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Education

Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook Press WA For $40M For New UW CS Building 102

Posted by timothy from the why-not-build-10,000-garages? dept.
theodp (442580) writes "Nice computer industry you got there. Hate to see something bad happen to it." That's the gist of a letter sent by Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Code.org, and other tech giants earlier this week asking the WA State Legislature to approve $40M in capital spending to help fund a new $110M University of Washington computer science building ($70M will be raised privately). "As representatives of companies and businesses that rely on a ready supply of high quality computer science graduates," wrote the letter's 23 signatories, "we believe it is critical for the State to invest in this sector in a way that ensures its vibrancy and growth. Our vision is for Washington to continue to lead the way in technology and computer science, but we must keep pace with the vast demand." The UW Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering profusely thanked tech leaders for pressing for a new building, which UW explained "will accommodate a doubling of our enrollment." Coincidentally, the corporate full-press came not long after the ACM Education Council Diversity Taskforce laid out plans "to get companies to press universities to use more resources to create more seats in CS classes" to address what it called "the desperate gap between the rising demand for CS education and the too-few seats available.

Submission + - Google Taking Over New TLDs (sealedabstract.com)

Submitted by bobo the hobo
bobo the hobo writes: In the corner of the internet where people care about DNS, there is a bit of an uproar at Google's application for over a hundred new top-level domains, including .dev, .lol, .app, .blog, .cloud and .search. Their application includes statements such as:
By contrast, our application for the .blog TLD describes a new way of automatically linking new second level domains to blogs on our Blogger platform – this approach eliminates the need for any technical configuration on the part of the user and thus makes the domain name more user friendly.

And also limiting usage of .dev to Google only:
Second-level domain names within the proposed gTLD are intended for registration and use by Google only, and domain names under the new gTLD will not be available to the general public for purchase, sale, or registration. As such, Charleston Road Registry intends to apply for an exemption to the ICANN Registry Operator Code of Conduct as Google is intended to be the sole registrar and registrant.
Communications

Vandalism In Arizona Shuts Down Internet and Phone Service 133

Posted by Soulskill from the can't-stop-the-signal-unless-you-have-wiresnips dept.
schwit1 sends news that vandalism on the outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona knocked out internet and telephone service for hours across much of the state's northern region. ATMs, credit card functionality, and emergency services were all affected. Officers are trying to determine who cut through a pipe containing a fiber-optic cable on the outskirts of the city, leading to the outage on Wednesday, which hit northern Phoenix and large parts of the north of Arizona. ... The four-inch-thick pipe, which carries a CenturyLink cable, was found sliced through in an area where it is exposed to the elements as it crosses a desert wash about a quarter of a mile from a residential area, Holmes said. Police said the investigation is in its early stages, but that the pipe may have been vandalized by thieves looking to steal metal.
Portables

Lenovo Saying Goodbye To Bloatware 210

Posted by Soulskill from the time-to-start-demanding-other-vendors-follow-suit dept.
An anonymous reader writes: "Lenovo today announced that it has had enough of bloatware. The world's largest PC vendor says that by the time Windows 10 comes out, it will get rid of bloatware from its computer lineups. The announcement comes a week after the company was caught for shipping Superfish adware with its computers. The Chinese PC manufacturer has since released a public apology, Superfish removal tool, and instructions to help out users. At the sidelines, the company also announced that it is giving away 6-month free subscription to McAfee LiveSafe for all Superfish-affected users.

Submission + - Pharming Attack Targets Home Router DNS Settings (threatpost.com)

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: Pharming attacks are generally network-based intrusions where the ultimate goal is to redirect a victim’s web traffic to a hacker-controlled webserver, generally through a malicious modification of DNS settings. Some of these attacks, however, are starting to move to the web and have their beginnings with a spam or phishing email.

Proofpoint yesterday reported on the latest iteration of this attack, also based in Brazil. The campaign was carried out during a five-week period starting in December when Proofpoint spotted phishing messages, fewer than 100, sent to customers of one of the country’s largest telecommunications companies.

Submission + - EFF Unearths Evidence of Possible Superfish-style Attacks in the Wild (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It's starting to look like Superfish and other software containing the same HTTPS-breaking code library may have posed more than a merely theoretical danger to Internet users. For the first time, researchers have uncovered evidence suggesting the critical weakness may have been exploited against real people visiting real sites, including Gmail, Amazon, eBay, Twitter, and Gpg4Win.org, to name just a few.

In a blog post published Wednesday, Researchers Joseph Bonneau and Jeremy Gillula wrote:

        We searched the Decentralized SSL Observatory for examples of certificates that Komodia should have rejected, but which it ended up causing browsers to accept, and found over 1600 entries. Affected domains included sensitive websites like Google (including mail.google.com, accounts.google.com, and checkout.google.com), Yahoo (including login.yahoo.com), Bing, Windows Live Mail, Amazon, eBay (including checkout.payments.ebay.com), Twitter, Netflix, Mozilla’s Add-Ons website, www.gpg4win.org, several banking websites (including mint.com and domains from HSBC and Wells Fargo), several insurance websites, the Decentralized SSL Observatory itself, and even superfish.com.

        While it’s likely that some of these domains had legitimately invalid certificates (due to configuration errors or other routine issues), it seems unlikely that all of them did. Thus it’s possible that Komodia’s software enabled real MitM attacks which gave attackers access to people’s email, search histories, social media accounts, e-commerce accounts, bank accounts, and even the ability to install malicious software that could permanently compromise a user’s browser or read their encryption keys.

