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Submission + - MARS, inc - We are running out of chocolate (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: There's no easy way to say this: You're eating too much chocolate, all of you. And it's getting so out of hand that the world could be headed towards a potentially disastrous (if you love chocolate) scenario if it doesn't stop.

Chocolate deficits, whereby farmers produce less cocoa than the world eats, are becoming the norm. Already, we are in the midst of what could be the longest streak of consecutive chocolate deficits in more than 50 years. It also looks like deficits aren't just carrying over from year-to-year—the industry expects them to grow. Last year, the world ate roughly 70,000 metric tons more cocoa than it produced. By 2020, the two chocolate-makers warn that that number could swell to 1 million metric tons, a more than 14-fold increase; by 2030, they think the deficit could reach 2 million metric tons.

Submission + - Disney keeps mysterious no-fly zone over parks (orlandosentinel.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: What do the White House and the Magic Kingdom have in common? Each is protected by a federally imposed no-fly zone.

That's because for the past decade, Disney World and Disneyland have benefited from a deal slipped into a 300-page spending bill that designates airspace above both parks as no-fly zones. That means anyone caught trying to chopper into Cinderella’s castle could risk federal prosecution and jail time.

The no-fly zones were put in place ostensibly for security reasons following 9/11 but have stayed in place in what some say is a cleverly crafted plan by Disney to keep pesky aerial advertisers out of its pristine airspace.

Submission + - Taking photos of Eiffel Tower at night is illegal (dailymail.co.uk)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The next time you're in the City of Lights and are about to snap nighttime pictures of the Eiffel Tower don't: you could be fined.

An obscure clause in EU law states that the tower's evening light display is an "art work" — and therefore is copyrighted.According to the Daily Mail, under the EU's 2001 information society directive, tourists could be fined for taking pictures of the Eiffel Tower at night and sharing them on Facebook, Twitter, or online.

Built in 1889, the structure is the most-visited paid monument in the world that attracts almost seven million of tourists to Paris each year. Tourist flock to see the glittering lightshow, which made its first appearance in 1985. Originally the work of Pierre Bideau, an electrician and lighting engineer, the golden lights that flank the sides of the tower sparkle for five minutes every hour from dusk til dawn.

The tower is classified as public domain, so when the lights are off, picture taking and sharing is permitted.

Submission + - Carmakers unite around privacy protections (apnewsarchive.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Nineteen automakers accounting for most of the passenger cars and trucks sold in the U.S. have signed onto a set of principles they say will protect motorists' privacy in an era when computerized cars pass along more information about their drivers than many motorists realize.

The principles were delivered in a letter Wednesday to the Federal Trade Commission, which has the authority to force corporations to live up to their promises to consumers. Industry officials say they want to assure their customers that the information that their cars stream back to automakers or that is downloaded from the vehicle's computers won't be handed over to authorities without a court order, sold to insurance companies or used to bombard them with ads for pizza parlors, gas stations or other businesses they drive past, without their permission.

The principles also commit automakers to "implement reasonable measures" to protect personal information from unauthorized access.

It's a meaningless gesture without being codified into law. A greedy car manufacturer or NSL trumps any 'set of principles'.

Submission + - Drone sightings up dramatically (yahoo.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The government is getting near-daily reports — and sometimes two or three a day — of drones flying near airplanes and helicopters or close to airports without permission, federal and industry officials tell The Associated Press. It's a sharp increase from just two years ago when such reports were still unusual.

Many of the reports are filed with the Federal Aviation Administration by airline pilots. But other pilots, airport officials and local authorities often file reports as well, said the officials, who agreed to discuss the matter only on the condition that they not be named because they weren't authorized to speak publicly. Michael Toscano, president of a drone industry trade group, said FAA officials also have verified the increase to him.

While many of the reports are unconfirmed, raising the possibility that pilots may have mistaken a bird or another plane in the distance for a drone, the officials said other reports appear to be credible.

Submission + - Learning breakthrough - Returning the human brain to a child-like state (independent.co.uk)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: It sounds like something out of a film, but scientists may have discovered a way to make you smarter – by reverting the brain to a “plastic” child-like state.

