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Submission + - Bing is adding street view (searchenginewatch.com)

Submitted by Technician
Technician writes: This story snuck by me. In August it was announced Bing is adding street view to it's maps. I became aware of it when I saw a car looking somewhat like a Google Streeet View car, but the camera package was cylindrical looking somewhat like R2D2 instead of the camera ball used by Google. This was spotted in Beaverton Oregon.

Submission + - Aussie state cops outed as Finfisher law enforcement malware users

Submitted by Bismillah
Bismillah writes: Wikileaks latest release of documents shows the the Australian New South Wales police force has spent millions on licenses for the FinFisher set of law enforcement spy- and malware tools — and still has active licenses. What it uses FinFisher, which has been deployed against dissidents by oppressive regimes, for is yet to be revealed.

Submission + - Malware Distributed Through Twitch Chat Is Hijacking Steam Accounts

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: If you use Twitch don't click on any suspicious links in the video streaming platform's chat feature. Twitch Support's official Twitter account issued a security warning telling users not to click the "csgoprize" link in chat. According to f-secure, the link leads to a Java program that asks for your name and email. If you provide the info it will install a file on your computer that's able to take out any money you have in your Steam wallet, as well as sell or trade items in your inventory. "This malware, which we call Eskimo, is able to wipe your Steam wallet, armory, and inventory dry," says F-Secure. "It even dumps your items for a discount in the Steam Community Market. Previous variants were selling items with a 12 percent discount, but a recent sample showed that they changed it to 35 percent discount. Perhaps to be able to sell the items faster."

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What to do after digitizing VHS tapes? 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Now that I've spent close to a month digitizing a desk drawer's worth of VHS tapes, deinterlacing and postprocessing the originals to minimize years of tape decay, and compressing everything down to H.264, I've found myself with a hard drive full of loosely organized videos. They'll get picked up by my existing monthly backup, but I feel like I haven't gained much in the way of redundancy, as I thought I would. Instead of having tapes slowly degrade, I'm now open to losing entire movies at once, should both of my drives go bad. Does anyone maintain a library, and if so, what would they recommend? Is having them duplicated on two drives (one of which is spun down for all but one day of the month) a good-enough long term strategy? Should I look into additionally backing up to optical discs or flash drives, building out a better (RAIDed) backup machine, or even keeping the original tapes around despite them having been digitized?

Submission + - MOM or Mangalyaan has now done 95% of its journey without a hitch (nvonews.com)

Submitted by rinka
rinka writes: There's been progress since: http://science.slashdot.org/st...

The Indian Mars mission is on target has completed 95% of it's journey and will reach its destination before the month end. Indian scientists have successfully restarted the Mars orbiter. Meanwhile there are reasons to believe that NASA and ISRO, both space agencies that have sent Mars rovers, have decided to coordinate their mars missions: http://nvonews.com/india-mars-...

Submission + - School to fingerprint students to 'monitor their diets' (eagnews.org) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: STOURBRIDGE, England – A school is implementing a biometric system to better track what students are eating each day.

The Express & Star reports students at Redhill School in Stourbridge, England will be fingerprinted in an attempt to reduce lunch lines and “monitor pupils’ diets.” The system requires pupils to press a finger against a machine which converts the print into biometric data. This can then be used to identify individual pupils accounts.

Headteacher Stephen Dunster wrote to parents, “We are aiming to have a cashless system throughout the school. The catering system is better for parents because they don’t have to provide children with lunch money every morning. From our perspective it is far more efficient as it reduces waiting times. We will also be able to monitor what children are buying to make sure they are eating a healthy diet.”

Submission + - California Declared Carpooling Via Ride-Share Services Illegal (cnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ride-share companies like Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar got letters from the California Public Utilities Commission this week telling them that carpool features for their services are illegal. "Basically, the CPUC says that under California law it's illegal for these ride-sharing services to charge passengers an individual fare when carrying multiple people in one vehicle. If the companies would like to add a carpool feature, they first have to request an adjustment to their existing permits with the CPUC or petition the state legislature to modify the law. Uber, Lyft and Sidecar all unveiled carpool features last month. The three companies say the feature lets strangers in multiple locations, but heading the same direction, share rides and split fares — saving passengers up to 50 percent per ride."

Submission + - Overstock.com Becomes First Retailer to Accept Bitcoin Worldwide

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In January, Ovestock.com started accepting bitcoins as a method of payment in the U.S. On Thursday, it started accepting bitcoins from consumers all over the world. "You can order in North Korea if you want," stated Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, "as long as you're having things delivered to, say, Singapore." The company will reportedly save significantly in foreign credit card transaction fees, but the fact that some governments are mobilizing to regulate the new currency could, at the very least, continue to stunt its widespread adoption.

