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+ - SPAM: e-cigarettes can potentially infect a computer if plugged in to charge

Submitted by bricko
bricko (1052210) writes "Now e-cigarettes can give you malware

[spam URL stripped]...

Better for your lungs, worse for your hard drives, e-cigarettes can potentially infect a computer if plugged in to charge

“The made in China e-cigarette had malware hardcoded into the charger, and when plugged into a computer’s USB port the malware phoned home and infected the system.”"
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+ - MORE FOREIGN WORKERS LEGALIZED THAN JOBS CREATED->

Submitted by bricko
bricko (1052210) writes "MORE FOREIGN WORKERS LEGALIZED THAN JOBS CREATED

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11...

President Barack Obama’s unilateral amnesty will quickly add as many foreign workers to the nation’s legal labor force as the total number of new jobs created by his economy since 2009.

The plans, expected to be announced late Nov. 20, will distribute five million work permits to illegal immigrants, and also create a new inflow of foreign college graduates for prestigious salaried jobs, according to press reports.

Obama has already provided or promised almost one million extra work permits to foreigners, while his economy has only added six million jobs since 2009.

http://dailycaller.com/2014/11..."
Link to Original Source

+ - SAVE act removes Sec. 230 protection from sites->

Submitted by bricko
bricko (1052210) writes "SAVE act removes Sec. 230 protection from sites

Human Rights Groups Ask Senate To Reject Proposed Sex Trafficking Law That Strips Long-Held Protections For Website Owners

https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

Stop S 2536

Now, the Senate is considering the "SAVE Act" (Stop Advertising Victims of Exploitation Act)[pdf link], which was passed out of the House by a 392-19 vote earlier this year. The bill expands the definition of "trafficking" to include "advertising," amending the definition of this federal crime.

Worse, it strips away protections website owners who host third-party content have enjoyed for years. The summary provided by Congress.gov highlights proposed changes that will do damage to many more entities than its intended targets.

Shields from liability under such prohibition an Internet access service provider, browser provider, common carrier, telecommunications carrier, or other generic search or utility provider solely based on providing generic search or utility services.

Notably, website owners are excluded from these liability protections, basically eliminating Section 230 immunity for anything the government considers to be an "adult advertisement."

Requires anyone selling, commercially promoting, or placing an adult advertisement to: (1) verify the identity of each person purchasing advertisement space for, and each person depicted in, such advertisement; (2) verify that each person whose goods or services are advertised is not under age 18; (3) create and maintain individually identifiable records pertaining to each such person for at least seven years; and (4) affix to each adult advertisement a statement describing where such records may be located.

Not only will website owners now be held accountable for third-party content, they'll also be expected to police it to ensure nothing runs afoul of this broadly-worded law. Failure to do so could result in a five-year prison sentence."
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+ - Calls to use Kelo Emnent Doman decision to seize all cable and fiber for public ->

Submitted by bricko
bricko (1052210) writes "Calls from conservative Weekly Standard magazine to use Eminent Domain to seize all fibers, cables etc for use as public utility for net. Turn over to neutral party company to be solely a cable, fiber management company and let anyone have access to all for any service that can be foreseen or invented.

From 2006 article....but just now becoming pertinent via posting on Drudge to get attention from conservatives."
Link to Original Source

+ - Brazil Is Keeping Its Promise to Avoid the U.S. Internet - US to lose 35 Billion-> 1

Submitted by bricko
bricko (1052210) writes "Brazil Is Keeping Its Promise to Avoid the U.S. Internet

http://gizmodo.com/brazils-kee...

Brazil was not bluffing last year, when it said that it wanted to disconnect from the United States-controlled internet due to the NSA's obscenely invasive surveillance tactics. The country is about to stretch a cable from the northern city of Fortaleza all the way to Portugal, and they've vowed not to use a single U.S. vendor to do it.

Brazil made a bunch of bold promises, ranging in severity from forcing companies like Facebook and Google to move their servers inside Brazilian borders, to building a new all-Brazilian email system—which they've already done. But the first actionable opportunity the country was presented with is this transatlantic cable, which had been in the works since 2012 but is only just now seeing construction begin. And with news that the cable plan will not include American vendors, it looks like Brazil is serious; it's investing $185 million on the cable project alone. And not a penny of that sum will go to an American company.

The implications of Brazil distancing itself from the US internet are huge. It's not necessarily a big deal politically, but the economic consequences could be tremendously destructive. Brazil has the seventh largest economy in the world, and it continues to grow. So when Brazil finally does divorce Uncle Sam—assuming things continue at this rate—a huge number of contracts between American companies and Brazil will simply disappear.

