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Submission + - Sony Pictures Leak Reveals Quashed Plan to Upload Phony Torrents (vice.com)

Submitted by retroworks
retroworks writes: Motherboard.vice offers an interesting scoop from the hacked Sony Pictures email trove. A plan championed by Polish marketing employee Magda Mastalerz was to upload false versions of highly-pirated Sony programming, effectively polluting torrent sites with false positives. For example, a “Hannibal”-themed anti-piracy ad to popular torrent sites disguised as the first episode. Sony Pictures legal department quashed the idea, saying that if pirate sites were illegal, it would also be illegal for Sony Pictures to upload onto them.

There were plans in WW2 to drop phony counterfeit currency to disrupt markets, and I wonder why flooding underground markets with phony products isn't widespread. Why don't credit card companies manufacture fake lists of stolen credit card numbers, or phony social security numbers, for illegal trading sites? For that matter, would fake ivory, fake illegal porn, and other "false positives" discourage buyers? Or create alibis? or distract police.

Comment Put your money into speakers (Score 5, Insightful) 433

by retroworks (#48593939) Attached to: Vinyl Record Pressing Plants Struggle To Keep Up With Demand
Ah, yes.... I rather vaguely remember a series of experiments I attended a couple of decades ago. My colleagues and I participated in several hours-long, herb-fueled, analysis sessions comparing cassette tape, CDs, and vinyl, with and without equalizers. We listened in sessions controlling for acoustic, heavy metal, synthesizer, etc.. I'm pretty sure the committee's conclusion was "put the money into the speakers". But I think we forgot to write it down anywhere.

Submission + - Economist: US Congress Should Hack Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) (economist.com)

Submitted by retroworks
retroworks writes: This week's print edition of The Economist has an essay on the Right to Tinker with hardware. "Exactly why copyright law should be involved in something that ought to be a simple matter of consumer rights is hard to fathom. Any rational interpretation would suggest that when people buy or pay off the loan on a piece of equipment—whether a car, a refrigerator or a mobile phone—they own it, and should be free to do what they want with it. Least of all should they have to seek permission from the manufacturer or the government."

Submission + - NYT: Mysterious Federal Algorithm Seizing Millions from Small US Business (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Reporter Shaila Dewan of NYTimes reports on how a US federal authority designed to track use of a "loophole" by criminals has resulted in the seizure of so much money from so many USA small businesses that the agency now cannot keep up with demands for refunds. Under a little known law (banks are not allowed to inform clients), if an business cuts a check for over $10,000, the activity must be reported by the bank to the federal government. Nothing new there. But today, the IRS has developed an algorithm... the algorithm is used to find businesses which "structure" payments, cutting two checks which combine for over $10k, as the investigators worried drug dealers and criminals were purposefully evading the reporting. Result? My company is having a very hard time with a new contract, and a wire transfer was late, but we put in money for half the payroll. Then we liquidated Paypal, petty cash, and combined assets for a second check, barely meeting the payroll. BAM. The bank informs us the money has been seized because it triggered a federal algorithm. Read about hundreds of businesses like mine whose 20 employees will be finding out sometime today that the paycheck they took home is no good.

From NYT:
“Who takes your money before they prove that you’ve done anything wrong with it? The federal government does."

"Using a law designed to catch drug traffickers, racketeers and terrorists by tracking their cash, the government has gone after run-of-the-mill business owners and wage earners without so much as an allegation that they have committed serious crimes. The government can take the money without ever filing a criminal complaint, and the owners are left to prove they are innocent. Many give up."

Comment Re:No It Reads Your Face (Score 1) 186

by retroworks (#48520001) Attached to: Pizza Hut Tests New "Subconscious Menu" That Reads Your Mind
You will be banked into facial recognition database and find Peperoni ads on your Facebook ads page. This is about facial recognition software, it's going into store cameras everywhere, and they are starting to package it as a "consumer advantage". Physical browsing is now, today, being tracked the same as web browsing. Minority Report has your pizza ready.

Comment Journalism Mantra: "If it bleeds, it leads" (Score 3, Interesting) 409

by retroworks (#48513651) Attached to: Is Chernobyl Still Dangerous? Was 60 Minutes Pushing Propaganda?

Eyeballs are attracted to bad news. Good news does not sell papers or attract viewers. This has been documented for a century, and modern psychology actually studies the "fear", "bad news", and "schadenfreude" centers in the brain. Perceived risks that you avoid releases dopamine. Talk radio manufactures doomsday stories every hour, on the hour.

