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SpallsHurgenson writes:

The US National Security Agency (NSA) will not always disclose security vulnerabilities, such as Heartbleed, and said it assesses each case individually, according to a blog post on the White House website.

"Disclosing a vulnerability can mean that we forego an opportunity to collect crucial intelligence that could thwart a terrorist attack stop the theft of our nation's intellectual property, or even discover more dangerous vulnerabilities that are being used by hackers or other adversaries to exploit our networks," government cyber security co-ordinator Michael Daniel explained. "We have also established a disciplined, rigorous and high-level decision-making process for vulnerability disclosure. This inter-agency process helps ensure that all of the pros and cons are properly considered and weighed."

cnst writes:

As per the schedule, OpenBSD 5.5 was released today, May 1, 2014.

The theme of the 5.5 release is "Wrap in Time", which represents a significant achievement of changing time_t to int64_t on all platforms, as well as ensuring that all of the 8k+ OpenBSD ports still continue to build and work properly, thus doing all the heavy lifting and paving the way for all other operating systems to make the transition to 64-bit time an easier task down the line.

Signed releases and packages and the new signify utility are another big selling point of 5.5, as well as OpenSSH 6.6, which includes lots of DJB crypto like chacha20-poly1305, plus lots of other goodies.

AnonTechie writes with a story on Ars Technica: Forget the Higgs, neutrinos may be the key to breaking the Standard Model.

Some physicists are surprised that two relatively recent discoveries in their field have captured so much widespread attention: cosmic inflation, the ballooning expansion of the baby universe, and the Higgs boson, which endows other particles with mass. These are heady and interesting concepts, but, in one sense, what's new about them is downright boring. These discoveries suggest that so far, our prevailing theories governing large and small the Big Bang and the Standard Model of subatomic particles and forces are accurate, good to go.

But both cosmic inflation and the Higgs boson fall short of unifying these phenomena and explaining the deepest cosmic questions. "The Standard Model, as it stands, has no good explanation for why the Universe has anything in it at all," says Mark Messier, physics professor at Indiana University and spokesman for an under-construction particle detector.

Ja'Achan writes:

Yesterday, a Canary build of Google Chrome removed something kind of important from the browser: the URL. Basically, it only shows the domain and leaves the rest of the URL bar as a search field.

Allen Pike, a blogger who writes "about technology and crap like that" suggests burying the URL like this will probably have some usability and security benefits. From the article:

More recently, browsers started hiding the URL scheme. http:// was no more, as far as most users were concerned. In iOS 7, Mobile Safari went even further and hid everything about the URL except the domain. With the Chrome "origin chip" change, the URL will move out of the field entirely, to a tidy little button that many users will never even realize is clickable.

AnonTechie writes:

Caltech astronomers have taken unprecedented images of the intergalactic medium (IGM)-the diffuse gas that connects galaxies throughout the universe-with the Cosmic Web Imager, an instrument designed and built at Caltech. Until now, the structure of the IGM has mostly been a matter for theoretical speculation. However, with observations from the Cosmic Web Imager, deployed on the Hale 200-inch telescope at Palomar Observatory, astronomers are obtaining our first three-dimensional pictures of the IGM. The Cosmic Web Imager will make possible a new understanding of galactic and intergalactic dynamics, and it has already detected one possible spiral-galaxy-in-the-making that is three times the size of our Milky Way. The Cosmic Web Imager was conceived and developed by Caltech professor of physics Christopher Martin. "I've been thinking about the intergalactic medium since I was a graduate student," says Martin. "Not only does it comprise most of the normal matter in the universe, it is also the medium in which galaxies form and grow."

Angry Jesus writes:

Jeffrey Katzenberg, head of the Dreamworks studio, recently spoke about future pricing models for streaming video. Katzenberg thinks it would be a good idea for movies to have just a 3-week theater run before being made available for download, world-wide. But then the cost to watch the video would be determined by the size of your display, the bigger it is the more you pay. So, kind of a two steps forward, one step back approach to catching up with the modern world. At least it is one step in the right direction.

