Slashdot Mirror

schwit1 quotes a report from Politico: In a just-released court opinion, a federal court judge overseeing government surveillance programs said he was "extremely concerned" about a series of incidents in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation and National Security Agency deviated from court-approved limits on their snooping activities. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Judge Thomas Hogan sharply criticized the two agencies over the episodes, referred to by intelligence gatherers as "compliance incidents." He also raised concerns that the government had taken years to bring the NSA-related issues to the court's attention and he said that delay might have run afoul of the government's duty of candor to the court. Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice to reveal whether or not they ever forced a company to provide technical surveillance assistance in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed: A high ranking technology official with the FBI told members of Congress Tuesday that the agency is incapable of cracking locked phones and devices on its own, even with additional resources. Amy Hess, the agency's executive assistant director for science and technology told a panel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that encrypted communications continue to pose a challenge to the American law enforcement, and to the safety of the American public. But when asked by lawmakers to provide a practical solution beyond the FBI's talking points, she said that the cooperation of technology companies would be necessary. According to the New York Times, "The FBI defended its hiring of a third-party company to break into an iPhone used by a gunman in last year's San Bernardino, Calif., mass shooting, telling some lawmakers on Tuesday that it needed to join with partners in the rarefied world of for-profit hackers as technology companies increasingly resist their demands for consumer information." They are stressing the importance of cooperation with tech companies and "third parties" to help fight terrorism, claiming they do not have the capabilities and resources available to crack encrypted devices. Congress is currently debating potential legislation on encryption.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed: A high ranking technology official with the FBI told members of Congress Tuesday that the agency is incapable of cracking locked phones and devices on its own, even with additional resources. Amy Hess, the agency's executive assistant director for science and technology told a panel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that encrypted communications continue to pose a challenge to the American law enforcement, and to the safety of the American public. But when asked by lawmakers to provide a practical solution beyond the FBI's talking points, she said that the cooperation of technology companies would be necessary. According to the New York Times, "The FBI defended its hiring of a third-party company to break into an iPhone used by a gunman in last year's San Bernardino, Calif., mass shooting, telling some lawmakers on Tuesday that it needed to join with partners in the rarefied world of for-profit hackers as technology companies increasingly resist their demands for consumer information." They are stressing the importance of cooperation with tech companies and "third parties" to help fight terrorism, claiming they do not have the capabilities and resources available to crack encrypted devices. Congress is currently debating potential legislation on encryption.

An anonymous reader writes: The new hip thing to do if you're a developer of a messaging app is to encrypt everyone's messages -- everyone's doing it! WhatsApp announced earlier this month all messages being sent through the service will now be end-to-end encrypted. Today, Viber has announcd it is doing something similar. All messages being sent through the latest version of the app will be end-to-end encrypted. To confirm messages are being encrypted, a padlock icon will appear in the chat UI. The latest version of the app is already available in the iOS App Store and Android Google Play Store. Viber is one of the largest messaging platforms with over 700 million users. Hidden chats can also be found in the new update. Users can hide select chats with people and access/display them with a PIN or Touch ID.

An anonymous reader cites a Mashable report: Cutting-edge technology always comes at a premium for early adopters, but it never stays premium for long. After launching its new P-Series 4K TVs with built-in Google Cast last month, Vizio is bringing the feature to its lower-priced TVs. The 2016 M-Series 4K TVs start at $849.99 for a 50-inch and rocket up to $3,999.99 for an 80-inch. They support high dynamic range (HDR) with Dolby Vision. The E-Series 4K TVs are much cheaper. They start at $469.99 for a 43-inch and go up to $1,699.99 for a 70-inch. Vizio's also selling non-4K full HD E-series TVs with SmartCast starting at $229.99 for a 32-inch and going up to $369.99 for a 43-inch.

Ernesto Van der Sar, writing for TorrentFreak: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings says that the recent crackdown on VPN and proxy users hasn't hurt the company's results. The VPN blockade only affects a small but vocal minority, according to Hastings, and there are no signs that hordes of subscribers are abandoning ship. Earlier this year Netflix announced that it would increase its efforts to block customers who circumvent geo-blockades. As a result, it has become harder to use VPN services and proxies to access Netflix content from other countries, something various movie studios have repeatedly called for. When asked about the impact of the VPN changes on the results, Hastings brushed the issue aside as a minor detail that doesn't impact the bigger picture in any way. "It's a very small but quite vocal minority. So it's really inconsequential to us, as you could see in the Q1 results." Earlier this year, Hastings also admitted that a VPN-blocking policy might be impossible to enforce.

