SoylentNews

Fnord666 writes:

Michael A. Persaud, a California man profiled in a Nov. 2014 KrebsOnSecurity story about a junk email purveyor tagged as one of the World's Top 10 Worst Spammers, was indicted this week on federal wire fraud charges tied to an alleged spamming operation.

According to an indictment returned in federal court in Chicago, Persaud used multiple Internet addresses and domains – a technique known as "snowshoe spamming" – to transmit spam emails over at least nine networks.

The Justice Department says Persaud sent well over a million spam emails to recipients in the United States and abroad. Prosecutors charge that Persaud often used false names to register the domains, and he created fraudulent "From:" address fields to conceal that he was the true sender of the emails. The government also accuses Persaud of "illegally transferring and selling millions of email addresses for the purpose of transmitting spam."

Persaud is currently listed as #8 on the World's 10 Worst Spammers list maintained by Spamhaus, an anti-spam organization. In 1998, Persaud was sued by AOL, which charged that he committed fraud by using various names to send millions of get-rich-quick spam messages to America Online customers. Persaud did not contest the charges and was ordered to pay more than a half-million dollars in restitution and damages.

Source:

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/02/top-10-spammer-indicted-for-wire-fraud/

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

TechDirt reports

Thanks to FOIA requests (and lawsuits), the ACLU has gathered enough documents to provide a comprehensive report [PDF] on the worthlessness of the TSA's "Behavioral Detection" program. Meant to give the agency a better way of proactively thwarting acts of terrorism, the program instead opts for lazy profiling, dubious readings of behavioral cues, and junk science.

The documents[1] show the evolution of the behavior detection program and make clear the extent to which it is a program of surveillance of unsuspecting travelers based on unreliable indicators. "Behavior detection officers", some of them dressed in plain clothes, scrutinize travelers at airports for over 90 behaviors that the TSA associates with stress, fear, or deception, looking for what the TSA calls signs of "mal-intent". The reliability of these so-called indicators is not supported by the scientific studies in the TSA files. The behavior detection officers may then engage travelers in "casual conversation" that is actually an effort to probe the basis for any purported signs of deception. When the officers think they perceive those behaviors, they follow the travelers, subject them to additional screening, and at times bring in law enforcement officers who can investigate them further.

The TSA has repeatedly claimed that the behavior detection program is grounded in valid science, but the records that the ACLU obtained show that the TSA has in its possession a significant body of research that contradicts those claims.

[1] Duplicate link in TFA.

[Ed. Note: Non mobile link here to source article here.]

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666

'Into the Breach' promises more pixellated sci-fi action.

If you've played FTL: Faster Than Light, you know that it's a sublime gaming experience, well deserving of its high ratings and devoted fan base. Developer Subset Games has just launched a teaser trailer for its follow-up title, Into The Breach. FTL provided players with perfectly-balanced chaos-management activities that made building, defending and upgrading a spaceship and its crew incredibly fun. Into The Breach looks to be as enjoyable, and the gameplay on display has even more of the same retro-pixel sci-fi mayhem.

Once again, the art-style looks adorable, with an isometric viewpoint on a small gaming grid that's populated with darling little monsters and heroes. The music is by Ben Prunty, the guy that made FTL's distinctive soundtrack (which you can buy on vinyl, you hipster), so you know it's going to rock.

Source: https://www.engadget.com/2017/02/10/ftl-successor/

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for charon

Birds are the best-known example of creatures able to sense magnetic fields and to use them for orientation and navigation. Less well known are the magneto-sensing abilities of American cockroaches, which quickly become magnetized when placed in a magnetic field.

Just how these creatures use this ability is the subject of much speculation. But there is general agreement that a better understanding of biomagnetic sensing could help engineers design better sensors for other applications, such as microrobot navigation.

But before that can happen, engineers will need a far better understanding of how cockroaches sense magnetic fields and how they become magnetized themselves.

Enter Ling-Jun Kong at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and a few pals who have measured the way American cockroaches become magnetized. In the process, they've made a remarkable discovery—it turns out that the magnetic properties of living cockroaches are strikingly different from those of dead cockroaches. And they think they know why.

The experiments are straightforward. Kong and co placed a series of living and dead cockroaches in a magnetic field of 1.5 kiloGauss; that's about 100 times stronger than a fridge magnet. The team left the creatures in the field for 20 minutes and then measured how strongly they had become magnetized and how long it took for this magnetization to decay.

