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Phoenix666 writes:

Once again, large swaths of the Internet in the United States were affected by a major morning network outage today [November 2]. This time, it was the Tier 1 network service provider Level 3 Communications that was at the center of the problem, which disrupted parts of the Internet's backbone. But for the moment, it does not appear that the outage was triggered by a denial of service attack or other network attack, like the attack on DNS provider Dyn on October 21.

[...] A Level 3 spokesperson confirmed that the company's networks had been restored to normal function by 1600 Greenwich Mean Time (noon US Eastern Time) but said that no other information was available yet.

The outage had no major impact on major streaming services that use Level 3, including Netflix and the HBO Go mobile application. But it did affect some customers' voice and Internet services. Level 3 suffered another brief outage a month ago, caused by a human error.

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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

The Mirror reports

Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust, which runs hospitals in Goole, Grimsby, and Scunthorpe, [...] provides services to more than 350,000 people.

[...] Dr Karen Dunderdale, the trust's deputy chief executive, told the Grimsby Telegraph [October 31]: "A virus infected our electronic systems yesterday and we have taken the decision, following expert advice, to shut down the majority of our systems so we can isolate and destroy it.

[...] "All adult patients (over 18) should presume their appointment or procedure has been cancelled unless they are contacted."

[...] "Major trauma cases will be diverted to neighbouring hospitals as will high risk women in labour.

"While our emergency departments remain open and are accepting ambulances, we would urge people to only visit if they absolutely need to, [i.e.] it is an accident or emergency.

The Lincolnite adds:

Mark Brassington, Chief Operating Officer at [United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust (ULHT)], said: "Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust (NLAG) has had to [shut down] all their electronic systems due to a computer virus.

"ULHT shares four clinical IT systems with NLAG, so, as a precautionary measure to protect ULHT, links with these shared systems have been stopped.

"We have a plan in place to minimise risks to patients which includes reverting to manual systems.

"The biggest impact on the trust is in processing of blood tests, access to historical test results and availability of blood for blood transfusions.

"Our number one priority is keeping patients safe so we are [canceling] all planned operations tomorrow (Tuesday 1 November) unless there is a clinical reason not to.

"We are trying to contact all patients, but patients due to have an operation on Tuesday are being asked to not turn up unless they hear otherwise.

Any bets on whether the version of the operating system they run is even supported?

Previously:
UK.gov Still Running XP--but Without Support Agreement.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Lithium, the lightest solid element, is created during astrophysical phenomena, but its origin has been elusive. Recently, a group of researchers detected enormous quantities of beryllium-7, an unstable element that decays into lithium in 53.2 days, inside nova Sagittarii 2015 N.2, which suggests that novae are the main source of lithium in the galaxy.

Practically every chemical element has an astronomical origin. Light elements were formed between 10 seconds and 20 minutes after the Big Bang, including hydrogen (75%), helium (25%) and a very small amount of lithium and beryllium.

The remaining chemical elements were formed in stars, either through fusion of other elements inside the nucleus, which begins with the fusion of hydrogen into helium, and produces increasingly heavy elements until iron forms. Other processes such as supernovae explosions or reactions in the atmospheres of giant stars produce gold, lead and copper, among others. Those elements were in turn recycled into new stars and planets, until the present time.

Luca Izzo, researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC), says, "But lithium posed a problem: We knew that 25 percent of existing lithium comes from primordial nucleosynthesis, but we were not able to trace the origins of the remaining 75 percent."

So that's why the hoverboards and Samsung Galaxy Note 7's have been exploding...

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Phoenix666 writes:

Laser-zapping of a globular, golf-ball-size object on Mars by NASA's Curiosity rover confirms that it is an iron-nickel meteorite fallen from the Red Planet's sky.

Iron-nickel meteorites are a common class of space rocks found on Earth, and previous examples have been seen on Mars, but this one, called "Egg Rock," is the first on Mars examined with a laser-firing spectrometer. To do so, the rover team used Curiosity's Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument.

Scientists of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) project, which operates the rover, first noticed the odd-looking rock in images taken by Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam) at at a site the rover reached by an Oct. 27 drive.

"The dark, smooth and lustrous aspect of this target, and its sort of spherical shape attracted the attention of some MSL scientists when we received the Mastcam images at the new location," said ChemCam team member Pierre-Yves Meslin, at the Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology (IRAP), of France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the University of Toulouse, France.