Ernesto Van der Sar, writing for TorrentFreak: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings says that the recent crackdown on VPN and proxy users hasn't hurt the company's results. The VPN blockade only affects a small but vocal minority, according to Hastings, and there are no signs that hordes of subscribers are abandoning ship. Earlier this year Netflix announced that it would increase its efforts to block customers who circumvent geo-blockades. As a result, it has become harder to use VPN services and proxies to access Netflix content from other countries, something various movie studios have repeatedly called for. When asked about the impact of the VPN changes on the results, Hastings brushed the issue aside as a minor detail that doesn't impact the bigger picture in any way. "It's a very small but quite vocal minority. So it's really inconsequential to us, as you could see in the Q1 results." Earlier this year, Hastings also admitted that a VPN-blocking policy might be impossible to enforce.

An anonymous reader cites a report on Reuters: German carmaker Audi created so-called defeat devices which cut emissions in 1999, years before parent company Volkswagen used them to cheat diesel emissions tests, German newspaper Handelsblatt reported on Tuesday. VW, Europe's largest automaker, admitted in September it had manipulated the engines of around 11 million diesel cars, including its VW, Audi, Porsche, Skoda and Seat brands. Engineers at Audi developed software capable of turning off certain engine functions in 1999, but it was never used by the VW luxury division, the newspaper said in an advance release of an article due to be published on Wednesday, which cited industry and company sources. Six years later, when VW engineers at the firm's Wolfsburg headquarters were unable to bring nitrogen oxide emissions below legal thresholds, they started to install the software developed by Audi, Handelsblatt said.

An anonymous reader cites a report on Climate Change News: India is on track to soar past a goal to deploy more than 100 gigawatts of solar power by 2022, the country's energy minister Piyush Goyal said on Monday. Speaking at the release of a 15-point action plan for the country's renewable sector, Goyal said he was now considering looking at "something more" for the fast-growing solar sector. "I think a new coal plant would give you costlier power than a solar plant," he said. "Of course there are challenges of 24/7 power. We accept all of that -- but we have been able to come up with a solar-based long term vision that is not subsidy based." In the past financial year, nearly 20GW of solar capacity has been approved by the government, with a further 14GW planned through 2016 according to the Union Budget.More details here. "I met this man in Meghalaya, who has a solar set-up for his homestay. He mentioned that only the initial setting up costs you much," Deepika Gumaste, a travel writer told Slashdot. "But once you have set it up, the operating costs are not much and more importantly, the environmental costs also go down. Good on your pockets too in the long run." It is worth pointing out that India is currently among the handful of nations that is increasing its coal consumption, according to a Guardian report from late last year. Also see: India aims to become 100% electric vehicle nation by 2030.

Apple, on Tuesday, announced a refresh for its 12-inch MacBook laptop. The 2016 MacBook comes with an Intel Skylake processor -- sixth-generation dual-core Intel Core M model, offering up to 1.3 GHz clock speed with Turbo Boost speeds of up to 3.1 GHz, faster 1866 MHz memory, and a 'rose gold' color variant. Apple assures 10 hours of wireless Web browsing time, or 11 hours of movie playback on a single charge. The new model will hit retail stores on Wednesday. It starts at $1,299 for the 256GB SSD and 8GB (up from 4GB) version, and goes all the way up to $1,599 for the top-of-the-line model which offers 512GB SSD.

