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Submission + - EU new VAT regulation ends up helping Amazon (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: Last year the EU passed a new legislation which was supposed to punish entities such as Amazon (which has its EU base in Belgium and thus not paying appropriate taxes in other EU countries) but ironically the same legislation which comes into effect 1st Jan of this year ends up helping Amazon

Microbusinsses (small shops dotted around the EU countries) simply couldn't cope with the complication of having to comply with each and every kind of VAT regulation in each and every EU country (plus local version of VATs)

Most of the microbusinesses may end up shutting their digital businesses, and those who hang on, opted to sell their wares on sites such as E-Bay or Amazon — the very entities the new EU regulation tried to punish

Submission + - Cold War, NSA, GCHQ and Encryption (bbc.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: In the 1980s, the historian James Bamford was researching his book The Puzzle Palace about the US National Security Agency (NSA) and came across references to the "Boris project" in papers written by William F Friedman, the founding father of code-breaking in America. The "Boris project' details a secret agreement between Boris Hagelin, the founder of Crypto AG, a Switzerland company which sold Enigma-like machines to nations and spy agencies around the world, and NSA

Upon learning of Mr. Bamford's discovery the NSA promptly had the papers locked up in a vault

In 1995, journalist Scott Shane, then at the Baltimore Sun, found indications of contacts between the company and the NSA in the 1970s, but the company said claims of a deal were "pure invention"

The new revelations of a deal do not come from a whistleblower or leaked reports, but are buried within 52,000 pages of documents declassified by the NSA itself this April and investigated by the BBC

The relationship was based on a deep personal friendship between Hagelin and Friedman, forged during the War. The central document is a once top-secret 22-page report of a 1955 visit by Friedman to Zug in Switzerland, where Crypto AG was based

Some elements of the memo have been redacted — or blacked out — by the NSA. But within the released material, are two versions of the same memo, as well as a draft

Each of the versions has different parts redacted. By placing them side by side and cross referencing with other documents, it is possible to learn many — but not all — details. The different versions of the report make clear Friedman — described as special assistant to the director of NSA — went with a proposal agreed not just by US, but also British intelligence

http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/4...

Friedman offered Hagelin time to think his proposal over, but Hagelin accepted on the spot

The relationship, initially referred to as a "gentleman's agreement", included Hagelin keeping the NSA and GCHQ informed about the technical specifications of different machines and which countries were buying which ones. The provision of technical details "is a revelation of the first order," says Paul Reuvers, an engineer who runs the Crypto Museum website

"That's extremely valuable. It is something you would not normally do because the integrity and secrecy of your own customer is mandatory in this business"

The key to breaking mechanical encryption machines — such as Enigma or those produced by Hagelin — is to understand in detail how they work and how they are used. This knowledge can allow smart code breakers to look for weaknesses and use a combination of maths and computing to work through permutations to find a solution. In one document, Hagelin hints to Friedman he is going to be able "to supply certain customers" with a specific machine which, Friedman notes, is of course "easier to solve than the new models"

Previous reports of the deal suggested it may have involved some kind of backdoor in the machines, which would provide the NSA with the keys. But there is no evidence for this in the documents (although some parts remain redacted)

Rather, it seems the detailed knowledge of the machines and their operations may have allowed code-breakers to cut the time needed to decrypt messages from the impossible to the possible

The relationship also involved not selling machines such as the CX-52, a more advanced version of the C-52 — to certain countries. "The reason that CX-52 is so terrifying is because it can be customised," says Prof Richard Aldrich, of the University of Warwick. "So it's a bit like defeating Enigma and then moving to the next country and then you've got to defeat Enigma again and again and again"

Some countries — including Egypt and India — were not told of the more advanced models and so bought those easier for the US and UK to break

In some cases, customers appear to have been deceived. One memo indicates Crypto AG was providing different customers with encryption machines of different strengths at the behest of Nato and that "the different brochures are distinguishable only by 'secret marks' printed thereon"

Historian Stephen Budiansky says: "There was a certain degree of deception going on of the customers who were buying [machines] and thinking they were getting something the same as what Hagelin was selling everywhere when in fact it was a watered-down version"

Among the customers of Hagelin listed are Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Pakistan, India, Jordan and others in the developing world

In the summer of 1958, army officers apparently sympathetic to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrew the regime in Iraq. Historian David Easter, of King's College, London, says intelligence from decrypted Egyptian communications was vital in Britain being able to rapidly deploy troops to neighbouring Jordan to forestall a potential follow-up coup against a British ally

The 1955 deal also appears to have involved the NSA itself writing "brochures", instruction manuals for the CX-52, to ensure "proper use". One interpretation is these were written so certain countries could use the machines securely — but in others, they were set up so the number of possible permutations was small enough for the NSA to crack

