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Submission + - 8.5 Ton Chinese Space Station 'Tiangong 1' Is Going To Crash To Earth (cnbc.com) 1

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: China launched a space laboratory named Tiangong 1 into orbit in 2011. The space laboratory was supposed to become a symbol of China's ambitious bid to become a space superpower. After 2 years in space, Tiangong 1 started experiencing technical failure. Last year Chinese officials confirmed that the space laboratory had to be scrapped. The 8.5 ton heavy space laboratory has begun its descent towards Earth and is expected to crash back to Earth within the next few months. Most of the laboratory is expected to burn up in earth's atmosphere, but experts believe that pieces as heavy as 100 Kilograms (220 Pounds) may survive re-entry and impact earth's surface. Nobody will be able to predict with any precision where those chunks of space laboratory will land on Earth until a few hours before re-entry occurs.The chance that anyone would be harmed by Tiangong-1's debris is considered unlikely

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What to put for work samples when CTO has butchered all my work?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Hi Slashdot, I feel like many of you have had this problem: I am looking for a job with a new company and most ask for links to "recent work" but the reason I am leaving my current job is because this company does not produce good code, and after years of trying to force them to change they have refused to change any of their poor practices, because the CTO is a narcissist and doesn't recognize that so much is wrong.

I have written good code for this company, the problem is it is mostly back-end code where I was afforded some freedom, but the front-end is still a complete mess that doesn't reflect any coherent coding practice whatsoever. I have tried so hard for five years to change the company's practices but I spend more time arguing in vain with the CTO than actually improving the company's development problems. I am giving up on fixing this company but finding it hard to exemplify my work when it is hidden behind some of the worst front-end code I have ever seen. Most applications ask for links to live code, not for code samples (which I would more easily be able to supply). Some of the websites look OK on the surface but are one right click -> inspect element away from giving away the mess; most of the projects require a username and password to login as well but account registration is not open.

So how do I reference my recent work when all of my recent work is embarrassing on the front-end? What have you done in this situation?

Submission + - Dutch Privacy Regulator Says Windows 10 Breaks the Law (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The lack of clear information about what Microsoft does with the data that Windows 10 collects prevents consumers from giving their informed consent, says the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA). As such, the regulator says that the operating system is breaking the law. To comply with the law, the DPA says that Microsoft needs to get valid user consent: this means the company must be clearer about what data is collected and how that data is processed. The regulator also complains that the Windows 10 Creators Update doesn't always respect previously chosen settings about data collection. In the Creators Update, Microsoft introduced new, clearer wording about the data collection—though this language still wasn't explicit about what was collected and why—and it forced everyone to re-assert their privacy choices through a new settings page. In some situations, though, that page defaulted to the standard Windows options rather than defaulting to the settings previously chosen. In the Creators Update, Microsoft also explicitly enumerated all the data collected in Windows 10's "Basic" telemetry setting. However, the company has not done so for the "Full" option, and the Full option remains the default.

The DPA's complaint doesn't call for Microsoft to offer a complete opt out of the telemetry and data collection, instead focusing on ensuring that Windows 10 users know what the operating system and Microsoft are doing with their data. The regulator says that Microsoft wants to "end all violations," but if the software company fails to do so, it faces sanctions.

Submission + - Researcher Turns HDD Into Rudimentary Microphone (bleepingcomputer.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Speaking at a security conference, researcher Alfredo Ortega has revealed that you can use your hard disk drive (HDD) as a rudimentary microphone to can pick up nearby sounds. This is possible because of how hard drives are designed to work. Sounds or nearby vibrations are nothing more than mechanical waves that cause HDD platters to vibrate. By design, a hard drive cannot read or write information to an HDD platter that moves under vibrations, so the hard drive must wait for the oscillation to stop before carrying out any actions.

Because modern operating systems come with utilities that measure HDD operations up to nanosecond accuracy, Ortega realized that he could use these tools to measure delays in HDD operations. The longer the delay, the louder the sound or the intense the vibration that causes it. These read-write delays allowed the researcher to reconstruct sound or vibration waves picked up by the HDD platters. A video demo is here.

"It's not accurate yet to pick up conversations," Ortega told Bleeping Computer in a private conversation. "However, there is research that can recover voice data from very low-quality signals using pattern recognition. I didn't have time to replicate the pattern-recognition portion of that research into mine. However, it's certainly applicable."

Furthermore, the researcher also used sound to attack hard drives. Ortega played a 130Hz tone to make an HDD stop responding to commands. "The Linux kernel disconnected it entirely after 120 seconds," he said. There's a video of this demo on YouTube.