The saddest thing is when CBS 60 Minutes gets it completely wrong - and wins a journalism Award. Ask CBS 60 Minutes anchor, Scott Pelley, about the state of journalism. http://www.mediabistro.com/tvn...

"Our house is on fire. Never before in human history has more information been available to more people. But at the same time never before in human history has more bad information been available to more people.” - Scott Pelley

He should know. Pelley's won an journalism award for misreporting the "trail" of "e-waste" in 2008. But reporting that a past story was exaggerated doesn't sell many ads.

Comment Re:There are issues to resolve... (Score 1) 262

by retroworks (#48505101) Attached to: Obama Offers Funding For 50,000 Police Body Cameras
There are issues to resolve, but they aren't that difficult to resolve. There are 9 exemptions police departments can claim, including #6 below. http://www.foiadvocates.com/ex...

6. Documents which are "personnel and medical and similar files the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy." 5 U.S.C. 552(b)(6).

Also exempt is anything mentioned by statute, so Washington could just pass a law liminting FOIA access to the police cams. And #7 probably works as well. :

"7 Documents which are "records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes," but only if one or more of six specified types of harm would result. 5 U.S.C. 552(b)(7)."

Or if you are on the police cam, you can start to reveal secrets related to oil well data, or banking. Big Oil and Banking have their own exemtions, 8 and 9.

Submission + - Battery with a billion holes (phys.org)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: A battery which is made up of tiny nanopores has been created by researchers from University of Maryland. Each of the nanopores holds electrolyte to carry the electrical charge between nanotube electrodes at either end, and acts as if a very tiny battery

According to Chanyuan Liu, a graduate student in materials science & engineering, says that it can be fully charged in 12 minutes, and it can be recharged thousands of time, and that the research team has already identified ways to increase the power of the batteries by ten times

The team consists of UMD chemists and materials scientists who collaborated on the project: Gary Rubloff , director of the Maryland NanoCenter and a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and in the Institute for Systems Research; Sang Bok Lee, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemisty and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering; and seven of their Ph.D. students (two now graduated)

Many millions of these nanopores can be crammed into one larger battery the size of a postage stamp. One of the reasons the researchers think this unit is so successful is because each nanopore is shaped just like the others, which allows them to pack the tiny thin batteries together efficiently. Coauthor Eleanor Gillette's modeling shows that the unique design of the nanopore battery is responsible for its success, and the space inside the holes is so small that the space they take up, all added together, would be no more than a grain of sand

The entire design of the battery involves each of its nanobattery components being composed of an anode, a cathode, and a liquid electrolyte confined within the nanopores of anodic aluminium oxide, which is an advanced ceramic material. Each nanoelectrode includes an outer ruthenium nanotube current collector and an inner nanotube of vanadium pentoxide storage material. These together form a symmetric full nanopore storage cell with anode and cathode separated by an electrolyte region. The vanadium pentoxide is treated with lithium at one end to serve as the anode, with pristine vanadium pentoxide at the other end serving as the cathode

Comment Taxpayer's Dilemma (Score 4, Insightful) 213

If no one pays taxes, I live in a lousy infrastructure.

If everyone pays taxes, I live in a nice infrastructure, but had to pay taxes.

If I admit not paying taxes, no one else wants to pay taxes either.

If I make everyone believe in paying taxes, while I secretly do not pay taxes, I benefit from the infrastructure for free.

Dang. Didn't realize this was a Ph.D thesis material!

Comment Threats Vs. Free Speech always a judgement call (Score 1) 436

by retroworks (#48491577) Attached to: Supreme Court To Decide Whether Rap Lyric Threats Are Free Speech
That's all this is, it's balancing the laws protecting citizens against credible threats vs. the free speech rights of the person making the threat. Whether it rhymes, is set to music, or is in iambic pentameter is irrelevant. Threatening speech is like pornography, judges have to know it when they hear it.

Comment Airline Luggage (Score 1) 257

by retroworks (#48490939) Attached to: The Driverless Future: Buses, Not Taxis
Could we robotize the baggage handling system first? Driverless luggage carriers and robots won't need background checks, won't pilfer, and don't interact with third parties out in the tarmac (less likely to encounter ambulance chasing lawyers out to sue Google for fender bending).

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