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takyon writes:

Emmanuel Macron has been declared the President of France after early vote counts:

France has a new president. Emmanuel Macron – an independent centrist who has never held elected office – has won a resounding victory over far-right, nationalist Marine Le Pen in the most important French presidential race in decades, according to early vote counts by the French Interior Ministry.

In early returns, Macron had won an estimated 65 percent of the vote to Le Pen's nearly 35 percent, according to the French Interior Ministry. Le Pen has already called to congratulate Macron and conceded defeat to a gathering of her supporters in Paris.

Also at The Guardian (live), Washington Post, NYT, Reuters, and The Local.

From CNBC: Euro hits six-month high on Macron victory

CNN editorial: Why Macron's victory is reassuring ... and yet not

BBC has an article about Macron's potential choice of Prime Minister.

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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

TechDirt reports:

In a letter sent recently from Senator Ron Wyden to two of his colleagues who head the Committee on Rules & Administration, it's noted that (incredibly) the ID cards used by Senate Staffers only appear to have a smart chip in them. Instead of the real thing, some genius just decided to put a photo of a smart chip [PDF] on each card, rather than an actual smart chip. This isn't security by obscurity, it's... bad security through cheap Photoshopping. From our Senate.

Moreover, in contrast to the executive branch's widespread adoption of PIV cards with a smart chip, most Senate staff ID cards have a photo of a chip printed on them, rather than a real chip. Given the significant investment by the executive branch in smart chip based two-factor authentication, we should strongly consider issuing our staff real chip-based ID cards and then using those chips as a second factor.

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AthanasiusKircher writes:

NPR reports:

The author of the model bill argues that the neutrality stipulation is necessary for public institutions funded by tax dollars, "who shouldn't be forced to subsidize speech that they disagree with." In response to the legislation, a Democratic North Carolina legislator criticized the bill as an unnecessary "regulation of a constitutional right." The story also mentions that "Critics say this kind of legislation could hinder a university's ability to regulate hate speech on campus," but the bill author responds that hate speech is "not well-defined in the law."

Although the proposed legislation varies by state, the model bill linked above recommends a number of initiatives, from clear campus policies on protecting free speech to severe disciplinary actions for students who interfere with that right. Perhaps the strongest section of the model bill would require that "Any student who has twice been found responsible for infringing the expressive rights of others will be suspended for a minimum of one year, or expelled" (Section 1.9).

In other free speech news, USA Today reports that the FCC is launching an investigation into an "obscene" joke by Stephen Colbert concerning Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, which caused a Twitter firestorm and led to a trending #FireColbert hashtag. While the joke was sexually explicit, the offensive word was bleeped in broadcast. CNN has argued that the FCC is merely doing its job in investigating "a number" of complaints, but Slate notes the high legal threshold that would be necessary for a fine in this case, given the late hour of the broadcast and the three-pronged test for obscenity.

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cafebabe writes:

Something odd is going on in finance this week. One unit of BitCoin briefly exceeded the value of a troy ounce of gold before it fell back. However, this occurred during Ethereum rallying to its current peak above US$100. Perhaps this is like comparing apples, oranges, and dog-biscuits but — as of this week — we now have a situation where Ethereum is well above the US$1 credibility threshold of most alternative digital currencies and, to a simpleton, BitCoin was more valuable than gold.

What changed? Nothing obvious. Banks have teams of shirking resume builders working on trendy projects and they've been working on digital currencies for years. Likewise, tranches of investments funds have been going into technology for decades. However, after puffing and bursting a housing bubble and educational bubble, is this the next place to jub other people's money? Is it Charles Stross' Accelerando coming to life? I don't know but I'll be very concerned if there is a financial wobble within the next month.

(External hyperlinks via Vinay Gupta, an Ethereum contributor, Ethereum evangelist and all-around great guy who helps the homeless.)

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cafebabe writes:

We've previously discussed the possibility of running a two hour marathon (with much of the usual wit in this thread). For a comparison against running one mile in four minutes, running at the pace of a five minute mile would be too slow. Like running a mile in four minutes, people said running a marathon in two hours was impossible. However, it is looking very possible with advanced footwear and suchlike. Specifically, Kenyan marathon runner Eliud Kipchoge was within 0.4% of this goal. Variously reported as being 25 seconds or 26 second too slow, his effort is an unofficial world record.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Last month, Congress voted to repeal FCC rules that would prevent internet service providers from selling your personal web browsing and app usage data. It was a decision that's unpopular across the country, regardless of party affiliation. If the politicians that voted in favor of the reversal thought no one would notice, there are some big ass signs in their districts that say otherwise.

The internet activists at the non-profit Fight for the Future have crowdfunded four billboards, so far, that shame the members of congress that voted for the repeal. The lawmakers that have the honor of being called out will now have to see their face along the highway when they return home. Those lucky few are Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Dean Heller (R-NV), John Rutherford (R-FL) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ). These four lawmakers accepted a combined $196,905 in campaign contributions from the telecom industry in the last election cycle. Blackburn, in particular, has been a longtime enemy of net neutrality. Just last year, she brought up SOPA and tried to frame it as an initiative that would have increased cybersecurity.

