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Submission + - The Pirate Bay Experiences Downtime (zeropaid.com)

Submitted by Dangerous_Minds
Dangerous_Minds writes: It appears that BitTorrent website The Pirate Bay is experiencing some downtime. ZeroPaid notes that users who attempt to access the site see a "Could not connect to caching server 00" error message. Drew Wilson says that it's unlikely that a raid has occurred and that it couldn't be a DNS problem as users can access enough of the site to receive the error message. Still, details are sparse as to the precise problem of the site at this point in time.

Submission + - Patent trolls finally bite the wrong organization (realtor.org)

Submitted by Beeftopia
Beeftopia writes: Patent trolls have long been a thorn in the side of the tech industry. No serious effort has taken place in Washington DC to rein them in. Until now. It seems that a patent troll has decided to lock horns with the 5th largest all time contributor to federal politicians, the National Association of Realtors. It is this unfortunate choice of target that has encouraged federal politicians to act. From the article:

Several lawmakers have introduced legislation to curb patent abuses, and President Obama has also moved on the administrative front, but comprehensive legislation is really what’s required to curb the practice. And that’s what NAR is calling for in the letter with its partners.
Books

Book Review: Present Yourself - Using SlideShare To Grow Your Business 40

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
benrothke writes "SlideShareis a free web 2.0 based slide hosting service where users can upload presentation-based files. Launched in October 2006, it's considered to be similar to YouTube, but for slideshows. It was originally meant to be used for businesses to share slides among employees more easily, but it has since expanded to also become a host of a large number of slides which are uploaded merely to entertain. SlideShare gets an estimated 58 million unique visitors a month and has about 16 million registered users. With such a strong user base, authors Kit Seeborg and Andrea Meyer write in Present Yourself: Using SlideShare to Grow Your Business how SlideShare users can use the site (including other similar collaborative sites such as Prezi and Scribd) to present their story to a worldwide audience. Given that visual presentations are the new language of business, understanding how to maximize their potential can be a valuable asset for the entrepreneur, job seeker and everyone in between." Read below for the rest of Ben's review.
Media

Sony & Panasonic Plan Next-Gen 300 GB Optical Discs By the End of 2015 289

Posted by samzenpus from the building-it-better dept.
SmartAboutThings writes "If you think optical discs are dead and are a sign of the past, maybe you need to take this into consideration – Sony and Panasonic have just announced in Tokyo that they have signed a basic agreement with the objective of developing the next-generation optical discs that are said to have a recording capacity of at least 300GB. The two companies have even set a deadline for this ambitious project: before the end of 2015."

Submission + - Hijacking Ships and Planes with Cheap GPS Spoofers

Submitted by Orome1
Orome1 writes: After demonstrating a successful GPS spoofing attack against a drone (UAV — unmanned aerial vehicle) last June, Cockrell School of Engineering Assistant Professor Todd Humphreys and his student research team have now proved that a GPS flaw and a few relatively cheap tools can be used to hijacks both ships and planes. With a laptop, an antenna, and a custom GPS spoofer that cost only $3,000 to build, the team managed to create a false GPS signal that the crew unknowingly accepted as the correct one and used it for navigation, and this resulted in the ship veering way off the original course. In the meantime, The Economist has published a timely and interesting piece about GPS jamming, which supports Humphreys' claims about how simple and trivial is to disrupt the workings of satellite positioning systems.
Businesses

Why Bob Mansfield Was Cut From Apple's Executive Team 100

Posted by samzenpus from the see-you-later dept.
colinneagle writes "AllThingsD reported that Bob Mansfield, Apple's Senior Vice President of Technologies, has disappeared from the executive management team at Apple. But it was only last October when Mansfield was widely reported to have been convinced to return from retirement by Apple CEO Tim Cook for a two-year stint. His return to the company may have been cut short on account of Apple's continued reliance on Samsung for its mobile SOC processors, for which Apple paid an estimated $10 billion to Samsung last year. Mansfield's group was to have played a major role in this, and apparently it has not been able effect this change."

Submission + - Cisco to Acquire Sourcefire for $2.7 Billion

Submitted by Orome1
Orome1 writes: Cisco will acquire Sourcefire, a provider of intelligent cybersecurity solutions. Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay $76 per share in cash in exchange for each share of Sourcefire and assume outstanding equity awards for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $2.7 billion, including retention-based incentives. The acquisition has been approved by the board of directors of each company. Once the transaction closes, Cisco will include Sourcefire into its guidance going forward. Prior to the close, Cisco and Sourcefire will continue to operate as separate companies.

