SoylentNews

mendax writes:

The New York Times published a story indicating that the Loch Ness Monster has been found. Well, sort of.

After many decades of folklore and research, the Loch Ness monster has finally been found by an underwater drone.

O.K., it was just a movie prop version of the fabled sea serpent that sank to the bottom of the Scottish lake in 1969 discovered by researchers hunting for Nessie's lair. But still, that's also pretty cool.

Researchers found the 30-foot prop, made for the 1970 Billy Wilder film "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes," 180 meters down on the bed of the lake in April. It had sunk during production in 1969 and a new Nessie was created for the film, which starred Christopher Lee and Robert Stephens.

If only today were April 1st!

Original Submission

jdavidb writes:

Jake Lloyd, the actor who portrayed Anakin Skywalker in the much maligned first installment of the Star Wars prequels, has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Lloyd was serving jail time and has been moved to a psychiatric care facility.

Lloyd was also in "Jingle All the Way", with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I know it's popular to trash the prequels, particularly "The Phantom Menace", but hopefully nobody blames Lloyd for that, seeing as how he was 10 at the time. I hope his treatment works out well for him and that he can have a bright future.

Original Submission

The Mighty Buzzard writes:

In a move that shouldn't surprise anyone, Paramount is claiming ownership of all Klingon ships and the Klingon language.

The ongoing lawsuit between Paramount Pictures, CBS Studios and the crowdfunded Star Trek spin-off "Prelude to Axanar" is raising some interesting copyright questions. The spin-off makers argue that several of the Star Trek related elements they use are not copyrightable, but the movie studios clearly disagree.

Earlier this year Paramount Pictures and CBS Studios filed a lawsuit against the makers of the Star Trek inspired fan film, accusing them of copyright infringement.

The dispute centers around the well-received short film Star Trek: Prelude to Axanar and the planned follow-up feature film Anaxar.

Among other things, the Star Trek rightsholders claim ownership over various Star Trek related settings, characters, species, clothing, colors, shapes, words, short phrases and even the Klingon language.

   
That'd be "verengan toDSaH Hutlh batlh" for those of you without plqaD glyphs in your font.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

A United States District Court judge has ruled that Pastafarianism, the cult of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM), is not a religion.

Stephen Cavanaugh, a prisoner in the Nebraska State Penitentiary, brought the case after being denied access to Pastafarian literature and religious items while behind bars. Cavanaugh argued that he is an avid Pastafarian, has the FSM tattoos to prove it, and should therefore be allowed "the ability to order and wear religious clothing and pendants, the right to meet for weekly worship services and classes and the right to receive communion" while on the inside.

Prison officers denied his requests on grounds that Pastafarianism is a parody religion.
...

The joke has since taken on a life of its own, with religious works being written to put meat(balls) on the noodles of the religion and scientists claiming that long strands of gas trailing galaxies may be the "noodly appendage" referred to in canonical works. Pastafarians have occasionally fought for the right to wear a colander on their heads – such strainers are holy to Pastafarians – and won religious freedom cases in Russia and Austria allowing them to do [so] in drivers' licence mugshots.

Judge Gerrard was not impressed by those offshore cases, quickly deciding that FSMism is a parody, not an actual religion. Nor was he impressed by Cavanaugh, who had a rather poor grasp on Pastafarianism's key texts, which the judge took the trouble to read.

Does Judge Gerrard also quiz self-proclaimed Christians on their knowledge of the Bible before deciding their right to religious freedom?

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

The Register reports

Infected with Petya ransomware? This tool will rescue your data:

An anonymous security researcher has published code that can unlock the encryption used by the Petya ransomware that surfaced last month.

The ransomware – first spotted hitting German computer users – reboots the infected Windows PC, pretends to run a CHKDSK program while encrypting the hard drive's file system tables, overwrites the master boot record, and reboots. After the machine restarts, the malware's code is booted rather than the operating system, and it demands 0.9 Bitcoin ($381) in exchange for a key code to recover the system's files.

But, according to a researcher going by the Twitter handle leo_and_stone, the malware writers made a mistake. He explained that an infection of his father-in-law's PC got him examining the code and finding weaknesses in the software nasty's design.