In a statement, a GCHQ spokesman said the agency "does not comment on its operational activities and neither confirms nor denies the accuracy of the specific inferences that have been drawn from the document you are discussing"

The NSA also declined to comment on the specific conclusions
HP

HP R&D Starts Enforcing a Business Casual Dress Code 480

Posted by timothy from the here's-your-pointy-headed-boss-disguise dept.
An anonymous reader writes: HP was once known as a research and technology giant, a company founded in a garage by a pair of engineers and dominated by researchers. Whilst a part of that lives on in Agilent any hope for the rest of the company has now died with the announcement that HP R&D will have to dress in business "smart casual" with T-shirts, baseball caps, short skirts, low cut dresses and sportswear all being banned.
Open Source

Battle For Wesnoth Seeks New Developers 58

Posted by timothy from the but-where's-the-ios-version? dept.
jones_supa writes: Twelve years ago, David White sat down over a weekend and created the small pet project that we know today as the open source strategy game The Battle For Wesnoth. At the time, Dave was the sole programmer, working alongside Francisco Muñoz, who produced the first graphics. As more and more people contributed, the game grew from a tiny personal project into an extensive one, encompassing hundreds of contributors. Today however, the ship is sinking. The project is asking for help to keep things rolling. Especially requested are C++, Python, and gameplay (WML) programmers. Any willing volunteers should have good communication skills and preferably be experienced with working alongside fellow members of a large project. More details can be found at the project website.
Google

Google Will Block Access To Its Autocomplete API On August 10 59

Posted by timothy from the keeping-coders-in-suspense-since dept.
An anonymous reader writes with news reported by VentureBeat that Google will be discontinuing developer access to its unofficial Autocomplete API, as of August 10 of this year. A snippet from the article: Google currently supports more than 80 APIs that developers can use to integrate Google services and data into their applications. The company also has unsupported and unpublished APIs which people outside the company have discovered and leveraged. One of those is the Autocomplete API. The company says it is making this move "in the interest of maintaining the integrity of autocomplete as part of Search," that it wants to "ensure that users experience autocomplete as it was designed to be used," and finally that "this provides the best user experience for both services." I'm sure many will disagree.

Submission + - Chinese tourist crashes drone into Taipei 101 skyscrapper (yibada.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: A Chinese tourist is under remand for crashing his drone into the Taipei 101 sky scrapper, and ordered to pay a fine of $48,000 (NT $1.5 Million)

Yan Yungfan, a 30-year-old man from eastern China's Fujian Province, was supposedly attempting to film Taipei's cityscape on Tuesday morning with a remotely controlled Phantom 3 UAV when he lost control of the drone, causing it to hit the side of Taipei 101 at around the 30th floor

No one was injured in the incident and only minor damage was sustained by the building's glass windows, but the video immediately became a viral sensation after it was uploaded online

Taipei 101 said in a statement that there have been three incidents of drones crashing around the building since mid-June, with the first two cases taking place on June 15 and June 20. No injuries were reported for both incidents, although the UAV that crashed on June 15 fell less than two meters from pedestrians

Comment Poland is coming to the rescue ... (Score 1) 484

by Taco Cowboy (#50172343) Attached to: France To Reduce Reliance On Nuclear Power

... with their new coal power stations

https://notalotofpeopleknowtha...

If France really wants to close down their nuclear power plants, Poland will be more than happy to supply Germany with their excess electricity generated from coal power stations

What about 'Carbon Footprint', you say? Hey, Poland can claim that their 'carbon footprint' is not as high as China, so they get all the greenlights they need to construct even MORE coal power plants

Comment What will water be like on denser planets? (Score 1) 134

by Taco Cowboy (#50172011) Attached to: NASA Spies Earth-Sized Exoplanet Orbiting Sun-Like Star

While I have a lot of interest in astronomy I am not trained in the field, thus, I have the following questions - hoping that someone may be able to answer them ...
 
Let's say a planet, Planet XYZ, which is 5X denser than earth and there's water on (and in) it --- how will the water behaves on that planet?

Will water on Planet XYZ 5X denser than planet earth have 5X the viscosity of the H20 we have on planet earth?

What if the planet has only half the density of planet earth? Will the water be half the viscosity as it is on planet Earth?
AI

A Programming Language For Self-Organizing Swarms of Drones 56

Posted by timothy from the just-don't-teach-them-to-shoot dept.
New submitter jumpjoe writes: Drones are becoming a staple of everyday news. Drone swarms are the natural extension of the drone concept for applications such as search and rescue, mapping, and agricultural and industrial monitoring. A new programming language, compiler, and virtual machine were recently introduced to specify the behaviour of an entire swarm with a single program. This programming language, called Buzz, allows for self-organizing behaviour to accomplish complex tasks with simple program. Details on the language and examples are available here. Full disclosure: I am one of the authors of the paper.

