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Submission + - Hacker Threatened With 44 Felony Charges Escapes With Misdemeanor (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It's no secret that prosecutors usually throw every charge they can at an alleged criminal, but the case of Aaron Swartz brought to light how poorly-written computer abuse laws lend themselves to this practice. Now, another perfect example has resolved itself: a hacker with ties to Anonymous was recently threatened with 44 felony counts of computer fraud and cyberstalking, each with its own 10-year maximum sentence. If the charges stuck, the man was facing multiple lifetimes worth of imprisonment. But, of course, it wasn't. Prosecutors struck a deal to get him to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor charge, which carried only a $10,000 fine. The man's attorney, Tor Eklund, said, "The more I looked at this, the more it seemed like an archetypal example of the Department of Justice’s prosecutorial abuse when it comes to computer crime. It shows how aggressive they are, and how they seek to destroy your reputation in the press even when the charges are complete, fricking garbage."

Submission + - Apple faces large penalties in EU tax probe

Submitted by chasm22
chasm22 writes: EU Regulators are apparently set to accuse Apple and the Irish government of entering into several sweetheart deals that left Apple with lower taxes than what it legally owed. If the ruling is upheld, Apple could owe billions in back taxes. Interestingly, it seems that the Irish government would actually get the extra money and suffer little for its part in the scheme. http://wallstcheatsheet.com/te...

Submission + - Endurance experiment writes one petabyte to six consumer SSDs

Submitted by crookedvulture
crookedvulture writes: Last year, we kicked off an SSD endurance experiment to see how much data could be written to six consumer drives. One petabyte later, half of them are still going. Their performance hasn't really suffered, either. The casualties slowed down a little toward the very end, and they died in different ways. The Intel 335 Series and Kingston HyperX 3K provided plenty of warning of their imminent demise, though both still ended up completely unresponsive at the very end. The Samsung 840 Series, which uses more fragile TLC NAND, perished unexpectedly. It also suffered a rash of cell failures and multiple bouts of uncorrectable errors during its life. While the sample size is far too small to draw any definitive conclusions, all six SSDs exceeded their rated lifespans by hundreds of terabytes. The fact that all of them wrote over 700TB is a testament to the endurance of modern SSDs.

Submission + - Jewish school removes evolution questions from exams

Submitted by Alain Williams
Alain Williams writes: Religious sponsored ignorance is not just in the USA, a school in Hackney, England is trying to hide the idea of evolution from its pupils. Maybe they fear that their creation story will be seen for what it is if pupils get to learn ideas supported evidence. The girls are also disadvantaged since they can't answer the redacted questions, thus making it harder to get good marks.

Submission + - Apple Refuses to Unlock Bequeathed iPad

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: BBC reports: A man whose mother bequeathed her iPad to her family in her will says Apple's security rules are too restrictive. Since her death, they have been unable to unlock the device, despite providing Apple with copies of her will, death certificate and solicitor's letter. After her death, they discovered they did not know her Apple ID and password, but were asked to provide written consent for the device to be unlocked. Mr Grant said: "We obviously couldn't get written permission because mum had died. So my brother has been back and forth with Apple, they're asking for some kind of proof that he can have the iPad. "We've provided the death certificate, will and solicitor's letter but it wasn't enough. They've now asked for a court order to prove that mum was the owner of the iPad and the iTunes account.

Submission + - NSA tracking cellphone locations worldwide, Snowden documents show (washingtonpost.com) 1

Submitted by tramp
tramp writes: The National Security Agency is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world, according to top-secret documents and interviews with U.S. intelligence officials, enabling the agency to track the movements of individuals — and map their relationships — in ways that would have been previously unimaginable.

Of course it is "only metadata" and absolutely not invading privacy if you ask our "beloved" NSA.

Submission + - NASA launch on Monday will help pave way to life on Mars (linuxacademy.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Mars seems to have gone from being a warm, wet planet with a liquid core (with magnetic fields strong enough to maintain an atmosphere) to a cooled, solidified core that weakened the magnetic fields, and therefore the atmosphere, and turned the planet into its frozen desert-like surface. By gathering information about the Mars upper atmosphere and its magnetic field, MAVEN helps pave the way to rebuilding the atmosphere making it possible for life on the red planet.

Submission + - Canonical developers call Linux Mint insecure, not recommended (muktware.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: Ubuntu developer Oliver Grawert does not prefer to do online banking with Linux Mint. In the official mailing list of the distribution, Ubuntu developers stated that the popular Ubuntu derivative is a vulnerable system and people shouldn’t go for online banking on it. One of the Ubuntu developers, Oliver Grawert, originally pointed out that it is not necessary that security updates from Ubuntu get down to Linux Mint users since changes from X.Org, the kernel, Firefox, the boot-loader, and other core components are blocked from being automatically upgraded.

