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Submission + - Spain officials quit over trains that were too wide for tunnels (bbc.com)

Submitted by WmHBlair
WmHBlair writes: From the one would think that this would have been caught before anybody was embarrassed department: "Two top Spanish transport officials have resigned over a botched order for new commuter trains that cost nearly €260m ($275m; £230m). The trains could not fit into non-standard tunnels in the northern regions of Asturias and Cantabria."

Comment Long Before the Web (Score 1) 382

by WmHBlair (#57226032) Attached to: The 'Scunthorpe Problem' Has Never Really Been Solved

Five decades ago (way before the WWW), there were two secretaries in the company I worked for who were so sheltered and innocent that they couldn't understand why they kept having customers call to ask for a manager to complain about their "language." The reason for customer complaints? Their names were Frances Screws and Susie Bangs, which they clearly stated when answering the phone for their bosses. They were married, respectively, to Dick Screws and Hardrick Bangs. This was the Bible Belt, and my simply using the word "darn" would shock them (they considered it to be profanity); both would frown and blush. I did worse, however; they didn't like me a lot. Apparently, their husbands were equally sheltered and naive. I met both of the husbands once, only briefly, at a "holiday" party, but I didn't disagree with that characterization by others who knew them better. I thought the situation was of little real consequence, a little more than funny, but apparently (I learned after I had left) it caused both couples quite a bit of trouble in the real (Bible belt) world trying to do mundane things like making restaurant and motel reservations. I was told they had to get notarized, certified copies of their birth and marriage certificates in order to open bank accounts (and for one of them, a BankAmericard credit card account, which ultimately they were denied). My secretary explained to me that she had tried to explain to Susie what the verb "to bang" meant so she would know why folks she talked to were so offended, but first she had to explain what the verb "to fuck" meant and what "intercourse" was; Susie had never heard the first, but knew of the second, but wanted to call sex with her husband "marital relations." She simply failed to accept that the verb "to bang" could possibly mean what was claimed. So incredibly sheltered. About 20 years ago someone all of us had worked with back then told me both couples ended up legally changing their names (but that had happened in the late 80s, long before the web). While I would have much more sympathy today, I did convince upper management to allow them to use an "incorrect" name when answering the phone. Frances didn't want to do that because she considered it to be telling a lie, but someone or something eventually made her come around.

I've met a half dozen or so people in my travels whose last names were either Screws or Bangs (or something else once considered "suggestive"). They appear to enjoy hearing about Frances and Susie, but each of them had their own stories to tell.

Submission + - SPAM: Learning to Program is Getting Harder

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: While Google suggests that parents and educators are to blame for why kids can't code, Allen Downey argues that learning to program is getting harder. Downey writes: "The fundamental problem is that the barrier between using a computer and programming a computer is getting higher. When I got a Commodore 64 (in 1982, I think) this barrier was non-existent. When you turned on the computer, it loaded and ran a software development environment (SDE). In order to do anything, you had to type at least one line of code, even if all it did was another program (like Archon). Since then, three changes have made it incrementally harder for users to become programmers: 1) Computer retailers stopped installing development environments by default. As a result, anyone learning to program has to start by installing an SDE — and that's a bigger barrier than you might expect. Many users have never installed anything, don't know how to, or might not be allowed to. Installing software is easier now than it used to be, but it is still error prone and can be frustrating. If someone just wants to learn to program, they shouldn't have to learn system administration first. 2) User interfaces shifted from command-line interfaces (CLIs) to graphical user interfaces (GUIs). GUIs are generally easier to use, but they hide information from users about what's really happening. When users really don't need to know, hiding information can be a good thing. The problem is that GUIs hide a lot of information programmers need to know. So when a user decides to become a programmer, they are suddenly confronted with all the information that's been hidden from them. If someone just wants to learn to program, they shouldn't have to learn operating system concepts first. 3) Cloud computing has taken information hiding to a whole new level. People using web applications often have only a vague idea of where their data is stored and what applications they can use to access it. Many users, especially on mobile devices, don't distinguish between operating systems, applications, web browsers, and web applications. When they upload and download data, they are often confused about where is it coming from and where it is going. When they install something, they are often confused about what is being installed where. For someone who grew up with a Commodore 64, learning to program was hard enough. For someone growing up with a cloud-connected mobile device, it is much harder." So, with the Feds budgeting $200 million a year for K-12 CS at the behest of U.S. tech leaders, can't the tech giants at least put a BASIC on every phone/tablet/laptop for kids?