A couple of points: the first-generation MacBook didn't fare well with reviewers and plenty of users alike. Second, today's announcement also hints that the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro lineups won't be getting the Intel Skylake upgrade for at least a few more months -- which is really sad, because, at present, they come equipped with almost three-year-old processor and graphics chips. No wonder, Oculus executive made fun of Apple's computers.

mdsolar quotes a report from Los Angeles Times: After a decades-long search, scientists announced early this year that they had detected gravitational waves probably coming from the merger of two black holes back in September. Now, a team of scientists using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope say they spotted a brief flash of gamma rays that occurred less than half a second after that long-sought gravitational wave signal. The gamma-ray outburst, described at the American Physical Society's April meeting in Salt Lake City, has not been definitively linked to that first gravitational wave signal, and scientists weren't able to pinpoint its exact origin -- just that they came from the same general area. But if other astronomers begin to find a similar pattern, the results do raise the intriguing possibility that such high-energy events might not be quite as 'invisible' as we thought. The first gravitational wave signal rolled through the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory on Sept. 14, hitting the Louisiana detector first and then the one in Washington state seven milliseconds later, telling researchers that the signal must have come from the southern hemisphere.

mdsolar quotes a report from Los Angeles Times: After a decades-long search, scientists announced early this year that they had detected gravitational waves probably coming from the merger of two black holes back in September. Now, a team of scientists using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope say they spotted a brief flash of gamma rays that occurred less than half a second after that long-sought gravitational wave signal. The gamma-ray outburst, described at the American Physical Society's April meeting in Salt Lake City, has not been definitively linked to that first gravitational wave signal, and scientists weren't able to pinpoint its exact origin -- just that they came from the same general area. But if other astronomers begin to find a similar pattern, the results do raise the intriguing possibility that such high-energy events might not be quite as 'invisible' as we thought. The first gravitational wave signal rolled through the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory on Sept. 14, hitting the Louisiana detector first and then the one in Washington state seven milliseconds later, telling researchers that the signal must have come from the southern hemisphere.

coondoggie writes: NASA' s Orbital Debris Program Office said that by far the source of the greatest amount of orbital debris remains the Fengyun-1C spacecraft, which was the target of a People's Republic of China anti-satellite test in January 2007. Much more debris is now floating around Earth's atmosphere since the six years NASA last looked at the top 10 space junk missions. The space agency says that 10 missions out of the 5,160 space missions that have launched since 1957 account for approximately one-third of all cataloged objects now in Earth orbit. NASA said that the second and fourth most significant satellite breakups are Cosmos 2251 and Iridium 33 spacecraft, which were involved in the first ever accidental satellite collision February 2009.

An anonymous reader writes: YouTube's 360-degree videos are nothing new to the site as they were first introduced in March 2015. Today, YouTube has expanded on the feature by allowing select users to live stream 360-degree videos wherever an internet connection is present. Whether it's at a music festival or sporting event, viewers will be able to view 360-degree live video through their web browser, mobile device or VR headset. Google Executive Neal Mohan says, "Now anyone, with just their phone, can have that front row experience without having to be there." In addition, YouTube has also launched spatial audio for on-demand YouTube videos. "Just as watching a concert in 360 degrees can give you an unmatched immersive experience, spatial audio allows you to listen along as you do in real life, where depth, distance and intensity all play a role," according to the YouTube blog post. If you have an Android device, you can test out spatial audio from this playlist. YouTube's announcement comes one week after Facebook announced its plans to get more serious about 360-degree videos. They are opening up their Live Video feature to developers to allow developers to integrate live streaming into third-party apps.

Last week, a report, citing court documents, claimed that Canadian police have had BlackBerry's global decryption key since 2010. Today BlackBerry CEO John Chen officially commented on the report. In a blog post, Chen reiterated that his company remains committed to doing what is "right for the citizenry," without confirming if the Candian police have the "global encryption key." "I have stated before that we are indeed in a dark place when companies put their reputations above the greater good," Chen wrote, adding that the company's cooperation with the Canadian police resulted in shutting down a criminal organization. He adds: Regarding BlackBerry's assistance, I can reaffirm that we stood by our lawful access principles. Furthermore, at no point was BlackBerry's BES server involved. Our BES continues to be impenetrable -- also without the ability for backdoor access -- and is the most secure mobile platform for managing all mobile devices. That's why we are the gold standard in government and enterprise-grade security. For BlackBerry, there is a balance between doing what's right, such as helping to apprehend criminals, and preventing government abuse of invading citizen's privacy, including when we refused to give Pakistan access to our servers. (Update). We have been able to find this balance even as governments have pressured us to change our ethical grounds. Despite these pressures, our position has been unwavering and our actions are proof we commit to these principles. To recall, Chen criticized Apple last year when the iPhone maker refused to unlock a terrorist's iPhone. At the time, he said, Apple was "putting reputation above the greater good."

