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The Almighty Buck

Pirate Bay Founder Fined For 'Continued Involvement' 237

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the take-that-evildoer dept.
tekgoblin writes with an excerpt from TekGoblin: "The founders of The Pirate Bay have been hit with a bunch of punishments and other measures to prevent them from continuing. However Fredrik Neij was just fined by the Stockholm District court another 500,000 Swedish kronor ($70,690 US). Fredrik Neij and Gorrfrid Scatholm both had been banned from operating the site but Neij had been recently found still involved with the site. Neij already owes around 10.6 million."
Hardware Hacking

FishPi: Raspberry Pi Powered Autonomous Boat To Cross the Ocean 136

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the dolphins-protest-sea-drone-program dept.
lukehopewell1 writes "The Raspberry Pi is a triumph in computing, and it's now set to become a triumph in robotics as one developer plans to build a model boat around it and sail it across the Atlantic Ocean, completely unmanned. It's codenamed FishPi and will see a model boat sail across the Atlantic all by itself save for a camera, GPS module, compass and solar panels." The creator is posting updates on the build progress using a forum on his website.
Security

FTC Files Complaint Against Wyndham For Hotel Data Breaches 46

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the your-privacy-is-not-our-first-priority dept.
coondoggie writes "A little over a month after the FBI warned travelers of an uptick in data being stolen via hotel Internet connections, the Federal Trade Commission has filed a complaint against Wyndham Worldwide Corporation and three of its subsidiaries for alleged data security failures that led to three data breaches at Wyndham hotels in less than two years."
Businesses

Silicon Valley Values Shift To Customersploitation 244

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the but-being-treated-like-cattle-is-fun dept.
theodp writes "Bill Davidow is the real Silicon Valley deal. Commenting on how Silicon Valley has changed over the decades, Davidow is not impressed, dishing out harsh words for Facebook, Apple, Google, and others. 'When corporate leaders pursue wealth in the winner-take-all Internet environment,' concludes Davidow, 'companies dance on the edge of acceptable behavior. If they don't take it to the limit, a competitor will. That competitor will become the dominant supplier — one monopoly will replace another. And when you engage in these activities you get a different set of Valley values: the values of customer exploitation.'"
Crime

Carderprofit.cc Was FBI Carding Sting, Nets 26 Arrests 181

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the crime-pays-but-then-prison dept.
tsu doh nimh writes in with news of a major sting operation against carders. From the article: "The U.S. Justice Department today unveiled the results of a two-year international cybercrime sting that culminated in the arrest of 26 people accused of trafficking in hundreds of thousands of stolen credit and debit card accounts. Among those arrested was an alleged core member of 'UGNazi,' a malicious hacking group that has claimed responsibility for a flood of recent attacks on Internet businesses." The trick: the FBI ran a carding forum as a honeypot.
Robotics

Pentagon's In-Orbit Satellite Recycling Program Moving Forward 115

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the suddenly-babylon-five dept.
An anonymous reader writes with an update on DARPA's plans to rebuild satellites in orbit. "A year old DARPA program which aims to recycle satellites in orbit has started its next phase by looking for a guinea pig defunct satellite to use for evaluating the technology required. The program involves a Dr Frankensat 'complete with mechanical arms and other "unique tools"' and blank "satlets" to build upon.' Need parts! Kill the little one!" If we're ever going to build space craft and other things in orbit, this seems like a great first step.
EU

EU Court Upholds Microsoft Antitrust Fines 126

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the chump-change dept.
a_n_d_e_r_s writes "The ongoing saga of Microsoft's misuse of their dominant position in the EU marketplace to block competitors may be finally over, with the fine set to 860 million euros (just over 1 billion dollars). In 2004 Microsoft was ordered to provide certain information to competitors but failed to do so and was given an hefty fine. Now the EU General Court in Luxembourg has upheld the EU Commission decision and ruled against Microsoft." This is a minor reduction (4.3%) of the original fine because of a minor technicality. Microsoft, naturally, is unhappy with the result.
Patents

US Patent Trolling Costs $29 Billion a Year 130

Posted by Soulskill from the gotta-give-those-courtrooms-something-to-do dept.
New submitter Bismillah writes "This piece of research from Boston University seems to put an end to claims that patent trolling is 'socially valuable,' and instead is a social loss. 'We estimate that firms accrued $29 billion of direct costs in 2011. Moreover, although large firms accrued over half of direct costs, most of the defendants were small or medium-sized firms, indicating that [non-practicing entities] are not just a problem for large firms.' The total cost to society could be around $80 billion, according to the researchers. What's more, the costs have gone up fourfold since 2005."
The Internet

