Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader shares an Ars Technica article: The Federal Communications Commission today unveiled new broadband labels modeled after the nutrition labels commonly seen on food products. Home Internet service providers and mobile carriers are being urged to use the labels to give consumers details such as prices (including hidden fees tacked onto the base price), data caps, overage charges, speed, latency, packet loss, and so on. ISPs aren't required to use these labels. But they are required to make more specific disclosures as part of transparency requirements in the FCC's net neutrality order, which reclassified Internet providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. The FCC recommends that ISPs use these labels to comply with the disclosure rules and says use of the labels will act as a "safe harbor" for demonstrating compliance. However, ISPs can come up with their own format if they still make all the required disclosures in "an accurate, understandable, and easy-to-find manner," the FCC said today.

New Minnesota legislation is "attempting to penalize those who post explicit photos or videos of ex-lovers on the Internet without permission," reports the Associated Press. But while 27 states across America have already passed laws against "revenge porn", Hollywood's lobbying arm, the MPAA, argues that Minnesota's bill doesn't specifically require an intent to harass in their definition of the crime, which "could limit the distribution of a wide array of mainstream, Constitutionally protected material, including items of legitimate news, commentary, and historical interest," according to Ars Technica. The MPAA adds that "images of Holocaust victims, or prisoners at Abu Ghraib, or the Pulitzer-Prize winning photograph entitled 'Napalm Girl' -- which shows a young girl running screaming from her village, naked, following a Napalm attack -- could be prohibited under the terms of this legislation."

"This is the same MPAA that fiercely supported the Stop Online Piracy Act of 2012," notes Ars Technica, though "many claimed that legislation would also curtail free speech because SOPA could lead to the removal of domains that host infringing material." But the state's ACLU chapter is also opposing Minnesota's bill, according to the Associated Press, pointing out that it doesn't require an offender to be aware that they're invading someone's privacy, and arguing that "We're not doing victims of revenge porn any service by passing a law that can't be upheld in court, that will let people go free."

An anonymous reader shares an article on Ars Technica: The teenager who grabbed headlines earlier this week for hacking a fake game listing on to Valve's Steam store says there are "definitely" more vulnerabilities to be found in the popular game distribution service. But he won't be the one to find them, thanks to what he sees as Valve "giv[ing] so little of a shit about people's [security] findings." Ruby Nealon, a 16-year-old university student from England, says that probing various corporate servers for vulnerabilities has been a hobby of his since the age of 11. His efforts came to the attention of Valve (and the wider world) after an HTML-based hack let him post a game called "Watch paint dry" on Steam without Valve's approval over the weekend."It looks like their website hasn't been updated for years," Nealon told Ars. "Compared to even other smaller Web startups, they're really lacking. This stuff was like the lowest of the lowest hanging fruit."

An anonymous reader writes: The FBI has been citing a 1789 law, the All Writs Act, to compel Apple to assist the authorities in unlocking the iPhone 5c belonging to San Bernardino killer, Syed Farook. The law allows for judges to issue orders for people or companies to do something despite Congress not passing laws to cover specific instances. According to the Civil Liberties Union, the U.S. government has cited the All Writs Act in 63 cases since 2008 to compel Apple or Google to assist in accessing data stored on an iPhone or Android device. Most of the orders involved Apple. "To the extent we know about the underlying facts, these cases predominantly arise out of investigations into drug crimes," said Eliza Sweren-Becker, an ACLU attorney.

An anonymous reader shares an Ars Technica report: U.S. government officials from the FBI director down have said repeatedly that the FBI-Apple legal brouhaha was just about a single phone -- the seized iPhone used by Syed Farook, one of the San Bernardino shooters. And just last week, James Comey, the FBI director, said his fight with Apple wasn't about setting precedent; rather, it was about battling terrorism. But it seems that the storyline has changed. The Justice Department now says it will not hesitate to invoke the precedent it won in its iPhone unlocking case. Having won the court and technological battle a triumphant Department of Justice warned late Monday that its legal battle for what many say amounts to judicially ordered encryption backdoors has only just begun. "It remains a priority for the government to ensure that law enforcement can obtain crucial digital information to protect national security and public safety, either with cooperation from relevant parties, or through the court system when cooperation fails," Melanie Newman, a Justice Department spokesman, wrote in an e-mail to Ars. "We will continue to pursue all available options for this mission, including seeking the cooperation of manufacturers and relying upon the creativity of both the public and private sectors."

An anonymous reader shares an Ars Technica report: U.S. government officials from the FBI director down have said repeatedly that the FBI-Apple legal brouhaha was just about a single phone -- the seized iPhone used by Syed Farook, one of the San Bernardino shooters. And just last week, James Comey, the FBI director, said his fight with Apple wasn't about setting precedent; rather, it was about battling terrorism. But it seems that the storyline has changed. The Justice Department now says it will not hesitate to invoke the precedent it won in its iPhone unlocking case. Having won the court and technological battle a triumphant Department of Justice warned late Monday that its legal battle for what many say amounts to judicially ordered encryption backdoors has only just begun. "It remains a priority for the government to ensure that law enforcement can obtain crucial digital information to protect national security and public safety, either with cooperation from relevant parties, or through the court system when cooperation fails," Melanie Newman, a Justice Department spokesman, wrote in an e-mail to Ars. "We will continue to pursue all available options for this mission, including seeking the cooperation of manufacturers and relying upon the creativity of both the public and private sectors."