Submission + - WD announces 8TB, 10TB helium hard drives (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: Western Digital's HGST subsidiary today announced it's shipping its first 8TB and the world's first 10TB helium-filled hard drive. The 3.5-in, 10TB drive also marks HGST's first foray into the use of singled magnetic recording technology, which Seagate announced it began using last year. Unlike standard perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR), where data tracks rest side by side, SMR overlaps the tracks on a platter like shingles on a roof, thereby allowing a higher areal density. Seagate has said SMR technology will allow it to achieve 20TB drives by 2020. That company has yet to use helium, however. HGST said its use of hermetically-sealed helium drives reduces friction among moving drive components and keeps dust out. Both drives use a 7-platter configuration with a 7200 RPM spindle speed. The company said it plans to discontinue its production of air-only drives by 2017, replacing all data center models with helium drives.

Submission + - Research Finds No Large Scale Heartbleed Exploit Attempts Before Disclosure (threatpost.com)

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: In the days and weeks following the public disclosure of the OpenSSL Heartbleed vulnerability in April, security researchers and others wondered aloud whether there were some organizations–perhaps the NSA–that had known about the bug for some time and had been using it for targeted attacks. A definitive answer to that question may never come, but traffic data collected by researchers on several large networks shows no exploit attempts in the months leading up to the public disclosure.

Researchers from the University of Michigan, the University of Illinois, the University of California at Berkeley , Purdue University and the International Computer Science Institute took a comprehensive look at the way that the Heartbleed vulnerability affected the Internet as a whole in the months since it was disclosed in April, focusing mainly on the response by organizations to patch vulnerable servers and revoke certificates. As the scope and effect of the Heartbleed vulnerability set in, security teams scrambled to determine which of their servers were vulnerable to the issue and whether they needed to begin revoking a bunch of SSL certificates, as well. Many of the top sites on the Internet were patched almost immediately after the disclosure, but that didn’t extend to the rest of the vulnerable server population.

Submission + - Apple Said to Negotiate Deep Payments Discounts from Big Banks (bankinnovation.net)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Apple is including some sort of automatic credit card payment system with the iPhone 6. It's using some security feature of the phone and system to negotiate a cheaper transaction fee.

Basically, there are two kinds of credit card transactions: card-present, and card-not-present. The former is cheaper because there's less risk of fraud. The article says that Apple has negotiated the card-present rate for its iPhone payment system, even though the card is not present. Presumably, this is because of some other security features that reduce the risk of fraud.

Submission + - Comcast Using JavaScript Injection To Serve Ads on Public Wi-Fi Hotspots (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For some time now, Comcast has setting up public Wi-Fi hotspots, some of which are run on the routers of paying subscribers. The public hotspots are free, but not without cost: Comcast uses JavaScript to inject self-promotional ads into the pages served to users. 'Security implications of the use of JavaScript can be debated endlessly, but it is capable of performing all manner of malicious actions, including controlling authentication cookies and redirecting where user data is submitted. ... Seth Schoen, the senior staff technologist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, reviewed the data ...and said that "there ended up being JavaScript in the page that was not intended by the server." Even if Comcast doesn't have any malicious intent, and even if hackers don't access the JavaScript, the interaction of the JavaScript with websites could "create" security vulnerabilities in websites, Schoen said. "Their code, or the interaction of code with other things, could potentially create new security vulnerabilities in sites that didn't have them," Schoen said in a telephone interview.'

Submission + - Is there any scenario where violating net neutrality acceptable? 1

Submitted by rcht148
rcht148 writes: Ever since I heard about T-Mobile's 'Music Freedom' announcement, I have been asking myself this question. If you're unaware of it, T-Mobile recently announced that music streaming from some services (Pandora, iHeartRadio, iTunes Radio, Rhapsody, Slacker, Spotify and some others) will NOT be counted against the customers 4G LTE data cap. I love T-Mobile for the much needed shake-up to the wireless industry that they provided and thanks to them my wireless bill has gone down by almost 40%. In lay man terms this promo sounds great because you get more for your data (Your 2GB 4G LTE plan now means 2GB 4G LTE + music streaming from some providers*). I can't seem to accept this as an engineer. It violates the definition of net neutrality. So, I've been asking myself the broader question, in what scenario does a net neutrality violation become acceptable? If you're a net neutrality supporter do you find this service acceptable?

Submission + - How China's E-waste Capital Is Trying to Clean Itself Up (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: If you want to see where your old electronics go to die, take a trip to Guiyu. For two decades, PCs, phones and other electronics have been shipped to this town on the southeast coast of China, where locals in thousands of small workshops pull them apart with buzz saws and pliers to extract the valuable components inside. But things may finally be changing. A sign posted by a small stream in the town declares that Guiyu will crack down on any 'acid cleaning, and burning activities.' And residents said it's rare now to see 'board burning' in the town itself, with that and other dangerous activities having been moved to an industrial park to the north.

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