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Comment Obama is but a puppet (Score 5, Insightful) 236

by Taco Cowboy (#47942557) Attached to: Apple's "Warrant Canary" Has Died

The huge machinery behind the NSA / CIA / FBI and all those alphabet agencies wants total control, and it has the enthusiastic support of private companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, amongst others

Obama? That one is but a puppet

When the term of this puppet ends, by 2016 they will have another puppet installed. But of course, they will give us an "illusive election", whereby no matter who we vote for, it will be their puppet who will be installed inside the Casa Blanca!

Viva la Maquinaria !!

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How hard is it to pick-up astronomy and physics as an adult? 1

Submitted by samalex01
samalex01 writes: I'm 38, married, two young kids, and I have a nice job in the IT industry, but since I was a kid I've had this deep love and passion for astronomy and astrophysics. This love and passion though never evolved into any formal education or anything beyond just a distant fascination as I got out of high school, into college, and started going through life on more of an IT career path.

So my question, now that I'm 38 is there any hope that I could start learning more about astronomy or physics to make it more than just a hobby? I don't expect to be a Carl Sagan or Neil deGrasse Tyson, but I'd love to have enough knowledge in these subjects to research and experiment to the point where I could possibly start contributing back to the field. MIT Open Courseware has some online courses for free that cover these topics, but given I can only spend maybe 10 hours a week on this would it be a pointless venture? Not to mention my mind isn't as sharp now as it was 20 years ago when I graduated high school.

Thanks for any advice or suggestions.

Submission + - Novel antibiotic from vaginal microbes (nature.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: Good news for the Sushi-Lovers!

A study have found that bacteria living in vagina secretes a newly discovered antibiotic — Lactocillin

Michael Fischbach, a microbiologist and chemist at the University of California, San Francisco, led a team into researching the huge diverse potential of the microbiome for producing antimicrobial molecules

The researchers built a machine-learning algorithm, training a computer program to recognize genes that are already known to make small molecules that could act as drugs. Then they asked the program to hunt for similar genes in the human microbiome. The search yielded thousands of these drug-making genes within microbes living on and in the body. Some are similar to drugs being tested in clinical trials, such as a class of antibiotics called thiopeptides

“We used to think that drugs were discovered by drug companies and prescribed by a physician and then they get to you,” Fischbach says. “What we’ve found here is that bacteria that live on and inside of humans are doing an end-run around that process; they make drugs right on your body”

Fischbach’s team then purified one of these: a thiopeptide made by a bacterium that normally lives in the human vagina. The researchers found that the drug could kill the same types of bacteria as other thiopeptides — for instance, Staphylococcus aureus, which can cause skin infections. The scientists did not actually show that the human vaginal bacteria make the drug on the body, but they did show that when they grew the bacteria, it made the antibiotic

Submission + - Europeans came from three ancestry groupings (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: A recent study by researchers at Harvard Medical School and the University of Tübingen in Germany has found that present day Europeans are descendants of three different groups of people — A near east farmer group, an indigenous hunter gatherer group, and an ncient North Eurasian group from Siberia

"Nearly all Europeans have ancestry from all three ancestral groups," said Iosif Lazaridis, a research fellow in genetics in Reich's lab and first author of the paper. "Differences between them are due to the relative proportions of ancestry. Northern Europeans have more hunter-gatherer ancestry — up to about 50 percent in Lithuanians — and Southern Europeans have more farmer ancestry."