An anonymous reader shares an Ars Technica report: U.S. government officials from the FBI director down have said repeatedly that the FBI-Apple legal brouhaha was just about a single phone -- the seized iPhone used by Syed Farook, one of the San Bernardino shooters. And just last week, James Comey, the FBI director, said his fight with Apple wasn't about setting precedent; rather, it was about battling terrorism. But it seems that the storyline has changed. The Justice Department now says it will not hesitate to invoke the precedent it won in its iPhone unlocking case. Having won the court and technological battle a triumphant Department of Justice warned late Monday that its legal battle for what many say amounts to judicially ordered encryption backdoors has only just begun. "It remains a priority for the government to ensure that law enforcement can obtain crucial digital information to protect national security and public safety, either with cooperation from relevant parties, or through the court system when cooperation fails," Melanie Newman, a Justice Department spokesman, wrote in an e-mail to Ars. "We will continue to pursue all available options for this mission, including seeking the cooperation of manufacturers and relying upon the creativity of both the public and private sectors."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Prison phone companies have convinced a court to halt new rate caps on inmate calling for the second time this month. The first stay was issued March 7 and prevented the FCC from implementing new rate caps of 11 cents to 22 cents per minute on both interstate and intrastate calls from prisons. But the stay -- which remains in place while the prison phone companies' lawsuit against the FCC is still pending -- did not disturb an earlier "interim" cap of 21 cents to 25 cents per minute that applied only to interstate calls, those that cross state lines. The order also didn't specifically object to the FCC changing its definition of "inmate calling service" to include both interstate and intrastate calls. Seizing on this ambiguity, the FCC decided that it could impose the interim caps on both interstate and intrastate calls. But prison phone companies Securus Technologies, Global Tel Link (GTL), and Telmate all asked the federal appeals court to stop the caps from being applied to intrastate calls. A court order issued Wednesday sided with the prison phone companies, saying that "petitioners have satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending court review." As a result, the interim rate caps will still apply only to interstate calls.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Prison phone companies have convinced a court to halt new rate caps on inmate calling for the second time this month. The first stay was issued March 7 and prevented the FCC from implementing new rate caps of 11 cents to 22 cents per minute on both interstate and intrastate calls from prisons. But the stay -- which remains in place while the prison phone companies' lawsuit against the FCC is still pending -- did not disturb an earlier "interim" cap of 21 cents to 25 cents per minute that applied only to interstate calls, those that cross state lines. The order also didn't specifically object to the FCC changing its definition of "inmate calling service" to include both interstate and intrastate calls. Seizing on this ambiguity, the FCC decided that it could impose the interim caps on both interstate and intrastate calls. But prison phone companies Securus Technologies, Global Tel Link (GTL), and Telmate all asked the federal appeals court to stop the caps from being applied to intrastate calls. A court order issued Wednesday sided with the prison phone companies, saying that "petitioners have satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending court review." As a result, the interim rate caps will still apply only to interstate calls.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Prison phone companies have convinced a court to halt new rate caps on inmate calling for the second time this month. The first stay was issued March 7 and prevented the FCC from implementing new rate caps of 11 cents to 22 cents per minute on both interstate and intrastate calls from prisons. But the stay -- which remains in place while the prison phone companies' lawsuit against the FCC is still pending -- did not disturb an earlier "interim" cap of 21 cents to 25 cents per minute that applied only to interstate calls, those that cross state lines. The order also didn't specifically object to the FCC changing its definition of "inmate calling service" to include both interstate and intrastate calls. Seizing on this ambiguity, the FCC decided that it could impose the interim caps on both interstate and intrastate calls. But prison phone companies Securus Technologies, Global Tel Link (GTL), and Telmate all asked the federal appeals court to stop the caps from being applied to intrastate calls. A court order issued Wednesday sided with the prison phone companies, saying that "petitioners have satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending court review." As a result, the interim rate caps will still apply only to interstate calls.

An anonymous reader links to a report on Ars Technica: One of the oldest and most profitable patent trolls, Uniloc, has been shot down. Its US Patent No. 5,490,216, which claims to own the concept of "product activation" in software, had all claims ruled invalid by the Patent Trademark and Appeals Board (PTAB). The process through which PTAB eliminated the patent is called an "inter partes review," or IPR. The IPR process, created by the America Invents Act, is an increasingly popular and effective way for defendants to challenge patents outside federal courts. It was Uniloc's lawsuit against Microsoft that provided the company with its original headlines. Uniloc said that Microsoft's system of checking software licenses -- in other words, type in a key number and have your software validated violated -- the patent. That case led to a $388 million jury verdict against Microsoft.

