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kadal writes:

We've previously covered Mozilla considering a push to deprecate HTTP in favor of HTTPS. Well, it looks like the time is here. This HTTPS encrypted blogpost by Mozilla starts with

Today we are announcing our intent to phase out non-secure HTTP.

There's pretty broad agreement that HTTPS is the way forward for the web. In recent months, there have been statements from IETF, IAB (even the other IAB), W3C, and the US Government calling for universal use of encryption by Internet applications, which in the case of the web means HTTPS.

[...] There are two broad elements of this plan:

• Setting a date after which all new features will be available only to secure websites
• Gradually phasing out access to browser features for non-secure websites, especially
  features that pose risks to users' security and privacy.

[...] For example, one definition of "new" could be "features that cannot be polyfilled". That would allow things like CSS and other rendering features to still be used by insecure websites, since the page can draw effects on its own (e.g., using <canvas>). But it would still restrict qualitatively new features, such as access to new hardware capabilities.

[More after the break]

takyon writes:

The Intercept has released an article entitled, "The Computers Are Listening: How the NSA Converts Spoken Words Into Searchable Text":

Top-secret documents from the archive of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show the National Security Agency can now automatically recognize the content within phone calls by creating rough transcripts and phonetic representations that can be easily searched and stored. The documents show NSA analysts celebrating the development of what they called "Google for Voice" nearly a decade ago.

Though perfect transcription of natural conversation apparently remains the Intelligence Community's "holy grail," the Snowden documents describe extensive use of keyword searching as well as computer programs designed to analyze and "extract" the content of voice conversations, and even use sophisticated algorithms to flag conversations of interest.

The documents include vivid examples of the use of speech recognition in war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in Latin America. But they leave unclear exactly how widely the spy agency uses this ability, particularly in programs that pick up considerable amounts of conversations that include people who live in or are citizens of the United States.

Recently, Chancellor Angela Merkel defended German intelligence (BND) spying on behalf of the NSA. Former Director of the NSA Michael Hayden has taken the opportunity to use the failed Garland, TX attack to advocate preserving or extending NSA surveillance:

Public wishes about how to balance privacy and security will have to be evaluated in light of the shooting deaths of two men outside a "Draw Muhammad" free-speech event in Garland, Texas, on Sunday, former CIA and NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden tells Newsmax TV. "You've got this difficult decision to make: when does free thought and free speech cross the line into something that's actionable by American law enforcement?" Hayden said Monday on "Newsmax Prime," hosted by J.D. Hayworth. The "totality of circumstances" should determine where the line is drawn between privacy and security, Hayden said. "We may actually discover that we're drawing the line too conservatively and that we should be more forward-leaning with our action," he said. "We'll let the facts take us there if they will."

Despite criticism of NSA overreach from some quarters, the agency's former boss doesn't see anything wrong with how information is collected, he told Hayworth. He understands the concerns, Hayden said, but added: "Of all the times when we might want to make it more difficult or more cumbersome to find the terrorists in the United States, this is not that time because of the kind of things that happened in Texas yesterday."

ISIS just claimed responsibility for the Garland attack. What does this all mean for the USA FREEDOM Act, the bill that could place some small limits on the U.S. surveillance state? According to the New York Times, the NSA may be willing to sacrifice elements of domestic telephone spying in order to preserve "more vital" programs.

AnonTechie writes in on the ineffectiveness of the US Federal Election Commision:

The leader of the US Federal Election Commission, the agency charged with regulating the way political money is raised and spent, says she has largely given up hope of reining in abuses in the 2016 US presidential campaign, which could generate a record $10 billion in spending.

“The likelihood of the laws being enforced is slim,” Ann M. Ravel, the chairwoman, said in an interview. “I never want to give up, but I’m not under any illusions. People think the F.E.C. is dysfunctional. It’s worse than dysfunctional.”

Her unusually frank assessment reflects a worsening stalemate among the agency’s six commissioners. They are perpetually locked in 3-to-3 ties along party lines on key votes because of a fundamental disagreement over the mandate of the commission, which was created 40 years ago in response to the political corruption of Watergate.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Elisabeth Rosenthal writes in the NYT that she has spent the past six months trying to figure out a medical bill for $225 that includes "Test codes: 105, 127, 164, to name a few. CPT codes: 87481, 87491, 87798 and others" and she really doesn't want to pay it until she understands what it’s for. "At first, I left messages on the lab’s billing office voice mail asking for an explanation. A few months ago, when someone finally called back, she said she could not tell me what the codes were for because that would violate patient privacy. After I pointed out that I was the patient in question, she said, politely: “I’m sorry, this is what I’m told, and I don’t want to lose my job.”" Bills variously use CPT, HCPCS or ICD-9 codes. Some have abbreviations and scientific terms that you need a medical dictionary or a graduate degree to comprehend. Some have no information at all. Heather Pearce of Seattle told me how she’d recently received a $45,000 hospital bill with the explanation “miscellaneous.”