"Well, I always like a challenge ... the hard task of analyzing and reimplementing the modified salsa algorithm is done," he said. "So, here it is for everyone to play and experiment with. Btw, paying ransom isn't that much of a challenge."

The article explains the steps the researcher took to figure out how the ransomware installed itself, how it determined whether a provided password was anaylzed to see if it should decrypt files, and how he was able to bypass it. Quite a nice bit of hacking in the traditional sense of the word.

All is not rosy, however, as the article notes:

"In all likelihood, the author(s) of Petya have already heard about Leostone's tool and are modifying their code to disallow the solution as we speak," said security blogger David Bisson.

[...] "Drop-in appliances and security solutions can only do so much to protect the network, and will do little to stop this threat if networks continue to be architected and expanded without defense in depth in mind. If enterprises don't start making strides towards defensible architecture today, massive ransoms may end up getting paid tomorrow."

Have any Soylentils experienced ransomware? How did you deal with it? Were you able to side-step the ransom demand and if so, how?

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

HughPickens.com writes:

James Hibberd reports at EW that showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss have confirmed that Barack Obama wanted – and will get – episodes of their ultra-secret show ahead of their debut on HBO. "When the commander-in-chief says, 'I want to see advanced episodes,' what are you gonna do?" says Benioff. HBO is remaining mum on the subject, but if Obama gets advanced copies, he's the only person outside of HBO to do so. In an unprecedented move, HBO decided not to send any screeners to journalists or industry insiders. The move was to maintain the secrecy of the show's season 6 storylines, which are expanding beyond the scope of author George R.R. Martin's novels for the first time.

Obama has said that GOT is one of his favorite shows and has expressed concern about the fate of the Night's Watch Lord Commander. "Three weeks ago, I was the in the company of the President of the United States. He turned to me, put his hand on my shoulder, and said, 'You didn't kill Jon Snow did you?'" said GOT director David Nutter: Nutter's reply: " 'Jon Snow is deader than dead." Obama also revealed that like many of us, he has trouble keeping track of the names of the many characters. Asked which character he most identifies with, Obama said he related to "the dwarf...what's his name?"

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

A group of scientists from ITMO University in Saint Petersburg, Russia has developed a novel approach to the construction of quantum communication systems for secure data exchange. The experimental device based on the results of the research is capable of transmitting single-photon quantum signals across distances of 250 kilometers or more, which is on par with other cutting edge analogues. The research paper was published in the Optics Express journal.

Information security is becoming more and more of a critical issue not only for large companies, banks and defense enterprises, but even for small businesses and individual users. However, the data encryption algorithms we currently use for protecting our data are imperfect -- in the long-term, their logic can be cracked. Regardless of how complex and intricate the algorithm is, getting round it is just the matter of time.

Contrary to algorithm-based encryption, systems that protect information by making use of the fundamental laws of quantum physics, can make data transmission completely immune to hacker attacks in the future. Information in a quantum channel is carried by single photons that change irreversibly once an eavesdropper attempts to intercept them. Therefore, the legitimate users will instantly know about any kind of intervention.

[...] In order to encode quantum bits in the system, laser radiation is directed into a special device called the electro-optical phase modulator. Inside the modulator the central carrier wave emitted by the laser is split into several independent waves. After the signal is transmitted through the cable, the same splitting occurs on the receiver end. Depending on the relative phase shift of the waves generated by the sender and the receiver, the waves will either enhance or cancel each other. This pattern generated by overlapping wave phases is then converted into the combination of binary digits, 1 and 0, which serves to compile a quantum key.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

So long, and thanks for all the fish:

An octopus has made a successful dash for freedom from a New Zealand aquarium and is now thought to be roaming the Pacific Ocean. Inky the octopus took his chance to escape through a small gap in his enclosure at the National Aquarium in the coastal city of Napier. After managing to squeeze his way out, Inky slid across the floor and found a 15cm-wide (6in) drain pipe which - luckily for him - led to the sea, the Stuff.co.nz website reports.

Aquarium manager Rob Yarrall says the tank's lid was left slightly ajar following maintenance work. "He managed to make his way to one of the drain holes that go back to the ocean and off he went - didn't even leave us a message," he tells Radio New Zealand. Staff later found "octopus tracks" which revealed Inky's escape route. The breakout happened earlier this year but only came to light in the national press on Tuesday.

