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HughPickens.com writes:

Jad Mouawad writes at The New York Times that a driver's license may no longer be enough for airline passengers to clear security in some states, if the Department of Homeland Security has its way the Department of Transportation will start enforcing the Real ID Act, which was enacted by Congress in 2005 following the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. Homeland Security officials insist there will be no more delays. In recent months, federal officials have visited Minnesota and other states to stress that the clock was ticking. The message was that while participation was voluntary, there would be consequences for failing to comply. "The federal government has quietly gone around and clubbed states into submission," says Warren Limmer, a state senator in Minnesota and one of the authors of a 2009 state law that prohibits local officials from complying with the federal law. "That's a pretty heavy club."

Privacy experts, civil liberty organizations and libertarian groups fear the law would create something like a national identification card. Presently twenty-nine states are not in compliance with the act and more than a dozen have passed laws barring their motor vehicle departments from complying with the law, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The new standards require more stringent proof of identity and will eventually allow users' information to be shared more easily in a national database. Marc Rotenberg, the president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center,says he is concerned with all the information being available on the cards in a way that makes it more shareable and notes that the recent theft of millions of private records from the Office of Personnel Management did not inspire confidence in the government's ability to maintain secure databases. "You create more risk when you connect databases," says Rotenberg. "One vulnerability becomes multiple vulnerabilities."

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The day of reckoning is nigh for a potentially huge number of orange-badged external staffers (contractors and vendors) within Microsoft. On July 1, 2014, five months into the Satya Nadella's tenure as CEO, a new company policy came down requiring orange-badged staffers to take a six month break after each 18-month stint at Microsoft. This kind of requirement wasn't unprecedented at Microsoft; one class of contingent staffers, known as A- ("a-dash"), was already subject to a mandatory 100-day break after one year employment; however, V- ("v-dash") staffers could work indefinitely, without a break.

The clock started ticking for these workers when the policy was announced; at the time, the number of orange badged staffers was estimated to exceed 70,000. By comparison, the number of blue-badged regular full-time employees was about 100,000, prior to the Nokia acquisition in 2014.

GeekWire's Todd Bishop has published a followup story; on January 1, 2016 the eighteen months are up for external staffers who were on campus when the new policy went into effect.

A FAQ from an internal company email from July, 2014 obtained by GeekWire:

Some vendors have been granted exemptions, according to GeekWire; also, other vendors have arranged to work remotely, taking advantage of the fact that the policy does not explicitly ban contractors from billing Microsoft after eighteen months, but rather terminates their building and network access.

Original Submission

"SpallsHurgenson" writes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/17/technology/personaltech/how-to-track-data-use-and-choose-the-right-smartphone-plan.html

I looked into a number of different approaches for calculating cellular data use. Each of the big American carriers offers an app or web tool for monitoring data consumption. But I recommend against those solutions because in my testing, they were generally time-consuming or poorly designed.

Instead, the quickest way to monitor your data use is by simply using your phone. Each carrier has a hidden code that you can punch into your phone to get an update on data use.

For AT&T subscribers, the method is simple. You place a phone call to *DATA# (*3282#). AT&T will send a text message showing the amount of megabytes you have used out of your monthly allotment. It showed that so far this month I have used 464 megabytes out of 3 gigabytes.

[...] Similarly, Sprint customers can send a text message containing the word "Usage" to the number 1311 and get a text message with a data report. T-Mobile subscribers can place a call to #WEB# (#932#) to receive a quick data summary.

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Apple may have said that it opposes the idea of weakening encryption and providing governments with backdoors into products, but things are rather different in China. The Chinese parliament has just passed a law that requires technology companies to comply with government requests for information, including handing over encryption keys.

Under the guise of counter-terrorism, the controversial law is the Chinese government's attempt to curtail the activities of militants and political activists. China already faces criticism from around the world not only for the infamous Great Firewall of China, but also the blatant online surveillance and censorship that takes place. This latest move is one that will be view very suspiciously by foreign companies operating within China, or looking to do so.

http://betanews.com/2015/12/27/china-passes-law-requiring-tech-firms-to-hand-over-encryption-keys/

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

xpda writes:

A numerical model indicates that some of -- and possibly all -- the gullies found on Mars were not caused by flowing liquid water. According to a paper published December 21 in Nature Geoscience (DOI: 10.1038/ngeo2619), Martian gullies can result from geologic dry ice processes that have no terrestrial analogues and do not require liquid water. Such dry ice processes may have helped shape the evolution of landforms elsewhere on the martian surface. The areas around the gullies probably do not provide potential habitable environments for life in Mars's recent past, as has been widely speculated. NASA's evidence also indicates the gullies were formed by dry ice rather than liquid water.