An anonymous reader writes: A customer database as well as information about Verizon security flaws were reportedly put up for sale by criminals this week after a data breach at Verizon Enterprise Solutions. According to KrebsOnSecurity, "a prominent member of a closely guarded underground cybercrime forum posted a new thread advertising the sale of a database containing the contact information on some 1.5 million customers of Verizon Enterprise." The entire database was priced at $100,000, or $10,000 for each set of 100,000 customer records. "Buyers also were offered the option to purchase information about security vulnerabilities in Verizon's Web site," security journalist Brian Krebs reported. Verizon has apparently fixed the security flaws and has reassured its customers by saying "our investigation to date found an attacker obtained basic contact information on a number of our enterprise customers" and that "no customer proprietary network information (CPNI) or other data was accessed or accessible."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: A Kentucky hospital is operating in an internal state of emergency following an attack by cybercriminals on its computer network, Krebs on Security reported. Methodist Hospital, based in Henderson, Kentucky, is the victim of a ransomware attack in which hackers infiltrated its computer network, encrypted files and are now holding the data hostage, Krebs reported Tuesday. The criminals reportedly used new strain of malware known as Locky to encrypt important files. The malware spread from the initial infected machine to the entire internal network and several other systems, the hospital's information systems director, Jamie Reid, told Krebs. The hospital is reportedly considering paying hackers the ransom money of four bitcoins, about $1,600 at the current exchange rate, for the key to unlock the files.

An anonymous reader writes from an article on Ars Technica: New details of the Paris attacks carried out last November reveal that it was the consistent use of prepaid burner phones, not encryption, that helped keep the terrorists off the radar of the intelligence services. As an article in The New York Times reports: "the three teams in Paris were comparatively disciplined. They used only new phones that they would then discard, including several activated minutes before the attacks, or phones seized from their victims." The article goes on to give more details of how some phones were used only very briefly in the hours leading up to the attacks. "Everywhere they went, the attackers left behind their throwaway phones, including in Bobigny, at a villa rented in the name of Ibrahim Abdeslam. When the brigade charged with sweeping the location arrived, it found two unused cellphones still inside their boxes." At another location used by one of the terrorists, the police found dozens of unused burner phones "still in their wrappers." As The New York Times says, one of the most striking aspects of the phones is that not a single e-mail or online chat message from the attackers was found on them. But rather than trying to avoid discovery by using encryption -- which would in itself have drawn attention to their accounts -- they seem to have stopped using the internet as a communication channel altogether, and turned to standard cellular network calls on burner phones.

An anonymous reader writes: [Hogan's attorneys told jurors this is the core of the case:] "Gawker took a secretly recorded sex tape and put it on the Internet." And now they are paying for it, dearly. Also notable is that there doesn't seem to be anyone interested in defending them, as even the Twitter community (if it can truly be called that) has come out strongly in favor of the ruling against Gawker. Maybe they should have at least made more friends? They did make $6.5 million in net income in 2014 and their Wikipedia article states that they were last sold in 2009 for $300 million, so while they may not be put out of business, it seems likely they will at least be [changing] hands, and soon, with the jury ruling $55 million for economic injuries and $60 million for emotional distress. I think that's jury-speak for "body slam."
According to Ars Technica, Gawker Media was one of the first successful, large, digital-only news companies. "The stunning sum, which may have punitive damages added to it, is a life-threatening event for the New York-based network of news and gossip sites."

An anonymous reader writes from an Ars Technica article: Physical weaknesses in memory chips that make computers and servers susceptible to hack attacks dubbed "Rowhammer" are more exploitable than previously thought and extend to DDR4 modules, not just DDR3, according to a recently published research paper. The paper, titled How Rowhammer Could Be Used to Exploit Weaknesses in Computer Hardware (PDF), arrived at that conclusion by testing the integrity of dual in-line memory modules, or DIMMs, using diagnostic techniques that hadn't previously been applied to finding the vulnerability. The tests showed many of the DIMMs were vulnerable to a phenomenon known as "bitflipping," in which 0s were converted to 1s and vice versa.

An anonymous reader writes from an article on Ars Technica: When former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was pushing to get a waiver allowing her to use a BlackBerry like President Barack Obama back in 2009, the National Security Agency had a very short list of devices approved for classified communications. The General Dynamics' Sectera Edge and L3 Communications' Guardian were the two devices built for the Secure Mobile Environment Portable Electronic Device (SME PED) program. They were the only devices anyone in government without an explicit security waver (like the one the president got, along with his souped-up BlackBerry 8830) could use until as recently as last year to get mobile access to top secret encrypted calls and secure e-mail. At the time Clinton was asking for a phone, only the Sectera Edge was available (the Guardian was running behind in development) and it required multiple server-side and phone-side e-mail additions, desktop synchronization software, and other supporting products. The "Executive Kit" version of the Edge, priced for government purchase at $4,750, included: Type 1 Sectera Edge (GSM or CDMA) device plus: Executive Carry Case, Leather Holster Travel Charger, Red/Black USB Cables, Vehicle Charger, Earbud, Stylus 10-pack, microSD Card with User Manual, Spare Battery, Privacy Shield 4-pack, Antivirus Software, Apriva Email Client and Perpetual Rights fee and Office Suite for Windows CE.

AmiMoJo writes: In the summer of 2013, secure e-mail service Lavabit was ordered by a federal judge to provide real-time e-mail monitoring of one of its users. Rather than comply with the order, Levison shut down his entire company. He said what the government was seeking would have endangered the privacy of all of his 410,000 users. Now, what was widely assumed has been confirmed. In documents posted to the federal PACER database this month, the government accidentally left his e-mail, 'Ed_snowden@lavabit.com,' unredacted for all to see.