Comment C-14 does *NOT* decay into stable carbon ! (Score 5, Informative) 108

by Taco Cowboy (#50159137) Attached to: Fossil Fuels Are Messing With Carbon Dating

As I am the one who submitted this article I need to point out an error

... The C-14 within an organism is continually decaying into stable carbon isotopes

The radioactive C-14 isotopes do not decay into "stable carbon isotopes" but rather, into stable N-14 isotopes via beta decay !

Please accept my sincere apology for the error - it was the fault of no other but me alone, for not noticing that glaring error when I was copy-pasta-ing from articles of three different sites
Google

Woman Recruited By Google Four Times and Rejected Now Joins Age Discrimination Suit 634

Posted by Soulskill from the if-at-first-you-don't-succeed dept.
dcblogs writes: An Ivy league graduate, with a Ph.D. in geophysics, Cheryl Fillekes, who also specializes in Linux and Unix systems, was contacted by Google recruiters four separate times over a seven year period. In each instance, she did well enough on the phone interviews to get invited to an in-person interview but was rejected every time for a job. She has since joined an age discrimination lawsuit against Google filed about two months ago by another older worker. "The amended lawsuit also alleges that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) received 'multiple complaints of age discrimination by Google, and is currently conducting an extensive investigation.'"

Submission + - Fossil fuels are messing with Carbon Dating (scientificamerican.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: The element Carbon comes in several isotopes, with one of them the radioactive Carbon-14

Carbon-14 is formed when some of the atmospheric Nitrogen at the upper atmosphere is bombarded by cosmic radiation and break down into the unstable radioactive isotope of Carbon-14

The unstable isotope is brought to Earth by atmospheric activity, such as storms, and becomes fixed in the biosphere. Because it reacts identically to C-12 and C-13, C-14 becomes attached to complex organic molecules through photosynthesis in plants and becomes part of their molecular makeup. Animals eating those plants in turn absorb Carbon-14 as well as the stable isotopes. This process of ingesting C-14 continues as long as the plant or animal remains alive

The natural distribution of C-14 on planet Earth used to be about one part per trillion

The carbon dating method in determining the age of an artifact is based on the amount of radioactive carbon-14 isotopes

The C-14 within an organism is continually decaying into stable carbon isotopes, but since the organism is absorbing more C-14 during its life, the ratio of C-14 to C-12 remains about the same as the ratio in the atmosphere. When the organism dies, the ratio of C-14 within its carcass begins to gradually decrease. The rate of decrease is 1/2 the quantity at death every 5,730 years. That is the half-life of C-14 and that is the base on how Carbon Dating operates

The fossil fuel which we are burning are so old they do not have contain any traceable amount of C-14, and the more we use fossil fuel, the more non-C-14 Carbon we pump into the atmosphere

If emissions continue under a business-as-usual scenario, by year 2050 a T-Shirt made in that year (2050) will have a 'Carbon-14 emission' signature as a T-Shirt worn by William the Conqueror a thousand years (if William the Conqueror had a fetish for T-Shirt), for someone using the radiocarbon dating technique

http://www.bbc.com/news/scienc...
http://www.psmag.com/nature-an...


Graphics

LibreOffice Ported To Run On Wayland 216

Posted by timothy from the onwards-and-up-words dept.
An anonymous reader writes: LibreOffice has lost its X11 dependency on Linux and can now run smoothly under Wayland. LibreOffice has been ported to Wayland by adding GTK3 tool-kit support to the office suite over the past few months. LibreOffice on Wayland is now in good enough shape that the tracker bug has been closed and it should work as well as X11 except for a few remaining bugs. LibreOffice 5.0 will be released next month with this support and other changes outlined by the 5.0 release notes.
Businesses

Why Certifications Are Necessary (Even If Aggravating To Earn) 213

Posted by samzenpus from the eat-your-broccoli dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes: Whether or not certifications have value is a back-and-forth argument that's been going on since before Novell launched its CNE program in the 1990s. Developer David Bolton recently incited some discussion of his own when he wrote an article for Dice in which he claimed that certifications aren't worth the time and money. But there's a lot of evidence that certifications can add as much as 16 percent to a tech professional's base pay; in addition a lot of tech companies use resume-screening software that weeds out any resumes that don't feature certain acronyms. There's also the argument that the cost, difficulty, and annoyance of earning a certification is actually the best reason to go through it, especially if you're looking for a job; it broadcasts that you're serious enough about the technology to invest a serious chunk of your life in it. But others might not agree with that assessment, arguing that all a certification proves is that you're good at taking tests, not necessarily knowing a technology inside and out.

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