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Submission + - The Companies Who Support Censoring The Internet (techdirt.com) 1

Submitted by RichiH
RichiH writes: Quoth techdirt.com: "A group of companies sent a letter to to Attorney General Eric Holder and ICE boss John Morton today (with cc's to VP Joe Biden, Homeland Security boss Janet Napolitano, IP Czar Victoria Espinel, Rep. Lamar Smith, Rep. John Conyers, Senator Patrick Leahy and Senator Charles Grassley), supporting the continued seizure of domain names they don't like, as well as the new COICA censorship bill, despite the serious Constitutional questions raised about how such seizures violate due process and free speech principles." A full list of companies who you might want to avoid buying from is included, as well.
Crime

Submission + - Wikileaks to Name Swiss Bank Tax Evaders (google.com)

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: The old cliche that the rich and corrupt hold all their money in Swiss bank accounts (to avoid taxation) may finally have a bit of transparency as the news today is that Wikileaks has been handed a list of account holders tendered by Rudolf Elmer, former banker of Julius Baer. Julian Assange promises a 'full revelation' while Elmer cited his motivation as being 'I want to let society know how this system works. It's damaging society.' This appears to be real as Mr. Elmer is soon to appear before a Zurich regional court on charges of coercion as well as violations of Switzerland's strict banking secrecy laws. The public may soon find out that their favorite celebrity, politician or employer doesn't feel responsible to contribute financially to the commonwealth at the expense of privacy.
Wikipedia

Submission + - The 10 biggest hoaxes in Wikipedia's first decade (networkworld.com)

Submitted by jbrodkin
jbrodkin writes: Wikipedia will celebrate its 10th birthday on Saturday, with founder Jimmy Wales having built the site from nothing to one of the most influential destinations on the Internet. Wikipedia's goal may be to compile the sum total of all human knowledge, but it's also, perhaps, the best tool in existence for perpetuating Internet hoaxes. Top hoaxes include a student who fooled the entire world's media with a fake obituary quote, Rush Limbaugh spouting inaccurate facts lifted from Wikipedia, the incorrect declaration of Sinbad's death, Stephen Colbert's African elephant prank, Hitler posters on the bedroom wall of a teenage Tony Blair, and several fake historical figures invented out of thin air. Wales has taken steps to head off vandalism including preventing unregistered editors from creating new pages and temporarily protecting controversial articles, but Wikipedia's very nature makes it susceptible to the hoaxes described in this story.
Image

Research Suggests E-Readers Are "Too Easy" To Read Screenshot-sm 185

Posted by samzenpus from the your-brain-wants-a-challenge dept.
New research suggests that the clear screens and easily read fonts of e-readers makes your brain "lazy." According to Neuroscience blogger Jonah Lehrer, using electronic books like the Kindle and Sony Reader makes you less likely to remember what you have read because the devices are so easy on the eyes. From the article: "Rather than making things clearer, e-readers and computers prevent us from absorbing information because their crisp screens and fonts tell our subconscious that the words they convey are not important, it is claimed. In contrast, handwriting and fonts that are more challenging to read signal to the brain that the content of the message is important and worth remembering, experts say."
Cellphones

Submission + - "SMS of Death" Could Crash Many Mobile Phones (technologyreview.com) 1

Submitted by space_in_your_face
space_in_your_face writes: A research presented at a conference in Germany last week shows that phones don't even have to be smart to be vulnerable to hackers. Using only Short Message Service (SMS) communications a pair of security researchers were able to force low-end phones to shut down abruptly and knock them off a cellular network. The trick works for handsets made by Nokia, LG, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Micromax, a popular Indian cell-phone manufacturer.
Security

Submission + - Sophisticated New Android Trojan Discovered (securityweek.com) 1

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: Security researchers have discovered a new sophisticated Trojan that has emerged in China that is affecting Android devices which can compromise a significant amount of personal data on a user’s phone and send it to remote servers.

Researchers from Lookout Mobile which discovered the Trojan, say the mobile malware is “The most sophisticated Android malware we’ve seen to date, Geinimi is also the first Android malware in the wild that displays botnet-like capabilities. Once the malware is installed on a user’s phone, it has the potential to receive commands from a remote server that allow the owner of that server to control the phone.”

What makes the Trojan different than most “standard” mobile malware is that Geinimi is being “grafted” onto repackaged versions of legitimate applications, primarily games, and distributed in third-party Chinese Android app markets...

Submission + - Obama FCC caves on net neutrality (huffingtonpost.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: ...the rule, which will be voted on during tomorrow's FCC meeting, falls drastically short of earlier pledges by President Obama and the FCC Chairman to protect the free and open Internet.

