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Submission + - Buzz Aldrin wants President Obama to announce new space exploration initiative (examiner.com)

Submitted by MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: While he has initiated the social media campaign, #Apollo45, to commemorate the 45th anniversary of the first moon landing, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin is also using the occasion to campaign for an expansion of American space exploration. According to a Tuesday story in the Washington Post, Aldrin has expressed the wish that President Obama make some sort of announcement along those lines this July 20. The idea has a certain aspect of déjà vu.

Aldrin believes that the American civil space program is adrift and that some new space exploration, he prefers to Mars, would be just the thing to set it back on course. There is only one problem, however. President Obama has already made the big space exploration announcement. Aldrin knows this because he was there.

President Obama flew to the Kennedy Space Center on April 15, 2010, with Aldrin accompanying as a photo op prop, and made the announcement that America would no longer be headed back to the moon, as was the plan under his predecessor George W. Bush. Instead American astronauts would visit an Earth approaching asteroid and then, decades hence, would land on Mars.

Submission + - Japan's Missing Plutonium: How dangerous material falls through the cracks (thebulletin.org) 1

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: Japan's missing plutonium has been found, but the larger point of this article remains: 'Most people would agree that keeping track of dangerous material is generally a good idea. So it may come as a surprise to some that the arrangements that are supposed to account for weapon-grade fissile materials—plutonium and highly enriched uranium—are sketchy at best. The most recent example involves several hundreds kilograms of plutonium that appear to have fallen through the cracks in various reporting arrangements.'

Submission + - President of UT Austin declines chancellor's request to resign (bloomberg.com) 2

Submitted by lfp98
lfp98 writes: President Bill Powers has long been in conflict with Governor Rick Perry over the direction and goals of the University of Texas' flagship Austin campus. This week, news leaked that the Chancellor requested Powers' resignation before this Thursday's meeting of the Regents (who are all Perry appointees), under threat of being fired at that meeting if he did not resign. So far Powers has refused, while expressing an openness to leaving after the end of the current academic year [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/06/bill-powers-ut-resign_n_5562317.html]. Powers is highly regarded by UT students, faculty, alumni [http://www.dallasnews.com/sports/college-sports/texas-longhorns/20140706-alumni-letter-calls-university-of-texas-president-s-forced-resignation-a-travesty.ece] and the larger academic community, but has been criticized by Perry and other conservatives for not being sufficiently focused on providing educational services at the lowest possible cost. Powers' supporters view the forced dismissal as brazen political interference with University governance, primarily for the purpose of allowing Perry to influence the choice of a new president before he leaves office in December [http://chronicle.com/article/As-Fight-Over-U-of-Texas/147535/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en].

Submission + - Website Pays Dearly for Fighting Negative Review (infopackets.com)

Submitted by WubbaDucki
WubbaDucki writes: An online retailer that threatened to "fine" a couple $3,500 for leaving a negative review online a website has now been ordered to pay $306,750 in compensation and legal fees. John and Jennifer Palmer won the verdict as compensation for KlearGear damaging their credit record with a bogus debt claim.

Back in 2009, Jennifer Palmer left a negative review of the company after it failed to deliver two desk toys ordered by her husband. Three years later, KlearGear demanded that the couple withdraw the review within 72 hours or face a fine of $3,500. The fine is for violating a non-disparagement clause in the company's terms of sale, which says that customers cannot write negative reviews about their products or purchases.

Submission + - Microsoft's No-IP.com Domain Seizure Causing Outages For SonicWall Customers (crn.com)

Submitted by cgriffin21
cgriffin21 writes: Microsoft's recent seizure of 23 domains from No-IP.com, a Reno, Nev.-based company that provides a popular free dynamic DNS service, is causing outages for millions of legitimate users of the service — and apparently, at least one security vendor. The No-IP.com outages are having an impact on some customers of SonicWall, a vendor of network security and content control hardware appliances, Marc Harrison, president of Silicon East, a Manalapan, N.J.-based SonicWall partner, told CRN Tuesday.