Earthquake Retrofit writes: A Silicon Valley startup called SmartCar in Mountain View, California signed up for Comcast Internet service. After hearing Comcast excuses for months, company owner Katta finally got fed up and decided that he would find a new office building once his 12-month lease expires on April 20 of this year. Katta told Comcast he wanted to 'cancel' his nonexistent service and get a refund for a $2,100 deposit he had paid. Instead, Comcast told him he'd have to pay more than $60,000 to get out of his contract with the company. Comcast eventually waived the fee—but only after being contacted by Ars Technica about the case.

An anonymous reader writes: The Nike HyperAdapt 1.0 self-lacing shoes have been officially unveiled. We know they will go on sale later this year, but we do not know the price. "When you step in, your heel will hit a sensor and the system will automatically tighten," explained Tiffany Beers, the project's technical lead. There are two buttons on the side of the shoe that allow you to tweak how loose or tight the laces are. The concept behind the HyperAdapt shoes bring to mind Marty McFly's Nike Mags from Back to the Future, even if they do not look very similar. Nike hasn't yet revealed how the shoes work from a technical point of view but they do lineup with the US patent filed by the company in 2009. The HyperAdapt 1.0 shoes will be exclusively available to users of the Nike+ app later this year in three color combinations -- white, grey and black.

An anonymous reader writes: T-Mobile is expanding its Binge On program. The wireless carrier on Thursday announced that it is adding YouTube and seven other video services including Discovery Go, Google Play Movies, and Red Bull TV to its program which allows subscribers to stream as much as they want without billing the usage against their data plan. The carrier says that its partners can now optimize the video as well, with YouTube being the first service to make use of the feature. From an Ars Technica report, "Binge On is enabled by default and affects nearly all video regardless of whether a video provider has joined the program. Binge On throttles video streams and downloads to about 1.5Mbps, forcing the video services to deliver lower quality, typically about 480p. Video services that meet some technical requirements also get their data "zero-rated" so that customers can watch shows without it counting against high-speed data limits." Many have raised concerns about Binge On and the way it handles internet traffic. Some strongly believe that T-Mobile's program violates Net Neutrality. Earlier this year, privacy rights group, EFF, also expressed its concerns, adding that Binge On was just "throttling of all data." Interestingly, YouTube was one of the key video platforms which hadn't joined Binge On when T-Mobile first introduced the program last year. At the time, the Google-owned video portal said, "Reducing data charges can be good for users, but it doesn't justify throttling all video services, especially without explicit user consent." Not sure what made YouTube change its heart.

An anonymous reader writes: T-Mobile is expanding its Binge On program. The wireless carrier on Thursday announced that it is adding YouTube and seven other video services including Discovery Go, Google Play Movies, and Red Bull TV to its program which allows subscribers to stream as much as they want without billing the usage against their data plan. The carrier says that its partners can now optimize the video as well, with YouTube being the first service to make use of the feature. From an Ars Technica report, "Binge On is enabled by default and affects nearly all video regardless of whether a video provider has joined the program. Binge On throttles video streams and downloads to about 1.5Mbps, forcing the video services to deliver lower quality, typically about 480p. Video services that meet some technical requirements also get their data "zero-rated" so that customers can watch shows without it counting against high-speed data limits." Many have raised concerns about Binge On and the way it handles internet traffic. Some strongly believe that T-Mobile's program violates Net Neutrality. Earlier this year, privacy rights group, EFF, also expressed its concerns, adding that Binge On was just "throttling of all data." Interestingly, YouTube was one of the key video platforms which hadn't joined Binge On when T-Mobile first introduced the program last year. At the time, the Google-owned video portal said, "Reducing data charges can be good for users, but it doesn't justify throttling all video services, especially without explicit user consent." Not sure what made YouTube change its heart.

insitus writes: The FCC is getting close to approving Charter's $79 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. According to a (paywalled) report in the Wall Street Journal, FCC boss Tom Wheeler is expected to circulate an order among fellow commissioners as early as this week that would approve the deal with some conditions. Those conditions would include provisions requiring Charter deliver low-income broadband to select communities. That paywalled WSJ report is here. The story's also at Ars Technica, among others. From Ars' report: If Charter's acquisitions of TWC and Bright House are approved, Charter would become the nation's second largest Internet service provider after Comcast, with the two companies controlling the majority of high-speed Internet subscriptions. Comcast struck a deal to buy Time Warner Cable in February 2014, but it failed to convince the FCC and Department of Justice to approve that merger. Among other things, the agencies were concerned that a bigger Comcast would try to harm online video providers that need access to Comcast's broadband network.

