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Submission + - UMG v Grooveshark settled, no money judgment against individuals

Submitted by NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: UMG's case against Grooveshark, which was scheduled to go to trial Monday, has been settled. Under the terms of the settlement (PDF), (a) a $50 million judgment is being entered against Grooveshark, (b) the company is shutting down operations, and (c) no money judgment at all is being entered against the individual defendants.

Submission + - Debian GNU/Hurd 2015 released for DVD, NETINST, etc (debian.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2015. This is a snapshot of Debian "sid" at the time of the stable Debian "jessie" release (April 2015), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release. The installation ISO images can be downloaded from Debian Ports [1] in the usual three Debian flavors: NETINST, CD, or DVD. Besides the friendly Debian installer, a pre-installed disk image is also available there, making it even easier to try Debian GNU/Hurd. The easiest way to run it is inside a VM such as qemu [2]

Submission + - Scientists have paper on gender bias rejected because they're both women (dailylife.com.au)

Submitted by ferrisoxide.com
ferrisoxide.com writes: A paper co-authored by researcher fellow Dr. Fiona Ingleby and evolutionary biologist Dr. Megan Head — on how gender differences affect the experiences that PhD students have when moving into post-doctoral work — was rejected by peer-reviewed PLoS One journal because they didn’t ask a man for help.

A (male) peer reviewer for the journal suggested that the scientists find male co-authors, to prevent “ideologically biased assumptions.” The same reviewer also provided his own ironically biased advice, when explaining that women may have fewer articles published because men's papers "are indeed of a better quality, on average", "just as, on average, male doctoral students can probably run a mile race a bit faster".

Submission + - New Test Suggests NASAs EM Drive Works (io9.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Last year, NASAâ(TM)s advanced propulsion research wing made headlines by announcing the successful test of a physics-defying electromagnetic drive, or EM drive. Now, this futuristic engine, which could in theory propel objects to near-relativistic speeds, has been shown to work inside a space-like vacuum.

NASA Eagleworks made the announcement quite unassumingly via NASASpaceFlight.com. Thereâ(TM)s also a major discussion going on about the engine and the physics that drives it at the siteâ(TM)s forum.

Submission + - Tesla announces batteries to power businesses and homes in blackouts (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors has unveiled a new range of batteries that store solar energy to power homes and businesses as a back-up during grid blackouts. In a move beyond its vehicle business, Tesla said that its new battery would be able to provide consumers with a source of off-grid power, particularly targeting those living in remote areas not supported by national energy frameworks. CEO Elon Musk announced at an event in Los Angeles that the carmaker would start shipping the battery units to U.S. installation companies over the next few months. Musk suggested that the new design would transform the “entire energy infrastructure of the world.” In a statement the company added that the device was “a critical step in this mission to enable zero emission power generation.”

Submission + - Unnoticed For Years, Malware Turned Linux Servers Into Spamming Machines

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For over 5 years, and perhaps even longer, servers around the world running Linux and FreeBSD operating systems have been targeted by an individual or group that compromised them via a backdoor Trojan, then made them send out spam, ESET researchers have found.

What's more, it seems that the spammers are connected with a software company called Yellsoft, which sells DirectMailer, a "system for automated e-mail distribution" that allows users to send out anonymous email in bulk.

Submission + - OpenBSD 5.7 Released

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Just as per the schedule, OpenBSD 5.7 was released today, May 1, 2015. The theme of the 5.7 release is "Source Fish". There are some big changes in OpenBSD 5.7. The nginx httpd server removed from base in favor of an internally developed httpd server in 5.7. BIND (named) from base in 5.7 in favor of nsd(8) (authoritative DNS) and unbound(8) (recursive resolver). Packages will exist for BIND and nginx. This version include a new control utility, rcctl(8), for managing daemons/services, USB 3 support and more. See a detailed log of changes between the 5.6 and 5.7 releases for more information. If you already have an OpenBSD 5.6 system, and do not want to reinstall, upgrade instructions and advice can be found in the Upgrade Guide. You can order the 5.7 CD set from the new OpenBSD Store and support the project.

