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Government

Conservative Groups Accuse FCC of Helping Net Neutrality Advocates File Comments 283

Posted by samzenpus from the no-cheating dept.
jfruh writes Conservative groups opposed to net neutrality have a beef with the FCC, claiming the commission helped pro-net neutrality advocates file comments on the subject without similarly helping opponents. In other news out of this camp, it turns out American Commitment, an advocacy group with ties to the Republican billionaire Koch brothers, sent out 2.4 million letters to Congress opposing net neutrality but only collected about 814,000 signatures. The group then generated three letters to Congress for each person signing the petition, one letter to each of the signer's two senators and one to each signer's representative.
Communications

User Error Is the Primary Weak Point In Tor 70

Posted by timothy from the setting-aside-whether-you-like-particular-users dept.
blottsie (3618811) writes with a link to the Daily Dot's "comprehensive analysis of hundreds of police raids and arrests made involving Tor users in the last eight years," which explains that "the software's biggest weakness is and always has been the same single thing: It's you." A small slice: In almost all the cases we know about, it’s trivial mistakes that tend to unintentionally expose Tor users. Several top Silk Road administrators were arrested because they gave proof of identity to Dread Pirate Roberts, data that was owned by the police when Ulbricht was arrested. Giving your identity away, even to a trusted confidant, is always huge mistake. A major meth dealer’s operation was discovered after the IRS started investigating him for unpaid taxes, and an OBGYN who allegedly sold prescription pills used the same username on Silk Road that she did on eBay. Likewise, the recent arrest of a pedophile could be traced to his use of “gateway sites” (such as Tor2Web), which allow users to access the Deep Web but, contrary to popular belief, do not offer the anonymizing power of Tor. "There's not a magic way to trace people [through Tor], so we typically capitalize on human error, looking for whatever clues people leave in their wake," James Kilpatrick, a Homeland Security Investigations agent, told the Wall Street Journal.
Intel

Intel Drops Gamasutra Sponsorship Over Controversial Editorials 724

Posted by timothy from the middle-of-the-road dept.
An anonymous reader writes Processor firm Intel has withdrawn its advertising from Gamasutra in response to the site's decision to carry feminist articles. The articles had drawn the ire of the self-described "Gater" movement, a grass-roots campaign to discredit prominent female games journalists. Intel was apparently so inundated with criticism for sponsoring the Gamasutra site that it had no choice but to withdraw support. An Intel spokesperson explained that "We take feedback from our customers very seriously especially as it relates to contextually relevant content and placements" and as such Gamasutra was no longer an appropriate venue for their products."
Science

Scientists Seen As Competent But Not Trusted By Americans 460

Posted by samzenpus from the hug-a-scientist-today dept.
cold fjord writes The Woodrow Wilson School reports, "If scientists want the public to trust their research suggestions, they may want to appear a bit 'warmer,' according to a new review published by Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. The review, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), shows that while Americans view scientists as competent, they are not entirely trusted. This may be because they are not perceived to be friendly or warm. In particular, Americans seem wary of researchers seeking grant funding and do not trust scientists pushing persuasive agendas. Instead, the public leans toward impartiality. 'Scientists have earned the respect of Americans but not necessarily their trust,' said lead author Susan Fiske, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and professor of public affairs. 'But this gap can be filled by showing concern for humanity and the environment. Rather than persuading, scientists may better serve citizens by discussing, teaching and sharing information to convey trustworthy intentions.'"
Earth

Exxon and Russian Operation Discovers Oil Field Larger Than the Gulf of Mexico 201

Posted by samzenpus from the drill-baby-drill dept.
An anonymous reader writes The state-run OAO Rosneft has discovered a vast pool of crude in the Kara Sea region of the Arctic Ocean, arguably bigger than the Gulf of Mexico. From the article: "The discovery sharpens the dispute between Russia and the U.S. over President Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine. The well was drilled before the Oct. 10 deadline Exxon was granted by the U.S. government under sanctions barring American companies from working in Russia’s Arctic offshore. Rosneft and Exxon won’t be able to do more drilling, putting the exploration and development of the area on hold despite the find announced today."
Security

