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takyon writes:

Blackberry has decided to exit Pakistan by the end of 2015 rather than comply with government data retention requests:

Phone-maker Blackberry is to stop operating in Pakistan at the end of 2015 because of government requests to monitor customer data. The Pakistani government wanted to be able to monitor every message and email sent via its phones, it said. In a blogpost, it said it had decided to "exit the market altogether" over the row. It said Pakistan's demand was not to do with public safety but a request for "unfettered access".

In July, Pakistan's Telecommunications Authority told Blackberry the servers underpinning its messaging business would no longer be allowed to operate in the country, citing "security reasons". Marty Beard, chief operating officer at Blackberry, said the "truth" of the matter was Pakistan had wanted to look at all the traffic passing across its messaging servers but the phone company would not "comply with that sort of directive".

"Remaining in Pakistan would have meant forfeiting our commitment to protect our users' privacy. That is a compromise we are not willing to make," wrote Mr Beard.

This led Pakistan to tell Blackberry its servers could no longer operate in the country. Mr Beard said Blackberry did not support "backdoors" that would grant open access to customers' information and had never complied with such a request anywhere in the world.

Maybe they deserve more than a 0.5% share of the global smartphone market.

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HughPickens.com writes:

Located between Hawaii and Australia, the Marshall Islands are made up of 29 atolls and five islands with a population of about 70,000, all of whom live about six feet above sea level. Now Story Hinkley writes in The Christian Science Monitor that another 10,000 Marshallese have moved to Springdale, Arkansas because of climate change.

Because this Pacific island nation is so small, the Marshallese population in Arkansas attribute their Springdale settlement to one man, John Moody, who moved to the US in 1979 after the first wave of flooding. Moody's family eventually moved to Springdale to live with him and work for Tyson and other poultry companies based in Arkansas, eventually causing a steady flow of extended friends and family migrating to Springdale. "Probably in 10 to 20 years from now, we're all going to move," says Roselinta Keimbar adding that she likes Arkansas because it is far away from the ocean, meaning it is safe.

For more than three decades, Marshallese have moved in the thousands to the landlocked Ozark Mountains for better education, jobs and health care, thanks to an agreement that lets them live and work in the US.. This historical connection makes it an obvious destination for those facing a new threat: global warming. Marshallese Foreign Minister Tony de Brum says even a small rise in global temperatures would spell the demise of his country.

While many world leaders in Paris want to curb emissions enough to cap Earth's warming at 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius), de Brum is pushing for a target that's 25 percent lower. "The thought of evacuation is repulsive to us," says de Brum. "We think that the more reasonable thing to do is to seek to end this madness, this climate madness, where people think that smaller, vulnerable countries are expendable and therefore they can continue to do business as usual." Meanwhile residents jokingly call their new home "Springdale Atoll," and there's even a Marshallese consulate in Springdale, the only one on the mainland US. "Its not our fault that the tide is getting higher," says Carlon Zedkaia. "Just somebody else in this world that wants to get rich."

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Phoenix666 writes:

We make very careful considerations about the interface and operation of the GNU coreutils, but unfortunately due to backwards compatibility reasons, some behaviours or defaults of these utilities can be confusing.

This information will continue to be updated and overlaps somewhat with the coreutils FAQ, with this list focusing on less frequent potential issues.

Good tips and reminders for those who don't work mostly with a CLI (Command Line Interface).

[What has been YOUR biggest CLI gotcha? -Ed.]

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Phoenix666 writes:

The domestication of wild grains has played a major role in human evolution, facilitating the transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one based on agriculture. You might think that the grains were used for bread, which today represents a basic staple. But some scientists argue that it wasn't bread that motivated our ancestors to start grain farming. It was beer. Man, they say, chose pints over pastry.

