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Submission + - SPAM: Russia Declassifies Footage of the Largest Nuke Ever Tested

schwit1 writes: Photos and short video clips have previously been available, but this unseen 40 minutes declassified footage of the Soviet Union’s monster nuclear bomb give a whole new insight into what happened on Novaya Zemlya on October 30, 1961.

It's difficult to truly get across how powerful RDS-220 was. The mushroom cloud reached an altitude of 210,000 feet, and people observed the flash through bad weather at 621 miles. An observer felt heat from the explosion at a distance of 168 miles, and the bomb was capable of inflicting third-degree burns at 62 miles.

Link to Original Source

Submission + - Prosecution of journalist collapses after recording disproves police testimony 2

Andy Smith writes: Slashdot reported last September how I was arrested while standing in a field near a road accident, as I photographed the scene for a newspaper. I was initially given a police warning for "obstruction", but the warning was then cancelled and I was prosecuted for resisting arrest and breach of the peace. These are serious charges and I was facing a prison sentence. Fortunately we had one very strong piece of evidence: A recording of my arrest. Not only did the recording prove that two police officers' testimony was false, but it caught one of them boasting about how he had conspired with a prosecutor to arrest and prosecute me. Yesterday the case was dropped, and now the two police officers and the prosecutor face a criminal investigation.

Submission + - Turkey Bans Periscope (stockholmcf.org)

stikves writes: According to online reports, a recent court order has banned Periscope across Turkey. The cited reason is the alleged violation of copyrights of a local company named "Periskop".

This adds to the list of online services no longer available in Turkey, including Wikipedia, PayPal, and WordPress among others.

Submission + - Web Trackers Exploit Flaw in Browser Login Managers to Steal Usernames (bleepingcomputer.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Princeton privacy experts are warning that advertising and analytics firms can secretly extract site usernames from browsers using hidden login fields and tie non-authenticated users visiting a site with their profiles or emails on that domain. This type of abusive behavior is possible because of a design flaw in the login managers included with all browsers. Experts say that web trackers can embed hidden login forms on sites where the tracking scripts are loaded. Because of the way the login managers work, the browser will fill these fields with the user's login information, such as username and passwords.

The trick is an old one, known for more than a decade but until now it's only been used by hackers trying to collect login information during XSS (cross-site scripting) attacks. Princeton researchers say they recently found two web tracking services that utilize hidden login forms to collect login information. The two services are Adthink (audienceinsights.net) and OnAudience (behavioralengine.com), and Princeton researchers said they identified scripts from these two that collected login info on 1,110 sites found on the Alexa Top 1 Million sites list. A demo page has been created to show how the tracking works.

Comment Re:States want "rights" over local broadband (Score 1) 165

You have it a little backwards; pre-civil war the slave states were against states rights as that implied the ability for states to allow escaped slaves to exist in relative freedom in the North. They depended on the strong federal government to defend the slavery laws which were embodied in the constitution, (as well as the national tariffs that protected the cotton growers from competition.) It wasn't even talked about much once the Union occupation / reconstruction ended, since Jim Crow was tolerated on a national level. It was really only after Truman integrated the military, and especially Brown vs. the Board of Education that it became such a standard complaint from the racists that their state laws should overrule anything else. That ATT and Comcast can profit off of that, well, that's the free market for you!

Submission + - Icy Volcanoes May Erupt on Pluto (space.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The New Horizons probe may have discovered two possible ice volcanoes on the surface of Pluto. "These are two really extraordinary features. Nothing like this has ever been seen in the solar system." Oliver White, a New Horizons postdoctoral researcher with NASA's Ames Research Center in California said. The mountains have been informally named Wright Mons and Picard Mons, and at their crests, each peak hosts a central crater, reminiscent of peaks called "shield volcanoes" on Earth. "Whatever they are, they're definitely weird" — 'volcanoes' is the least weird hypothesis at the moment," White says.

Submission + - Computerworld: Fury and fear in Ohio as IT jobs go to India (computerworld.com)

ErichTheRed writes: A company called Cengage Learning now joins the Toys 'R Us, Disney and Southern California Edison IT offshoring club. Apparently, even IT workers in low-cost parts of the country are too expensive and their work is being sent to Cognizant, one of the largest H-1B visa users. As a final insult, the article describes a pretty humiliating termination process was used. Is it time to think about a professional organization before IT goes the way of manufacturing?

Submission + - 8 of the 10 Security Flaws Used by Cyber-Criminals This Year Were Flash Bugs

An anonymous reader writes: Adobe Flash Player provided eight of the top 10 vulnerabilities used by exploit kits in 2015. Angler is currently the most popular exploit kit, regularly tied to malware including Cryptolocker. Vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Silverlight are also major targets. All of these are the conclusions of a Recorded Future report.

Comment Re:In other news (Score 1) 403

Back in the '80s, a company distributing Russian or East German propaganda videos would be shut down

What a crock of shit. I used to go to my friends house and browse his copy of "Soviet Life" all the time. Another friend regularly travelled to both East Germany and Poland in the early 80's on a regular basis. Sure, they earned a thick folder from Reagan's black hat brigades, but otherwise it didn't impact their lives one bit.

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