Last week, a report, citing court documents, claimed that Canadian police have had BlackBerry's global decryption key since 2010. Today BlackBerry CEO John Chen officially commented on the report. In a blog post, Chen reiterated that his company remains committed to doing what is "right for the citizenry," without confirming if the Candian police have the "global encryption key." "I have stated before that we are indeed in a dark place when companies put their reputations above the greater good," Chen wrote, adding that the company's cooperation with the Canadian police resulted in shutting down a criminal organization. He adds: Regarding BlackBerry's assistance, I can reaffirm that we stood by our lawful access principles. Furthermore, at no point was BlackBerry's BES server involved. Our BES continues to be impenetrable -- also without the ability for backdoor access -- and is the most secure mobile platform for managing all mobile devices. That's why we are the gold standard in government and enterprise-grade security. For BlackBerry, there is a balance between doing what's right, such as helping to apprehend criminals, and preventing government abuse of invading citizen's privacy, including when we refused to give Pakistan access to our servers. (Update). We have been able to find this balance even as governments have pressured us to change our ethical grounds. Despite these pressures, our position has been unwavering and our actions are proof we commit to these principles. To recall, Chen criticized Apple last year when the iPhone maker refused to unlock a terrorist's iPhone. At the time, he said, Apple was "putting reputation above the greater good."

Last week, a report, citing court documents, claimed that Canadian police have had BlackBerry's global decryption key since 2010. Today BlackBerry CEO John Chen officially commented on the report. In a blog post, Chen reiterated that his company remains committed to doing what is "right for the citizenry," without confirming if the Candian police have the "global encryption key." "I have stated before that we are indeed in a dark place when companies put their reputations above the greater good," Chen wrote, adding that the company's cooperation with the Canadian police resulted in shutting down a criminal organization. He adds: Regarding BlackBerry's assistance, I can reaffirm that we stood by our lawful access principles. Furthermore, at no point was BlackBerry's BES server involved. Our BES continues to be impenetrable -- also without the ability for backdoor access -- and is the most secure mobile platform for managing all mobile devices. That's why we are the gold standard in government and enterprise-grade security. For BlackBerry, there is a balance between doing what's right, such as helping to apprehend criminals, and preventing government abuse of invading citizen's privacy, including when we refused to give Pakistan access to our servers. (Update). We have been able to find this balance even as governments have pressured us to change our ethical grounds. Despite these pressures, our position has been unwavering and our actions are proof we commit to these principles. To recall, Chen criticized Apple last year when the iPhone maker refused to unlock a terrorist's iPhone. At the time, he said, Apple was "putting reputation above the greater good."

Thanks to subscription-based music streaming services, the music industry is seeing a significant growth for the first time in nearly two decades. According to International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), an industry trade group, the global music sales rose 3.2 percent last year, also surpassing those from all physical music formats. The important tipping point in 2015 saw digital services account for 45 percent of recorded music revenue. According to the report, Spotify, Apple Music and other music streaming services brought in about $2.9 billion in revenue. The findings are in line with Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)'s estimates from last month. IFPI also noted that music on free streaming services such as YouTube has also grown quickly, creating a panic among record labels and artists alike. Billboard elaborates that aspect: In criticizing ad-supported services, the IFPI joined a growing list of trade bodies and music company executives to criticize YouTube for paying royalties that are relatively low when considering its popularity. The report argues YouTube distorts its negotiations with labels by hiding behind the DMCA "safe harbor" rules that limit the liability of online intermediaries from the infringing actions of their users. The result, the IFPI argues, is YouTube can use an "act first, negotiate later" that "fundamentally distort[s] the negotiation process."

An anonymous reader writes: In a surprise appearance at CinemaCon, James Cameron announced plans for "a truly massive cinematic process" -- four new sequels to his 2009 blockbuster Avatar, plus a Disney theme park. "It's going to be a true epic saga," Cameron told the audience, promising that Avatar 2 would be released in Christmas of 2018, followed by three additional sequels, for a total of five Avatar-themed movies. Cameron's original sci-fi blockbuster earned $2.8 billion, though at least one Slashdot user argued that its overall message was that technology is bad, "strange because the movie is among most technically sophisticated ever."