The most surprising part of the project, however, was the discovery of the Basal Eurasians

Before Australian Aborigines and New Guineans and South Indians and Native Americans and other indigenous hunter-gatherers split, they split from Basal Eurasians

The study also found that Mediterranean groups such as the Maltese, as well as Ashkenazi Jews, had more Near East ancestry than anticipated, while far northeastern Europeans such as Finns and the Saami, as well as some northern Russians, had more East Asian ancestry in the mix

Submission + - Study Finds Link Between Artificial Sweeteners and Glucose Intolerance

Submitted by onproton
onproton writes: The journal Nature released a study today that reveals a link between the consumption of artificial sweeteners and the development of glucose intolerance, a leading risk factor for the development of type 2 diabetes, citing a critical alteration of intestinal bacteria. Paradoxically, these non-caloric sweeteners, which can be up to 20,000 times sweeter than natural sugars, are often recommended to diabetes patients to control blood glucose levels. Sugar substitutes have come under additional fire lately from studies showing that eating artificially sweetened foods can lead to greater overall calorie consumption and even weight gain. While some, especially food industry officials, remain highly skeptical of such studies, more research still needs to be done to determine the actual risks these substances may pose to health.
Security

Tinba Trojan Targets Major US Banks 61

Posted by samzenpus from the protect-ya-neck dept.
An anonymous reader writes Tinba, the tiny (20 KB) banking malware with man-in-the-browser and network traffic sniffing capabilities, is back. After initially being made to target users of a small number of banks, that list has been amplified and now includes 26 financial institutions mostly in the US and Canada, but some in Australia and Europe as well. Tinba has been modified over the years, in an attempt to bypass new security protections set up by banks, and its source code has been leaked on underground forums a few months ago. In this new campaign, the Trojan gets delivered to users via the Rig exploit kit, which uses Flash and Silverlight exploits. The victims get saddled with the malware when they unknowingly visit a website hosting the exploit kit."

Submission + - Snowden's Leaks Didn't Help Terrorists 1

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: The Interecept reports that contrary to lurid claims made by U.S. officials, a new independent analysis of Edward Snowden’s revelations on NSA surveillance that examined the frequency of releases and updates of encryption software by jihadi groups has found no correlation in either measure to Snowden’s leaks about the NSA’s surveillance techniques. According to the report "well prior to Edward Snowden, online jihadists were already aware that law enforcement and intelligence agencies were attempting to monitor them (PDF).” In fact, concerns about terrorists' use of sophisticated encryption technology predates even 9/11.

Earlier this month former NSA head Michael Hayden stated, “The changed communications practices and patterns of terrorist groups following the Snowden revelations have impacted our ability to track and monitor these groups”, while Matthew Olsen of the National Counterterrorism Centre would add “Following the disclosure of the stolen NSA documents, terrorists are changing how they communicate to avoid surveillance.” Snowden’s critics have previously accused his actions of contributing from everything from the rise of ISIS to Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. "This most recent study is the most comprehensive repudiation of these charges to date," says Murtaza Hussain. "Contrary to lurid claims to the contrary, the facts demonstrate that terrorist organizations have not benefited from the NSA revelations, nor have they substantially altered their behavior in response to them."

Submission + - FCC May Raise Broadband Speed Requirements for Subsidies to ISPs 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: On Wednesday at a hearing in front of the US House Committee on Small Business, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler stated that for ISPs to be eligible for government broadband subsidies, they would have to deliver speeds of at least 10 Mbps. Said Wheeler: "What we are saying is we can't make the mistake of spending the people's money, which is what Universal Service is, to continue to subsidize something that's subpar." He further indicated that he would remedy the situation by the end of 2014. The broadband subsidies are collected through bill surcharges paid for by phone customers.

Comment Depends on which country (Score 5, Interesting) 232

by Taco Cowboy (#47925321) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Have You Experienced Fear Driven Development?

90% is a small number, right?

