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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 137 declined, 25 accepted (162 total, 15.43% accepted)

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Submission + - Hackers have infiltrated our power grid's control networks (lasvegassun.com)

Submitted by davidwr
davidwr writes: A security researcher and the Associated Press are reporting that hackers have infiltrated many of our nation's power grid networks. Exfiltrated data included engineering plans and other non-public information that could aid an attacker later as well as account credentials. Multiple companies were affected but one of the more notable ones was the energy provider Calpine.

Submission + - India bans rape documentary, BBC will air it tonight

Submitted by davidwr
davidwr writes: In a classic case of the Streisand effect, BBC4 will move up its scheduled broadcast of India's Daughter to 10PM Wednesday night after it was banned in India. It was originally scheduled to air this Sunday, which is International Women's Day. "The move was made after Indian authorities banned the domestic broadcast of the film and said they were also trying to prevent it from being shown worldwide."

The film is about the brutal 2012 gang rape of Jyoti Singh, a 23-year old student.

Yes, I realize that Slashdot is "news for nerds" but the attempted worldwide censorship by India and BBC4's response should strike a chord with many /. readers.

Submission + - UK Tribunal says UK-US surveillance illegal

Submitted by davidwr
davidwr writes: The Guardian reports that the UK's Investigative Powers Tribunal has ruled against some aspects of the GCHK/NSA survellance that took place from 2007-2014, saying it "breached human rights law." It goes on to say that the current way things are happening is legal. To read more, go to the IPT's list of judgments page and scroll to the bottom. Or just go straight to the linked PDFs: Liberty_Ors_Judgment_6Feb15.pdf and Liberty-Order6Feb15.pdf

Submission + - Unexplained out-of-band WIndows DVD patch

Submitted by davidwr
davidwr writes: Microsoft released September 2014 update for DVD playback in Windows 7 SP1

as an out-of-band "Important" update yesterday without explaining why it was rushed instead of waiting two weeks.

Microsoft knows that patching annoys system administrators and others and typically doesn't do out of band updates without a good reason. Unlike the recent out-of-band Russian Time Zone update, there isn't an obvious to be a "you must install this by a certain date or something will break" reason to rush this.

Does anyone know why Microsoft didn't either 1) wait two weeks or 2) provide a clearer explanation of why this is important enough to push out early?

Canada

Submission + - 30+ year old minor drug charge keeps Canadian contest winner from Super Bowl (www.cbc.ca) 3

Submitted by davidwr
davidwr writes: It's not "your rights ONline" but a Canadian who won an all-expenses-paid trip to New Orleans couldn't get past US Customs because he got busted with 2 grams of pot back in 1981, when he was 19 years old.

With Toronto and other Canadian cities having tech hubs, this "zero tolerance" is probably already having an impact on technology companies who have employees or contractors with ancient criminal records and who can't send them to US industry events.
Government

Submission + - Congress, at Last Minute, Drops Requirement to Obtain Warrant to Monitor Email (allgov.com) 1

Submitted by davidwr
davidwr writes: Before passing the Video Privacy Protection Act Amendments Act, the Senate dropped an amendment which would require the feds to get warrants before looking at mail older than 6 months that is stored on a 3rd-party server.

This means the status quo, dating from the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, remains.
The Military

Submission + - Dolphins With Friggin' Lasers^H^H^H^H^H^HPistols (en.rian.ru)

Submitted by davidwr
davidwr writes: OK, it's not sharks with lasers, but Reuters reports the Ukranians are training their dolphin killing machines to use knives and pistols.

The other country training dolphins to take over the world before they leave and thank us for all the fish? The United States.

