SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Site News
Join our Folding@Home team:
Main F@H site
Our team page
Support us: Subscribe Here
and buy SoylentNews Swag
We always have a place for talented people, visit the Get Involved section on the wiki to see how you can make SoylentNews better.
- [c0lo] Funny karma moments immortalized in court
- [mcgrew] Odds and ends
- [khallow] how to generate space-time?
- [turgid] Noisy old Disks
- [fliptop] Technical Marvels. Chapter 1
- [deimios] Screaming into the void
- [fab23] xkcd: Machine
- [rpnx] Federal Appeals Courts Need To Review State Court Judgements
- [Freeman] Latest best reason to ditch Windows - Anyone else?
- [DannyB] American to British dictionary
- [jasassin] Toms Hardware is AI?
- [NotSanguine] “Pink slime” local news outlets
- [Mojibake Tengu] GNU Poke 4.0
- [takyon] Yeah, I'm still using Jango Index
- [digitalaudiorock] The Cloudflare browser police are at it again.
Older Stuff
-
March 13- NSA Auto-Attacks 0-day Exploits (14)
- Three Strikes, Four Years... Zero Out (22)
- Video Is Closest to Experiencing Warp Drive (23)
- Discovery of Long-Forgotten WW1 Trenches in UK (29)
- Climate Change Helped Genghis Khan Conquer Asia (24)
- $300 FLAC Player Kickstarts Past $2 Million (86)
- Backdoor Found in Samsung Galaxy Devices (23)
- Wordpress's Pingback Used in DDoS Attacks (13)
- Wall Street Embraces Bitcoin (41)
- Laser Pointing at Aircraft Increasing (17)
- Oceans of Water Deep in the Earth (24)
- NZ Customs 3D-printed Fearmongering Shot Down (22)
- America's Greatest Shrine to Pseudoscience (87)
-
March 12
Quick Links
from the oops-that's-not-the-way-it's-meant-to-work dept.
GungnirSniper writes:
"Late last year, US retailer Target had multiple IT failures that led to 40 million credit cards being leaked, and more than $61 million in breach-related expenditures, as well as a significant cut into their holiday profits. Businessweek has a lengthy article laying out the failures, among them:
- Despite installing FireEye's monitoring technology, security administrators disabled FireEye's option to automatically delete malware as it is detected, allowing the unclassified 'malware.binary' through.
- When Target India's team received the first critical alert from FireEye, they notified the security team at Target's Headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, but the report was ignored or simply no action was taken on it.
- Additional critical alerts were generated, but apparently no action was taken on them, allowing updated malware through.
- Symantec Endpoint Protection detected odd behavior on the same server as detected by FireEye, but this did not raise concern.
- The initial illicit access was gained by an outside vendor's stolen credentials, which should not have given as much network access as it did.
Though the data was copied through a few hops in the US, it ultimately was traced to Russia. Analysis the binaries shows the malware itself was unsophisticated, and included a possible hacker's alias in the 'exfiltration code.'"
- Read More...
- 16 comments
AnonTechie writes:
"According to a new report, four major American tech firms (Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Cisco) hold $ 163 Billion in United States government debt overseas for tax reasons. That means that American taxpayers are effectively paying interest toward a corporate cash stash held abroad that likely will not return to the US anytime soon.
A second report points out that, if taxed at the current rate of 35%, this would yield $89B. This sum is approximately one quarter of America's projected $514 billion budget deficit this year. There is no suggestion that any of the companies' activities are in any way unlawful."
- Read More...
- 42 comments
hubie writes:
"As Roosevelt said, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Information Avoidance is the term applied to behavior where people avoid seeking out information on an issue because they are afraid of finding out something they don't want to hear. This is often seen in the medical field where, for instance, some people will decline to undergo screening tests out of fear that something will turn up. A couple of University of Florida psychologists looked into this and found that if people were approached in a manner where they first had to contemplate the pros and cons of undergoing a test, they were more inclined to agree to the test.
In the open access journal Earth's Future, Richard Somerville posits that a large number of people who reject to entertain the arguments behind climate change science are doing so as the result of information avoidance. He suggests that perhaps the results of the University of Florida study can improve the way in which climate science is presented to the general public."
- Read More...
- 30 comments
from the important-but-relatively-unknown dept.
AnonTechie writes:
From Magnetic Attraction: Physicists Pay Homage to the SQUID at 50:
From humble beginnings in a series of accidental discoveries, SQUIDs - short for superconducting quantum interference devices - have invaded and enhanced many areas of science and medicine, thanks, in part, to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). SQUIDs are the world's most sensitive magnetometers and powerful signal amplifiers, with broad applications ranging from medicine and mining to cosmology and materials analysis. Physicists from around the world celebrated last week to mark the 50th anniversary of the first journal paper introducing the SQUID, published in February 1964.
- Read More...
