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Submission + - How 5G will change the world

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: The global race is on to develop 5G, the fifth generation of mobile network. While 5G will follow in the footsteps of 4G and 3G, this time scientists are more excited. They say 5G will be different — very different. "5G will be a dramatic overhaul and harmonisation of the radio spectrum," says Prof Rahim Tafazolli who is the lead at the UK's multimillion-pound government-funded 5G Innovation Centre at the University of Surrey. To pave the way for 5G the ITU is comprehensively restructuring the parts of the radio network used to transmit data, while allowing pre-existing communications, including 4G and 3G, to continue functioning. 5G will also run faster, a lot faster. Prof Tafazolli now believes it is possible to run a wireless data connection at an astounding 800Gbps — that's 100 times faster than current 5G testing. A speed of 800Gbps would equate to downloading 800 HD films — in a single second. Samsung hopes to launch a temporary trial 5G network in time for 2018's Winter Olympic Games.

Submission + - France Wants To Get Rid Of Diesel Fuel

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: France wants to gradually phase out the use of diesel fuel for private passenger transport and will put in place a system to identify the most polluting vehicles, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Friday. Next year, the government will launch a car identification system that will rank vehicles by the amount of pollution they emit, Valls said in a speech. This will make it possible for local authorities to limit city access for the dirtiest cars. "In France, we have long favoured the diesel engine. This was a mistake, and we will progressively undo that, intelligently and pragmatically," Valls said. About 80 percent of French motorists drive diesel-powered cars. Valls said taxation would have to orient citizens towards more ecological choices, notably the 2015 state budget measures to reduce the tax advantage of diesel fuel versus gas.

Submission + - Google should be broken up, say European MPs

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: The European Parliament has voted in favour of breaking Google up, as a solution to complaints that it favours is own services in search results. Politicians have no power to enforce a break-up, but the landmark vote sends a clear message to European regulators to get tough on the net giant. US politicians and trade bodies have voiced their dismay at the vote. The ultimate decision will rest with EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager. She has inherited the anti-competitive case lodged by Google's rivals in 2010. Google has around 90% market share for search in Europe. The Commission has never before ordered the break-up of any company, and many believe it is unlikely to do so now. But politicians are desperate to find a solution to the long-running anti-competitive dispute with Google.

Submission + - Hacker Threatened With 44 Felony Charges Escapes With Misdemeanor (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It's no secret that prosecutors usually throw every charge they can at an alleged criminal, but the case of Aaron Swartz brought to light how poorly-written computer abuse laws lend themselves to this practice. Now, another perfect example has resolved itself: a hacker with ties to Anonymous was recently threatened with 44 felony counts of computer fraud and cyberstalking, each with its own 10-year maximum sentence. If the charges stuck, the man was facing multiple lifetimes worth of imprisonment. But, of course, it wasn't. Prosecutors struck a deal to get him to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor charge, which carried only a $10,000 fine. The man's attorney, Tor Eklund, said, "The more I looked at this, the more it seemed like an archetypal example of the Department of Justice’s prosecutorial abuse when it comes to computer crime. It shows how aggressive they are, and how they seek to destroy your reputation in the press even when the charges are complete, fricking garbage."

Submission + - Kim Dotcom declares he is 'broke' because of legal fight

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: Kim Dotcom, the founder of the seized file-sharing site Megaupload, has declared himself "broke". The entrepreneur said he had spent $10m (£6.4m) on legal costs since being arrested in New Zealand in 2012 and accused of internet piracy. Mr Dotcom had employed a local law firm to fight the US's attempt to extradite him, but his defence team stepped down a fortnight ago without explaining why. Mr Dotcom said he would now represent himself at a bail hearing on Thursday. He denies charges of racketeering, conspiring to commit copyright infringement and money laundering. He told a conference in London, via a video link, that his lawyers had resigned because he had run out of money. "The [US authorities] have certainly managed to drain my resources and dehydrate me, and without lawyers I am defenceless," he said. "They used that opportunity to try and get my bail revoked and that's what I'm facing."

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).

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