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Submission + - Bitcoin price soars over $266 and hits a new all-time high (coindesk.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Today, the price of bitcoin (in USD) surged over it's previous high which was recorded back in April of this year. After a mini-crash when Silk Road go shut down the price has bounced back and surged with additional support from China and investors backing the digital currency.

The current volatility could play a part in if the currency can be taken seriously as a means of exchange, with many wishing to hold onto coins as an investment.

Submission + - Good Luck Finding A Data Scientist (wallstreetandtech.com)

Submitted by CowboyRobot
CowboyRobot writes: If you are in the market for a data scientist, chances are the search will be long, difficult and costly. The term 'big data' is definitely overused, but there is no doubt that business and technology leaders are banking that big data will help provide analytics for a variety of needs in the very near future, including regulatory reporting, client targeting, trading strategies, portfolio management and more. "Finding big data talent is difficult, retaining it is nearly impossible," said Dr. Usama Fayyad, chairman of Oasis500, and former CDO at Yahoo! "And the role of data scientist is impossible to fill, especially outside of the US." Unfortunately, universities are not yet up to the task of producing large numbers of data scientists. Only a few schools have degrees that focus on the data sciences. For instance, Stanford offers online courses for data mining and statistics. The University of California at Berkeley offers a Master of Information and Data Science (MIDS), but the program is only starting up in January 2014. It will take most students about a year to complete the MIDS course, but keep in mind that many enrollees will likely have full-time jobs and will only take the courses part time, lengthening the time until they graduate.

Submission + - TrueCrypt to go Through a Crowdfunded, Public Security Audit 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After all the revelations about NSA’s spying efforts, and especially after the disclosure of details about its Bullrun program aimed at subverting encryption standards and efforts around the world, the question has been raised of whether any encryption software can be trusted. Security experts have repeatedly said that it you want to trust this type of software, your best bet is to choose software that is open source. But, in order to be entirely sure, a security audit of the code by independent experts sounds like a definitive answer to that issue.

And that it exactly what Matthew Green, cryptographer and research professor at Johns Hopkins University, and Kenneth White, co-founder of hosted healthcare services provider BAO Systems, have set out to do. The software that will be audited is the famous file and disk encryption software package TrueCrypt. Green and White have started fundraising at FundFill and IndieGoGo, and have so far raised over $50,000 in total.

Submission + - Auto-Detecting Fake Social Media Accounts (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: Facebook estimates 5 percent of its accounts are bots, frauds, or otherwise fake; Twitter puts the estimate for its accounts at 7 percent. Now services are arising that claim to automatically assess an account to tell whether or not it represents a real human. One such service, called BeehiveID, is already helping assess online dating accounts to check for fakes, and surely other companies will jump into this market soon enough.

Comment Re:Active fucking X?! (Score 1) 218

by bmurray7 (#45340761) Attached to: Why Internet Explorer Still Dominates South Korea.

You can run 3D game engines completely in JavaScript

Unless the installed browser blocks WebGL due to "unresolved driver issues" (such as Firefox on Ubuntu on an Atom N450 according to about:support). Or unless the installed browser doesn't implement WebGL at all (such as IE on XP or Vista, or Safari and Safari wrappers on iOS).

You can run 3D game engines in JavaScript without WebGL. It might be slow, but that doesn't JavaScript isn't Turing complete.

Submission + - Politicians & Celebrities Personal Data Stolen in Limo Cloud Service Hack

Submitted by alphatel
alphatel writes: In as yet another Plain Text hack, a company which handles bookings for Limousine companies through an online portal had user credit card, address and personal data exposed, including pickups and activities. These may be the same attackers who recently lifted PR Newswire and Adobe info from the same servers. Beyond the credit card data were important personal notes, including who to contact and what, if any, illicit activity may have occurred in the vehicles.

It must be interesting to have all your data exposed to a group of violent strangers, like the way the rest of the world is exposing itself to the NSA. Shoe, meet foot.

