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n1 writes:

"The NSA targets System Administrators and 'probable administrators' to gain access to the systems and networks they work on, The Intercept reveals. The document obtained by Edward Snowden informs us that the NSA does not only seek access for surveillance on specific targets, but detailed information in regards to customer lists, business correspondence and even "pictures of cats in funny poses with amusing captions".

There is no suggestion that these operations make any safeguards for American citizens in what many would describe as an unconstitutional surveillance program. The Author of one of the leaked document describes how he accomplishes his work, "Just pull those selectors, queue them up for QUANTUM, and proceed with the pwnage"."

Papas Fritas writes:

"Measles is spreading in upper Manhattan and the Bronx, according to public health authorities in New York as about 16 cases have turned up, including two that involved contagion in doctors' offices. Outbreaks have also been reported in the Boston area, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Now the LA Times reports that the first signs of a backlash against anti-vaccination falsehoods emerged last week, when that noted scientific authority and spokesmodel Jenny McCarthy, who has been spreading anti-vaccination drivel for years, got wasted by the Internet community when she left herself open to a reaction.

On Thursday, McCarthy asked a question of her fans on Twitter to see what they'd say. What she got was a dose of the reality she helped spawn. The question: "What is the most important personality trait you look for in a mate? Reply using #JennyAsks".

Just when you think that Internet commentary is nothing more than a wretched hive of scum and villainy, a light shines through so strongly it can help restore your optimism about people says Phil Plait as McCarthy received hundreds of replies including "They vaccinate their kids," "Someone who vaccinates, b/c I'd want our kids to survive," "Someone who respects that science isn't on some secret malicious crusade to screw us over and that vaccinations save lives," "What qualities do I look for in a mate? Science literacy and critical thinking skills," and "Ideal mate accepts scientific consensus & considers the elderly, infants & immune compromised b4 spreading baseless hysteria." McCarthy responded with a tweet saying "Thank you to all the haters who tweet my name. You make my Q SCORE higher and higher. It's because of you I continue to work. Thank you! : )" However, she did not address the substance of the tweets directed at her that her advocacy on behalf of the anti-vaccine movement has contributed to a dramatic rise in vaccine-preventable illnesses."

Meanwhile, Appalbarry writes: (somewhat tongue in cheek):

"Jenny McCarthy's anti-vaccination brigades are 'cheering the news' that British Columbia is in the midst of a growing measles outbreak.

In less than a month the number of infected individuals climbed from zero to over one hundred, surely a small price to pay to avoid the (mumble mumble) scourge of MMR-caused autism! (In fact the outbreak originated in the Netherlands, but there is no apparent linkage between wooden shoes and autism either.)"

Scareb writes:

"Hot on the heels of the Netflix deal with Comcast, Reuters reports in a news item that the language between content providers and content deliverers is also heating up.

As many here are probably already familiar with, Netflix believes that carriers should pay for the interconnects that keep their traffic flowing while AT&T believes that Netflix is trying to 'get a free lunch :

'While in the short term Netflix will in cases reluctantly pay large to ensure a high quality member experience, we will continue to fight for the internet the world needs and deserves,' wrote Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings. AT&T's senior executive vice president for external and legislative affairs, Jim Cicconi, rebutted with the following, 'As we all know, there is no free lunch, and there's also no cost-free delivery of streaming movies. Someone has to pay that cost'"

An anonymous coward writes:

"ChipWhisperer: An Open-Source Platform for Hardware Embedded Security Research. (PDF)

Partial quote from 1st page (1/18):

'This paper introduces a complete side channel analysis toolbox inclusive of the analog capture hardware, target device, capture software, and analysis software. The highly modular design allows use of the hardware and software with a variety of existing systems. The hardware uses a synchronous capture method which greatly reduces the required sample rate, while also reducing the data storage requirement and improving synchronization of traces. The synchronous nature of the hardware lends itself to fault injection, and a module to generate glitches of programmable width is also provided. The entire design (hardware and software) is open-source, and maintained in a publicly available repository. Several long example capture traces are provided for researchers looking to evaluate standard cryptographic implementations.'"

