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ragequit writes: "There were reports that the websites of the Venetian Casino and the Pallazo Casino were defaced by a group of hackers called the "Anti WMD Team,". The extent of the damage is yet to be determined, however some internal data such as employee records were posted as screenshots, and there was disruption of intranet operations at some properties. The attack is reported to be politically motivated."

amblivious writes:

"Built in 1932 by the Goodyear Zeppelin Corporation, Hangar One was one of the largest free standing structures in the world and is now a familiar landmark in Silicon Valley. The building, covering 8 acres (3.2 ha), is large enough to fit 3 ships the size of the Titanic side-by-side. It is so large that it generates its own microclimate, with fog forming in the upper reaches and falling 17 stories to the ground as rain. NASA took over Hangar One from the Navy in 1994 but it had little use and fell into disrepair. In 2012 Google offered $US33 million to repair the facility and has now taken over the lease.

There has been widespread speculation on what Google plans to do with Hangar One, ranging from testing planetary rovers and other space or aviation technology to high altitude balloons, or simply for use as an elaborate hangar for Google's executive planes.

In a statement on Monday, a Google spokesperson simply said, 'We are delighted to move ahead in the selection process and we are looking forward to working with both GSA and Nasa to preserve the heritage of Moffett Federal Airfield.'"

cculpepper from the forums writes: "Back in the 1980s, Bell Labs decided to make a successor to UNIX called Plan 9. Plan 9 was primarily developed to be simple and to facilitate an environment for grid computing on geographically separated computers. While Plan 9 was open-sourced in 2000, it was released under the Lucent Public License, which was seen as less than ideal by people in the GNU community. The University of California, Berkley has been recently authorized to release Plan 9 under the GNU Public License version 2, a license shared by the Linux kernel, as well as various other projects."

mechanicjay adds: "Plan 9 remains available under a modified LPL (Lucent Public Licence). What sort of difficulties might be had with a dual-licencing scheme?"

Betteridge would suggest the answer to this question might be "None."

AudioGuy writes:

"Researchers say they have uncovered an ongoing attack that infects home and small-office wireless routers from Linksys with self-replicating malware, most likely by exploiting a code-execution vulnerability in the device firmware.

The worm works by injecting vulnerable devices with a URL-encoded shell script that carries out the same seek-and-hijack behavior. The exploit may also change some routers' domain name system server to 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4, which are IP addresses used by Google's DNS service. Compromised routers remain infected until they are rebooted. Once the devices are restarted, they appear to return to their normal state. People who are wondering if their device is infected should check for heavy outbound scanning on port 80 and 8080, and inbound connection attempts to miscellaneous ports below 1024.

This blog post at Sans contains more technical details including a way to test if you have a vulnerable device."

This was submitted via the forum, edited by mattie_p. Gaaark writes:

"A US company located in the state of Texas called Traqcloud has produced a new, cheap way to track anyone or anything using GPS satellite tracking for only $10 per month after an initial outlay of $69 for the device. Of course, Michael Hamilton, co-founder of traqcloud, states that 'it is possible for any type of tracking device to be used for the wrong reasons,' adding that his company forbids violating the privacy of others, as per their acceptable use policy.

From my point of view, (I'm a father of a 14 year old boy with Autism) does my son's privacy take second place to his security and my peace of mind? He has no sense of personal safety and will walk off anywhere with anyone at anytime: he has, in the middle of the night, tried going outside on his own (no coat, no boots in mid-winter).

TraqClouds' device may help me sleep at night.

Do I have the right to track him like this? Does this extend to tracking my 'normal' daughter? My wife? A neighbor? Where do rights to privacy end?"

This was submitted via the forum, edited by mattie_p. sl4shd0rk writes:

"Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has decided to take a stab at stopping the illegal activity of the NSA by filing a class action lawsuit aimed at President Barack Obama and members of the intelligence community. The suit is at least the third filed at the Federal level since the Snowden revelations were made public. The previous two suits are almost guaranteed to end up in the Supreme Court, as federal judges disagree on the constitutional legalities of the NSA program."

Paul's suit is the first class action lawsuit against the NSA. If you want to join the suit yourself, be prepared to leave some contact information with his Political Action Committee, and then get hit up for a donation. Interestingly enough, there was some controversy about the text of the lawsuit, but not in a legal sense. Paul, a known plagiarist in speeches, was falsely accused of plagiarizing this lawsuit by the Washington Post.

LaminatorX writes: "Reuters reports that Time Warner Cable has accepted a $45.2bn buyout offer from Comcast. This comes after fending off a previous offer from rival Charter Communications. Should the deal pass regulatory scrutiny, the combined giant would be a player in 19 of the top 20 U.S. media markets."

amblivious writes: "For the first time, laser-driven fusion has passed a milestone called fuel gain, the point at which more energy is produced than is consumed in starting the reaction. In a trial at the National Ignition Facility late last year, 15 kilojoules of energy was released with an input of 10 kilojoules (Nature). Although this is not yet a self-sustaining reaction because the reactor as a whole consumes more energy it is expected that collisions with helium nuclei generated in the reaction will lead to ignition. See the article at New Scientist for more information."

amblivous writes: "It seems that reports of Jade Rabbit's death may have been premature as it is showing some signs of life again. New Scientist reports that the Chinese space agency has received signals from Yutu (Jade Rabbit) and amateurs have also received a downlink signal, according to the Planetary Society. It is not yet clear if Yutu will be able to continue its mission."

Calling it the most sophisticated malware-driven espionage campaign ever discovered, researchers said they have uncovered an attack dating back to at least 2007 that infected computers running the Windows, OS X, and Linux operating systems of 380 victims in 31 countries."

Behind the scenes, inside the massive data centers that power this worldwide social network, you’ll find all sorts of other technologies that have changed our world in very different ways — and perhaps bigger ways.

Any good techie can appreciate the items listed or at least several of them. They are often over-looked ways that Facebook has contributed; ways that average Facebook users probably have absolutely no clue about; ways that might earn them just a bit of respect from the most die-hard Facebook haters."

AndyTheAbsurd writes with an article from Gigaom:

A Twitter advertising technique is perturbing people. Promoted brands like MasterCard and IFC are appearing in the list of accounts some users follow, even if they don’t actually follow them.

Sources familiar with the company’s advertising strategy tell me this has been occurring since early 2013, but the public has only just now cottoned onto it thanks to actor William Shatner (of Star Trek fame). Shatner brought attention to it after he saw that “MasterCard” appeared in his following list despite the fact that he didn’t follow it.