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martyb writes:

Now this is scary. CNBC has a story posted: Execs: We're not responsible for cybersecurity. The story was posted on April 1, but I do not think this is a joke.

More than 90 percent of corporate executives said they cannot read a cybersecurity report and are not prepared to handle a major attack, according to a new survey.

More distressing is that 40 percent of executives said they don't feel responsible for the repercussions of hackings, said Dave Damato, chief security officer at Tanium, which commissioned the survey with the Nasdaq.

"I think the most shocking statistic was really the fact that the individuals at the top of an organization — executives like CEOs and CIOs, and even board members — didn't feel personally responsible for cybersecurity or protecting the customer data," Damato told CNBC's "Squawk Box". ...

"As a result they're handing this off to their techies, and they're really just placing their heads in the sand right now," he said.

I suppose I should not be surprised, but I find it absolutely appalling that there could be this level of active ignorance at such a high level in an organization. What would it take to make said "leaders" actually care about security?

Current practices of providing a year or two of credit monitoring seems woefully inadequate compensation. What if the affected company had to make an actual cash payout of, say, $500 to every person who had their personally identifiable information (PII) compromised? Treble that amount if the notification is not "timely"?

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Phoenix666 writes:

A lottery security director who was convicted of fixing a $16.5m lottery jackpot also allegedly rigged several other lottery random-number generators to be able to predict the winning numbers, according to Iowa investigators.

For several years, Eddie Tipton, the former security director of the US Multi-State Lottery Association, installed software code that allowed him to predict winning numbers on specific days of the year, investigators allege. The random-number generators had been erased, but new forensic evidence has revealed how the hack was apparently done.

Tipton was convicted last year of rigging the $16.5m jackpot in Iowa, and is now awaiting trial on charges linking him to prizes in Colorado, Wisconsin, Oklahoma and Kansas.

Previous coverage: Prosecutors Suspect Man Hacked Lottery Computers to Score Winning Ticket

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The Mighty Buzzard writes:

Michael Larabel over at Phoronix has been testing the recently announced Ubuntu's user-space programs on Windows:

From the benchmarks carried out so far with Ubuntu on Windows 10, the performance is surprisingly quite good. The only big difference in performance based upon our initial tests seem to be in areas when dealing with file-system / disk performance: Redis, CompileBench, PHP compilation, and similar workloads were much slower than an actual Ubuntu 14.04 LTS installation. When it comes to CPU bound workloads, the Windows 10 Linux subsystem kicked into gear and was delivering promising results for this developer feature that's currently only enabled to Windows Insider members. There were a few exceptions where the performance regressed like with the OpenMP-using GraphicsMagick, but overall the results ended up being better than anticipated.

The benchmarking took up several pages prior to that conclusion. RTFA if you want the specifics but the summary is pretty accurate.

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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

39,000 Verizon employees, members of the Communications Workers of America or the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, have been working without a contract since August of 2015. A strike has been called for 6AM April 13. It will be the largest strike since August of 2011 whan, again, it was Verizon management refusing to bargain in good faith.

IBEW Local 827 reports

Verizon made $39 billion in profits over the last three years--and $1.8 billion a month in profits over the first three months of 2016--but the company is still insisting on givebacks that would devastate our jobs.

The company wants to gut job security protections, contract out more of our work, freeze our pensions at 30 years of service, shutter call centers, and offshore the jobs to Mexico and the Philippines. If we don't accept all of these changes, they will require technicians to work away from home for as long as two months at a time, anywhere in the Verizon footprint, without seeing their families. Verizon has also totally refused to negotiate any improvements in wages, benefits, or working conditions for Verizon Wireless retail workers who formed a union in 2014.

The company's greed is disgusting. [CEO] Lowell McAdam made $18 million last year--more than 200 times the compensation of the average Verizon employee. Verizon's top five executives made $233 million over the last five years. Last year alone, Verizon paid out $13.5 billion in dividends and stock buybacks to shareholders. But they claim they can't afford a fair contract.

And it's not just workers who are getting screwed. Verizon has $35 billion to invest in the failing internet company, Yahoo, but refuses to maintain its copper network, let alone build FiOS in underserved communities across the region. And even where it's legally committed to building FiOS out for every customer, Verizon refuses to hire enough workers to get the job done right or on time.

[Continues...]

takyon writes:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is cautiously optimistic about Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's recent memo concerning an overhaul of the classification system:

Clapper's memo directs the heads of several intelligence agencies, including the NSA and CIA, to substantially overhaul the government's formal classification system as part of a process known as the Fundamental Classification Guidance Review. Although the review sounds like a routine bureaucratic exercise, Clapper's call for agencies to take a leading role in reducing the amount of information that is classified is potentially a game changer.

It is refreshing to see the country's intelligence chief acknowledge that the government makes too much information secret via its arcane classification rules. [...] The true impact of Clapper's proposals will depend on how they are implemented. If done correctly they have the potential to reduce the amount of material kept secret by intelligence agencies.