Comment Re: Airport lounges suck (Score 1) 55

by GodGell (#52710939) Attached to: Hacker Uses Fake Boarding Pass App To Get Into Fancy Airline Lounges

Thomas Cook tourists from England. Drunk, loud, red sunburnt skin, loud, messy, loud, zero manners, loud. An absolute menace at every holiday destination. Almost as bad as rich Russians who think everything is theirs to damage and everybody is there to serve them only.

As somebody who lives in Central Europe (which, to most Brits, is apparently the same thing as Eastern Europe), I can fully attest to your observations. British tourists are incredibly uncultured and rude compared to pretty much all other tourists you see around here. Which is quite funny when you think about how, historically, they tended to portray themselves as more sophisticated than other folk*. Rich Russians are a menace, especially if they're anywhere near a car, but they have a niveau of behavior your average Brit could only dream of.

[*] I once even heard a group of them outright declaring that they're the "best" people in the Universe, and that "we've kicked these guys' arses every time we came here" (never mind that this country has never been at war with Britain). They then proceeded to threaten the nightclub owner (who threw them out of his club, hence the argument) to go to the British embasssy and "you'll see what happens". They were bloody serious too; I wish I could say this was an isolated incident, but these things happen practically all summer, every summer, if you live in a touristy city.

Submission + - Winner of the 2015 Underhanded C Contest announced (underhanded-c.org)

Submitted by Xcott Craver
Xcott Craver writes: The Underhanded C contest results have now been announced. This time the contest challenge was to cause a false match in a nuclear inspection scenario, allowing a country to remove fissile material from a warhead without being noticed. The winner receives $1000 from the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

Submission + - Receiving Meteor-M N2 Russian Weather Satellite Images

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Meteor-M N2 is a low orbit Russian weather satellite which broadcasts live weather satellite images, similar to the APT images produced by the NOAA satellites. But Meteor digital images are however much better as they are transmitted as a digital signal with an image resolution 12x greater than the aging analog NOAA APT signals. Radio enthusiasts are receiving images with hacked cheap digital TV dongles. There is even the AMIGOS project which stands for Amateur Meteor Images Global Observation System: users around the world can contribute Meteor images through the internet to create worldwide real-time coverage.

Submission + - Low Cost EEG Head-Sets Promise Virtual Reality Feedback Loops (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from the University of Memphis have found that it's possible to use a low-cost EEG device such as the $300 Emotiv Epoc to understand how a user is feeling — opening up the path to genuine psycho-biological feedback in virtual/augmented reality scenarios. The Epoc has been used, in combination with the Razer Hydra, to give users control over VR/AR environments, but integrating emotional feedback into VR environments heralds many new possibilities in the fields of medical research, gaming — and, of course, marketing research.

Submission + - John Cleese Warns Campus Political Correctness Leading Towards 1984 (washingtonexaminer.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ashe Schow writes at the Washington Examiner that, "The Monty Python co-founder, in a video for Internet forum Big Think, railed against the current wave of hypersensitivity on college campuses, saying he has been warned against performing on campuses. "[Psychiatrist Robin Skynner] said: 'If people can't control their own emotions, then they have to start trying to control other people's behavior,'" Cleese said. "And when you're around super-sensitive people, you cannot relax and be spontaneous because you have no idea what's going to upset them next." Cleese said that it's one thing to be "mean" to "people who are not able to look after themselves very well," but it was another to take it to "the point where any kind of criticism of any individual or group could be labeled cruel." Cleese added that "comedy is critical," and if society starts telling people "we mustn't criticize or offend them," then humor goes out the window. "With humor goes a sense of proportion," Cleese said. "And then, as far as I'm concerned, you're living in 1984." Cleese is just the latest comedian to lecture college students about being so sensitive.

Submission + - Secret US flight flew over Scottish airspace 'to capture Snowden' (thenational.scot)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: THE UK GOVERNMENT is facing demands to reveal the details of a secret flight through Scottish airspace which was at the centre of a plot to capture whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The plane, which passed above the Outer Hebrides, the Highlands and Aberdeenshire, was dispatched from the American east coast on June 24 2013, the day after Snowden left Hong Kong for Moscow. The craft was used in controversial US 'rendition' missions.

Reports by Scottish journalist Duncan Campbell claim the aircraft, traveling well above the standard aviation height at 45,000 feet and without a filed flight plan, was part of a mission to capture Snowden following his release of documents revealing mass surveillance by US and UK secret services.

Comment Congratulations (Score 3, Insightful) 373

by GodGell (#51162925) Attached to: SpaceX Lands Falcon 9 Rocket At Cape Canaveral

Wow, what a sight to behold. It was pretty hard to stay quiet while watching that streak of light come down with everybody cheering. Probably the first "USA! USA!" chant I've ever heard that was both entirely well-deserved and not even a little bit sarcastic. An historic occasion indeed. :-)

Congratulations SpaceX, this is like that 4th launch where everyone suddenly went from doubt to astonishment.

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