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Submission + - Internet user may get 3-yr in jail for viewing torrent site/blocked URL in India (intoday.in)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It is official now. The the punishment for rape is actually less and not carried out properly. But, the Indian government about to introduce a new law. The Indian government, with the help of internet service providers, and presumably under directives of court, has banned thousands of websites and URLs in the last five odd years. But until now if you somehow visited these "blocked URLs" all was fine. However, now if you try to visit such URLs and view the information, you may get three-year jail sentence as well as invite a fine of Rs 3 lakhs (USD 4468.398). Some users think that this is all fault of Bollywood/Hollywood movie studios. They are abusing power, court and money and setting up the "Cargo Cult State" in India, that has copied the worst aspects of the West.

Submission + - Federal Financial Aid to be Made Available for Coding Bootcamps

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: In this week's Hack Education Weekly News, Audrey Watters writes, "The US Department of Education has selected eight higher ed institutions and eight 'non-traditional providers' that will work as partners to pilot the DoE’s new EQUIP experiment, meaning that students will be able to receive federal financial aid for coding bootcamps, MOOCs, and the like. [...] Good thing there haven’t been any problems with for-profit higher ed and exploitation of financial aid, otherwise this would all seem like a terrible idea." Four of the eight selected sites are coding schools. Perhaps the most high-profile of the lot is The Flatiron School, not only because of its participation in President Obama's TechHire initiative, but also by virtue of its association with supermodel Karlie Kloss, who President Obama dubbed a Super Coder earlier this year (Kloss learned to code at Flatiron). Visitor records show Flatiron CEO Adam Enbar attended a December 2015 meeting of national CS education policy shapers and influencers at the White House that included Microsoft Director of Education Policy Allyson Knox and Google Director of Public Policy Johanna Shelton (Flatiron partnered with Google last year on Google’s CS Summer Institute for high school students, and lists Google as a 'Hiring Partner' on its homepage).

Submission + - Chicago's Experiment in Predictive Policing Isn't Working (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Struggling to reduce its high murder rate, the city of Chicago has become an incubator for experimental policing techniques. Community policing, stop and frisk, "interruption" tactics — the city has tried many strategies. Perhaps most controversial and promising has been the city’s futuristic "heat list" — an algorithm-generated list identifying people most likely to be involved in a shooting.

The hope was that the list would allow police to provide social services to people in danger, while also preventing likely shooters from picking up a gun. But a new report from the RAND Corporation shows nothing of the sort has happened. Instead, it indicates that the list is, at best, not even as effective as a most wanted list. At worst, it unnecessarily targets people for police attention, creating a new form of profiling.
Ubuntu

Submission + - Ubuntu Smartphone Shipping in October (wsj.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Smartphones running the open source Ubuntu operating system will be available to customers beginning in October 2013, Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth told CIO Journal. Ubuntu will be available on a full range of devices, including desktop and tablet computers, potentially providing corporate IT executives a way to reduce the number of devices they purchase and manage, and would allow users to access all manner of corporate data through a single, pocket-sized device. “You can share Windows apps to the phone desktop,” said Mr. Shuttleworth during a meeting in New York Tuesday.
Government

Submission + - Copyright claim thwarts North Korea (bbc.co.uk) 1

Submitted by ianare
ianare writes: A propaganda video from the North Korean authorities has been removed from YouTube following a copyright claim by games maker Activision. It shows a space craft flying around the world and eventually over a city resembling New York. The buildings are then seen crumbling amid fires and missile attacks. However, the dramatic images were soon recognised as having been lifted from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. By Tuesday, the video had been blocked, with a message notifying users of Activision's complaint shown in its place.
Politics

Submission + - First city in the United States to pass an anti-drone resolution (aljazeera.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Charlottesville, Virginia is the first city in the United States to pass an anti-drone resolution. The writing of the resolution coincides with a leaked memo outlining the legal case for drone strikes on US citizens and a Federal Aviation Administration plan to allow the deployment of some 30,000 domestic drones.
United States

Submission + - Obama Eyeing Internet ID for Americans 1

Submitted by
Pickens
Pickens writes: "CBS News reports that the Obama administration is currently drafting the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, which will be released by the president in the next few months. "We are not talking about a national ID card," says Commerce Secretary Gary Locke whose department will be in charge of the program. "We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities." Although details have not been finalized, the "trusted identity" may take the form of a smart card or digital certificate that would prove that online users are who they say they are. These digital IDs would be offered to consumers by online vendors for financial transactions. White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt says that anonymity and pseudonymity will remain possible on the Internet. "I don't have to get a credential if I don't want to," says Schmidt. There's no chance that "a centralized database will emerge," and "we need the private sector to lead the implementation of this.""