An anonymous reader writes from an Ars Technica article: Customers who sued ATT over its practice of throttling unlimited data plans will not be able to pursue a class-action lawsuit against the company. ATT argued that the customers could not only have their complaints heard individually in arbitration, and Judge Edward Chen of US District Court in Northern California has sided with the cellular company. Chen accepted ATT's argument, noting that the Supreme Court previously upheld ATT's arbitration provision in a 2011 decision. In the 2011 case, ATT Mobility v. Concepcion, the Supreme Court found that the Federal Arbitration Act preempted a California state law that limited the power of companies to force customers into arbitration. [Chen's ruling granting ATT's motion to compel arbitration was issued on February 29 and highlighted in a MediaPost article Friday.] "Plaintiffs argue that the Concepcion Court never addressed the specific issues now raised -- i.e., that enforcement of the arbitration agreements would violate their rights as protected by the Petition Clause of the First Amendment," Chen wrote. "Because there is no state action in the instant case, Plaintiffs lack a viable First Amendment challenge to the arbitration agreements. As Plaintiffs have not challenged the arbitration agreements on any other bases, the Court grants ATT's motion to compel arbitration."
ATT is still being punished by the FCC and FTC. Ars Technica writes, "The FCC last year proposed a $100 million fine to punish ATT for throttling the wireless Internet connections of customers with unlimited data plans without adequately notifying the customers about the reduced speeds. Separately, the FTC sued ATT in an attempt to gain millions of dollars worth of refunds for customers who paid for unlimited data and had their speeds throttled."

An anonymous reader writes from an Ars Technica article: Customers who sued ATT over its practice of throttling unlimited data plans will not be able to pursue a class-action lawsuit against the company. ATT argued that the customers could not only have their complaints heard individually in arbitration, and Judge Edward Chen of US District Court in Northern California has sided with the cellular company. Chen accepted ATT's argument, noting that the Supreme Court previously upheld ATT's arbitration provision in a 2011 decision. In the 2011 case, ATT Mobility v. Concepcion, the Supreme Court found that the Federal Arbitration Act preempted a California state law that limited the power of companies to force customers into arbitration. [Chen's ruling granting ATT's motion to compel arbitration was issued on February 29 and highlighted in a MediaPost article Friday.] "Plaintiffs argue that the Concepcion Court never addressed the specific issues now raised -- i.e., that enforcement of the arbitration agreements would violate their rights as protected by the Petition Clause of the First Amendment," Chen wrote. "Because there is no state action in the instant case, Plaintiffs lack a viable First Amendment challenge to the arbitration agreements. As Plaintiffs have not challenged the arbitration agreements on any other bases, the Court grants ATT's motion to compel arbitration."
ATT is still being punished by the FCC and FTC. Ars Technica writes, "The FCC last year proposed a $100 million fine to punish ATT for throttling the wireless Internet connections of customers with unlimited data plans without adequately notifying the customers about the reduced speeds. Separately, the FTC sued ATT in an attempt to gain millions of dollars worth of refunds for customers who paid for unlimited data and had their speeds throttled."

An anonymous reader shares an update on Google's ongoing battle with Russian regulators: Google suffered a major blow in Russia on Monday, after the Moscow Arbitration court sided with an earlier ruling that Google had violated the country's anti-trust rules by having its apps and services bundled on Android smartphones. Yandex, a Russia-based search engine, last year sued Google over "anti-competitive practices," saying that Google was abusing its dominant position in the market to hurt competition. In response, Google had noted that Android, which roughly owns 80 percent of the market, is a free and open source operating system. At the time, the Russian Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS) ruled that Android users must not be catered with Google's homegrown apps and services. The Moscow's Arbitration Court ruling said on Monday that it fully supports the earlier FAS decision. According to an Ars Technica report, "Google will now be required to change its business practices with smartphone makers in Russia, or else face a fine if it fails to adhere to the ruling."

An anonymous reader points to an official announcement made by TP-Link, which confirms a report from last month that it is blocking open source firmware: The FCC requires all manufacturers to prevent users from having any direct ability to change RF parameters (frequency limits, output power, country codes, etc.) In order to keep our products compliant with these implemented regulations, TP-LINK is distributing devices that feature country-specific firmware. Devices sold in the United States will have firmware and wireless settings that ensure compliance with local laws and regulations related to transmission power. As a result of these necessary changes, users are not able to flash the current generation of open-source, third-party firmware. We are excited to see the creative ways members of the open-source community update the new firmware to meet their needs. However, TP-LINK does not offer any guarantees or technical support for customers attempting to flash any third-party firmware to their devices. Don't lose all your hopes yet. Developer Sebastian Gottschall, who works on DD-WRT Linux-based firmware, believes that TP-Link hasn't blocked third-party firmware. He adds, "Just the firmware header has been a little bit changed and a region code has been added. This has been introduced in September 2015. DD-WRT for instance does still provide compatible images... in fact it's no lock." Furthermore, Cisco insists that FCC's existing or proposed rules doesn't limit or eliminate the ability of a developer to use open source software.

Reader Lisandro writes: The F-35 Fighter jet can't seem to catch a break. An advanced AN/APG-81 AESA F35 radar system has been found riddled with a software bug that causes it to degrade and stop working. The solution? Rebooting the system while in the air.

Major General Jeffrey Harrigian, director of the Air Force's F-35 integration office at the Pentagon, was quoted as saying "radar stability - the radar's ability to stay up and running. [...] What would happen is they'd get a signal that says either a radar degrade or a radar fail - "something that would force us to restart the radar." The issue was spotted in late 2015, and thankfully, it was caught during the testing period. The software version "3i" is affected. An update aimed to resolve the bug is expected to be delivered to the US Air Force by the end of March.

