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Submission + - Florida plans to become first state to eliminate all childhood vaccine mandates (apnews.com)

Submitted by skam240
skam240 writes: Florida plans to become the first state to eliminate vaccine mandates, a longtime cornerstone of public health policy for keeping schoolchildren and adults safe from infectious diseases.

State Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who announced the decision Wednesday, cast current requirements in schools and elsewhere as “immoral” intrusions on people’s rights that hamper parents’ ability to make health decisions for their children.

Florida’s move, a significant departure from decades of public policy and research that has shown vaccines to be safe and the most effective way to stop the spread of communicable diseases, especially among schoolchildren, is a notable embrace of the Trump administration’s public health agenda led by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist.

Submission + - Privacy advocate challenges YouTube's ad blocking detection scripts under EU law (theregister.com)

Submitted by Dotnaught
Dotnaught writes: Privacy advocate Alexander Hanff has filed a complaint with the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) challenging YouTube's use of JavaScript code to detect the presence of ad blocking extensions in the browsers of website visitors. He claims that under Europe's ePrivacy Directive, YouTube needs to ask permission to run its detection script because it's not technically necessary. If the DPC agrees, it would be a major win for user privacy.

Feed Techdirt: Nearly Half Of Americans Claim They've Changed Their Behavior Due To NSA (google.com)

From feed by feedfeeder
The folks at the NSA and their defenders used to use the argument that we were on the verge of a "cyber pearl harbor" in their constant attempts to change laws to give the NSA and others in law enforcement and intelligence more powers to spy on everyone (the argument being that they would do this in order to "protect" us). But... it's beginning to look like the "cyber pearl harbor" wasn't an attack from foreign hackers... but from the NSA itself. Eric Schmidt recently noted that the NSA's actions were a hostile "attack" and it appears that many Americans agree. A new poll found that nearly half of American adults who responded have changed some form of online behavior because of the NSA stories, and they think a lot more carefully about where they go, what they say and what they do online.

We've pointed out (since the Snowden revelations began) that this was going to have a negative impact on the tech industry, but much of the concerns was from overseas users. However, it's clear that it's impacting how Americans view their online habits as well:

When it comes to specific Internet activities, such as email or online banking, this change in behavior translates into a worrying trend for the online economy: over one quarter of respondents (26%) said that, based on what they have learned about secret government surveillance, they are now doing less banking online and less online shopping. This shift in behavior is not good news for companies that rely on sustained or increased use of the Internet for their business model.
Importantly, the study also found that, contrary to the claims of many, the Snowden revelations aren't just being followed by security-obsessed techies. While the general public may not be keeping tabs on all the details, they are getting the basics.

And in case anyone is tempted to think that this is a narrow issue of concern only to news junkies and security geeks, let me be clear: according to this latest survey, 85% of adult Americans are now at least somewhat familiar with the news about secret government surveillance of private citizens phone calls, emails, online activity, and so on.
Once again, it appears that the federal government, and the NSA in particular, have created a huge cost for innovation and economic growth, while having almost no real benefit to show for it.

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Submission + - UN Report: Climate Changes Overwhelming (bbc.com)

Submitted by iONiUM
iONiUM writes: From the article, "The impacts of global warming are likely to be "severe, pervasive and irreversible", a major report by the UN has warned." A major document was released by the IPCC outlining the current affects on climate change, and they are not good. For specific effects on humans: "Food security is highlighted as an area of significant concern. Crop yields for maize, rice and wheat are all hit in the period up to 2050, with around a tenth of projections showing losses over 25%."

Submission + - Bitcoin Plunges after Mt. Gox Exchange halts trades (bloomberg.com) 3

Submitted by krakman
krakman writes: From Bloomberg...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Bitcoin plunged more than 8 percent today after a Tokyo-based exchange halted withdrawals of the digital currency, citing technical malfunction.

Mt. Gox, claimed in a blog post it needed to “temporarily pause on all withdrawal requests to obtain a clear technical view of the currency processes.” It promised an “update” — not a reopening — on Monday, Feb. 10, Japan time.

This is day after Russia's Prosecutor General concluded Bitcoin and other digital currencies are illegal under current law.

Submission + - Snowden documents show British digital spies using viruses and 'honey traps' (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: At the start of this week, documents released by whistleblower Edward Snowden detailed DDOS attacks on chatrooms by a British online intelligence unit dubbed the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG). Now he has released a new trove showing that JTRIG is about much more than purely online annoyances.