Submission + - Study Connects Cybercrime to Job Loss

Submitted by Orome1
Orome1 writes: After years of guesswork and innumerable attempts to quantify the costly effects of cybercrime on the U.S. and world economies, McAfee engaged the Center for Strategic and International Studies to build an economic model and methodology to accurately estimate these losses, which can be extended worldwide. The report posits a $100 billion annual loss to the U.S. economy and as many as 508,000 U.S. jobs lost as a result of malicious cyber activity. To help measure the real loss from cyber attacks, CSIS enlisted economists, intellectual property experts and security researchers to develop the report. The general accepted range for cybercrime launch was between $100 billion and $500 billion to the global economy.

Submission + - Dissecting Operation Troy: Cyberespionage in South Korea

Submitted by Orome1
Orome1 writes: While reports on the Dark Seoul and cyberattacks against South Korea have been rampant, no one has yet discovered the true mission behind the attacks. Research conducted by the McAfee Labs teams show a much greater breadth to these attacks, how they operate and how they evade defenses. This is the first time a connection between a series of cyber-events has been discovered.

Submission + - 2.5 Million Californians Had Personal Info Compromised

Submitted by Orome1
Orome1 writes: Attorney General Kamala D. Harris released the first report detailing the 131 data breaches reported to her office in 2012, showing that 2.5 million Californians had personal information put at risk through an electronic data breach. The average (mean) breach incident involved the information of 22,500 individuals. The median breach size was 2,500 affected individuals, with five breaches of 100,000 or more individuals’ personal information. More than half of the breaches (55 percent) were the result of intentional intrusions by outsiders or by unauthorized insiders. The other 45 percent were largely the result of failures to adopt or carry out appropriate security measures.

Submission + - Cybercrime Market Is All About Cybercrime-as-a-Service

Submitted by Orome1
Orome1 writes: The cybercrime market is constantly evolving, and it is currently full of knowledgeable individuals who have focused on their core competencies to offer services to those who have not the skills, patience or time to make what they want or need for their criminal exploits. Research-as-a-Service offerings are more gray market than black. The offers are made by commercial companies that find and sell zero-day vulnerabilities to buyers of their choosing (often governments), and by brokers who help vulnerability sellers to get as much money as possible for their knowledge, and help buyers to remain anonymous and acquire information about vulnerabilities they might not otherwise be able to get their hands on. Prices range from $5,000 and more for Adobe Reader zero day vulnerabilities, to $100,000 or even $250,000 for iOS ones.

Submission + - It takes 10 hours to identify a security breach

Submitted by Orome1
Orome1 writes: Businesses are vulnerable to security breaches due to their inability to properly analyze or store big data, according to McAfee. The ability to detect data breaches within minutes is critical in preventing data loss, yet only 35 percent of firms stated that they have the ability to do this. In fact, more than a fifth (22 percent) said they would need a day to identify a breach, and five percent said this process would take up to a week. On average, organizations reported that it takes 10 hours for a security breach to be recognized. The study of 855 incidents showed that 63 percent took weeks or months to be discovered. The data was taken from these organizations within seconds or minutes in almost half (46 percent) of the cases.
The Almighty Buck

Demo Europe Hits Russia — and Start-ups Have To Beg 26

Posted by timothy from the just-want-to-borrow-a-cup-of-money dept.
judgecorp writes "The Demo VC funding event has hit Europe (Moscow, specifically), and it is very clear that start-ups in Europe have to compete hard for any venture capital. In its 20 year history in Silicon Valley, Demo is famous for highlighting subsequent success stories such as Netscape, Skype and Salesforce.com. Demo Europe began with a venture capitalist waxing lyrical on how the shortage of funds means he gets plenty of choice where to put his money. Promising tech start-ups have a series of hoops to jump through including brief pitches. The most promising candidates so far include a Russian social VoIP network and a shared whiteboard."
Sony

Sony's PS4 To Have Less Stringent DRM Than Microsoft's Xbox One 509

Posted by timothy from the waiting-for-it-to-hit-goodwill dept.
Tackhead writes "E3 is turning into Bizarro World this year. Sony has not only promised that the PS4 will support used games without an online connection, they trolled the Xbox folks hard with this Official PlayStation Used Game Instructional Video. Compounding the silliness, and hot on the heels of the political firestorm surrounding Donglegate, Microsoft went for rape jokes during their Xbox presentation." Similarly, onyxruby writes "The Verge covers how Sony has crafted policies explicitly to make the PS4 consumer friendly to the public. They make the case that the PS4 will be superior in nearly every way [to the Xbox Next] by not requiring an Internet connection, not restricting used games, supporting indie developers and selling for $100 cheaper than the Xbox One." And if you're interested in the guts rather than the policies or the politics, Hot Hardware has a comparison of the internals of both of these new offerings.

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