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Comment It's all about DRM (Score 5, Interesting) 42

First question: why is Amazon dropping support for old Kindles? Answer: Because older Kindles cannot ne updated to support mandatory new DRM. Almost all Kindle books are downloaded with DRM. Previously, the encryption key used was a function of the serial number of the Kindle device. This has be changed to a random number stored within the firmware. If a Kindle is unable to run the new DRM, it is unable to read most new ebooks. Older Kindles do not have enough memory to rin the newer firmware and Amazon has chosen not to backport just the new DRM. The second question is: why is Amazon changing the DRM? Yo be precise, Amazon appears to be changing only the encryption key, the other features of the DRM appear to be unchanged. That's less clear. The old keys were a hash of the serial number, so a customer who purchased a licensed copy could remove the DRM relatively easily. Amazon may have chosen to block this for their own reasons, or perhaps they were pressured by big publishers. It's not clear. Either way, Amazon is dropping support for older Kindles because they don't support the new version of Amazon's DRM.

Submission + - Chuck Peddle, Lead Designer Of The 650x Microporcessors, Dies

Submitted by kackle
kackle writes: If you cut your teeth on 8-bit computers during their explosion into the mainstream, beginning in the 1970s, you were likely aware of and/or influenced by the work of electrical engineer Charles "Chuck" Peddle, who died this week. The general public may not know his name today, but his efforts had a big impact on the cost and availability of computing to the average person at the beginning of the personal computer era.

Submission + - 'Bombe' Code-Breaking WW2 Computer Was Used To Decipher Message (bbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Computer historians have staged a re-enactment of World War Two code-cracking at Bletchley Park. A replica code-breaking computer called a Bombe was used to decipher a message scrambled by an Enigma machine. Held at the National Museum of Computing (TNMOC), the event honored Polish help with wartime code-cracking. Enigma machines were used extensively by the German army and navy during World War Two. This prompted a massive effort by the Allies to crack the complex method they employed to scramble messages. That effort was co-ordinated via Bletchley Park and resulted in the creation of the Bombe, said Paul Kellar who helps to keep a replica machine running at the museum. Renowned mathematician Alan Turing was instrumental in the creation of the original Bombe.

For its re-enactment, TNMOC recruited a team of 12 and used a replica Bombe that, until recently, had been on display at the Bletchley Park museum next door. The electro-mechanical Bombe was designed to discover which settings the German Enigma operators used to scramble their messages. As with World War Two messages, the TNMOC team began with a hint or educated guess about the content of the message, known as a "crib", which was used to set up the Bombe. The machine then cranked through the millions of possible combinations until it came to a "good stop", said Mr Kellar. This indicated that the Bombe had found key portions of the settings used to turn readable German into gobbledygook. After that, said Mr Kellar, it was just a matter of time before the 12-strong team cracked the message.

Submission + - Massive Undersea Walls Could Stop Glaciers From Melting, Scientists Say (cnn.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Building walls on the seafloor could prevent glaciers from melting and sea levels rising due to global warming, scientists say. Barriers of sand and rock positioned at the base of glaciers would stop ice sheets sliding and collapsing, and prevent warm water from eroding the ice from beneath, according to research published this week in the Cryosphere journal, from the European Geosciences Union. The audacious idea centers on the construction of "extremely simple structures, merely piles of aggregate on the ocean floor, although more advanced structures could certainly be explored in the future," said the report's authors, Michael Wolovick, a researcher at the department of geosciences at Princeton University, and John Moore, professor of climate change at the University of Lapland in Finland.

Using computer models to gauge the probable impact of walls on erosion of the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica, one of the world's largest, Wolovick and Moore hoped to test the efficiency of "a locally targeted intervention." They claimed the simplest designs would allow direct comparison with existing engineering projects. "The easiest design that we considered would be comparable to the largest civil engineering projects that humanity has ever attempted," they said. "An ice sheet intervention today would be at the edge of human capabilities." For example, building four isolated walls would require between 0.1 and 1.5 cubic km of material. "That is comparable to the 0.1 km3 that was used to create Palm Jumeirah in Dubai ($12 billion)...(and) the 0.3 km3 that was used to create Hong Kong International Airport ($20 billion)," the report said.

