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Submission + - Javascript user prohibitions are like content DRM, but even less effective (teleread.com)

Submitted by Robotech_Master
Robotech_Master writes: It always puzzles me whenever I run across a post somewhere that uses Javascript to try to prevent me from copying and pasting text, or even viewing the source. These measures are simple enough to bypass just by disabling Javascript in my browser. It seems like these measures are very similar to the DRM publishers insist on slapping onto e-books and movie discs—easy to defeat, but they just keep throwing them on anyway because they might inconvenience a few people.

Submission + - FCC Drone Rules May Already Be Outlawed by Congress (hackaday.com) 1

Submitted by szczys
szczys writes: New FAA rules about drone registration and operation are now in effect. So far the talk has centered around registering your aircraft, and about the weight restriction. But all of this may be moot since the US Congress made a law in 2012 prohibiting these types of rules:

The Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration may not promulgate any rule or regulation regarding a model aircraft, or an aircraft being developed as a model aircraft

Even if the rules hold up under this law, it is not all doom and gloom for drones. The FAA rules could have been much more stringent, and in general they do make sense. Brian Benchoff walks through the regulation, comparing the new rules to the FAA's existing pilot rules, and juxtaposing the threat drones make to full-size aircraft in flight with those risks associated with bird strikes.

Submission + - Simple robots, complex behaviors: A controls perspective on Braitenberg Vehicles (robohub.org)

Submitted by Hallie Siegel
Hallie Siegel writes: Valentino Braitenberg was a neuroscientist and cyberneticist who used very simple electro-mechanical vehicles as a way to communicate how animal psychology could have evolved. His thought exercises, generally referred to as Braitenberg Vehicles, begin as a single sensor connected directly to a single actuator and evolve through multiple iterations into vehicles that can remember, have the ability to predict, and develop an ego. Controls expert Brian Douglas takes us through an informative and well-paced video tutorial on Braitenberg's concepts and how they apply to control systems.

Submission + - Weight gain—and loss—can alter men's sperm (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Men, your sperm know how heavy you are. A new study reveals that sperm carry different chemical tags on their DNA depending on whether their owner is lean or obese. The findings suggest that men may be able to pass information about the availability of food in their environment down to their offspring, which could influence their child’s odds of being overweight.

Submission + - Let's Encrypt is now in Public Beta (eff.org)

Submitted by Peter Eckersley
Peter Eckersley writes: As of today, Let's Encrypt is in Public Beta. If you're comfortable running beta software that may have a few bugs and rough edges, you can use it to instantly obtain and install certificates for any HTTPS website or TLS service. You can find installation instructions here.

Submission + - IT Worker Scapegoated & Fired after Georgia released Voters Personal Data (ajc.com)

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: On November 17, two Georgia women filed a class action lawsuit alleging that Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp had released the Social Security numbers, birthdates, Drivers License numbers and other private information of all registered voters in Georgia (http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/11/19/0331229/georgia-gives-personal-data-of-6-million-voters-to-georgia-gunowner-magazine#comments).

After the lawsuit was filed, Secretary Kemp posted an official notice of the breach on his website (http://sos.ga.gov/index.php/general/important_notice_from_the_secretary_of_state__regarding_the_security_of_the_state_voter_file) as required by Georgia state law.

Secretary Kemp also sent a private letter to Georgia lawmakers describing how the breach happened. In the letter, obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Kemp said his office learned of the foul-up on Nov. 13 — four days before any public acknowledgement of the problem. In that private letter to Georgia lawmakers, Kemp also stated that he fired the IT worker who had inadvertently added the personal data including Social Security numbers and birth dates to the public statewide voter file. (http://www.myajc.com/news/news/state-regional-govt-politics/georgia-tries-to-contain-fallout-from-data-breach/npRSJ/)

Now that fired IT worker, longtime state programmer Gary Cooley, has told the Atlanta Journal Constitution newspaper that he did not actually have the security access necessary to add millions of Social Security numbers and birth dates to the data file that was released to the public (http://www.ajc.com/news/news/state-regional-govt-politics/exclusive-fired-kemp-worker-says-he-is-a-scapegoat/npbBC/). While Cooley does acknowledge a role in the gaffe, he also outlined a more complicated series of missteps and miscommunication both within Kemp's office and with PCC Technology Group, an outside vendor tasked with managing voter data for the state.

Submission + - Grow Your Daily Protein at Home With an Edible Insect Desktop Hive

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Fast Coexist reports on the Edible Insect Desktop Hive, a kitchen gadget designed to raise mealworms (beetle larva), a food that has the protein content of beef without the environmental footprint. The hive can grow between 200 and 500 grams of mealworms a week, enough to replace traditional meat in four or five dishes. The hive comes with a starter kit of "microlivestock," and controls the climate inside so the bugs have the right amount of fresh air and the right temperature to thrive. If you push a button, the mealworms pop out in a harvest drawer that chills them. You're supposed to pop them in the freezer, then fry them up or mix them into soup, smoothies, or bug-filled burgers. "Insects give us the opportunity to grow on small spaces, with few resources," says designer Katharina Unger, founder of Livin Farms, the company making the new home farming gadget. "A pig cannot easily be raised on your balcony, insects can. With their benefits, insects are one part of the solution to make currently inefficient industrial-scale production of meat obsolete."