Submission + - FCC Approves New ATSC 3.0 TV Standard (reuters.com)

Submitted by mikeebbbd
mikeebbbd writes: Reuters notes: "U.S. regulators on Thursday approved the use of new technology that will improve picture quality on mobile phones, tablets and television, but also raises significant privacy concerns by giving advertisers dramatically more data about viewing habits."
ATSC3.0 will apparently make personal data collection and targeted ads possible. New TVs will be necessary, and broadcasters will need to transmit both ATSC 2 (the current standard) and 3 for 5 years before turning off the older system. For now, the conversion is voluntary. There appears to be no requirement (as there was when ATSC 2 came out) for low-cost adapter boxes to make older TVs work; once a channel goes ATSC 3-only, your current TV will not display it any more.

Submission + - So whatever happened to that spaceport SpaceX was building in South Texas? (blastingnews.com)

Submitted by MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: About a year and a half ago, with then Texas Governor Rick Perry and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk in attendance, ground was broken on the first private spaceport designed to launch rockets vertically near Brownsville, Texas. At the time, SpaceX announced that it expected to launch a rocket a month, either a Falcon 9 or a Falcon Heavy in the skies over South Texas starting in 2016. But then, the Texas spaceport story fell off the face of the Earth, as it were. Fortunately, the Valley Morning Star has an explanation as to why things are taking so long.

Submission + - What Lies Beneath: The First Transatlantic Communications Cables (hackaday.com)

Submitted by szczys
szczys writes: Our global information networks are connected by many many fibre optic cables sitting on the the ocean floor. The precursor to this technology goes all the way back to 1858 when the first telegraph cable connecting North America and Europe was laid. The story of efforts to lay transatlantic cables is fascinating. First attempts were met with many failures including broken cable in the first few miles of installation, and even frying the first successful connection with 2000 volts within a month of completion. But the technology improved quickly and just a century later we laid the first voice cables that used — get this — vacuum tubes in the signal repeaters.

Submission + - Server Snafu Makes Microsoft Beg for CA Audit Data from Its Partners (softpedia.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft, just like Google, Apple, and Mozilla, is part of the CA/BForum, an organization of Web browser vendors and certification authorities (CAs). As a browser vendor, Microsoft maintains a list of authorized CAs and their respective root certificates.

According to a message on the CA/BForum, there was an error on the server that was running a CRM application that managed this list of trusted certificates and the adjacent details regarding each certificate and CA. The data is lost forever, and Microsoft is now asking CAs to resend their most recent audits. Currently a lot of certs are broken in Edge and IE.

Submission + - Why DevOps is So Painful for Big Companies

Submitted by StewBeans
StewBeans writes: A recent poll of IT professionals found that DevOps adoption is on the rise, jumping from 66 to 74 percent adoption — 81 percent among enterprises. Despite this jump, more traditional enterprises are having a hard time getting DevOps right and often run into a number of problems, like lack of common tools, collaboration, or culture change. That's because to do it successfully, organizations have to change a deeply embedded mindset and processes that contradict what DevOps is. An article by Peter Buonora, enterprise architect for BJ's Wholesale Club, points out, "Compared to the traditional IT mindset, which is about trying to minimize change, question change, and manage it to a point where the number of overall changes is reduced and we lock down the environment, it’s not hard to see that the two approaches are on a collision course." He offers a few DevOps approaches for traditional enterprises, which include setting up a dedicated team to demonstrate business value, and bringing in new talent that have lived and breathed DevOps in a previous job.

Submission + - Comodo Antivirus Tech Support Feature Lets Anyone Connect to Your PC (softpedia.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google Project Zero security researcher Tavis Ormandy has discovered that one of Comodo's tech support tools packed with many of the company's security products leaves the door open for attackers to connect with admin privileges on the user's PC. He discovered that to blame for this problem was a remote desktop tool called GeekBuddy, which Comodo was bundling with its security software. This tool either used no password, or used a simple system to create the password which tech support staff would use to connect to user PCs. Ormandy previously discovered a similar issue in Comodo software, related to the company's Chromodo browser.

Submission + - Carbon Dioxide From the Air Converted Into Methanol (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: The danger posed by rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide has seen many schemes proposed to remove a proportion it from the air. Rather than simply capture this greenhouse gas and bury it in the ground, though, many experiments have managed to transform CO2 into useful things like carbon nanofibers or even fuels, such as diesel. Unfortunately, the over-arching problem with many of these conversions is the particularly high operating temperatures that require almost counterproductive amounts of energy to produce relatively low yields of fuel. Now researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) claim to have devised a way to take CO2 directly from the air and convert it into methanol using much lower temperatures and in a correspondingly simpler way.

