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Comment Domestic Spying (Score 1) 2

by wrekkuh (#40891495) Attached to: Who's Afraid of Huawei?
When video from DEFCON 20 is released (in the coming days/weeks), it will be interesting to see General Keith Alexander's speech (Director at NSA, Commander at USCYBERCOM). He says that records aren't kept on every American, and that there is a lot of oversight involved (from multiple branches of the US Government).(Quick summary here.)

Will be interesting to see that talk, but the NSA installation found years ago by that AT&T Technician, which made wholesale copies of international and domestic internet traffic says quite different to the US Government's current claims.

Comment A Few Possible Points (Score 1) 153

by wrekkuh (#40889601) Attached to: The Chinese Telecom That Spooks the World

and have them install a critical software update to avoid exploits.

I love how Cisco did something along these lines recently, including the siphoning off of web history, along with a slew of other privacy violations completely in the clear, with no permission whatsoever.

Another possible point of hypocrisy is the CIA's partial funding of Facebook, which seems to suggest that if a foreign company wants to build a network in the US, that is government funded, it's a National Security issue... but if a domestic company, which is funded by the US government, wants to build a network all over the world, and a foreign government says, "Um, no." then it's censorship.

There is also the fact that Huawei has hired a former defense contractor for the US government as it's Chief Security Officer.
Businesses

Submission + - Refugee from Facebook questions the social media life (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by stevegee58
stevegee58 writes: The Washington Post published an interesting article about Facebook's employee #51, Katherine Losse. As an English major from Johns Hopkins, Losse wasn't the typical Facebook employee. But after starting in customer service, she later became Mark Zuckerberg's personal ghostwriter, penning blog posts in his name. The article traces Losse's growing disillusionment with social networking in general and Facebook in particular. After cashing out some FB stock, Losse resigned and moved to a rural West Texas town to get away from technology and focus on writing. Her book, "The Boy Kings: A Journey Into the Heart of the Social Network" was recently published in June of this year.

The article provides an interesting vignette of life inside Facebook and is well worth the quick read.
China

Submission + - Who's Afraid of Huawei? (economist.com) 2

Submitted by wrekkuh
wrekkuh writes: The Economist has printed an interesting look at the concerns and speculations of the fast-growing Chinese telecom giant Huawei, and it's spread into western markets. Of particular concern is Huawei's state funding, and the company's founder, Ren Zhengfei, who once served as an engineer in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). However, another article from The Economist goes into greater detail about the steps Huawei has taken to mitigate some of these concerns in England — including co-operating with the GCHQ in Britain, the UK's signals-intelligence agency, to ensure equipment built by Huawei is not back-doored.
Science

Submission + - DARPA Creates first 0.85 THz Solid State Receiver (paritynews.com) 3

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: DARPA, under its THz Electronics program, has designed a solid state receiver capable of THz (terahertz) frequencies thus inching towards the possibilities of transistor-based electronics that will operate at THz frequencies. The newly designed solid state receiver demonstrates a gain of 0.85 THz. This particular milestone is a stepping stone for the next target of 1.03 THz. Because of this achievement a host of DoD electronics capabilities can now be realized. One such application where this can be of use is for a sensor that will operate through clouds under a DARPA program, dubbed, VISAR.

Submission + - Hackers topple Huawei routers at Defcon (google.com)

Submitted by TarPitt
TarPitt writes: Huawei routers turn out to be have multiple serious security vulnerabilities lending to easy exploit:

LAS VEGAS, Nevada — Hackers at an infamous Def Con gathering were shown how to easily slip into computer networks through some routers made by Chinese electronics colossus Huawei Technologies. "For the 20th anniversary of Def Con the gift is China," Recurity Labs chief Felix "FX" Lindner said as he opened his presentation. "Nobody needs a back door; this is plausible deniability," he quipped as he detailed weaknesses in three small Huawei routers that could be exploited using basic hacking techniques. "You get what you pay for. Sorry."

Oddly this story has not picked up much notice in the technical press.

Submission + - Ticket Holders at London 2012 Can't Share Media on Social Networks (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by wrekkuh
wrekkuh writes: Ticket holders at the Olympics in London are banned from 'exploiting' media from the Games -

"Images, video and sound recordings of the Games taken by a Ticket Holder cannot be used for any purpose other than for private and domestic purposes and a Ticket Holder may not license, broadcast or publish video and/or sound recordings, including on social networking websites and the internet more generally, and may not exploit images, video and/or sound recordings for commercial purposes under any circumstances, whether on the internet or otherwise, or make them available to third parties for commercial purposes."

