Submission + - Researchers Easily Breached Voting Machines For the 2020 Election (engadget.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The voting machines that the U.S. will use in the 2020 election are still vulnerable to hacks. A group of ethical hackers tested a bunch of those voting machines and election systems (most of which they bought on eBay). They were able to crack into every machine, The Washington Post reports. Their tests took place this summer at a Def Con cybersecurity conference, but the group visited Washington to share their findings yesterday. A number of flaws allowed the hackers to access the machines, including weak default passwords and shoddy encryption. The group says the machines could be hacked by anyone with access to them, and if poll workers make mistakes or take shortcuts, the machines could be infiltrated by remote hackers.

Submission + - Facebook To Create Virtual Reality Social Media World Called Horizon (bbc.com)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: First, the strange Youtube pre-rendered CGI ad for Facebook Horizon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... The BBC reports: Facebook is creating an immersive environment called Horizon to tempt people into spending more time in virtual reality. The VR app will be a mix of social places where users can mingle and chat, and other areas where they can play games against each other. People will inhabit and explore the virtual spaces via a cartoon avatar. The app will be made available and tested in early 2020, by a small group of Facebook users. Details about Horizon and early footage of the virtual space were shown off at Facebook's Oculus Connect 6 developer conference this week.

Facebook said anyone using Horizon would be able to call on human "guides" to help them navigate and become more familiar with the virtual environment. The guides will not be "moderators" who will police behaviour, said Facebook. It added that it would include tools that let people manage how they interact with other users. It will also have options that let people shape and build their own part of the environment. They will also be able to design their own avatars. The entire space has been given a cartoon-like feel as it is intended to be used on Facebook's Oculus Quest headset, which does not have the high resolution graphics of PC-linked headsets. Sam Machkovech, a reporter for Ars Technica, who has tried Horizon, said Facebook had put "a ton of work" into the version he saw, to make it as welcoming as possible. But he noted that Horizon was "yet another" combination of apps, chat and avatars which Facebook had produced in just a few years. He suggested that it was still searching for a good combination that proved properly tempting to users. "We're still waiting for Facebook to inspire confidence that it will launch a social-VR app and stick with it for more than two years," he wrote. Anyone interested in joining Horizon can sign up to be an early tester.

Submission + - Scientists Prepare To Drill For Million-Year-Old Ice In Antarctica (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Million-year-old ice buried deep in Antarctica could hold crucial information about the planet’s past and help climate predictions. And scientists with the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) are a step closer to unearthing it. On Monday, they unveiled a drill designed to reach three kilometres below the surface of the frozen continent. The ice, believed to be up to 1.5m years old, is the target of several international research projects.

“What we’re embarking on over the next few years is to solve one of the last great problems in climate science,” glaciologist Tas van Ommen said. “We’ll see in the ice, tiny bubbles that are trapped between snowflakes in the ice as it gets buried,” van Ommen said. “These tiny bubbles are time capsules of past atmosphere. “We want to get that ice, analyse those time capsules and understand what [carbon dioxide] did in that period around one million years ago when the climate was changing.” About 1 million years ago the Earth shifted from a 40,000-year ice age cycle to a 100,000-year cycle, van Ommen said. “[Carbon dioxide] is tied up in that change and it changes the rate at which ice ages have worked in the past,” he added. “We need to understand if the CO2 we put in the atmosphere will have long-term consequences for the Earth in the future.”

Submission + - New Federal Rules Limit Police Searches of Family Tree DNA Databases (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released new rules yesterday governing when police can use genetic genealogy to track down suspects in serious crimes—the first-ever policy covering how these databases, popular among amateur genealogists, should be used in law enforcement attempts to balance public safety and privacy concerns. The DOJ interim policy, which takes effect on 1 November, is intended to “balance the Department’s relentless commitment to solving violent crime and protecting public safety against equally important public interests,” such as privacy and civil liberties, a press release states. The policy says “forensic genetic genealogy” should generally be used only for violent crimes such as murder and rape, as well as to identify human remains. (The policy permits broader use if the ancestry database’s policy allows such searches.) Police should first exhaust traditional crime solving methods, including searching their own criminal DNA databases.

Under the new policy, police can’t quietly upload a fake profile to a genealogy website, as some have done in hopes of finding a suspect’s distant relatives, without first identifying themselves. And the site itself must have informed its users that law enforcement agencies may search their data. The policy also bars police from using a suspect’s DNA profile to look for genes related to disease risks or psychological traits. Another provision attempts to limit situations in which police secretly take a DNA sample from a suspect’s relative—from a discarded cup or tissue, for example—to help home in on a suspect. The policy says the person must give their informed consent unless police have obtained a search warrant.

Submission + - Study Proves the FCC's Core Justification For Killing Net Neutrality Was False (vice.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A new study has found the FCC’s primary justification for repealing net neutrality was indisputably false. For years, big ISPs and Trump FCC boss Ajit Pai have told anyone who’d listen that the FCC’s net neutrality rules, passed in 2015 and repealed last year in a flurry of controversy and alleged fraud, dramatically stifled broadband investment across the United States. Repeal the rules, Pai declared, and US broadband investment would explode. But a new study from George Washington University indicates that Pai’s claims were patently false. The study took a closer look at the earnings reports and SEC filings of 8,577 unique companies from Q1 2009 through Q3 2018 to conclude that the passage and repeal of the rules had no meaningful impact on broadband investment. Several hundred of these were telecom companies.

“The results of the paper are clear and should be both unsurprising and uncontroversial,” The researchers said. “The key finding is there were no impacts on telecommunication industry investment from the net neutrality policy changes. Neither the 2010 or 2015 US net neutrality rule changes had any causal impact on telecommunications investment.” While the study is the biggest yet to do so, it’s not the first to reach this conclusion.

Submission + - Interview with the guy who tried to frame me for heroin possession

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: krebsonsecurity.com: “In April 2013, I received via U.S. mail more than a gram of pure heroin as part of a scheme to get me arrested for drug possession. But the plan failed and the Ukrainian mastermind behind it soon after was imprisoned for unrelated cybercrime offenses.”

Submission + - GNOME Foundation is Being Sued Because of Shotwell Photo Manager (itsfoss.com)

Submitted by JustAnotherOldGuy
JustAnotherOldGuy writes: The GNOME Foundation is facing a lawsuit from Rothschild Patent Imaging, LLC. Rothschild allege that Shotwell, a free and open source personal photo manager infringes its patent. Neil McGovern, Executive Director for the GNOME Foundation says “We have retained legal counsel and intend to vigorously defend against this baseless suit. Due to the ongoing litigation, we unfortunately cannot make any further comments at this time.” While Neil cannot make any further comments on this issue, let me throw some lights on this matter. The patent in the question deals with wireless image distribution. The patent is ridiculous because it could mean any software that transfers images from one device to another could be violating this patent.
Rothschild was only recently awarded a patent relating to wifi image transfers, but he has a long history taking companies like Apple and Samsung to court. His LLC was named in 2015 as the single largest nonpracticing entity by defendant count; a NPE is a company or person who holds patents but makes no products, instead pursuing companies that do for settlements. One website counts 30 lawsuits filed since June involving Rothschild Patent Imaging LLC, with more than 100 ongoing.

Submission + - Giant planet around tiny star 'should not exist' (bbc.com)

Submitted by Thelasko
Thelasko writes: The Jupiter-like world is unusually large compared with its host star, contradicting a widely held idea about the way planets form.

GJ 3512b, however, is a giant planet with a mass about half as big as the one of Jupiter, and thus at least one order of magnitude more massive than the planets predicted by theoretical models for such small star,

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