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Submission + - Mass Surveillance Disruption Network (indiegogo.com) 3

Submitted by mikel.heyden
mikel.heyden writes: I"m sure your organization gets inundated with requests. We're however working to develop an application to disrupt mass surveillance. We're just looking for any exposure you may be able to provide.

I'd be more than happy to answer any questions you may have about the project.

The goal is to disrupt mass surveillance by creating enormous amounts of data. Data will be disguised to be indecipherable from actual conversations. Disruption will occur over all primary forms of communication: Email, Phone calls, Text Messaging, and Web Browsing

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/surveillance-disruption-network

Submission + - Playing Super Mario induces structural brain plasticity (nature.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Video gaming is a highly pervasive activity, providing a multitude of complex cognitive and motor demands. Gaming can be seen as an intense training of several skills. Associated cerebral structural plasticity induced has not been investigated so far. Comparing a control with a video gaming training group that was trained for 2 months for at least 30âmin per day with a platformer game, we found significant gray matter (GM) increase in right hippocampal formation (HC), right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and bilateral cerebellum in the training group.

Submission + - School Budget Cuts? Google Suggests Virtual Field Trips

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: For schools experiencing tax-revenue shortfalls, Google has a suggestion. "Across the country," a video introducing Google+ Virtual Field Trips begins, "budget cuts are making it difficult for students to explore the world outside their classrooms. If students can't go on field trips, why don't we bring field trips to them?" Virtual field trips through its Connected Classrooms Program, Google explains, connect cultural institutions like museums, zoos and aquariums with schools regardless of financial restrictions ("most field trips cost money," Google notes). So, is the let-them-eat-Google-Plus-Hangout-cake program more awesome or sad?

Submission + - New FCC chairman presses carriers to unlock cell phones (cnet.com)

Submitted by tad001
tad001 writes: The FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler sent a letter to the CTIA urging carriers to unlock handsets once customer contracts are fulfilled. Unlocking cell phones became illegal earlier this year when the Library of Congress opted not to renew an exemption in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, an exemption it granted in 2006 and 2010.

Submission + - Smithsonian Releasing 3D Models of Artifacts

Submitted by plover
plover writes: The Seattle Times reports "the Smithsonian Institution is launching a new 3D scanning and printing initiative to make more of its massive collection accessible to schools, researchers and the public worldwide. A small team has begun creating 3D models of some key objects representing the breadth of the collection at the world's largest museum complex. Some of the first 3D scans include the Wright brothers' first airplane, Amelia Earhart's flight suit, casts of President Abraham Lincoln's face during the Civil War and a Revolutionary War gunboat. Less familiar objects include a former slave's horn, a missionary's gun from the 1800s and a woolly mammoth fossil from the Ice Age. They are pieces of history some people may hear about but rarely see or touch."

So far they have posted 20 models on the site, with the promise of much more to come.

Submission + - GoDaddy Pulls Lavabit's Security Creds Because The FBI Got Ahold Of Its Encrypti (forbes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The FBI complained. Levison got hit with a $5,000/day contempt of court charge, and handed over the keys in digital form two days later after being charged $10,000. He also shuttered his site, making the keys useless for future communication interception. Today, the Lavabit site is still up, simply to solicit funds for Lavabit's legal defense. Levison says he's received over $200,000, but has already spent $100,000 of it; Lavabit is currently appealing the contempt charge and arguing that asking a site to turn over its encryption keys — imperiling the security of its business — is unconstitutional. But if you try to access the secure version of Lavabit's site — https://www.lavabit.com/ — you'll find that it's down. "Peer's Certificate has been revoked," says the error message.

That's thanks to GoDaddy — Lavabit's domain name provider — which apparently saw the news coverage about Levison handing his encryption keys over to the FBI.

