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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 92 declined, 33 accepted (125 total, 26.40% accepted)

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Politics

Submission + - Wikileaks stops publishing classified files (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "Wikileaks has had to cease publishing classified files due to what the
organization calls a "blockade by US-based finance companies" that, according
to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has "destroyed 95% of our revenue." Assange
also opined that "A handful of US finance companies cannot be allowed to decide
how the whole world votes with its pocket." According to Assange the group was
taking "pre-litigation action" against the financial blockade in Iceland,
Denmark, the UK, Brussels, the United States and Australia. They have also
filed an anti-trust complaint with the European Commission."

Submission + - DA critiques Gizmodo emails (eff.org) 1

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "After the police broke in to a Gizmodo editor’s home and collected emails from computers found there as part of the investigation of the stolen 2010 iPhone prototype, the DA petitioned the court to withdraw the search warrant, because it violated a law intended to protect journalists. Nevertheless, the DA, rather than apologize for the illegal search and seizure, issued a critique of the seized emails, commenting that they were ‘juvenile’ and that ‘It was obvious that they were angry with the company about not being invited to [...] some big Apple event [...] this is like 15-year-old children talking [...] They talked about having Apple right where they wanted them and they were really going to show them.'"

Submission + - Chinese Research Journals Plagued by Plagiarism (npr.org)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "When a Chinese research journal became the first in China to be
subjected to CrossCheck text analysis software, it was found to be chock
full of plagiarised articles. 31 percent of papers were discovered to
be characterised by unreasonable copying and plagiarism overall, with
40% in computer science and life sciences. Part of the explanation is
thought to lie in certain aspects of Chinese culture, which emphasizes
rote memorization and repetition and regards the copying a teacher's
work as a learning technique. Also, the rigid hierarchical nature of
Chinese academic beauracracies means that an accusation of misconduct
directed at a high-ranking researcher by an underling will not be taken
seriously."
Politics

Submission + - Prosecuted For Critical Twittering (eff.org)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation is trying to urge a
federal court to block what they claim is the
unconstitutional use of the federal anti-stalking law to
prosecute a man for posting criticism of a public figure to
Twitter. The law was orginally targeted against crossing
state lines for the purpose of stalking, but was modified in
2005 to make the 'intentional infliction of emotional
distress' by the use of 'any interactive computer service' a
crime. The prosecution’s theory in this case is that using
Twitter to criticize a public figure can be a criminal act
if the person’s feelings are hurt."

Submission + - The Autistic Mouse (newswise.com)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "Some autistic children are known to possess a mutation in a particular gene. Scientists have genetically engineered a mouse to have the same mutation, and claim that it exhibits autistic behaviors, as well as abnormal brain chemistry. In social interaction experiments, the mouse either avoided normal interactions or became inappropriately aggressive, behaviors that the Johns Hopkins researchers claim is similar to social behavior in autistic humans."

Submission + - Arrested for Possessing Information (nti.org) 1

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "A citizen of the UK, of Pakistani origin, has been arrested for possessing a recipe for the production of ricin, an extremely dangerous poison made from castor beans. He has also been charged with possessing some bomb-making instructions. He has not been accused of actually doing or having anything besides information. Some claim that you can find a ricin recipe on the web; others that the recipes are bogus. Either way, think twice about indulging your curiosity if you live in Britain."
Google

Submission + - Ex-Google Engineer Blasts Google's Technology (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "Dhanji R. Prasanna, an engineer who recently resigned from Google, describes Google's famous back-end infrastructure as a collection of obsolete technologies, designed 10 years ago for building search engines and crawlers. He blasts MapReduce and its closed-source friends as 'ancient, creaking dinosaurs', compared with outside open source projects like MessagePack, JSON, and Hadoop. He also criticizes Google's coding culture, which has become unfriendly to hacker types due to the company's enormous size."
Security

Submission + - RSA Offers to Replace 40 Million SecurID Tokens (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "RSA has finally admitted that its SecureID tokens were duplicated by criminals who broke into their computers and gained access to the 'seed records'. They have offered to replace the tokens used by their customers, although they suggest that the attack was targeted only at military information (Lockheed Martin), and the attackers have shown no interest in financial or personal data. Replacing tokens for a large organization is very disruptive, and, according to an RSA manager, 'there is no guarantee that it won't happen again.'"

Submission + - Cooling Computers by Erasing Data (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "A fundamental result of information theory and thermodynamics is that computation generates heat, as your knees may have noticed. Further, it has been proven that, in a classical computer, deleting data necessarily produces a small amount of waste heat. A new theoretical result shows that in a quantum computer deleting data actually cools the device under the right circumstances. The result can be checked by experiment and has possible practical applications; it leads as well to a new understanding of entropy in thermodynamics and information theory."
Science

Submission + - The Electron is a Sphere (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "In a 10 year long experiment, scientists at Imperial College have made the most precise measurement so far of the shape of the electron. It's round. So round, in fact, that if the electron were enlarged to the size of the solar system, its shape would diverge from a perfect sphere less than the width of a human hair. The experiment continues in the search for even greater precision. There are implications for understanding processes in the early universe, namely the mysterious fate of the antimatter."
Games

Submission + - Video Games Outclassing Movies? (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "Charlie Brooker laments the embarrassing offerings available at the movie theater and points out that recent game titles are not only technically amazing, but better at telling a story and appealing to the intelligent person looking for entertainment. All related in his inimitable foaming-at-the-mouth style."

Submission + - New Technology for Lifelike Games (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "Rockstar's latest game, L.A. Noire, can 'compete head-on with film and television' according to its 'writer/director' Brendan McNamara. It employs 32 HD cameras arranged like a birdcage around each actor, capturing 1,000 frames per second to make character's faces and emotions more lifelike. The creator believes that this will make video games become 'the pre-eminent entertainment form for the 21st century.'"

Submission + - U.S. Preserves Smallpox for Defense (nti.org)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "The U.S. is preserving the last remaining known strains of smallpox in case they are needed to develop biowarfare 'countermeasures' and as a hedge against possible outbreaks in a population with no natural immunity. 451 specimens are stored in Atlanta at the Centers for Disease Control, and 120 strains at the Russian Vector laboratory in Siberia. Meanwhile, the government has contracted to pay almost $3 billion to procure 14 million smallpox vaccination doses."
Privacy

Submission + - FBI Tracking Device Teardown (ifixit.com)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "According to a federal court, the FBI has the right to attach a GPS tracking device to your car without a warrant, and may even sneak on to your driveway to do so. But what's inside the devices? iFixit has a detailed teardown, showing hand-soldered circuit boards powered by a stack of D-cells rated for over a decade of service."
Cloud

Submission + - Dropbox Lied About Security (electronista.com)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "Dropbox faces a possible FTC investigation because of misleading statements it has made about the privacy and security of its 25 million users' files. The cloud storage company previously claimed that it was impossible for its employees to access file contents, but in fact, as the encryption keys are in their possession, this is false. The complaint points out that their false security claims gave Dropbox a competitive advantage over other firms offering similar services who actually did provide secure encryption."

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