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Submission + - SPAM: Flawed Bridge Technology Set The USS McCain Up For Disaster

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: This article outlines in detail the causes behind the crash in 2017 of the USS McCain and an oil-tanker that killed ten sailors and injured many others.

It is a horror story of a bankrupt Navy upper management that seemed more in love with cool computer software and automation than making sure the Navy’s ships and its crews can function efficiently and effectively in any situation. Moreover, the story suggests that this same upper management made lower level officers the scapegoats for its bad decisions, while skating free with no consequences.

And worst of all, that same overly complex computer navigation system remains in place, with only superficial patches imposed in both its software and its user instructions.

This story however is hardly unique. It reflects the general and systemic failures of almost any project coming out of the upper managements of the entire federal government for the past three decades, a pattern of failure that partly explains why Donald Trump was elected, and why he is hated so thoroughly by so many in that federal workforce. He more than anyone in decades has been demanding from them quality work, and firing them when they fail to provide it.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: Rene Auberjonois, Star Trek and Boston Legal Actor, Dies at 79

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: “Auberjonois was a prolific television actor, appearing as Paul Lewiston in 71 episodes of ‘Boston Legal’ and as Clayton Runnymede Endicott III in ABC’s long-running sitcom ‘Benson.’ He played Odo in ‘Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,’ and carried that role into video games, voicing the same role in ‘Harbinger’ and ‘The Fallen.’ He appeared in the movie ‘MASH’ as Father Mulcahy in the first of several collaborations with Robert Altman. Other film credits include Roy Balgey in 1976’s ‘King Kong’ and Reverend Oliver in ‘The Patriot,’ as well as parts in ‘McCabe & Mrs. Miller,’ ‘Eyes of Laura Mars’ and ‘Walker.’”
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Retiring worn-out wind turbines could cost billions that nobody has (energycentral.com) 6

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: This is a story about death and resurrection, and as with all such stories, faith plays its part.

Texas is by far the leading wind energy producer in the United States, generating more than 20,000 megawatts of electricity each year. That is about one-fourth of the nation's wind-energy production.

We can expect the Texas winds to blow forever, but the colossal turbines which capture the breeze and transform it into electricity will not turn forever. Like all mechanical things devised by man, no matter how clever, they eventually wear out.

And here, as we confront the end days of a wind turbine, our story begins.

Submission + - NSA's EternalBlue Exploit Ported to Windows 10 (threatpost.com)

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: EternalBlue, the NSA-developed attack used criminals to spread WannaCry ransomware last month, has been ported to Windows 10 by security researchers.

The publicly available version of EternalBlue leaked by the ShadowBrokers targets only Windows XP and Windows 7 machines. Researchers at RiskSense who created the Windows 10 version of the attack were able to bypass mitigations introduced by Microsoft that thwart memory-based code-execution attacks.

These mitigations were introduced prior to a March security update from Microsoft, MS17-010, and any computer running Windows that has yet to install the patch is vulnerable.

Submission + - What Gmail's new TLS icon really means — email encryption is still broken

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: On Safer Internet Day Google announced that Gmail will display warning signs for missing encryption and authentication, a great initiative indeed! Now that it's live we've taken it for a spin, only to find that the warning when composing email is quite slow (for new domains), and that they fail to mention that the non-authenticated TLS encryption that the currently sad state of SMTP encryption leaves us with is really poor, and vulnerable to almost anything (except passive wiretapping). I rather wish they took a stance on how we could move on to proper email encryption.

Submission + - Chronic stress could lead to depression and dementia, scientists warn (independent.co.uk)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: A major review of published research suggests that chronic stress and anxiety can damage areas of the brain involved in emotional responses, thinking and memory, leading to depression and even Alzheimer's disease.

Dr Linda Mah, the lead author of the review carried out at a research institute affiliated to the University of Toronto, said: "Pathological anxiety and chronic stress are associated with structural degeneration and impaired functioning of the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex, which may account for the increased risk of developing neuropsychiatric disorders, including depression and dementia."

Submission + - Scientists begin another attempt to drill through the Earth's crust

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: An expedition to the Indian Ocean is about to begin an effort to drill a core down through the Earth’s crust and into its mantle.

Geologists have been trying to drill through the contact between the crust and the mantle, called the Moho, since the 1960s, with no success. Either the projects have gone way over budget and been shut down, have failed due to engineering problems, or were stopped by the geology itself. This last issue is maybe the most interesting.

Expeditions have come close before. Between 2002 and 2011, four holes at a site in the eastern Pacific managed to reach fine-grained, brittle rock that geologists believe to be cooled magma sitting just above the Moho. But the drill could not punch through those tenacious layers. And in 2013, drillers at the nearby Hess Deep found themselves similarly limited by tough deep-crustal rocks

This new project hopes to learn from these past problems to obtain the first rock samples from below the Earth’s crust.

Submission + - The new 501(c)(3) and the future of open source in the United States (gnome.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: If you're involved in the free and open-source software movement — especially in the United States — you may want to read through this, as long as it may seem. It appears that the United States' Internal Revenue Service has strongly shifted its views of free and open-source software, and to the detriment of the movement, in my opinion.

