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Crime

UK Wants To Criminalize Re-Identification of Anonymized User Data (bleepingcomputer.com) 120

Posted by BeauHD from the statements-of-intent dept.
An anonymous reader writes: European countries are currently implementing new data protection laws. Recently, despite leaving the European Union, the United Kingdom has expressed intent to implement the law called General Data Protection Regulation. As an extension, the UK wants to to ban re-identification (with a penalty of unlimited fines), the method of reversing anonymization, or pointing out the weakness of the used anonymisation process. One famous example was research re-identifying Netflix users from published datasets. By banning re-identification, UK follows the lead of Australia which is considering enacting similarly controversial law that can lead to making privacy research difficult or impossible. Privacy researchers express concerns about the effectiveness of the law that could even complicate security, a view shared by privacy advocates.
Businesses

Monsanto Leaks Suggest It Tried To Kill Cancer Research On Roundup Weed Killer (rt.com) 242

Posted by BeauHD from the concealed-information dept.
Danny Hakim reports via The New York Times (Warning: article may be paywalled; alternate source): Documents released Tuesday in a lawsuit against Monsanto raised new questions about the company's efforts to influence the news media and scientific research and revealed internal debate over the safety of its highest-profile product, the weed killer Roundup. The active ingredient in Roundup, glyphosate, is the most common weed killer in the world and is used by farmers on row crops and by home gardeners. While Roundup's relative safety has been upheld by most regulators, a case in federal court in San Francisco continues to raise questions about the company's practices and the product itself.

The documents underscore the lengths to which the agrochemical company goes to protect its image. Documents show that Henry I. Miller, an academic and a vocal proponent of genetically modified crops, asked Monsanto to draft an article for him that largely mirrored one that appeared under his name on Forbes's website in 2015. Mr. Miller could not be reached for comment. A similar issue appeared in academic research. An academic involved in writing research funded by Monsanto, John Acquavella, a former Monsanto employee, appeared to express discomfort with the process, writing in a 2015 email to a Monsanto executive, "I can't be part of deceptive authorship on a presentation or publication." He also said of the way the company was trying to present the authorship: "We call that ghost writing and it is unethical." Mr. Miller's 2015 article on Forbes's website was an attack on the findings of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a branch of the World Health Organization that had labeled glyphosate a probable carcinogen, a finding disputed by other regulatory bodies. In the email traffic, Monsanto asked Mr. Miller if he would be interested in writing an article on the topic, and he said, "I would be if I could start from a high-quality draft." The article appeared under Mr. Miller's name, and with the assertion that "opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own." The magazine did not mention any involvement by Monsanto in preparing the article.
Ubuntu

Ubuntu's Unity desktop environment can run in Windows (wordpress.com) 170

Posted by EditorDavid from the surreal-compatibility dept.
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: "This is one of the coolest tickets I've seen on GitHub," writes Ubuntu developer Adolfo Jayme Barrientos, adding "this kind of surreal compatibility between platforms is now enabled...the fact that you can execute and use Linux window managers there, without virtual machines, is simply mind-blowing."

"The Windows 10 Anniversary Update coming in August includes an unusual feature aimed at developers: an Ubuntu sub-system that lets you run Linux software using a command-line interface," explains Liliputing.com "Preview versions have been available since April, and while Microsoft and Canonical worked together to bring support for the Bash terminal to Windows 10, it didn't take long for some users to figure out that they could get some desktop Linux apps to run in Windows. Now it looks like you can even load Ubuntu's Unity desktop environment, making windows 10 look like Ubuntu.
AI

California Researchers Build The World's First 1,000-Processor Chip (ucdavis.edu) 205

Posted by EditorDavid from the laying-down-all-your-chips dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the University of California, Davis about the world's first microchip with 1,000 independent programmable processors: The 1,000 processors can execute 115 billion instructions per second while dissipating only 0.7 Watts, low enough to be powered by a single AA battery...more than 100 times more efficiently than a modern laptop processor... The energy-efficient "KiloCore" chip has a maximum computation rate of 1.78 trillion instructions per second and contains 621 million transistors.
Programs get split across many processors (each running independently as needed with an average maximum clock frequency of 1.78 gigahertz), "and they transfer data directly to each other rather than using a pooled memory area that can become a bottleneck for data." Imagine how many mind-boggling things will become possible if this much processing power ultimately finds its way into new consumer technologies.
Open Source

