is, "any nonpublic telephone or electronic communication acquired without the consent of a person who is a party to the communication, including communications in electronic storage" that has been obtained by "any intelligence collection activity not otherwise authorized by court order".

The gist of the legislation is, they are acknowledging the presence of this (illegal and unconstitutional) activity in the context of 'limiting' retention of these communications to five years. After five years a troop of Congressionally Authorized Boy Scouts will tour NSA facilities and supervise the removal of your telephone calls and email. And you know they will. It is time for us to completely dismantle, de-fund, de-construct and defame the NSA for what it has done, and smite Section 309, which says it's perfectly all right for Americans to spy on Americans 'for five years'. Or as we IT folks know, forever.

Submission + - California sues Uber over practices (usatoday.com)

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: California prosecutors on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against Uber over the ridesharing company's background checks and other allegations, adding to the popular startup's worldwide legal woes.

San Francisco County District Attorney George Gascon, meanwhile, said Uber competitor Lyft agreed to pay $500,000 and change some of its business practices to settle its own lawsuit.

Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey partnered with Gascon in a probe of the nascent ridesharing industry. A third company — Sidecar — is still under investigation and could face a lawsuit of its own if it can't reach an agreement with prosecutors.

Uber faces similar legal issues elsewhere as it tries to expand in cities, states and countries around the world.

The companies have popular smartphone apps that allow passengers to order rides in privately driven cars instead of taxis. All three are based in San Francisco.

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