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Comment Re:Its *not* $634M - $1.2 billion contract to Serc (Score 1) 365

by tocs (#45133521) Attached to: Buried In the Healthcare.gov Source: "No Expectation of Privacy"
I do not know much about the new health care laws. Certainly, I have no idea what the costs are going to be. So, my question is how does this story, Obamacare glitches give paper applications new life fit into the picture. It sounds a little like the health care program is not going to cost so much as the infrastructure and bureaucracy to support it.

From the link above:
"The Obama administration has been prepared for a crush of paper. Over the summer, it awarded a $1.2 billion contract to Serco, which says it expects to process 6.2 million paper applications in the health law’s first open enrollment period running through the end of March."

Submission + - Physicists Discover Geometry Underlying Particle Physics (simonsfoundation.org)

Submitted by Lee_Dailey
Lee_Dailey writes: Physicists have discovered a jewel-like geometric object that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality.

“This is completely new and very much simpler than anything that has been done before,” said Andrew Hodges, a mathematical physicist at Oxford University who has been following the work.

Submission + - Linux health given the reveletion of NSA crypto-subverting attacks? 4

Submitted by deepdive
deepdive writes: I have a basic question. What is the privacy/security health of the Linux kernel (and indeed other FOSS OS's) given all the recent stories about the NSA going in and deliberately subverting various parts of the privacy/security sub-systems. Basically, can one still sleep soundly thinking that the most recent latest/greatest ubuntu/opensuse/what-have-you distro she/he downloaded is still pretty safe. Or do people need to get a little worried and start burning some extra night oil over this?

Submission + - Plants communicate using fungi (bytesizebio.net)

Submitted by Shipud
Shipud writes: In response to aphid attacks, some plants produce chemicals that repel the aphids and attract wasps, the aphids' natural enemies. Researchers at the University of Aberdeen have shown that plants attacked by aphids can communicate that information to neighboring plants via existing networks of fungi in the soil. Thus fungal symbiosis with plants is shown to be taken one step further: not only do they provide nutrients to plants, they also function as communication hardware.

Submission + - What if Snowden Gets Hit by a Bus? 1

Submitted by Error27
Error27 writes: Edward Snowden has four laptops full of secret data. There is an implied threat that if he gets hit by a bus, the data will be released. Let's assume the laptops hold very sensitive data including SSL private keys and password files. What are the implications from an IT perspective?

Submission + - The service of Snowden and the apparent change of political landscape (nytimes.com)

Submitted by gale the simple
gale the simple writes: NY Times is not exactly known for being amiably disposed towards Snowden and his recent disclosure of NSA programs. It is, therefore, somewhat surprising that a subject of a debate about rolling back some of the massive surveillance state is actually shown there.
Maybe Noam Chomsky was right. There are good journalists out there. It is just not often that they have a window of opportunity in which to post.

Submission + - Lawmakers Who Upheld NSA Phone Spying Received Double the Defense Industry Cash (wired.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The numbers tell the story — in votes and dollars. On Wednesday, the House voted 217 to 205 not to rein in the NSA’s phone-spying dragnet. It turns out that those 217 “no” voters received twice as much campaign financing from the defense and intelligence industry as the 205 “yes” voters.

Comment Re:It's A Start (Score 1) 362

by tocs (#44381923) Attached to: NSA Still Funded To Spy On US Phone Records
The fight in congress is over. If a few votes are needed to pass some bill some one in the executive branch talks to some one in the NSA that talks to a buddy at Booz Allen. The buddy at Booz Allen takes a few minutes to look at the list that he has compiled for this very purposes picks out a few names (5 or 6 of the 435 represenatives that can be bought, sold, or blackmailed) and give them to the guy at the NSA (adding you "owe me a beer for this").

The guy at Booz Allen looks forward to the beer (maybe he will buy a round, he has a good paying job) and gets back to work feeding information to others at Booz Allen and the rest of the Carlyle Group.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booz_Allen_Hamilton#Political_contributions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booz_Allen_Hamilton#Business
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booz_Allen_Hamilton#Government

Submission + - Hackaday.com is for sale... (hackaday.com)

Submitted by tocs
tocs writes: sort of. They are trying to raise some money ($540,000) on Indiegogo.

From the Hackaday post:
"The owner of Hackaday, [Jason Calacanis], wants to sell this site.

When we posted this announcement, the comments section blew up and a whole bunch of people suggested doing a Kickstarter or crowdfunding campaign. This is it. We, the editors and contributors of Hackaday, want to buy Hackaday to keep giving you all these awesome hacks without the threat of some undue outside influence should someone else buy it.

We’re going to keep this stickied at the top of the front page for the duration of our Indiegogo campaign, so check out what else we have to say below."

There is a fair bit of discusion in the Hackaday comment section about what is going on and if it is worth the price. I think I will pitch in a few dollars. It is a pretty good site.

Submission + - 70,000+ Have Played Brain-Mapping 'EyeWire' Game (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by kkleiner
kkleiner writes: EyeWire is a game developed by MIT researchers in which users map the connectome, which is the massively complex connections between the billions of neurons in the brain. Since its launch last year, EyeWire has already had over 70,000 citizen scientists play the game. Users are not only contributing directly while they play the game, but they're also advancing brain science by helping researchers improve AI algorithms so that someday computers can study the connectome accurately and independently.

Submission + - Can You Trust A Crowdsourced Courier (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: EasyBring is a crowdsourced delivery service. If you have package to deliver, you register it with the service, and someone that is making that journey already will pick it up and deliver it for you. There are obvious worries, like how do you know your stuff won't get stolen? And what stops someone using the service to deliver drugs... or a bomb? But it's going well in Norway, and the company hopes to expand

Submission + - The Strong Goldbach Conjecture Proved ? (arxiv.org)

Submitted by morto
morto writes: "The Strong Goldbach conjecture dates back to 1742. It states that every even integer greater than four can be written as the sum of two prime numbers. Since then, no one has been able to prove the conjecture. ...Additionally, the conjecture has been verified to be true for all even integers up to 4.10^18. In this paper, we prove that the conjecture is true for all even integers greater than 362."

It seems then it is finally proved, right ?

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