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Open4D writes:

The Guardian has Ladar Levison's account, "why I was forced to shut down Lavabit".

My legal saga started last summer with a knock at the door, behind which stood two federal agents ready to to serve me with a court order requiring the installation of surveillance equipment on my company's network ...

He describes his subsequent struggles with the legal system, lack of representation, the closing of Lavabit, and finishes with ...

More importantly for my case, the prosecution also argued that my users had no expectation of privacy, even though the service I provided encryption is designed for users' privacy.

If my experience serves any purpose, it is to illustrate what most already know: courts must not be allowed to consider matters of great importance under the shroud of secrecy, lest we find ourselves summarily deprived of meaningful due process. If we allow our government to continue operating in secret, it is only a matter of time before you or a loved one find yourself in a position like I did standing in a secret courtroom, alone, and without any of the meaningful protections that were always supposed to be the people's defense against an abuse of the state's power.

lhsi writes:

A baby mammoth will be displayed at the Natural History (NH) Museum in London.

From Friday 23 May until 7 September, a preserved baby mammoth nicknamed Lyuba, that was discovered in Siberia in 2007 will go on display at the Natural History Museum in London. The exhibit is on loan from the Shemanovsky Museum - Exhibition Complex in Salekhard, Russia.

AnonTechie writes:

Childhood fluoride exposure has no effect on IQ.

About a year ago, the city of Portland, Oregon was in the news because of its water supply-and not because a teenager decided to relieve himself into a reservoir. Instead, the issue was fluoridation, the addition of trace amounts of fluorine to municipal drinking water. Fluoridation is widespread in the US, as copious evidence indicates it improves oral hygiene. That evidence prompted the Portland City Council to approve fluoridation-only to see voters reject that plan by a wide margin. While some of the opposition focused on the finances of the deal for the fluoridation process, concerns about the safety of fluoridation also played a major role in organizing the opposition.

It turns out that a similar drama had been playing out in New Zealand, where the city of Hamilton reversed course on water fluoridation several times over the past two years. Now, in response to the kerfuffle, some New Zealand researchers (combined with a ringer from Duke) have looked into one of the supposed health threats posed by fluoridation: it stunts the mental development of children. Their new report finds no evidence of this, however. In fact, children who grew up with fluoridated water had slightly higher IQs than their peers, though the difference wasn't statistically significant.

Horse With Stripes writes:

ZDnet is reporting that China has banned Windows 8 from government PCs. According to Chinese news agency Xinhua, China doesn't want another Windows XP support debacle to deal with, so it's banned Windows 8 from government machines.

In a brief statement on China's Central Government Procurement Centre's website about a particular class of energy-saving products [page in Chinese], the agency noted that new government computers are forbidden from having Windows 8 installed. As Reuters notes, it's not clear how the ban on Windows 8 is related to the use of energy-savings products.

So, fellow Soylenters, is this "payback" (as the article seems to hint), or is this an "it's about time" move by the largest PC market in the world? Either way this will affect Microsoft's business going forward, and possibly new PC sales in China as the current XP hardware is repurposed with Linux rather than being replaced.

Anonymous Coward writes:

The Chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems has written to the US President explaining how recent relevations regarding NSA installing backdoors into equipment being exported is damaging the trust that companies have built up with their customers, and stressing how it is making new sales even more difficult. This is all the more relevant to Cisco as one of their packages is shown in the photograph accompanying the (previously) Top Secret revelation from Glenn Greenwald's book 'No Place to Hide'. The letter is shown in full in the following PDF.

http://cryptome.org/2014/05/cisco-implant.pdf

Online PDF Viewer (if required): http://view.samurajdata.se/

AnonTechie writes:

IM services start to block unencrypted chats. XMPP upgrade is rolling out now.

A host of instant messaging services will begin refusing unencrypted connections from today under a pledge to harden the extensible messaging and presence protocol (XMPP). Developers pledged in 2012 to begin testing client-to-server and server-to-server encryption for XMPP as of January in a move heralded as an initial step to secure the communications protocol against criminals and government spies. The XMPP Standard Foundation initiative covered 70 providers but could not be enforced. Peter Saint-Andre, the technologist behind the initiative, welcomed the go live date. "Today, a large number of services on the public XMPP network permanently turned on mandatory encryption for client-to-server and server-to-server connections," Saiont-Andre said. "This is the first step toward making the XMPP network more secure for all users."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/20/im_upgrade _locks_out_lazy_eavesdroppers/

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stpeter/manifest o/master/manifesto.txt

Users can check the security of xmpp services here. https://xmpp.net/

thechanklybore writes:

The Register reports that, in one of the more bizarre branding exercises ever witnessed, London Heathrow Terminal 5 will be renamed, for a period of 2 weeks, to "Terminal Samsung Galaxy S5". This is to cover the period of the launch of the company's flagship phone.

How long until until the Sony Z404 Error page?

[Ed's Note: a disclaimer has been received explaining that Samsung's claims and the reports are incorrect.]