ChemCam found iron, nickel and phosphorus, plus lesser ingredients, in concentrations still being determined through analysis of the spectrum of light produced from dozens of laser pulses at nine spots on the object. The enrichment in both nickel and phosphorus at some of the same points suggests the presence of an iron-nickel-phosphide mineral that is rare except in iron-nickel meteorites, Meslin said.

Looks a little bit like a Prothean hand grenade. Coincidence?

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takyon writes:

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-uber-privacy-20161102-story.html

Uber is taking its ride-hailing app down a new road in an effort to make it smarter, simpler and more fun to use. The redesigned app also will seek to mine personal information stored on smartphones in a change that could raise privacy concerns, even though it will be up to individual users to let Uber peer into their calendars and address books. The change represents the biggest overhaul in four years to Uber Technologies Inc.'s popular app, which is used by millions of people to summon cars in more than 450 cities around the world for rides that are usually cheaper than traditional taxis.

[...] In another time-saving move that will test how much users trust the San Francisco-based company with their personal information, users will be able to give the app access to their calendars so addresses listed in an entry can automatically appear in the Uber app near the time of the appointment. Uber plans to introduce this option by next month. Starting in December, Uber will also seek access to users' personal contacts so they can ask for a ride to wherever a friend currently is. If this feature is activated, Uber's app will contact the friend to ask if he or she is willing to share the current location. If the friend doesn't have the Uber app, the request will be sent through a text message to the mobile number listed in the address book.

Uber says it doesn't expect privacy objections because users will have to agree to allow the app to scan their calendars and address books. And people whose locations are being sought through the new address-book feature will be able to decide whether they want to share the information.

Also at The Verge, CNET, and WSJ.

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takyon writes:

New Frontier in Ocean Exploration: The E/V Nautilus and NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer 2015 Field Season (22.1 MB PDF, starts on page 30):

During two cruise legs of the 2015 E/V Nautilus field season, the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Hercules was deployed to examine some of the cold seep features of the deep Gulf of Mexico. Cold seeps are locations where hydrocarbons that are normally trapped deep beneath the seafloor escape into the water column. The hydrocarbons are forced out from the depths by the movement of large salt bodies that developed over the course of several million years as water evaporated from an ancient shallow Gulf of Mexico (Brooks et al., 1987). Shifting of these salt layers produces cracks in the oil-bearing shale that provide pathways for upward migration of oil and gas.

At some seep sites, deep within the sediments, the interaction of porewater and salt results in a highly saline fluid (brine) that can be more than four times more saline than seawater. When this brine is expelled from the sediments, it is far denser than the overlying seawater and does not mix very easily with it. In some cases, the brine forms large pools, or even rivers, as we discovered on one of the ROV dives at a site called Garden Banks 903. [...] At active seep sites where methane and hydrogen sulfide are expelled at the sediment-water interface, large mussel beds can form (reviewed in Cordes et al., 2009). Here in the deep sea where food is generally scarce, bacterial symbionts in the mussels' gills allow them to use dissolved gases being emitted at the seafloor as a source of energy.

[...] On the last leg of these seafloor hydrocarbon community investigations, we focused on a larger brine pool dubbed the "Jacuzzi of Despair," in reference to its warm temperature (19°C) and high salt content—which can be fatal to many macrofauna unlucky enough to fall in (we observed large dead isopods and crabs that had been preserved along the edge of the brine pool). This crater-like, circular, brine-filled pool rose 3 m above the surrounding seafloor, and brine was spilling out on one side in a spectacular "waterfall."

Also at Los Angeles Times and the Houston Chronicle .

Original Submission

meustrus writes:

When trying to understand the two bad choices we have now, it can help to look into the past at where they came from. In this article, Matt Stoller at The Atlantic provides a deep dive into a transformation the Democratic party underwent in the late 1960s onward. In it we see how the Democrats morphed the anti-big-business politics that had powered it for over a century into the big-government politics that define the political conversation today.

Modern liberals tend to confuse a broad social-welfare state and redistribution of resources in the form of tax-and-spend policies with the New Deal. In fact, the central tenet of New Deal competition policy was not big or small government; it was distrust of concentrations of power and conflicts of interest in the economy. The New Deal divided power, pitting faction against other faction, a classic Jefferson-Madison approach to controlling power (think Federalist Paper No. 10). Competition policy meant preserving democracy within the commercial sphere, by keeping markets open. Again, for New Deal populists like Brandeis and Patman [ed: links mine], it was democracy or concentrated wealth—but not both.

