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buswolley writes:

PandoDaily has been posting a series of editorials and investigative reports about government ties to the Tor project which has led to some hot words exchanged by members of the Tor project and journalists at PandoDaily.

Now, PandoDaily reports a threatening tweet from Anonymous (since deleted). Is this a case of a journalist trying to bring attention to himself, or has the author struck a nerve?

Brief history of Tor (from Almost everyone involved in developing Tor was (or is) funded by the US government)

The origins of Tor go back to 1995, when military scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory began developing cloaking technology that would prevent someone’s activity on the Internet from being traced back to them. They called it “onion routing” — a method redirecting traffic into a parallel peer-to-peer network and bouncing it around randomly before sending it off to its final destination. The idea was to move it around so as to confuse and disconnect its origin and destination, and make it impossible for someone to observe who you are or where you’re going on the Internet.

Onion routing was like a hustler playing the three-card monte with your traffic: the guy trying to spy on you could watch it going under one card, but he never knew where it would come out.

The technology was funded by the Office of Naval Research and DARPA. Early development was spearheaded by Paul Syverson, Michael Reed and David Goldschlag — all military mathematicians and computer systems researchers working for the Naval Research Laboratory, sitting inside the massive Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling military base in Southeast Washington, D.C.

The original goal of onion routing wasn’t to protect privacy — or at least not in the way most people think of “privacy.” The goal was to allow intelligence and military personnel to work online undercover without fear of being unmasked by someone monitoring their Internet activity.

"gewg_" writes:

AlterNet reports

In a Sunday presidential run-off election in Uruguay, Frente Amplio (Broad Front) candidate Tabaré Vázquez beat opposition candidate Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou by 53.6 to 41.1 percent, a vote that had major implications for the future of Uruguay's historic marijuana regulation.

While Vázquez has promised to continue implementing marijuana regulation, National Party opposition candidate Lacalle Pou had said that if he were to become president, he would repeal major parts of the law, including government-regulated sales to adults--the most distinguishing feature of the Uruguayan initiative.

"Sunday's presidential election result safeguards Uruguay's historic marijuana legalization" said Hannah Hetzer, Policy Manager of the Americas at the Drug Policy Alliance. "The Uruguayan people determinedly chose the presidential candidate who will continue the country's progressive policies, including the roll out of the world's first national legally regulated marijuana market."

fliptop writes:

An article at ACM.org talks about how Intrinsic Use Control, the technology use to secure nuclear weapons, can also be used to secure IT hardware and communications with uncrackable encryption:

"Using the random process of nuclear radioactive decay is the gold standard of random number generators," [scientist and engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Mark] Hart said. "You'd have a better chance of winning both Mega Millions and Powerball on the same day than getting control of IUC-protected components."

The code is randomly generated by its unique nuclear source and is not known by any person.

Hart added:

All radiation sources decay — from highly enriched uranium to everyday background radiation — so IUC coding could easily be generated outside the nuclear weapons realm. For instance, the approach could be used in the manufacturing process of IT equipment destined for secure uses to prevent tampering and better secure the supply chain.

The coding could eliminate insider threats by preventing people from adding counterfeit components or tampering with the equipment.

Additionally, gear in point-to-point communications links could be loaded with a unique radiologically generated encryption key, rather than relying on a manufacturer's less-secure coding.

Full article at FCW.com.

"gewg_" writes:

El Reg reports

Blu-ray players [...] use an antiquated digital rights management scheme to control the distribution of movies, meaning some films could only be played in the geographic regions in which they were purchased.

Matthew Garrett (mjg59) [...] told the Kiwicon hacker conference in Wellington, New Zealand, [December 11] how firmware designed by Taiwanese firm MediaTech could be popped to enable the region encoding to be changed.

[...]The hole [flaw], since crudely-patched on units made in 2014, closed off the ability to gain authenticated access where the DMCA controls could be changed. The pop is possible because the firmware checked for and permitted arbitrary code to run on USB devices ahead of running from internal flash storage.

Garrett's (alcohol-fueled) research could likely be advanced by more sober punters to mitigate the latest fixes, he said.

OK. You folks who delayed buying one of these things because of the DRM can now start your search for a pre-2014 unit.

"crutchy" writes:

A story from RT.com claims:

[...] that China has developed and successfully tested a highly accurate laser defense system against light drones. The homemade [sic] machine boasts a two-kilometer range and can down "various small aircraft" within five seconds of locating its target.

Boasting high speed, great precision and low noise, the system is aimed at destroying unmanned, small-scale drones flying under an altitude of 500 meters and at speeds below 50 meters per second, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing a statement by one of the developers, the China Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP).