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We had two Soylentils submit stories about a family being ordered off a plane by Delta Airlines.

Forced off a Delta Plane and for Keeping Their Seat

kaszz writes:

A California family used the seat their 18-year old son didn't use because he left with an earlier flight. They made use of it for their child instead, but were forced off the Delta Air Lines plane and threatened with jail after refusing to give it up on the crowded flight..

View all the raw glory or do it with some commentary.

In other news don't use the bathroom, ask for water, or be autistic.

Last time it was United Air's Abuses: Doing the Heavy-Handed Thing a Third Time.

Delta Airlines: "Give Up the Seat or You're Going to Jail"

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

AlterNet reports

Brian Schear, of Huntington Beach, said he and his family were flying overnight from Hawaii to Los Angeles last week when [Delta Airlines] employees asked them to give up the seat where their 2-year-old son was sitting, reported KABC-TV.

[...] "You have to give up the seat or you're going to jail, your wife is going to jail and they'll take your kids from you," Schear recalled the flight attendant saying.

Delta employees wanted the family to hold the young child in their laps during the flight, but Schear argued that they had bought the boy a ticket because he needed to sit in his car seat to sleep.

An employee inaccurately told the family the boy needed to sit in a seat with an adult, because the airline's website recommends that children under 2 years old should sit in an approved child seat in a ticketed seat of their own.

The entire family was ordered off the plane, and they stayed overnight in a hotel and bought new tickets the following day, reported KTLA-TV

Video

BTW, can someone tell me what ecver= in a YouTube URL means?

Previous:
Male American Airlines Flight Attendant Hits Mother of Twins with Stroller
United Air's Abuses: Doing the Heavy-Handed Thing a Third Time
Passenger Violently Removed From Overbooked United Airlines Flight

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Days after being announced, Tenable reverse engineered the Intel AMT Vulnerability. According to a blog post, the vulnerability is a backdoor dream. The AMT web interface uses HTTP Digest Authentication, which uses MD5. The problem is that partial matches of the hash are also accepted. Therefore, Tenable decided to experiment and while doing so:

Long story short, for over five years, a complete and trivial bypass of AMT authentication has existed. If this wasn't an intentional backdoor, it is a monumental mistake in security and coding best practices. Regardless, the "backdoor" is now public. With Shodan showing thousands of unpatchable computers (as no patch is currently available, assuming they would ever be patched) exposed to the Internet, some poor IT sod is bound to show up to work some bad news on Monday.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

In 2013, Time magazine ran a cover story titled Google vs. Death about Calico, a then-new Google-run health venture focused on understanding aging — and how to beat it. "We should shoot for the things that are really, really important, so 10 or 20 years from now we have those things done," Google CEO Larry Page told Time.

But how exactly would Calico help humans live longer, healthier lives? How would it invest its vast $1.5 billion pool of money? Beyond sharing the company's ambitious mission — to better understand the biology of aging and treat aging as a disease — Page was vague.

I recently started poking around in Silicon Valley and talking to researchers who study aging and mortality, and discovered that four years after its launch, we still don't know what Calico is doing.

turgid writes:

The BBC has a story about government plant to introduce a new law to allow real-time snooping of British Internet users' activity.

The law would demand a very minimal level of judicial oversight (a judge appointed by the Prime Minister) and the approval of politicians (secretaries of state) so the protection against politically-motivated abuse is effectively nil.

Furthermore, the law will effectively require that backdoors be built into encryption protocols to permit the reading of data on demand.

The news has not been widely publicised by the government, and most people are occupied with Brexit at the moment, so it has not been very well noticed.

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Phoenix666 writes:

With its dense and hydrocarbon-rich atmosphere, Titan has been a subject of interest for many decades. And with the success of the Cassini-Huygens mission, which began exploring Saturn and its system of moons back in 2004, there are many proposals on the table for follow-up missions that would explore the surface of Titan and its methane seas in greater depth.

The challenges that this presents have led to some rather novel ideas, ranging from balloons and landers to floating drones and submarines. But it is the proposal for a "Dragonfly" drone by researchers at NASA's JHUAPL that seems particularly adventurous. This eight-bladed drone would be capable of vertical-takeoff and landing (VTOL), enabling it to explore both the atmosphere and the surface of Titan in the coming decades.

The mission concept was proposed by a science team led by Elizabeth Turtle, a planetary scientist from NASA's Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL). Back in February, the concept was presented at the "Planetary Science Vision 2050 Workshop" – which took place at NASA's headquarters in Washington, DC – and again in late March at the 48th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas.

One advantage of flying in a methane atmosphere is you don't have to cart a lot of heavy fuel with you.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Puerto Rico announced a historic restructuring of its public debt on Wednesday, touching off what may be the biggest bankruptcy ever in the $3.8 trillion U.S. municipal bond market.

While it was not immediately clear just how much of Puerto Rico's $70 billion of debt would be included in the bankruptcy filing, the case is sure to dwarf Detroit's insolvency in 2013. The move comes a day after several major creditors sued Puerto Rico over defaults its bonds.