[Ed's Note: If you haven't already got a PDF reader built-in to your browser, the submitter suggests the following link: http://view.samurajdata.se/. I do not take any responsibility for this software.]

janrinok writes:

"Breaking news: The BBC is reporting that Russian troops have begun storming the Belbek airbase in the Crimea. From the article:

Earlier, several hundred unarmed protesters seized a Ukrainian naval base at Novofedorivka, western Crimea.

Pro-Russian militia have also been seizing Ukrainian navy ships.

The BBC's Ian Pannell, in Crimea, says the Ukrainian troops on the peninsula feel beleaguered and abandoned by their commanders in Ukraine.

On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law formalising Russia's takeover of Crimea from Ukraine, despite fresh sanctions from the EU and the US.

In Belbek, two armoured personnel carriers burst through the wall of the base followed by Russian troops firing weapons in the air.

An ambulance was then seen entering the base amid reports that at least one person was injured. The Ukrainian soldiers were later gathered at the base main square in front of the heavily armed Russian troops.

The storming followed an ultimatum by the Russians to surrender.

"

janrinok writes:

"The BBC is reporting the trial of a new type of radar, being tested in Pisa, Italy. Ignoring the speculation that this radar might have spotted the missing Malaysian Airways Flight MH370, the radar has performed well."

From the article:

The world's first photonic radar was tested at Pisa Airport in Italy and achieved "world-class" performance, according to an independent expert. It uses lasers to produce high fidelity signals that pinpoint planes precisely. But there are doubts over its range, say researchers in Nature journal.

Today's radar networks track planes via a combination of ground stations and satellites. The new PhoDiR (Photonics-based fully digital radar) system is a working prototype for next-generation radars designed to let pilots and air traffic control exchange far more information in a single signal. Photonic systems promise:

• Higher precision less noise (interference) in the radar transmission
• Higher bandwidth able to transmit cockpit data (eg critical flight systems) as well as location data, simultaneously
• Greater flexibility more frequencies available
• Smaller antennas cheaper, lighter and more portable

The compact system could potentially be installed on aircraft, and has a very large bandwidth allowing pilots to transmit detailed information directly to ground stations within range. This would not necessarily have helped in the case of MH370, where on-board avionic and communication systems appear to have been manually disabled."

Fluffeh writes:

"Following up on the earlier story where Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan put a nation-wide ban on Twitter after they didn't remove content that made him look less than stellar, Turkish citizens reacted in much the same that file-sharers around the world have done when sites such as The Pirate Bay were blocked by their ISPs. They took to the open web to spread the word on how to circumvent web censorship but in a fresh twist, they also took to the streets posting information, graffiti with DNS records to the point where according to analysis site Zete.com, tweets in Turkey before the ban numbered 10 million a day they now sit at 24 million.

The Turkish Government responded in turn by (Google Translation) blocking Google's DNS."

Fluffeh writes:

"In recent weeks, there have been a flurry of motions exchanged in two courts over what kinds of 'telephony metadata' records the government should be keeping, or deleting. On Feb. 25, Department of Justice lawyers told the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) that they needed special permission to hang on to their records for longer than the five years that they normally do in order to comply with evidence-retention rules for lawsuits brought by the activist groups. The FISC judge, Reggie Walton, denied their request, noting that there was no preservation order for that metadata. In other words, delete as you usually delete.

But in fact, there were such orders in place at least in the view of activist groups like EFF and ACLU, which filed lawsuits in San Francisco federal court. Today, Walton has a new order suggesting he's pretty upset that DOJ lawyers didn't tell him about the existing orders. It's an unusual expression of displeasure with the government by a FISC judge."

jorl17 writes:

"Brady Haran over at Numberphile has brought us an amazing experimental track based on Pi. Everything follows patterns of the irrational number, and the result is a mind-blowing progressive rock song. This expands upon the concept first tried with the Golden Ratio song. Notice the length of the video?"

janrinok writes:

"From the BBC comes a report of Rosetta's awakening after almost 3 years in hibernation."