Submission + - Chicxulub Impact Must Have Spread Life-Bearing Rocks Through The Solar System (medium.com)

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: Some 65 million years ago, an asteroid the size of a small city hit the Yucatan Peninsula in what is now Mexico, devastating Earth and triggering the sequence of events that wiped out the dinosaurs. This impact ejected 70 billion kg of Earth rock into space. To carry life around the Solar System, astrobiologists say these rocks must have stayed cool, less than 100 degrees C, and must also be big, more than 3 metres in diameter to protect organisms from radiation in space. Now they have calculated that 20,000 kilograms of this Earth ejecta must have reached Europa, including at least one or two potentially life-bearing rocks. And they say similar amounts must have reached other water-rich moons such as Callisto and Titan. Their conclusion is that if we find life on the moons around Saturn and Jupiter, it could well date from the time of the dinosaurs (or indeed from other similar impacts).

Submission + - International Space Station Infected With Malware Carried by Russian Astronauts (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by DavidGilbert99
DavidGilbert99 writes: Nowhere is safe. Even in the cold expanse of space, computer malware manages to find a way. According to Russian security expert Eugene Kaspersky, the SCADA systems on board the International Space Station have been infected by malware which was carried into space on USB sticks by Russian astronauts.

Submission + - Sweden is closing many prisons due to lack of prisoners. (rtoz.org)

Submitted by rtoz
rtoz writes: Sweden is taking steps to close many prisons due to lack of prisoners.

This year alone, four prisons and a detention center got closed in Sweden.

The percentage of the population in Sweden prison is significantly lower than in most other countries.

And,the Swedish prison system is not generally severe. For example, the top-of-the-line prison in Sollentuna, Sweden includes cells with comfortable mattresses and private bathrooms. After prisoners hit the weight room, they can cook up a meal in the state of the art kitchen before kicking back and watching TV on the couch. Sweden’s prison authorities are quick to point out that every square inch of the prison can be seen on a security camera.

Though the Sweden Government is taking steps to close the prisons, crime rate in sweden is not reduced. Actually Crime rate it getting increased in Sweden. It seems they are planning to take steps for preventing the crimes than focusing on sentencing the people involve in criminal activities.

Submission + - Hacker spoofs track plays to top music charts (scmagazine.com.au)

Submitted by mask.of.sanity
mask.of.sanity writes: Stand aside P!nk, Niki Minaj; you've just been beaten by a music generator. One Aussie security expert curious about the fraud mechanisms at play on streaming services like Spotify uploaded garbage music tracks and directed three Amazon virtual machines to click the play button 24/7 for a month, earning him top spot in online music charts and $1000 in royalties.

Submission + - Drone-Mounted Laser Weapons Are on the Way (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: The project, called Endurance, is referred to in DARPA's 2014 budget request as being tasked with the development of "technology for pod-mounted lasers to protect a variety of airborne platforms from emerging and legacy EO/IR guided surface-to-air missiles." The budget explains that it will be the first application of DARPA's much-discussed Excalibur laser defense system, which developed lasers powerful enough to use as weapons. With the new program, DARPA is focused on miniaturizing the technology, as well as "developing high-precision target tracking, identification, and lightweight agile beam control to support target engagement. The program will also focus on the phenomenology of laser-target interactions and associated threat vulnerabilities." In other words, DARPA hopes that drone-mounted lasers will soon be able to shoot missiles out of the sky.

Submission + - HP Claims Blu-ray, DVD and CD Drive Makers Engaged in Price Fixing for Years (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: HP has filed a lawsuit against seven makers of optical disk drive technology, claiming the companies engaged in widespread price fixing in order to drive up the cost of Blu-ray, DVD and CD drives for PC and peripheral equipment makers. The suit was filed Thursday at the district court in Houston against Toshiba, Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, NEC, TEAC and Quanta Storage. The lawsuit claims the conspiracy to drive up prices took place from at least Jan. 1, 2004 through Jan. 1, 2010, when "almost all forms of home entertainment and data storage were on optical discs" and the companies controlled 90% of the optical disk market. HP alleges the companies used industry events, such as CES, as cover to communicate competitive information and hammer out anticompetitive agreements.

Submission + - Anti-poaching lawsuit against Apple, Google and others given the green light (tuaw.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A class action lawsuit against Apple, Google and a number of other high-profile tech companies has been given the green light by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh.

The lawsuit stems from anti-poaching agreements that Apple a number of tech companies entered into from 2005 through 2009. Parties to the agreement all promised not to recruit employees from one another. The companies involved include Apple, Intel, Google, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm, and Adobe.

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