The results make for interesting reading. The team could easily measure the magnetic field associated with all the cockroaches, alive or dead, as soon as they came out of the external field. The field associated with living cockroaches then decayed in about 50 minutes. By contrast, it took almost 50 hours for the field to decay in dead cockroaches.

That raises an obvious question: why the difference? Kong and co have created a mathematical model of magnetization to come up with the answer. They assume that magnetization is the result of magnetic particles inside the cockroaches aligning themselves with the external magnetic field. When removed from the external field, the magnetization decays because Brownian motion causes the magnetic particles to become randomly aligned again.

Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603616/the-curious-case-of-cockroach-magnetization/

Original Submission

GreatAuntAnesthesia writes:

It is often opined here on Soylent that Economics isn't real science. You would expect economists to disagree with that sentiment, but it turns out that there is a growing international movement within the world of economics itself, started by a group of students, that seeks to drastically overhaul the entire field. Some choice quotes from the article, which is in fact a review of a book "which formalises and expands the case" that economics is in need of reform:

In the autumn of 2011, as the world's financial system lurched from crash to crisis, the authors of this book began, as undergraduates, to study economics. While their lectures took place at the University of Manchester the eurozone was in flames. The students' first term would last longer than the Greek government. Banks across the west were still on life support. And David Cameron was imposing on Britons year on year of swingeing spending cuts.

Yet the bushfires those teenagers saw raging each night on the news got barely a mention in the seminars they sat through, they say: the biggest economic catastrophe of our times "wasn't mentioned in our lectures and what we were learning didn't seem to have any relevance to understanding it", they write in The Econocracy. "We were memorising and regurgitating abstract economic models for multiple-choice exams."

Part of this book describes what happened next: how the economic crisis turned into a crisis of economics. It deserves a good account, since the activities of these Manchester students rank among the most startling protest movements of the decade.

After a year of being force-fed irrelevancies, say the students, they formed the Post-Crash Economics Society, with a sympathetic lecturer giving them evening classes on the events and perspectives they weren't being taught. They lobbied teachers for new modules, and when that didn't work, they mobilised hundreds of undergraduates to express their disappointment in the influential National Student Survey. The economics department ended up with the lowest score of any at the university: the professors had been told by their pupils that they could do better.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Beyoncé is being sued by the estate of a deceased New Orleans YouTube star:

Beyoncé's apparent appropriation of New Orleans culture stirred controversy with the release of her 2016 single "Formation" — with its groundbreaking video and the song itself nominated for an array of Grammy Awards this year.

But the family of a murdered New Orleans rapper whose voice is sampled on the bouncy track has spurred a new $26 million lawsuit claiming the celebrated pop singer, who recently revealed she's pregnant with twins, stole the copyrighted material.

Messy Mya was shot and killed in 2010.

[As an adjunct to this discussion, I cannot too highly recommend Spider Robinson's 1983 Hugo Award winning short story: Melancholy Elephants . -Ed]

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Jack Wallen asks via TechRepublic

Has SELinux got you down by blocking your apps or causing general havoc? Instead of disabling it, discover how to use the SELinux Alert Browser to solve those problems.

If you're using a Linux distribution that takes advantage of SELinux, such as CentOS, Red Hat, Fedora, or SUSE, you know it can be a blessing and a curse. While SELinux is an incredibly powerful tool that goes a very long way to keep your Linux-powered machines secure, it can be a nightmare to configure. Fortunately, there is a tool called SELinux Alert Browser that can ease those troubles.

With SELinux Alert Browser, you can get quick solutions when SELinux is causing you issues. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find an easier route to solving your SELinux-based headaches.

[...] The Troubleshoot button will reveal possible actions you can take to resolve your issue. In some cases sealert will instruct you how to have SELinux stop auditing the issue; in other cases sealert will show how to generate a new policy module that allows an object (such as xenconsoled) access to a resource.

When SELinux Alert Browser makes suggestions, they will be in the form of commands you can run to solve the problem. If you agree with the suggestion offered by sealert, go back to the Terminal window and issue the suggested command(s). Hopefully, your issue will be resolved. If you're unsure that access should be allowed, I highly recommend doing research before issuing the suggested command(s).

Any Soylentils ever get so fed up with SELinux that you just disabled it? Think this might have avoided that?