Submission + - Report: Valve anti-cheat scans your DNS history (playerattack.com)

Submitted by dotarray
dotarray writes: Valve is looking at your browsing history right now, if a recent report is to be believed. It seems that the company's Valve Anti Cheat system (VAC) reportedly looks at all the domains you have visited, and if it finds that you've frequented hack sites, you'll be banned without question.

Submission + - India beats tech denial and sabotage, launches indigenous cryogenic rocket

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: India beats tech denial and sabotage, launches indigenous cryogenic rocket

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) today successfully launched its heavy-duty rocket — the Geo Synchronous Satellite Launch vehicle (GSLV). The GSLV5, carrying communication satellite GSAT-14 was launched from Isro’s spaceport at Sriharikota, about 80 km from Chennai.

ISRO had to develop the cryogenic technology from scratch after the United States prevented Russia from transferring the technology to the India in 1993.

Today's successful launch marks the culmination of a 20 year effort to develop the engine.

A key scientist who was involved in the development of the cryogenic engine has accused the CIA of orchestrating the spy scandal that shook the organization in 1994. As a result, ISRO suffered a setback and the development of the engine was delayed by almost a decade.

Submission + - I fought my ISP's bad behavior and won (github.io)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Eric Helgeson documents his experience with an unscrupulous ISP that was injecting affiliate IDs into the URLs for online retailers. 'It appears that the method they were using was to poison the A record of retailers and do a 301 redirect back to the www cname. This is due to the way apex, or ‘naked’ domain names work.' Upon contacting the ISP, they offered him access to two DNS servers that don't perform the injection, but they showed no indication that they would stop, or opt-out any other subscribers. (It was also the only wireless provider in his area, so he couldn't just switch to a competitor.) Helgeson then sent the data he gathered to the affiliate programs of major retailers on the assumption that they'd be upset by this as well. He was right, and they put a stop to it. He says, 'ISP’s ask you to not do crummy things on their networks, so how about they don’t do the same to their customers?'

Submission + - Microsoft Reportedly Looking To Put Windows Phone On Android Devices, Starting W (blogspot.com.au)

Submitted by quantr
quantr writes: Microsoft has reached out to HTC to see if the company would be interested in adding Windows as a second OS to its Android handsets, a new report by Bloomberg claims. It isn’t clear exactly how the two operating systems would share the handset, in terms of allowing dual-booting or making a user choose a default at device setup, but it’s a sign Redmond may be thinking about pulling out all the stops to get people using its mobile OS.
These talks are in very early stages, according to Bloomberg’s sources, and there’s a possibility that Microsoft may even reduce or eliminate its licensing fee for Windows Phone to make it more attractive to HTC. HTC seems to be a target because it’s a former partner that has already built both Windows and Android hardware (though it doesn’t seem to be too keen on delivering more on the Windows Phone side). Microsoft’s head of Operating Systems Terry Myerson is said to be heading to Taiwan to discuss the arrangement in further detail with HTC, says Bloomberg.

Submission + - Teaching Fractions: The Tootsie Roll is the New Pie

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Following up on a WSJ story, data visualization author Stephen Few illustrates why using lines or bars may be sweeter than pie when it comes to teaching kids fractions. "Although the metaphor is easy to grasp (the slices add up to an entire pie)," explains Few, "we know that visual perception does a poor job of comparing the sizes of slices, which is essential for learning to compare fractions. Learning that one-fifth is larger than one-sixth, which is counter-intuitive in the beginning, becomes further complicated when the individual slices of two pies—one divided into five slices and other into six—look roughly the same. Might it make more sense to use two lines divided into sections instead, which are quite easy to compare when placed near one another?" So, is the Tootsie Roll the new pie?

Submission + - Security Researchers Rewarded with $12.50 Voucher to Buy Yahoo T-Shirt 2

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: More and more companies are offering Bug Bounty Programs remunerating security researchers for reporting vulnerabilities and weaknesses in their applications and software. Now Security analyst Graham Cluley writes that researchers at High-Tech Bridge informed Yahoo’s Security Team about three cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities affecting the ecom.yahoo.com and adserver.yahoo.com domains. According to High-Tech Bridge, each of the vulnerabilities could compromise *any* @yahoo.com email account. All that was required was that the victim, while logged into Yahoo, should click on a specially-crafted link received in an email. Forty-eight hours later, Yahoo had patched all of the vulnerabilities and Yahoo’s security team responded, thanking the researchers and "offering the mighty bounty of err.. $12.50 per vulnerability," writes Cluley. But there was one catch. The $12.50 was given as a discount code that can only be used in the Yahoo Company Store, which sells Yahoo’s corporate t-shirts, cups, pens and other accessories. "Such a risible reward is unlikely to win Yahoo any friends and could – if anything – make it less likely that the site will gain the assistance of white-hats in future," wrote Cluley. “If Yahoo cannot afford to spend money on its corporate security, it should at least try to attract security researchers by other means," wrote Ilia Kolochenko, the CEO of High-Tech Bridge. "Otherwise, none of Yahoo’s customers can ever feel safe.”

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