Lying Online No Longer a Crime In Rhode Island 127

Posted by Soulskill from the who-would-lie-on-the-internet-anyway dept.
stevegee58 writes "In a sudden outbreak of common sense, Rhode Island repealed an obscure law enacted in 1989 that made it a crime to lie in online postings. Violations of this law carried a maximum penalty of $500 and up to a year in prison. From the article: '"This law made virtually the entire population of Rhode Island a criminal," said Steven Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island American Civil Liberties Union. "When this bill was enacted nobody had any idea what its ramifications were. Telling fibs may be wrong, but it shouldn't be criminal activity." The law aimed to stop fraud, con artists and scammers, but also outlawed the "transmission of false data" regardless of whether liars stood to profit from their deception or not.'"
Japan

Robot Hand Beats You At Rock, Paper, Scissors 100% of the Time 225

Posted by Soulskill from the we-have-outlived-our-usefulness-as-a-species dept.
wasimkadak writes "This robot hand will play a game of rock, paper, scissors with you. Sounds like fun, right? Not so much, because this particular robot wins every. Single. Time. It only takes a single millisecond for the robot to recognize what shape your hand is in, and just a few more for it to make the shape that beats you, but it all happens so fast that it's more or less impossible to tell that the robot is waiting until you commit yourself before it makes its move, allowing it to win 100% of the time."
Australia

Australian Telco Causes Minor Panic While Preparing Web Filter 105

Posted by Soulskill from the don't-scare-the-wallabies dept.
Twisted64 writes "Australia's largest telco, Telstra, has been frightening users of its mobile data services for the last week. Logging revealed that HTTP requests from a mobile device on Telstra's network were duplicated with a request from another server, located in Chicago. Eyebrows were raised on the Whirlpool forums, with fears that Telstra was giving up Australian browsing data to a U.S. company and therefore the U.S. government. Following a well-worded letter, Telstra revealed today that the reason for this behavior is that the company is preparing an opt-in web filter. Personally, while the idea of my browsing data being logged anywhere does not fill me with joy, the idea of the U.S. government having access to it (randomized or not) is probably going to be enough to make me switch to an inferior carrier once my current plan ends."
Patents

U.S. Judge Grants Apple Injunction Against Samsung Galaxy Tab 498

Posted by Soulskill from the too-pad-roddenberry-never-patented-the-padd dept.
Bill Dimm writes "Apple scores a win against Samsung over a design patent. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh issued a ruling granting Apple's request for a preliminary injunction preventing Samsung from selling its Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the United States. She wrote, 'Although Samsung has a right to compete, it does not have a right to compete unfairly by flooding the market with infringing products. ... While Samsung will certainly suffer lost sales from the issuance of an injunction, the hardship to Apple of having to directly compete with Samsung’s infringing products outweighs Samsung’s harm in light of the previous findings by the Court."
Space

New Mineral Found In Meteorite 85

Posted by Soulskill from the please-don't-call-it-unobtianium dept.
Virtucon writes "The new mineral was found embedded in the Allende meteorite, which fell to Earth in 1969. Since 2007, geologist Chi Ma of Caltech has been probing the meteorite with a scanning electron microscope, discovering nine new materials including panguite. 'Panguite’s primordial nature means that it was actually around before the Earth and other planets formed, meaning it can help scientists learn more about the conditions in the cloud of gas and dust that gave rise to our solar system.'"
The Almighty Buck

High-Frequency Traders Are the Ultimate Hackers, Says Mark Cuban 538

Posted by Soulskill from the or-script-kiddies-of-the-financial-world dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Billionaire Mark Cuban talks in an interview with the Wall Street Journal about how he thinks high-frequency trading can be quite damaging to stock markets. He goes so far as to call high-frequency traders the 'ultimate hackers.' He says, 'They're running software programs that have one goal, and that's to exploit the trading systems as early and often as possible. As someone who wrote software for eight years and who keeps up very closely with the technology world, that scared the hell out of me. The only certainty in the software world is that there is no such thing as bug-free software. When software programs are trying to outsmart other software programs and hack the world's trading platforms, that is a recipe for disaster. ... How many times an hour are there failures across individual equities around the world because of software running algorithms battling each other for supremacy to make a profitable trade? We have no idea. It's not a question of if or when we have meltdowns, it's just a question of how big and where. It's straight out of War Games. And that's before we even get to the possibility of nefarious or sovereign hackers getting involved.'"

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