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China

NSA Says It Foiled Plot To Destroy US Economy Through Malware 698

Posted by timothy from the big-brother-says-he's-got-your-back dept.
mrspoonsi writes "Business Insider Reports: The National Security Agency described for the first time a cataclysmic cyber threat it claims to have stopped On Sunday's '60 Minutes.' Called a BIOS attack, the exploit would have ruined, or 'bricked,' computers across the country, causing untold damage to the national and even global economy. Even more shocking, CBS goes as far as to point a finger directly at China for the plot — 'While the NSA would not name the country behind it, cyber security experts briefed on the operation told us it was China.' The NSA says it closed this vulnerability by working with computer manufacturers. Debora Plunkett, director of cyber defense for the NSA: One of our analysts actually saw that the nation state had the intention to develop and to deliver — to actually use this capability — to destroy computers."
Bitcoin

Bitcoin Inventor Satoshi Nakamoto Could Actually Be Group From Europe 186

Posted by samzenpus from the we-are-legion dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto could be a group from Europe which has a strong footing in the financial sector. From the article: 'Josh Zerlan, the Chief Operating Officer of Butterfly Labs and a person familiar with the Bitcoin network, has said it is highly likely that Nakamoto could be a group of people working the financial sector. Speaking to IBTimes UK on the sidelines of a Global Bitcoin Conference in Bangalore, India, Zerlan said: "One of the prevailing theories, I think has credibility, is that it was some group of people from financial sector that created this. They released it and stepped back and let it go. So, Satoshi Nakamoto is a group of people, I think, is a reasonable possibility."'"

Comment Re:50% more free (speech), privacy (Score 4, Interesting) 495

by monk (#45544837) Attached to: I wish my cell phone was...

I'm holding out for a US deloyment of Firefox OS

You can buy an unlocked, GSM, ZTE Open Firefox OS phone for $80. I have one. Works fine with an H2O Wireless (cheap AT&T) sim. It's fun and an impressive first release. It handles calls, email, messaging and web browsing fine, but don't expect it to be a complete replacement for an Android phone yet. Still rough around the edges.
Government

Geeks For Monarchy: The Rise of the Neoreactionaries 730

Posted by samzenpus from the I-wish-to-subscribe-to-your-newsletter dept.
Third Position writes "Many of us yearn for a return to one golden age or another. But there's a community of bloggers taking the idea to an extreme: they want to turn the dial way back to the days before the French Revolution. Neoreactionaries believe that while technology and capitalism have advanced humanity over the past couple centuries, democracy has actually done more harm than good. They propose a return to old-fashioned gender roles, social order and monarchy."

Comment Re:Perjury? (Score 1) 199

by monk (#45466991) Attached to: Warner Bros. Admits To Issuing Bogus Takedowns

...
Isn't making a false statement under the DMCA essentially like perjury? And if it is, why isn't someone being charged criminally?
...
And don't tell me it's a civil matter, because the *AAs have gotten enforcement of this ramped up to a federal crime.
 

The only crime that matters is annoying someone with power.
Who with power was annoyed by WB lying?
See? No crime.
Science

Did Snakes Help Build the Primate Brain? 202

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the snakes-on-a-brain dept.
sciencehabit writes "A new study of the monkey brain suggests that primates are uniquely adapted to recognize the features of snakes and react in a flash. What's more, by selecting for traits that helped animals avoid them, the reptiles ultimately endowed us with forward-facing eyes, for example, and enlarged visual centers deep in our brains that are specialized for picking out specific features in the world around us, such as the general shape of a snake's body camouflaged among leaves.The results lend support to a controversial hypothesis: that primates as we know them would never have evolved without snakes."
Government

Feds Confiscate Investigative Reporter's Confidential Files During Raid 622

Posted by Soulskill from the freedom-of-the-press-void-where-prohibited dept.
schwit1 writes "Using a warrant to search for guns, Homeland security officers and Maryland police confiscated a journalist's confidential files. The reporter had written a series of articles critical of the TSA. It appears that the raid was specifically designed to get her files, which contain identifying information about her sources in the TSA. 'In particular, the files included notes that were used to expose how the Federal Air Marshal Service had lied to Congress about the number of airline flights there were actually protecting against another terrorist attack,' Hudson [the reporter] wrote in a summary about the raid provided to The Daily Caller. Recalling the experience during an interview this week, Hudson said: 'When they called and told me about it, I just about had a heart attack.' She said she asked Bosch [the investigator heading the raid] why they took the files. He responded that they needed to run them by TSA to make sure it was 'legitimate' for her to have them. '"Legitimate" for me to have my own notes?' she said incredulously on Wednesday. Asked how many sources she thinks may have been exposed, Hudson said: 'A lot. More than one. There were a lot of names in those files. This guy basically came in here and took my anonymous sources and turned them over — took my whistleblowers — and turned it over to the agency they were blowing the whistle on,' Hudson said. 'And these guys still work there.'"
Patents