So what's the problem? “Medical bills and explanation of benefits are undecipherable and incomprehensible even for experts to understand, and the law is very forgiving about that,” says Mark Hall. “We’ve not seen a lot of pressure to standardize medical billing, but there’s certainly a need.” Hospitals and medical clinics say that detailed bills are simply too complicated for patients and that they provide the information required by insurers but with rising copays and deductibles, patients are shouldering an increasing burden. One recent study found that up to 90 percent of hospital bills contain errors and an audit by Equifax found that hospital bills that totaled more than $10,000 contained an average error of $1,300. “There are no industry standards with regards to what information a patient should receive regarding their bill,” says Cyndee Weston, executive director of the American Medical Billing Association. “The software industry has pretty much decided what information patients should receive, and to my knowledge, they have not had any stakeholder input. That would certainly be a worthwhile project for our industry.”

martyb writes:

I found an article published on Science Daily which reports 'Fuzzy thinking' in depression, bipolar disorder: New research finds effect is real. Here's an excerpt:

People with depression or bipolar disorder often feel their thinking ability has gotten "fuzzy," or less sharp than before their symptoms began. Now, researchers have shown in a very large study that effect is indeed real -- and rooted in brain activity differences that show up on advanced brain scans.

What's more, the results add to the mounting evidence that these conditions both fall on a spectrum of mood disorders, rather than being completely unrelated. That could transform the way doctors and patients think about, diagnose and treat them.

In a new paper in the journal BRAIN, researchers from the University of Michigan Medical School and Depression Center and their colleagues report the results of tests they gave to 612 women -- more than two-thirds of whom had experienced either major depression or bipolar disorder. The researchers also present data from detailed brain scans of 52 of the women, who took tests while brain scans were conducted.

[...] On the brain scans, the researchers found that the women with depression or bipolar disorder had different levels of activity than healthy women in a particular area of the brain called the right posterior parietal cortex. In those with depression, the activity in this area was higher than in healthy individuals, while in those with bipolar disorder it was lower. The area where the differences were seen helps control "executive function" -- activities such as working memory, problem solving and reasoning.

An abstract is available but the full report is behind a paywall.

takyon writes:

Facebook has announced the Internet.org Platform, "an open program for developers to easily create services that integrate with Internet.org." The partnership is designed to deliver affordable Internet access to the developing world. However the initiative has been criticized for violating net neutrality:

Facebook says it will allow more websites and other online services to join its "free mobile data" Internet.org scheme.

The announcement follows a backlash against the initiative. Opponents suggest it compromises the principles of net neutrality, because it favours access to some sites and apps over others.

But Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg said it was "not sustainable to offer the whole internet for free". "It costs tens of billions of dollars every year to run the internet, and no operator could afford this if everything were free," he said in an online video posted to Internet.org's website.

Also discussed at TechCrunch, Ars Technica, Gizmodo, and Quartz.

Previously:

Internet Access in Developing World With Drones
Facebook's Internet.org - "Internet-For-Everyone" - Launches in Zambia
India Debates Net Neutrality

Hugh Pickens writes:

Jake Edge writes at LWN.net that there is a myth that programming skill is somehow distributed on a U-shaped curve and that people either "suck at programming" or that they "rock at programming", without leaving any room for those in between. Everyone is either an amazing programmer or "a worthless use of a seat" which doesn't make much sense. If you could measure programming ability somehow, its curve would look like the normal distribution. According to Edge this belief that programming ability fits into a bi-modal distribution is both "dangerous and a myth". "This myth sets up a world where you can only program if you are a rock star or a ninja. It is actively harmful in that is keeping people from learning programming, driving people out of programming, and it is preventing most of the growth and the improvement we'd like to see." If the only options are to be amazing or terrible, it leads people to believe they must be passionate about their career, that they must think about programming every waking moment of their life. If they take their eye off the ball even for a minute, they will slide right from amazing to terrible again leading people to be working crazy hours at work, to be constantly studying programming topics on their own time, and so on.

The truth is that programming isn't a passion or a talent, says Edge, it is just a bunch of skills that can be learned. Programming isn't even one thing, though people talk about it as if it were; it requires all sorts of skills and coding is just a small part of that. Things like design, communication, writing, and debugging are needed. If we embrace this idea that "it's cool to be okay at these skills"—that being average is fine—it will make programming less intimidating for newcomers. If the bar for success is set "at okay, rather than exceptional", the bar seems a lot easier to clear for those new to the community. According to Edge the tech industry is rife with sexism, racism, homophobia, and discrimination and although it is a multi-faceted problem, the talent myth is part of the problem. "In our industry, we recast the talent myth as "the myth of the brilliant asshole", says Jacob Kaplan-Moss. "This is the "10x programmer" who is so good at his job that people have to work with him even though his behavior is toxic. In reality, given the normal distribution, it's likely that these people aren't actually exceptional, but even if you grant that they are, how many developers does a 10x programmer have to drive away before it is a wash?"

frojack writes:

According to ScienceMag, the palmlike Pandanus candelabrum plant has an affinity for diamonds. Or more precisely, an affinity for kimberlite.