I for one welcome our aquatic mammalian overlords.
Security

Submission + - Turn your computer off? Maybe not: Your RAM may still be foresicly copyable. (alphagalileo.org)

Submitted by davidwr
davidwr writes: Stravroula Karayianni, Vasilios Katos, and Christos K. Georgiadis describe a way to recover passwords from RAM in a computer that's been turned off but which still has electrical power connected to it. They rely on the fact that in many computers, if you "turn off" the computer but still leave battery or A/C power connected, the RAM continues to be powered and is just as "fresh" as the moment you thought you turned off your computer. Their paper, "A framework for password harvesting from volatile memory," will appear in the journal Int. J. Electronic Security and Digital Forensics, Vol. 4, Nos. 2/3, pp. 154-163.

Submission + - What is a reasoanble immigration policy for highly-trained workers?

Submitted by davidwr
davidwr writes: What are a reasonable temporary-worker or immigration-visa rules to apply to workers whose skills would likely to quickly net them a "top 20th percentile wages" (about $100,000) job in the American workplace if they were allowed to work in the is country?

Should the visa length be time-limited? Should it provide for a path to permanent residency? Should the number be limited and if so, how should we decide what the limit should be?

Note: The people affected are already likely eligible for special work-permit programs, but these programs may have quotas, time limits, prior-job-offer-requirements, and other restrictions. I'm asking /. what they think the limits and restrictions, if any, should be.

I'm assuming normal rules to keep out certain criminals, spies, terrorists, and other "undesirable aliens" will remain as is. These issues are beyond the scope of this question.

Submission + - Hot pigs on the loose (yahoo.com)

Submitted by davidwr
davidwr writes: Oak Ridge has radioactive frogs (YUM!) and now Germany has hot hogs on the hoof (DO NOT EAT!). 'The German boars roam in forests nearly 950 miles (1,500 kilometers ) from Chernobyl. Yet, the amount of radioactive cesium-137 within their tissue often registers dozens of times beyond the recommended limit for consumption and thousands of times above normal.' 'Cesium also accumulates over time in the soil, which makes boars most susceptible They snuffle through forest soil with their snouts and feed on the kinds of mushroom that tend to store radioactivity, Environment Ministry spokesman Thomas Hagbeck said.' 'Japan's Fukushima plant has so far not leaked nearly as much radiation as Chernobyl...' So far???
Facebook

Submission + - Collecting Personal Information About "Facebook Co (vortex.com)

Submitted by davidwr
davidwr writes: [Embargo from /. main page until the next anniversary of Pink Pony Day in a couple of weeks :) . Trim as needed for copyright compliance.]

--cut here--
Contact: Milo M. Münchhausen / FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Phone: (703) 555-0099 Extension 666

"INTERNET UNLIMITED ANALYTICS SURVEILLANCE SERVICES"
ANNOUNCES SUITE OF "FACEBOOK COMMENTS" STRATEGIC SURVEILLANCE TOOLS

April 1, 2011 — Internet Unlimited Analytics Surveillance Services (IUASS) of McLean, Virginia has announced an exciting expansion of its Internet surveillance and analysis services to include a wide range of features for surveillance exploitation and information analysis related to the "One Identity" Facebook Comments system, now being rapidly adopted as the only supported commenting system by both major and minor Web sites around the world.

Up until now, leveraging of Facebook data by law enforcement, insurance companies, and a broad variety of other enterprises — for the locating and profiling of malcontents, underage violators, insurance fraud perpetrators, and other undesirables — has been largely a manual process, often involving human observation of photos posted by Facebook users.

This all changes with the Facebook Comments system. By leveraging the fact that most Facebook users will only maintain a single identity within the Facebook ecosystem, and the new Facebook Comments requirement that all comments posted by a user at any participating site on the Internet must be publicly tagged with their Facebook identity, an enormous new range of surveillance and analysis possibilities have arrived, courtesy of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's "You Only Should Have One Identity on the Internet" vision. Mr. Zuckerberg's prescient and brilliant philosophy, by forcing most users of the Facebook Comment system to be fully identified for every comment that they post on all participating sites, regardless of topic or sensitivity, has enabled the ultimate linking of all aspects of persons' lives — professional, personal, public, and private — into a seamless continuum ripe for deep penetration, analysis, and appropriate exploitation.

