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Comment CyberThis, CyberThat, CyberCommand (Score 5, Insightful) 61

Dear US military and federal contracting wanker-sphere,
I know you were 30 years late discovering this whole internet thing, so imagery and phrases from 1980s cyberpunk still sound super-duper-cutting-edge to you, but can you please stop using "cyber" as a catch-all for everything connected to computers? Thanks.

PS: When you leave a laptop full of citizen's private information on the bus, and a million people's social security numbers turn up on pastebin the next day, that's called "negligence" not "a cyberattack".
United States

The Military's Latest Enemy: Climate Change 163

Posted by samzenpus from the it's-getting-hot-in-here dept.
Lasrick writes A surprising report from the Pentagon last month places climate change squarely among the seemingly endless concerns of the US military. Although a Wall Street Journal editorial misrepresented the report in an editorial (subtitled 'Hagel wants to retool the military to stop glaciers from melting'), the report itself is straightforward and addresses practical military issues such as land management of bases and training facilities. "So, this plan is not really about mobilizing against melting glaciers; it's more like making sure our ships have viable facilities from which to launch bombs against ISIS. And the report doesn't just focus on home, though. It casts a wider eye towards how a changing climate will affect defense missions in the future."
Crime

Bounties vs. Extreme Internet Harassment 716

Posted by timothy from the incentives-work dept.
A user writes Brianna Wu, a game studio owner in Boston, found herself the target of numerous anonymous death threats last month, apparently the escalation of a campaign that started when she spoke up for women in gaming, and that intensified during the GamerGate train wreck. Rather than hide, she's offering an $11,000+ cash reward for anyone who helps put her attacker in jail, and she's reporting — albeit at a time many see GamerGate being in its death throes — that it's already having an effect. Wu is also setting up a legal fund to go after those promoting more extreme libels against her and others, with screenshots of a forged tweet purporting to be written by her still circulating around the Internet.
Electronic Frontier Foundation

The Fight Over the EFF's Secure Messaging Scoreboard 63

Posted by samzenpus from the making-the-grade dept.
blottsie writes The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)'s new Secure Messaging Scorecard is designed to answer one important question: Which apps and tools actually keep your messages secure and safe from prying eyes? The results have been mixed. In the midst of many positive reactions from technology companies and users, the scorecard stoked a wave of criticism from several prominent figures in the security industry, who deemed the effort inaccurate, misleading, and vague."
Cloud

LHC Data Generation Expected To Scale Up To 400PB a Year 99

Posted by Soulskill from the heading-toward-exascale dept.
DW100 writes: Cern has said it expects its experiments with the Large Hadron Collider to generate as much as 400PB of information per year by 2023 as the scope of its work continues to expand. Currently LHC experiments have generated an archive of 100PB and this is growing by 27PB per year. Cern infrastructure manager Tim Bell, speaking at the OpenStack Summit in Paris, said the organization is using OpenStack to underpin this huge data growth, hoping it can handle such vast reams of potentially universe-altering information.

Comment Re:Not a good week... (Score 1) 445

by Bruce Perens (#48298059) Attached to: Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo Crashes

One of the definitions I found was:

One who makes great sacrifices or suffers much in order to further a belief, cause, or principle.

I am sure that fits. While SpaceShip II is mainly intended for a non-exploration purpose, the program has resulted in some significant advances in rocketry and White Knight II has significant non-tourism use. These pilots have been involved in other space efforts, I remember the one who was injured from the Rotary Rocket test flights. There are lots of safer ways for these folks to make as much money as a test pilot is paid. They do what they do to advance our progress in aeronautics and space.
HP

Will HP's $200 Stream 11 Make People Forget About Chromebooks? 232

Posted by timothy from the depends-on-one's-needs dept.
theodp writes With an 11.6" screen, Windows 8.1, and free Office 365 for a year, the $199.99 solid-state HP Stream 11 laptop is positioned to make people think twice about Chromebooks (add $30 for the HP Stream 13). But will it? "The HP Stream 11 is clearly both inexpensive and a great value," writes Paul Thurrott. "At just $200, it's cheap, of course. But it also features a solid-feeling construction, a bright and fun form factor, a surprisingly high-quality typing experience and a wonderful screen. This isn't a bargain bin throwaway. The Stream 11 is something special." The HP Stream Family also includes the HP Stream 7, a $99.99 Windows 8.1 Tablet that includes the Office 365 deal. By the way, at the other end of the price spectrum, HP has introduced the Sprout, which Fast Company calls a bold and weird PC that's bursting at the seams with new ideas, from 3-D scanning to augmented reality. (We mentioned the Sprout a few days ago, too; HP seems to be making some interesting moves lately, looks like they're getting on the smartwatch bandwagon, too.) If you're looking at the Stream as a cheap platform for OSes other than Windows, be cautious: one of the reviews at the Amazon page linked describes trouble getting recent Linux distributions to install.
Privacy

