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Submission + - One Dead, Two Critically Wounded in Assassination Attempt on Donald Trump 17

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Former President Donald Trump was surrounded and rushed off a stage by Secret Service agents at a rally in Butler, PA following an assassination attempt that left one crowd member dead, two other spectators critically wounded, and Trump bloodied by sniper fire that hit his ear (video). The shooter, who opened fire with an AR-15-type semiautomatic rifle from a rooftop several hundred feet from the stage where Trump was speaking, was killed. The release of his identity is pending confirmation by law enforcement.

Submission + - Germany's Giant Windmills Are Wildly Unpopular (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: It’s getting harder to get permission to erect the turbine towers. Local regulations are getting stricter. Bavaria decided back in 2014 that the distance between a wind turbine and the nearest housing must be 10 times the height of the mast, which, given the density of dwellings, makes it hard to find a spot anywhere. Wind energy development is practically stalled in the state now. Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin, passed a law this year demanding that wind-farm operators pay 10,000 euros ($11,100) per turbine each year to communities within 3 kilometers of the windmills.

Wind projects are also often rejected or stalled because they’re deemed to interfere with military communications, air traffic control or broadcast radio stations.

Besides, local opponents of the wind farms often go to court to stall new developments or even have existing towers dismantled. According to the wind-industry lobby BWE, 325 turbine installations with a total capacity of more than 1 gigawatt (some 2% of the country’s total installed capacity) are tied up in litigation. The irony is that the litigants are often just as “green” as the wind-energy proponents — one is the large conservation organization NABU, which says it’s not against wind energy as such but merely demands that installations are planned with preserving nature in mind. Almost half of the complaints are meant to protect various bird and bat species; others claim the turbines make too much noise or emit too much low-frequency infrasound. Regardless of the validity of such claims, projects get tied up in the courts even after jumping through the many hoops necessary to get a permit.

Submission + - Russian 'Sovereign Internet' Law Gives Government Sweeping Power Over Internet (npr.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A Russian law has taken effect that, in theory, would allow the Russian government to cut off the country's Internet from the rest of the world. The "sovereign Internet law," as the government calls it, greatly enhances the Kremlin's control over the Web. It was passed earlier this year and allows Russia's government to cut off the Internet completely or from traffic outside Russia "in an emergency," as the BBC reported. But some of the applications could be more subtle, like the ability to block a single post.

It requires Internet service providers to install software that can "track, filter, and reroute internet traffic," as Human Rights Watch stated. Such technology allows the state telecommunications watchdog "to independently and extrajudicially block access to content that the government deems a threat." The equipment would conduct what's known as "deep packet inspection," an advanced way to filter network traffic. Such widespread control is alarming to human rights groups, which fear it could be used to silence dissent. The Russian government has justified the law by saying it is needed to prevent U.S. cyberattacks. And, as the BBC reported, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has rejected the idea the law could be used to cut off Russia from the rest of the world: "No-one is suggesting cutting the Internet."

Submission + - NordVPN Users' Passwords Exposed In Mass Credential-Stuffing Attacks (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As many as 2,000 users of NordVPN, the virtual private network service that recently disclosed a server hack that leaked crypto keys, have fallen victim to credential-stuffing attacks that allow unauthorized access to their accounts. In recent weeks, credentials for NordVPN users have circulated on Pastebin and other online forums. They contain the email addresses, plain-text passwords, and expiration dates associated with NordVPN user accounts.

I received a list of 753 credentials on Thursday and polled a small sample of users. The passwords listed for all but one were still in use. The one user who had changed their password did so after receiving an unrequested password reset email. It would appear someone who gained unauthorized access was trying to take over the account. Several other people said their accounts had been accessed by unauthorized people. Over the past week, breach notification service Have I Been Pwned has reported at least 10 lists of NordVPN credentials similar to the one I obtained. While it’s likely that some accounts are listed in multiple lists, the number of user accounts easily tops 2,000. What’s more, a large number of the email addresses in the list I received weren’t indexed at all by Have I Been Pwned, indicating that some compromised credentials are still leaking into public view. Most of the Web pages that host these credentials have been taken down, but at the time this post was going live, at least one remained available on Pastebin, despite the fact Ars brought it to NordVPN’s attention more than 17 hours earlier.