A recent test saw the machine successfully bring down over 30 drones - a 100-percent success rate, according to the statement. The laser system is expected to play a key role in ensuring security during major events in urban areas.

The statement is hardly surprising - we reported yesterday that the US Navy is deploying a weapon with a similar role to the Persian Gulf on board the US Ponce.

Blackmoore writes:

Andy Baio writes a touching tale - Playing with my Son - or What happens when a 21st-century kid plays through video game history in chronological order?

If you have a kid, why not run experiments on them? It’s like running experiments on a little clone of yourself! And almost always probably legal.

It’s disappointing how many people have children and miss this golden opportunity, usually waiting until they’re in their teens to start playing mindgames with them.

Start with the arcade classics and Atari 2600, from Asteroids to Zaxxon. After a year, move on to the 8-bit era with the NES and Sega classics. The next year, the SNES, Game Boy, and classic PC adventure games. Then the PlayStation and N64, Xbox and GBA, and so on until we’re caught up with the modern era of gaming.

Would that child better appreciate modern independent games that don’t have the budgets of AAA monstrosities like Destiny and Call of Duty? Would they appreciate the retro aesthetic, or just think it looks crappy?

Or would they just grow up thinking that video game technology moved at a breakneck speed when they were kids, and slammed to a halt as soon as they hit adolescence?

Hugh Pickens writes:

Lily Hay Newman reports at Slate that Sony is counter-hacking to keep its leaked files from spreading across torrent sites. According to Recode, Sony is using hundreds of computers in Asia to execute a denial of service attack on sites where its pilfered data is available, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter. Sony used a similar approach in the early 2000s working with an anti-piracy firm called MediaDefender, when illegal file sharing exploded. The firm populated file-sharing networks with decoy files labelled with the names of such popular movies as “Spider-Man,” to entice users to spend hours downloading an empty file. "Using counter-attacks to contain leaks and deal with malicious hackers has been gaining legitimacy," writes Newman. "Some cyber-security experts even feel that the Second Amendment can be interpreted as applying to 'cyber arms'.”

[Ed's Comment: As I understand it, the Second Amendment only applies in the United States or in its territories overseas — it doesn't give Americans the right to bear arms anywhere else in the world.]

tonyPick writes:

Science has an article on a study on the incidence of plagiarism, using over 20 years of data from Cornell University's arXiv archive:

The study is available on arXiv. Science has obtained the data from one of the authors, and used this to produce a geographic breakdown of the data:

NotSanguine writes:

In an article published on Thursday in Science News, reports on research which shows that during bad times (weather, earthquakes, natural disasters, etc.) weaker male fetuses are more likely to miscarry than female fetuses. What is more, the male fetuses that are carried to term tend to be stronger and healthier than their counterparts born in good times.

From the article:

Males are more likely to die than females while in the womb. Bouts of severely cold weather, earthquakes, natural disasters, even the 9/11 terrorist attack on New York City exacerbate this difference, as months later the ratio of boys to girls born can decline to well below the typical ratio of 105-to-100.

Biologists have long thought that the women spontaneously abort male fetuses that are frail, making room for new pregnancies and, possibly, a healthier baby. (Females are thought to have a better chance of reproducing than males in tough times, so aborting them doesn’t make as much evolutionary sense.) Because of the large investment required to raise children, “there would be a big payoff to being able to select which fetuses to raise and which not,” says Ron Lee, an economic demographer at the University of California (UC), Berkeley.

The results are interesting. I wonder how prolonged abundance and safety might affect the male gender. Will we have more, weaker men, or will other factors kill them off?

Hugh Pickens writes:

Vindu Goel reports at the NYT that Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, addressing questions from Facebook users at his second town hall meeting with the public, shared the secret of his success telling users that mistakes are good and that successful people not only learn from their mistakes but spend most of their time making mistakes. “If you’re successful, most of the things you’ve done were wrong,” said Zuckerberg. “What ends up mattering is the stuff you get right.” If you get a few big things right, he said, “you can make some pretty important changes in the world.” Zuckerberg also discussed the importance of software programming skills. “If you can code, you have the power to sit down and make something and no one can stop you,” he said, predicting that schools would eventually require everyone to learn a little coding because it sharpens analytical skills that are useful in a wide variety of professions.

When asked what he thinks about Facebook becoming synonymous with wasting time, Zuckerberg said he wasn't sure he agreed with the premise of the question. He explained everyone is told they'll have time for life after finishing school or their homework, but they forget to realize that friends and family is what matters in life. Facebook, he said, helps connect people in a way society doesn't always offer. "We're proud of our contribution there," Zuckerberg said. "If we could make people a little more connected then I think that's valuable."