Reader wbr1 points to Ars Technica's Wednesday report that NASA has announced a 2018 launch date for its InSight mission to Mars, two years after its original launch date; the date slip gives engineers time to fix problems with the spacecraft's seismometer system. Adds wbr1: "Even with the failure and extra cost, I think this is the type of mission we should be doing more of. We need more landers and rovers, everywhere we can put them. The science benefit is high, but the cost is magnitudes lower than launching meatbags and all the attendant support they need."

judgecorp writes: Google has elected to open up some of its data center designs, which it has -- until now -- kept to itself. Google has joined the Open Compute Project, which was set up by Facebook to share low-cost, no-frills data center hardware specifications. Google will donate a specification for a rack that it designed for its own data centers. Google's first contribution will be "a new rack specification that includes 48V power distribution and a new form factor to allow OCP racks to fit into our data centers," the company said. "We kicked off the development of 48V rack power distribution in 2010, as we found it was at least 30 percent more energy-efficient and more cost-effective in supporting these higher-performance systems." The company said it hopes to help others "adopt this next generation power architecture, and realize the same power efficiency and cost benefits as Google." Google hasn't submitted a proposed specification to the OCP yet, but the company is working with Facebook to get that done.

AmiMoJo writes: In the US, electricity demand is growing very slowly, which means that capacity additions don't have to exceed retirements by much in order to keep the grid functioning. Tracking the comings and goings from the electric grid can help provide a picture of the country's changing energy mix. The Energy Information Administration, which provides data on the US' electric grid, says 18GW of capacity were retired this past year, more than 80 percent of it coal-fired. More than 27GW of utility-scale projects will replace that this year. Note that much of the new generating hardware is wind and solar, but the plants being replaced often had low capacity factors due to their age and high pollutant output.

Just a day after it made headlines for announcing that it would remove encryption from its line of FireOS devices, reports Ars Technica, the company has reverted the change, and says that encryption will again be a user-selectable option, with an update to come sometime this Spring. Judging from comments here on Slashdot, that ought to please a lot of people. However, encryption isn't the Fire's only problem; Ricki Jennings at ComputerWorld has collected some of the user reaction to the change, and says that anemic hardware means that even with this small course correction, the Fire tablets themselves "still suck." I'm not so sure; I bought one of the low-end Fire tablets and returned it, disappointed not in the hardware (seemed not bad at all for $50, with a decent screen, snappy video, and sound that was better than reviews had led me to expect) but rather by the intentional limitations of the OS itself.

An anonymous reader writes: It's been almost a year now since Oculus announced that the consumer version of the Rift virtual-reality headset would only support Windows PCs at launch -- a turnaround from development kits that worked fine on Mac and Linux boxes. Now, according to Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey, it "is up to Apple" to change that state of affairs. Specifically, "if they ever release a good computer, we will do it," he told Shacknews recently. Basically, Luckey continued, even the highest-end Mac you can buy would not provide an enjoyable experience on the final Rift hardware, which is significantly more powerful than early development kits. "It just boils down to the fact that Apple doesn't prioritize high-end GPUs," he said. "You can buy a $6,000 Mac Pro with the top-of-the-line AMD FirePro D700, and it still doesn't match our recommended specs."

HughPickens.com writes: Cyrus Farivar reports at ArsTechnica that Congressman David Jolly has introduced the "No Taxpayer Support for Apple Act," a bill that would forbid federal agencies from purchasing Apple products until the company cooperates with the federal court order to assist the unlocking of a seized iPhone 5C associated with the San Bernardino terrorist attack. "Taxpayers should not be subsidizing a company that refuses to cooperate in a terror investigation that left 14 Americans dead on American soil," said Jolly, who announced in 2015 that he's running for Senate, joining the crowded GOP primary field to replace Sen. Marco Rubio. "Following the horrific events of September 11, 2001, every citizen and every company was willing to do whatever it took to side with law enforcement and defeat terror. It's time Apple shows that same conviction to further protect our nation today." Jolly's bill echoes a call from Donald Trump last month to boycott Apple until it agrees to assist the FBI. Not to fear, GovTrack gives Jolly's bill a 1% chance of being enacted.

Soulskill writes: In a recent Facebook post, AMD's Robert Hallock hinted that the company is working on a standardized solution for external GPUs. When people are looking to buy laptops, they often want light, portable machines — but smaller devices often don't have the horsepower to effectively run games. Hallock says, "External GPUs are the answer. External GPUs with standardized connectors, cables, drivers, plug'n'play, OS support, etc." The article points out that the Thunderbolt 3 connector already (kinda) solves this problem, providing up to 40Gbps of bandwidth over a single connector. Still, I find external GPUs intriguing. I like the idea of having a light laptop when I'm moving around, but a capable one when I sit down at home to play a game. It'd also be nice to grab my desktop's GPU when I want to game on my laptop in the living room. Standardization may turn out to be important for GPU-makers if VR ends up taking off. The hardware requirements for those devices are fairly steep, and it'd facilitate adoption if graphics power was more easily expandable.