On the whole, researchers estimate that the United States could lose about $35 billion due to security fears. That's a lot of money."
Link to Original Source

+ - 255Tbps: World's fastest network could carry all of the internet's traffic ->

Submitted by bricko
bricko (1052210) writes "255Tbps: World’s fastest network could carry all of the internet’s traffic on a single fiber

A joint group of researchers from the Netherlands and the US have smashed the world speed record for a fiber network, pushing 255 terabits per second down a single strand of glass fiber. This is equivalent to around 32 terabytes per second — enough to transfer a 1GB movie in 31.25 microseconds (0.03 milliseconds), or alternatively, the entire contents of your 1TB hard drive in about 31 milliseconds.

To put 255Tbps into perspective, the fastest single-fiber links in commercial operation top out at 100Gbps, or 2,550 times slower. 255Tbps is mindbogglingly quick; it’s greater, by far, than the total capacity of every cable — hundreds of glass fibers — currently spanning the Atlantic Ocean. In fact, 255 terabits per second is similar to — or maybe even more than — the total sum of all traffic flowing across the internet at peak time.

How — How did the researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and University of Central Florida (CREOL) do it? Multi-core fiber, of course! As it stands, the entire internet backbone consists of single-mode glass and plastic fiber. These fibers can only carry one mode of light — which, in essence, means they can only carry the light from a single laser. (It’s a bit more complex than that, but it’s beyond the scope of this story to explain it any further.) You can still use wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) to push insane amounts of data down a single fiber (a few terabits), but we will eventually run up against the laws of physics."
Link to Original Source

+ - Should Twitter Suspend LGBT Engineer Accused Of Raping Her Wife?->

Submitted by bricko
bricko (1052210) writes "Should Twitter Suspend LGBT Engineer Accused Of Raping Her Wife?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...

What is surprising is that the alleged rapist is a well-regarded feminist and LGBT advocate, Dana McCallum, a transgender woman who was named by Business Insider as the fifth-most important LGBT person in the tech world. She is a senior engineer for Twitter, which stated "We don't comment on employees’ personal matters” when McCallum was charged with five felonies earlier this years: three counts of spousal rape, one count of false imprisonment and one count of domestic violence.

McCallum ultimately pleaded guilty on Tuesday to two misdemeanors: one count of domestic violence with corporal injury to the spouse and one count of false imprisonment. The District Attorney's office insisted on a guilty plea when she attempted to enter no contest. From a legal standpoint, the case is resolved, but the aftershocks in the way we think about rape and assault will reverberate for a long time.

Or at least they should. Unfortunately, the relative silence around McCallum’s trial, let alone the issue of woman-on-woman rape and sexual assault, is deafening and disturbing. In researching for this article, I posted queries in multiple forums for female journalists for resources or recommended experts for female-on-female rape. I received only one response. I've seen only a handful of articles reporting on the McCallum case and they are generally absent of any criticism."
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+ - The Ebola Patient Was Sent Home Because of Bad Software->

Submitted by bricko
bricko (1052210) writes "The Dallas hospital's debacle highlights the atrociousness of many electronic health records.

        Protocols were followed by both the physician and the nurses. However, we have identified a flaw in the way the physician and nursing portions of our electronic health records (EHR) interacted in this specific case.

The hospital's electronic health record contains separate workflows for doctors and nurses. The information about the patient's travel history was on the nurses' side, but "it would not automatically appear in the physician’s standard workflow." Which means the doctor wouldn't know about Duncan's recent trip to Liberia. Which means she'd have no reason to suspect Duncan had Ebola.

The incident underscores how important it is for doctors and hospitals to find EHRs that work well. The federal government has greatly incentivized the use of digital records, as opposed to paper charts, and nearly half of physicians now use them. Increasingly, EHRs aren't just a convenient way to track appointments and vital signs, they're critical communication links that can make all the difference.

There are technical problems beyond the software, too: Ebola isn't even considered its own disease under the current medical classification system for diseases, called ICD. Under ICD-9, the current version, Ebola shares a code with "multiple viral diseases." (The virus will have its own code under ICD-10, which rolls out next year.)

For its part, the Dallas hospital said it plans to make changes to its health record in order to prevent future such slip-ups:

        As result of this discovery, Texas Health Dallas has relocated the travel history documentation to a portion of the EHR that is part of both workflows. It also has been modified to specifically reference Ebola-endemic regions in Africa. We have made this change to increase the visibility and documentation of the travel question in order to alert all providers. We feel that this change will improve the early identification of patients who may be at risk for communicable diseases, including Ebola."
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+ - Extent of Antarctic sea ice reaches record levels, scientists say->

Submitted by bricko
bricko (1052210) writes "Extent of Antarctic sea ice reaches record levels, scientists say

Scientists say the extent of Antarctic sea ice cover is at its highest level since records began

Satellite imagery reveals an area of about 20 million square kilometres covered by sea ice around the Antarctic continent.

Jan Lieser from the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) said the discovery was made two days ago.

"This is an area covered by sea ice which we've never seen from space before," he said.

"Thirty-five years ago the first satellites went up which were reliably telling us what area, two dimensional area, of sea ice was covered and we've never seen that before, that much area.

"That is roughly double the size of the Antarctic continent and about three times the size of Australia.""
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