>> also renews the expiring parts of the Patriot Act through 2019

This should be the headline: Bipartisan bill renews Patriot Act for four years, with minor tweaks

In fact, I think there's really no reform. From TFA:
"data would instead be stored by the phone companies themselves, and could be accessed by intelligence agencies only after approval of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court"

Um...guess what happens as soon as this bill is passed? "Hey Obama, er, I mean secret court, can we please continue access all the data from those boxes we installed at the phone companies again? Of course? Well, thanks!"

What's the point of predicting riots if all we're going to do is stand around and give people "space to destroy" when they do riot?

These aren't thunderstorms...

>> So basically, Google is giving you access to their hash, salt, and saying "Enjoy unlimited cracking attempts...

Not exactly. The 37-bit version is just less than 25% of the full 160-bit SHA-1 so, as the source mentions (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/google/password-alert/master/SECURITY.md) the intent is to keep enough of the password to tell when the same password has been tried twice, but not enough of the hash to allow someone to authoritatively crack it. (I hope - haven't seen the proof of 37-is-the-right-number yet.)

This isn't the first time someone's used hashes with high collision rates to see if the same passwords are being tried without actually storing enough of a hash to flag the password. See this article for a different example (trying to tell badly configured clients from brute forcing attempts): http://www.filetransferconsult...

In Soviet Russia Cargo Boxes Open You!

You're right - I do feel better.

Still happy Verizon's giving the finger to ESPN
http://entertainment.slashdot....

>> the survey, which covered 114 square miles, may have just uncovered the proverbial tip of the iceberg

An iceberg is 90% submerged, so...the survey only covered 10% of the total area? Or found only 10% of the stuff? Or which 10%?

>> Web is for video playback, reading news and blogs, Business app?, desktop

And how long have you been out of work?

I know if my mother-in-law had just the Hallmark channel, the game show network and one other she'd switch providers, even it only saved her 30%.

Alternatively, if there was a way to just get Netflix to stream random stuff in preselected genres all day I could get her off cable altogether - tens of millions of people just want the TV on all the time because they live alone, but can't stand the crap the broadcast networks have during the day and have no need for ESPN.

As I remember it, the Nexus 7 was part of a strategic campaign by Google to ensure that "tablet" didn't mean "iPad" by introducing a high-quality Android device supported by Google itself to the masses. Now that that mission's largely been accomplished (e.g., if you're just looking for a tablet to browse the Internet and run a couple of simple apps, would you really shell out the extra money buy an iPod?) and there are many high-quality Android tablet alternatives in every form factor imaginable, the Nexus 7 isn't needed so much.

>> Population of Earth: 7 billion X a generous 1% of all humans, so 700,000,000 users

Are you sure SlashDot is the right forum for you?

>> Where does this business find its customers?

Just put an ad in "Self" magazine. Or figure out who the hell is buying selfie sticks and advertise next to those.

This is already happening. Just look around your local state for "tuition-free online public school" (often also a "charter" school) and you will find this model already in use.

At a national and state level, government wonks are also pushing this model. Look up "common core" and note how well the OP's concept of a (centralized national) "curriculum facilitator" fits vs. the old concept of a (decentralized and local) "content expert."

That's the "short" version? Yeesh. Anyway, here's what that article was trying to say:

Two things are likely to pass:
1) Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act: Lets Homeland Security invent regulations to let companies and governments at all levels share data about people. Good for law enforcement, bad for privacy and civil rights, good for corporations who share too much trying to please the government (because of a liability shield).
2) Something else similar with some provisions keeping the NSA at arms length to molify the public, but I lost interest exactly what it was because the article was pretty confusing.

>> How can a system at the same time aggregate and make data anonymous

Given existing PC-driven redaction of police reports, I'd expect it to read something like this:

(race redacted) (gender redacted) (age redacted) adult or child wearing (clothing redacted) and (method of transportation redacted), possibly named (name redacted) wanted as a person of interest in the alleged (incident redacted) that was reported on (date/time redacted) at (place redacted). If you have any information about this alleged incident or this person, please call (main, overloaded and disinterested dispatcher phone number with 30-minute hold time) and remember to obey all police commands at all time.

>> kidnappings

If you live in a city where "kidnappings" is just considered another statistics...it might be time to move.