Submission + - AMD and NVIDIA Go To War In Q4, Radeon R 290 Launched (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: There is little love lost between team Red and team Green, when it comes to 3D graphics cards, but AMD and NVIDIA seem to be engaged in an even more vicious volley of attacks on each other's business as the holiday shopping season approaches, and consumers will ultimately be the benefactor. Recently NVIDIA responded to AMD's Radeon R9 290X launch with a massive price cut on their GeForce GTX 780 card, dropping it by a full $150 to $499. Today, AMD is back at it again with the launch of the Radeon R9 290, a lower cost ($399) derivative of the R9 290X with a few stream processors disabled. However, just before launch, AMD delivered a driver drop and a clock speed boost, such that the new $399 Radeon R9 290 performs a lot more in line with NVIDIA's $499 GeForce GTX 780. In the benchmarks, the two cards trade victories depending on the game engine at play. However, for a full $100 less, it's clear AMD is not going to lose the battle on price. On the flip side, AMD's new Hawaii GPU-based cards do run hotter and a little louder than NVIDIA's flagship GPUs.

Submission + - Internet Explorer Still Dominant in South Korea. (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by bmurray7
bmurray7 writes: You might think that the country that has the fastest average home internet speeds would be a first adapter of modern browsers. Instead, as the Washington Post reports, a payment processing security standard forces most South Korean's to rely upon Internet Explorer for online shopping. Since the standard uses a unique encryption algorithm, an ActiveX control is required to complete online purchase. As a result, many internet users are in the habit of approving all AtivceX control prompts, potentially exposing them to malware.

Submission + - New Medal Designed To Honor Cyber Soldiers (theverge.com) 1

Submitted by dmfinn
dmfinn writes: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has announced his plans to coin a new medal designed to honor those soldiers who fight behind screens. The award, which unnamed officials have dubbed the, "Distinguished Warfare Medal", will honor military personal who have proven themselves exceptional beyond their peers in regards to cyberwarefare. Unlike other medals in its tier, the DWM will not require any sort of "act of valor", an action in which ones life is put at risk, which means drone pilots and cyberwarefare operators are eligible to receive it. The medal cannot be given for any efforts made in the flesh, and any cyber operator will be eligible to receive it for his or her actions that took place after September 11th, 2001. In ranking to other medals, the defense department has confirmed that is considered an honor slightly higher than the Bronze Star, but lower than the Distinguished Flying Cross. This will be the first new medal introduced into the U.S. armed forces since the induction of the Bronze Star after WWII.

The official summary of the award states it will be award for, "extraordinary achievement, not involving acts of valor, directly impacting combat operations or other military operations."

Submission + - Source code for Photoshop 1.0 (computerhistory.org)

Submitted by
gbooch
gbooch writes: "With the permission of Adobe Systems, the Computer History Museum has made available the source code for Photoshop version 1.0.1, comprising about 128,000 lines code within 179 files, most of which is in Pascal, the remainder in 68000 assembly language.

This the kind of code I aspire to write.

The Computer History Museum has earlier made available the source code to MacPaint (which you'll find here http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/macpaint-and-quickdraw-source-code/)."
Security

Submission + - Adobe Reader Zero Day is First Adobe Sandbox Escape (threatpost.com)

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: Researchers at Kaspersky Lab have confirmed that the zero-day exploit found in the wild targeting Adobe Reader and Acrobat is the first attack to successfully circumvent the sandbox in the ubiquitous Adobe products. Attackers are using malicious PDFs posing as an application for an international travel visa to exploit a zero-day vulnerability in Adobe Reader and Acrobat, a researcher at FireEye said. The exploit is the first to escape the sandbox included in Reader X and above.
Programming

Submission + - Ask slashdot: spreadsheet with decent programming language?

Submitted by
slartibartfastatp
slartibartfastatp writes: "Spreadsheets are very flexible tools for data analysis and transformations, the obvious options being MS Excel and LibreOffice. However, I found increasingly infuriating to deal with the VBA--dialect functions or (even worse) its translated versions. Is there any spreadsheet that allows usage of a decent programming language in its formulae? I found PySpread intriguing, but still very beta (judging from its latest release version 0.2.3). Perl or even javascript would be better options than =AVERAGE(). The slashdot community knows any viable alternatives ?"

Submission + - Dell cancelling "team members" stock options (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by sl4shd0rk
sl4shd0rk writes: Apparently the privatizing of Dell is going to leave some employees who hold corporate stock options empty-handed. Dell announced in an "obtained" email that employees holding stock below $13.65/share will get a pay-out however those who obtained shares above $13.65 will get none.

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