Submission + - Wikileak supporters twitter accounts subpoenaed. (boingboing.net)

Submitted by HJED
HJED writes: The U.S. Justice Department has served Twitter with a subpoena for the personal information and private messages of Wikileaks supporters.
There's a copy of the subpoena here[PDF] and boing boing has a detailed article about it here.
Twitter has 3 days to turn over the information.
The Internet

Submission + - Are You Ready for the Digital Afterlife? 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Dave Winer's call for Future-Safe Archives goes mainstream in Rob Walker's NY Times Magazine cover story on how the Internet can provide a certain kind of immortality to those who are prepared. To illustrate how digital afterlives might play out, Walker cites the case of 34-year-old writer Mac Tonnies, who updated his blog on Oct. 18, 2009, sent out some public tweets and private messages via Twitter, went to bed and died of cardiac arrhythmia. As word of his death spread via his own blog, Tonnies's small, but devoted audience rushed in to save his online identity. 'Finding solace in a Twitter feed may sound odd,' writes Walker, 'but the idea that Tonnies's friends would revisit and preserve such digital artifacts isn't so different from keeping postcards or other physical ephemera of a deceased friend or loved one.' Unfortunately, how long Mac Tonnies’s digital afterlife will remain for his Web friends and parents is still a big question, since it's preserved in a hodge-podge of possibly gone-tomorrow online services for which no one has the passwords. Hoping to fill the need for digital-estate-planning services are companies like Legacy Locker, which are betting that people will increasingly want control over their digital afterlife. 'We're entering a world where we can all leave as much of a legacy as George Bush or Bill Clinton,' says filmmaker-and-friend-of-Tonnies Paul Kimball. 'Maybe that's the ultimate democratization. It gives all of us a chance at immortality.'
Science

Immaculate Conception In a Boa Constrictor 478

Posted by samzenpus from the gold-frankincense-and-mice dept.
crudmonkey writes "Researchers have discovered a biological shocker: female boa constrictors are capable of giving birth asexually. But the surprise doesn't end there. The study in Biology Letters found that boa babies produced through this asexual reproduction — also known as parthenogenesis — sport a chromosomal oddity that researchers thought was impossible in reptiles. While researchers admit that the female in the study may have been a genetic freak, they say the findings should press researchers to re-think reptile reproduction. Virgin birth among reptiles, especially primitive ones like boas, they argue may be far commoner than ever expected."
User Journal

Journal Journal: Police push to continue warrantless cell tracking

Journal by AHuxley
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20008941-281.html
"A law requiring police to obtain a search warrant before tracking Americans' cell phones may imperil criminal investigations and endanger children's lives, a law enforcement representative told Congress this week."
"Obtaining a search warrant when monitoring the whereabouts of someone "who may be attempting to victimize a child over the Internet will have a significant slowing effect on the processing of child exploitation leads," sai
PlayStation (Games)

BioShock 2's First DLC Already On Disc 466

Posted by Soulskill from the read-the-rest-of-this-post-in-a-month-for-five-bucks dept.
An anonymous reader writes with this quote from 1Up: "Trouble is brewing in Rapture. The recently released Sinclair Solutions multiplayer pack for BioShock 2 is facing upset players over the revelation that the content is already on the disc, and the $5 premium is an unlock code. It started when users on the 2K Forums noticed that the content is incredibly small: 24KB on the PC, 103KB on the PlayStation 3, and 108KB on the Xbox 360. 2K Games responded with a post explaining that the decision was made in order to keep the player base intact, without splitting it between the haves and have-nots."
NASA

Submission + - SPAM: NASA satellite looks for life in dead Mars craft

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter will next week make a number of passes over the presumed dead Phoenix Mars Lander on the surface of the planet and listen for what the space agency called possible, though improbable, radio transmissions. Odyssey will pass over the Phoenix landing site about 10 times this month and two longer listening tries in February and March trying to determine if the craft survived Martian winter and try to lock onto a signal and gain information about the lander’s status.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - U.S. Coast Guard wants to kill LORAN-C (insidegnss.com)

Submitted by adaviel
adaviel writes: LORAN (Long Range Aids to Navigation) is an electronic navigation system using low-frequency radio, used by many boaters (including me) before GPS. It has an approximately 200m accuracy and is a functional replacement in case GPS fails or the US implements selective availability in time of war. The US Coast Guard intends to turn it off starting February 8.

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