Beer has plenty to recommend it over bread. First, and most obviously, it is pleasant to drink. "Beer had all the same nutrients as bread, and it had one additional advantage," argues Solomon H. Katz, an anthropology professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Namely, it gave early humans the same pleasant buzz it gives us. Patrick E. McGovern, the director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Project for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health at the University of Pennsylvania, goes even further. Beer, he says, was more nutritious than bread. It contains "more B vitamins and [more of the] essential amino acid lysine," McGovern writes in his book, Uncorking the Past: the Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages. It was also safer to drink than water, because the fermentation process killed pathogenic microorganisms. "With a four to five percent alcohol content, beer is a potent mind-altering and medicinal substance," McGovern says, adding that ancient brewers acted as medicine men.

We hold these things to be self-evident: The Internet is for Pr0n, and Civilization is for Beer.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

What's Driving The Disruption And Capital Investment?

The on-demand, utility economy has had a significant influence on business models in the automotive industry and have introduced services like Beepi and Vroom. Both startups aim to simplify the $36.5 billion used car industry by enabling consumers to surf, finance, and arrange delivery of a used car via their smartphones or other online device.

On the manufacturer side, new players like Tesla have challenged the traditional retail dealership model with direct sales and no franchise stores.

From a product perspective, sophisticated electronics and software now account for as much as 35 percent of the total cost of the automobiles themselves,and the ever increasing software content has accelerated the pace of product innovation from years to months.

[...] Millennials have spearheaded disruption in the automotive industry with a major focus on pricing transparency, a preference for the ease of digital transactions, and the foundational expectation that their car should simply be an extension of their "always on" mobile lifestyles.

In a recent Car Buyer of the Future study done by Autotrader with a sample size of over 4,000 customers, less than half a percent currently enjoy the car-buying experience. In a study conducted by Accenture, 75 percent of respondents would consider purchasing a car via home delivery, completely online.

Today's consumers want a faster, streamlined but personalized, no pressure, car-buying experience that allows them to purchase, finance, and insure their vehicle with the touch of a screen. They have been trained by Google, Facebook, and other digital data super powers to expect and enjoy a personalized customer experience based on their stated or inferred preferences from observed online behaviors and millions of digital data points. Why should car ownership or access to automotive mobility be any different?

Some marketing-speak to get through, but a reasonable overview of the current state of the industry.

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NotSanguine writes:

Kate Taylor over at The New York Times is reporting on the backlash from the recent poor showing of New York students on the Algebra Regents examination. Passing this examination is required for students to graduate from high school in New York.

From the article (semi-paywalled: Search for article title in the your favorite search engine and click on the result to bypass):

In 2013, concerned that high school graduates were not prepared for college, the State Board of Regents revamped the exams students must pass to graduate, starting with the English and Algebra I tests. The board decided that, where previously students needed a score of only 65 on a 100-point scale to pass, in coming years they would have to score at a “college- and career-ready” level, which this year was deemed to be a 79 in English, and a 74 in Algebra.

The result: On the 2015 Algebra I exam, which was supposed to align with the new Common Core curriculum, the percentage of students passing fell to 63 percent, down nine points from the old exam last year. And less than a quarter of students scored at the college-ready level. In New York City, which has a concentration of poor and minority students, only 52 percent of students passed the 2015 exam, down from 65 percent the previous year on the old exam. Just 16 percent reached the “college-ready” level.

[Continued after the break.]

tt0114814 writes:

The Wall Street Journal has an article detailing how the Paris attackers operated out in the open, using their own names, credit cards and drivers licenses. Even more absurd the leader was interviewed for a Terrorist of the Month profile piece in ISIS's english language magazine bragging that he had stockpiled weapons in preparation for an attack.

Combined with the evidence that they communicated over unencrypted SMS the evidence is pretty damning that the surveillance state is in the hands of the Keystone Kops.

Original Submission

The Mighty Buzzard sent in some news:

This morning's fun news comes to us courtesy of The Register. In short, there are two vulnerabilities: the most severe one is a remotely-exploitable denial of service (DoS) bug and the other is a medium-severity out-of-bounds access vulnerability. Fixes are due out shortly.

