RajivSLK - Slashdot User

Submission + - Sunday Times issues DMCA takedown notice to the Intercept over Snowden article (documentcloud.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16, 2015 @03:01PM

An anonymous reader writes: On Sunday the newspaper the Sunday Times published an article citing anonymous UK government sources that Edward Snowden was in the hands of the Russians and Chinese. Shortly thereafter, Glenn Greenwald at the Intercept published a scathing criticism of the article. In this article, Glenn published a photograph of the paper's front page on which the story occurred. Yesterday, the Intercept received a DMCA take down notice from News Corp on account of the photograph.
The Intercept is refusing to comply with the take down notice.

Submission + - Julian Assange To Be Interviewed in London After All (aklagare.se)

Submitted by mpawlo on Monday June 15, 2015 @02:24PM

mpawlo writes: The Swedish Director of Public Prosecution Ms Marianne Ny has submitted a request for legal assistance to the English authorities and a request to Ecuadorian authorities regarding permission to interview Julian Assange at Ecuador’s embassy in London during June-July 2015. Back in 2010, a warrant was issued in Stockholm, Sweden for WikiLeaks founder and spokesman Julian Assange. Ever since, Assange has found refugee at the embassy of Ecuador in London.

Submission + - USCRN shows U.S. temperatures have declined for 10 years (dailycaller.com)

Submitted by davidph on Monday June 15, 2015 @02:08PM

davidph writes: Recent research published by NOAA's National Climate Data Center purports to show that world temperatures have continued to rise over the last two decades, at least if you accept their data data manipulation. But not all climate scientists approve of the adjustments to the raw data. For instance, Georgia Tech climate scientist Judith Curry says the National Climate Data Center paper is "politically useful for the Obama administration" but not a "useful contribution to our scientific understanding."

Now we have ten years of data from the U.S. Surface Climate Observing Reference Network, state-of-the-art weather stations "designed with climate science in mind." The high quality data from the USCRN show rather that instead of rising temperatures have actually declined slightly in the last ten years.

Submission + - StrageLoop bans engineer over political views (breitbart.com)

Submitted by Third Position on Sunday June 07, 2015 @01:00PM

Third Position writes: Software engineer Curtis Yarvin was scheduled to give a talk on a new system software stack at Strangeloop — but his talk has now been cancelled after the conference received complaints on social media by critics of his political views. These complaints occured despite the fact that Yarvin’s talk, the abstract of which is copied below, concerned a purely technical topic.

Submission + - In Advance Of Upcoming Steam Summer Sale, Valve Introduces Steam Refunds

Submitted by Deathspawner on Tuesday June 02, 2015 @06:20PM

Deathspawner writes: Despite all of its competition, Valve's Steam service remains the most popular digital PC game store around. While Steam does do a lot of things right, it can sometimes stumble in the worst of ways. Look no further than April's Skyrim mod debacle as a good example. Well, just as Valve fixed up that issue, it's gone ahead and fixed another: it's making refunds dead simple. While refunds have been possible in the past, it's required gamers to jump through hoops to get them. Now, Valve has set certain criteria, and if it's met, a refund will be granted, no questions asked — a definite step in the right direction.

Submission + - USA Freedom Act passes unamended, limiting NSA surveillance (betanews.com) 1

Submitted by Mark Wilson on Tuesday June 02, 2015 @05:16PM

Mark Wilson writes: Today the US Senate passed the USA Freedom Act without amendments, signalling the start of the significant surveillance reform that has been called for since Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the agency's activities. It had already been determined that the bulk collection of phone metadata was illegal, and the expiry of Section 215 of the Patriot Act at the end of May brought this data collection to an end anyway.

The USA Freedom Act sets in concrete the end of the phone data collection program and is seen as a major victory for privacy advocates. It will come as good news to Snowden himself who will undoubtedly feel a sense of relief that his risk-taking paid off. The bill is still to be signed into law by President Obama, but this is now little more than a formality.

Submission + - Senator proposes criminal charges against global warming skeptics

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02, 2015 @03:31PM

An anonymous reader writes: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) has proposed that racketeering charges be considered against fossil fuel companies who express skepticism about human-caused global warming and dare to disagree with any environmental regulations imposed based on this theory.