Original Submission

[Editor's Note: By continuing to read this submission, you take full responsibility if the movie gets ruined for you. You were warned!]

hubie writes:

Going against the tide of positive reviews for "The Force Awakens" the new Star Wars movie, L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's daily newspaper, found much to dislike. Most of the review seems to fault the movie for being more glitz than substance, "more reboot than sequel":

"Not a classy reboot however, like Nolan's Batman, but an update twisted to suit today's tastes and a public more accustomed to sitting in front of a computer than in a cinema."

The reviewer was not impressed with the depiction of the evil characters, particularly when compared to Vader and Palpatine:

"The counterpart of Darth Vader, Kylo Ren, wears a mask merely to emulate his predecessor, while the character who needs to substitute the emperor Palpatine as the incarnation of supreme evil represents the most serious defect of the film," it wrote. "Without revealing anything about the character, all we will say is that it is the clumsiest and tackiest result you can obtain from computer graphics."

In contrast, the newspaper was very impressed with such movies as the James Bond Skyfall, and described Mad Max, Fury Road as a "real, true masterpiece."

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

MovieTickets.com says[1]

This is an expansive, rib-tickling, and subversive comedy in which Moore, playing the role of "invader", visits a host of nations to learn how the U.S. could improve its own prospects. The creator of "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "Bowling for Columbine" is back with this hilarious and eye-opening call to arms. Turns out the solutions to America's most entrenched problems already existed in the world--they're just waiting to be co-opted.

[1] Despite just 1 HTML error and 3 warnings, that page doesn't "Degrade gracefully" at all for me without specifying No Style in my browser. (I block everything that is not readable text.)

The Ring of Fire notes Republicans Will Hate Michael Moore's New Movie

"The American Dream seemed to be alive and well everywhere but America", says Moore.
["Where To Invade Next"] is the sort of documentary that will have Republicans sputtering angry America-themed rhetoric and completely missing the point.

From the other side of the aisle, Esquire says Noted Schmuck Michael Moore Just Made a Very Good Movie

Michael Moore is the worst kind of asshole: the kind who's right a lot of the time. He tells us mostly agreeable things in the most disagreeable way, rich in smarm and hyperbole and self-regard. A certain kind of messenger seems to revel in people's occasional desires to kill him. Moore is that kind of messenger.

[More after the break.]

Appalbarry writes:

My first web page was back around 1994, hand coded, learning HTML by trial and error. In retrospect we had things easy.

That was followed by a number of years of Dreamweaver, a program that worked very, very well for me for some moderately big sites, then later several years of Wordpress based sites because it was fast and easy.

It's time again to upgrade our sites, and what I'm hoping to find is an open-source package that will do what Dreamweaver did, but bring that ease of use into an age of CMS and responsive design. My specific goals are below.

[More after the break.]

frojack writes:

Okay, there is at least a random chance that some of us or someone in our family got a new smartphone as a gift this year. Maybe you hand the old phone down to one of the kids for a wifi device. Maybe you thought better of trading it in, and having your data end up on the streets.

There are the usual perennial articles on this subject Such as this one from a site that appears somewhat reputable, or this one from BusinessInsider.

Note: Most GSM phones can be used to call 911 in the US/Canada even without a sim card present. Donations to Charities or Women's Shelters or Homeless service agencies is always an option as long as you wipe the phone completely.

So what does the Savvy Soylentil do with the old Smartphone?

[Update: removed derogatory phrasing that was present in original submission. -Ed.]

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://torrentfreak.com/how-hollywood-caught-the-uks-most-prolific-movie-pirates-151227/

Following a three year investigation by Hollywood-backed anti-piracy group the Federation Against Copyright Theft, last week five of the UK's most prolific movie pirates were sentenced in the West Midlands.

