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Submission + - NSA, Obama Sued Over Domestic Surveillance Program 4

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: A group of people, including a former federal prosecutor and the parents of a Navy SEAL sniper killed in action, have filed a class-action law suit against the National Security Agency, Verizon and President Obama over the NSA’s collection of cell phone data. The suit says the order that enabled the surveillance program is “the broadest surveillance order to ever have been issued” and enables indiscriminate collection of data.

The suit, filed this week in federal court in Washington, D.C., also names Roger Vinson, the judge who signed the Verizon order, as a defendant, along with Attorney General Eric Holder and NSA Director Keith Alexander. The plaintiffs say that the NSA’s surveillance program violates the Constitution and unfairly and unnecessarily infringes on citizens’ privacy. The classified order directs Verizon to hand over all of the so-called metadata for calls on its network to the NSA. The metadata includes the originating and terminating phone numbers along with details of the call, but not the contents of the call.

“The order, issued and signed by Judge Roger Vinson, violates the U.S. Constitution and also federal laws, including, but not limited to, the outrageous breach of privacy, freedom of speech, freedom of association, and the due process rights of American citizens.”
Science

Submission + - Emergent Gravity Disproved (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by
kdawson
kdawson writes: "A paper up on the ArXiv claims to disprove the gravity-from-entropy theory of Erik Verlinde, which we discussed soon after he introduced the idea in a symposium late in 2009. Archil Kobakhidze says that experiments measuring the effect of gravity on quantum particles (neutrons in this case) match results expected from classical Newtonian gravity, not Verlindian entropic gravity. Here is Kobakhidze's paper (PDF)."
Government

Submission + - Court overturns Mass law banning recording of cops (universalhub.com) 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: In its ruling, which lets Simon Glik continue his lawsuit, the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston said the wiretapping statute under which Glik was arrested and the seizure of his phone violated his First and Fourth Amendment rights.
Supercomputing

Submission + - Do Supercomputers Still Matter? (hp.com)

Submitted by
Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: "The innovations that are redefining the way businesses compute today were made feasible by supercomputers, the first platforms to enable parallel processing on a scale anywhere close to that of the cloud. Supercomputing would have been a lost art had it not been for the capability of everyday PC processors to be stacked together by the thousands — a technology for the high end made possible at the low end. But now, writes Scott Fulton in an exhaustive technical essay, a looming engineering bottleneck may have already rendered it technically and financially impossible for supercomputers to continue evolving at the current rate. Can the cloud go forward if the “grid” on which it’s based grinds to a halt?"
Programming

Submission + - Is Process Killing the Software Industry? (oreilly.com)

Submitted by blackbearnh
blackbearnh writes: We all know by now that Test Driven Development is a best practice. And so is having 100% of your code reviewed. And 70% unit test coverage. And keeping your CCN complexity numbers below 20. And doing pre-sprint grooming of stories. And a hundred other industry 'best practices' that in isolation seem like a great idea. But at the end of the day, how much time does it leave for developers to be innovative and creative?

A piece on O'Reilly Radar is arguing that excessive process in software development is sucking the life out of passionate developers, all in the name of making sure that 'good code' gets written. TFA:"The underlying feedback loop making this progressively worse is that passionate programmers write great code, but process kills passion. Disaffected programmers write poor code, and poor code makes management add more process in an attempt to 'make' their programmers write good code. That just makes morale worse, and so on."
Security

Submission + - Russian Drug Cops Storm Rogue Pharmacy Party (krebsonsecurity.com)

Submitted by tsu doh nimh
tsu doh nimh writes: Brian Krebs has posted a fascinating, inside look at a battle that's been brewing between two Russian men who run a pair of the largest online rogue pharmacy programs in the world. The story focuses more on Pavel Vrublevsky, the man alleged to run Rx-Promotion — a pharmacy program that specializes in selling addictive, controlled substances like Oxycodone — and how Russian drug authorities recently raided a party in Moscow thrown for Rx-Promotion affiliates who had been competing for cash and prizes and the grand prize — a one kilogram bar of gold.
Books

Submission + - "The Hidden Reality" Draws Ire from Physicists (scientificamerican.com) 1

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: Scientific American is running a piece by science journalist John Horgan attacking pop physicist Brian Greene's latest offering titled "The Hidden Reality." He's not entirely alone, Not Even Wrong backs him up and reminds us of a growing list of multiverse propaganda. The Journal of Nature ran a short piece trying to remind everyone that Greene's book is more theory than fact but apart from those three responses, the popular press seems to be gobbling up this tantalizing concept of a multiverse. NPR offers an excerpt while SFGate and The Wall Street Journal entertain us with interviews of the controversial Greene. The New York Times and Salon seem to think it's worthwhile with Salon even calling it "the science behind" the multiverse theory. The New York Times thought it worthwhile to give Greene an op-ed column. For better or for worse, Greene has certainly brought this great debate to the public's attention — similar to his exhibition of String Theory.
The Internet

