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Comment What outage? (Score 1) 105

by rootmon (#43657127) Attached to: CenturyLink's Nationwide Outage Affects Millions

I have been working since 8 AM Eastern Time as a telecommuter and my CenturyLink DSL has been up without so much as an SSH session disconnecting all day. I live in SW Florida and my colleagues tell me they're having problems but perhaps the outage is not as widespread as publicized or it's affecting DNS and I use OpenDNS instead of my ISP's DNS for filtering sites I don't want my kids to browse such as adult content.

In my experience, Cable modems were far less stable than DSL. I had Comcast for a while and it was much worse. So please don't listen to the cable modem trolls. Overall DSL is a more reliable technology and I've been using Spring/Embarq/CenturyLink for 12 years now with very few hiccups which they did address quickly, except for a move where I used DirectWay/Hughes and then Comcast for a while. DirectWay/Hughes was good if you have no other options but satellite just has too much latency for some apps like voip or skype, and Comcast was terrible especially during peak hours.
Censorship

Submission + - Is Facebook (or G+ or MySpace) Popularity the Next American Idol? (facebook.com)

Submitted by
rootmon
rootmon writes: "Could the "Like" or "+" button replace the toll free numbers that everyone calls in to vote for on American Idol and other talent shows? Since it requires a person to be logged in, there isn't the same level of anonymity — you can ensure each identify can only vote one — so it's harder to "stuff the ballot box". It might also lead to further discussion in social circles via comments and shares. Do you /.'s out there think this is more or less democratic and fair or judging talent? Is thsi the end ::gasp:: for Simon? Will this lead more to fads and trends (a la memes) or will this lead to indie bands that the people really enjoy becoming more popular than the toy boy manufactured bands and repackaged beats that the RIAA has tried to force feed each new generation? Please share your thoughts my friends. Disclaimer: I included a link to my friend Sonny who is participating in such an experiment? I'll send a Free Cowboy Neal fanboy t-short to the guy who most accurately guesses (in the comments below) the final number of votes Sonny gets from all social media in the next 4 days, or if you're a local member of the /. meetup I'll buy ya a beer next meetup."
Facebook

Submission + - How Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook status updated shut down a website (networkworld.com)

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: At 10:31 p.m. on Sunday evening, Mark Zuckerberg updated his Facebook status. He was grilling a steak, and noticed that the iOS app he was using to monitor the meat's temperature had integrated Facebook to inform users' Friends what they were cooking. Having become excited by the discovery that the site he founded had organically popped up in a product he was using, he wanted to inform his 15.5 million subscribers about it.

The app, called iGrill, is run by a small Connecticut-based company called iDevices, the CEO of which told the Hartford Courant that Facebook integration was supposed to be a "quiet release." By 10:33 p.m. that night, a commenter replied to Zuckerberg's status, reporting that the website was down due to overwhelming traffic. He was telling the truth.

"We were caught totally off guard by Mark Zuckerberg’s post and the immediate influx of traffic," Chris Allen, the CEO of iDevices, said, according to the Courant. "We had quietly released this update for our users earlier this month and were waiting for it to gain traction, but this obviously gives us a huge head start."

According to the report, iDevices incorporated additional servers and bandwidth to stay online. Also, although he said he would welcome the opportunity if Zuckerberg was interested, Allen denied rumors that Zuckerberg was investing in the company and had simply used Facebook for his own profit.
Space

Submission + - Astronomers catch a star in the act of devouring a planet (io9.com)

Submitted by jamstar7
jamstar7 writes: Astronomers have witnessed the first evidence of a planet's destruction by its aging star as it expands into a red giant.

"A similar fate may await the inner planets in our solar system, when the Sun becomes a red giant and expands all the way out to Earth's orbit some five-billion years from now," said Alex Wolszczan, from Penn State, University, who led a team which found evidence of a missing planet having been devoured by its parent star. Wolszczan also is the discoverer of the first planet ever found outside our solar system.

The planet-eating culprit, a red-giant star named BD+48 740 is older than the Sun and now has a radius about eleven times bigger than our Sun.

The evidence the astronomers found was a massive planet in a surprising highly elliptical orbit around the star — indicating a missing planet — plus the star's wacky chemical composition.

5 billion years or so is a long way off, so it's likely none of us has to worry about it, but still, watching a star eating its own planets is not only cool in its own right, but gives you food for thought as to how to keep the human species going long after the Sun starts going off the main sequence into red gianthood. And of course, some more cash into astronomers' and physicists' hands now can give us a closer ballpark number of when this event is going to happen. It's all in the math...
Security

Submission + - After Hacker Exposes Hotel Lock Insecurity, Lock Firm Asks Hotels To Pay For Fix (forbes.com)

Submitted by Sparrowvsrevolution
Sparrowvsrevolution writes: In an update to an earlier story on Slashdot, hotel lock company Onity is now offering a hardware fix for the millions of hotel keycard locks that hacker Cody Brocious demonstrated at Black Hat were vulnerable to being opened by a sub-$50 Arduino device. Unfortunately, Onity wants the hotels who already bought the company's insecure product to pay for the fix.