A geologist has discovered a thorny, palm-like plant in Liberia that seems to grow only on top of kimberlite pipes—columns of volcanic rock hundreds of meters across that extend deep into Earth, left by ancient eruptions that exhumed diamonds from the mantle. [...] It has a stilt-like aerial root system, similar to mangrove trees, and rises to a height of 10 meters or more, spreading spiny, palm-like fronds. [...] Kimberlite pipes bring the gems to the surface in eruptions that sometimes rise faster than the speed of sound. The pipes are rare.

The Kimberlite pipes are rich in magnesium, potassium, and phosphorus, and the plant appears to be particularly adapted to these soils. It appears to grows no where else.

Prospecting has just gotten much easier. That may be good for the West African nations, but not necessarily for P. candelabrum. Kimberlite mines tend to be narrow and vertical, with much smaller footprints than open-pit copper mines, and their effluent—ground-up kimberlite—is benign.

AnonTechie writes:

Among all of the NSA hacking operations exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden over the last two years, one in particular has stood out for its sophistication and stealthiness. Known as Quantum Insert, the man-on-the-side hacking technique has been used to great effect since 2005 by the NSA and its partner spy agency, Britain’s GCHQ, to hack into high-value, hard-to-reach systems and implant malware.

Quantum Insert is useful for getting at machines that can’t be reached through phishing attacks. It works by hijacking a browser as it’s trying to access web pages and forcing it to visit a malicious web page, rather than the page the target intend to visit. The attackers can then surreptitiously download malware onto the target’s machine from the rogue web page.

Quantum Insert has been used to hack the machines of terrorist suspects in the Middle East, but it was also used in a controversial GCHQ/NSA operation against employees of the Belgian telecom Belgacom and against workers at OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The “highly successful” technique allowed the NSA to place 300 malicious implants on computers around the world in 2010, according to the spy agency’s own internal documents—all while remaining undetected.

But now security researchers with Fox-IT in the Netherlands, who helped investigate that hack against Belgacom, have found a way to detect Quantum Insert attacks using common intrusion detection tools such as Snort, Bro and Suricata.

http://www.wired.com/2015/04/researchers-uncover-method-detect-nsa-quantum-insert-hacks/

[Related]: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/05/detecting_quant.html

takyon writes:

Carly Fiorina, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, has announced that she will seek the Republican nomination for the 2016 US presidential election:

"Yes, I am running for president," she said on ABC's "Good Morning America," where she made the announcement to host George Stephanopoulos. "I think I'm the best person for the job because I understand how the economy actually works. I understand the world, who's in it, how the world works. I understand bureaucracies, and that's what our federal government has become — a giant, bloated, unaccountable, corrupt bureaucracy," she said. "I understand technology, which is a tool both to re-imagine government to re-engage citizens in the process of government, and I understand executive decision-making, which is making a tough call in a tough time with high stakes for which you're prepared to be accountable."

The former Hewlett-Packard executive said she does not believe that it is necessary to have experience in political office, something that she has heard from Americans while traveling throughout the country. "They're kind of tired of the political class, and they believe that we need to return to a citizen government," she said.

Fiorina also slammed Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, saying that she is not trustworthy. While Fiorina said she admires Clinton, she asserted that the former secretary of state has not been transparent about issues ranging from Benghazi to foreign donations to her family's foundation.

Fiorina also launched her presidential campaign website on Monday, featuring a one-minute video with the message that America's founders "never intended us to have a professional political class." The video begins with Fiorina watching Clinton's presidential announcement. After Clinton says she is running for president, Fiorina switches off the TV, turns to the camera and delivers her message.

Neurosurgeon Ben Carson made his announcement on Sunday; former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee is expected to join the race on Tuesday.

Gizmodo points out that Fiorina's team forgot to register the domain carlyfiorina.org.

AnonTechie writes:

A group of Cambridge (UK) computer scientists have set a new gold standard for openness and reproducibility in research by sharing the more than 200 GB of data and 20,000 lines of code behind their latest results - an unprecedented degree of openness in a peer-reviewed publication. The researchers hope that this new gold standard will be adopted by other fields, increasing the reliability of research results, especially for work which is publicly funded.

