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takyon writes:

The FBI is not eager to reveal (more) details about methods it used to identify Tor users as part of a child pornography case. FBI's Operation Torpedo previously unmasked Tor users by serving them malicious scripts from secretly seized .onion sites.

The FBI is resisting calls to reveal how it identified people who used a child pornography site on the Tor anonymising network. The agency was ordered to share details by a Judge presiding over a case involving one alleged user of the site. Defence lawyers said they need the information to see if the FBI exceeded its authority when indentifying users. But the Department of Justice (DoJ), acting for the FBI, said the details were irrelevant to the case. "Knowing how someone unlocked the front door provides no information about what that person did after entering the house," wrote FBI agent Daniel Alfin in court papers filed by the DoJ which were excerpted on the Vice news site.

The Judge ordered the FBI to hand over details during a court hearing in late February. The court case revolves around a "sting" the FBI carried out in early 2015 when it seized a Tor-based site called Playpen that traded in images and videos of child sexual abuse. The agency kept the site going for 13 days and used it to grab information about visitors who took part in discussion threads about images of child abuse.

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Phoenix666 writes:

A team of researchers has discovered the fossil of a 305-million-year-old arachnid, which will help scientists to understand more about the early origins of modern-day spiders.

The new species, named Idmonarachne brasieri in honour of Professor Martin Brasier, University of Oxford, who passed away in December 2014, was found in Montceau-les-Mines, France, and researchers from The University of Manchester, Berlin's Museum für Naturkunde, the University of Kansas and Imperial College London have worked with the Natural History Museum and the UK's Diamond Light Source to scan and examine the fossil in detail.

Details of the origins of spiders remain limited, with little knowledge of their predecessors and no insights into character acquisition early in their evolution. This fossil was preserved in 3D, which enabled the researchers to investigate its minute anatomical details.

We have known since 2008 that a group called the uraraneids were a sister group to true spiders -- they could make silk, but probably laid it down in sheets, rather than spinning it as modern spiders do. They also had a tail-like structure at the end called a flagellum. Analysis of Idmonarachne brasieri suggests that as the spider lineage evolved, the animals lost their tail-like structure, and developed spider-like fangs and limbs. Whilst they could likely make silk, the ancestors lacked the ability to spin it using specialised appendages called spinnerets. These are the features that define true spiders, and give them more control over the use and distribution of silk.

A creature that venerable would explain our instinctive fear of them, but not why we don't have a deathly fear of chickens.

Original Journal Reference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2016; 283 (1827): 20160125 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2016.0125

Original Submission

GungnirSniper writes:

Amos Dudley, a student at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, created his own clear plastic retainers using dental molds, laser imaging, a 3D printer, and plastic molds. His description of the research and process includes images of each step. After sixteen weeks, he was satisfied with the results and has received a deluge of inquiries. The Washington Post notes he only spent $60 on materials as he had free use of the college's equipment. Dudley, who will graduate this spring, is getting job interviews thanks in part to the attention the project has received.

[For those who are not familiar, Wikipedia explains: "orthodontia, also known as orthodontics and dentofacial orthopedics, was the first specialty created in the field of dentistry. … The specialty deals primarily with the diagnosis, prevention and correction of malpositioned teeth and the jaws." -Ed.]

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Today at the Microsoft BUILD Conference [keynote video], Kevin Gallow, VP of Windows Developer Platform, announced that the Bash shell is coming to Windows in the form of an Ubuntu image running natively on Windows. This summer, an update will be available to Windows 10 that will allow you to run user mode Linux shells and command line tools, unchanged. According to Scott Hanselman, once you have the update, you can download Ubuntu on Windows from Canonical from the Windows store which will install a real Linux binary. Dustin Kirkland, part of Canonical's Ubuntu Product and Strategy team, explains this magic in more detail here.

From the last link:

An Anonymous Coward writes:

As reported by ScienceNews.org:

Resistance may soon be futile. With machine implants worthy of a Star Trek villain, a new breed of beetle takes walking instructions from its human overlords.

Hirotaka Sato and his colleagues at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore inserted electrodes into flower beetles (Mecynorrhina torquata) to stimulate specific leg muscle groups. By altering the order of electrical zap sequences, the team was able to control a beetle's gait. Changing the duration of the electrical signals also altered the insects' speed and step length, Sato and colleagues report March 30 in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

Abstract:

We have constructed an insect–computer hybrid legged robot using a living beetle (Mecynorrhina torquata; Coleoptera). The protraction/retraction and levation/depression motions in both forelegs of the beetle were elicited by electrically stimulating eight corresponding leg muscles via eight pairs of implanted electrodes. To perform a defined walking gait (e.g. gallop), different muscles were individually stimulated in a predefined sequence using a microcontroller. Different walking gaits were performed by reordering the applied stimulation signals (i.e. applying different sequences). By varying the duration of the stimulation sequences, we successfully controlled the step frequency and hence the beetle's walking speed. To the best of our knowledge, this paper presents the first demonstration of living insect locomotion control with a user-adjustable walking gait, step length and walking speed.