Also at The Washington Post .

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Still no Decent Groupware for Linux?

Thunderbird still cannot save or read Contacts on a CardDAV server (also, Thunderbird is in indefinite feature freeze...). Neither can RoundCube nor SquirrelMail.

It seems that — still — there isn't any complete opensource alternative to be stacked against the Microsoft solution which could be explained as "Outlook(desktop)/OWA(web)/ActiveSync(mobile) working against a unified server-based data store".

PostPath failed. Hula failed. Zimbra is not opensource, and Zentyal is foolishly playing the never ending game of being Outlook-compatible, which they only manage to partially achieve (look at their forums).

Has Google Apps absorbed all the momentum for non-Microsoft groupware alternatives?

Original Submission

legont submitted a story which contained, in part:

The Huffington Post reports:

Never-published data on vegetable oil and heart health reveals some disturbing trends.

[...] A new analysis of never-before-published trial data from the 1960s and '70s pokes holes at the notion that we can stave off heart attack and stroke by eating more polyunsaturated fat (the "healthy" kind). Instead, it suggests that some people who eat more of this fat from vegetable and and seed oils -- specifically, those that are high in omega-6 fatty acids — actually have a higher risk of death than those who have a diet high in saturated fat.

The study's findings were never published in full, perhaps because they went against the emerging and increasingly popular hypothesis that saturated fat in foods like red meat and dairy causes cholesterol levels in blood to rise, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease and death.

Tom Brenna is a professor of human nutrition at Cornell University and served on the committee of scientists who helped create the 2015-2020 U.S. Dietary Guidelines. He says that it isn't as simple as rattling off the names of certain plant oils. Different types of oils have different fatty acid profiles, which all act on your body in different ways.

"This gives us strong reason to think carefully about the composition of polyunsaturated fatty acids," said Brenna. "The analysis does not say that polyunsaturated fatty acids in general are a bad substitute, but that they're seeing negative things exclusively with omega-6 fatty acids."

[...] "You can no longer just say eat one kind of oil or another kind of oil," he said. "You have to specify which one it is, and we have not, as a society, figured out how to talk about that yet."

For the record, the only oils that Brenna can wholeheartedly recommend are olive oil, avocado oil and high-oleic sunflower oil.

I personally believe that it was done because vegetable based food is cheaper and it is impossible to feed the population on healthy meat. In short — Malthus's Catastrophe.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Sean Parker, a Napster co-founder and the first president of Facebook, has donated $250 million for immunotherapy cancer research in the form of a joint effort spanning at least 40 labs:

Billionaire Sean Parker, famous for his founding roles at Napster and Facebook, is backing an unconventional $250 million effort to attack cancer that involves persuading hundreds of the country's top scientists — who often are in competition with each other — to join forces and unify their research targets. The consortium, which will be formally announced Wednesday, focuses on immunotherapy, a relatively new area of research that seeks to mobilize the body's own defense systems to fight mutant cancer cells. Many believe it represents the future of cancer therapy.

More than 300 scientists working at 40 labs in six institutions — Stanford, the University of California, San Francisco, and University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Pennsylvania, MD Anderson Cancer Center and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center — have already signed on.

"Cancer immunotherapy is such an incredibly complex field, and for every answer it seems to pose 10 more questions. I'm an entrepreneur so I wish some of these questions had been answered yesterday," Parker said.

He describes the effort as a way to remove obstacles related to bureaucracy and personality that will allow scientists to borrow from each other's labs unencumbered. The researchers will continue to be based at their home institutions but will receive additional funding and access to other resources, including specialized data scientists and genetic engineering equipment set to become part of the nonprofit Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy in San Francisco. A centralized scientific steering committee comprised of one member from each participating university will set the group's research agenda and coordinate data collection and clinical trials across the many sites.

Also at Reuters, NYT, and TechCrunch.

Original Submission

FakeBeldin writes:

The Badlock bug is a staple of modern times by having its own website, a catchy name and a logo. It also was announced 22 March — about 3 weeks before any details were released. That's how scary the discoverers thought it'd be (or, that's how they hoped to create a hype). So is it?
Badlock hypes it:

Impact examples of intercepting administrator network traffic:
- Samba AD server — view or modify secrets within an AD database, including user password hashes, or shutdown critical services.
- standard Samba server — modify user permissions on files or directories.

