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Piracy

FBI Helps Shut Down Piracy Sites In Romania 58

Posted by samzenpus from the shut-it-down dept.
An anonymous reader writes: The FBI has taken a major role in the shutting down of at least two popular piracy-torrent sites in Romania, according to a report from Romania's High Court of Cassation and Justice. The popular torrenting domains serialepenet.ro and fisierulmeu.ro are now offline after a series of raids on individuals and companies, including a hosting company in Bucharest thought to have some involvement with the pirate operation.
Businesses

Battle To Regulate Ridesharing Moves Through States 328

Posted by timothy from the when-monopolists-attack dept.
New submitter jeffengel writes: The push to regulate services like Uber and Lyft has spread through state legislatures nationwide. At least 15 states have passed ridesharing laws in 2015, joining Colorado, California, and Illinois from last year. More could follow, with bills pending in Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, and others. All this activity has led to new clashes with companies, city leaders, and consumers. Ridesharing bills have stalled or been killed off in Texas, Florida, New Mexico, and Mississippi. Meanwhile, Uber has exited Kansas and is threatening to leave New Jersey and Oregon, while Lyft has ceased operations in Houston, Columbus, and Tacoma. How this plays out could affect the companies' expansion plans, as well as the future of transportation systems worldwide.

Comment Re:Child abuse is machine recognizable; piracy is (Score 0) 348

by Heoko (#44960433) Attached to: UK MPs: Google Blocks Child Abuse Images, It Should Block Piracy Too
Actually, Law enforcement agencies in the US have been infecting computers with child porn malware, to frame people for breaking the law To quote the non-popularized Snowden Leak from about a month ago: "The procedure will be using the new methods which include stuffing child pornography images and moving-images inside of average files which will be shared by servers sanctioned by the FBI. The methods of stuffing will vary from each agent or officer but are approved as long as the suspect cannot detect that the file contains child pornography until the file has been downloaded. Child pornography has successfully been stuffed into adult pornography films, music files using ID3 tags, software programs, keygens and cracks, and other material that has been illicitly traded over P2P file sharing networks. This method has been successful at deterring both child pornographers and copyright infringement and has been approved for official procedures under the guise that it be kept as classified information."

Comment Re:Child abuse is machine recognizable; piracy is (Score 0) 348

by Heoko (#44959319) Attached to: UK MPs: Google Blocks Child Abuse Images, It Should Block Piracy Too
Pretty sure its just people outsourced in India reviewing image results, Easily blocked with thousands of people hammering away at a keyboard. Dont let the myth of complete automation of technology companies fool you, its mainly driven on pure work than "machine read" data.
Crime

Russia Issues Travel Warning To Its Citizens About United States and Extradition 369

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the about-that-cold-war dept.
mendax writes "The New York Times reports that the Russian government is warning its citizens to not travel to countries that have an extradition treaty with the United States, noting that 'detentions of Russian citizens in various countries, at the request of American law enforcement, have become more frequent.' The article reports the Russian foreign ministry as saying,'Experience shows that the judicial proceedings against those who were in fact kidnapped and taken to the U.S. are of a biased character, based on shaky evidence, and clearly tilted toward conviction.'"
Censorship

Iran Set To Block Access To Google 279

Posted by timothy from the haraamph-haraamph dept.
legolas writes "The official state online censorship body in Iran has reported that Google and Gmail are going to be blocked effective immediately, ostensibly in response to the contentious videos that YouTube is hosting. This comes as Iran is preparing the launch of their 'Halal' intranet to replace the current direct (albeit highly censored) access to the global Internet. While there have been several state-organized protests for the film 'Innocence Of Muslims' in Iran, the public in general doesn't seem bothered by it."
The Military