Remote Exploit Vulnerability Found In Bash 399

Posted by Soulskill from the don't-bash-bash dept.
kdryer39 sends this news from CSO: A remotely exploitable vulnerability has been discovered by Stephane Chazelas in bash on Linux, and it is unpleasant. The vulnerability has the CVE identifier CVE-2014-6271. This affects Debian as well as other Linux distributions. The major attack vectors that have been identified in this case are HTTP requests and CGI scripts. Another attack surface is OpenSSH through the use of AcceptEnv variables. Also through TERM and SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND. An environmental variable with an arbitrary name can carry a nefarious function which can enable network exploitation.
Power

South Australia Hits 33% Renewal Energy Target 6 Years Early 169

Posted by Soulskill from the kangaroo-on-a-treadmill dept.
ferrisoxide.com writes: South Australia has hit its target of 33% renewable energy by 2020, 6 years earlier than expected, delivering clean power to the state through investment in wind, solar and geothermal energy — mothballing one coal-fired power station in the process. Not content to rest on their laurels, the SA government has now announced a new "stretch" target of 50% by 2025. South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill declared that despite initial upfront costs to renewable energy generators such as wind farms, the 50 per cent target will not add one extra dollar to energy prices.
Operating Systems

Outlining Thin Linux 221

Posted by Soulskill from the tux-on-a-diet dept.
snydeq writes: Deep End's Paul Venezia follows up his call for splitting Linux distros in two by arguing that the new shape of the Linux server is thin, light, and fine-tuned to a single purpose. "Those of us who build and maintain large-scale Linux infrastructures would be happy to see a highly specific, highly stable mainstream distro that had no desktop package or dependency support whatsoever, so was not beholden to architectural changes made due to desktop package requirements. When you're rolling out a few hundred Linux VMs locally, in the cloud, or both, you won't manually log into them, much less need any type of graphical support. Frankly, you could lose the framebuffer too; it wouldn't matter unless you were running certain tests," Venezia writes. "It's only a matter of time before a Linux distribution that caters solely to these considerations becomes mainstream and is offered alongside more traditional distributions."
Moon

Nvidia Sinks Moon Landing Hoax Using Virtual Light 275

Posted by samzenpus from the this-proves-nothing dept.
schwit1 writes Using its new top-shelf graphics processing unit, Nvidia tackles one of the most persistent conspiracy theories in American history: the veracity of the 1969 to 1972 Apollo moon landings. From the article: "'Global illumination is the hardest task to solve as a game company,' Scott Herkelman, Nvidia's GeForce general manager, said in an interview. 'Virtual point lights don't do a bad job when the environment stays the same, but a game developer has to fake shadows, fake reflections...it's a labor-intensive process.' So when a Nvidia research engineer used the company's new dynamic lighting techniques to show off a side-by-side comparison between an Apollo 11 photo and a GeForce-powered re-creation, the company knew it had a novel demo on its hands. 'We're going to debunk one of the biggest conspiracies in the world,' Herkelman said."
Earth

Hundreds of Thousands Turn Out For People's Climate March In New York City 200

Posted by samzenpus from the cooling-things-off dept.
mdsolar writes with an update on the People's Climate March. More than 400,000 people turned out for the People's Climate March in New York City on Sunday, just days before many of the world's leaders are expected to debate environmental action at the United Nations climate summit. Early reports from event organizers are hailing the turnout as the largest climate march in history, far bigger than the Forward on Climate rally held in Washington, D.C., last year. High-profile environmentalists including Bill McKibben, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jane Goodall and Vandana Shiva marched alongside policymakers such as Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and former Vice President Al Gore were also there, and more than 550 buses carried in people from around the country.
Upgrades

