148528506
submission
BigVig209 writes:
An article from the Chicago Tribune (https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-automated-license-plate-readers-in-suburbs-20210629-nlrvjbfwwjal7gu4ihnwlv4tua-story.html) on how suburban police departments in the Chicago area use license plate cameras as a crime-fighting tool. Some police departments have discontinued using license plate cameras saying they did not work as advertised and had too many problems.
Some suburbs and leaders expressed serious concerns about privacy and misuse of private information. The story describes how many police officers have abused license plate databases (https://apnews.com/article/699236946e3140659fff8a2362e16f43).
148430664
submission
luis_a_espinal writes:
In another case of "Floriduh" being "Floriduh", a government building in Manatee County had to shut down due to an outbreak. TL;DR; it could be the Delta Variant, and this incident saw a 40% fatality rate.
The county doesn't require the use of masks, even among the unvaccinated, allowing unvaccinated people to work indoors and in proximity without any form of protection.
From the story:
In all, five employees of the IT department contracted the virus. Of that group, four were hospitalized and two died last week.
“That’s a 40% case fatality rate,” said Dr. Scott Hopes, the county administrator. “That’s a high fatality rate.”
132428126
submission
bmimatt writes:
Hundreds of thousands of potentially sensitive files from police departments across the United States were leaked online last week. The collection, dubbed “BlueLeaks” and made searchable online, stems from a security breach at a Texas web design and hosting company that maintains a number of state law enforcement data-sharing portals.
The collection — nearly 270 gigabytes in total — is the latest release from Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets), an alternative to Wikileaks that publishes caches of previously secret data.
86287859
submission
An anonymous reader writes:
This is a grim story about a company that screwed poor people, military veterans, and taxpayers
to turn a profit. It includes shocking details about the inner-working of the for-profit college including stuff like this:
"ITT recruiters even manipulated prospective students using pain-based sales techniques. Recruiters used a sales strategy called the “Pain Funnel” that encouraged them to ask progressively more hurtful questions to get prospective students to enroll in the school."
86256661
submission
Mickeycaskill writes:
One of the core principles of Blockchain technology has potentially been undermined by the creation of an editing tool.
The company responsible however, Accenture, says edits would only be carried out “under extraordinary circumstances to resolve human errors, accommodate legal and regulatory requirements, and address mischief and other issues, while preserving key cryptographic features.”
Because Blockchain is effectively run by a network of unrelated computers, it produces a permanent ledger of transactions with which no one can tamper. Until now.
Accenture’s move to create an editing system will no doubt be viewed by some technology observers as a betrayal of what blockchain technology is all about. But the company insisted it is needed, especially in the financial services industry.
“The prototype represents a significant breakthrough for enterprise uses of blockchain technology particularly in banking, insurance and capital markets,” said Accenture.
83042461
submission
alphadogg writes:
Open source’s march toward preeminence in business software continued over the past year, according to a survey https://www.blackducksoftware.... released by open source management provider Black Duck Software and venture capital firm North Bridge. Roughly two-thirds of respondents to the survey – which was administered online and drew 1,300 respondents – said that their companies encouraged developers to contribute to open-source projects, and a similar proportion said that they were actively engaged in doing so already. That’s a 5% increase from the previous year’s survey.
67070139
submission
Advocatus Diaboli writes:
According to a report in the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, the telecommunications company Cable & Wireless—now a subsidiary of Vodafone—“actively shaped and provided the most data to GCHQ surveillance programs and received millions of pounds in compensation.” The relationship was so extensive that a GCHQ employee was assigned to work full time at Cable & Wireless (referred to by the code name “Gerontic” in NSA documents) to manage cable-tap projects in February of 2009. By July of 2009, Cable & Wireless provided access to 29 out of the 63 cables on the list, accounting for nearly 70 percent of the data capacity available to surveillance programs.