Submission + - IEEE launches anti-malware services to improve security

Submitted by Aryeh Goretsky
Aryeh Goretsky writes: The IEEE Standards Assocation has launched an Anti-Malware Support Service (AMSS) to help the computer security industry respond more quickly to malware.

The first two services available are a Clean file Metadata Exchange [PDF], to help prevent false positives in anti-malware software, and a Taggant System [PDF] to help prevent software packers from being abused.

Official announcement is here.

Submission + - Austria dumps provider protection, TOR exit nodes illegal (network23.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Austria: The operation of TOR exit nodes was declared a criminal offense by a regional criminal court. The ruling of the court affects not only TOR Exit nodes but all servers which could be used for fraud.

Submission + - More lack of accountability from Congress (nationaljournal.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Who says they’re conservatives? The House Ethics committee, run by Republicans, has quietly eliminated the requirement that elected officials list any privately sponsored travel they receive in their annual financial-disclosure forms.

The move, made behind closed doors and without a public announcement by the House Ethics Committee, reverses more than three decades of precedent. Gifts of free travel to lawmakers have appeared on the yearly financial form dating back its creation in the late 1970s, after the Watergate scandal. National Journal uncovered the deleted disclosure requirement when analyzing the most recent batch of yearly filings. “This is such an obvious effort to avoid accountability,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “There’s no legitimate reason. There’s no good reason for it.”

Once again more evidence that we the voters must replace as many of these crooks, from both parties, as we can.

Submission + - SONY EXITING PC BUSINESS WITH A BANG AS VAIO FLIP LAPTOPS GET RECALLED DUE TO FI (digitaltrends.com)

Submitted by xerxes2044
xerxes2044 writes: If you use or own a Sony VAIO Flip PC laptop, you should stop right now, because a recall of these computers has just been announced by a U.S. government agency.

The problem with the Sony VAIO Flip PC stems from their lithium-ion batteries, which pose fire and burn hazards, according to this recall advisory notice published by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. The batteries were manufactured by Panasonic, according to the CPSC document. Here’s how the agency describes the problem.

Submission + - Nearly one-third of Americans aren't ready for the next generation of technology (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Thanks to a decade of programs geared toward giving people access to the necessary technology, by 2013 some 85% of Americans were surfing the World Wide Web. But how effectively are they using it? A new survey suggests that the digital divide has been replaced by a gap in digital readiness. It found that nearly 30% of Americans either aren’t digitally literate or don’t trust the Internet. That subgroup tended to be less educated, poorer, and older than the average American.

Submission + - After 47 years, Computerworld ceases print publication (technologizer.com)

Submitted by harrymcc
harrymcc writes: In June 1967, a weekly newspaper called Computerworld launched. Almost exactly 47 years later, it's calling it quits in print form to focus on its website and other digital editions. The move isn't the least bit surprising, but it's also the end of an era--and I can' t think of any computing publication which had a longer run. Over at Technologizer, I shared some thoughts on what Computerworld meant to the world, to its publisher, IDG, and to me.

Submission + - Make A Date With Fraud

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: Netcraft is reporting that criminals are mounting massive phishing attacks through online dating sites. The scams are numerous and target multiple sites. Actual methods range from blackmail to 419-style scams. Characteristically, fraudsters hijack an existing account on one of the services, then use that as a portal to deliver a PHP script to compromise the site. 'The latest attacks make use of a phishing kit which contains hundreds of PHP scripts, configured to send stolen credentials to more than 300 distinct email addresses.' The BBC offers additional insights .

Submission + - Two senators (one of whom is a Republican!) propose a 12-cent gas tax increase (greatergreaterwashington.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: There are several proposals on the table to stave off the impending insolvency of the Highway Trust Fund (which pays for transit, biking, and walking projects too) in two months. Just now, two senators teamed up to announce one that might actually have a chance. Senators Bob Corker (R-TN) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) have proposed increasing the gas tax by 12 cents a gallon over two years. The federal gas tax currently stands at 18.4 cents a gallon, where it has been set since 1993, when gas cost $1.16 a gallon.

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