Submission + - Pondering Egypt and Net Activism (internetevolution.com)

Submitted by rsmiller510
rsmiller510 writes: A new book that calls into question the power of the internet to affect real political change is quite prescient given the situation in Egypt today where the government has literally shut down the internet.
Iphone

Submission + - NFC Could Make iPhone a Payment Machine (internetevolution.com)

Submitted by rsmiller510
rsmiller510 writes: You might not know what 'near field communication is,' but there's a chance it could transform the iPhone into a payment machine tied to your iTunes account. And if that happens, it could put Apple in the payments business.
Communications

Tens of Thousands Protest In Cairo, Twitter Blocked 167

Posted by timothy from the lol-cats-won't-save-you dept.
Haffner writes "Protests in Cairo, Egypt have now reached the tens of thousands. Police have deployed water cannons and tear gas. I am writing this live from Cairo, where I witnessed a throng of 1000-3000 march towards Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. I also witnessed 300-500 protesting on one of the bridges heading downtown. Most importantly, twitter has been blocked by many national carriers." Why Twitter? As reader pinkushun writes "Using Twitter and Facebook, the people instigated a series of fast-moving, rapidly shifting demos across half a dozen or more Egyptian cities. The police could not keep up – and predictably, resorted to violence. Sadly this has led to three known deaths thus far." Update: 01/26 02:05 GMT by T : Jake Appelbaum is tweeting up a storm about the state of the active filters.
Democrats

Obama Nominates RIAA Lawyer For Solicitor General 463

Posted by CmdrTaco from the this'll-be-great dept.
Xiph1980 writes "President Barack Obama on Monday nominated former Recording Industry Association of America lawyer Donald Verrilli Jr. to serve as the nation's solicitor general. The solicitor general is charged with defending the government before the Supreme Court, and files friend-of-the court briefs in cases in which the government believes there is a significant legal issue. The office also determines which cases it would bring to the Supreme Court for review. Verrilli is best known for leading the recording industry's legal charge against music- and movie-sharing site Grokster. That 2003 case ultimately led to Grokster's demise when the US Supreme Court sided with the RIAA's verdict."
Businesses

The Fall of Traditional Entertainment Conglomerates 204

Posted by samzenpus from the let-me-know-how-that-goes-for-you dept.
Advocatus Diaboli writes "We no longer live in the era of 'plantation-type' movie studios or recording houses. However large private companies still have considerable power over content production, distribution and promotion. Technology has been slowly changing this state of affairs for almost 30-40 years, however certain new technological advances, enabling systems and cost considerations will change the entertainment industry as we know it within 5 years."
Crime

Wikileaks To Name Swiss Bank Tax Evaders 783

Posted by CmdrTaco from the oh-this-will-work-out-fine dept.
eldavojohn writes "The old cliche that the rich and corrupt hold all their money in Swiss bank accounts (to avoid taxation) may finally have a bit of transparency, as the news today is that Wikileaks has been handed a list of account holders tendered by Rudolf Elmer, former banker of Julius Baer. Julian Assange promises a 'full revelation' while Elmer cited his motivation as being: 'I want to let society know how this system works. It's damaging society.' This appears to be real, as Mr. Elmer is soon to appear before a Zurich regional court on charges of coercion as well as violations of Switzerland's strict banking secrecy laws. The public may soon find out that their favorite celebrity, politician or employer doesn't feel responsible to contribute financially to the commonwealth at the expense of privacy."
Security

Submission + - Dancho Danchev Claimed Located (google.com)

Submitted by kdawson
kdawson writes: A Bulgarian newspaper carries a report that missing security researcher Dancho Danchev has been found — and is in a mental institution (link is a Google translation of the Bulgarian original). The article claims that 'according to reliable source of [the newspaper] Dnevnik he was placed in a Bulgarian psychiatric hospital since December 11.' I hope more will eventually be revealed as to where Danchev spent the 3 months preceding that date. During the bygone Soviet era, 'psychiatric hospital' didn't have the same connotations it might in the West.
Google

Google To Push WebM With IE9, Safari Plugins 413

Posted by timothy from the first-one's-free dept.
surveyork writes with this "new chapter in the browser wars: 'Google in a defense of its decision to pull H.264 from Chrome's HTML5 revealed that it will put out WebM plugins for Internet Explorer 9 and Safari. Expecting no official support from Apple or Microsoft, Google plans to develop extensions that would load its self-owned video codec. No timetable was given.' So Google gets started with their plan for world-wide WebM domination. They'll provide WebM plugins for the browsers of the H.264-only league, so in practice, all major browsers will have WebM support — one way or the other. Machiavellian move?"

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