Virginia Court: LEOs Can Force You To Provide Fingerprint To Unlock Your Phone 328

Posted by Soulskill from the now-where-am-i-going-to-store-my-incriminating-evidence dept.
schwit1 writes with news of a Circuit Court decision from Virginia where a judge has ruled that a criminal defendant cannot use Fifth Amendment protections to safeguard a phone that is locked using his or her fingerprint. According to Judge Steven C. Fucci, while a criminal defendant can't be compelled to hand over a passcode to police officers for the purpose of unlocking a cellular device, law enforcement officials can compel a defendant to give up a fingerprint. The Fifth Amendment states that "no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself," which protects memorized information like passwords and passcodes, but it does not extend to fingerprints in the eyes of the law, as speculated by Wired last year. Frucci said that "giving police a fingerprint is akin to providing a DNA or handwriting sample or an actual key, which the law permits. A passcode, though, requires the defendant to divulge knowledge, which the law protects against, according to Frucci's written opinion."
United States

Statisticians Study Who Was Helped Most By Obamacare 739

Posted by samzenpus from the looking-at-the-numbers dept.
HughPickens.com writes We know that about 10 million more people have insurance coverage this year as a result of the Affordable Care Act but until now it has been difficult to say much about who was getting that Obamacare coverage — where they live, their age, their income and other such details. Now Kevin Quealy and Margot Sanger-Katz report in the NYT that a new data set is providing a clearer picture of which people gained health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. The data is the output of a statistical model based on a large survey of adults and shows that the law has done something rather unusual in the American economy this century: It has pushed back against inequality, essentially redistributing income — in the form of health insurance or insurance subsidies — to many of the groups that have fared poorly over the last few decades. The biggest winners from the law include people between the ages of 18 and 34; blacks; Hispanics; and people who live in rural areas. The areas with the largest increases in the health insurance rate, for example, include rural Arkansas and Nevada; southern Texas; large swaths of New Mexico, Kentucky and West Virginia; and much of inland California and Oregon.

Despite many Republican voters' disdain for the Affordable Care Act, parts of the country that lean the most heavily Republican (according to 2012 presidential election results) showed significantly more insurance gains than places where voters lean strongly Democratic. That partly reflects underlying rates of insurance. In liberal places, like Massachusetts and Hawaii, previous state policies had made insurance coverage much more widespread, leaving less room for improvement. But the correlation also reflects trends in wealth and poverty. Many of the poorest and most rural states in the country tend to favor Republican politicians.
Security

Drupal Warns Users of Mass, Automated Attacks On Critical Flaw 76

Posted by timothy from the big-targets-get-hit-first dept.
Trailrunner7 writes The maintainers of the Drupal content management system are warning users that any site owners who haven't patched a critical vulnerability in Drupal Core disclosed earlier this month should consider their sites to be compromised. The vulnerability, which became public on Oct. 15, is a SQL injection flaw in a Drupal module that's designed specifically to help prevent SQL injection attacks. Shortly after the disclosure of the vulnerability, attackers began exploiting it using automated attacks. One of the factors that makes this vulnerability so problematic is that it allows an attacker to compromise a target site without needing an account and there may be no trace of the attack afterward.
Australia

Australian Gov't Tries To Force Telcos To Store User Metadata For 2 Years 58

Posted by timothy from the authority-problem dept.
AlbanX writes The Australian Government has introduced a bill that would require telecommunications carriers and service providers to retain the non-content data of Australian citizens for two years so it can be accessed — without a warrant — by local law enforcement agencies. Despite tabling the draft legislation into parliament, the bill doesn't actually specify the types of data the Government wants retained. The proposal has received a huge amount of criticism from the telco industry, other members of parliament and privacy groups. (The Sydney Morning Herald has some audio of discussion about the law.)

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