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Hugh Pickens writes:

Adam Frank and Marcelo Gleiser write in the NYT that two leading researchers, George Ellis and Joseph Silk, recently published a controversial piece called "Scientific Method: Defend the Integrity of Physics" that criticized a newfound willingness among some scientists to explicitly set aside the need for experimental confirmation of today's most ambitious cosmic theories — so long as those theories are "sufficiently elegant and explanatory." Whether or not you agree with them, Ellis and Silk have identified a mounting concern in fundamental physics: Today, our most ambitious science can seem at odds with the empirical methodology that has historically given physics its credibility:

Chief among the 'elegance will suffice' advocates are some string theorists. Because string theory is supposedly the 'only game in town' capable of unifying the four fundamental forces, they believe that it must contain a grain of truth even though it relies on extra dimensions that we can never observe. Some cosmologists, too, are seeking to abandon experimental verification of grand hypotheses that invoke imperceptible domains such as the kaleidoscopic multiverse (comprising myriad universes), the 'many worlds' version of quantum reality (in which observations spawn parallel branches of reality) and pre-Big Bang concepts. These unprovable hypotheses are quite different from those that relate directly to the real world and that are testable through observations — such as the standard model of particle physics and the existence of dark matter and dark energy. As we see it, theoretical physics risks becoming a no-man's-land between mathematics, physics and philosophy that does not truly meet the requirements of any.

Richard Dawid argues that physics, or at least parts of it, are about to enter an era of post-empirical science. "How are we to determine whether a theory is true if it cannot be validated experimentally?" ask Frank and Gleiser. "Are superstrings and the multiverse, painstakingly theorized by hundreds of brilliant scientists, anything more than modern-day epicycles?"

takyon writes:

The brain's reaction to certain words could be used to replace passwords, according to a study by researchers from Binghamton University in New York:

In "Brainprint," a newly published study in academic journal Neurocomputing, researchers from Binghamton University observed the brain signals of 45 volunteers as they read a list of 75 acronyms, such as FBI and DVD. They recorded the brain's reaction to each group of letters, focusing on the part of the brain associated with reading and recognizing words, and found that participants' brains reacted differently to each acronym, enough that a computer system was able to identify each volunteer with 94 percent accuracy. The results suggest that brainwaves could be used by security systems to verify a person's identity.

According to Sarah Laszlo, assistant professor of psychology and linguistics at Binghamton University and co-author of "Brainprint," brain biometrics are appealing because they are cancellable and cannot be stolen by malicious means the way a finger or retina can.

Zhanpeng Jin, assistant professor at Binghamton University's departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering, doesn't see brainprint as the kind of system that would be mass-produced for low security applications (at least in the near future) but it could have important security applications.

"We tend to see the applications of this system as being more along the lines of high-security physical locations, like the Pentagon or Air Force Labs, where there aren't that many users that are authorized to enter, and those users don't need to constantly be authorizing the way that a consumer might need to authorize into their phone or computer," Jin said.

The project is funded by the National Science Foundation and Binghamton University's Interdisciplinary Collaboratino Grants (ICG) Program.

AnonTechie writes:

A group of researchers at the Chinese web services company Baidu have been barred from participating in an international competition for artificial intelligence technology after organizers discovered that the Baidu scientists broke the contest's rules.

The competition, which is known as the "Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge", is organized annually by computer scientists at Stanford University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Michigan.

It requires that computer systems created by the teams classify the objects in a set of digital images into 1,000 different categories. The rules of the contest permit each team to run test versions of their programs twice weekly ahead of a final submission as they train their programs to "learn" what they are seeing.

However, on Tuesday, the contest organizers posted a public statement noting that between November and May 30, different accounts had been used by the Baidu team to submit more than 200 times to the contest server, "far exceeding the specified limit of two submissions per week."

Jitendra Malik, a University of California computer scientist who is a pioneer in the field of computer vision, compared the accusations against Baidu to drug use in the Olympics. "If you run a 9.5-second 100-meter sprint, but you are on steroids, then how can your result be trusted?" Mr. Malik said.

The episode has raised concern within the computer science community, in part because the field of artificial intelligence has historically been plagued by claims that run far ahead of actual science.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/technology/computer-scientists-are-astir-after-baidu-team-is-barred-from-ai-competition.html

[Related Paper]: Deep Image: Scaling up Image Recognition

penguinoid writes:

These days there are so many apps infested with spyware or adware, and it almost seems as if the stores themselves are promoting them in exchange for a cut. And some apps that start off clean get "updated" to include ads and spying. How do you find free apps that aren't infested?

hemocyanin writes:

The most recent candidate under the DNC banner is Lincoln Chafee who interestingly, besides being the lone Republican (he switched parties) to vote against the Iraq war, is vehemently pro-metric system. I remember when I was a kid, the freeway signs for distance and speed were printed in both English and metric. Converting all those signs from miles to km (again) would cost money, but then, using the English measurement system costs money too, forever -- according to a random guy I googled up without putting any real effort into it because I'm not that interested in proving myself wrong (Paul Naughtin), somewhere between six billion and a trillion. There are without a doubt, critics who might call that somewhat of a wide margin but as one witty commenter noted: "It is probably impossible to give an upper bound on that, however I can give you a lower bound: 500 Million Dollars for the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter by NASA".