As he writes today in his Washington Post op-ed:
The fossil fuel industry, its trade associations and the conservative policy institutes that often do the industry's dirty work met at the Washington office of the American Petroleum Institute. A memo from that meeting that was leaked to the New York Times documented their plans for a multimillion-dollar public relations campaign to undermine climate science and to raise "questions among those (e.g. Congress) who chart the future U.S. course on global climate change."

Gee, industry skeptics of global warming wish to use their first amendment rights to debate the issue! How dare they! Worse, they might use money to finance their effort!

As noted at the first link, the idea that any disagreement with global warming advocacy should be criminalized is not a new thing, and has increasingly been advocated by that leftwing community. The Whitehouse is now tying this to the criminalization of the use of money to express that disagreement. This is nothing more than a fascist attempt at squelching freedom.

Submission + - Meet the Classic Game Designers

Submitted by belg4mit on Thursday May 28, 2015 @06:44PM

belg4mit writes: In collaboration with AMC in support of their fictionalized account of the history of video games, "Halt and Catch Fire", Motherboard TV is releasing a series of mini-documentaries about people involved in the history of gaming including Dona Bailey, the author of Centipede, and John Romero of id Software fame.

Submission + - Sourceforge staff takes over a user's account and wraps their software installer (arstechnica.com) 11

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28, 2015 @03:45PM

An anonymous reader writes: Sourceforge staff took over the account of the GIMP-for-Windows maintainer claiming it was abandoned and used this opportunity to wrap the installer in crapware. Quoting Ars:

SourceForge, the code repository site owned by Slashdot Media, has apparently seized control of the account hosting GIMP for Windows on the service, according to e-mails and discussions amongst members of the GIMP community—locking out GIMP's lead Windows developer. And now anyone downloading the Windows version of the open source image editing tool from SourceForge gets the software wrapped in an installer replete with advertisements.

Submission + - Gates, Zuckerberg Promising Same Jobs to US Kids and Foreign H-1B Workers? 1

Submitted by theodp on Sunday May 17, 2015 @01:41AM

theodp writes: Over at the Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg-bankrolled Code.org, they're using the number of open computing jobs in each state to convince parents of the need to expand K-12 CS offerings so their kids can fill those jobs. Sounds good, right? But at the same time, the Gates and Zuckerberg-bankrolled FWD.org PAC has taken to Twitter, using the number of open "STEM" jobs in each state to convince politicians of the need to expand the number of H-1B visas so foreign workers can fill those jobs. While the goal of Microsoft's 'two-pronged' National Talent Strategy is to kill two birds [K-12 CS education and H-1B visas] with one crisis, is it cool for organizations backed by many of the same wealthy individuals to essentially promise the same jobs to U.S. kids and foreign H-1B workers?

Submission + - Security certification for an old grad? (nolink.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13, 2015 @06:52PM

An anonymous reader writes: I graduated in late 2003 during the tech bubble burst with a below 2.5 GPA. I am 35 with an interest in getting a security job. What are the chances that I would be just wasting my time and money? I am pursuing business interests with a patent used in a service that will be a prime target for hackers. I have been writing client/server software in an OpenBSD virtual machine for the security and the kqueue functionality; not to mention the rest of the virtual clients crash that I have tried. I figure that trying to sell the service idea, even if I can't get a job, when they ask what qualifies me to have such ideas, I can say I have the credentials. I just got issued the patent this year.

Submission + - Sorority Files Lawsuit After Sacred Secrets Posted on Penny Arcade Forums (seattlepi.com) 1

Submitted by Limekiller42 on Wednesday May 06, 2015 @05:23PM

Limekiller42 writes: Lawyers for the Phi Sigma Sigma sorority have filed suit in Seattle's King County Superior Court against an unidentified person for "publicizing the sorority’s secret handshake, robe colors and other practices." The well-written article is by Levi Pulkkinen of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and states that the sorority is seeking a restraining order and financial compensation for damages.

Submission + - Ancestery.com caught sharing DNA database with government (eff.org)

Submitted by SonicSpike on Wednesday May 06, 2015 @11:25AM

SonicSpike writes: In 1996, a young woman named Angie Dodge was murdered in her apartment in a small town in Idaho. Although the police collected DNA from semen left at the crime scene, they haven’t been able to match the DNA to existing profiles in any criminal database, and the murder has never been solved.