Now, I'm off to put a piece of paper right up to the front of my projector for a postage-stamp sized image. That'll save me thousands of dollars!

jas writes in his blog:

SanDisk and Samsung have announced 19nm server-grade SSDs at impressive capacities or impressive speeds (but not both at the same time). In particular, SanDisk has unveiled the 4 TB Optimus MAX, a 2.5" solid-state drive (SSD) packed with 19nm eMLC flash, connected via 6 Gbit/sec SAS. The Optimus MAX is rated for 75,000 random read IOPS, 15,000 random write IOPS, and 400 MB/sec sequential read and write.

For those who would prefer speed and endurance over capacity, SanDisk also announced the Lightning Ultra Gen. II SSDs. With capacities of 200/400/800GB, these drives employ a SAS 12Gb/s interface and are rated at up to 1000/600 MB/s (4KB sequential read/write) and up to 190K/100K random read/write IOPS.

Papas Fritas writes:

In a 6-to-2 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States has affirmed the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate air pollution from coal-burning power plants across state lines handing the Obama administration what is arguably its biggest environmental victory in its effort to use the Clean Air Act as a tool to fight global warming and reduce carbon emissions. "Today's Supreme Court decision means that millions of Americans can breathe easier," says Fred Krupp, president for the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), which was a party to the case.

At issue was whether the EPA could use what are known as good-neighbor rules to regulate emissions that cross state borders. In short, the Supreme Court ruled that a power plant in Ohio whose emissions blow east into New York is liable for the damage caused there, even if it's hundreds of miles away from the source. Utilities must now weigh the high costs of cleaning up their coal operations against simply shutting them down. Given the cheap price of natural gas, the decision is likely to push utilities into building new natural gas-fired power plants. By 2020, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates, 60 gigawatts of coal-fired power production will be retiredabout 20 percent of the total amount of coal-fired capacity in the U.S. If anything, the Supreme Court will quicken that pace of retirements.

Nerdfest writes:

An outrageous, insightful, and sadly accurate commentary on programming. I found this an extremely entertaining read and agree with most of it. It doesn't offer solutions, but certainly highlights a lot of the problems.

"Double you tee eff?" you say, and start hunting for the problem. You discover that one day, some idiot decided that since another idiot decided that 1/0 should equal infinity, they could just use that as a shorthand for "Infinity" when simplifying their code. Then a non-idiot rightly decided that this was idiotic, which is what the original idiot should have decided, but since he didn't, the non-idiot decided to be a dick and make this a failing error in his new compiler. Then he decided he wasn't going to tell anyone that this was an error, because he's a dick, and now all your snowflakes are urine and you can't even find the cat.

Personally, I think things will only get better (including salaries) when software development is treated like other engineering disciplines.

cnst writes:

What has been planned for a long time now, prior to the infamous heartbleed fiasco of OpenSSL (which does not affect SSH at all), is now officially a reality - with the help of some recently adopted crypto from DJ Bernstein. OpenSSH now finally has a compile-time option to no longer depend on OpenSSL, the option `make OPENSSL=no` has now been introduced for a reduced-configuration OpenSSH to be built without OpenSSL.

The result would leave you with no legacy SSH-1 baggage at all, and on the SSH-2 front with only AES-CTR and chacha20+poly1305 ciphers, ECDH/curve25519 key exchange and Ed25519 public keys.

[Editor's Note: This appears to be very much a Work-in-Progress, so might not be available for your distro or via standard repositories.]

AnonTechie writes:

A story today from Brown University (Rhode Island) reveals that the new 'wonder-material' graphene could be dangerous to humans and the environment Everybody's favorite nanomaterial may have a plethora of near-magical properties, but as it turns out, it could also be bad for the environment - and bad for you, too. It's easy to get carried away when you start talking about graphene. Comprised of single atom thick layers of carbon, graphene is incredibly light, incredibly strong, extremely flexible and highly conductive both of heat and electricity. Its properties hold the promise of outright technological revolution in so many fields that it has been called a wonder material.

Two recent studies give us a less than rosy angle. In the first, a team of biologists, engineers and material scientists at Brown University examined graphene's potential toxicity in human cells. They found that the jagged edges of graphene nanoparticles, super sharp and super strong, easily pierced through cell membranes in human lung, skin and immune cells, suggesting the potential to do serious damage in humans and other animals.