- 7 comments
dotdotdot writes:
"For the first time since it was introduced nine years ago, the price of Prime is going up. Existing Prime members will pay $99 per year on their annual renewal date and Amazon Student members will pay $49.
'Even as fuel and transportation costs have increased, the price of Prime has remained the same. If you consider things like inflation and fuel costs, a Prime membership valued at $79 in 2005 would be worth more than $100 today,' an Amazon statement said.
The critical cut-off date is April 17. If your renewal comes up before then, you'll still pay the original $79 fee. If it comes up on April 17 or after, you're stuck with the higher fee."
- Read More...
- 39 comments
from the is-that-the-sound-of-desperation-that-I-hear dept.
skullz writes:
"Hot on the heels of Microsoft easing up access to the Windows Phone OS are rumors of dual Windows / Android phones, able to boot into either OS.
- Huawei Confirms Dual-OS Android-Windows Smartphone
- Huawei Might Launch Dual-OS Android-Windows Phone Handsets Too
The narrative so far is Android for personal use, Windows for BYOD to the office. I can see a company locking down a Windows Phone install so it can connect to Exchange and the company wifi but what would the two OSs share? Contacts and pictures? Would a bit of malware on one OS be isolated from the other?
It used to be that you would dual boot your Windows box with Linux, now that trend has reversed itself for your mobile. How far we have come."
- Read More...
- 30 comments
Angry Jesus writes:
"The Irish Times reports that Google has given high level censorship powers to government security agencies in the UK.
Google has given British security officials special permissions for its YouTube video site, allowing them to have content instantly reviewed if they think that it threatens national security. They already had the power to request removal illegal content, now they can flag legal but "unsavory" content en masse.
They are in part a response to a blitz from UK security authorities to persuade internet service providers, search engines and social media sites to censor more of their own content for extremist material even if it does not always break existing laws."
- Read More...
- 14 comments
from the Beta-with-significant-limitations dept.
"VLC, the popular Swiss Army knife of media players, took one step nearer to a Windows 8 Metro release after the beta was released on the Kickstarter project page. The version currently available is for x86 processors but an ARM compiled version is expected soon for Windows Phone compatibility. It seems to be merely a matter of time before VLC provides a common user interface, media sync route and (almost) universal file and codec support to (almost) every phone and tablet currently available.
From Update #19:
Today, the first Beta of VLC for WinRT is getting deployed on the store. As many of you know, the road to come to this point has been long... Very long... I've been driving or helping some ports of VLC on mobile, but this port has been the hardest, by an order of magnitude. [...] This application [...] is compiled for Intel x86 CPUs: Windows RT version will follow as soon as we are able to compile it. The ARM version will also apply to Windows Phone."
- Read More...
- 22 comments
Fluffeh writes:
"In a written statement to a House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on the DMCA takedown system, RIAA CEO Cary Sherman informed lawmakers about the ongoing struggle against online piracy. 'All those links to infringing music files that were automatically repopulated by each pirate site after today's takedown will be re-indexed and appear in search results tomorrow. Every day we have to send new notices to take down the very same links to illegal content we took down the day before. It's like Groundhog Day for takedowns,' Sherman says.
Google, however, clearly disagrees with the RIAA, Katherine Oyama, Google's Senior Copyright Policy Counsel said 'The best way to battle piracy is with better, more convenient, legitimate alternatives to piracy, as services ranging from Netflix to Spotify to iTunes have demonstrated. The right combination of price, convenience, and inventory will do far more to reduce piracy than enforcement can.'"
- Read More...
- 49 comments
from the won't-someone-please-think-of-the-dealerships dept.
einar writes:
"New Jersey's governor Christie has decided that all new motor vehicles must be sold through middlemen. This blocks Tesla from directly selling cars, without traditional car sellers. Although, New Jersey decided so this week, they are in good company: 48 states in the US ban or restrict direct car sales."
- Read More...
- 77 comments
Archimedes writes:
"It has come to my attention that various and sundry folk have done far better approximations of the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter than had been possible with my excellent 96-sided regular polygon method.
"μπÏάβο," I say (or would if this calculating engine of yours could properly handle "Unicode"). It pleases me to no end to know that the great work has continued, lo these many years since that obstreperous Italic fellow with the red cloak so rudely interrupted my research.
However, with an eternity in Hades on my hands, I have endeavored to stay busy by continuing to produce more accurate approximations. (That rake Sisyphus tells me it's a waste of time, but he is not one to talk in that regard.)
What follows is the closest approximation I have made in my posthumous calcutatory diversions. "Pi," to use your modern shorthand, is about...
- Read More...
- 163 words in story
- 63 comments
As you might expect, one month later, the certificates expired, and the database stopped accepting remote connections. New certificates were generated with a ten year expiration, and we continue to work towards better documenting our internal processes on the wiki to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. Apache, and slashd are running again, and we appear to be back to status-quo in terms of site operation.