"We're compelled by industry policies to revoke certs when we become aware that the private key has been communicated to a 3rd-party and thus could be used by that party to intercept and decrypt communications,â says GoDaddy spokesperson Elizabeth L. Driscoll, in response to an inquiry about Lavabit's keys being revoked.

Submission + - Google Offers Cash for Updates to Linux and Other FOSS (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by jrepin
jrepin writes: Google is offering rewards as high as $3,133.70 for software updates that improve the security of OpenSSL, OpenSSH, BIND, and several other open-source packages that are critical to the stability of the Internet. The program announced Wednesday expands on Google's current bug-bounty program, which pays from $500 to $3,133.70 to people who privately report bugs found in the company's software and Web properties.

Submission + - If Java Is Dying, It Sure Looks Awfully Healthy

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Andrew Binstock writes at Dr. Dobb's that a recurring prejudice in the forums where the cool kids hang out is against Java, often described as verbose and fading in popularity but Binstock sees little supporting evidence of Java being in some kind of long-term decline. While it is true that Java certainly can be verbose, several scripting languages have sprung up which are purpose-designed to spare developers from long syntactical passages to communicate a simple action including NetRexx, Groovy, and Scala. As far as Java's popularity goes, normally, when technologies start their ultimate decline, tradeshows are the first to reflect the disintegrating community. But the recent JavaOne show was clearly larger and better attended than it has been in either of the last two years and vendors on the exhibiting floor were unanimous in saying that traffic, leads, and inquiries were up significantly over last year. Technically, the language continues to advance says Binstock. Java 8, expected in March, will add closures (that is, lambda expressions) that will reduce code, diminish the need for anonymous inner classes, and facilitate functional-like coding. Greater modularity which will be complete in Java 9 (due in 2016) will help efficient management of artifacts, as will several enhancements that simplify syntax in that release. "When you add in the Android ecosystem, whose native development language is Java, it becomes very difficult to see how a language so widely used in so many areas — server, Web, desktop, mobile devices — is in some kind of decline," concludes Binstock. "What I'm seeing is a language that is under constant refinement and development, with a large and very active community, which enjoys a platform that is widely used for new languages. None of this looks to me like a language in decline."

Submission + - SF Commuters Stared at Phones, Oblivious to Murderer 3

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: A security camera shows a man raised a .45-caliber pistol several times and pointed it across the aisle on a crowded San Francisco Muni train, but not one of the dozens of passengers looked up from their phones and tablets until the man fired a bullet into the back of a SF State student getting off the train. "These weren't concealed movements," said District Attorney George Gascón, "the gun is very clear. These people are in very close proximity with him, and nobody sees this. They're just so engrossed, texting and reading and whatnot. They're completely oblivious of their surroundings."

Submission + - Samsung Galaxy Round (financialpost.com)

Submitted by iONiUM
iONiUM writes: Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Round phone with a curved 5.7" display today. It comes with a hefty $1,000 USD price tag. This is a follow-up to the 55" curved TVs it began selling in June, and is most likely the first step before fold-able phones hit the market. Considering the recent LG announcement of mass OLED flexible screen production, it seems that we are indeed getting very close to flexible phones. One question I wonder is, will Apple follow suit? So far there has been no indication they are even attempting flexible/bendable screens.

Submission + - The Linux Backdoor Attempt of 2003

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Ed Felton writes about an incident, in 2003, in which someone tried to backdoor the Linux kernel. Back in 2003 Linux used a system called BitKeeper to store the master copy of the Linux source code. If a developer wanted to propose a modification to the Linux code, they would submit their proposed change, and it would go through an organized approval process to decide whether the change would be accepted into the master code. But some people didn’t like BitKeeper, so a second copy of the source code was kept so that developers could get the code via another code system called CVS. On November 5, 2003, Larry McAvoy noticed that there was a code change in the CVS copy that did not have a pointer to a record of approval. Investigation showed that the change had never been approved and, stranger yet, that this change did not appear in the primary BitKeeper repository at all. Further investigation determined that someone had apparently broken in electronically to the CVS server and inserted this change.

