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Submission + - New UK Anti-Terror Laws, The Time is Right

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: Police and security services will get new powers as the UK faces a terror threat "perhaps greater than it has ever been", the home secretary says. The terror threat level in Britain was raised from "substantial" to "severe" earlier this year in response to conflicts in Iraq and Syria. The new legislation includes: Counter-radicalisation measures — requirements that schools, colleges and probation providers help prevent people being radicalised. Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures — to allow the authorities to force suspects to move to another part of the country. Forcing firms to hand details to police identifying who was using a computer or mobile phone at a given time. Banning insurance companies from covering ransoms. Greater powers to disrupt people heading abroad to fight — including cancelling passports at the border for up to 30 days.

Submission + - Replacement for Turing Test Proposed

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: A US professor is proposing a new way to test whether artificial intelligence (AI) is on a par with that of humans. Currently scientists use the Turing test — named after computer scientist Alan Turing — which evaluates whether an AI can convince a judge that it is human in a conversation. Prof Mark Riedl, from the Georgia Institute of Technology, is proposing a new test. It would ask a machine to create a convincing poem, story or painting. Dubbed Lovelace 2.0 it is an iteration of a previous Lovelace Test, proposed in 2001. "For the test, the artificial agent passes if it develops a creative artefact from a subset of artistic genres deemed to require human-level intelligence and the artefact meets certain creative constraints given by a human evaluator," explained Prof Riedl. The 65-year-old Turing test is successfully passed if a computer is mistaken for a human more than 30% of the time during a series of five-minute keyboard conversations.

Submission + - Obama offer to 5m illegal migrants

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: Nearly five million people living illegally in the US can escape deportation under sweeping changes to the US immigration system. US President Barack Obama will unveil his plan, which he is enacting without Congress, in a televised address. Republicans have argued the action is beyond his authority and will fight it. There are about 11m illegal immigrants in the US and this year unaccompanied children coming across the Mexico border prompted a humanitarian crisis. "The president is taking an important step to fix our broken immigration system," said a White House statement before Mr Obama's speech, due at 2000EST (0100GMT).

Submission + - U.S. Government Seeks to Keep Megaupload Money Because Kim Dotcom Is a Fugitive

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Justice told a Virginia federal judge that Kim Dotcom and cohorts have no business challenging the seizure of an estimated $67 million in assets because the Megaupload founder is evading prosecution. The government brought criminal charges against Dotcom in early 2012, but he's been holed up in New Zealand awaiting word on whether he'll be extradited. The government got antsy and this past July, brought a civil complaint for forfeiture in rem, a maneuver to firmly establish a hold over money from bank accounts around the world, luxury cars, big televisions, watches, artwork and other property allegedly gained by Megaupload in the course of crimes. Dotcom is fighting the seizures by questioning the government's basis for asserting a crime, saying "there is no such crime as secondary criminal copyright infringement," as well as challenging how the seized assets are tied to the charges against Dotcom. But according to the U.S. government, Dotcom doesn't get the pleasure of even making the arguments. In a motion to strike, the government cites the doctrine of fugitive disentitlement, which bars a person from using the resources of the court if that person is aware of prosecution and is evading it.

Submission + - Amnesty releases anti-spying program for activists 1

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: Amnesty International has released a program that can spot spying software used by governments to monitor activists and political opponents. The Detekt software was needed as standard anti-virus programs often missed spying software, it said. Amnesty said many governments used sophisticated spying tools that could grab images from webcams or listen via microphones to monitor people. Karl Zetterlund, a senior researcher at security firm Sentor, said the needs of law enforcement were understandably different to those of the average cyberthief. "Criminals are mainly interested in information that can somehow generate money. Law enforcement spyware may only need to collect a few pieces of identifying information, such as a net address, from the computer," he said. "Generally, policeware may be better at hiding, as normal malware often aims for strength in numbers and spreading is more important than passing under the radar." There had also been cases in the past, he said, when computer security companies collaborated with governments to ignore spyware they found planted on machines.

Comment Re:Yawn ... (Score 2) 167

by mrspoonsi (#48417859) Attached to: Microsoft Azure Outage Across the Globe
Well, I have a rack in a datacenter, and I have an azure vm, which basically pings the rack servers / services to notify me of outage. In the last year I when I come to install patches on the azure VM, about 3 times I have had the message 'unexpected shutdown, enter reason' message waiting when log-on. Number of times this has happened on my own rack (in last year? zero, you can go back 4 years and still zero).

Submission + - Organic molecules detected on comet by Philae (bbc.com)

Submitted by Shortguy881
Shortguy881 writes: Carbon-containing "organics" are the basis of life on Earth and may give clues to chemical ingredients delivered to our planet early in its history. The compounds were picked up by a German-built instrument designed to "sniff" the comet's thin atmosphere. Other analyses suggest the comet's surface is largely water-ice covered with a thin dust layer. The European Space Agency (Esa) craft touched down on the Comet 67P on 12 November after a 10-year journey.

Submission + - Microsoft releases out-of-band security patch for Windows

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: Microsoft has announced today that they will be pushing an out-of-band security patch today. The patch, which affects nearly all of the company's major platforms, is rated 'critical' and it is recommended that you install the patch immediately. The patch is rated 'critical' because it allows for elevation of privileges and will require a restart. The platforms that are affected include: Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows 8 and 8.1, Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows RT and Windows RT 8.1 and Windows 10 Technical Preview customers are affected too.

Submission + - NYC to replace most of its payphones with free gigabit WiFi in 2015

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: NYC announced its plans: LinkNYC — a network of 10,000 gigabit WiFi hotspots that will line the streets of all five boroughs of New York City. The project will replace all but a small handful of historic payphones with "Links," small towers equipped with WiFi, an Android tablet with select city-service apps and, of course, the ability to make phone calls. What's missing? The word pay: it's all free.

Submission + - Google Owes A Woman Money After Photos Of Her Cleavage Appeared In Street View

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: A judge has ruled in favor of a Montreal woman who says Google invaded her privacy after a photo of her sitting outside of her house with part of her breast exposed appeared on Google Street View. Now Google must pay up to the tune of $2,250. According to a 17-page decision, Maria Pia Grillo suffered shock and embarrassment when she looked up her house using Google Maps' Street View feature in 2009 and discovered an image that shows her leaning forward and exposing cleavage. Even though the original image, which was snapped by one of Google’s camera-equipped cars, blurred out her face, the rest of the picture provided enough information to identify her.

Submission + - Apple to distribute over $100 million worth of iPads in underprivileged schools

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: Students in 114 schools across the country are about to get free iPads straight from Apple, thanks to the tech titan's $100 million pledge to President Obama's ConnectED initiative. Cupertino first announced its support for the project (which aims to give students access to high-speed internet) in February this year, but now we know how the company's fulfilling its multimillion-dollar promise. According to Apple's ConnectED page, 96 percent of the students in each of its 114 chosen schools are eligible for free or, at least, reduced-priced lunches. Also, half of the schools are in urban areas, with students who are mostly of Black, Hispanic, Native American and Asian heritage. Apple placed emphasis in giving minorities access to technology and knowledge, as they usually don't, putting them at a disadvantage. The company says it sees "the results of this and other forms of inequality every day", as "minorities are significantly underrepresented in the technology industry."

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