Submission + - NY: Freedom of Information Req's Do Not Include BBerry's PIN-to-PIN Msg System (nydailynews.com)

Submitted by wrekkuh
wrekkuh writes: The Daily News is reporting that if aides of New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo cannot speak in person or by telephone with the Governor, they are told to use BlackBerry's PIN-to-PIN messaging system — a function that leaves no lasting trail because it bypasses data-saving email servers. Consequently, a Freedom of Information request for all e-mails to and from Governor Cuomo's office resulted in an empty reply from the Records Access Officer -

"Please be advised that the New York State Executive Chamber has conducted a diligent search, but does not possess records responsive to your request."
Communications

Submission + - The Hivemind Singularity (theatlantic.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Alan Jacobs at The Atlantic writes about a book called New Model Army, which takes the idea of Anonymous — a loose, self-organizing collective with a purpose — and adds twenty-five years of technological advancement. The book's author, Adam Roberts, 'asks us to imagine a near future when electronic communications technologies enable groups of people to communicate with one another instantaneously, and on secure private networks invulnerable, or nearly so, to outside snooping.' With the arrival of high-tech communications technology, such groups wouldn't be limited to enacting their will from behind a computer screen: they could form actual armies. 'Again, each NMA organizes itself and makes decisions collectively: no commander establishes strategy and gives orders, but instead all members of the NMA communicate with what amounts to an advanced audio form of the IRC protocol, debate their next step, and vote. Results of a vote are shared to all immediately and automatically, at which point the soldiers start doing what they voted to do. ... They are proud of their shared identity, and tend to smirk when officers of more traditional armies want to know who their "ringleaders" are. They have no ringleaders; they don't even have specialists: everyone tends the wounded, not just some designated medical corps, and when they need to negotiate, the negotiating team is chosen by army vote. Each soldier does what needs to be done, with need determined by the NMA which each has freely joined.' Let's hope resistance isn't futile.

Comment Re:If anyone wondered what to use the Q for (Score 1) 121

by wrekkuh (#40648965) Attached to: XBMC Ported To Android
Exactly what i was thinking. Also, this quote from the submission... "Running your favorite media-center software on small, cheap, embedded hardware is about to become a hassle-free reality." is a little confusing to me because, well, i have a hassle-free installation of my favorite media-center software (XBMC) on small, cheap, embedded hardware already, as many others do as well.

Further to the point, can anyone tell the court what the hardware requirements for compiling Jelly Bean or Ice Cream Sandwich is?
Education

Submission + - Looking for recommendations for training

Submitted by
SouthSeaDragon
SouthSeaDragon writes: "I'm a computer professional who has performed most of the functions that could be expected over a 39 year career, including hardware maintenance and repair, sitting on a 800 support line, developing a help desk application from the ground up (terminal-based), writing a software manual, plus developing and teaching software courses. In recent years, I've worked for computer software vendors doing pre-sales support generally for infrastructure products including applications, app servers, integration with Java based messaging and ESB product and most recently a Business Rules product. I was laid off recently due to a restructuring and am now trying to figure out the next phase. With the WIA displaced worker grants now available I am attempting to figure out what training would be good to pursue. I am hearing that "the Cloud" is the next big thing, but I'm also looking into increasing my development skills with a current language. I wonder what the readers might suggest for new directions."
HP

Submission + - Pre To Postmortem: The Inside Story of the Death of Palm and webOS (theverge.com)

Submitted by
SomePgmr
SomePgmr writes: "Thirty-one. That's the number of months it took Palm, Inc. to go from the darling of International CES 2009 to a mere shadow of itself, a nearly anonymous division inside the HP machine without a hardware program and without the confidence of its owners. Thirty-one months is just barely longer than a typical American mobile phone contract. Understanding exactly how Palm could drive itself into irrelevance in such a short period of time will forever be a subject of Valley lore."
Power

Submission + - Solar Impulse Completes First Solar Intercontinental Flight (solarimpulse.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Slashdotters may remember the Solar Impulse — the world's first 100% solar-powered airplane — from last year when it made its public debut. Today the Solar Impulse made news again as it successfully completed the world's first solar-powered intercontinental flight — a pivotal step that paves the way for the plane's first trip around the world in 2014.
Security

Submission + - Mitt Romney's Hotmail And Dropbox Accounts Hacked (gawker.com)

Submitted by wrekkuh
wrekkuh writes: Someone has contacted Gawker claiming to have compromised the presumptive GOP candidate Mitt Romney's Hotmail and Dropbox accounts. Gawker has confirmed the hack involved resetting the Hotmail account's password via correctily answering 'ole Mitt's security question.

It is interesting to note the hacker did not provide screenshots of his access to Mr. Romney's account. It seems hackers have learned not to make that mistake again, as we saw 4 years ago when Sara Palin's e-mail account was hacked, & the fact that the hacker did provide screenshots of his access which helped in tracking him down.

The kicker? Sara Palin's e-mail account was hacked the same exact way; An easily guessable security question.

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