An oxymoron has been institutionalized; the Intelligence Transparency Council was established on April 5th by Clapper.

Second Paper to Show Human Embryo Editing

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Second Chinese team reports gene editing in human embryos

The mutation that was introduced is the naturally occurring variant in the CCR5 gene seen in some people resistant to AIDS progression.

Introducing precise genetic modifications into human 3PN embryos by CRISPR/Cas-mediated genome editing (DOI: 10.1007/s10815-016-0710-8)

Chinese Team Uses CRISPR to Genetically Modify Human Embryo

Phoenix666 writes:

Chinese team uses CRISPR to genetically modify human embryo

In this latest effort, the Chinese team reports that they obtained 213 fertilized eggs from a fertility clinic, which had been deemed unsuitable for in vitro therapy. The women who had donated the eggs all gave permission for the embryos to be used for genetic research, on condition that the embryos would not be allowed to mature into a human being. The team used the CRISPR technique to edit genes, adding a mutation that causes damage to an immune cell gene called CCR5—such cells that are damaged naturally have been found to lead to HIV resistance. Thus the point of the research was to learn more about the possibility of producing human babies that would be immune to HIV. The team reports that just 4 out of 26 of the embryos that were edited were modified successfully—some still contained genes that had not been modified, and others had resulted in unexpected gene mutations. All of the embryos were destroyed after three days. Due to the results, it is not clear what has been learned from the experiments, except that some groups, particularly in China, are willing to conduct such research despite international condemnation.

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steveha writes:

The WayTools TextBlade is an innovative new idea for a mobile keyboard. It stores in a tiny volume, weighs 1.5 ounces, and combines position-sensing and chording instead of using simple keypresses. It only has 8 keys and a space bar, yet it can replace a full keyboard. Three pieces stack for storage and then snap together with magnets to make the keyboard. Here's a video demo.

But the development and release process has been a disaster. Deadlines have been slipped repeatedly. The first TextBlade prototypes were shown off in January 2015, and WayTools originally promised to ship in February 2015. 14 months later it's April 2016 and the TextBlade hasn't shipped.

The current status: WayTools says that they are through with development but want to make sure that people are happy, so they are shipping very limited quantities to an early Test Release Group ("TREG"). This started in February 2016. Their web site now promises that if you order a TextBlade today, you will get it in June. All of the forum posts from TREG testers are uniformly positive... but general shipping has not started yet.

There is so much unprecedented engineering in the TextBlade that it seems plausible that they could have needed a lot of time to test it. Yet the repeated schedule slips, now totalling 14 months, are highly suspicious and weird. How could they honestly have thought they were one month away from mass production and then slipped over a year?

The most charitable explanation I have is that WayTools is a small company with more engineering talent than scheduling or public relations talent. The least charitable explanation is that this is an elaborate scam and the TextBlade never will ship.

So I ask the SoylentNews community: have you ever seen a TextBlade? Did you attend one of their public demos, or do you know someone in the TREG, or perhaps are you in the TREG?

I want to believe! If TextBlade is real, I'd spend $100 to get one. If it's not real, it's the most elaborate prank I've ever seen.

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edIII writes:

"We have spent the last 50 years fighting for equality for everyone and these laws are discriminatory which XHamster.com does not tolerate," Kulich told The Huffington Post. "Judging by the stats of what you North Carolinians watch, we feel this punishment is a severe one. We will not standby and pump revenue into a system that promotes this type of garbage. We respect all sexualities and embrace them."

After laughing for about 5 minutes, I started to wonder if this is really effective or not. What do you other Soylentils think? Effective protest measure, or not? Whatever happens, I think the tension level in North Carolina just went up a bit.

Also covered at CNN.

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takyon writes:

Goldman Sachs has reached a settlement with the Department of Justice over its handling of mortgage-backed securities:

Goldman Sachs has become the latest big bank to agree to a multibillion-dollar settlement over the way it packaged and sold mortgage-backed securities in the heady days of the housing boom.

The Justice Department said Monday that Goldman had agreed to pay $5.06 billion over its conduct in the packaging and sale of residential mortgage-backed securities between 2005 and 2007.

Investors lost billions of dollars during the period by purchasing securities based on mortgages that were often much riskier than they were presented to be.

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Phoenix666 writes:

GCHQ, the UK's surveillance agency, intervened to help prevent the sixth Harry Potter instalment leaking online, the book's publisher has said.

Bloomsbury's Nigel Newton said GCHQ contacted him in 2005 after it apparently discovered an early copy of The Half Blood-Prince on the internet.

However, after a page was read to an editor, it was determined to be fake.

A spokesperson for GCHQ told the Sunday Times: "We don't comment on our defence against the dark arts."

GCHQ, based in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, is a secret intelligence agency which monitors electronic communication to prevent terrorism and tackle serious and organised crime.

Your tax dollars (or pounds) hard at work.