Submission + - What happened when Boston Schools tried for bus fairness with an algorithm (bostonglobe.com) 1

Submitted by sandbagger
sandbagger writes: Last year, the Boston Public Schools asked MIT graduate students Sébastien Martin and Arthur Delarue to build an algorithm that could do the enormously complicated work of changing start times at dozens of schools — and rerouting the hundreds of buses that serve them. In theory this would also help with student alertness.

The political firestorm that erupted proved once more that computer can solve problems but whether or not the answer is politically or socially acceptable is another matter

Submission + - Why is browsing still so slow on my 50Mb link? (pxlnv.com) 3

Submitted by gb7djk
gb7djk writes: Ever wondered why pages see to load slower and slower? Or why it is that browsing seems to take just as long to load a page, even though your broadband connection doubled in speed a couple of months ago?

When I moved into my own apartment several years ago, I got to pick my plan and chose a massive fifty megabit per second broadband connection, which I have since upgraded. So, with an internet connection faster than I could have thought possible in the late 1990s, what’s the score now? A story at the Hill took over nine seconds to load; at Politico, seventeen seconds; at CNN, over thirty seconds. This is the bullshit web.

Submission + - SPAM: The College Board Pushes for Compulsory High School Computer Science

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Education Week reports that The College Board wants high schools to make it mandatory for students to take computer science before they graduate. The call came as The College Board touted the astonishing growth in its Advanced Placement (AP) computer science courses, which was attributed to the success of its new AP Computer Science Principles (AP CSP) class, a "lite" alternative to the Java-based AP CS A course. "The College Board is willing to invest serious resources in making this viable-much more so than is in our economic interest to do so," said College Board President David Coleman. "To governors, legislators, to others-if you will help us make this part of the life of schools, we will help fund it." Just two days before Coleman's funds-for-compulsory-CS offer, EdWeek cast a skeptical eye at the tech sector's role in creating a tremendous surge of enthusiasm for K-12 CS education. Last spring, The College Board struck a partnership with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative with a goal of making AP CSP available in every U.S. school district. Also contributing to the success of The College Board's high school AP CS programs over the years has been tech-bankrolled Code.org, as well as tech giants Microsoft and Google. The idea of a national computer programming language requirement for high school students was prominently floated in a Google-curated Q&A session with President Obama (video) following the 2013 State of the Union address.

Comment Was it hacking or just good police work? (Score 4, Informative) 75

by papafox_too (#52705645) Attached to: Australian Authorities Hacked Computers in the US

Did the Queensland Police hack any computers? They appear to have simply sent emails containing links. When the link was clicked, the IP address of the mail client as recorded.

From the TLA:

>> Details on how exactly this was achieved are limited, but according to a court document from another case,
>> “When a user clicked on that hyperlink, the user was advised that the user was attempting to open a video
>> file from an external website. If the user chose to open the file, a video file containing images of child pornography
>> began to play, and the FLA [foreign law enforcement agency] captured and recorded the IP address of the user accessing the file.”

So it doesn't appear that any code was inserted into the target computer. The offenders didn't follow good opsec - they clicked on a link while they were not connected to a TOR proxy.

As for jurisdiction - it appears that the server was moved to Brisbane. Again from the TLA:

>> At one point, The Love Zone server was also reportedly moved to Brisbane, giving Task Force Argos,
>> the Queensland Police Service unit that took over the site, access to every private message on the site.

If the server was located in Queensland, then Queensland court orders could legitimately apply to it. So no evidence of hacking or of extra-territoriality. Move along folks, no misconduct, just good police work.

Submission + - Drug-test the Rich - Not the Poor - to Qualify for Tax Benefits (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Press2ToContinue
Press2ToContinue writes: "The (tax) benefits we give to poor people are so limited compared to what we give to the top 1%” of taxpayers, Congresswoman Gwen Moore says, “It’s a drop in the bucket.” Many states implement drug-testing programs to qualify for benefit programs so that states feel they are not wasting the value they dole out.

However, seven states who implemented drug testing for tax benefit program recipients spent $1m on drug testing from the inception of their programs through 2014. But the average rate of drug use among those recipients has been far below the national average – around 1% overall, compared with 9.4% in the general population – meaning there’s been little cost savings from the drug testing program. Why? “Probably because they can’t afford it,” say Moore.