High severity vulnerability: CVE-2015-8027, is a remotely-exploitable denial-of-service (DoS) bug that the node.js Foundation is keeping embargoed until the patch is issued. It affects all versions of v0.12.x through to v5.x, but not versions 0.10.x.

Medium severity vulnerability: CVE-2015-6764, is an out-of-bounds access vulnerability that only affects v4.x and v5.x. An attacker can trigger an out-of-bounds access and/or denial-of-service “if user-supplied JavaScript can be executed by an application”, the CVE says.

There are currently no known exploits in the wild.

See also: InfoWorld and Security Week .

Those of you who have to spend their day updating and testing have my sympathies.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

In a landmark decision, a Swedish court on Friday ruled that the country's internet service providers cannot be forced to block controversial Swedish file-sharing site Pirate Bay.

[...] After considering the case for almost a month, the District Court of Stockholm ruled that copyright holders could not make Swedish ISP Bredbandsbolaget block Pirate Bay.

The court found that Bredbandsbolaget's operations do not amount to participation in the copyright infringement offences carried out by some of its 'pirate' subscribers.

Pirate Bay is blocked by many European ISPs but anti-piracy outfits have always hoped that one day the notorious site would be restricted in Sweden.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A campaign called "Racismo virtual, consequencias reais" (Virtual racism, real consequences) has been launched in Brazil:

The campaign is called "Virtual racism, real consequences" and it's backed by Criola, a civil rights organisation run by Afro-Brazilian women. The group collects comments from Facebook or Twitter and uses geolocation tools to find out where the people who have posted them live. They then buy billboard space nearby and post the comments in huge letters, although names and photos are pixelated.

Criola's founder Jurema Werneck says the campaign is intended to encourage people to speak out and report racism. "Those people [who post abuse online] think they can sit in the comfort of their homes and do whatever they want on the internet. We don't let that happen. They can't hide from us, we will find them," Werneck tells BBC Trending. There are laws against racial abuse in Brazil, but Werneck thinks the authorities haven't done enough to enforce them, and that many people are afraid to speak out against racist abuse.

[...] The campaign was sparked by an incident where a popular black weather presenter became the target of crude racist remarks. The insults were hurled at Maria Julia Coutinho after her photo was posted on the Facebook page of Nacional Journal, a prime-time news programme.

Ironically, the photo was posted on 3 July, which in Brazil is a national day against racial discrimination - and the racially charged comments were quickly overwhelmed by thousands of messages expressing support for Coutinho. "I just printed of all the comments on this post and I will report them to the appropriate authorities. Racism is a crime," said one Facebook user.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Japan will dispatch a whaling fleet to the Antarctic on Tuesday after a one year suspension, the government said, defying international criticism and a UN legal ruling that the "research" expedition is a commercial hunt in disguise.

"The research ships will depart for new whale research in the Antarctic on December 1, 2015," the Fisheries Agency said Monday in a statement on its website.

Tokyo has for years come under intense global pressure to stop hunts that opponents decry as inhumane but that Japan says are an inherent part of its traditional culture.

The United Nations' top legal body judged last year that Japan's so-called scientific whaling activity in the Southern Ocean was a disguise for commercial hunts.

It's for scientific research. Tasty, tasty research.

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takyon writes:

Amazon has released video of its new Amazon Prime Air delivery drone prototype. The video, narrated by former Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson, depicts an octocopter rising vertically to 400 feet before switching on the rear propeller. Amazon claims that it has a range of up to 15 miles. From the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post:

The video shows the drone switching into "landing mode" and descending onto a "delivery zone" in the customer's backyard. The drone releases the package onto what looks like a sheet of plastic with an Amazon logo. The larger the yard and the less tree cover, the easier the landing will be.