A second article indicates that graphene is shown to be very mobile in water and likely to cause negative environmental impacts if spilled.

Angry Jesus writes:

Recent ATIP (Access to Information Act) requests for Canadian TSP (telecom sevice provider) privacy data have revealed that, on average, TSPs receive a request from law enforcement for subscriber data every 27 seconds, or about 1 out of every 35 Canadian citizens per year. Given the sheer volume of requests, it is likely that most have no judicial oversight and it also seems that TSPs rarely, if ever, exercise their legal right to deny a request without a warrant.

Even worse, there is legislation currently pending to permit TSPs to secretly disclose the same information to 3rd parties if they are investigating a contractual breach or possible violation of any law. So basically it would be a complete free for all. In true political fashion, the name of the bill proposing this change is the Digital Privacy Act.

MrGuy writes:

Following up on a story SoylentNews covered previously, it appears that Google has reversed their controversial policy of mining student accounts on behalf of advertisers.

Google had prevented adverts from being shown from within GAE's own apps, but the scans could have been used to tailor what appeared when users visited a website using the firm's AdSense platform.

"We've permanently removed all ads scanning in Gmail for Apps for Education, which means Google cannot collect or use student data in Apps for Education services for advertising purposes," wrote Google for Education director Bram Bout on a company blog.

I guess I'm glad Google's no longer imposing their business model on students (who don't exactly get to choose their school's email provider), possibly in violation of the law. I'm disappointed it took a lawsuit to get them to stop.

A reader called gewg_ writes:

from dartmouth.edu

At 4 a.m. on May 1, 1964, in the basement of College Hall, Professor John Kemeny and a student programmer simultaneously typed RUN on neighboring terminals. When they both got back correct answers to their simple programs, time-sharing and BASIC were born. Those innovations made computing accessible to all Dartmouth students and faculty, and soon after, to people across the nation and the world.

Dartmouth's BASIC at 50 anniversary celebration was held yesterday, which included the public premier of a documentary on the history and impact of BASIC.

Sir Finkus writes:

The World Health Organization has warned that the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections poses a major threat to global health. The report [PDF 3.9MB] paints a bleak picture, noting that previously treatable infections such as urinary tract infections caused by E. coli are becoming increasingly difficult to treat in all regions.

It goes on to recommend:

1. Using antibiotics only when prescribed by a doctor
2. Completing the full prescription, even if they feel better
3. never sharing antibiotics with others or using leftover prescriptions.

lhsi writes:

Researchers performed some experiments whereby they used different words to explain helping: "Some children choose to help" vs. "Some children choose to be helpers". The researchers then allowed the children to play and while they were doing so, performed an activity nearby that the child could stop playing and help with (open a container, pick up some crayons).

Children who heard the noun wording (helper) helped significantly more than children who heard the verb wording (help). When the experimenter talked to youngsters about helping, using verb wording, the children didn't help any more than when the experimenter never brought up helping at all.

Papas Fritas writes:

Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin has lashed out again, this time at newly announced US ban on high-tech exports to Russia suggesting that "after analyzing the sanctions against our space industry, I propose the US delivers its astronauts to the ISS with a trampoline." Rogozin does actually have a point, although his threats carry much less weight than he may hope. Russia is due to get a $457.9 million payment for its services soon and few believe that Russia would actually give it up.

Furthermore, as Jeffrey Kluger noted at Time Magazine, Russia may not want to push the United States into the hands of SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, two private American companies that hope to be able to send passengers to the station soon. SpaceX and Orbital Sciences have already made successful unmanned resupply runs to the ISS and both are also working on upgrading their cargo vehicles to carry people. SpaceX is currently in the lead and expects to launch US astronauts, employed by SpaceX itself, into orbit by 2016. NASA is building its own heavy-lift rocket for carrying astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit, but it won't be ready for anything but test flights until after 2020. "That schedule, of course, could be accelerated considerably if Washington gave NASA the green light and the cash," says Kluger. "America's manned space program went from a standing start in 1961 to the surface of the moon in 1969-eight years from Al Shepard to Tranquility Base. The Soviet Union got us moving then. Perhaps Russia will do the same now."