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Data Storage

Submission + - Wall Street Hedge Fund Smashes Hard Drive Evidence (wsj.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We all know Slashdotters love debating the best way to wipe a hard drive clean. Looks like tech-savvy Wall Street Hedge Fund managers also know the best way to do it. From the WSJ article:

"F—in' pulled the external drives apart," Mr. Longueuil told Mr. Freeman during their meeting, according to the criminal complaint. "Put 'em into four separate little baggies, and then at 2 a.m. 2 a.m. on a Friday night, I put this stuff inside my black North Face jacket, and leave the apartment and I go on like a twenty block walk around the city and try to find a, a garbage truck and threw the s—t in the back of like random garbage trucks, different garbage trucks four different garbage trucks."
Security

Submission + - Microsoft Says RIP Windows XP AutoRun (itnews.com.au)

Submitted by aesoteric
aesoteric writes: Microsoft has finally decided to push out an update to disable AutoRun in its XP operating system, a Windows feature that had been increasingly exploited by virus writers over the years. But because Microsoft still sees AutoRun as a feature and not a security hole, it isn't calling its Windows Update a "security update" but rather an "Important, non-security update" — but it effectively disables the AutoRun feature anyway.
Music

Submission + - Last.FM Requires Subscription (blog.last.fm)

Submitted by Hummdis
Hummdis writes: If you, like so many others, listen to Last.FM on your mobile or home entertainment devices, then you're going to need to pay for this once free service effective February 15th.

It remains free to listen on Last.FM (the website), but if you want to continue to listen on Android, your BluRay player, or any other device, you'll need to spend the $3.00 per month to be able to do so.
HP

Submission + - An Open Letter To PC Makers: Ditch Bloatware, Now! (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: This is the final straw, the last stand. This is the year that companies have to wise up and realize that they're destroying the experience of the very machines they are maketing so vigorously against their competitors. We're talking about bloatware, and it's an issue that we simply cannot remain silent on any longer. The term "bloatware" generally refers to any additional software installed on a machine that is not a native part of the operating system. "Bloatware" is usually provided by third-party software companies, and can range from security suites to unwanted Web browser toolbars. It's most problematic as these programs generally attempt to boot up first thing, right as the OS is booting up, before the end-user ever has a chance to launch the program on their own accord. It's time for manufacturers to take note: consumers do not want bloatware. It's a royal pain from top to bottom, and moreover, it ruins your brand. When people think of HP and Dell, they immediately think of just how infuriating it is that their last "new" PC took over one minute to boot up and become useable. To these companies: why are you saddling your machines with software that makes it less enjoyable to use? The solution seems pretty simple. If you still wish to include loads upon loads of third-party software, stick it all on a thumb drive and include it with every new machine. Problem solved.
Programming

Submission + - How Facebook Ships Code

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "yeegay has a very interesting article about how Facebook develops and releases software that he has gathered from talking with friends at the company. The two largest teams at Facebook are Engineering and Ops, with roughly 400-500 team members each, together making up about 50% of the company. All engineers go through 4 to 6 week “Boot Camp” training where they learn the Facebook system by fixing bugs. After boot camp, all engineers get access to live DB and any engineer can modify any part of Facebook's code base and check-in at-will so that engineers can modify specs mid-process, re-order work projects, and inject new feature ideas anytime. Then arguments about whether or not a feature idea is worth doing or not generally get resolved by spending a week implementing it and then testing it on a sample of users, e.g., 1% of Nevada users. "All changes are reviewed by at least one person, and the system is easy for anyone else to look at and review your code even if you don’t invite them to," writes yeegay. "It would take intentionally malicious behavior to get un-reviewed code in.” What is interesting for a compnay this size is that there is no official QA group at Facebook but almost every employee is dogfooding the product every day: many times a day and every employee is using a version of the site that includes all the changes that are next in line to go out. All employees are strongly encouraged to report any bugs they see and these are very quickly actioned upon. Facebook has about 60,000 servers with the smallest level comprising only 6 servers and there are nine levels for pushing out new code. For new code the ops team observes those 6 servers at level 1 to make sure that they are behaving correctly before rolling forward to the next level. If a release is causing any issues (e.g., throwing errors, etc.) then the push is halted, the engineer who committed the offending changeset is paged to fix the problem, and then the release starts over again at level 1."
Privacy

Submission + - Unsecured IP Cameras Accessible to Everyone (net-security.org)

Submitted by Orome1
Orome1 writes: In the last couple of decades, we have become so accustomed to the idea that the public portion of our everyday life is watched and recorded — in stores, on the street, in institutions — that we often don't even notice the cameras anymore. Analog surveillance systems were difficult to hack into by people who lacked the adequate knowledge, but IP cameras — having their own IPs — can be quite easily physically located and their stream watched in real-time by anyone who has a modicum of computer knowledge and knows what to search for on Google.
Privacy

Submission + - Google Street View logs WiFi networks, Mac address (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: There's a story over at The Register about how Google is collecting more than just images when they drive around for the Street View service. "Google's roving Street View spycam may blur your face, but it's got your number. The Street View service is under fire in Germany for scanning private WLAN networks, and recording users' unique Mac (Media Access Control) addresses, as the car trundles along."

There's a choice quote at the end, "Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently said internet users shouldn't worry about privacy unless they have something to hide. "
Patents

Smartphones Patented — Just About Everyone Sued 1 Minute Later 407

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the definition-of-a-patent-troll dept.
This week the US Patent and Trademark Office issued a surprisingly (although I guess it shouldn't be) broad patent for a "mobile entertainment and communication device". Upon closer inspection you may notice that it pretty much outlines the ubiquitous smartphone concept. "It's a patent for a mobile phone with removable storage, an internet connection, a camera and the ability to download audio or video files. The patent holding firm who has the rights to this patent wasted no time at all. At 12:01am Tuesday morning, it filed three separate lawsuits against just about everyone you can think of, including Apple, Nokia, RIM, Sprint, ATT, HP, Motorola, Helio, HTC, Sony Ericsson, UTStarcomm, Samsung and a bunch of others. Amusingly, the company actually first filed the lawsuits on Monday, but realized it was jumping the gun and pulled them, only to refile just past the stroke of midnight. "

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