A full incident report will be written up and posted to the wiki in the next few days.
- Read More...
- 70 comments
melikamp writes:
"Hot on the heels of finding a bizarre many-tailed asteroid, Hubble has now photographed the never-before-seen breakup of an asteroid into as many as 10 smaller pieces drifting away from each other at a leisurely 1.6 km/h. The crumbling of the asteroid P/2013 R3 is unlikely due to a collision with another asteroid, which would be instantaneous and violent by comparison to what has been observed. Nor is the asteroid coming unglued due to the pressure of interior ices warming and vaporizing, because it is far too cold. This leaves a scenario in which the asteroid is disintegrating due to a subtle effect of sunlight (possibly the YORP effect), which causes the rotation rate to slowly increase, and the pieces to gently pull apart due to centrifugal force."
- Read More...
- 18 comments
Taco Cowboy writes:
"An AlJazeera article claims that Bayes' Theorem could be used to help with the search for the missing flight MH370.
Days after a Malaysian airliner with 239 people aboard went missing en route to Beijing, searchers are still struggling to find any confirmed sign of the plane. Authorities have acknowledged that they didn't even know what direction it was heading when it disappeared. In 2009, Air France Flight 447 en route to Paris from Rio de Janeiro vanished over the Atlantic Ocean, triggering the most expensive and exhaustive search effort ever conducted for a plane. After two years, officials could only narrow the location of the plane's black box down to an area the size of Switzerland. What took two years for other experts in the search for the black box, took only five days for consultants who applied the Bayes' Theorem, to finally find the device 12,000 feet under water. Read more inside.
'It's a very short, simple equation that says you can start out with hypothesis about something - and it doesn't matter how good the hypothesis is,' said Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, author of The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy.
The hypothesis is subject to change, based on probability, but can still be used with the theorem. Pretty much based on the concept of learning from experience, one can say. It is because of this character of the formula - forcing researchers to change their hypothesis with each new information - that the probability becomes more accurate.
Bayes' Theorem, which is also used in Google's driverless cars and predictions in stock markets, is based on probability. Because the theorem starts with a hypothesis - something McGrayne said 'can be very subjective' - it had been seen as controversial until the 1960s. But because it forces researchers to change their hypothesis with each new piece of information, the probability becomes more accurate.
The theorem was used in World War II to locate German U-boats and the lost nuclear submarine U.S.S. Scorpion. It was also used during the Cold War to spot Soviet submarines.
'The AF 447 search is rooted in Bayesian inference,' Lawrence D. Stone, chief scientist at Virginia-based scientific consultancy Metron - which was contacted to apply Bayes' Theorem in the search for the Air France plane - wrote in ORMS Today magazine in 2011. Bayes' Theorem 'allows the organization of available data with associated uncertainties and computation of the PDF (probability distribution function) for target location given these data,' he said.
Despite assistance from Australia, China, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Philippines and the United States, Malaysian search efforts are even further from locating Flight MH370. The search area has been expanded to almost 27,000 square nautical miles - an area roughly equivalent to the state of Indiana - authorities said. That's more than 10,000 nautical square miles larger than the search for Air France Flight 447, before Bayes' Theorem was applied. Stone told Al Jazeera that in the current search for flight MH370, it is "highly unlikely" that Bayes' Theorem is being applied. That is not to suggest it is totally absent. Bayes' Theorem is pervasive, and those involved in the current search have applied a certain Bayesian flavour in their search, "but it then got upset when their prior calculations were incorrect," said statistician Professor Bradley Efron of Stanford University, as quoted by Al Jazeera, referring to the conclusion by Malaysian authorities that the MAS plane could have ended up in the Strait of Malacca.
Bayes' Theorem, after all, is all about learning from experience, which is probably why Efron said one would need "reasonably accurate past experiences" for the theorem to work. In other words, to calculate accurately to locate the plane."
- Read More...
- 627 words in story
- 24 comments
from the lowest-bidders-all-the-way-down dept.
skullz writes:
"I've watched the Affordable Care Act's federal and state website roll-outs with trepidation as one botched IT project crashes and burns after another. As more information is coming out about Minnesota's health insurance exchange, lo and behold, poor communication, lack of fundamentals, and bureaucracy seem to be contributing factors.
From NPR's How A Series Of Mistakes Hobbled Minnesota's Health Exchange we learn that the users were the first to actually test the website:
What Minnesotans did not know is they were testing the site. There wasn't time for consumer testing before the site went live. Michael Krigsman, a consultant who specializes in diagnosing and preventing IT project failures, says testing is key. 'That is so screwed up. You can quote me on that,' he says. 'This is one of these things that's so foundational. It's like why do we need to breathe the air?"
Having been on projects with shifting scope, compressed timeframes, and arbitrary milestones I feel for the developers who worked on these websites and am a little depressed that we are still doing this in 2014. When will the managers learn? Or at least listen?"
- Read More...
- 25 comments
