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Data Storage

Submission + - Facebook condemns European data protection fines (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: Facebook claims companies could start court battles with data protection authorities if the regulators are given powers to levy fines of 2% of global turnover for data protection law breaches.

Facebook said the European Commission's proposed sanctions regime — which is contained in its draft General Data Protection Regulation — could also put off US and other businesses from trading within the EU, meaning less jobs being created.
Privacy

Submission + - Why big data could sink Europe's "right to be forgotten" (gigaom.com)

Submitted by
concealment
concealment writes: "Europe’s proposed ‘right to be forgotten’ has been the subject of intense debate, with many people arguing it’s simply not practical in the age of the internet for any data to be reliably expunged from history.

Well, add another voice to that mix. The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) has published its assessment of the proposals, and the tone is sceptical to say the least. And, interestingly, one of the biggest problems ENISA has found has to do with big data."
Government

Submission + - Senate bill rewrite lets Feds read your e-mail without warrants (cnet.com) 1

Submitted by
concealment
concealment writes: "A Senate proposal touted as protecting Americans' e-mail privacy has been quietly rewritten, giving government agencies more surveillance power than they possess under current law.

Leahy's rewritten bill would allow more than 22 agencies — including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission — to access Americans' e-mail, Google Docs files, Facebook wall posts, and Twitter direct messages without a search warrant. It also would give the FBI and Homeland Security more authority, in some circumstances, to gain full access to Internet accounts without notifying either the owner or a judge."
Government

Submission + - Jail Looms for Man Who Revealed AT&T Leaked iPad User E-Mails (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by
concealment
concealment writes: "AT&T screwed up in 2010, serving up the e-mail addresses of over 110,000 of its iPad 3G customers online for anyone to find. But today Andrew Auernheimer, an online activist who pointed out AT&T’s blunder to Gawker Media, which went on to publicize the breach of private information, is the one in federal court this week.

Groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) worry that should that charge succeed it will become easy to criminalize many online activities, including work by well-intentioned activists looking for leaks of private information or other online security holes. Weev’s case hasn’t received much attention so far, but should he be found guilty this week it will likely become well known, fast."
Encryption

Submission + - Quantum cryptography conquers noise problem (nature.com)

Submitted by
ananyo
ananyo writes: "Quantum-encryption systems that encode signals into a series of single photons have so far been unable to piggyback on existing telecommunications lines because they don't stand out from the millions of others in an optical fiber. But now, physicists using a technique for detecting dim light signals have transmitted a quantum key along 90 kilometres of noisy optical fibre. The feat could see quantum cryptography finally enter the mainstream.
The researchers developed a detector that picks out photons only if they strike it at a precise instant, calculated on the basis of when the encoded photons were sent.
The team’s ‘self-differentiating’ detector activates for 100 picoseconds, every nanosecond. The weak charge triggered by a photon strike in this short interval would not normally stand out, but the detector measures the difference between the signal recorded during one operational cycle and the signal from the preceding cycle — when no matching photon was likely to be detected. This cancels out the background hum. Using this device, the team has transmitted a quantum key along a 90-kilometre fiber, which also carried noisy data at 1 billion bits per second in both directions — a rate typical of a telecommunications fiber."
Security

Submission + - Hosting provider automatically fixes vulnerabilities in customers' websites (antagonist.nl) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Dutch hosting provider Antagonist today announced their in-house developed technology that automatically detects and fixes vulnerabilities in their customers’ websites. The service is aimed at popular software such as WordPress, Drupal and Joomla. Antagonist is the first hosting provider on the planet to offer this service, and plans to license the technology to other hosting providers as well.
Mars

Submission + - What has Curiosity found that is "earth-shaking"? (npr.org)

Submitted by Randym
Randym writes: NASA scientists have some exciting new results from one of the rover's instruments. On the one hand, they'd like to tell everybody what they found, but on the other, they have to wait because they want to make sure their results are not just some fluke or error in their instrument.

The exciting results are coming from an instrument in the rover called SAM. "We're getting data from SAM as we sit here and speak, and the data looks really interesting," says John Grotzinger. He's the principal investigator for the rover mission. SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) is a suite of instruments onboard NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity.