Steve Jobs Video Kills Apple Patent In Germany 100

Posted by timothy from the bit-of-an-oopsie dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Today the Federal Patent Court of Germany shot down an Apple photo gallery bounce-back patent over which Cupertino was/is suing Samsung and Motorola. A panel of five judges found the patent invalid because the relevant patent application was filed only in June 2007 but Steve Jobs already demoed the feature in January 2007 (video). While this wouldn't matter in the U.S., it's a reason for a patent to be invalidated in Europe. For different reasons someone thought the iPhone presentation was a mistake. It now turns out that when Steve Jobs said "Boy have we patented it!" his company forgot that public disclosure, even by an inventor, must not take place before a European patent application is filed. But Apple can still sue companies over the Android photo gallery: in addition to this patent it owns a utility model, a special German intellectual property right that has a shorter term (10 years) and a six-month grace period, which is just enough to make sure that history-making Steve Jobs video won't count as prior art."
Medicine

Universal Flu Vaccine "Blueprint" Discovered 100

Posted by samzenpus from the common-cure dept.
minty3 writes "Scientists say they used the pandemic as a 'natural experiment' to discover how the body's immune system builds resistance to the flu. The research, published in the journal Nature Medicine, showed how certain immune cells helped some avoid the severe illness. 'Our findings suggest that by making the body produce more of this specific type of CD8 T cell, you can protect people against symptomatic illness,' said study leader Professor Ajit Lalvani, from the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London, in a statement. 'This provides the blueprint for developing a universal flu vaccine.'"
Privacy

NSA Broke Privacy Rules Thousands of Times Per Year, Audit Finds 312

Posted by samzenpus from the say-it-isn't-so dept.
NettiWelho writes "The Washington Post reports: The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents. Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by law and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls."
Books

Book Review: The Chinese Information War 139

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
benrothke writes "It's said that truth is stranger than fiction, as fiction has to make sense. Had The Chinese Information War: Espionage, Cyberwar, Communications Control and Related Threats to United States Interests been written as a spy thriller, it would have been a fascinating novel of international intrigue. But the book is far from a novel. It's a dense, well-researched overview of China's cold-war like cyberwar tactics against the US to regain its past historical glory and world dominance." Read below for the rest of Ben's review.

Comment Re:I'm on a boat (Score 1) 398

by monk (#43804611) Attached to: I am fairly prepared for a storm outage of ...

Is it a land yacht? Because tornadoes only occur on land.

They can -- and do -- cross bodies of water. They can even form there. I guess technically, if you're on a boat, you wouldn't get hit by a tornado -- because it's called a "waterspout" when it's over a lake, river, harbor, inlet, canal, bay, ocean, whatever. But it would still ruin your day.

Obligatory "Tornado Strikes Racing Yacht" video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhJS49_W6b4
Science

Physicist Proposes New Way To Think About Intelligence 233

Posted by samzenpus from the look-at-the-big-brain-on-brad dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A single equation grounded in basic physics principles could describe intelligence and stimulate new insights in fields as diverse as finance and robotics, according to new research, reports Inside Science. Recent work in cosmology has suggested that universes that produce more entropy (or disorder) over their lifetimes tend to have more favorable properties for the existence of intelligent beings such as ourselves. A new study (pdf) in the journal Physical Review Letters led by Harvard and MIT physicist Alex Wissner-Gross suggests that this tentative connection between entropy production and intelligence may in fact go far deeper. In the new study, Dr. Wissner-Gross shows that remarkably sophisticated human-like "cognitive" behaviors such as upright walking, tool use, and even social cooperation (video) spontaneously result from a newly identified thermodynamic process that maximizes entropy production over periods of time much shorter than universe lifetimes, suggesting a potential cosmology-inspired path towards general artificial intelligence."

Comment Re:Morning Workout to a Video and Treadmill Desk (Score 1) 635

by monk (#43186877) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How Do You Stay Fit At Work?

> Thanks for the no-duh moment, googling 'treadmill desk' was so obvious.

I actually gave you quite a few specifics. No links, because I didn't intend to promote any particular brand. Normally, I would be happy to give you more detail about the treadmill desk I've used for several years now and how well it's worked out and the issues raised and resolved at work, that sort of thing. Over that time, walking 8 hours a day had a small positive impact on my cardio fitness and a big positive impact on skeletal/muscle resilience and comfort. But your attitude actually makes me enjoy whatever small suffering your life may bring.

You really need to learn how to interact with humans who haven't been paid to pretend they like you.

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