IUASS' first new service to take advantage of the Facebook Comments surveillance potential, called FCUTO (Facebook Comments Unlimited Tracking Observer), currently offers two primary operational modes:

Target Mode — When the Facebook ID of a particular person is already known, FCUTO Target Mode will automatically search the Web to gather, analyze, and report (via fully-customizable dossiers) complete data regarding all sites and instances on the Internet (participating in the Facebook Comments system) where the target ID has posted comments. In addition to creating cross-indexed lists of sites and specific comments related to the target ID, the FCUTO service automatically determines the "Undesirability Index" (UI) for the target, based on a complex analysis of the sites visited, and the comments posted, by the target.

Insurance companies can determine if a target has commented in self-incriminating manners on sites discussing HIV/AIDS. Employers can learn if employees are making negative comments about their firm — or positive comments about competitors — and take appropriate punitive actions. Political groups can use FCUTO to verify that their members are not commenting on sites or in ways that could reflect badly on the group, or can use FCUTO to find potential gold mines of "dirty laundry" that could be used to tarnish the reputations of opponents.

Search Mode — FCUTO Search Mode is even more powerful. In Search Mode, you do not need to specify any individual target. Instead, you merely specify the topics, attributes, issues, or other parameters of interest, and FCUTO automatically creates indexed databases of all Facebook Comment user IDs that meet the required criteria anywhere on the Web. You can then use FCUTO Target Mode to build complete dossiers on specific targets of interest who were revealed via Search Mode.

For example, you might want to locate all Facebook IDs where the user has left Facebook Comments on news sites supporting liberal causes or criticizing public officials, while also commenting on sites discussing particular issues such as sexual matters, medical problems, or other data of potential value — depending on your specific target goal sets and operational methodologies.

Under normal conditions without FCUTO, it would be impractical to correlate the public and private lives of so many individuals in a useful manner, but FCUTO, through the genius of Facebook Comments, enables all of this and much more!

Of course, FCUTO includes features to correlate collected data and created dossiers with all other data posted on Facebook by targeted individuals, and to cross-reference with public record data and private commercial databases. You'll know far more about your targets than they know about themselves!

# # #

For more information about using FCUTO to leverage Facebook Comments for your firm, organization, agency, or other enterprise, please contact Milo M. Münchhausen at (703) 555-0099 Extension 666, or via email: milo@iuass.com

- — -

--Lauren--
"Yes. This posting is a satire."
Japan

Submission + - Net sees earthquake damage, routes around it (renesys.com) 2

Submitted by davidwr
davidwr writes: Japanese internet outages mostly healed themselves within hours. While some cables remain out most computers that lost connectivity have it again. From James Cowie's blog linked below: 'The engineers who built Japan's Internet created a dense web of domestic and international connectivity that is among the richest and most diverse on earth, as befits a critical gateway for global connectivity in and out of East Asia. At this point, it looks like their work may have allowed the Internet to do what it does best: route around catastrophic damage and keep the packets flowing, despite terrible chaos and uncertainty.' Let's here it for redundancy and good planning.
Education

Submission + - ADHD kids treated with instant gratification (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by davidwr
davidwr writes: "The brains of children with attention-deficit disorders respond to on-the-spot rewards in the same way as they do to medication, say scientists."

Instead of pumping kids full of Ritalin, we can give them fast rewards for good behavior and pump them only half-full of Ritalin. This won't help them outside the classroom but it might help kids who don't tolerate medication very well.

On a related note, my teacher says if this gets posted to the main page in the next 60 seconds she'll give me a gold star.
Idle

Submission + - Get off my lawn! Old man mines farm (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by davidwr
davidwr writes: 73 year old man says "Get off my lawn" and means it. Alexander Skopintsev, a farmer in far eastern Russia, was convicted of planting mines to "ward off trespassers" and protect his potatoes. Kids, the next time the old man down the street says "get off my lawn" I suggest you listen!

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