[...] "Over a number of years the groups illegally released online more than 2,500 films including Argo, the Avengers and Skyfall," FACT said in a statement.

Speaking at Wolverhampton Crown Court, FACT prosecutor David Groome said that the men had gone to great lengths to avoid being detected. But was that really the case and just how easy was it to track them down?

[... One pirate,] Baker92 had been a member of another release group DTRG, FACT again turned to Equifax. Presuming the '92' in his nickname related to his birth year, FACT searched for any person named Baker born in 1992 with an association to [a girl he gave a shoutout to] called Ria. This led FACT – and the police – to Reece Baker's front door.

[... Another pirate,] Cooperman666 was also an encoder for release group ANALOG and in their NFO files a Live.com email address was listed for contact. However, that same email address was also used for a Facebook account held in the name of Ben Cooper. That page revealed he lived in Wolverhampton and was born in 1981.

Same techniques that were used to find Dread Pirate Roberts of Silk Road. Do we really need global surveillance, or are these guys just low hanging fruit?

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

The first release of the lightweight Linux distro, antiX (pronounced "Antiques"), was in 2007. It was spun off of MEPIS. With the exception of 1 controversial release, the antiX ISO has always been able to fit on a CD.

The last release of MEPIS was in July 2013. Distrowatch calls MEPIS "Dormant". The antiX developers have picked up the torch and built a DVD-sized distro they call MX.

Softpedia reports:

The final release of antiX MX-15 [codename "Fusion"] comes after two Beta and two RC (Release Candidate) builds, during which the distribution's maintainers implemented numerous new features, updated some of the most important core components and applications, and fixed many of the bugs reported by users since the previous stable release of the OS.

antiX MX-15 is based on the latest and most advanced Debian GNU/Linux 8.2 (Jessie) operating system, which means that it inherits many of its features, including the Linux kernel 4.2 packages. The OS is currently built around the lightweight Xfce 4.12 desktop environment.

[...] Prominent features of antiX MX-15 include the automatic enabling of the Broadcom b43 and b44 drivers, support for installing the operating system on UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) machines, numerous improvements to the Advanced LiveUSB tool, as well as several under-the-hood changes.

antiX MX-15 comes with some of the best open source applications, such as Mozilla Firefox 43.0, Mozilla Thunderbird 38.4, LibreOffice 4.3.3.2, VLC Media Player 2.2.1, and Clementine 1.2.3. Additionally, the distribution improves the Settings Manager and lets users install numerous apps using one-click extras with MX Package Installer.

The antiX MX original applications are also included, and among them are Apt Notifier, Boot Repair, Broadcom Manager, Check Apt GPG, Codecs Installer, Find Shares, Flash Manager, Package Installer, Switch User, Persistence/Remaster, User Manager, Create Live USB, and Sound Card.

The News section of antix.mepis.org notes:

Just like MX-14, this release defaults to sysVinit

[...] Both [the 32- and 64-bit] ISO files weigh in at around 1GB in size.

[...] Download page (for torrents, mirror choices, and pre-loaded media purchase): http://www.mepiscommunity.org/download-links
Project home page: http://www.mxlinux.org

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

TechDirt reports:

The Cherokee County [Kansas] Sheriff's Department engaged in a fruitless 19-hour standoff with a vacant residence. On the 20th hour, the fugitive house was finally taken down.

[...] The write-up at The Free Thought Project contains a decent summation of the ridiculous ordeal, but the real fun comes in reading the play-by-play at the Joplin Globe, which captures the shifting narrative provided by the Sheriff's Department.

It begins on December 15th, with the site declaring "Joplin man in standoff with law enforcement in Galena".[1] Granted, this was several hours before it was discovered that a more accurate headline would have been "Joplin house in standoff with law enforcement."

[...] [The cops] used a thermal imaging camera and thought they detected someone hiding in the attic. So, the standoff began, with the sheriff confidently stating they'd be able to wait out the fugitive member of the local gang concern, "Joplin Honkies", thanks to the department's bench depth.

[...] Five hours later, Sheriff Groves admitted[1] that the man the occupants of the house had already stated wasn't in the house was, in fact, not in the house.