Original Submission

DeathMonkey writes:

Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe torture can be justified to extract information from suspected terrorists, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, a level of support similar to that seen in countries like Nigeria where militant attacks are common.
 
The March 22-28 online poll asked respondents if torture can be justified "against suspected terrorists to obtain information about terrorism." About 25 percent said it is "often" justified while another 38 percent it is "sometimes" justified. Only 15 percent said torture should never be used.
 
The Reuters/Ipsos poll included 1,976 people. It has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 2.5 percentage points for the entire group and about 4 percentage points for both Democrats and Republicans.

Probably not the best methodology to support the claim of "Nearly two-thirds of Americans", but an interesting view into a potential demographic shift in the US. Or, maybe it says more about the internet...

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Max Hyre writes:

As reported by The Age

In the list of the world's great companies, Unaoil is nowhere to be seen. But for the best part of the past two decades, the family business from Monaco has systematically corrupted the global oil industry, distributing many millions of dollars worth of bribes on behalf of corporate behemoths including Samsung, Rolls-Royce, Halliburton and Australia's own Leighton Holdings.

[...] How they make their money is simple. Oil-rich countries often suffer poor governance and high levels of corruption. Unaoil's business plan is to play on the fears of large Western companies that they cannot win contracts without its help.

[...] A massive leak of confidential documents has for the first time exposed the true extent of corruption within the oil industry, implicating dozens of leading companies, bureaucrats and politicians in a sophisticated global web of bribery and graft.

And you thought Microsoft's activity was widespread.

It's a detailed and fascinating article (the first of a promised three), but though it claims it's based on leaked e-mails and “documents”, it quotes none of them.

Original Submission

MS is getting more and more odd.

Several places have covered a new MS project bringing a Linux subsystem to Windows kernel components. From an Ars article:

the company has developed some Windows kernel components (lxcore.sys, lxss.sys, presumably standing for "Linux core" and "Linux subsystem," respectively) that support the major Linux kernel APIs. These components are not GPLed and do not appear to contain Linux code themselves; instead, they implement the Linux kernel API using the native Windows NT API that the Windows kernel provides. Microsoft is calling this the "Windows Subsystem for Linux" (WSL).

[...] Our understanding is that these are not recompiled or ported versions of the programs (as are used in tools aiming to provide a Unix-like environment on Windows such as Cygwin) but instead unmodified programs. Microsoft is describing this in terms of providing a Linux-like command-line environment at the moment, but from what we can gather, there's little fundamental restriction to this, potentially opening the door to running a wide range of Linux programs natively on Windows.

Also of note in the Ars article:

Microsoft [says] that the Windows 10 Anniversary Update will include the ability to run the popular bash shell from Unix, along with the rest of a typical Unix command-line environment.

Other sources: Zdnet, winbeta.org, AnandTech, The Register.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The owners of Adblock Plus have prevailed in a German court yet again. A Munich court ruled that Adblock Plus's "acceptable ads" program was legal:

Adblock Plus has won another legal challenge in Germany against a daily newspaper which claimed its "acceptable ads" policy broke the law. The Süddeutsche Zeitung argued that Adblock Plus's German owner Eyeo GmbH should not be allowed to block ads while also offering a "whitelisting" service to advertisers.

Adblock Plus operates a whitelisting policy, whereby advertisers can apply to have their ads unblocked as long as they adhere to its "acceptable ads" policy, which does not allow the display of ads it deems intrusive. However, big corporations such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Taboola have paid AdBlock Plus to allow their ads to pass through its filter software. The outfit said the ruling was its fifth court battle in Germany, this one against the paper.

From The Guardian:

It is the last of a tranche of legal cases brought by German newspaper publishers and broadcasters against the company behind Adblock Plus, Eyeo. Germany's largest newspaper publisher Axel Springer, business title Handelsblatt and broadcaster RTL Interactive are among that have unsuccessfully challenged the legality of the software.

Adblock Plus spokesperson Ben Williams said the ruling showed the court viewed adblocking as a challenge and opportunity rather than a threat. "Look, we don't want to pile on publishers here," he wrote. We know that the transition from print to online is still a huge challenge. But we view adblocking much like the court: as an opportunity, or a challenge, to innovate." However, the ruling is unlikely to mark the end of legal challenges to Eyeo, and the case could go to appeal.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Gravis

Volkswagen convinced a US judge to give it another few weeks to hammer out an agreement with the EPA over how to fix its diesel vehicles and bring them into compliance with US law. That break appears to be the only good news the company is getting this month. [...] VW announced that it was recalling all electric versions of the VW Golf after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) found a flaw in the vehicle's battery software that can make them stall.