Fast forward to 2014. The Idaho police sent the semen sample to a private lab to extract a DNA profile that included YSTR and mtDNA—the two genetic markers used to determine patrilineal and matrilineal relationships (it’s unclear why they reopened the case after nearly 20 years). These markers would allow investigators to search some existing databases to try to find a match between the sample and genetic relatives.

The cops chose to use a lab linked to a private collection of genetic genealogical data called the Sorenson Database (now owned by Ancestry.com), which claims it’s “the foremost collection of genetic genealogy data in the world.” The reason the Sorenson Database can make such an audacious claim is because it has obtained its more than 100,000 DNA samples and documented multi-generational family histories from “volunteers in more than 100 countries around the world.”

Sorenson promised volunteers their genetic data would only be used for “genealogical services, including the determination of family migration patterns and geographic origins” and would not be shared outside Sorenson.

Despite this promise, Sorenson shared its vast collection of data with the Idaho police. Without a warrant or court order, investigators asked the lab to run the crime scene DNA against Sorenson’s private genealogical DNA database. Sorenson found 41 potential familial matches, one of which matched on 34 out of 35 alleles—a very close match that would generally indicate a close familial relationship. The cops then asked, not only for the “protected” name associated with that profile, but also for all “all information including full names, date of births, date and other information pertaining to the original donor to the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy project.”

Submission + - Bernie Sanders, H-1B skeptic

Submitted by Presto Vivace on Friday May 01, 2015 @05:40PM

Presto Vivace writes: Will the Vermont senator raise the visibility of the visa issue with his presidential run?
The H-1B visa issue rarely surfaces during presidential races, and that's what makes the entrance by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) into the 2016 presidential race so interesting. ... ...Sanders is very skeptical of the H-1B program, and has lambasted tech firms for hiring visa workers at the same time they're cutting staff. He's especially critical of the visa's use in offshore outsourcing.

Submission + - Microsoft's K-12 CS and H-1B Visa Agenda: From Think Tank to Law of the Land

Submitted by theodp on Saturday April 25, 2015 @03:09AM

theodp writes: Led by Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, with corporate contributions from the likes of Microsoft and Google, a $30M campaign to promote K-12 computer science education was a smash success, winning over the President and lawmakers, who are poised to make CS a 'core academic subject' in a rewritten No Child Left Behind Act, which could result in hundreds of millions of dollars in new spending that the tech giants suggested could be funded using fees from additional H-1B visas they're coincidentally lobbying for to bring in foreign programming talent. Since the NY Times' Eric Lipton just won a 2015 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting that shed light on how foreign powers buy influence at think tanks, it probably bears mentioning that Microsoft's 'two-pronged' K-12 CS and H-1B visa agenda — which is on the verge of becoming the law of the land — was hatched at an influential Microsoft-backed think tank mentioned in Lipton's reporting, the Brookings Institution. On September 27, 2012, the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings "hosted a forum on STEM education and immigration reforms and how these policy innovations can recharge American competitiveness and economic opportunity for current and future generations of workers." Keynote remarks were delivered by Brad Smith, executive VP and general counsel of Microsoft, who took the occasion to introduce Microsoft's National Talent Strategy. "So, Brad," asked the Brookings Institution's Darrell West, "you're the only [one] who mentioned this topic of making the problem bigger. So, we galvanize action by really producing a crisis ['like climate change', as Microsoft partner Code.org later put it], I take it?" Smith replied, "Yeah, I think we have the opportunity to do two things...the immigration and education issues are, to some degree, opposite sides of the same coin. The coin itself is about the need to have people with the right skills to do the work that the country needs to get done...And, you know, it will require additional people from outside the United States in the short term [20+ years, according to the WSJ] but let's use that to help address the broader and to some degree deeper and longer lasting problem that we face with respect to our educational system. It also gives us the opportunity to connect with people who may not have seen this connection or to connect with people who care more about one issue or the other, but bring them together" (video @ 49:24). Fittingly, in attendance two years later at the White House as President Obama tackled the national CS crisis as he 'learned to code' from a nonprofit headed by Smith's next-door-neighbor at the Brookings-trumpeted and nationally-covered Hour of Code event was Fred Humphries, a top Microsoft lobbyist and Brookings partner. According to visitor records, Humphries returned to the White House the next day with Smith and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to quietly meet with officials. While in D.C., Nadella also lobbied for high-skilled immigration. And that, kids, is How a Bill [Gates Agenda] Becomes a Law!

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