Infographic: Ubuntu Linux Is Everywhere 185

Posted by BeauHD from the all-around-us dept.
prisoninmate writes: To celebrate the launch of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, due for release later this month, on April 21, Canonical put together an interesting infographic, showing the world how popular Ubuntu is. From the infographic, it looks like there are over 60 million Ubuntu images launched by Docker users, 14 million Vagrant images of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS from HashiCorp, 20 million launches of Ubuntu instances during 2015 in public and private clouds, as well as bare metal, and 2 million new Ubuntu Cloud instances launched in November 2015. Ubuntu is used on the International Space Station, on the servers of popular online services like Netflix, Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit, Dropbox, PayPal, Wikipedia, and Instagram, in Google, Tesla, George Hotz, and Uber cars. It is also employed at Bloomberg, Weta Digital and Walmart, at the Brigham Young University to control the Mars Rover, and it is even behind the largest supercomputer in the world.
Privacy

There Are Some Super Shady Things In Oculus Rift's Terms of Service (gizmodo.com) 186

Posted by BeauHD from the buyer-beware dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: While the [Oculus Rift] is cool, like any interesting gadget, it's worth looking through the Terms of Service, because there are some worrisome things included. Quite a few of the items in the document are pretty typical in any sort of Terms of Service agreement. These include details like waiving your right to a juried trial and agreeing to go into arbitration instead. Oculus can also terminate your service for myriad reasons, and third parties can collect information on you. However, there are some even more devilish details in the Rift's full Terms of Service. If you create something with the Rift, the Terms of Service say that you surrender all rights to that work and that Oculus can use it whenever it wants, for whatever purposes. Basically, if you create something using the device, Oculus can't own it, but the company can use it -- and they don't have to pay you for for using it. Oculus can use it even if you don't agree with its use. Oculus can collect data from you while you're using the device. Furthermore, the information that they collect can be used to directly market products to you. As UploadVR noted, the Oculus Rift is a device that is always on (much like Microsoft's Xbox One Kinect feature) which leads to further concerns about when the information will be collected.

Comment Collusion? (Score 4, Insightful) 399

by Ydna (#50960987) Attached to: The War On Campus Sexual Assault Goes Digital

I think this is a pretty cool idea (improving the likelihood of reporting rapists and ill-informed post-adolescents). But will it be able to avoid collusion on the part of those reporting? Multiple persons with an ax to grind (or just wanting to "tease" someone) could seemingly file multiple reports triggering the escrow's release. That, in itself, is not the problem. It's the consequences of free (or possibly anonymous) condemnation. I still think anything that improves reporting of (genuine) assault is a good thing. I just worry about how technology has an equal hand in facilitating asshattery.

There are two goods I would like to see from an effort like this: punish the truly criminal and better educate those poisoned with the antique ideals of past generations. I didn't have the best education regarding this (but it was better than most maybe) as a child and must frequently question my thinking regarding other humans. Yes, I'm talking about men. I prefer to be inclusive, but men are the fucking problem here.

I just don't want to ruin someone's life because of poor guidance (by parents, peers, media, educators, etc.). I expect that a small percentage of false-positives is to be expected. But I don't want to provide a means to facilitate it.

Even the most vile transgressor deserves to face their accusers.
Transportation

Rookie Dongle Warns Parents When Their Kids Are Driving Too Fast (thestack.com) 153

Posted by samzenpus from the always-watching dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Dongle Apps, a Belgian tech company, has introduced a new system which alerts a car owner if the vehicle's driver is breaking the speed limit. Initially designed for parents and guardians to keep an eye on their young ones behind the wheel, the 'Rookie Dongle', connects to the vehicle's on-board diagnostics (OBD II) port, internal GPS and mobile technologies to push real-time data to the cloud and send notifications to car owners via email or text when the driver is speeding, suddenly accelerates, brakes hard or has high RPM levels.

Comment Only a grand? (Score 1) 52

by Ydna (#50329975) Attached to: The 2015 Underhanded C Contest Has Begun

Only US$1,000.00? That's useless. For those who study the history of code (in any klanguage, but especially C [or microcode]), this could be a meaningful challenge. But only if we're talking six figures. At least the really smart people I've been blessed to associate with are worth it.

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