Cherokee County Sheriff David Groves said local, state and federal law enforcement officers late into the day on Tuesday had believed that Doug Alexius, 40, of Joplin, was inside the home and armed, although no shots had been fired.

Groves said a search that ended at 5:30 p.m. concluded that Alexius was not in the home.

Left unmentioned was the damage done to the house in search of the fugitive who wasn't there. Law enforcement officers fired flash bangs into the home and used an armored vehicle-mounted ram to punch holes in the attic. The officers also tore apart the inside of the home in their futile search.

[1] Yet another website that puts styling in their HTML (black text on a black background) then doesn't check that with a text-only browser.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The effect of the social environment on cooperation has received attention in studies of nonhuman animal behavior but has been largely overlooked in human research. Research with animals in the wild and under controlled conditions in captivity has consistently shown that social dynamics, and specifically the nature of the dominance hierarchy, has a large impact on cooperative outcomes. Although variable in form, every animal society has some form of dominance hierarchy. Hierarchy is defined as priority of access to resources and probability of winning competitive encounters, and reflects underlying assymetries in power. A hierarchy can be characterized in terms of linearity and steepness, with the former providing information about the degree of transitivity between individuals and the latter indicating the extent to which individuals differ from each other in winning encounters or accessing resources. Among nonhuman primates, it has been demonsrated repeatedly that the characteristics of dominance hierarchies impact cooperative outcomes, with steep and linear hierarchies being associated with decreased cooperation. For example, experiments have shown that cooperation is impeded among chimpanzees living in steep and linear hierarchies, whereas it emerges more easily among species with more relaxed hierarchies such as cottontop tamarins.

A great deal of research has focused on human cooperative behavior, but these experiments have primarily been conducted with anonymous participants, leaving the influence of social relationships on cooperation largely overlooked. Although the influence of hierarchy on cooperation has rarely been examined, researchers have considered hierarchy's influence on economic issues such as market entry, bargaining, and learning. Other work has investigated how disproportionate power in sanctioning influences cooperation, and both empirical and modeling investigations have been directed at how group status impacts cooperation and competition with other groups. In the current study, we hypothesize that social relationships, and specifically hierarchical relationships reflecting power assymetries between individuals, will have a negative impact on human cooperation as it does in our nonhuman primate relatives. In order to test the effect of social hierarchy on cooperation, we present participants with a task inspired by nonhuman primate research in which two individuals of known social rank are presented with the opportunity to invest in a cooperative task, and, if a threshold of investment is met and cooperation is achieved, the higher ranking of the two investors controls the distribution of the resource. To investigate how human cooperation is impacted by the presence of a social hierarchy, we compare cooperative success in the presence of a hierarchy (with both earned and arbitrarily assigned ranks) to success in a condition when hierarchy is absent.

It's an important topic at a time when many worldwide are remarking on how broken the current models of hierarchy and social organization are.

DOI: 10.1038/srep18634

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Options for those lacking a Linux render farm, from The Register .

The editors mentioned are OpenShot, Pitivi, Kdenlive, Shotcut, Flowblade, Cinelerra, Blender, and Avidemux.

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Eric Hameleers blogs once again:

It took me a while to get to a level where I could do another public update of my "liveslak" scripts for the Slackware Live Edition. The previous two articles about the Live OS generated quite some feedback and I think I was able to address a lot of those remarks and suggestions in the updated code. My TODO has however only shrunk [by] one item...

A "Beta3"[1] is what we have now. My milestone for emitting a new Beta was to have a working UEFI boot. And I hope I managed that. Works here... for what it's worth.

  - What is Slackware Live Edition?

[...] We're talking about a "live OS" here, which you can run off a CDROM, a DVD, or a USB stick and does not have to be installed to a computer hard drive. You can carry the USB stick version with you in your pocket. You'll have a pre-configured Slackware OS up & running in a minute wherever you can get your hands on a computer with a USB port. The USB version is "persistent" meaning that the OS stores your updates on the stick. The CD/DVD versions (and the USB stick if you configure it accordingly) run without persistence, which means that all the changes you make to the OS are lost on reboot.

[1] The link in TFA for "Beta3" doesn't appear to be what was intended (DIY rather than ready-to-go ISOs).

Previous: Slackware Live Edition Beta Available

Original Submission