An anonymous reader writes: FinFisher, the hacker that broke into Italian firm Hacking Team, has published a step-by-step account of how he carried out the attacks, what tools he used, and what he learned from scouting HackingTeam's network. Published on PasteBin, the attack's timeline reveals he entered their network through a zero-day exploit in an (unnamed) embedded device, accessed a MongoDB database that had no password, discovered backups in the database, found a BES admin password in the backups, and eventually got admin access to the Windows Domain Server. From here, it was easy to reach into their email server and steal all the company's emails, and later access Git repos and steal the source code of their surveillance software.

Ernesto Van der Sar, reporting for TorrentFreak: The MPAA wants Internet providers and services to take stronger actions against persistent copyright infringers. Ideally, the most egregious pirates should lose their accounts permanently, the group says. To accomplish this ISPs should be required to track the number of notices they receive for each account. In recent weeks, many groups and individuals have voiced their opinions about the future of the DMCA, responding to a U.S. Copyright Office consultation. This includes the MPAA, which acts on behalf of the major Hollywood studios. In a 71-page submission the group outlines many problems with the current law, asking for drastic reforms. Ideally, the group would like search engines to enforce a "stay down" policy ensuring that content can't reappear under different URLs. In addition, it would like registrars to suspend domain names of pirate sites, such as The Pirate Bay.The problem is that ISPs don't necessarily see this abuse as a problem.

An anonymous reader writes: As many Slashdot readers speculated, the story about a man deleting his entire company with a line of code was a hoax. Marco Marsala, the owner of a Web hosting company claimed on a forum earlier this week that he deleted all the data on his company's server. Stack Overflow, which runs the forum, says that the post was a hoax, and pointed to an article on an Italian news outlet, which describes this whole fiasco as a "marketing effort" (in Italian) to promote Marsala's company. "It was just a joke," Marsala told the paper.

An anonymous reader writes: As many Slashdot readers speculated, the story about a man deleting his entire company with a line of code was a hoax. Marco Marsala, the owner of a Web hosting company claimed on a forum earlier this week that he deleted all the data on his company's server. Stack Overflow, which runs the forum, says that the post was a hoax, and pointed to an article on an Italian news outlet, which describes this whole fiasco as a "marketing effort" (in Italian) to promote Marsala's company. "It was just a joke," Marsala told the paper.

An anonymous reader writes: On Friday, Gizmodo reported on an internal discussion among Facebook employees in which they seem to be asking Mark Zuckerberg whether they should do something to "help prevent President Trump in 2017." Facebook is now assuring users that it wouldn't use its algorithms to influence voting in the presidential election this November. "We as a company are neutral -- we have not and will not use our products in a way that attempts to influence how people vote," a Facebook spokesman said in a statement.Media critic Jay Rosen said, "It sounds nutty but Facebook has a rock solid First Amendment right to filter out all Trump news -- if it wanted to."

Apple says it expects its users to replace their iPhone and Apple Watch after (more like, every) three years. The company adds that it expects a Mac user to replace their computer after four years. The iPhone maker shared the expectations in a recently released document as part of its latest environmental push. In the document, Apple underscores how much its products contribute to the greenhouse gas lifecycle. The Guardian reports: Within a new question and answer section Apple said: "Years of use, which are based on first owners, are assumed to be four years for OS X and tvOS devices and three years for iOS and watchOS devices." That assessment doesn't take into account the recycling of devices, their reconditioning and their resale, of course, but when you buy a new iPhone 6S for $649 (starting price, off-contract), Apple expects it to last three years, something many suspected. Apple has been accused of intentionally slowing down iPhones every time a new one is released, although there is little evidence to support the theory.Also see: Apple's Recycling Initiatives Recover $40 Million In Gold

An anonymous reader writes: Apple released its latest annual environmental report yesterday with numbers detailing how much the company has been able to recover from old devices. Business Insider notes that Apple was able to recover over 61 million pounds of steel, aluminum, glass, and other materials from its computers and iPhones. This includes a total of 2,204 pounds of gold worth $40 million at current prices ($1,229.80 per troy ounce of gold). Cult of Mac ran the figures quoted by Apple through today's metal prices, and came up with individual figures for copper ($6.4 million), aluminum ($3.2 million), silver ($1.6 million), nickel ($160,426), zinc ($109,503), and lead ($33,999). Last month, Apple unveiled an iPhone recycling robot, named Liam, that salvages old parts.