[...] The story of why the Watergate Babies spurned populism is its own intellectual journey. It started with a generation of politicians who cut their teeth on college-campus politics. In their youth, they saw, up close, not the perils of robber barons, but the failure of the New Deal state, most profoundly through the war in Vietnam. "We were the '60s generation that didn't drop out," Bob Edgar, a U.S. representative from the class of 1975, told me. The war in Vietnam shaped their generation in two profound ways. First, it disillusioned them toward the New Deal. It was, after all, many New Dealers, including union insiders, who nominated Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and who supported a war that killed millions, including 50,000 Americans their age. And second, higher education—the province of the affluent—exempted one from military service, which was an explicit distinction among classes.

[...] By quietly cutting back the influence of unions, [Democratic strategist Fred] Dutton sought to eject the white working class from the Democratic Party, which he saw as "a major redoubt of traditional Americanism and of the antinegro, antiyouth vote." The future, he argued, lay in a coalition of African Americans, feminists, and affluent, young, college-educated whites.

[...] By 2008, the ideas that took hold in the 1970s had been Democratic orthodoxy for two generations. "Left-wing" meant opposing war, supporting social tolerance, advocating environmentalism, and accepting corporatism and big finance while also seeking redistribution via taxes.

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takyon writes:

There are 155 ballot measures being voted on during the 2016 U.S. elections on November 8th, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). Eight measures were voted on before November, and the 155 count includes Washington, D.C.'s statehood referendum. Hundreds of local ballot measures are not reflected in this count.

[Continues...]

"exec" writes:

The Internet of things (IoT) has already been used to launch the biggest DDoS attacks ever, but now it represents a potential path for attackers to compromise cell phones.

Flaws in Belkin WeMo devices - electrical switches, cameras, light bulbs, coffee makers, air purifiers, etc. – enabled Invincea Labs researchers to not only hack into the devices, but to use that access to attack an Android phone running the app that controls the WeMo devices.

"This is the first instance we've seen of IoT hacking something else," says researcher Scott Tenaglia, who pledges to look for other vulnerable devices that might be abused to carry out similar attacks.

http://www.networkworld.com/article/3138050/internet-of-things/black-hat-europe-iot-devices-can-hack-phones.html

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Veteran dev says timed sampling's arrival in Berkeley Packet Filter makes Linux 4.9 a match for Solaris' DTrace

In 2004 former Reg hack Ashlee Vance brought us news of DTrace, a handy addition to Solaris 10 that "gives administrators thousands upon thousands of ways to check on a system's performance and then tweak ....production boxes with minimal system impact". Vance was excited about the code because "it can help fix problems from the kernel level on up to the user level."

Vance's story quoted a chap called Brendan Gregg who enthused about [the] tool after using it and finding "... DTrace has given me a graph of a hundred points that leaves nothing to the imagination. It did more than just help my program, it helped me understand memory allocation so that I can become a better programmer."

[...] As Gregg explains on his blog, Linux has had plenty of tracing tools for a long time, but they were miscellaneous kernel capabilities rather than dedicated tools and didn't match DTrace's full list of functions. But over time developers have worked on further tracing tools and Facebook developer Alexei Starovoitov recently offered up some enhancements to the Linux kernel that Gregg feels mean it now matches DTrace.

Gregg reckons Starovoitov's contribution, plus efforts like the bcc project he's worked on will offer Linux users their best ever chance to conduct really detailed tracing of Linux.

[...] Gregg's post has oodles more detail about DTrace's long history, plus links a-plenty to tools you can use to employ the tool.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/01/linux_in_2016_catches_up_to_solaris_from_2004/

Original Submission

takyon writes:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-insidertrading-insight-idUSKBN12W2X4

When plumber Gary Pusey pleaded guilty in May to insider trading, it was a victory not just for New York prosecutors but for a little-known squad inside the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that uses data analysis to spot unusual trading patterns. Formed in 2010, the Analysis and Detection Center of the SEC's Market Abuse Unit culls through billions of rows of trading data going back 15 years to identify individuals who have made repeated, well-timed trades ahead of corporate news. The new strategy is starting to show results, enabling the SEC to launch nine insider trading cases, around 7 percent of cases the agency brought since 2014 against people who trade on confidential corporate information.

It signals a shift in how the agency initiates insider trading probes, which more often are launched based on referrals from Wall Street's self-regulator Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or an informant's tip. "It's essentially the new frontier," said Andrew Ceresney, the SEC's enforcement director. "We have tremendous amounts of data available to use, and we've been developing tools to take advantage of that."