Submission + - How Google avoids downtime

Submitted by Brandon Butler
Brandon Butler writes: Google has an innovative way of attempting to keep its services — like its cloud platform and apps — up and running as much as possible. The man in charge of it is Ben Trenyor, who runs Google's Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) team.

Each Google product has a service level agreement (SLA) that dictates how much downtime the product can have in a given month or year. Take 99.9% uptime, for example: That allows for 43 minutes of downtime per month, or about 8 hours and 40 minutes per year. That 8 hours and 40 minutes is what is referred to at Google as an “error budget.”

Google product managers don’t have to be perfect — they just have to be better than their SLA guarantee. So each product team at Google has a “budget” of errors it can make.
If the product adheres to the SLA’s uptime promise, then the product team is allowed to launch new features. If the product is outside of its SLA, then no new features are allowed to be rolled out until the reliability improves.

In a traditional site reliability model there is a fundamental disconnect between site reliability engineers (SREs) and the product managers. Product managers want to keep adding services to their offerings, but the SREs don’t like changes because that opens the door to more potential problems.

This “error budget” model addresses that issue by uniting the priorities of the SREs and product teams. The product developers want to add more features, so they architect reliable systems. It seems to work; according to tracking company CloudHamrony, Google had one of the most reliable IaaS clouds among the major vendors in 2014.
Patents

Patent Trolls On the Run But Not Vanquished Yet 56

Posted by samzenpus from the don't-forget-the-fire dept.
snydeq writes Strong legislation that will weaken the ability of the trolls to shake down innovators is likely to pass Congress, but more should be done, writes InfoWorld's Bill Snyder. "The Innovation Act isn't an ideal fix for the program patent system. But provisions in the proposed law, like one that will make trolls pay legal costs if their claims are rejected, will remove a good deal of the risk that smaller companies face when they decide to resist a spurious lawsuit," Snyder writes. That said, "You'd have to be wildly optimistic to think that software patents will be abolished. Although the EFF's proposals call for the idea to be studied, [EFF attorney Daniel] Nazer doesn't expect it to happen; he instead advocates several reforms not contained in the Innovation Act."

Submission + - How I Got My Photos From The Department of Homeland Security

Submitted by gallifreyan99
gallifreyan99 writes: Like every foreigner who flies into the US (and an increasing number of Americans, too) Tor Project contributor Runa Sandvik is tracked by Homeland Security with a series of photos taken at the border. When she filed an FOIA request to get hold of those images, what emerged was a weird, Big Brotherish take on time lapse photography.
Facebook

Facebook's Colonies 53

Posted by Soulskill from the sun-always-sets-on-the-facebook-empire dept.
sarahnaomi writes: Facebook this week released a major report on global internet access, as part of the company's Internet.org campaign, which aims to bring cheap internet to new markets in partnership with seven mobile companies. Facebook says 1.39 billion people used its product in December 2014, and it's natural for the company to try to corral the other four-fifths of the planet. But aside from ideals and growth markets, the report highlights a tension inherent to the question of access: When Facebook sets sail to disconnected markets, what version of the internet will it bring? In its report, Facebook advocates for closing the digital divide as quickly as we can, which is a good thing. But when Facebook argues that, "as use of the internet continues to expand, it will exert a powerful effect on the global economy, particularly in the developing world," it's arguing that any increase in access is inherently good, which isn't necessarily the case.

Submission + - Cable Networks are Speeding Up Shows to Fit More Ads

Submitted by WheezyJoe
WheezyJoe writes: After trying just about every other trick to squeeze more commercials into your Law and Order binge-fix, cable networks are now resorting to speeding up older shows and reruns in an effort to capture yet more revenue. TBS used compression technology to speed up the Wizard of Oz during its airing last November, causing pop-culture writer Stephen Cox to notice that the munchkins' voices were pitched higher than normal. TBS, TNT, and TV Land have also sped up shows including Seinfeld and Friends. “It is a way to keep the revenue from going down as much as the ratings,” a top executive at one major cable programmer said. “The only way we can do it is to double down and stretch the unit load a little more.”

Submission + - So. Cal. Edison's IT layoffs 'heartless,' says Sen. Grassley (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: Southern California Edison's decision to cut 500 of its IT workers and replace them contractors from two large H-1B using India-based IT services firms, is getting the ire of U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). He said the case illustrates how some employers "are potentially using legal avenues to import foreign workers, lay-off qualified Americans, and then export jobs overseas.” Grassley, chair of the Sen. Judiciary Committee, said “I don't intend on allowing legislation to move through this body without reforms to the H-1B visa program that protect the American worker." Meanwhile, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Iowa), and the leader of an effort to significantly raise the H-1B cap, was critical of Grassley’s view, and told The Hill: "It's absurd to think that in this global marketplace we can maintain an insular, protectionist workforce.”
Security

Schneier: Everyone Wants You To Have Security, But Not From Them 114

Posted by Soulskill from the you-can-trust-us dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Bruce Schneier has written another insightful piece about the how modern tech companies treat security. He points out that most organizations will tell you to secure your data while at the same time asking to be exempt from that security. Google and Facebook want your data to be safe — on their servers so they can analyze it. The government wants you to encrypt your communications — as long as they have the keys. Schneier says, "... we give lots of companies access to our data because it makes our lives easier. ... The reason the Internet is a worldwide mass-market phenomenon is that all the technological details are hidden from view. Someone else is taking care of it. We want strong security, but we also want companies to have access to our computers, smart devices, and data. We want someone else to manage our computers and smart phones, organize our e-mail and photos, and help us move data between our various devices. ... We want our data to be secure, but we want someone to be able to recover it all when we forget our password. We'll never solve these security problems as long as we're our own worst enemy.

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