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Submission + - Iran Arrests Eight For 'Un-Islamic' Instagram Modeling (bbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Tehran cybercrimes court said the country has arrested eight people working for online modeling agencies deemed to be "un-Islamic." The women models were arrested for starring in photos on Instagram and elsewhere without wearing their headscarves, which has been required in public since 1979. A total of 170 people have been identified by investigators for being involved in online modeling, including 59 photographers and make-up artists, 58 models and 51 fashion salon managers and designers. The court's prosecutor Javad Babaei announced the the threats on TV, claiming modeling agencies accounted for about 20 percent of posts on Instagram from Iran and that they had been "making and spreading immoral and un-Islamic culture and promiscuity." He added, "We carried out this plan in 2013 with Facebook, and now Instagram is the focus."

Submission + - Here's why airport security takes so long (zdnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: With the number of passengers vastly outweighing the number of TSA agents, the situation is only getting worse. It's so bad that the TSA is now warning travelers at some airports, like Chicago O'Hare and Midway, to show up at their departure airport up to three hours before their flight leaves — all because there aren't enough staff to man the security posts.

Submission + - Philadelphia Union Accused of Using Drones to Intimidate Enemies (heatst.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Hotel developer Mihir Wankawala clicked on the link a friend had sent him and watched in shock: Drone-shot video shows dozens of union protestors, the view rising to peer in the windows of the historic hotel property Wankawala was carefully refurbishing. The whole video, which the unions posted to YouTube, is ominously set to Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me.”

“I guess they were trying to show their power,” says Wankawala, who says he sought bids from union and non-union contractors and discovered that using solely organized labor would increase his costs by around 30 percent. “I’m the new kid on the block. This is my first project [in Philadelphia]. I think they were trying to send a message that you have to use union labor to get your project done.”

Such scare tactics are nothing new; for decades, Philadelphia’s construction unions have used violence, vandalism, harassment and intimidation to dominate the construction industry.

Submission + - A review of new features in FreeBSD 10.3 (distrowatch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: DistroWatch has a review of some of the more significant features which appeared in FreeBSD 10.3. The review covers Linux compatibility, managing jails with iocage and ZFS-powered boot environments.

"The release announcement for FreeBSD 10.3 mentioned several features and improvements which caught my attention. Specifically the availability of ZFS boot environments, 64-bit Linux compatibility and jail improvements were of interest to me. I was especially eager to try out FreeBSD's new jails technology using the iocage front-end. The iocage software has been presented as an improvement on (and replacement for) Warden, a friendly front-end for handling jail environments."

Submission + - The 2015 Nebula Awards

Submitted by Dave Knott
Dave Knott writes: The winners of the 2015 Nebula Awards (presented 2016) have been announced. The Nebulas are voted on by members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and (along with the Hugos) are considered to be one of the two most prestigious awards in science fiction. This year's winners are:

Best Novel: Uprooted , Naomi Novik
Best Novella: Binti , Nnedi Okorafor
Best Novelette: “Our Lady of the Open Road,” Sarah Pinsker
Best Short Story: “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers,” Alyssa Wong
Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation: Mad Max: Fury Road , Written by George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, Nick Lathouris
Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy: Updraft , Fran Wilde
Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award: Sir Terry Pratchett
Kevin O'Donnell Jr. Service Award: Lawrence M. Schoen
2016 Damon Knight Grand Master Award: C.J. Cherryh

Submission + - Linux Kernel 4.6 Officially Released

Submitted by prisoninmate
prisoninmate writes: Linus Torvalds announced the final release of the anticipated Linux 4.6 kernel, which, after seven Release Candidate builds introduces features like the OrangeFS distributed file system, support for the USB 3.1 SuperSpeed Plus (SSP) protocol, offering transfer speeds of up to 10Gbps, improvements to the reliability of the Out Of Memory task killer, as well as support for Intel Memory protection keys. Moreover, Linux kernel 4.6 ships with Kernel Connection Multiplexor, a new component designed for accelerating application layer protocols, 802.1AE MAC-level encryption (MACsec) support, online inode checker for the OCFS2 file system, support for the BATMAN V protocol, and support for the pNFS SCSI layout.

Submission + - Three classes of interstellar travel are possible

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The stars call to us through the ages, with each and every one holding the promise of a future for humanity beyond Earth. For generations, this was a mere dream, as our technology allowed us to neither know what worlds might lie beyond our own Solar System or to reach beyond our planet. But time and development has changed both of those things significantly. Now, when we look to the stars, we know that potentially habitable worlds lurk throughout our galaxy, and our spaceflight capabilities can bring us there. But so far, it would only be a very long, lonely, one-way trip. This isn’t necessarily going to be the case forever, though, as physically feasible technology could get humans to another star within a single lifetime, and potentially groundbreaking technology might make the journey almost instantaneous.
Businesses

Chinese Companies Rent White Foreigners 145

Posted by samzenpus from the token-white-guy dept.
The job market may look bad here, but if you're in China, and you happen to be white, all you need is a suit and tie. An increasing number of Chinese companies are willing to pay any price to have a few fair-skinned faux employees walking around. From the article: "'Face, we say in China, is more important than life itself,' said Zhang Haihua, author of Think Like Chinese. 'Because Western countries are so developed, people think they are more well off, so people think that if a company can hire foreigners, it must have a lot of money and have very important connections overseas. So when they really want to impress someone, they may roll out a foreigner.' Or rent one."
Windows

Submission + - Beyond Trust Warns that UAC is Still Broken. (reuters.com) 2

Submitted by
twitter
twitter writes: "Enterprise users looking for a reason to upgrade from XP will be disappointed with Windows 7 security issues. BeyondTrust, a Least Privilege Management provider for Windows, warns that UAC changes are ineffective and not up to Federal regulations.

Despite growing CSO and CISO recognition of the need to deploy end-users as standard users, and requirements by the Federal Government for the removal of administrator rights under the Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC) mandate, Windows 7 includes no significant changes to UAC for standard users.

"For enterprises, there is little benefit to the changes to User Account Control in Windows," said John Moyer, CEO of BeyondTrust. "Windows 7 introduces cosmetic changes to reduce the prompts that plagued Vista, but it does nothing to fix the underlying productivity and usability problems for standard users... Windows 7`s UAC slider puts end-users in charge of the security decision of what to run with administrative privileges, which is essentially an invitation for malicious users, hackers and malware."

It is amazing that Microsoft can not do what Unix and every gnu/linux distribution has done for decades, provide real user privilege separation. Where these are provided, it is easy to add GUI front ends like kdesu, so that authentication is simple and painless for the few times it is needed."
Space

Orbit Your Own Satellite For $8,000 208

Posted by kdawson from the be-the-first-on-your-block dept.
RobGoldsmith sends word of Interorbital's TubeSat Personal Satellite Kit, which allows anyone to send a half-pound payload to low-earth orbit for $8,000. Your satellite will fly to orbit from Tonga atop an Interorbital Systems NEPTUNE 30 rocket along with 31 other TubeSats. It will function for several weeks, then its orbit will decay and it will burn up in the atmosphere. Interorbital plans to send up a load of 32 TubeSats every month. If you pay in full in advance, you get slotted onto a particular scheduled launch. Here are Interorbital's product page and brochure (PDF).

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