[...] Amazon says its drone has "sophisticated 'sense and avoid' technology," which will be essential for those backyard landings. Everyone from big tech companies such as Amazon to start-ups is developing this technology, so that drones can identify obstacles and automatically avoid them. For example, with sense and avoid, a drone would realize a dog had strayed into its landing zone, and not land until the coast was clear. Because this prototype has nine propellers it will still function even if multiple motors fail.

One section of the video, which Amazon notes is actual flight footage, shows the drone flying between 55-58 mph. That speed will come in handy if Amazon is going to deliver on its promise of getting packages to customers in 30 minutes.

Amazon isn't saying how much this prototype weighs, only that its drones weigh less than 55 pounds. And it's not sharing the prototype's wingspan. If you look at the photo below and remember that blue box is actually a shoe box, it's obvious the drone is far larger than the consumer drones we see most frequently, such as the DJI Phantom and Parrot Bebop.

News, or ploy to increase "Cyber Monday" and Christmas season sales?

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An Anonymous Coward sent us:

Contrast this excerpt from the infamous letter from Clyde Barrow to Henry Ford: http://www.snopes.com/business/consumer/barrow.asp "...For sustained speed and freedom from trouble the Ford has got every other car skinned, and even if my business hasen't[sic] been strickly[sic] legal it don't hurt anything to tell you what a fine car you got in the V8."

With this:

http://www.buffalonews.com/city-region/police-blotter/troopers-ask-for-help-finding-xbox-game-thieves-20151125 "...The thieves were seen fleeing the store in a gray Toyota Prius."

Something just feels wrong when thieves use a Prius as their getaway car!

[What is the strangest getaway vehicle you have ever heard of? -Ed.]

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takyon writes:

Bloomberg Businessweek has published a story on efforts by Walmart to track and spy on employees after management felt threatened by a union-backed protest group, the Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart):

In the autumn of 2012, when Walmart first heard about the possibility of a strike on Black Friday, executives mobilized with the efficiency that had built a retail empire. Walmart has a system for almost everything: When there's an emergency or a big event, it creates a Delta team. The one formed that September included representatives from global security, labor relations, and media relations. For Walmart, the stakes were enormous. The billions in sales typical of a Walmart Black Friday were threatened. The company's public image, especially in big cities where its power and size were controversial, could be harmed. But more than all that: Any attempt to organize its 1 million hourly workers at its more than 4,000 stores in the U.S. was an existential danger. Operating free of unions was as essential to Walmart's business as its rock-bottom prices.

[...] Internally, however, Walmart considered the [OUR Walmart] group enough of a threat that it hired an intelligence-gathering service from Lockheed Martin, contacted the FBI, staffed up its labor hotline, ranked stores by labor activity, and kept eyes on employees (and activists) prominent in the group. During that time, about 100 workers were actively involved in recruiting for OUR Walmart, but employees (or associates, as they're called at Walmart) across the company were watched; the briefest conversations were reported to the "home office," as Walmart calls its headquarters in Bentonville, Ark.

The details of Walmart's efforts during the first year it confronted OUR Walmart are described in more than 1,000 pages of e-mails, reports, playbooks, charts, and graphs, as well as testimony from its head of labor relations at the time. The documents were produced in discovery ahead of a National Labor Relations Board hearing into OUR Walmart's allegations of retaliation against employees who joined protests in June 2013. The testimony was given in January 2015, during the hearing. OUR Walmart, which split from the UFCW in September, provided the documents to Bloomberg Businessweek after the judge concluded the case in mid-October. A decision may come in early 2016.

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shortscreen writes:

The Chinese white dolphin, also known as the pink dolphin, has long been a popular tourist attraction in Hong Kong. However, Samuel Hung, chairman of the Hong Kong Dolphin Conservation Society believes that overfishing, pollution, and water traffic are driving the animals away.

Hung reports that only 60 dolphins now remain in the area, compared to 158 in 2003. Disruption of dolphin habitats by the ongoing construction of a 50km bridge to Macau, combined with future plans for construction of a third runway at Hong Kong's Chek Lap Kok airport, could make the dolphins even more scarce.

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