Marneus68 writes:

After the recent launch of Bittorent Sync and the Bittorent Bleep, Bittorent Inc. is reportedly working on a distributed web browser called Maelstrom.

The project that aims to "power a new way for web content to be published, accessed and consumed" is in alpha and only accessible with an invite.

While very interesting, this project raises many questions. How is this "distributed web browser" made? Is the DNS lookup distributed among users too? Is this going to become a new protocol and is it going to be open?

Sadly, if you're not on the alpha there's not much you can deduce from the little blurb on their blog.

Is anyone on Soylent News on the alpha yet? Anyone tried to do a bit of tinkering to see how it works?

The full announcement available here. Additional coverage can be found here and here.

"gewg_" writes:

El Reg reports

Microsoft has patched 25 software vulnerabilities--including bugs that allow hackers to hijack PCs via Internet Explorer, Word and Excel files, and Visual Basic scripts.

Microsoft said its December's edition of Patch Tuesday includes critical fixes for Windows, Office and Internet Explorer as well as a patch for Exchange.

MS14-80: Addresses 14 security flaws in Internet Explorer, including various remote-code execution vulnerabilities and an ASLR bypass. The patch is considered a low risk for Windows Server systems, but critical for desktops, laptops and tablets. All the flaws were privately reported, and credit was given to various independent researchers as well as the HP Zero Day Initiative, Qihoo 360 and VeriSign iDefense Labs.

MS14-81: Two vulnerabilities in Word and Office Web Apps that allow an attacker to remotely execute code on targeted systems if the victims open booby-trapped documents. This update also applies to users running Office for Mac. Credit was given to Google Project Zero researcher Ben Hawkes, who privately reported the flaws to Microsoft. Rated as Critical.

MS14-84: A remote-code execution vulnerability (CVE-2014-6363) in the Windows VBScript engine can be exploited via a specially crafted webpage. Credit for discovery was given to SkyLined and VeriSign iDefense Labs. Rated as Critical.

The article also mentions Adobe software and Linux. Are any Soylentils running that combination?

Blackmoore writes:

Ars Technica - US Navy approves first laser weapon for operation aboard Persian Gulf ship

On Wednesday the Office of Naval Research (ONR) announced that it would approve an experimental laser weapon for use on the USS Ponce in the Persian Gulf. The laser weapon system is part of a $40 million research program to test directed energy weapons, and it is the first to be officially deployed and operated on a naval vessel.

Although the laser weapon system is not as powerful as other weapons aboard the Ponce, Christopher Harmer, senior naval analyst with the Institute for the Study of War told The Wall Street Journal that the directed energy of the laser aimed at a target would “cause a chemical and physical disruption in the structural integrity of that target.” Harmer added that the advantage of the laser weapon system is that it can disable many oncoming targets without needing to reload ammunition: “as long as you've got adequate power supply and adequate cooling supply.”

Welcome to the future that Anime promised.

tonyPick writes:

Version 1.4 of the Go Language has just been released:

The major news in this release is that it adds official support for Android platforms, and it's now possible to write Android applications using pure Go code.

Full release notes have more details.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Maria Konnikova writes in The New Yorker that mondegreens are funny but they also give us insight into the underlying nature of linguistic processing, how our minds make meaning out of sound, and how in fractions of seconds, we translate a boundless blur of sound into sense. One of the reasons we often mishear song lyrics is that there’s a lot of noise to get through, and we usually can’t see the musicians’ faces. Other times, the misperceptions come from the nature of the speech itself, for example when someone speaks in an unfamiliar accent or when the usual structure of stresses and inflections changes, as it does in a poem or a song. Another common cause of mondegreens is the oronym: word strings in which the sounds can be logically divided multiple ways. One version that Steven Pinker describes goes like this: Eugene O’Neill won a Pullet Surprise. The string of phonetic sounds can be plausibly broken up in multiple ways—and if you’re not familiar with the requisite proper noun, you may find yourself making an error.

Other times, the culprit is the perception of the sound itself: some letters and letter combinations sound remarkably alike, and we need further cues, whether visual or contextual, to help us out. In a phenomenon known as the McGurk effect, people can be made to hear one consonant when a similar one is being spoken. “There’s a bathroom on the right” standing in for “there’s a bad moon on the rise” is a succession of such similarities adding up to two equally coherent alternatives.

Finally along with knowledge, we’re governed by familiarity: we are more likely to select a word or phrase that we’re familiar with, a phenomenon known as Zipf’s law. One of the reasons that “Excuse me while I kiss this guy” substituted for Jimi Hendrix’s “Excuse me while I kiss the sky” remains one of the most widely reported mondegreens of all time can be explained in part by frequency. It’s much more common to hear of people kissing guys than skies.