Iran's Smart Concrete Can Cope With Earthquakes and Bombs 609

Posted by samzenpus from the built-tough dept.
PolygamousRanchKid writes "Iran is an earthquake zone, so its engineers have developed some of the toughest building materials in the world. Ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) could also be used to protect hidden nuclear installations from the artificial equivalent of small earthquakes, namely bunker-busting bombs. UHPC is based—like its quotidian cousins—on sand and cement. In addition, though, it is doped with powdered quartz (the pure stuff, rather than the tainted variety that makes up most sand) and various reinforcing metals and fibers. UHPC can withstand more compression than other forms of concrete. UHPC is also more flexible and durable than conventional concrete. It can therefore be used to make lighter and more slender structures. All of which is fine and dandy for safer dams and better sewers, which threaten no one. But UHPC's potential military applications are more intriguing—and for many, more worrying. Deep bunkers can be tackled in other ways. America's Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) has looked at what is known in the jargon as functional defeat, in other words bombing their entrances shut or destroying their electrical systems with electromagnetic pulses. They are also working on active penetrators—bombs which can tunnel through hundreds of meters of earth, rock and concrete. Development work is also under way on esoteric devices such as robot snakes, carrying warheads, which can infiltrate via air ducts and cable runs."
Cloud

Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace To Google: Don't Be Evil 208

Posted by Soulskill from the you-guys-should-team-up-and-start-a-search-engine dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Over the weekend, Blake Ross, Facebook's product director and co-founder of Firefox, worked with Facebook engineers Tom Occhino and Marshall Roch to demonstrate how evil they think Google's newly launched Search plus Your World (SPYW) feature really is, and created a 'proof of concept' showing how it should really work. His team got some help from Twitter engineers and Myspace engineers, and consulted other social networks as well to really make sure the message hits home: SPYW should surface results from all social networks, not just Google+. By leveraging Google's own algorithms, the group built a bookmarklet called 'don't be evil' (a jab at Google's informal motto) and released it on a new website named Focus on the User."
The Military

Drone Kills Top Al Qaeda Figure 885

Posted by Soulskill from the automated-violence dept.
wiredmikey writes with this excerpt from a Wall Street Journal report: "The U.S. ushered in a new CIA-led counterterrorism program in Yemen on Friday, sending unmanned aircraft to kill an American-born cleric who occupied a top place on the U.S.'s anti-terrorist list. The death of Anwar al-Awlaki eliminates a leading figure in Yemen's branch of al Qaeda and one of its most charismatic recruiters. A Web-savvy Islamic preacher with sparkling English, Mr. Awlaki was known for his ability to couch extremist views in ways that appealed to Western youth. He had been linked to suspects in the 2009 Fort Hood, Texas, shooting spree and the botched bombing of a Detroit-bound jet that Christmas."
Medicine

Could Assortative Mating Explain Autism? 286

Posted by samzenpus from the and-nerd-begot-nerd dept.
clm1970 writes "Researcher Simon Baron-Cohen has put forth the theory that 'how we mate and marry' could explain the increase in rates of Autism Spectrum Disorders, particularly Asperger's. When two technically minded people marry and have children, so the provocative theory goes, they are more apt to produce a child who crosses the line into mild autism."
Robotics

Canadian Firm Gave Libyan Rebels Surveillance Drone 165

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the we're-watching-you dept.
Joining the posted submitter club, suasfan22 writes with a bit in Wired about the use of a drone by Libyan Rebels. From the article: "The Libyan revolutionaries are more of a band of enthusiastic amateurs than experienced soldiers. But it turns out the rebels have the kind of weaponry usually possessed by advanced militaries: their very own drone. Aeryon Labs, a Canadian defense firm, revealed on Tuesday that it had quietly provided the rebel forces with a teeny, tiny surveillance drone, called the Aeryon Scout. Small enough to fit into a backpack, the three-pound, four-rotor robot gave Libyan forces eyes in the sky independent of the Predators, Fire Scout surveillance copters and manned spy planes that NATO flew overhead. Don't worry, it's not armed."

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