VW states that the flaw is caused by "oversensitive diagnostics for the high-voltage battery management system (that) may falsely detect an electrical surge resulting in the vehicle's electric drive motor shutting down unexpectedly."

[...] Meanwhile, VW may have gotten permission to continue pursuing a settlement with the EPA, but it's not out of the woods yet as far as US government action. The FTC filed suit against VW today, accusing the company of false advertising related to its "clean diesel" vehicles.

Source: ExtremeTech

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Foxconn will take over the electronics maker Sharp for about 20% less than it was willing to pay previously.

Chinese iPhone assembler Foxconn is to swallow Japanese monitor biz Sharp for ¥389bn (£2.5bn) – around £625m less than it had previously been willing to cough up. Under the terms of the deal, Foxconn's daddy Hon Hai will gain a controlling stake of 66 per cent in Sharp.

The takeover beat a proposal by the Japanese government to bail out the ailing company with a state-backed fund. According to the Japan Times, Sharp is expected to report a loss of ¥200bn (£1.2bn) for its fiscal year 2015. Last month the long-awaited merger was put on hold after the Japanese outfit passed new info to Foxconn, reported to show a 300 billion yen ($2.7bn) liability in its accounts.

Also at BBC, NYT, and Reuters.

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canopic jug writes:

The IEEE Spectrum has two articles about the upcoming 25th anniversary of the Linux kernel later this year. The first is Linux at 25: Why It Flourished While Others Fizzled which attributes the success to timing, cost, and the right license. The second is an actual interview with Linus Torvalds himself about various topics related to the past, present, and future of Linux. The kernel started out as "just a hobby" without aspiration to become big and professional like GNU. Yet it has grown and evolved into what appears to be the largest online collaborative project to-date by far.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A teenager found a flaw in Valve's Steam game approval process, and used it to publish an unapproved game about a familiar subject:

A 16-year-old lad in Manchester, England, exploited flaws in Valve's developer site to publish on Steam an unapproved game about watching paint dry. Ruby Nealon, a computer science student at Salford uni, said a set of programming blunders in the Steamworks website let him sneak his Watch Paint Dry roleplaying game past Valve's censors and onto gaming store Steam without their approval. "The Steam store had a game posted to it on Sunday called Watch Paint Dry that was never reviewed by anyone at Valve," Nealon told El Reg. "I published it after they ignored several reports of the vulnerabilities."

Nealon first managed to blag an account on Steamworks, Valve's developer platform, and created some basic in-game trading cards. He then fiddled with the HTML form data sent to Valve's servers to trick the system into thinking they had been approved by a Valve editor. He basically changed his user ID number in a form element from his own to a Valve employee's and then changed the approved state to accepted, and submitted it. Bingo, that worked.

Here is a Reddit IAmA about it.

Original Submission

tonyPick writes:

According to Techcrunch Spotify has raised $1 billion in convertible debt to fight Apple Music, but the terms of the deal may prove to be difficult if Spotify under performs:

On-demand streaming music is inevitable, so Spotify is taking whatever fuel it can get to win the race against Apple. Whoever can sign up customers faster to consume their data and network effect could earn money off them for a long, long time. So it makes sense that Spotify would be willing to raise money at ugly, exploitative terms now for a better chance at earning those riches later.
...
But here's the catch.

If Spotify doesn't perform well, some aggressive deal terms could cost it a lot of money.

TPG and Dragoneer get to convert the debt to equity at a 20% discount of whatever share price Spotify sets for an eventual IPO. And if it doesn't IPO within the next year, that discount goes up 2.5% every extra six months.

Spotify also has to pay 5% annual interest on the debt, and 1% more every six months up to a total of 10%. And finally, TPG and Dragoneer can sell their shares just 90 days after the IPO, before the 180-day lockup period ends for Spotify's employees and other investors.

(Originally spotted via Hacker News).

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Google has launched a phone/landline service for its Google Fiber customers, called Fiber Phone. It allows you to use a "cloud-based" phone number from any tablet, PC, or phone:

For $10/month, you get unlimited local and nationwide calling, and the same affordable rates as Google Voice for international calls. You can keep your old phone number, or pick a new one. You can use call waiting, caller ID, and 911 services just as easily as you could before. Fiber Phone can also make it easier to access your voicemail—the service will transcribe your voice messages for you and then send as a text or email.

[...] Your Fiber Phone number lives in the cloud, which means that you can use it on almost any phone, tablet or laptop. It can ring your landline when you're home, or your mobile device when you're on-the-go. [...] To stay updated on the latest, sign up here.

Original Submission