Now, I'm neither a firm GOP nor DNC voter... but I'm tempted.

takyon: Former Governor of Rhode Island Lincoln Chafee joins a number of other candidates seeking a 2016 U.S. presidential nomination.

Original Submission

The Devious Defecator writes in with an Ars Technica report:

Who was the "devious defecator" leaving their "offending fecal matter" across an Atlanta-area warehouse that stored and delivered products for grocery stores?

That's how US District Judge Amy Totenberg described the issue as she ruled in favor of two employees who were forced to give a buccal cheek swab to determine if their DNA was a match. But a match was not to be had. The two sued, claiming that the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) prohibited their 2012 tests by a forensics lab hired by their employer, Atlas Logistics Group Retail Services.

Ahead of trial, Judge Totenberg set aside Atlas Logistics' claims that the "genetic information" at issue wasn't covered by the law. Atlas Logistics asserted that GINA excludes analyses of DNA, RNA, chromosomes, proteins, or metabolites if such analyses do not reveal an individual's propensity for disease. The judge ruled that the "plain meaning of the statute's text" is satisfactory for the case to go forward despite the tests at issue not revealing disease propensities.

The two plaintiffs were singled out [for testing] because their work schedules coincided with the timing and location of what the court termed the "defecation episodes."

The company has offered a combined $200,000 to the two employees without admitting wrongdoing. The two employees have vowed to push for more.

takyon: Judge Amy Totenberg is the sister of NPR correspondent Nina Totenberg. The Washington Post has more details about the case and GINA.

darkfeline sent an Ars Technica article about Facebook's opposition to a Vermont startup's "Designbook" trademark application:

"We don't believe that any of our branding is related to theirs," Pollak said, in an article published yesterday by Boston magazine. "Our logo is completely different, different colors, different fonts."

Pollak and Clark say their name was inspired by the design books they used in school. It's a "really specific thing when you're an engineer... It's your prototype book, where you keep track of your projects, your ideas, and your inventions."

Facebook hasn't commented on the situation, but Pollak describes it as a case of "trademark extortion and corporate bullying."

"What about a phonebook?" he asked. "What about a yearbook? What about a notebook or a scrapbook? All of those things have the name 'book' in them and the truth is, a lot of those things are an aggregation of profiles."

Facebook has asserted rights to both the prefix "face" and the suffix "book" in the social networking space. The company has been through a few trademark brawls in recent years. In 2010, the company sued Teachbook, an online community aimed at schoolteachers, which fought back for a while before agreeing to change its name to TeachQuest in 2012. Other sites, like Placebook, agreed to change their name without a lawsuit. Adult website owner FriendFinder Networks created a site called FacebookOfSex, which, no surprise, folded after Facebook quickly filed suit.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Brian Everstine writes at Air Force Times that US intelligence officers were able to locate and bomb an Islamic State command center based on a photo and comments in social media. "The [airmen are] combing through social media and they see some moron standing at this command," said Gen. Hawk Carlisle, commander of Air Combat Command. "And in some social media, open forum, bragging about command and control capabilities for Da'esh, ISIL, And these guys go 'ah, we got an in.' So they do some work, long story short, about 22 hours later through that very building, three JDAMS take that entire building out. Through social media. It was a post on social media. Bombs on target in 22 hours."

Carlisle was careful to not go into great detail about the how the information was gathered and what additional effort went into targeting those bombs. It's easy to imagine that in addition to the information gleaned from the initial post that the Air Force used satellite and drone reconnaissance data. It's also possible that US intelligence could have actively engaged with the original poster in order to draw out information. Attackers and researchers have shown time and time again that simply asking a target for information—either by posing as a trusted individual or using carefully created phishing attacks—works even better than fancy information-stealing digital attacks.

takyon writes:

The Intercept's Micah Lee wrote a guide explaining how to encrypt a hard drive but was criticized for recommending Microsoft's BitLocker disk encryption utility for Windows users. Microsoft has responded to some of the criticisms by providing more details about how BitLocker works:

The company told me which random number generator BitLocker uses to generate encryption keys, alleviating concerns about a government backdoor in that subsystem; it explained why it removed the Elephant diffuser, citing worries over performance and compatibility that will appease some, but certainly not all, concerned parties; and it said that the government-compromised algorithm it bundles with Windows to generate encryption keys is, by default, not used at all.

Significant questions remain about BitLocker, to be sure, and because the source code for it is not available, those questions will likely remain unanswered. As prominent cryptographer Bruce Schneier has written, "In the cryptography world, we consider open source necessary for good security; we have for decades." Despite all of this, BitLocker still might be the best option for Windows users who want to encrypt their disks.

Microsoft cryptographer Niels Ferguson gave a presentation in 2007 suggesting that Dual_EC_DRBG might have a backdoor. These suspicions were confirmed by the Snowden documents. Microsoft says that the default pseudorandom number generator for Windows is CTR_DRBG, and that BitLocker uses it when it generates a new key.