However, El Reg injects some sanity:

Still, if your Active Directory server is Samba-based, sounds like patching time.

More details: Ars Technica , El Reg .

So: is this overhyped? What if your customers can login using the Samba AD server?

Original Submission

HughPickens.com writes:

According to a new report from RAND, autonomous vehicles would have to be driven hundreds of millions of miles and, under some scenarios, hundreds of billions of miles to create enough data to clearly demonstrate their safety and under even the most-aggressive test driving assumptions, it would take existing fleets of autonomous vehicles tens and even hundreds of years to log sufficient miles to adequately assess their safety when compared to human-driven vehicles. “Our results show that developers of this technology and third-party testers cannot drive their way to safety,” says Nidhi Kalra. “It's going to be nearly impossible for autonomous vehicles to log enough test-driving miles on the road to statistically demonstrate their safety, when compared to the rate at which injuries and fatalities occur in human-controlled cars and trucks.”

The problem is that even though the total number of crashes, injuries and fatalities from human drivers is high, the rate of these failures is low in comparison with the number of miles that people drive. Americans drive nearly 3 trillion miles every year, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. In 2013, there were 2.3 million injuries reported, which is a failure rate of 77 injuries per 100 million miles driven. The related 32,719 fatalities correspond to a failure rate of about 1 fatality per 100 million miles driven. “The most autonomous miles any developer has logged are about 1.3 million, and that took several years. This is important data, but it does not come close to the level of driving that is needed to calculate safety rates,” says Susan M. Paddock. “Even if autonomous vehicle fleets are driven 10 million miles, one still would not be able to draw statistical conclusions about safety and reliability.”

[The full report (pdf) is available online. -Ed.]

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The days of killer USB Type-C cables may soon be over:

The USB Promoter Group announced a new cryptographic authentication protocol for USB Type-C devices that should put an end to faulty as well as malicious Type-C chargers and devices.

The USB Type-C standard was designed for both charging and data transfers as a convenience feature to allow people to carry fewer cables with them and to help device manufacturers cut costs. However, once the two were combined, the risk that people would become infected by plugging their laptops and smartphones with strange USB Type-C chargers or devices also increased. The USB devices could have embedded malware, which could infect host devices. The chargers could also be uncertified and use lower quality standards, which could risk damaging the host notebooks or smartphones.

The new authentication protocol for USB Type-C aims to fix both problems by allowing users to set policies that would restrict their devices to using only USB chargers that are compliant with the standard or automatically block them until their authenticity has been confirmed. The verification will be done right when the cable is connected, before any power or data is transmitted to the host device.

Previously:

One Manufacturer's "Fundamentally Dangerous" USB Type-C Cable Fries Hardware
Amazon Bans Non-Compliant USB Type-C Cables

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Last month, the story of a 25-year-old man who's living inside a plywood box parked in his friend's living room became the latest installment in San Francisco's crazy housing market.

In a city where the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is currently $3,590, Peter Berkowitz's tale of paying only $400 a month in rent and squeezing into some 32-square-feet of space became the stuff of legend. 

"It fits all my needs where I have a private, sound-proof place where I can keep my belongings," Berkowitz said in an interview with SFGate. "I'm saving thousands of dollars a year. It's a solution that works for me. I don't want to spend so much money on rent."

After media outlets across the country covered the story and the London Guardian ran an editorial by Berkowitz, he began hearing from people who wanted to live in similar humble, inexpensive accommodations. Berkowitz announced in a story on Hoodline this week that he would begin selling custom pods.

Those plans were quickly stopped by the San Francisco's chief housing inspector Rosemary Bosque who told Hoodline that "pods are illegal and a violation of housing, building, and fire safety codes."

"He would have to completely open it up or look at something different, such as a bed with a frame, with curtains, something that was open to the room," Bosque said in the Hoodline interview. "This would be the case for anywhere in the country with respect to building and inhabitability codes."

Thinking outside the box is verboten (forbidden).

Original Submission