Grotzinger says they recently put a soil sample in SAM, and the analysis shows something Earth-shaking. "This data is gonna be one for the history books. It's looking really good," he says.
Firefox

Submission + - Mozilla Makes Prototype of Firefox OS Available (ostatic.com)

Submitted by Thinkcloud
Thinkcloud writes: Even though the operating system hasn't arrived in a version for smartphones and tablets just yet, it is available as a prototype module that you can run on Windows, Mac or Linux computers. The initial Firefox OS phones are expected to arrive in 2013, and it's been reported that Alcatel and ZTE are the first manufacturers on board.

Submission + - Should conferences embrace diversity? (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Register is reporting how Josh Susser has managed to get a Ruby conference in the UK cancelled as the speakers are 100% white male.

Should conferences embrace diversity from the start or should they put the best speakers up even if they are all white and male or should we have quotas, say 10% need to be non-white, 50% women, 6% gay to better reflect the mix of your local population? How far do we have to go to ensure we are diverse? Do we need to ensure that all minorities are represented?

Submission + - The world's oldest original digital computer springs back into action at TNMOC (tnmoc.org) 1

Submitted by
prpplague
prpplague writes: "After a three-year restoration project at The National Museum of Computing, the Harwell Dekatron (aka WITCH) computer will rebooted on 20 November 2012 to become the world's oldest original working digital computer.
Now in its seventh decade and in its fifth home, the computer with its flashing lights and clattering printers and readers provides an awe-inspiring display for visiting school groups and the general public keen to learn about our rich computer heritage."
The Military

Submission + - Israel's Iron Dome Missile Defense Shield Actually Works

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Sarah Tory writes that the fighting between Israel and Palestinians in the Gaza strip is the latest round of violence in a region that has been torn apart by a decades-old conflict but the debut of Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense shield has added a new element to the conflict, one that military officials are calling a “game-changer.” Israeli officials are claiming that the shield is destroying 90 percent of missiles and rockets it aims at that have been fired into southern Israel by Hamas. This level of success is unprecedented compared with older missile defense systems such as the American-made Patriot model used during the 1991 Gulf War. The missile-defense system can detect rocket launches and then determine the projectiles’ flight paths and only intercepts rocket or artillery shells if they are headed for populated areas or sensitive targets; the others it allows to land. It takes a lot of raw computing power to rapidly build a ballistic profile of a fast-incoming projectile, make a series of quick decisions concerning potential lethality, and launch a countermeasure capable of intercepting said projectile in-flight and one reason Iron Dome is showing a much more robust capability than the Patriot system did in the early 1990s is simply that its battle control hardware and software are several generations more advanced than those early interceptor systems. "Israeli officials point out that Iron Dome saves money despite the fact that the interceptors cost up to $100,000 each," writes Tory. "The cost of rebuilding a neighborhood destroyed by a rocket attack—not to mention people wounded and lives lost—would be far greater than the cost of the interceptor." Most important, the system buys Israel time, allowing it to plan out an appropriate response without the political pressure that would be generated by hundreds of potential deaths."

Submission + - Did Anonymous prevent election hijack? (google.com)

Submitted by Black Parrot
Black Parrot writes: The internet is abuzz with a story about Anonymous setting up a "firewall" to prevent a scheme to hijack Ohio's electoral votes, as some claim actually happened in 2004. Reportedly there are similarities this time around, except that the votes didn't suddenly shift to the other candidate, and Karl Rove got a big surprise. Fact, fiction, or conspiracy theory? Only Julian Assange knows for sure.
Idle

Submission + - Apes suffer mid-life crisis too (mongabay.com)

Submitted by Damien1972
Damien1972 writes: Humans are not alone in experiencing a mid-life crisis — great apes suffer the same, according to new research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A new study of over 500 great apes found that well-being patterns in primates are similar to those experience by humans. This doesn't mean that middle age apes seek out the sportiest trees or hit-on younger apes inappropriately, but rather that their well-being starts high in youth, dips in middle age, and rises again in old age.
Security

Submission + - UN to Seek Internet Kill Switch Next Month (thenewamerican.com)

Submitted by
helix2301
helix2301 writes: "The United Nations and a wide swath of its autocratic member regimes were drafting a plan to give a little-known UN agency control over the online world. Among the most contentious schemes: a plot to hand the International Telecommunications Union a so-called “kill switch” for the Internet that critics say would be used to smash free speech."

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