According to the documents, released to NBC News, JTRIG's role is to "deny, disrupt, degrade and deceive" by any means possible. These techniques include destroying an individual's computer with a custom virus dubbed "Ambassador's Reception", setting up social media honey traps to harvest embarrassing information, actively attacking companies online and off, and planting data on people's systems.

Submission + - Is Whitelisting The Answer To The Rise In Data Breaches? (forbes.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that cyber criminals are quickly getting more sophisticated than current security, intrusion detection and prevention technology can defend against. And you have to wonder if the computer security industry as a whole is willing to take the disruptive measures required to address the issue head-on. One way to tackle the surging data breach epidemic is with a technology called “whitelisting.” It’s not going to sound too sexy to the average end user and frankly, even CIOs may find it unfashionable but in short, whitelisting is a method of locking-down a machine such that only trusted executables, DLLs and other necessary system and application components are allowed to run – everything else is denied. A few start-up security companies are beginning to appear in this space. The idea is to start with a known, clean system installation and then lock it down in that state so absolutely nothing can be changed. If you follow system security, regardless of your opinion on the concept of whitelisting, it’s pretty clear the traditional conventions of AV, anti-malware, intrusion detection and prevention are no longer working.
Businesses

Why Bad Directors Aren't Thrown Out 205

Posted by Soulskill from the power-behind-the-throne dept.
An anonymous reader writes "For publicly-owned companies, the CEO gets most of the spotlight. If the company is successful and the stock goes up, the CEO gets the credit. If the company stumbles, the CEO gets the blame. But an article at the NY Times points how the board of directors for most companies seem to get a free pass, even when their decisions or their CEO selections consistently go wrong. 'Last year, there were elections for 17,081 director nominees at United States corporations, according to the service. Only 61 of those nominees, or 0.36 percent, failed to get majority support. More than 86 percent of directors received 90 percent or more of the votes. Of the 61 directors who failed to get majority approval, only six actually stepped down or were asked to resign. Fifty-one are still in place, as of the most recent proxy filings.' The article uses Hewlett-Packard as an example; the past several years have seen poor CEO choices, the abominable Autonomy acquisition, and billions in write-offs for other failed endeavors. Yet HP's directors were all re-elected."
Science

Submission + - Sexually Rejected Flies Turn to Booze (sciencemag.org) 1

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Offer a male fruit fly a choice between food soaked in alcohol and its nonalcoholic equivalent, and his decision will depend on whether he's mated recently or been rejected by a female. Flies that have been given the cold shoulder are more likely to go for the booze, researchers have found. It's the first discovery, in fruit flies, of a social interaction that influences future behavior.

Submission + - European Parliament blocks copyright reform with 113% voter turnout (falkvinge.net) 1

Submitted by mcmadman
mcmadman writes: In a bizarre turn of events. The Legal Affairs committee (JURI), which has the responsibility of safeguarding the integrity and trustworthiness of the legal framework as a whole in Europe voted recently to weaken a reform of the copyright monopoly for allowing re-publication and access to orphan works. Pieces of our cultural heritage where no copyright monopoly holder can be located. What is surprising that the voter turnout happened to be 113%. This rather embarrassing issue was pointed out to the committee, the fact that there were three votes too many, and that these three votes determined the outcome. When this was done, along with formally requesting a re-vote, that re-vote on the points in question was denied.

Comment Re:Right on Adobe! (Score 1) 731

by codguy (#32197432) Attached to: Adobe Calls Out Apple With Ads In NY Times, WSJ
Apple could certainly take the high road, and actually allow Flash, but not in the default configuration. Thus, end users would have to get it from the App Store knowingly. If it turned out to really be as bad as Apple claims, end users would be quickly saying, "hey, why the heck has my machine slowed to a crawl, and the battery life dropped to two hours?" Apple could put a prominent FAQ on it's website or make it the first scripted answer from support--"If you are experiencing sluggishness and reduced battery life, and have installed Flash via the App Store, please remove it, and check if your problem is solved before complaining more." Word on the street would be "Hey, don't install Flash because it cripples your iDevice." This would clearly shift the burden to Adobe--or they pick up the ball and run with it (i.e. engineer Flash from being a cpu/battery hog and security risk), or they loose brainshare/marketshare because they cannot do so (as Apple claims). Apple's actions are far from the high road even though they present them as that...

Comment Re:So... (Score 1) 411

by h4rr4r (#32196916) Attached to: Armstrong, Cernan Testify Against Obama Space Plan

Those gifted kids will not be running the country ever, that kind of power is inherited or gained through connections not being gifted. Gifted kids will do fine anyway, why spend even more on them? If anything get them out of highschool and on to real education as fast as possible.

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