From the report:

The Rosetta probe has started turning on its instruments. After coming out of a near three-year, deep-space hibernation in January, the satellite now has sufficient power to check out its science payload. The spacecraft is currently about 675 million km from Earth, and continues to close in on its comet quarry. Rosetta should arrive at the icy body in early August, when it will then start mapping the object to find a safe spot to put down its little lander. This craft, known as Philae, is piggy-backing the main probe, and was set to receive its wake-up commands on Friday. It will be another week, however, before they are actioned.

Dr Matt Taylor, the European Space Agency's Rosetta project scientist, told BBC News: 'The mission as a whole had this big emotional moment in January when the spacecraft was woken up. Now, individual teams must experience something similar again as each one of Rosetta's 11 instruments is turned on for testing.'

Fluffeh writes:

"In two months time citizens of all European Union member states will vote on who can represent them in the European Parliament. Pirate Parties will join the election race In several countries, with Finland having the most prominent candidate in Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde, who is also picked by the European Pirate Party as candidate for the European Commission presidency.

In addition, Sunde said that he's ready for the Finnish election campaign which will kick off during the coming weeks. As can be expected of the Pirate Bay founder, he has strong opinions on the topic of file-sharing and freedom of information. Copying is baked into people's genes according to Sunde, quite literally. "People learn by copying others. All the knowledge we have today, and all success is based on this simple fact - 'we are copies.'"

AnonTechie writes:

"Echoing a question asked on programmers.stackexchange.com - How can software be protected from piracy ?

It just seems a little hard to believe that with all of our technological advances and the billions of dollars spent on engineering the most unbelievable and mind-blowing software, we still have no other means of protecting against piracy than a "serial number/activation key." I'm sure a ton of money, maybe even billions, went into creating Windows 7 or Office and even Snow Leopard, yet I can get it for free in less than 20 minutes. Same for all of Adobe's products, which are probably the easiest. Can there exist a fool-proof and hack-proof method of protecting your software against piracy? If not realistically, could it be theoretically possible? Or no matter what mechanisms these companies deploy, can hackers always find a way around it ?"

chromas writes:

"Reed Hastings of Netflix writes in his blog:

The essence of net neutrality is that ISPs such as AT&T and Comcast don't restrict, influence or otherwise meddle with the choices consumers make. The traditional form of net neutrality which was recently overturned by a Verizon lawsuit is important, but insufficient.

This weak net neutrality isn't enough to protect an open, competitive Internet; a stronger form of net neutrality is required. Strong net neutrality additionally prevents ISPs from charging a toll for interconnection to services like Netflix, YouTube, or Skype, or intermediaries such as Cogent, Akamai or Level 3, to deliver the services and data requested by ISP residential subscribers. Instead, they must provide sufficient access to their network without charge.

Business Week and Forbes have articles with very slightly contrasted viewpoints."

youngatheart writes:

"First there was HipHop, the PHP interpreter which improved performance, now usually referred to by the less embarrassing name HHVM. Building on HHVM, they've just introduced Hack, which 'reconciles the fast development cycle of PHP with the discipline provided by static typing, while adding many features commonly found in other modern programming languages.'

Over the past year, Facebook has converted nearly all of its PHP code base to Hack, which makes up the core of its website."

Anonymous Coward writes:

"Yahoo! has moved its data controlling business from London to Dublin in a bid to avoid harsh UK security powers that it says has harmed its users, and its business. I left Yahoo! for neomailbox once it was clear that the lack of security of my Yahoo! email continued under Meyers' leadership. The fact their web mail dropped dramatically in quality didn't help either (emails to eff.org were bounced for months (no MX record), but only when sent from my Yahoo! webmail accounts). It's nice to see they are actually doing something to address their lack of security, although it will be a while before I'd go back to Yahoo!. The Guardian article covering this story is here.

It's unfortunate Yahoo! didn't take advantage of Iceland's IMMI initiative and move to Iceland, however it's understandable from a logistical perspective. It's somewhat of a chicken and egg thing, but until Iceland works on the logistical problems businesses face with moving their data operations to Iceland, the attractiveness of Birgitta Jansdottir's IMMI initiative may not be enough to overcome the logistical hardships businesses would have.

Freedom House publishes reports on its concept of freedom on the internet here, although I question some of their metrics."