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takyon writes:

The Kepler space observatory lives on, for the moment:

Mission operations engineers have successfully recovered the Kepler spacecraft from Emergency Mode (EM). On Sunday morning, the spacecraft reached a stable state with the communication antenna pointed toward Earth, enabling telemetry and historical event data to be downloaded to the ground. The spacecraft is operating in its lowest fuel-burn mode. The mission has cancelled the spacecraft emergency, returning the Deep Space Network ground communications to normal scheduling.

Once data is on the ground, the team will thoroughly assess all on board systems to ensure the spacecraft is healthy enough to return to science mode and begin the K2 mission's microlensing observing campaign, called Campaign 9. This checkout is anticipated to continue through the week.

Earth-based observatories participating in Campaign 9 will continue to make observations as Kepler's health check continues. The K2 observing opportunity for Campaign 9 will end on July 1, when the galactic center is no longer in view from the vantage point of the spacecraft.

K2's previous science campaign concluded on March 23. After data was downlinked to the ground, the spacecraft was placed in what is termed Point Rest State (PRS). While in PRS, the spacecraft antenna is pointed toward Earth and it operates in a fuel-efficient mode, with the reaction wheels at rest.

The Emergency Mode began approximately 14 hours before the planned maneuver to orient the spacecraft toward the center of the Milky Way for Campaign 9. The team has therefore ruled out the maneuver and the reaction wheels as possible causes of the EM event. An investigation into what caused the event will be pursued in parallel, with a priority on returning the spacecraft to science operations.

Previously: Kepler Spacecraft Enters Emergency Mode

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Phoenix666 writes:

China has awarded a prestigious "Pineapple Prize" to a fart-detector.

The Pineapple Prizes are organised by Guokr.com, a Chinese popular science publication that named the award after the fruit which in China is said to be so ugly that only the brave and curious would explore its delicious interior. The prizes therefore look for discoveries that are both useful and amusing.

This year that approach saw Li Jigong of Tianjin University take out the Physics prize for a device Chinese state media says "not only solves the mystery of who farted, but provides a way to locate the source of any odor through the complex dynamics of air."

A spot of research suggests there's actually some serious work behind this one, as Jigong is co-author of a paper titled Odor source localization using a mobile robot in outdoor airflow environments with a particle filter algorithm .

To become standard equipment in elevators everywhere?

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GungnirSniper writes:

While hoarding is nothing new, researchers believe that demographic aging will lead to an increase in the disorder.

They call it an emerging issue that is certain to grow with an aging population. That's because, while the first signs often arise in adolescence, they typically worsen with age, usually after a divorce, the death of a spouse or another crisis.

Hoarding is different from merely living amid clutter, experts note. It's possible to have a messy house and be a pack rat without qualifying for a diagnosis of hoarding behavior. The difference is one of degree. Hoarding disorder is present when the behavior causes distress to the individual or interferes with emotional, physical, social, financial or legal well-being.

Brain scanning shows a difference in reaction among hoarders:

Brain-imaging studies of hoarders have revealed abnormally low activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, which governs thinking and emotion. When these people are shown trigger images — such as pictures of objects being shredded and discarded — that area of their brain lights up and turns hyperactive.

Treatment can include interventions, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and medication per Wikipedia.

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HughPickens.com writes:

AP reports that CIA chief John Brennan says his spy agency will not engage in waterboarding even if ordered to do so by a future president because "this institution needs to endure." The CIA used such interrogation techniques after the Sept. 11 attacks and Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have suggested they would not continue the ban President Obama put on waterboarding shortly after taking office in 2009. "I would bring back waterboarding," said GOP front-runner Donald Trump during a Feb. 6 debate in New Hampshire. "And I would bring back a hell of a lot worse." Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, also known for his hawkish language on the campaign trail, said during the debate that he didn't think waterboarding was, by definition, torture. He added that he wouldn't bring it back in any "widespread" fashion.

Brennan, a longtime Obama security adviser, took an unequivocal stance against "enhanced interrogation" techniques: "I will not agree to carry out some of these tactics and techniques I've heard bandied about because this institution needs to endure," said Brennan. "I would not agree to having any CIA officer carrying out waterboarding again."

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Phoenix666 writes:

Researchers at ETH Zurich have managed to use a synthetic genetic program to instruct stem cells taken from fatty tissue to become cells that are almost identical to natural beta cells. This brings them a major step closer to a personal repair kit for diabetes sufferers.

Researchers led by Martin Fussenegger, Professor of Biotechnology and Bioengineering at ETH Zurich's Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering in Basel, have performed a feat that many specialists had until now held to be impossible: they have extracted stem cells from a 50-year-old test subject's fatty tissue and applied genetic reprogramming to make them mature into functional beta cells.

In the presence of glucose, the beta cells generated using this "genetic software" produce the hormone insulin - just like natural beta cells, which are found in the pancreas. The researchers reported this in the journal Nature Communications.

Best hold onto those love handles.

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