Why the iPhone 6 Has the Same Base Memory As the iPhone 5 264

Posted by timothy from the enough-is-enough-for-anybody dept.
Lucas123 writes When the iPhone 5 was launched two years ago, the base $199 (with wireless plan) model came with 16GB of flash memory. Fast forward to this week when the iPhone 6 was launched with the same capacity. Now consider that the cost of 16GB of NAND flash has dropped by more than 13% over the past two years. So why would Apple increase capacity on its $299 model iPhone 6 to 64GB (eliminating the 32GB model), but but keep the 16GB in the $199 model? The answer may lie in the fact that the 16GB iPhone is, and has been, by far the best selling model. IHS analyst Fang Zhang believes Apple is using that to push users to its iCloud storage service. Others believe restricting storage capacity allows Apple to afford the new features, like NFC and biometrics.
Science

CERN Tests First Artificial Retina Capable of Looking For High Energy Particles 60

Posted by Soulskill from the robot-eyes-are-taking-our-jobs dept.
KentuckyFC writes: Pattern recognition is one of the few areas where humans regularly outperform even the most powerful computers. Our extraordinary ability is a result of the way our bodies process visual information. But surprisingly, our brains only do part of the work. The most basic pattern recognition—edge detection, line detection and the detection of certain shapes—is performed by the complex circuitry of neurons in the retina. Now particle physicists are copying this trick to hunt for new particles. A team at CERN has built and tested an artificial retina capable of identifying particle tracks in the debris from particle collisions. The retina can do this at the same rate the LHC smashes particles together: about 800 million collisions per second. In other words, it can sift through the data in real time. The team says the retina outperforms any other particle-detecting device by a factor of 400v.
Microsoft

Microsoft Paid NFL $400 Million To Use Surface, But Announcers Call Them iPads 405

Posted by Soulskill from the free-advertising dept.
mpicpp sends this news from Business Insider: Prior to the season, Microsoft and the NFL struck a 5-year, $400 million deal with one of the major components being that the Microsoft Surface would become "the official tablet of the NFL," with coaches and players using the Surface on the sidelines during games. But Microsoft and the league ran into a problem during week one of the season when at least two television announcers mistakenly referred to the tablets as iPads, giving a huge rival some unexpected exposure. The biggest blunder for the league came during the nationally televised Monday Night Football game when ESPN's Trent Dilfer joked about how long it took Cardinals assistant head coach Tom Moore to "learn how to use the iPad to scroll through the pictures." In a separate incident, Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints was spotted by Fox commentator John Lynch using a Surface on the sideline. Lynch remarked that Brees was "not watching movies on his iPad.
Intel

Intel Releases SD-Card-Sized PC, Unveils Next 14nm Chip 47

Posted by Soulskill from the go-small-or-go-home dept.
szczys writes: Intel is upping their bid for a place at the efficient-yet-powerful device table. They've launched their Edison board, which features an x86 based SoC running at 100 MHz. The footprint measures 35.5mm x 25.0mm and offers a 70-pin connector to break out 40 pins for add-on hardware. Also at the Intel Developer Forum today, the company demonstrated a PC running on Skylake, a new CPU microarchitecture based on the 14nm process used for Broadwell. Intel is pushing to break into both wearable devices and household devices, as it sees both as huge opportunities for growth.
Image

Dirty Diapers Used To Grow Mushrooms Screenshot-sm 97

Posted by samzenpus from the hold-the-mushrooms-please dept.
Zothecula writes While their contents might be considered an environmental hazard by many, disposable diapers themselves pose a more significant problem for the environment. According to the EPA, the average baby will work their way through 8,000 of them before they end up in landfill where they'll take centuries to break down. In an effort to reduce the problem, scientists at Mexico's Autonomous Metropolitan University, Azcapotzalco (UAM-A), have turned used diapers to the task of growing mushrooms.

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