Geezer writes:

The Huffington Post has a story of what must be seen as the height of absurdity. As part of the fallout from the recent indictments of 5 PLA cyber-spies, China is threatening to suspend cooperation on joint US-Chinese cyber-security efforts. What can the world's two biggest players in industrial espionage possibly be cooperating on?

The linked story notes that efforts so far have been largely ineffective. Is there anything the US could realistically do? An IP block sounds tempting, but VPNs render that largely ineffective. Fund open-source firewalls or "advanced persistent threat" filters or ...?

ticho writes:

Qt 5.3 has been released. The main focus for this release was performance, stability and usability. Nevertheless, Qt 5.3 has also gotten a fair amount of new features that help make developers' lives easier.

Qt is a cross-platform application and UI framework for developers using C++ or QML, a CSS & JavaScript like language.

Among the highlights of the 5.3 release are:

• Support for new platforms (Windows 8.1, WinRT, QNX)
• QQuickWidget a widget attempting to cross the gap between the new Qt Quick interfaces and traditional QWidget-based interfaces
• Compiled Qt Quick (only available in Enterprise version, sadly

AnonTechie writes:

Frontiers launches a new open-access journal: Frontiers in Robotics and AI

Frontiers a community driven open-access publisher and research networking platform is pleased to announce the launch of a new open-access journal: Frontiers in Robotics and AI. Frontiers in Robotics and AI is the first open-access community journal covering the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence and joins the growing "Frontiers in" journal series. Frontiers in Robotics and AI will make use of the unique Frontiers open-science platform for open-access publishing and research networking, which provides an equal opportunity to seek, share and create knowledge. "Frontiers in Robotics and AI will foster an online community of researchers and facilitate multidisciplinary exchange of the latest high-quality research and findings without limits or boundaries in the exciting fields of robotics and artificial intelligence," says Mel Slater, ICREA Research Professor, University of Barcelona and Chief Editor of the specialty section Virtual Environments.

"After decades of promise, the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence are making significant impact on society, science and engineering. Frontiers in Robotics and AI will help to further this process with an open-science platform that provides researchers with the latest innovative tools to maximize the reach and impact of their research, boost research collaborations and more."

http://www.frontiersin.org/

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-05/f-f la051914.php

http://www.frontiersin.org/Robotics_and_AI

halcyon1234 writes:

Are there any wearable fitness devices on the market that won't phone home with my health data?

I'd love to be able to track my fitness regime with some wearable hardware, but I have absolutely no desire to feed Big Data even more personal information about myself. At best my data will be used to line the pockets of marketers, or at worst will sabotage my ability to get insurance, health care, etc. Or maybe my concerns are entirely unfounded.

So are there any that keep the data out of the cloud right out of the box? Any that are at least hack-friendly so the transmission can be blocked (at the hardware level, by fudging around with hosts.txt and my router)? Or any that can be hooked up to third-party analysis software that doesn't transmit data?

Bob9113 writes:

I have been trying to frame Net Neutrality to explain it to a broader audience. I have been comparing it to the shipping carrier networks, but that works best with people who already understand common carrier and how it relates to physical carriage. A couple days ago, I thought of a different service to compare it to, and it is proving much easier to explain to people who are less familiar with limited competition networks. I created a YouTube video that explores how electric neutrality is critical to protecting the free market in electric appliances. If you think it does a good job, please help spread it far and wide, send it to all your friends.

Horse With Stripes writes:

ABC News is reporting that scores have been arrested in 'Blackshades' malware-related raids around the world.

The FBI and law enforcement officials in more than a dozen countries have made scores of arrests in cases involving Blackshades, malicious software that allows users to surreptitiously peep into the computers and web cameras of others. The targets for law enforcement included the creators and administrators of Blackshades.

Last year 20-year-old Jared James Abrahams was arrested for 'sextorting' Miss Teen USA using Blackshade. He pleaded guilty in November and was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

WillAdams writes:

Inventables, a Chicago company, will donate a Shapeoko CNC machine to a non-profit school, library or workshop in each U.S. State: https://www.inventables.com/50states

The open hardware machine is documented on github and a wiki and has assembly instructions which include interactive SVG diagrams. A hobby-level machine, it is able to cut wood, plastic, and soft metals (such as aluminum, brass, and copper) and is quite upgradable.

Uses, thus far, have included a broad variety of projects, ranging from simple boxes to props, games, and furniture.

AnonTechie writes:

A 10 Million Pounds Sterling prize has been launched to solve one of the greatest scientific problems facing the world today. The competition idea is based on the 1714 Longitude Prize, which was won by John Harrison. His clocks enabled sailors to pinpoint their position at sea for the first time. In an updated version, the public will be asked to choose a new challenge.

Six potential categories have been announced, ranging from healthcare to the environment. After a special 50th anniversary edition of the BBC science series Horizon on Thursday, the public will be able to cast their vote on the issue that they would most like to see tackled.