83278553
submission
Earthquake Retrofit writes:
US News reports that the flight was delayed because a fellow passenger thought the equations he was writing might be a sign he was a terrorist. Pennsylvania economics professor Guido Menzio was solving a differential equation and said he was told the woman thought he might be a terrorist because of what he was writing.
83266427
submission
Earthquake Retrofit writes:
More than four years since its previous issue, iconic hacker zine Phrack has published a new issue. Phrack issue number 69 contains articles from researchers Aaron Portnoy and Alisa Esage, as well as articles on OS X rootkits and exploiting Ruby on Rails.
First released in 1985 via BBS, Phrack has been staffed by dozens of editors and contributors in its three-plus decades. The long-running zine has also hosted a number of notable articles, including the famed Hacker Manifesto and Smashing The Stack For Fun And Profit.
82400315
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Earthquake Retrofit writes:
Sometimes you want to carry your gun in peace, but people keep drawing attention to your piece.
This very issue plagued Kirk Kjellberg, the creator of Ideal Conceal, a gun that folds up to look like a smartphone.
"A boy spotted me in [a] restaurant and said loudly, 'Mommy, Mommy, that guy's got a gun!' And then pretty much the whole restaurant stared at me," Kjellberg told NBC News.
He developed Ideal Conceal to avoid those awkward situations.
82160879
submission
Earthquake Retrofit writes:
Silicon Valley startup called SmartCar in Mountain View, California signed up for Comcast Internet service. After hearing Comcast excuses for months, company owner Katta finally got fed up and decided that he would find a new office building once his 12-month lease expires on April 20 of this year. Katta told Comcast he wanted to “cancel” his nonexistent service and get a refund for a $2,100 deposit he had paid. Instead, Comcast told him he’d have to pay more than $60,000 to get out of his contract with the company. Comcast eventually waived the fee—but only after being contacted by Ars Technica about the case.
80949039
submission
Earthquake Retrofit writes:
Ars Technica has a story about how Verizon Wireless is testing the limits of the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules, which has announced that it will exempt its own video service from mobile data caps—while counting data from competitors such as YouTube and Netflix against customers' caps.
79843335
submission
Earthquake Retrofit writes:
A new Google Chrome extension lets you remove mentions of Donald Trump from your browsing experience. Trump Filter scans websites for references to the Republican presidential candidate, showing a blank void in the place of Trump-related content.
I'm not so sure this is a good idea. Trump will go away someday but Justin Beiber is forever.
79584901
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Earthquake Retrofit writes:
The Register reports that on the last day of the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, the conference organizers unexpectedly announced they had set up a new "high-level advisory committee" that would guide the agenda of future conferences and "contribute ideas for the development of the Internet."
The committee has already had its first meeting, the organizers stated, naming ICANN's Fadi Chehade and Alibaba CEO Jack Ma as its founders and noting that it had "invited 31 leading Internet figures from governments, enterprises, academic institutions, and technological communities to be members of the first high-level advisory committee." Those "figures" have not been named but we understand they include government representatives from a number of authoritarian governments, including Russia, and do not include lead names from the internet community.
79032649
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Earthquake Retrofit writes:
Wapo has a story about Gordon Pennycook, a doctorate student at the University of Waterloo who studies why some people are more easily duped than others.
"Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena" was one of many randomly generated sentences Pennycook, along with a team of researchers at the University of Waterloo, used in a new four-part study put together to gauge how receptive people are to nonsense.
Those more receptive to bull**** are less reflective, lower in cognitive ability (i.e., verbal and fluid intelligence, numeracy), are more prone to ontological confusions [beliefs in things for which there is no empirical evidence (i.e. that prayers have the ability to heal)] and conspiratorial ideation, are more likely to hold religious and paranormal beliefs, and are more likely to endorse complementary and alternative medicine.
78626141
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Earthquake Retrofit writes:
Barton today asked Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler if the commission can shut down websites used by ISIS and other terrorist groups.
"Isn't there something we can do under existing law to shut those Internet sites down, and I know they pop up like weeds, but once they do pop up, shut them down and then turn those Internet addresses over to the appropriate law enforcement agencies to try to track them down? I would think that even in an open society, when there is a clear threat, they’ve declared war against us, our way of life, they've threatened to attack this very city our capital is in, that we could do something about the Internet and social media side of the equation."
Wheeler noted that Congress could update its definition of a "lawful intercept" under the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, in which an ISP intercepts a suspect's Internet traffic and sends a copy to a law enforcement agency performing surveillance. Barton asked Wheeler if the commission will work with lawmakers if Congress decides to update the laws, to which Wheeler answered, "A capital yes, sir."
77009281
submission
Earthquake Retrofit writes:
Ars Technica is reporting that an East Texas judge has thrown out 168 patent cases in one fell swoop. The judge's order puts the most litigious patent troll of 2014, eDekka LLC, out of business. The ruling comes from a surprising source: US District Judge Rodney Gilstrap, the East Texas judge who has been criticized for making life extra-difficult for patent defendants. Gilstrap, who hears more patent cases than any other US judge, will eliminate about 10 percent of his entire patent docket by wiping out the eDekka cases.
76377035
submission
Earthquake Retrofit writes:
Dr Kathleen Richardson, a robot ethicist at De Montfort University in Leicester, wants to raise awareness of the issue and persuade those developing sex robots to rethink how their technology is used. She believes that they reinforce traditional stereotypes of women and the view that a relationship need be nothing more than physical.
75944795
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Earthquake Retrofit writes:
The NPR website has an interesting story that the Justice Department says it will beef up legal requirements for using cell-site simulators. It includes a rare picture of the device and refers to them as dirt boxes.
74495393
submission
Earthquake Retrofit writes:
NSA's systems integrity management platform — SIMP — was released to the code repository GitHub https://github.com/nationalsec... over the weekend.
NSA said it released the tool to avoid duplication after US government departments and other groups tried to replicate the product in order to meet compliance requirements set by US Defence and intelligence bodies.
73914029
submission
Earthquake Retrofit writes:
The New York Times is reporting that WikiLeaks has released "...material which appeared to capture officials in Paris talking candidly about Greece's economy, relations with Germany — and, ironically, American espionage... It came a day before the French Parliament is expected to definitively pass a controversial security bill legalizing broad surveillance, particularly of terrorism suspects."
71344167
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Earthquake Retrofit writes:
The Washington Post reports the governor denying he uses e-mail but court documents expose his confusion.
From the article:
Branstad’s apparent confusion over smartphones, apps and e-mail is ironic because he has tried to portray himself as technologically savvy. His Instagram account has pictures of him taking selfies and using Skype... 2010 campaign ads show him tapping away on an iPad. “Want a brighter future? We’ve got an app for that.” Earlier this month, the governor’s office announced that it had even opened an account on Meerkat, the live video streaming app.
Perhaps he's distancing himself from e-mail because it's a Hillary thing.