TGV writes:

Ars Technica writes about WikiLeaks' release of 17 secret documents from the negotiations of the global Trade in Services Agreement (TISA). If their interpretation is correct,

and

What more nasty surprises will these negotiations bring?

takyon writes:

The National Security Agency has been warrantlessly sifting through Americans' international Internet traffic on behalf of the FBI in order to identify malicious hackers since 2012, according to the New York Times, ProPublica, and The Intercept:

The revelation calls into question previous statements made by senior U.S. officials about a claimed lack of ability to detect cyberattacks within the United States. During his time as director of the NSA, for instance, Keith Alexander continually lobbied for more cybersecurity powers, but did not mention the scope of those already obtained by the agency. In March 2014, the then-NSA director told a cybersecurity conference at Georgetown University: "An attack on Wall Street or an exploit going against Wall Street — NSA and Cyber Command would probably not see that. We have no capability there. Against everything that's been said, the fact is we don't have the ability to see it."

The Times report, an embargoed copy of which was shared with The Intercept because co-founder Laura Poitras contributed to it, also reveals that the FBI negotiated in 2012 to use the NSA's surveillance capabilities to monitor Internet traffic passing over "chokepoints operated by U.S. providers through which international communications enter and leave the United States." The NSA would reportedly send the intercepted traffic to a "cyberdata repository" maintained by the bureau in Quantico, Virginia.

frojack writes:

The Economist has a short blurb on a crowd dispersal used against stone throwers in Israel.

The good news is it is entirely non-toxic, and allegedly drinkable, and serves to clear the area with no injuries. There are reports of its use go back several years

The bad news, is there is some indication that US Police departments are starting to order the Feculent fragrance for their own crowd control situations.

It remains to be seen how this "collective environmental punishment" will go over in the streets of the US where people call the police on dog walkers that fail to pick up after their pet.

AnonTechie writes:

Moscow's Don Giulio Salumeria promises "small islands of warm and sunny Italy," offering authentic Italian prosciutto, ricotta, mozzarella and tiramisu for sale in the cold lands of Russia.

Fat lot of good any of it will do Muscovites, given that Russia has banned food imports from the European Union and the US. It's not that Don Giulio can't figure out how to import it, but the shop sure can't advertise those delicious imported foods.

So what's a well-stocked salumeria to do? Pay an ad company to rig billboards with facial recognition that's been tweaked to spot the official symbols and logos on the uniforms worn by Russian police, that's what.

As Adweek reports, an ad agency called The 23 created an outdoor ad that could apparently spot police uniforms. As police approached the ad, as you can see in this YouTube video, the billboard would switch from advertising a nice, fat wedge of Don Giulio Salumeria's imported cheese, rolling over instead to an ad for a nice, completely non-contraband Matryoshka doll shop.

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2015/06/01/russian-billboard-advertising-contraband-hides-when-it-recognises-cops/

[Also Covered By]: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/06/smart_billboard.html

takyon writes:

[editors note: for those of you that want some Blue Oyster Cult playing while reading this, here's a link ]

Godzilla has received a Japanese citizenship certificate. Address: Shinjuku-ku, Kabuki-cho, 1-19-1. Date of birth: April 9, 1954. Reason for special residency: "Promoting the entertainment of and watching over the Kabuki-cho neighborhood and drawing visitors from around the globe."

A replica of Japan's undisputed "King of Monsters" was also placed on top of the district's iconic Toho building. The Japanese film company will release a new Godzilla film in 2016, following the success of a 2014 Hollywood remake by British director Gareth Edwards. Godzilla attended an awards ceremony in April, where he was presented with a sash from Shinjuku mayor, Kenichi Yoshizumi.

In other news, Sony Pictures could lose its license to kill make James Bond films after an agreement with Metro Goldwyn-Mayer expires later this year.

middlemen writes:

Game piracy is a real problem for independent game developers, especially on platforms like Android and Linux where reverse engineering games is quite easy.

To counter this, a simple method of using OpenGL to encrypt the assets such as images and data can be done by using the graphics card or GPU for performing the encryption/decryption work completely on the GPU, by using native OpenGL calls. This uses the already established General Purpose GPU (GPGPU) computing methodology to accomplish this task. A description of a proof-of-concept is available at Stealth Labs blog and the source code is available at github.

From stealthy.io:

Suppose you are an independent game developer. You are facing piracy and fake copies of your game, and you do not have the legal and economic power to handle this problem. You want to continue making games without getting discouraged by pirates, who most likely reside in other countries. What do you do ? How do you prevent or reduce the incentive to pirate your game through reverse engineering ? Maybe you could perform encryption of your game assets, like textures, shaders and images, to thwart the piracy and copy-cat efforts ? You could use standard encryption libraries like OpenSSL, but that still leaves the decrypted data open to access, in CPU memory, by anyone running a debugger on your software. What if you could use OpenGL to do the encryption and leave the data in the framebuffer object and render it from there using OpenGL itself ? Then you would never have to even extract the data from GPU memory into CPU memory ! Debugging tools for OpenGL are not good enough, and reverse engineering tools for OpenGL are non-existent.