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takyon writes:

Teamsters Union-backed Lyft drivers are rejecting a proposed $27 million settlement with Lyft:

The objectors have written to U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria in recent days, saying the payout and contractual concessions to drivers are insufficient. They also expressed concern that the deal doesn't address the most important issue: whether drivers for ride-hailing companies such as Lyft and Uber should remain independent contractors or be treated as employees, eligible for healthcare benefits and paid time off, among other provisions. The union-backed objectors acknowledged that trying to resolve that question once and for all carries significant risks -- namely losing in trial. But they told the court that "the stakes for the state, the economy and the drivers themselves are much higher."

Uber is partnering with a General Motors company to rent vehicles to Uber drivers on a weekly basis starting at $179. GM has a similar arrangement with Lyft... and recently invested $500 million in Lyft.

Researchers have found that African Americans face longer wait times and more cancellations when using ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft:

The two-year study by researchers at MIT, Stanford and the University of Washington tracked discrimination of Uber, Lyft and Flywheel passengers in Boston and Seattle—showing that black riders of UberX wait between 29 and 35 percent longer than white riders. The study, which involved nearly 1,500 rides, also found that women were routinely taken on longer rides than necessary by drivers and were frequently overcharged. [...] As well as wait times and elongated routes, passengers with "African-American sounding" names were disproportionately canceled by Uber drivers compared to riders with "white sounding" names, the study found.

Racial and Gender Discrimination in Transportation Network Companies (DOI: 10.3386/w22776) (DX)

Finally, Toyota has invested in yet another ride-hailing startup, Getaround, and is piloting "Smart Key Box" software in some of its vehicles. The software would allow drivers to unlock the doors and start the engines using a smartphone while in Bluetooth range:

Drivers can unlock their loaned cars using their smartphones while in Bluetooth range, as the system shares an encrypted code in order to securely give access to the vehicle and push-button ignition. The said encrypted code will be valid only for the duration of the loan, but users will presumably be able to extend their loan if needed.

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AnonTechie writes:

Overconfident security execs may be putting their organisations at greater risk, according to new research.

A report by services firm Accenture has revealed that of the 2,000 enterprise security practitioners – representing companies with annual revenues of more than $1bn – three in four were confident in their ability to stop all crooks getting into their systems.

Titled Building Confidence: Facing the Cybersecurity Conundrum (PDF), the report revealed that more than half of security executives admit it can take months to detect sophisticated breaches, and a third of those successful breaches are never discovered at all.

[...] The French spend 9.4 per cent of their total IT budget on security, ahead of the 8.2 per cent global average, while the Australians tend to scrimp by with a mere 7.6 per cent on security, pipped by the Americans at 8 per cent – though ironically it is French, American and Australian companies who are the least confident in their ability to monitor for a breach.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/02/survey_finds_75_of_security_execs_believe_they_are_invicible/
[Related Video]: GoldenEye: Boris - I Am Invincible!

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for chromas

After years of busted budgets and schedules, NASA says its $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope is ready for testing and on track for launch in 2018. [...] NASA has completed an initial round of laser-based optical measurements, known as a Center of Curvature Test, to determine that the telescope's 18 hexagonal mirror elements are precisely aligned to produce sharp images. In the months ahead, the mirror will be subjected to the stresses and strains it's expected to experience during launch. Then the mirror's alignment will be checked again to make sure it'll work correctly in space.

NASA also says the fifth and last layer of the telescope's sunshield has been completed and delivered to a facility in California. The reflective, foldable sunshield is designed to keep the telescope's sensitive electronics and optics from overheating. Eventually, all the components will be combined to create the finished telescope, and then loaded onto a European Ariane 5 rocket for launch in October 2018. The telescope will be sent to a gravitational balance point beyond Earth known as Sun-Earth L-2.

Source: http://www.geekwire.com/2016/nasa-ames-webb-space-telescope-testing/

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Broadcom is looking to broaden its markets with the purchase of Brocade Communications Systems:

Broadcom Ltd. agreed to buy Brocade Communications Systems Inc. for $5.5 billion, expanding beyond its main business in chips to add boxes that help connect storage systems to computers in data centers.

Broadcom, one of Silicon Valley's most aggressive acquirers, said it plans to sell Brocade's other communications technology businesses to avoid competing with companies that now buy Broadcom chips.

The deal stands to help Broadcom reduce its reliance on sales of wireless chips for smartphones, a market that has slowed lately. Apple Inc., its largest customer, in October said it sold 45.5 million iPhones in the quarter ended in September, 2.5 million fewer than a year earlier.

Also at NYT, Reuters, Broadcom.

Broadcom was itself bought by Avago Technologies for $37 billion in 2015. Avago then renamed itself Broadcom.

Original Submission