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Power

Lack of US Cybersecurity Across the Electric Grid 95

Posted by Soulskill from the asking-for-trouble dept.
Lasrick writes: "Meghan McGuinness of the Bipartisan Policy Center writes about the Electric Grid Cybersecurity Initiative, a collaborative effort between the center's Energy and Homeland Security Projects. She points out that over half the attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure sectors last year were on the energy sector. Cyber attacks could come from a variety of sources, and 'a large-scale cyber attack or combined cyber and physical attack could lead to enormous costs, potentially triggering sustained power outages over large portions of the electric grid and prolonged disruptions in communications, food and water supplies, and health care delivery.' ECGI is recommending the creation of a new, industry-supported model that would create incentives for the continual improvement and adaptation needed to respond effectively to rapidly evolving cyber threats. The vulnerability of the grid has been much discussed this last week; McGuinness's recommendations are a good place to start."

Comment Re:The universe does not need us.... (Score 1) 313

by Wolfrider (#46753531) Attached to: Russia Wants To Establish a Permanent Moon Base

> On the flip side, billions of humans on earth need food, shelter, clean water, and education right fucking now. Once we get our house in order I could see wasting a few trillion dollars on a cosmic vanity project, but not until then.

--The thing is though, we have had THOUSANDS OF YEARS to "get our house in order", and things are as bad (or worse) as they have ever been. We deserve a chance to start over in a new territory at this point. Charles Sheffield has some good stories that illustrate why doing this is a Good Idea, if you're interested.

Comment Re:There isn't enough rubles in Moscow (Score 1) 313

by Wolfrider (#46753501) Attached to: Russia Wants To Establish a Permanent Moon Base

--I'm with you 99%. The prospect of a new "space race" to the Moon is exciting for me, for the same reasons that you listed. We need to get Mankind into space in a big way.

--Anyone who hasn't already read "The Moon is a harsh mistress" turn in your geek card - it should be required reading. And if you get a chance, go visit the Saturn V rockets on display in Houston and Cape Canaveral.

--My greatest fear is that the US will treat this as rhetoric, and fail to get the fire lit under the space program again (that badly needs a cash infusion, as well as buy-in from the general public - hearts and minds help train future astronauts.)

--There's too many people as it is on this damn f'd up ball of rock+water, and we have a single point of failure. If we expand into space, eventually that will mean less congestion on the roads and in the cities. I may already be too old to live the dream of going into space in my lifetime and staying at the Space Hilton, but dammit I would support it financially for the future of the species.
Medicine

Carpenter Who Cut Off His Fingers Makes "Robohand" With 3-D Printer 91

Posted by samzenpus from the finger-jam dept.
mpicpp (3454017) writes with the ultimate DIY story about a carpenter in South Africa who lost his fingers in an accident, and now runs a company that makes mechanical prosthetics with 3D printing technology. "'I was in a position to see exactly what happens in the human hand. I got the basics of what it's all about and thought yeah, I'll make my own.' Richard van As is recalling the moment in May 2011 when he sat in a Johannesburg hospital waiting to hear if his fingers could be stitched back on. Just an hour earlier, he had been in his carpentry workshop sawing wood when the saw slipped and ripped diagonally through the four fingers on his right hand....After days of scouring the Internet he couldn't find anywhere to buy a functional prosthetic finger and he was astonished at the cost of prosthetic hands and limbs which began in the tens of thousands of dollars. But his online surfing paid off as it brought him to an amateur video posted by a mechanical effects artist in Washington State, by the name of Ivan Owen. Together, the pair developed a mechanical finger for van As, but their partnership has also gone on to benefit countless hand and arm amputees around the globe, through the birth of the company "Robohand." Officially launched in January 2012, Robohand creates affordable mechanical prosthetics through the use of 3D printers. Not only that, but it has made its designs open source, so that anyone with access to such printers can print out fingers, hands and now arms as well.'"
Moon

Russia Wants To Establish a Permanent Moon Base 313

Posted by samzenpus from the one-of-these-days-Alisa dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Having established its presence in the Crimean Peninsula, Russia is now shooting for a bit loftier goal, a permanent Moon base. 'As reported by the Voice of Russia, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin told the government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta that establishing a permanent Moon base has become one of the country's top space priorities. "The moon is not an intermediate point in the [space] race, it is a separate, even a self-contained goal," Rogozin reportedly said. "It would hardly be rational to make some ten or twenty flights to the moon, and then wind it all up and fly to the Mars or some asteroids."'"
Education

Is Germany Raising a Generation of Illiterates? 431

Posted by samzenpus from the me-write-pretty-one-day dept.
StartsWithABang (3485481) writes "Over at Starts With A Bang, the weekly question comes in from Germany, where we're informed: 'In Germany, many teachers have adopted a new way of teaching children to write properly. The way is called "Writing by Reading" and essentially says: Write as you wish, you're not bound by any rules. Recently, this way of teaching has been heavily criticized [link in German], but not before it has been "tested" on several years of school children.' The reading wars have been going on in the US, too, but will this wind up having a negative outcome? Or, as this piece argues, is it likely to be a wash?"
Security

Private Keys Stolen Within Hours From Heartbleed OpenSSL Site 151

Posted by samzenpus from the that-didn't-take-long dept.
Billly Gates (198444) writes "It was reported when heartbleed was discovered that only passwords would be at risk and private keys were still safe. Not anymore. Cloudfare launched the heartbleed challenge on a new server with the openSSL vulnerability and offered a prize to whoever could gain the private keys. Within hours several researchers and a hacker got in and got the private signing keys. Expect many forged certificates and other login attempts to banks and other popular websites in the coming weeks unless the browser makers and CA's revoke all the old keys and certificates."