The researchers are presenting their results at a talk today at the 12th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI) in Oakland, California.

In recent years there's been a great deal of discussion about so-called 'open access' publications - the idea that research publications, particularly those funded by public money, should be made publicly available.

Computer science has embraced open access more than many disciplines, with some publishers sub-licensing publications and allowing authors to publish them in open archives. However, as more and more corporations publish their research in academic journals, and as academics find themselves in a 'publish or perish' culture, the reliability of research results has come into question.

http://phys.org/news/2015-05-gold-standard.html

[Also Covered By]: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-05/uoc-ngs043015.php

[Source]: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/new-gold-standard-established-for-open-and-reproducible-research

chromas writes:

Nick and Margaret: The Trouble with Our Trains is a BBC Two show featuring Nick Hewer and Margaret Mountford, who explore "the sorry state of the British rail network."

The dynamic duo's travels took them to the Wessex Integrated Control Centre, located above the platform entrances at London Waterloo railway station, manned 24 hours a day by teams of controllers from both South West Trains and Network Rail.

[The] documentary revealed more than it planned this week, exposing the passwords used at a rail control centre.

The article features a frame of the video which shows the complex login credentials taped to an LCD panel of a Windows XP terminal.

One might wonder if overstrict password policy brought this about, except obviously a strict password policy would not allow the password that is stickied to the monitor..

AnonTechie writes:

While most of us have been binge-streaming or strapping computers to our bodies or wrapping our heads around the ins and outs of net neutrality, an international team of academics and some of the world's biggest technology companies have been quietly pondering how to rewrite the basic structure of the internet—for our sakes.

Their idea sounds simple: instead of numbers, use names. Focus not on the locations of things, but on the things themselves.

The proposal, called Named Data Networking, shifts the focus from the numbered locations of data—IP addresses like 174.16.254.1—to the very names of data—something like motherboard/stories/NDN/photo1. Under this system, for example, when your computer makes a packet request for a new Netflix release, you could retrieve the video from the nearest computer that has it, rather than wait to get it from Netflix's heavily-trafficked centralized servers.

"As far as the network is concerned," the project's website says, "the name in an NDN packet can be anything: an endpoint, a chunk of movie or book, a command to turn on some lights, etc." An internet not of numbers, but, if you will, of things.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-internet-of-names
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Named_data_networking

Hugh Pickens writes:

Julie Beck writes in The Atlantic that though science and fantasy seem to be polar opposites, a Venn diagram of “scientists” and “Lord of the Rings fans” have a large overlap which could (lovingly!) be labeled “nerds.” Several animal species have been named after characters from the books including wasps, crocodiles, and even a dinosaur named after Sauron, “Given Tolkien’s passion for nomenclature, his coinage, over decades, of enormous numbers of euphonious names—not to mention scientists’ fondness for Tolkien—it is perhaps inevitable that Tolkien has been accorded formal taxonomic commemoration like no other author,” writes Henry Gee. Other disciplines aren’t left out of the fun—there’s a geologically interesting region in Australia called the “Mordor Alkaline Igneous Complex,” a pair of asteroids named “Tolkien” and “Bilbo,” and a crater on Mercury also named “Tolkien.”

“It has been documented that Middle-Earth caught the attention of students and practitioners of science from the early days of Tolkien fandom. For example, in the 1960s, the Tolkien Society members were said to mainly consist of ‘students, teachers, scientists, or psychologists,’” writes Kristine Larsen, an astronomy professor at Central Connecticut State University, in her paper “SAURON, Mount Doom, and Elvish Moths: The Influence of Tolkien on Modern Science.” “When you have scientists who are fans of pop culture, they’re going to see the science in it,” says Larson. “It’s just such an intricate universe. It’s so geeky. You can delve into it. There’s the languages of it, the geography of it, and the lineages. It’s very detail oriented, and scientists in general like things that have depth and detail.” Larson has also written papers on using Tolkien as a teaching tool, and discusses with her astronomy students, for example, the likelihood that the heavenly body Borgil, which appears in the first book of the trilogy, can be identified as the star Aldebaran. “I use this as a hook to get students interested in science,” says Larson. “I’m also interested in recovering all the science that Tolkien quietly wove into Middle Earth because there’s science in there that the casual reader has not recognized."

sigma writes:

The Herald Sun reports that Australian-based chain Dominos Pizza have developed a GPS Driver Tracker to let customers track the location of their pizzas in real time.

While the app is intended to mollify salivating customers concerns about the interminable wait for their cheesy comestible, it has had the additional benefit of reducing accident rates among delivery drivers. An eighteen month trial halved the number of potentially dangerous habits such as speeding and taking corners too quickly. Chief Executive Don Meij said in an interview “There’s a lot of behavior you can learn about and change as a result,”

Disclaimer: I like pizza.