66104367
submission
HughPickens.com writes:
The Pentland Firth is a raw, stormy sound between the Scottish mainland and the Orkney Islands, known for some of the world’s fastest flowing marine waters. Daily tides here reach 11 miles per hour, and can go as high as 18 – a breakneck current that’s the reason people are describing Scotland as the Saudi Arabia of tidal power. Now Megan Garber reports in The Atlantic that a new tidal power plant, to be installed off the Scottish coast aims to make the Scotland a world leader for turning sea flow into electricity. Underwater windmills, the BBC notes, have the benefit of invisibility—a common objection to wind turbines being how unsightly they are to human eyes. Undersea turbines also benefit from the fact that tides are predictable in ways that winds are not: You know how much power you're generating, basically, on any given day. The tidal currents are also completely carbon-free and since sea water is 832 times denser than air, a 5 knot ocean current has more kinetic energy than a 350 km/h wind.
MeyGen will face a challenge in that work: The turbines are incredibly difficult to install. The Pentland Firth is a harsh environment to begin with; complicating matters is the fact that the turbines can be installed only at the deepest of ocean depths so as not to disrupt the paths of ships on the surface. They also need to be installed in bays or headlands, where tidal flows are at their most intense. It is an unbelievably harsh environment in which to build anything, let alone manage a vast fleet of tidal machines beneath the waves. If each Hammerfest machine delivers its advertised 1MW of power, then you need 1,000 of them to hope to match the output of a typical gas or coal-fired power station. "The real aim," says Keith Anderson, "is to establish the predictability which you get with tidal power, and to feed that into the energy mix which includes the less predictable sources like wind or wave. The whole point of this device is to test that it can produce power, and we believe it can, and to show it's robust and can be maintained."
66077523
submission
phantomfive writes:
Silicon Valley is making a mark in Washington as Google has recently replaced Goldman as the largest lobbyist, but until recently, most of the money in from Silicon Valley went to democratic candidates. In 2014, that has changed, and Republicans are getting most of the money. Why the change? Gordon Crovitz suggests it's because Harry Reid blocked patent reform. Reid gets a large chunk of donations from trial lawyers, who oppose the reform.
59945841
submission
concertina226 writes:
The United Nations will debate the use of killer robots for the first time at the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) this week, but human rights activists are calling for the robots to be banned.
Human Rights Watch and Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic have published a new report entitled "Shaking the Foundations: The Human Rights Implications of Killer Robots", which calls for killer robots to be banned to prevent a potential arms race between countries.
Killer robots, or fully autonomous weapons, do not yet exist but would be the next step after remote-controlled armed drones used by the US military today. Fully autonomous weapons would have the ability to identify and fire on targets without human intervention, putting compliance with international humanitarian laws in doubt.
Among the problems with killer robots highlighted in the report is the risk of criminal liability for a military officer, programmer or weapons manufacturer who created or used an autonomous weapon with intent to kill.
If a robot killed arbitrarily, it would be difficult to hold anyone accountable.
16796448
story
Black Gold Alchemist writes
"Dowa, a Japanese mining company in Kosaka, has begun the recycling of rare earth metals from used cellphones and computers. This is in response to a recent, temporary trade embargo from China, which is the leading supplier of rare earth metals needed for production of products including hybrid cars, wind turbines, and LCD screens. Because of the shortage of rare earth metals, Japanese trade minister Akihiro Ohata is asking the government to include a rare earth strategy in its supplementary budget for this year."
5707491
story
TheZid writes
"A newly proposed bill would give Uncle Sam the power to disconnect private sector computers from the internet in the event of a 'cyber security emergency.' As usual, our government is trying to take away our privacy by citing security. What actually counts as a 'Cyber-Security Emergency?' Does the president now have the option of disconnecting people when they disagree with his policies? How about disconnecting bloggers that criticize his health care reform? What counts as an emergency? Can political opponents be deemed a cyber-security emergency?"