Submission + - Mozilla To Stop Supporting Sideloaded Extensions In Firefox (zdnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla has announced today plans to discontinue one of the three methods through which extensions can be installed in Firefox. Starting next year, Firefox users won't be able to install extensions by placing an XPI extension file inside a special folder inside a user's Firefox directory. The method, known as sideloading, was initially created to aid developers of desktop apps. In case they wanted to distribute a Firefox extension with their desktop app, the developers could configure the app's installer to drop a Firefox XPI extension file inside the Firefox browser's folder.

This method has been available to Firefox extension developers since the browser's early days. However, today, Mozilla announced plans to discontinue supporting sideloaded extensions, citing security risks. Mozilla plans to stop supporting this feature next year in a two-phase plan. The first will take place with the release of Firefox 73 in February 2020. Firefox will continue to read sideloaded extensions, but they'll be slowly converted into normal add-ons inside a user's Firefox profile, and made available in the browser's Add-ons section. By March 2020, with the release of Firefox 74, Mozilla plans to completely remove the ability to sideload an extension. By that point, Mozilla hopes that all sideloaded extensions will be moved inside users' Add-ons section.

Submission + - Uber Allegedly Paid $100K Ransom and Had Hackers Sign NDAs After Data Breach (cbsnews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: New details about how Uber responded to a massive hack attack in 2016 raise questions about the way it handled sensitive customer information. Instead of reporting the hackers to police, the company allegedly paid $100,000 in exchange for a promise to delete 57 million user files the men stole off a third party server, prosecutors said. Within weeks of paying the ransom, Uber employees showed up at Brandon Glover's Winter Park, Florida, home and found Vasile Mereacre at a hotel restaurant in Toronto, Canada, the Justice Department said. The pair admitted their crimes, but Uber didn't turn them over to the cops. Instead, they had the hackers sign non-disclosure agreements, promising to keep quiet. The two hackers pleaded guilty on Wednesday.

But there was a third person involved who was unknown to Uber, U.S. attorney for Northern California Dave Anderson told CBS News correspondent Kris Van Cleave in an exclusive interview. Anderson, who investigated the hack, said there's "no way to know definitively" what actually happened to the stolen data. [...] The hackers also targeted a company owned by LinkedIn in December of 2016, but prosecutors say LinkedIn did not pay and promptly reported the hack to police. Uber eventually did as well — a year after the hack, when new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, publicly disclosed the attack. The two known hackers were eventually arrested and pleaded guilty on Wednesday to conspiracy to commit extortion charges. They face a maximum of five years in prison. The third person involved remains at large.

Submission + - SPAM: Will Amazon Poach CS Profs Needed to Produce CS Grads Promised for Amazon HQ2?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: To make good on the proposal that snagged it a share of the Amazon HQ2 prize last year, the State of Virginia pledged to produce an additional 25K-35K grads annually with computer science or closely related degrees. And while university leaders in the Greater Washington DC area appear to be on the same page with Amazon when it comes to filling the region's ever-growing demand for tech talent, the Washington Business Journal reports there's an understanding that as universities in the region grow their faculty to meet the demands of Amazon, the schools will likely also have to compete with Amazon for those same educators. At a panel discussion on the future of Amazon HQ2 and education, interim president of George Mason University Anne Holton noted that the local schools are all going to be competing for faculty talent ("It's going to be elbows out"). Turning to Ardine Williams, VP of workforce development at Amazon, Holton added, "We are jostling with you for the new people too." So, if the people who are qualified to educate the next generation of STEM students for Amazon can also get paid more to work for Amazon, is professor poaching history likely to repeat itself?

Comment The Name Confused People (Score 1) 73

I used to be a DTV Now Subscriber. Every time I tried to explain the service to friends and family, they instantly got confused and thought I was using the Satellite based service. The name change will be a good thing to help "normal" consumers differentiate between the two services. That being said, the DVR functionality is abysmal...

Comment Weird Location (Score 3, Informative) 72

by dodgerfan (#45272851) Attached to: Welcome to the Goodwill Computer Museum (Video)
I visited there last year when I was in Austin for Formula 1. We happened to stumble upon the location as it's located in a strip mall right next to a Wal-Mart. The museum is pretty cool and has some neat stuff. If you are in the area it's definitely worth a look. There is also a great Goodwill computer store right next door with parts for older stuff (Mostly Dell, of course).

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