Onity is actually offering two different mitigations: The first is a plug that blocks the port that Brocious used to gain access to the locks' data, as well as more-obscure Torx screws to prevent intruders from opening the lock's case and removing the plug. That band-aid style fix is free. A second, more rigorous fix requires changing the locks' circuit boards manually. In that case, Onity is offering "special pricing programs" for the new circuit boards customers need to secure their doors, and requiring them to also pay the shipping and labor costs.

Submission + - Single handed keyboard options for coding?

Submitted by dubbreak
dubbreak writes: I was recently injured in a car accident which will limit the use of hand for 6 weeks or so. I'll be taking a little time off but deadlines march on and I'll need to be (semi) productive after my initial recuperation. What is you experience with single handed keyboards or other input option that require one hand at most?

The current project is mainly C#, so I've need to be able to type brackets, semicolons and parentheses quick and painlessly.
Security

Submission + - Email Hacks Are the Key to Targeted Attacks (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: For attackers looking to take control of a victim's online presence, there is no better place to start than the target's email account. If you own the email, you own the person. That's never been more true than today, with so many social networks, services and shopping sites attached to users' email addresses. New research done by Lucas Lundgren of IOActive shows just how simple it can be to get control of a target's email account, and from there, everything else.

For many people, their personal email account is where they store their lives. Bank statements, bills, personal correspondence, work files, anything you can get in electronic form can often be found in a given target's email inbox. And a large number of email systems protect users' inboxes with nothing more complicated than a simple password. Gmail is one notable exception, with its two-factor authentication option that enables users to employ a mobile app to generate one-time codes that they use in addition to their passwords. But, that's an option and not mandatory, and for many users just looks like an annoyance on the way to getting their email.

Knowing all of this, and knowing a lot more about security than most people do, Lundgren decided to run a little research project to see how easily he could get into some volunteers' email accounts. Targeting friends and family members who had agreed to the experiment, Lundgren found that with just the data he gathered online from Facebook and other sites, he had little trouble getting into the inboxes. The best mechanism, in most cases, was the password-reset function on various sites and email services.
Facebook

Submission + - Federal judges given more leeway to discourage social media use by jurors (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Federal judges are getting new instructions on how to discourage juror use of social media via mobile or other computing devices during a trial. The Federal Judicial Conference Committee today issued a new model set of jury instructions federal judges can now issue use to deter jurors from using social media such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or YouTube to research or communicate about cases on which they serve. The new guidelines provide detailed explanations of the consequences of social media use during a trial, along with recommendations for repeated reminders of the ban on social media usage., the committee said in a release."
Privacy

Submission + - Deep Web, Deep Privacy (pirateparty.org.uk)

Submitted by
Ajehals
Ajehals writes: "Tell someone that you know how to go off-radar on the Internet and, as a rule, they won’t believe you. They imagine shadowy intelligence agencies have state-of-the-art technology and can see everything you do. Bkut they would be wrong.

No doubt they do have amazing technology, but it is perfectly possible to hide yourself on the Internet, to send and receive emails that nobody can intercept or read, to upload and download securely, to visit banned websites, blog anonymously, and do anything you want without being followed, profiled or analysed. Those that know how use the Deep Web...."
Blackberry

Submission + - RIM killing off BlackBerry enterprise servers due to BB10 incompatibility (bgr.com)

Submitted by brocket66
brocket66 writes: We received word from a trusted source that RIM will be stopping development on the current BlackBerry Enterprise Server platform. We were told RIM plans to end development with version 5.0.3 — and only security patches will be issued after that — but RIM has publicly announced at version 5.0.4. Once that version is released, or soon after, RIM’s existing BlackBerry Enterprise Servers will not receive further updates. And here is where things get tricky
Movies

Submission + - Glasses-Free 3D A Possibility for Commercial Theaters...May Even Be Cheaper (themoviepool.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Despite how many people feel on the issue, it doesn't look like 3D movies are going away any time soon. One of my key issues with the format (besides it not being used optimally) has to deal with the glasses you have to wear in order to watch. I wear normal glasses (shocking this day and age, I know) so every 3D movie forces me to put glasses over my glasses, resulting in an awkward and often uncomfortable experience. One research group thinks it can rectify that problem with glasses-free 3D display technology designed for commercial theaters.
Medicine

Submission + - Should Medical Apps Be Regulated? (itworld.com) 2

Submitted by maximus1
maximus1 writes: There's a tidal wave of medical-related apps coming to smartphones and tablets that will be used by doctors and patients alike. But how should the medical establishment deal with them? Neurologist Steven Levine, currently working on an app for stroke victims, thinks they should be treated like new medicines: developed using scientific peer review and subject to regulation by the government or professional associations. Obstetrician Kurian Thott, developer of an app called iRounds that helps communication between doctors, thinks they should be released quickly and the market should decide which take off. What do you think?

Submission + - Inside the Grum Botnet (krebsonsecurity.com)

Submitted by tsu doh nimh
tsu doh nimh writes: An examination of a control server seized in the recent takedown of the Grum spam botnet shows that the crime machine was far bigger than most experts had assumed. A PHP panel used to control the botnet shows that it had just shy of 200,000 systems sending spam when it was dismantled in mid-July. Researchers also found dozens of huge email lists, totaling more than 2.3 billion addresses, as well evidence it was used for phishing and malware attacks in addition to mailing pharmacy spam. Just prior to its takedown, Grum was responsible for sending about one in six spams worldwide.

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