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

Radio New Zealand and the New York Times report that two pods of pilot whales, totalling 640 individuals, grounded themselves on a New Zealand beach on Thursday and Saturday. Volunteers tagged and re-floated some members of the first group; none of those were found in the second group. Pilot whales are a type of dolphin. The reason for the groundings is unknown, but mass strandings at the same site, Farewell Spit, have been observed before.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Move over, Qualcomm and MediaTek. Here comes Xiaomi:

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal , Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi is looking to join the ranks of Apple, Samsung, and Huawei by developing its own smartphone chips. The report says the move is part of "aspirations to join the top tier" of smartphone manufacturers and an attempt to stand out from the slew of other OEMs.

For now, Xiaomi's processor is apparently called "Pinecone," and it will be released "within a month" according to the report. This might be talking about the processor of the Xiaomi Mi 6, which, if Xiaomi keeps to the usual yearly release cycle, should be out sometime in March. Xiaomi's chip design division isn't coming from nowhere—using a shell company called "Beijing Pinecone Electronics," Xiaomi paid $15 million to acquire mobile processor technology from Datang subsidiary Leadcore Technology Ltd.

Also at TechCrunch and Engadget.

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

The Guardian reports that the U.S. Army sent a letter, dated 7 February, to member of Congress Raúl Grijalva, saying it would grant a permit for the construction of the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline. Work could resume as early as 8 February.

"I have determined that there is no cause for completing any additional environmental analysis," wrote Douglas W Lamon, the senior official performing the duties of assistant secretary of the army, wrote in a notice to the federal register.

More recent news in Standing Rock from Feb 9:

The restarting of the drilling operation, which a pipeline spokeswoman confirmed on Thursday morning, began soon after the US government gave the oil corporation the green light to proceed on Wednesday. The controversial pipeline could be transporting crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois within three months.

At the Standing Rock camps in Cannon Ball – where activists have been stationed since last spring to fight the project – indigenous and environmental organizers vowed to stay put and continue opposing the pipeline.

[Continues...]

bradley13 writes:

A French businessman is suing Uber for 45 million euros, for destroying his marriage.

It seems that he installed the Uber app on his wife's phone, used it once, and then logged out. Later, when using the app on his own phone to arrange tête-à-têtes with his mistress, his wife received Uber notifications, and figured out what was going on. Uber attributes this to a bug in their software specifically related to an older version of iOS.

What do soylentils think generally about the liability of tech companies for bugs in their software? Some say liability is needed to force some responsibility; others say it would be the death of the software industry as we know it.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Dr. Derek Lowe, from In the Pipeline, writes:

So since drug pricing and FDA regulations are so much in the news, it would seem like the perfect time for a small company to game the system for big profits, right? That's apparently what Marathon Pharmaceuticals believes. They just got approval for deflazacort, a steroid, as a treatment for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

[...] So what's not to like? Well, this drug has been around since the early 1990s. Marathon most certainly did not invent it. Nor did they think of applying it to DMD patients – the biggest clinical trial of the drug for that indication was done over twenty years ago, by someone else. DMD patients in the US were already taking the (unapproved) drug by importing it from Canada. Marathon just dug through the data again and ran a trial in 29 patients themselves, from what I can see. I should note that this is not any sort of cure, nor does it address the underlying pathology of the disease. The steroid treatment makes muscle strength in DMD patients stronger – barely. But even for that benefit, US patients will now have to get it from Marathon at something like 50 to 100 times the former price.

[...] So while I defend the FDA's function of making it tough on new drugs (making them prove safety and efficacy), I cannot stand how loose they are with old generic compounds. The agency hands out extremely valuable rewards like lollipops in these cases – a priority review voucher can be sold for hundreds of millions of dollars

[...] And they're also allowing the likes of Marathon to make the rest of the drug industry look like greedy sociopaths. Marathon, Catalyst, T*ring and all the rest of the people who are pulling these tricks have the word "Pharmaceuticals" in their name, but they are not drug companies. They discover nothing. They do no research. They take virtually no risks. They exist only to play legal games and watch the money roll in.

[...] As for the FDA, the agency probably can't change this on its own, though, even if it wants to – Congress has to act to give them the authority to deny market exclusivity or priority review vouchers under some conditions. Either that, or we should rethink these incentives entirely, because they are (clearly) too easy to exploit for fast bucks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflazacort

Also at ArsTechnica.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Is Edward Snowden's return from Russia on more than just a U.S. intelligence community wishlist? NBC's anonymous sources say so:

An NBC News report citing U.S. intelligence sources says Russia may consider handing over Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency contractor turned whistle-blower, to the United States as a favor to President Trump. NBC News, the only major news outlet to report the development at this point, wrote that "highly sensitive intelligence reports detailing Russian deliberations" suggest Russia is mulling over sending Snowden back to the U.S. as a favor to Trump. NBC News reported it is one of several tactics Russia could use to cozy up to the president.