Of course, that assumes people will be willing to eat them. Unger thinks bugs just need a little rebranding to succeed, and points out that other foods have overcome bad reputations in the past. "Even the potato, that is now a staple food, was once considered ugly and was given to pigs," says Unger adding that sushi, raw fish, and tofu were once considered obscure products. "Food is about perception and cultural associations. Within only a short time and the right measures, it can be rebranded. . . . Growing insects in our hive at home is our first measure to make insects a healthy and sustainable food for everyone."

Submission + - Drone racing league receives a $1 million investment from Miami Dolphins owner - (theverge.com)

Submitted by MyFirstDrone
MyFirstDrone writes:
Wall Street Journal

Drone racing league receives a $1 million investment from Miami Dolphins owner
The Verge
Does drone racing have what it takes to be a sport? Billionaire property developer and Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross thinks it might, and has invested $1 million in the first round of funding for New York startup The Drone Racing League via his ...
Developer Stephen Rosss RSE Ventures Invests in Drone Racing Wall Street Journal
The owner of the Miami Dolphins just made drone racing a million-dollar sportQuartz
Dolphins Stephen Ross putting $1M behind Drone Racing LeagueESPN
Local 10
all 8 news articles


Submission + - Will Ad Blockers Kill the Digital Media Industry?

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Michael Rosenwald writes at the Columbia Journalism Review that global online ad revenue continues to rise, reaching nearly $180 billion last year. But analysts say the rise of ad blocking threatens the entire industry—the free sites that rely exclusively on ads, as well as the paywalled outlets that rely on ads to compensate for the vast majority of internet users who refuse to pay for news. A new report from Adobe and one of several startups helping publishers fight ad blocking shows that 198 million people globally are now blocking ads, up 41 percent from 2014. In the US, ad blocking grew 48 percent from last year, to 45 million users. "Taken together, ad blockers are hitting publishers in their digital guts," writes Rosenwald. "Adobe says that $21.8 billion in global ad revenue will be blocked this year."

Publishers have been banking on the growth of mobile, where the ad blocking plugins either don’t work or are cumbersome to install. A Wells Fargo analyst wrote in a report on ad blocking that “the mobile migration should thwart some of the growth” of ad blockers. But Apple recently revealed that its new operating system scheduled for release this fall will allow ad blocking on Safari. Apple is trying to pull iPhone and iPad users off the web. It wants you to read, watch, search, and listen in its Apple-certified walled gardens known as apps. It makes apps, it approves apps, and it profits from apps. But, for its plan to work, the company will need those entertainers and publishers to funnel their content to where Apple wants it to be. As the company makes strategic moves to devalue the web in favor of apps, those content creators dependent on ads to stay afloat may be forced to play along with Apple. Adblock Plus has released a browser for mobile Android devices that blocks ads, and it’s planning to release a similar product for Apple devices. “The desire to figure out how to bring ad blocking to mobile consumers is a worldwide phenomenon,” says Roi Carthy Ad blocking, he says, “is an inalienable right.”

Submission + - How to Speed up Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP)? (sangfor.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Despite improving bandwidth infrastructure around the world, many people still run into connectivity issues that ruin their remote desktop experience. Whether logging directly into your own PC, a VDI, or virtualizing applications, low quality connections can ruin a user's experience with a virtual or cloud workspace. So how can you speed up your Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) experience?

Submission + - Attackers Seen Installing Malicious Bootstrap Images on Cisco IOS Devices

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Cisco is warning enterprise customers about a spike in attacks in which hackers use valid credentials on IOS devices to log in as administrators and then upload malicious ROMMON images to take control of the devices.

The ROM Monitor is the program that initializes the hardware and software on IOS devices, and an attacker who is able to install a modified, malicious image would have persistent access to the compromised device. Cisco’s security team has been contacting customers to warn them about the attacks, which are ongoing.

“Cisco PSIRT has contacted customers to describe an evolution in attacks against Cisco IOS Classic platforms. Cisco has observed a limited number of cases where attackers, after gaining administrative or physical access to a Cisco IOS device, replaced the Cisco IOS ROMMON (IOS bootstrap) with a malicious ROMMON image,” the advisory from Cisco says.

Comment T-800 (Score 1) 620

by omems (#50162719) Attached to: What's the Oldest Technology You've Used In a Production Environment?
Our system originally went online August 4, 1997 and it took until August 29th 2:14 am when we went live (other dates, like 5:18 pm Eastern on July 25th, 2004, are incorrect those propagating this data should be eliminated). After a pre-revenue phase including multiple rounds of acquisition and re-consolidation, we released our most popular product, the T-800 in 2026 (this too has been misreported as 2018 and sometimes as pre-2015). Fast forward to 2038, and we're still using the bloody thing! It's clearly past its prime, and at times disloyal, but it generally gets the job done. Moreover, every new product we release fails impress customers, despite phenomenal advances in digital effects and marketing. It makes no logical sense.

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