SoylentNews

"gewg_" writes:

Softpedia reports

The Linux kernel 2.6.32.67 LTS maintenance release has been made available [June 4] for all users of the 2.6 kernel series, and it promises to fix two regressions that have been introduced in the previous point release of the branch, Linux kernel 2.6.32.66 LTS.

[...] The 2.6.32 kernel series [...] will reach end of life in a couple of months, which means that [all users of 2.6.x] will have to move to a different LTS (Long Term Supported) kernel branch, such as Linux kernel 3.2 or Linux kernel 3.4.

For the record, Kernel 2.6.0 was released 2003/12/17, and Kernel 2.6.32 was released 2009/12/03.

In other kernel news, Greg Kroah-Hartman tweeted that Kernel 4.1 will be an LTS version.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Reuters reports that according to the Sunday Times Britain has pulled out agents from live operations in "hostile countries" after Russia and China cracked top-secret information contained in files leaked by former US. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. According to Rupert Murdoch's Sunday Times unnamed officials at the office of British Prime Minister David Cameron say China has also cracked the encrypted documents, which contain details of secret intelligence techniques and information that could allow British and American spies to be identified "Western intelligence agencies say they have been forced into the rescue operations after Moscow gained access to more than 1m classified files (paywalled) held by the former American security contractor, who fled to seek protection from Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, after mounting one of the largest leaks in US history."

However David Davis, the Conservative MP who is one of the leading campaigners for privacy, says: "We have to treat all of these things with a pinch of salt." Davis says the use of an anonymous source to create scare stories was a typical tactic and the timing was comfortable for the government. "You can see they have been made nervous by Anderson. We have not been given any facts, just assertions." Andrew Mitchell, a former cabinet minister, says he is sure the Sunday Times got the story because of the Anderson report and added "I think we have to be very careful of the argument 'listen sonny, we know what you don't know and therefore you should do what we say'. That is not a good argument; we need to have a proper debate about all of this. I don't approve of what Snowden did, but I have to say having been to Washington recently that there has been a massive change of view in the United States, not just people like Rand Paul and so on, there's a massive change of view about the debate and that has resulted from Snowden, whether you like it or not."

[Editor's Comment: There is media interest in the UK regarding this story. It originated from an unnamed source and is without any corroboration.]

darkfeline writes:

An Ars Technica story details how the FBI have lost control of domains that they have siezed:

In mid-May, the Federal Bureau of Investigations lost control over seized domains, including Megaupload.com, when the agency failed to renew a key domain name of its own. That domain, which hosted the name servers that redirected requests for seized sites to an FBI Web page, was purchased at auction—and then used to redirect traffic from Megaupload.com and other sites to a malicious site serving porn ads and malware. Weeks later, those sites are still in limbo because somehow, despite a law enforcement freeze on the domain name, the name servers associated with Megaupload.com and those other seized sites were changed to point at hosts associated with a domain registered in China.

As Ars reported on May 28, the domain CIRFU.NET had been registered by the FBI through GoDaddy to provide domain name servers and Web servers for the FBI's Cyber Initiative and Resources Fusion Unit (part of FBI's Cyber Division). The FBI failed to renew the domain on April 1, however, and on May 13 the domain was acquired at an auction by "Syndk8 Media Limited"—a front company registered at a Gibraltar mail and call forwarding service by a "black-hat SEO" Web marketer who calls himself Earl Grey.

kaszz writes:

Researchers of the University of Washington, USA are testing the prototype of their ApneaApp to diagnose sleep apnea, a health problem that can become life-threatening. To monitor a person's sleep, the app uses a smartphone as an active sonar system that tracks tiny changes in a person's movements during sleep. The phone speaker sends out an inaudible sound that bounce off the sleeping person's body and which is picked up again by the phone's microphone. "It's similar to the way bats navigate," said Rajalakshmi, lead author and a doctoral candidate in the UW's department of computer science and engineering. "They send out sound signals that hit a target, and when those signals bounce back they know something is there."

In technical terms, the app continuously analyzes changes in the acoustic room-transfer-function which is sampled at ultrasonic frequencies to detect motion and it works at a distance of up to 0.9 meter. This is very similar to what the iPhone app Sleep Cycle Sonalarm Clock does, except that the UW researchers have improved the sensitivity of the method so it can precisely track the person's breathing movements which allows it to not only detect different sleep phases but also sleep apnea events. The advantage in both use cases is that the sleep monitoring is contact-less (there's nothing in the user's bed that could disturb their sleep) and doesn't require any additional hardware besides the user's smartphone.

The researchers used a Samsung Galaxy S4 but that's also a smartphone with one of the best frequency responses with a total variation of only 0.014 dB in a 61 tone sweep from 20-20,000 Hz so perhaps this kind of use can only be done with specific smartphones?

janrinok writes:

According to TechDirt:

It's beginning to look like a US-based encrypted communications platform may be headed for a Lavabit-esque future. As we're well aware, agencies like the FBI and NSA are firmly opposed to encrypted communications, which is something Surespot -- a text-messaging service -- offers.