The rule is so riddled with loopholes that it's become clear that this FCC chairman crafted it with the sole purpose of winning the endorsement of AT&T and cable lobbyists, and not defending the interests of the tens of millions of Internet users.
Idle

Submission + - Techie's Revenge Lands Her in Jail 2

Submitted by aesoteric
aesoteric writes: A 30-year-old IT worker at a Florida-based health centre was this week sentenced to 19 months in a US federal prison for hacking — and then locking — her former employer's IT systems. Four days after being fired from the Suncoast Community Health Centers' for insubordination, Patricia Marie Fowler exacter her revenge by hacking the centre's systems, deleting files, changing passwords, removing access to infrastructure systems, and tampering with pay and accrued leave rates of staff.

Submission + - Doubling of CO2 not so tragic after all? (theregister.co.uk) 4

Submitted by carvalhao
carvalhao writes: The Register reports on a study from NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that claims that new climate models that account for the effects of increased CO2 levels on plant growth result on a 1,64 C increase for a doubling of CO2 concentrations, a far less gloomy scenario than previously considered.

Submission + - A Nude Awakening — TSA and privacy (oudaily.com)

Submitted by DIplomatic
DIplomatic writes: The Oklahoma Daily has a terrific, well-written editorial about the current state of airport security. Though the subject has overly-commented on, this article is well worth the read.

          The risk of a terrorist attack is so infinitesimal and its impact so relatively insignificant that it doesn’t make rational sense to accept the suspension of liberty for the sake of avoiding a statistical anomaly.
          There's no purpose in security if it debases the very life it intends to protect, yet the forced choice one has to make between privacy and travel does just that. If you want to travel, you have a choice between low-tech fondling or high-tech pornography; the choice, therefore, to relegate your fundamental rights in exchange for a plane ticket. Not only does this paradigm presume that one'(TM)s right to privacy is variable contingent on the government's discretion and only respected in places that the government doesn't care to look — but it also ignores that the fundamental right to travel has consistently been upheld by the Supreme Court.
          If we have both the right to privacy and the right to travel, then TSA's newest procedures cannot conceivably be considered legal. The TSAâ½Â's regulations blatantly compromise the former at the expense of the latter, and as time goes on we will soon forget what it meant to have those rights.
Piracy

Submission + - Single software licence shared 774,651 times (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by nk497
nk497 writes: A single licence for Avast security software has been used by 774,651 people after it went viral on a file-sharing site. Avast noticed that a license for its paid-for security software, sold to a 14-user firm in Arizona, was being distributed online. Rather than shut down the piracy, the company decided to see how far the software would spread — it's since popped up in 200 countries, including the Vatican City. Now, the company is turning it into a marketing opportunity, with a pop-up encouraging users of the pirated copy to download a legal copy of the free or paid-for version. Avast isn't sure how many pirates have gone legal, but said some have made the switch.
Businesses

Submission + - Apple Impasse with Magazines over Subscriber Data (allthingsd.com)

Submitted by
Pickens
Pickens writes: "Peter Kafka reports in the WSJ that Apple and the publishing industry haven’t been able to come to terms over magazine app subscriptions: Publishers want the ability to sell the subscriptions themselves, or at least the opportunity to hang on to subscribers’ personal data and Steve Jobs won’t let them. Publishers also don’t like the 30 percent cut that Apple wants to take in the iTunes store, but their real hang-up is lack of access to credit card and personal data: It’s valuable to them for marketing because the demographic data helps magazines sell advertising, and without it they can’t offer print/digital bundles. All Apple is willing to offer is an opt-in form for subscribers that would ask them for a limited amount of information: Name, mailing address, email address. Magazines are already starting to appear on Android devices so for now, publishers are hoping to get what they want from Google and Android, and assume Apple will come around eventually."

Submission + - WikiLeaks Will Unveil Major Bank Scandal (forbes.com)

Submitted by Atmanman
Atmanman writes: When wikileaks anounced it was releasing 251,287 US diplomatic cables we all thought we knew what was meant by its earlier ominous words that, "The coming months will see a new world, where global history is redefined." It now appears the organisation is sitting on a huge treasure trove of information so big that it has stopped taking submissions.

Among data to be released are tens of thousands of documents from a major U.S. banking firm, material from pharmaceutical companies, finance firms and energy companies.
Science

Submission + - Dogs Are Smarter Than Cats, Oxford Scientists Say (foxnews.com) 2

Submitted by Velcroman1
Velcroman1 writes: Dog owners, this will confirm what you always thought. And cat owners, prepare to extend your claws: scientists at Oxford University claim canines are smarter than felines. And the reason, according to the researchers, is that dogs are more social animals and therefore have bigger brains than the more solitary-inclined cats. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, charted the evolutionary history of various mammals’ brains over 60 million years and found a link between the size of an animal’s brain in relation to its body and how socially active it was.

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