Submission + - NSA Reform Bill Backed by Both Parties Set to Pass House of Representatives

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: The NYT reports that after more than a decade of wrenching national debate over the intrusiveness of government intelligence agencies, a bipartisan wave of support has gathered to sharply limit the federal government’s sweeps of phone and Internet records. A bill that would overhaul the Patriot Act and curtail the metadata surveillance exposed by Edward J. Snowden overwhelmingly passed the House Judiciary Committee by a vote of a 25-2 vote and is heading to almost certain passage in the House of Representatives while an identical bill in the Senate — introduced with the support of five Republicans — is gaining support over the objection of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who is facing the prospect of his first policy defeat since ascending this year to majority leader. "The bill ends bulk collection, it ends secret law,” says Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, the original author of the Patriot Act who has now helped author the Freedom Act. “It increases the transparency of our intelligence community and it does all this without compromising national security.”

The Patriot Act is up for its first reauthorization since the revelations about bulk data collection. The impending June 1 deadline for reauthorization, coupled with an increase of support among members of both parties, pressure from technology companies and a push from the White House have combined to make changes to the provisions more likely. The Snowden disclosures, along with data breaches at Sony Pictures, Target and the insurance giant Anthem, have unsettled voters and empowered those in Congress arguing for greater civil liberties protection — who a few years ago “could have met in a couple of phone booths,” says Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon. The Freedom Act very nearly passed both chambers of Congress last year, but it failed to garner the 60 votes to break a filibuster in the Senate. It fell short by two votes.

However some say the bill doesn't go far enough. The bill leaves intact surveillance programs conducted by the Drug Enforcement Agency and levies high penalties against those offering “material support” to terrorists. It also renews the expiring parts of the Patriot Act through 2019. "This bill would make only incremental improvements, and at least one provision – the material-support provision – would represent a significant step backwards,” says American Civil Liberties Union Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer. “The disclosures of the last two years make clear that we need wholesale reform.”

Submission + - Mozilla Wants To Deprecate Non-Secure HTTP

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today announced its intent to phase out non-secure HTTP, and that it will be making some proposals to the W3C WebAppSec Working Group soon. Specifically, the company says it is committed to "new development efforts on the secure web and to start removing capabilities from the non-secure web." Richard Barnes, Firefox's security lead, emphasized the company needs to work with the broader Internet community to achieve this ambitious objective. "Since the goal of this effort is to send a message to the web developer community that they need to be secure, our work here will be most effective if coordinated across the web community," Barnes said, and then outlined Mozilla's plans as two-fold, though details on how exactly Firefox will be impacted are still unclear.

Submission + - Attack on Point of Sale Vendor Highlights Supply Chain Risk (securityledger.com)

Submitted by chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: Warnings about the threat posed by compromised software and hardware supply chains have grown more pointed in recent months. Notably firms like Kaspersky (http://www.kaspersky.com/about/news/virus/2015/equation-group-the-crown-creator-of-cyber-espionage) and Trend Micro (http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/securing-the-it-supply-chain/) have highlighted attacks on technology supply chains, while the firm TrapX reported on a malware family, Zombie Zero, that was found lurking on hand-held scanners shipped from China and used by a prominent logistics firm. (http://deceive.trapx.com/rs/trapxcompany/images/AOA_Report_TrapX_AnatomyOfAttack-InternetOfThings.pdf)

RSA brings more evidence that sophisticated cyber criminal and state sponsored groups are looking for ways to compromise technology supply chains. On Wednesday, the company wrote about what is describes as an attempted “supply chain subversion” attack (https://blogs.rsa.com/attacking-a-pos-supply-chain-part-1/) against a prominent point of sale (POS) hardware vendor with links to the PoSeidon point of sale malware campaign.(http://blogs.cisco.com/security/talos/poseidon).