Bankruptcy may not immediately change the day-to-day lives of Puerto Rico's people, 45 percent of whom live in poverty, but it may lead to future cuts in pensions and worker benefits, and possibly a reduction in health and education services. The island's economy has been in recession for nearly 10 years, with an unemployment rate of about 11.0 percent, and the population has fallen by about 10 percent in the past decade.

The bankruptcy process will also give Puerto Rico the legal ability to impose drastic discounts on creditor recoveries, but could also spook investors and prolong the island's lack of access to debt markets.

The debt restructuring petition was filed by Puerto Rico's financial oversight board in the U.S. District Court in Puerto Rico on Wednesday, and was made under Title III of last year's U.S. Congressional rescue law known as PROMESA.

The Title III provision allows for a court debt restructuring process akin to U.S. bankruptcy protection. Puerto Rico is barred from a traditional municipal bankruptcy protection under Chapter 9 of the U.S. code.

The filing includes only Puerto Rico's central government, which owes some $18 billion in debt backed by the island's constitution. On paper, it does not include $17 billion of sales tax-backed debt, known as COFINA debt, or debt from other agencies.

But those debts are likely to be pulled into the bankruptcy, or included in separate bankruptcy proceedings in coming days, Elias Sanchez, an adviser to Governor Ricardo Rossello, told Reuters on Wednesday. Puerto Rico's massive pension debts will also likely get restructured in the bankruptcy. "Title III was especially compelled by the commonwealth's need to restructure $49 billion of pension liabilities," the oversight board said in Wednesday's filing.

-- submitted from IRC

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takyon writes:

Here's an extra story related to FBI Director Comey's questioning on Wednesday. It's a piece of "classified information":

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate committee that oversees the FBI, said publicly this week that the government paid $900,000 to break into the locked iPhone of a gunman in the San Bernardino, California, shootings, even though the FBI considers the figure to be classified information.

The FBI also has protected the identity of the vendor it paid to do the work. Both pieces of information are the subject of a federal lawsuit by The Associated Press and other news organizations that have sued to force the FBI to reveal them.

California's Feinstein cited the amount while questioning FBI Director James Comey at a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing Wednesday.

Related: FBI vs. Apple Encryption Fight Continues
Seems Like Everyone has an Opinion About Apple vs. the FBI
Washington Post: The FBI Paid "Gray Hat(s)", Not Cellebrite, for iPhone Unlock
FBI Can't Say How It Hacked IPhone 5C
Researcher Bypasses iPhone 5c Security With NAND Mirroring

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cafebabe writes:

Leprosy is bacterial. In addition to curing leprosy with antibiotics, we also have anti-biotic resistant leprosy. What prevents a terrorist from deliberately infecting themself with leprosy and then engaging in promiscuous activity? How would a city like San Francisco, Washington DC, Paris or Berlin react to leprosy? When leprosy has a long incubation period, are we certain that leprosy isn't spreading already?

martyb: I was debating whether or not to run this story; from the Wikipedia page, "Contrary to popular belief, it is not highly contagious." But, there is more to this than just antibiotic-resistant leprosy. It invites discussion as to other agents with delayed response that could be employed. In addition, given a terrorist's intention to affect some other group, what options do they have which would affect that group without also adversely affecting their own group? How many of their own group are people willing to "harm" in the pursuit of harm to another group?

takyon: Bill Gates: Bioterrorism could kill more than nuclear war — but no one is ready to deal with it
Dept. of Defense aims countermeasures at WMD, synthetic biological threats
Bill Gates: Bioterrorism Weapons Could Kill 30 Million
Vaccine Development Agreements Target Encephalitis Bioterror Agent
Public Meeting on Biodefense Budget Reform
How the House health care bill undercuts bioterror and pandemic defenses
Bengaluru: Wipro gets email threat 'pay 500 cr in bitcoins or suffer bio-terror'; warned of attack by May 25

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gizmobeast writes:

Facebook has kicked its push for TV-like shows into high gear and is aiming to premiere its slate of programming in mid-June, multiple people familiar with the plans told Business Insider.

Facebook plans to have about two dozen shows for this initial push and has greenlit multiple shows for production, according to people familiar with the discussions. They said the social network had been looking for shows in two distinct tiers: a marquee tier for a few longer, big-budget shows that would feel at home on TV, and a lower tier for shorter, less expensive shows of about five to 10 minutes that would refresh every 24 hours.

[...] Facebook sees high-quality, scripted video as an important feature to retain users, particularly a younger demographic that is increasingly flocking to rival Snapchat, as well as a means to rake in brand advertising dollars traditionally reserved for traditional TV.

Whether Facebook's users will embrace such programming is unclear. The short video clips that autoplay in Facebook's News Feed have been a success for most publishers, but there's no guarantee that consumers will begin to think of Facebook as a destination for watching longer-form shows.

Facebook declined to comment for this story.

Source: Facebook wants to launch its big attack on TV next month — here's what we know

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