Comment Re:Curiosity if you don't mind (Score 2, Informative) 693

by vadim_t (#46740937) Attached to: The GNOME Foundation Is Running Out of Money

The Linus/systemd controvery is long over btw. People had a conflict, yelled a bit at each other, then came up with patches, and everything went back to normal.

Personally I like at least the idea of systemd. It means I can make a single startup script, and have most of the work done by the system, instead of having to muck around with the minor differences of the ubuntu/debian/etc scripts.

Comment Re:From the parent article: (Score 4, Insightful) 693

by vadim_t (#46740891) Attached to: The GNOME Foundation Is Running Out of Money

Let me translate. They were fucking off by diverging from the core project into recreational political activities unrelated to their mission.

But that seems to be what a lot of people on Slashdot want. Look at the Mozilla and DropBox controversies. Lots of people posting and moderating support those.

No, I'd say what people here want in general is for an organization to be apolitical. Being against LGBT is bad, but doing activities related to LGBT is also bad. A software company is supposed to be a bunch of people coding and nothing else, ideally.

Deviations are allowed only for subjects related to the core mission: patents, copyright, open source, etc.
GNOME

The GNOME Foundation Is Running Out of Money 693

Posted by samzenpus from the coffers-are-bare dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The GNOME Foundation is running out of money. The foundation no longer has any cash reserves so they have voted to freeze non-essential funding for running the foundation. They are also hunting down sponsors and unpaid invoices to regain some delayed revenue. Those wishing to support the GNOME Foundation can become a friend of GNOME."
Businesses

The Comcast/TWC Merger Is About Controlling Information 107

Posted by Soulskill from the there's-a-party-at-comcast's-house-and-attendance-is-mandatory dept.
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from The Consumerist: "Comcast and proposed merger partner Time Warner Cable claim they don't compete because their service areas don't overlap, and that a combined company would happily divest itself of a few million customers to keeps its pay-TV market share below 30%, allowing other companies that don't currently compete with Comcast to keep not competing with Comcast. This narrow, shortsighted view fails to take into account the full breadth of what's involved in this merger — broadcast TV, cable TV, network technology, in-home technology, access to the Internet, and much more. In addition to asking whether or not regulators should permit Comcast to add 10-12 million customers, there is a more important question at the core of this deal: Should Comcast be allowed to control both what content you consume and how you get to consume it?"

Comment Re:One word... (Score 3, Informative) 76

by Samantha Wright (#46735151) Attached to: Can Web-Based Protests Be a Force for Change?
Well, here's the tl;dr of TFA: Social media is the starting point. Hence the Arab Spring—you use Facebook or Twitter or whatever to spread your message and/or propaganda, and then accrue those with personal willingness to march and coordinate action through the net. Five dictators have been overthrown in the Middle East since December 2010 (as well as uprisings and protests in more than a dozen other countries) following social media germination, so clearly it's viable for that. Unfortunately this means it's also a single point of failure, as shown in Egypt when they depeered from the rest of the network in early 2011, easy to infiltrate and possible to manipulate.
Displays

3D Display Uses Misted Water 65

Posted by Soulskill from the bring-an-umbrella dept.
An anonymous reader points out work at the University of Bristol into interactive, 3-D displays created by projecting light on misted water. "These personal screens are both see-through and reach-through. The see-through feature provides direct line of sight of the personal screen and the elements behind it on the tabletop. The reach-through feature allows the user to switch from interacting with the personal screen to reaching through it to interact with the tabletop or the space above it. The personal screen allows a range of customisations and novel interactions such as presenting 2D personal content on the screen, 3D content above the tabletop or supplementing and renewing actual objects differently for each user."
Government

Canada Introduces Privacy Reforms That Encourage Warrantless Disclosure of Info 99

Posted by samzenpus from the what-do-you-want-to-know? dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Earlier this week, the government introduced the Digital Privacy Act (Bill S-4), the latest attempt to update Canada's private sector privacy law. Michael Geist reports that the bill includes a provision that could massively expand warrantless disclosure of personal information. Organizations will be permitted to disclose personal information without consent (and without a court order) to any organization that is investigating a contractual breach or possible violation of any law. This applies both past breaches or violations as well as potential future violations. Moreover, the disclosure occurs in secret without the knowledge of the affected person (who therefore cannot challenge the disclosure since they are not aware it is happening). Consider it a gift to copyright trolls, who won't need the courts to obtain information on thousands of Internet users."

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