Researchers at Stanford University experimented by interfering with PirB, a protein expressed in animal brain cells that allows skills to be recalled but which also hampers the ability to learn new skills, and realised they could disrupt the receptor’s regular function, allowing the brain to make faster connections.

Submission + - UN: US Pot Legalization Violates Treaties (reuters.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Moves by some U.S. states to legalize marijuana are not in line with international drugs conventions, the U.N. anti-narcotics chief said on Wednesday, adding he would discuss the issue in Washington next week.

Residents of Oregon, Alaska, and the U.S. capital voted this month to allow the use of marijuana, boosting the legalization movement as cannabis usage is increasingly recognized by the American mainstream.

"I don't see how (the new laws) can be compatible with existing conventions," Yury Fedotov, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), told reporters.

Submission + - ISPs Removing Their Customers' Email Encryption

Submitted by Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes: EFF reports:

Recently, Verizon was caught tampering with its customer's web requests to inject a tracking super-cookie. Another network-tampering threat to user safety has come to light from other providers: email encryption downgrade attacks. In recent months, researchers have reported ISPs in the US and Thailand intercepting their customers' data to strip a security flag—called STARTTLS—from email traffic. The STARTTLS flag is an essential security and privacy protection used by an email server to request encryption when talking to another server or client.1

By stripping out this flag, these ISPs prevent the email servers from successfully encrypting their conversation, and by default the servers will proceed to send email unencrypted. Some firewalls, including Cisco's PIX/ASA firewall do this in order to monitor for spam originating from within their network and prevent it from being sent. Unfortunately, this causes collateral damage: the sending server will proceed to transmit plaintext email over the public Internet, where it is subject to eavesdropping and interception.

Great moments in customers relations!

Submission + - Police Body Cam Privacy Exploitation (komonews.com)

Submitted by blindbat
blindbat writes: A new Youtube account is pushing local police agencies to reconsider their use of body-mounted cameras. Poulsbo Police have been wearing body cameras for about a year, and the department says the results have been good. But last month reality hit, in the form of a new YouTube user website, set up by someone under the name, "Police Video Requests." The profile says it posts dash and body cam videos received after public records requests to Washington state police departments. "They're just using it to post on the internet," said Chief Townsend, "and I suspect it's for commercial purposes." In September, "Police Video Requests" anonymously asked Poulsbo PD for every second of body cam video it has ever recorded. The department figures it will take three years to fill that request. And Chief Townsend believes it is a huge privacy concern, as officers often see people on their worst days. "People with mental illness, people in domestic violence situations; do we really want to have to put that video out on YouTube for people? I think that's pushing it a little bit," he said.

Submission + - Banks Tell Merchants To Pay Up Post Breaches (pymnts.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: This sounds like a no-brainer, but ...

Industry bodies that represent banks are urging lawmakers to introduce legislation during the new session of Congress next year that would make retailers pay for cleanup costs themselves.

Banks have complained – particularly in the string of breaches that have started with Target and most recently capped off with Target’s successor as the “biggest breach in history” Home Depot – that their institutions are picking up tab for breaches caused by lapses in merchant security protocols.

Submission + - Mozilla Updates Firefox With Forget Button, DuckDuckGo Search, And Ads 1

Submitted by Krystalo
Krystalo writes: In addition to the debut of the Firefox Developer Edition, Mozilla today announced new features for its main Firefox browser. The company is launching a new Forget button in Firefox to help keep your browsing history private, adding DuckDuckGo as a search option, and rolling out its directory tiles advertising experiment.

Submission + - Federal workers, contractors reportedly behind half of government cyber breaches (ap.org)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Federal employees and contractors are unwittingly undermining a $10 billion-per-year effort to protect sensitive government data from cyberattacks, according to a published report.

The AP says that workers in more than a dozen agencies, from the Defense and Education departments to the National Weather Service, are responsible for at least half of the federal cyberincidents reported each year since 2010, according to an analysis of records.

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