TFA talked about a company in South East Asia and I do have business dealings with companies from that region - and I can tell you that many companies from that region are indeed dysfunctional

They kinda adopt the Western approach of management, but then they add in their own cultural flavor, mainly based on race / religion / language background and when all those things got mixed up, what TFA mentioned wasn't even enough to scratch the surface of the true dysfunctional nature of the beasts down there

Comment You can't earn a lot while working for others (Score 5, Informative) 270

by Taco Cowboy (#47924403) Attached to: College Students: Want To Earn More? Take a COBOL Class

Working for others may get you a decent living, but if you really, and I mean, REALLY want to earn a lot of money, working for others won't make you rich

I started by working for high tech companies, some decades ago. Yes, I did earn really decent wages, much better than most of my peers at that time. But I didn't stop there

When I was working, I noticed niche markets that were not being fulfilled. I got out and started my own companies (plural) to do just that

Some of the companies I sold to others, some I kept. A lot of people are working with me right now, but I gotta tell you, no matter how much I pay them (and yes, I do pay my co-workers very handsomely) they still do not earn as much as I

The moral is very simple --- if you really want to be wealthy, stop being a worker, and start being an entrepreneur

Submission + - Android One's price/performance ratio proves to be inferior! (digitimes.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: Slashdot carried the news about the launch of 3 Android One cellphones in India

http://tech.slashdot.org/story...

The truth is, the price / performance ratio of any of the three phones listed was actually ***INFERIOR*** to the entry level smartphones that are on sale in China

For example, in China, consumers are now able to buy a smartphone equipped with a 5-inch display, a 13-megapixel camera and a MediaTek 8-core CPU for US$100. Compare that to the Dream UNO Mi-498, the Android One smartphone from Spice, India, which has a 4.5-inch display, MediaTek 1.3GHz quad-core CPU, 5-megapixel camera, with a price tag of INR7,000, or US$115

If the Chinese smartphone makers can outdo Google in the game, what is the point of Google continuing pushing its Android One phones?

Comment It is ***MUCH MORE*** than that !! (Score 1) 103

by Taco Cowboy (#47923917) Attached to: NSA Director Says Agency Is Still Trying To Figure Out Cyber Operations

We're having coming up with a definition that means "It's fine when we do it, but an act of war if we want it to be when someone does it to us" that passes the laugh test

Remember it's NSA we are talking about

They do not need to speak the truth, and in fact, they have lied to the congress and nobody could do anything to them

In other words, they can declare "An Act of War" any time they want, even if nobody did nothing, because right now, as we speak, NSA is an entity that no one have any right to inspect - not the congress, not the court, and surely, not the White House

Comment They are pretending that they do not know (Score 2) 103

by Taco Cowboy (#47923623) Attached to: NSA Director Says Agency Is Still Trying To Figure Out Cyber Operations

"We're still trying to work our way through distinguishing the difference between criminal hacking and an act of war," said Rogers

NSA supposed to be a government agency filled with very intelligent folks, and they are telling us that they can't differentiate between common hacking (whether it be criminal or otherwise) and an _Act of War_ ?

I dunno about you, but I find it very hard to believe!

Submission + - Business competition, Korean Style (bbc.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: A spat has developed between 2 of the biggest Korean chaebols , Samsung & LG

Samsung is accusing LG's employees, one of which was a high-ranking executive, of damaging Samsung's branded washing machine in Germany

LG has retaliate with a charge that this episode is nothing but an attempt by Samsung to damage its (LG's) reputation

Prosecutors in Korea and Police in Germany are getting involved

Stay tuned ...

Submission + - Foxconn workers come down with leukemia (wantinews.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: Chances are the electronic device you use, whether it be smartphones, tablets, servers, or whatever, came from a factory somewhere in China

Foxxconn (or Hon Hai) is one of the biggest electronic factory that churns out millions and millions of electronic device every single day

A recent report came out that 13 young employees of Hon Hai had developed leukemia and 5 of them died of it. Instead of helping its employees, Foxconn denied everything and has adopted heavy-handed approach by demanding news outlets to retract their report (about Hon Hai's employees came down with leukemia) or Foxconn threatening them with lawsuits

As part of their "denial campaign" the "union" representing Hon Hai's workers came out with company approved propaganda, denying the link of benzene to those employees who were infected with leukemia

All in all, the picture is not pretty. Hon Hai is doing everything to cover up the truth, while its workers are still exposed to health-damaging chemicals in their workplace

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