“We might really save some money by drug-testing folks on Wall Street, who might have a little cocaine before they get their deal done,” she said, and proposes a bill requiring tests for returns with itemized deductions of more than $150,000.

“We spend $81bn on everything – everything – that you could consider a poverty program,” she explained. But just by taxing capital gains at a lower rate than other income, a bit of the tax code far more likely to benefit the rich than the poor, “that’s a $93bn expenditure. Just capital gains,” she added. Why not drug-test the rich to ensure they won't waste their tax benefits?

She is “sick and tired of the criminalization of poverty”. And, she added: “We’re not going to get rid of the federal deficit by cutting poor people off Snap. But if we are going to drug-test people to reduce the deficit, let’s start on the other end of the income spectrum.”

Submission + - Kindle Unlimited Scammers Gaming the System at the Expense of Real Authors (annchristy.com)

Submitted by saccade.com
saccade.com writes: Kindle Unlimited is Amazon's book service that lets customers "check out" any book from a large selection without paying for individual titles. Like most things on the Internet, it's fallen prey to scammers. The system is designed to pay authors out of a single pool of money based on how many pages of their books are actually read. However, scammers have figured out how to rig the system by posting large, fake books, then hiring click farms to "read" them. This doesn't affect people using the service to read books (other than the nuisance of occasionally stumbling over bogus titles). But legitimate authors are getting squeezed as more of the KU payment pool goes to thieves and their bogus books.

Submission + - VW Emissions Issues Spread to Gasoline Cars (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Volkswagen AG said it found faulty emissions readings for the first time in gasoline-powered vehicles, widening a scandal that so far had centered on diesel engines. Separately, the company’s Porsche unit said it’s halting North American sales of a model criticized by U.S. regulators.

Volkswagen said an internal probe showed 800,000 cars had “unexplained inconsistencies” concerning their carbon-dioxide output. Previously, the automaker estimated it would need to recall 11 million vehicles worldwide — more than Volkswagen sold last year. It was unclear how much overlap there was between the two tallies. The company said the new finding could add at least 2 billion euros ($2.2 billion) to the 6.7 billion euros already set aside for fixes to the affected vehicles but not litigation, fines or customer compensation.

Submission + - Large scale survey shows correlation between 'autism' and STEM jobs (independent.co.uk)

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: A 450,000 response survey in the UK has shown there is a significant correlation between a higher score on the Autism Quotient and being a scientist or engineer. AQ scores are also higher for males than female. This appears to provide a rationale for the underrepresentation of women in STEM field other than institutional structures.

Submission + - Five Eyes oversight agency says Snowden shows 'protected disclosure is critical (zdnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In the wake of NSA leaks debacle, New Zealand's Inspector General of Security and Intelligence has developed a process to enable whistleblowers to act safely. “The Edward Snowden disclosures demonstrate how critical it is to have a clear path, with appropriate protections, for disclosing information about suspected wrongdoing within an intelligence and security agency,” Cheryl Gwyn says. The Inspector General's powers were boosted after it was discovered New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) had been spying illegally on Kim Dotcom and others.

Submission + - Leading theory of solar system's formation just disproven

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: In 2005, scientists put forth the Nice Model to explain the configuration of the Solar System's planets. It was thought that the outer planets, Jupiter in particular, migrated through the inner Solar System, and were then pulled back out by the presence of the outer giants, causing the late heavy bombardment of the terrestrial planets as it crossed the asteroid belt. But not only are extra gas giants that have since been ejected required to explain the outer worlds, but the migration would have ejected the inner, terrestrial worlds, indicating that the rocky planets finished forming after the gas giants were already in place. R.I.P., Nice Model: 2005-2015.

Submission + - All Malibu Media subpoenas in Eastern District NY put on hold

Submitted by NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: A federal Magistrate Judge in Central Islip, New York, has just placed all Malibu Media subpoenas in Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, and Staten Island on hold indefinitely, due to "serious questions" raised by a motion to quash (PDF) filed in one of them. Judge Steven Locke's 4-page Order and Decision (PDF) cited the defendant's arguments that "(i) the common approach for identifying allegedly infringing BitTorrent users, and thus the Doe Defendant, is inconclusive; (ii) copyright actions, especially those involving the adult film industry, are susceptible to abusive litigation practices; and (iii) Malibu Media in particular has engaged in abusive litigation practices" as being among the reasons for his issuance of the stay.

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