RSA said it detected a sophisticated “spear phishing” campaign against a European POS vendor. According to RSA, e-mail messages were sent to a “small number of employees” of the Point of Sale system vendor posing as support emails from a customer (a prominent New York City restaurant). A malicious Microsoft Word document attached to the e-mail, if opened, installed a copy of the Vawtrak banking Trojan, which is adept at credential theft, according to The Security Ledger. (https://securityledger.com/2015/04/rsa-warns-of-supply-chain-attack-on-point-of-sale-vendors/)

The company said the goal of the attack was apparently to compromise the vendor itself, providing an avenue to “realize subversion of the vendor’s firmware or software built into the products.”

Submission + - Comcast brings fiber to city that it sued 7 years ago to stop fiber rollout

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In April 2008, Comcast sued the Chattanooga Electric Power Board (EPB) to prevent it from building a fiber network to serve residents who were getting slow speeds from the incumbent cable provider. Comcast claimed that EPB illegally subsidized the buildout with ratepayer funds, but it quickly lost in court, and EPB built its fiber network and began offering Internet, TV, and phone service. After EPB launched in 2009, incumbents Comcast and AT&T finally started upgrading their services, EPB officials told Ars when we interviewed them in 2013. But not until this year has Comcast had an Internet offering that can match or beat EPB's $70 gigabit service. Comcast announced its 2Gbps fiber-to-the-home service on April 2, launching first in Atlanta, then in cities in Florida and California, and now in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Submission + - Messenger's Mercury trip ends with a bang, and silence (bbc.com)

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: Nasa's Messenger mission to Mercury has reached its explosive conclusion, after 10 years in space and four in orbit.
Now fully out of fuel, the spacecraft smashed into a region near Mercury's north pole, out of sight from Earth, at about 20:00 GMT on Thursday.
Mission scientists confirmed the impact minutes later, when the craft's next possible communication pass was silent.
Messenger reached Mercury in 2011 and far exceeded its primary mission plan of one year in orbit.

That mission ended with an inevitable collision: Messenger slammed into our Solar System's hottest planet at 8,750mph (14,000km/h) — 12 times quicker than the speed of sound.

The impact will have completely obliterated this history-making craft. And it only happened because Mercury has no thick atmosphere to burn up incoming objects — the same reason its surface is so pock-marked by impact craters.

According to calculations, the 513kg, three-metre craft will have blasted a brand new crater the size of a tennis court. But that lasting monument is far too small to be visible from Earth.

Submission + - Results are in from psychology's largest reproducibility test: 39/100 reproduced (nature.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A crowd-sourced effort to replicate 100 psychology studies has successfully reproduced findings from 39 of them. Some psychologists say this shows the field has a replicability problem. Others say the results are "not bad at all". The results are nuanced: 24 non-replications had findings at least "moderately similar" to the original paper but which didn't quite reach statistical significance.

Submission + - Can riots be predicted by social media? (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: The broken glass and burned wreckage are still being cleared in the wake of the riots that convulsed Baltimore's streets on 27 April. The final trigger of the unrest was the funeral of a 25-year-old African-American man who had died in police custody, but observers point to many other root causes, from income inequality to racial discrimination. But for a few researchers who are studying Baltimore's unrest, the question is not the ultimate causes of the riot but its mechanism: How do such riots self-organize and spread? One of those researchers, Dan Braha, a social scientist at the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been collecting data from Twitter that spans the riot from buildup to aftermath, part of a larger study of social media and social unrest around the world. He spoke to Science about how researchers are helping to predict the riots of the future.

Submission + - FAA: 2 million lines of code process new air traffic system (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: he Federal Aviation Administration this week said it had completed the momentous replacement of 40-year old main computer systems that control air traffic in the US. Known as En Route Automation Modernization (ERAM), the system is expected to increase air traffic flow, improve automated navigation and strengthen aircraft conflict detection services, with the end result being increased safety and less flight congestion.

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