An anonymous reader writes: IBM is pushing big internet companies to pay patent licensing fees in part because IBM invented the Prodigy service, a precursor to the modern web. Yesterday, Big Blue filed a lawsuit against Groupon, saying the company has infringed four IBM patents, including patents 5,796,967 and 7,072,849. IBM inventors working on Prodigy "developed novel methods for presenting applications and advertisements," and "the technological innovations embodied in these patents are fundamental to the efficient communication of internet content," according to the company. The Prodigy patents were filed in 1993 and 1996, but they have "priority dates" stretching back to 1988. "Despite IBM's repeated attempts to negotiate, Groupon refuses to take a license but continues to use IBM's property," IBM lawyers write. IBM says it informed Groupon that it was infringing the '967, '849, and '346 patents as early as 2011. As for the '601 patent, IBM says that Groupon should have been on notice of that once Priceline got sued last year.

An anonymous reader writes: IBM is pushing big internet companies to pay patent licensing fees in part because IBM invented the Prodigy service, a precursor to the modern web. Yesterday, Big Blue filed a lawsuit against Groupon, saying the company has infringed four IBM patents, including patents 5,796,967 and 7,072,849. IBM inventors working on Prodigy "developed novel methods for presenting applications and advertisements," and "the technological innovations embodied in these patents are fundamental to the efficient communication of internet content," according to the company. The Prodigy patents were filed in 1993 and 1996, but they have "priority dates" stretching back to 1988. "Despite IBM's repeated attempts to negotiate, Groupon refuses to take a license but continues to use IBM's property," IBM lawyers write. IBM says it informed Groupon that it was infringing the '967, '849, and '346 patents as early as 2011. As for the '601 patent, IBM says that Groupon should have been on notice of that once Priceline got sued last year.

hackingbear writes: While the general steps of forming a long-term memory are clear, the details, such as how exactly the molecular signals get shuttled to the command center, which generally has tight security, are unclear. A new study, led by neuroscientist Yi Zhong of Tsinghua University in Beijing, may finally have that answer. In the tiny minds of fruit flies, a protein called importin-7 acts to shuttle the memory-triggering signal into the nucleus with its top-level clearance to the restricted area, researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. With genetic tweaking, the researchers dialed up and down the amount of importin-7 in the flies and then put them through the memory training and test. They found that cranking up levels of the shuttle protein strengthened the long-term memories of the flies, while turning it off weakened their memory. "The current work confirms that [importin-7] is indeed critical at the behavioral level in mediating [long-term memory] consolidation," the authors concluded.

AmiMoJo writes: VESA has finalized and released the DisplayPort 1.4 spec, which can drive 60Hz 8K displays and supports HDR color modes at 5K and 8K. The physical interface used to carry DisplayPort data -- High Bit Rate 3 (HBR3), which provides 8.1Gbps of bandwidth per lane -- is still the same as it was in DisplayPort 1.3. The new standard drives higher-resolution displays with better color support using Display Stream Compression (DSC), a "visually lossless" form of compression that VESA says "enables up to [a] 3:1 compression ratio." This data compression, among other things, allows DisplayPort 1.4 to drive 60Hz 8K displays and 120Hz 4K displays with HDR "deep color" over both DisplayPort and USB Type-C cables. USB Type-C cables can provide a USB 3.0 data connection, too.

WheezyJoe writes: According to the US Energy Information Administration, solar, wind, and gas dominate new US generating capacity in 2016. This year is notable because it will see the first new nuclear plant brought online in 20 years, contributing 1.1 GigaWatts to the grid. But that contribution will be dwarfed by renewable power sources, which together account for nearly two-thirds of 2016's new capacity. Part of the boom in renewables came because the tax incentives for their installation were in danger of expiring, so utilities rushed to get projects through the pipeline ahead of the end of the year. 9.5GW of capacity is expected to come online from solar -- more than the past three years combined. Another 6.8GW is expected from planned additions of wind power, largely spread across the Great Plains. Of new fossil fuel plants, the vast majority are going to be burning natural gas; there are no planned additions of coal plants.

NormalVisual writes: Disney is now asking its employees to chip in to promote the company's copyright agenda via the company's political action committee, DisneyPAC. CEO Bob Iger has sent a letter to the company's employees lauding the company's success with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement and the recent Supreme Court decision regarding the video service Aereo -- an Internet service claiming the right to retransmit [Disney's] broadcast signals without paying copyright or retransmission consent fees. Iger also expresses the company's hope that DisneyPAC will be able to influence Congress in regards to lowering corporate tax rates. Not surprisingly, the company refuses to comment on the initiative.

schwit1 writes: The researchers, led by immunologists at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, got started on the idea of harnessing a viral decoy knowing that such germs normally manipulate and prune the gut microbiome. The community of viruses that bustle in human guts -- called the virome or microvirome -- trigger anti-microbial immune responses that can put the microbial communities on lock down, preventing new microbes from colonizing. Such a state of "colonization resistance" in the gut could thwart harmful germs from moving in, particularly when the microbiome is imbalanced and vulnerable after antibiotic treatments, the researchers hypothesized -- and they found they were right.

An anonymous reader writes: During a congressional hearing Thursday, former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin had harsh words for the space agency and the space policy crafted by President Obama's administration. Under the Obama administration's guidance, NASA has established Mars as a goal for human spaceflight and said that astronauts will visit the red planet by the 2030s. However, a growing number of critics say the agency's approach is neither affordable nor sustainable.

On Thursday, Griffin, administrator of NASA from 2005 to 2009, joined those critics. The United States has not had a serious discussion about space policy, he testified, and as a result, the space agency is making little discernible progress. NASA simply cannot justify its claims of being on a credible path toward Mars, he added.