if ((options == (__WCLONE|__WALL)) && (current->uid = 0))
retval = -EINVAL;

A casual reading by an expert would interpret this as innocuous error-checking code to make wait4 return an error code when wait4 was called in a certain way that was forbidden by the documentation. But a really careful expert reader would notice that, near the end of the first line, it said “= 0” rather than “== 0” so the effect of this code is to give root privileges to any piece of software that called wait4 in a particular way that is supposed to be invalid. In other words it’s a classic backdoor. We don’t know who it was that made the attempt—and we probably never will. But the attempt didn’t work, because the Linux team was careful enough to notice that that this code was in the CVS repository without having gone through the normal approval process. "Could this have been an NSA attack? Maybe. But there were many others who had the skill and motivation to carry out this attack," writes Felton. "Unless somebody confesses, or a smoking-gun document turns up, we’ll never know."

Submission + - Solr: The Most Important Open Source Project You've Never Heard Of

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: When Steven-Vaughan Nichols researched a recent article on the open-source jobs most in demand, he was startled to learn that one hot keyword was Solr. Solr? What the heck is that? (We're so cute when the dollar-signs light up in our eyes.) So he investigated Solr: The Most Important Open Source Project You’ve Never Heard Of (which is part of Apache Lucene) to answer the question for all of us. And he ends up with a good overview of what it is and why you might care... even if you aren't looking for a job.

Submission + - BitTorrent "Bundles" Create Cash Registers Inside Artwork

Submitted by cagraham
cagraham writes: BitTorrent has released a new file format called Bundle into closed alpha-testing today, according to VentureBeat. The format allows artists to embed a paywall inside of their work, and then distribute the art for free over BitTorrent. When users open the work they can listen or view part it for free, and are then prompted to either pay a fee, turn over their email address, or perhaps share the work over social media, in order to see the rest. The new format may ease artists concerns about releasing work for free and having to hope for compensation in the future. Artists who have already signed on include Madonna, The Pixies, and author Tim Feriss.

Submission + - Hands On With Kindle Fire HDX

Submitted by adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: Amazon today announced three new Kindle Fire tablets, the Kindle Fire HD, 7-inch Kindle Fire HDX and 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HDX. All three new tablets run Amazon's new "Fire OS 3.0," a version of Android 4.2.2 that's compatible with third-party Android apps. However Fire OS 3.0 has a totally different set of built-in apps and a completely rebuilt UI layer for faster touch performance and smoother graphics. Amazon redesigned Android's graphics pipeline and touch event handler to improve responsiveness. The 7.9inch Kindle Fire HDX packs a 2.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, 2GB of RAM, and a 1,920-by-1,200 IPS LCD display for quick response and sharp images. And while the 8.9-inch model has the same processor and RAM, it comes with a 2,560-by-1,600 screen. Both new models have a 1-megapixel front camera, but the 8.9-inch device also has an 8-megapixel rear camera. Easily one of the biggest new features in the Kindle Fire HDX tablets is the Mayday button. Press it, and within 15 seconds, a live Amazon operator appears in a video chat window on your screen to answer all of your Kindle Fire questions. Your tablet now contains not merely an artificial helper like Siri, but an actual human assistant. The three tablets go on pre-sale tonight on Amazon.com. Kindle Fire HD will cost $139 where as the 7-inch and 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HDX will set you back by $229 and $379, respectively.

Submission + - FBI warns "Beta Bot" can kill your anti-virus programs, steal data (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: The FBI sent out a warning today about an uptick in the use of malware known as Beta Bot that can steal sensitive data such as log-in credentials and financial information. The FBI says Beta Bot blocks computer users’ access to security websites and disables anti-virus programs, leaving computers vulnerable to compromise. Cyber criminals aiming Beta Bot at financial institutions, e-commerce sites, online payment platforms, and social networking.

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