Submission + - Where Are The Raspberry Pi Zeros? (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: No matter how you spin it the Pi Zero is remarkably good value for a one-off or a repeat-production IoT project.
It also has one big advantage over similarly priced alternatives — a community and a track record. There are so many Pis out there that it has a stability that any IoT developer will find reassuring. Thus when the Pi Zero at $5 was announced it was a knockout blow for many of its competitors.Suddenly other previously attractive devices simply looked less interesting. The $9 C.H.I.P, the $20 CodeBug and even the free BBC MicroBit lost some of their shine and potential users.
But the Pi Zero sold out.
The Pi Zero was supposed to be available from November 26, 2015. It is now the start of February and all of the stockists, including the Pi Swag Shop, are still showing out of stock. That's two whole months, and counting, of restricted supply which is more than an initial hiccup.
Of course you would expect enough to be made available initially to meet the expected demand.
The Pi sells something in the region of 200,000 per month so what do you think the initial run of the Pi Zero actually was?
The answer is 20,000 units. Of which 10,000 were stuck to the cover of MagPi and "given away" leaving just 10,000 in the usual distribution channels. And yet Eben Upton, founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, commented:
"You'd think we'd be used to it by now, but we're always amazed by the level of interest in new Raspberry Pi products,"
Well yes, you really would think that they might be used to it by now and perhaps even prepared for it.
At the time of writing the Pi Zero is still out of stock and when it is briefly in stock customers are limited to one unit.
A victim of its own success, yes, but the real victims are the Raspberry Pi's competitors.

Submission + - Elon Musk cancels blogger's Tesla order after he complains about launch event

Submitted by umafuckit
umafuckit writes: Blogger Stewart Alsop wrote an open letter to Elon Musk following a supposedly badly run launch event for the Model X. Alsop complained that the event started almost 2 hours late and was unable to test drive the car (for which has put down a deposit). In response, Musk cancelled Alsop's pre-order saying "Must be a slow news day if denying service to a super rude customer gets this much attention".

Submission + - Microsoft Edge's InPrivate Browsing Mode Isn't Private- At All (betanews.com) 1

Submitted by JustAnotherOldGuy
JustAnotherOldGuy writes: The forensic examination of most web browsers has proven that they don't have a provision for storing the details of privately browsed web sessions. However, in the case of Microsoft Edge, the private browsing isn't as private as it seems. Previous investigations of the browser have resulted in revealing that websites visited in private mode are also stored in the browser’s WebCache file. The Container_n table stores web history, and a field named 'Flag' with a value of '8' shows that website was visited in private mode. An investigator can easily spot the difference and use this evidence against a person. The not-so-private browsing featured by Edge makes its very purpose seem to fail, and you can't help but ask how such a fundamental aspect of private browsing could be so fantastically borked. It beggars belief.

Submission + - IRS: Identity Theft Protection A Tax Deductible Benefit - Even Without A Breach (wordpress.com)

Submitted by chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: File this under "It's about time." The U.S. Internal Revenue Service has announced that it will treat identity theft protection as a non-taxable, non-reportable benefit that companies can offer — even when the company in question hasn't experienced a data breach, and regardless of whether it is offered by an employer to employees, or by other businesses (such as online retailers) to its customers, the blog E for ERISA reports. (https://eforerisa.wordpress.com/2016/01/10/irs-extends-tax-free-status-to-proactive-identity-theft-protection/) In short: companies can now deduct the cost of offering identity theft protection as a benefit for employees or extending it to customers, even if their data hasn't been exposed to hackers.

The announcement comes only four months after an earlier earlier announcement (https://eforerisa.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/earlier-announcement.pdf) by the IRS that it would treat identity theft protection offered to employees or customers in the wake of a data breach as a non-taxable event. Comments to the IRS following the earlier decision suggested that many businesses view a data breach as “inevitable” rather than as a remote risk.

The truth of that statement was made clear to the IRS itself, which had to provide identity theft protection earlier this year in response to a hack of its online database of past-filed returns and other filed documents which ultimately affected over 300,000 taxpayers. (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/18/us/politics/hacking-of-tax-returns-more-extensive-than-first-reported-irs-says.html)
The new IRS guidance could be a boon to providers of identity protection services such as Experian and Lifelock, though maybe not as much as one would expect. Data from Experian suggests that consumer adoption rates for identity theft protection services is low. Fewer than 10% of those potentially affected by a breach opt for free identity protection services when they are offered. For very large breaches that number is even lower — in the single digit percentages. (https://securityledger.com/2015/05/amid-rampant-data-theft-consumers-left-breached-and-burned-out/)

Submission + - North Carolina town talks back (newsobserver.com)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: Usually what happens in Woodland stays in Woodland, a town 115 miles east of Raleigh with one Dollar General store and one restaurant.

But news of the Northampton County hamlet’s moratorium on solar farms blew up on social media over the weekend after a local paper quoted a resident complaining to the Town Council that solar farms would take away sunshine from nearby vegetation. Another resident warned that solar panels would suck up energy from the sun.

As outlandish as those claims seem, town officials say the Internet got it wrong.

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