Surespot has been in the news lately, thanks to terrorist groups utilizing encrypted services to keep their communications secret. UK's Channel Four looked into Surespot and found that 115 "ISIS-linked" people "appear" to have used the service in the "past six months." Because UK 4 wasn't able to get this information from Surespot directly (because Surespot doesn't store personally identifiable information or users' communications), it has only been able to infer this from messages on social media services that refer to Surespot.

What this means in terms of terrorists "flocking" to encrypted apps is still very vague, but there's no doubt any additional layers of secrecy are welcomed by those wishing to hide their communications. What 115 ISIS-linked users means in terms of an installed user base of at least 100,000 is also open for discussion, but it's quite obvious there are plenty of non-terrorists using the service as well.

[..]

George Maschke of Antipolygraph.org has been periodically sending emails to Surespot, unofficially acting as the service's warrant canary. For several months, his questions have been answered. But as of May 25th, he has still received no response to his canned questions.

There's good reason to believe this is true. A recent plea agreement by a 17-year-old Virginia native charged with providing material support to ISIS (via instructions on how to use Bitcoin to provide anonymous donations) specifically mentions Surespot.

wantkitteh wrote to tell us that TechDirt reports:

Last night, we noted that an amendment from Reps. Thomas Massie and Zoe Lofgren was on the docket that had two provisions to stop two different kinds of surveillance: the first, taking away funding from "backdoor searches" which are a hugely problematic "loophole" that the NSA uses to do warrantless surveillance of Americans. In many ways, this is much worse than the bulk collection programs that were just hindered by the USA Freedom Act. The second part of the amendment was barring funds from being used to mandate "backdoors" into technology products -- another hugely important move. Thankfully, the amendment passed by a wide margin earlier today: 255 - to 174.

The article goes on to mention that a similar amendment was proposed and passed with a much wider margin in previous debates last year, but was later dropped when passing the higher profile "CRomnibus bill" required it.

"gewg_" writes:

Roy Schestowitz at TechRights reports:

Microsoft wages war on politics in all sorts of ways, sometimes through lobbyists, sometimes through 'former' staff, pseudo 'charities' like the Gates Foundation, and pressure groups like the Business Software Alliance.

Today we present information given to us courtesy of the California Association of Voting Officials. They complain about Microsoft lobbyists and they have expressed an interest in aligning for global issues, for they too realise that Microsoft cannot be ignored if society wants fair elections and ultimately pursues voting machinery that can be trusted.

Microsoft lobbying in this area is a scarcely explored topic. There is very little information about it out there, hence we hardly ever covered the topic. It is widely known, however, that voting machines in the US use Windows, which has back doors and therefore can never be trusted, with or without tampering by a human operator.

[...]Somehow, despite public will to induce transparency, accountability, audits, etc. on the process, decades later we are still [...] heavily dependent on a proprietary, secretive system (or set thereof).

[...]"We put open source language into voting system legislation", told us [sic] someone from the California Association of Voting Officials, "and the Microsoft lobbyists have it removed.

"This must be stopped as OS voting systems are a preferred security environment for vote tabulation... the alternative being Diebold / Dominion / Microsoft, etc."[...]

The head attorneys for President Obama's election report (which omitted open source voting system solutions even though the information was gifted to them) work for firms that lobby and/or represent Microsoft (Bob Bauer of Perkins Coie and Ben Ginsburg of Pattons Boggs/Jones Day)

Nate Persily was tasked with presenting the President with all information...but inexplicably failed to include any reference to open source in the report. When asked about this omission--and possible steps to remedy (addendum etc)--Persily went silent.

No members of the Presidential Committee were responsive...

In California--which is the frontline of the battle for open source voting systems in the USA--the lobbyist for the California Association of Clerks and Elected Officials Barry Brokaw is also the lobbyist for Microsoft

Runaway1956 writes:

The world’s second largest sailing ship, Russia’s Krusenstern barque, has rammed two Iceland Coast Guard vessels in the port of Reykjavik, considerably damaging the deck of one of the vessels.

Local tugs were apparently a little over-enthusiastic while pulling the Russian ship on Thursday. The Krusenstern was preparing to head out of Reykjavik’s harbor, which required it to be turned around with the help of local tugs, according to TASS.

The incident involved half of Iceland’s Coast Guard fleet, consisting of the Chilean-built ICGV Þór, the Danish-built ICGV Týr and ICGV Ægir and the Icelandic-built ICGV Baldur.

Some of you may ask, "News for Nerds?" Well, I find the whole thing rather humorous. After decades of technological advances, one tired old sailing ship inflicts some moderately serious damage on a pair of warships - and suffers almost no damage to itself. Need I point out that it's an UNARMED sailing ship?

quixote writes:

Just bought a FirefoxOS Revolution Geeksphone in mid-May. I mean, sure, it's buggy and needs improvement, but it's an open source, community-driven project. That is how it was presented to consumers.

It has nowhere to go but up, right? Wrong. Without any kind of transparency or openness or communication, the Geeksphone crew let us know in a one-line comment that they were orphaning all of us.