Snowden called the report "irrefutable evidence" that he wasn't colluding with Russians, despite allegations from U.S. House members.

Also at The Guardian.

Original Submission

The Mighty Buzzard writes:

The fine folks over at The Tennessean bring us this interesting bit of news:

Inspired by a Breitbart News editor whose speeches have spurred protests at colleges across the country, state lawmakers on Thursday touted a bill that they said would protect free speech on Tennessee campuses.

While discussing the bill in a news conference, sponsors Rep. Martin Daniel and Sen. Joey Hensley referenced the protests against controversial conservative Milo Yiannopoulos, who is a senior editor at Breitbart. Violence erupted at a protest against a planned Yiannopoulos speech at the University of California, Berkeley, prompting officials there to cancel the speech. The lawmakers indicated that the violence had hampered the expression of conservative ideas at Berkeley. Similar issues have cropped up in Tennessee, they said.

Daniel, R-Knoxville, called his legislation "the Milo bill," and said it was "designed to implement oversight of administrators' handling of free speech issues."

Hensley, R-Hohenwald, said the bill was specifically tailored to defend students with conservative views that he said had been silenced in the past.

"We've heard stories from many students that are honestly on the conservative side that have those issues stifled in the classroom," Hensley said. "We just want to ensure our public universities allow all types of speech."

Glad to see my state getting this correct even though they can't pull their heads out of their asses about broadband competition.

[Ed. Note: The current bill has no summary on the Tennessee General Assembly site, but it is likely similar or identical to the previous year's version from the same sponsors which died in committee.]

Original Submission

charon writes:

[T]he days of popping reading glasses on and off or constantly shifting your gaze through bifocals may be numbered. Researchers at the University of Utah have developed "smart glasses" with liquid lenses that can automatically adjust their focus.

"The major advantage of these smart eyeglasses is that once a person puts them on, the objects in front of the person always show clear, no matter at what distance the object is," says Carlos Mastrangelo, the electrical and computer engineering professor who led the research along with doctoral student Nazmul Hasan.

[...] The new smart glasses consist of lenses made of glycerin, a thick clear liquid, enclosed in flexible membranes. The membranes can be mechanically moved back and forth, changing the curvature of the glycerin lens. The lenses are set in frames containing a distance meter on the bridge, which measures the distance from the wearer's face to nearby objects using infrared light. The meter then sends a signal to adjust the curve of the lens. This adjustment can happen quickly, letting the user focus from one object to another in 14 milliseconds.

The glasses come with a smartphone app, which uses data about the wearer's eyeglass prescription to automatically calibrate the lenses via Bluetooth. When the wearer gets a new prescription, they can simply update the information on the app.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Ford Motor Co. is betting big on driverless cars by funneling money to a startup founded by former Google and Uber employees:

Ford Motor is betting $1 billion on the world's self-driving car future. The Detroit automaker announced Friday that it would allocate that sum over five years to a new autonomous car startup called Argo AI, which is headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pa., and will have offices in Michigan and California. Ford's financial outlay is part of a continuing investment strategy anchored to transforming the car and truck seller into a mobility company with a hand in ride-hailing, ride-sharing and even bicycle rentals.

Argo AI was cofounded a few months ago by Google car project veteran Bryan Salesky and Uber engineer Peter Rander, who met while working at Carnegie Mellon University's vaunted robotics and engineering school. "The reason for the investment is not only to drive the delivery of our own autonomous vehicle by 2021, but also to deliver value to our shareholders by creating a software platform that can be licensed to others," Ford CEO Mark Fields told USA TODAY. "This move gets us the agility and speed of a startup combined with Ford's global scale." Salesky, a self-driving car hardware specialist who left Google's renamed Waymo car program last fall, said that he decided to start his own company with Rander because of "the incredible advancements in machine learning, artificial intelligence and computer vision, but we just needed a partner to get these cars into the hands of millions of people."

Also at Ford and The Detroit News.

Having a look at the previously published stories as well as this one, it appears that there is no more need for collaboration:

Google and Ford to Collaborate on Autonomous Vehicles
Google, Ford, Uber Launch Coalition to Further Self-Driving Cars
Ford Pumps Cash Into Company Creating Maps for Self-Driving Cars
Ford Will Pursue Fleet of Autonomous Cars by 2021

Original Submission