Nicola Hahn writes: As the Department of Justice exerts legal pressure on Apple in an effort to recover data from the iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, Apple's CEO has publicly stated that "the U.S. government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create. They have asked us to build a backdoor to the iPhone." But, as one Windows rootkit developer has observed, the existing functionality that the FBI seeks to leverage is itself a backdoor. Specifically, the ability to remotely update code on a device automatically, without user intervention, represents a fairly serious threat vector. Update features marketed as a safety mechanism can just as easily be wielded to subvert technology if the update source isn't trustworthy. Something to consider in light of the government's ability to steal digital certificates and manipulate network traffic, not to mention the private sector's lengthy history of secret cooperation. Related: wiredmikey writes: Apple said Monday it would accept having a panel of experts consider access to encrypted devices if US authorities drop efforts to force it to help break into the iPhone of a California attacker. Apple reaffirmed its opposition to the US government's effort to compel it to provide technical assistance to the FBI investigation of the San Bernardino attacks, but also suggested a compromise in the highly charged legal battle.

In his first public remarks since Apple CEO Tim Cook said he would fight the federal magistrate's order, FBI Director James Comey claimed the Justice Department's request is is about "the victims and justice."

A new PNAS paper takes a look at just how different computer and human visual systems are. Humans can figure out that a mangled word "meant" something recognizable while a computer can't. Likewise with images: humans can piece together what a blurry image might depict based on small clues in the picture, where a computer would be at a loss. The authors of the PNAS paper used a set of blurry, tricky images to pinpoint the differences between computer vision models and the human brain.

They used pictures called "minimal recognizable configurations" (MIRCs) that were either so small or so low-resolution that any further reduction would prevent a person from being able to recognize them. The computer models did a better job after they were trained specifically on the MIRCs, but their accuracy was still low compared to human performance. The reason for this, the authors suggest, is that computers can't pick out the individual components of the image whereas humans can. This kind of interpretation is "beyond the capacities of current neural network models," the authors write.

NASA, notes Ars Technica, has just produced a bumper crop of applicants for the coveted job of astronaut. 18,300 would-be astronauts applied to be part of the 2017 hiring class. It would be good to keep a backup job in mind, though: NASA's astronaut applications have surged even as its flight opportunities have fallen by about 90 percent. Back in the early 2000s during the peak of the space shuttle program, NASA had more than 150 active astronauts. That's because the shuttle, with six to seven launches a year, afforded 40 to 50 annual flights into space. The number of active astronauts is now about one-third of that peak due to the shuttle's retirement in 2011. With no Shuttle, and only one real destination (the International Space Station), those 18,300 astronauts will be whittled down to 8-14 candidates.

Ars Technica reports that North Carolina senator Richard Burr says he plans to introduce legislation "to criminalize a company's refusal to aid decryption efforts as part of a governmental investigation." In a USA Today op-ed, Burr, griping that "[t]he newest Apple operating systems allow device access only to users," even Apple itself can't get in," drags out the usual bugaboos: "Murderers, pedophiles, drug dealers and the others are already using this technology to cover their tracks."

Updated Friday 12:40pm EST: The Wall Street Journal reports Senate Panel Chief Decides Against Plan to Criminalize Firms That Don't Decipher Encrypted Messages

AmiMoJo writes: A restored HD version of the original Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope 35mm print has appeared online. While this isn't the first time that attempts have been made to restore Star Wars to its original theatrical version—that's the one without the much-maligned CGI effects and edits of later 'special' editions—it is the first to have been based entirely on a single 35mm print of the film, rather than cut together from various sources. The group behind the release, dubbed Team Negative 1, is made up of Star Wars fans and enthusiasts who spent thousands of dollars of their own cash to restore the film without the blessing of creator George Lucus, or franchise owner Disney.

An anonymous reader writes with a story at Ars Technica, citing a Yahoo News interview, that National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers has explicitly blamed the terrorist attacks which struck Paris last November on communications backed by strong crypto. From the article: Because of encrypted communications, he said, "we did not generate the insights ahead of time. Clearly, had we known, Paris would not have happened." Rogers did not explicitly re-launch the campaign waged by FBI director James Comey to force technology companies to provide a "golden key" to encrypted communications. Rogers called encryption "foundational to our future" and added that arguing over encryption backdoors was "a waste of time." But he did say that encryption was making the job of the NSA and law enforcement more difficult. The interview comes shortly after the FBI won an order requiring Apple to provide technical means to bypass the security measures preventing them from unlocking the iPhone 5C belonging to Syed Rizwan Farook. Farook, along with his wife, are responsible for the December mass shooting in San Bernardino, California."

An anonymous reader writes: Freedom 251 is the name of a new affordable Android smartphone which is going on sale in India. It features an 4-core 1.3 Ghz Processor, with 1GB RAM and 8GB internal memory, and runs an Android Lollipop 5.1 distribution complete with civilian and government applications for Indian citizens. It is being heavily subsidized to make up for the benefits that it will bring to the people who could never afford a smartphone before. Ars Technica notes that the phone is apparently not carrier-subsidized, but as Pocket Now points out, "[t]he nation's defence minister will be at the launch event, a sign that the government has heavily subsidized the project in line with its developmental prerogatives."