Re: Firefox OS 2.2
« Reply #3 on: June 10, 2015, 05:34:08 PM »
No sorry, all FxOs development are finished by Geeksphone.

Thanks..... ;)

And that's all, folks. Apparently. To add injury to injury, they used a locked bootloader, according to another commenter. I didn't even check on that. It's an open source project, I thought.

I'm also mad as hell. Any other Soylentils in this mess? Anybody have any ideas on a useful way forward?

janrinok writes:

From the BigMessOfWires (BMOW) site:

What does it take to build a little 68000-based protoboard computer, and get it running Linux? In my case, about three weeks of spare time, plenty of coffee, and a strong dose of stubborness. After banging my head against the wall with problems ranging from the inductance of pushbutton switches to memory leaks in the C standard library, it finally works! I've built several other DIY computer systems before, but never took their software beyond simple assembly language programs. Having a full-fledged multitasking OS running on this ugly pile of chips and wires is a thrill, and opens up all kinds of interesting new possibilities. I've named this plucky little machine 68 Katy.

There is a video of just over 5 minutes duration, and a good description of how he did it - but it was no easy task. He eventually had to settle for a linux kernel version of "2.0.39, that dates all the way back to 2001!" For those who, like me, still like to get their hands 'dirty' it is an interesting project.

An Anonymous Coward wrote in with a report from Softpedia:

Krita Foundation completed a fundraising campaign successfully raising money for making their Krita digital painting app faster than the well-known Photoshop software from Adobe.

[...] On May 4, we reported that the Krita developers decided to do another Kickstarter campaign, after last year's successful one, this time to raise €20,000 ($22,000) for making the next version of the application faster.

[...] Krita's fundraising campaign was successfully completed, raising a little over €30,000 ($34,000), which means that the developers will concentrate all of their efforts on making the open-source digital painting app much faster than Photoshop.

[...] The current version of Krita is 2.9.5 [...] Most probably, the new, improved code will be implemented in Krita 3.0, which should be out later this year.

We had two submissions with updates concerning a US Government data breach.

Robotron writes:

A second round of hacks have been unleashed upon a vast range of already beleaguered U.S. federal government departments. The attacks again came from hackers linked to China, with the estimated figure upon personal data exposure this time running to about 14 million government employees across records dating back to the 1980s.

With each detailed personal file containing up to 780 identifying pieces of information, the breach constitutes one of the most intense computing blunders in governmental history. Though much can and has been said of the U.S. government's data collection abilities, their data protection skills clearly lack such polish.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Adam Chandler writes in The Atlantic that last week it was revealed that all of the data on Standard Form 86 — filled out by millions of current and former military and intelligence workers — is now believed to be in the hands of Chinese hackers. Form 86 requires that an applicant disclose everything from mental illnesses, financial interests, and bankruptcy issues to any brush with the law and major or minor drug and alcohol use. The application also requires a thorough listing of an applicant's family members, associates, or former roommates so hackers may have not only troves of personal data about Americans with highly sensitive jobs, but also the contacts or family members of American intelligence employees living abroad who could potentially be targeted for coercion.

At its worst, this cyberbreach also provides a basic roster of every American with a security clearance. "That makes it very hard for any of those people to function as an intelligence officer," says Joel Brenner. "The database also tells the Chinese an enormous amount of information about almost everyone with a security clearance. That's a gold mine. It helps you approach and recruit spies."

Meanwhile the number of current and former federal employees compromised has ballooned from 4 million to as many as 14 million. The scope of the breach is remarkable, experts say, because the personnel office apparently learned little from earlier government data breaches like the WikiLeaks case and the surveillance revelations by Edward J. Snowden, both of which involved unencrypted data. "This is potentially devastating from a counter­intelligence point of view," concludes Brenner.

See our story on the earlier breach.

tonyPick writes:

IEEE Spectrum has an article medical device cracking, and includes some comments on a research report on medical device hijacking, due to be released on 15 June.

The report, "Anatomy of an Attack–Medical Device Hijack (MEDJACK)," describes in detail three situations in which hackers were able to get into supposedly secure hospital networks, collecting valuable information, by targeting medical devices.

Although the article covers the report, it also goes into the general issue of embedded device security, and references an earlier article on security implications of the Internet of Things (IoT) from the same author.

Robotron writes:

The hype around Swift is near non-existent by Apple standards, yet the language has attracted high praise since its release last year. Swift is essentially one of the very few Apple products representing a clear departure from the hardware-led approach Steve Jobs took to the business. If Stack Overflow's 2015 dev survey is anything to go by, it looks as if the Swift language might have potential to really shake things up.

Might the days of Apple programmers relying upon objective C be numbered?

Robotron writes:

The State of California took an unprecedented move today [June 14] by uniformly restricting water supplies across the entire state. Farms will be most affected, although food prices aren't anticipated to rise in any hurry: imports from out of state continue apace. It's notable that this is a problem Silicon Valley hasn't been helping to solve.

Will this move force some much-needed modernization upon the infrastructure supporting the state's 38 million residents? Or will things continue to be corn, corn, corn for the time being?