An anonymous reader writes: The bill released Thursday by Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein to force U.S. companies to build backdoors into their encryption systems has been further dissected by experts. In less than 24 hours after the Court Orders Act of 2016 draft was released, 43,000 signatures have been added to a petition calling for the bill to be withdrawn. Bruce Schneier, the writer of the books on modern cryptography, said the bill would make most of what the NSA does illegal, unless no such agency is willing to backdoor its own encrypted communications. "This is the most braindead piece of legislation I've ever seen," Schneier told The Register. "The person who wrote this either has no idea how technology works or just doesn't care." Schneier says cryptographic code will be affected by this legislation, as well as "lossy compression algorithms" that are used to reduce the size of images for sending through email, which won't work in reverse and add back the data removed. Files that can't be decrypted on demand to their original state, and files that can't be decompressed back to their exact originals, all look the same to this draft now. He said even deleted data could be covered in this legislation.

An anonymous reader writes: On Friday, Google announced it is making changes to Chrome Web Store's User Data Policy to ensure developers are more transparent about how their extensions handle customer data. The company has notified developers and is giving them three months to comply with the changes. Come July 15, 2016, company says, extensions that violate the policy will be removed from the Chrome Web Store.The announcement comes amid a report that pointed out a rogue extension in the Chrome Web Store. The incident was one of many we have seen in the past few months. Following are the requirements that a developer must meet: 1. Be transparent about the handling of user data and disclose privacy practices. 2. Post a privacy policy and use encryption, when handling personal or sensitive information. 3. Ask users to consent to the collection of personal or sensitive data via a prominent disclosure, when the use of the data isn't related to a prominent feature.

An anonymous reader writes: Mark Zuckerberg didn't shy from condemning several of Trump's views at his company's developer conference earlier this week. Things are getting tenser now. Gizmodo's Michael Nunez is reporting about a political discussion inside Facebook wherein employees appear to be asking Zuckerberg whether the company should try to "help prevent President Trump in 2017." Every week, Facebook employees vote in an internal poll on what they want to ask Zuckerberg in an upcoming Q&A session. A question from the March 4 poll was: "What responsibility does Facebook have to help prevent President Trump in 2017?"An excerpt from the report which talks about Facebook's position :But what's exceedingly important about this question being raised -- and Zuckerberg's answer, if there is one -- is how Facebook now treats the powerful place it holds in the world. It's unprecedented. More than 1.04 billion people use Facebook. It's where we get our news, share our political views, and interact with politicians. It's also where those politicians are spending a greater share of their budgets. And Facebook has no legal responsibility to give an unfiltered view of what's happening on their network.

netbuzz writes: Stung by a ferocious backlash on social media, AMC Entertainment this morning took to Twitter to announce that it will not be experimenting with "texting friendly" movie theaters, a trial balloon floated only days ago by the company's boss. "NO TEXTING AT AMC. Won't happen. You spoke. We listened," the company said.That escalated quickly.

Reader mccalli writes: Phorm, a controversial UK deep-packet inspection/ad-injection company discussed on Slashdot many times before, has ceased trading today. Phorm was controversial for, among other things, editing and approving UK government advice on privacy, offering hospitality to the police prior to a decision over prosecution, and being the subject of an EU investigation for its practices and close relationship with the then UK government. The Register has a more editorialized version of the news, but it is fair to say that Phorm will not be mourned by fans of internet privacy.

Reader mccalli writes: Phorm, a controversial UK deep-packet inspection/ad-injection company discussed on Slashdot many times before, has ceased trading today. Phorm was controversial for, among other things, editing and approving UK government advice on privacy, offering hospitality to the police prior to a decision over prosecution, and being the subject of an EU investigation for its practices and close relationship with the then UK government. The Register has a more editorialized version of the news, but it is fair to say that Phorm will not be mourned by fans of internet privacy.

Reader mccalli writes: Phorm, a controversial UK deep-packet inspection/ad-injection company discussed on Slashdot many times before, has ceased trading today. Phorm was controversial for, among other things, editing and approving UK government advice on privacy, offering hospitality to the police prior to a decision over prosecution, and being the subject of an EU investigation for its practices and close relationship with the then UK government. The Register has a more editorialized version of the news, but it is fair to say that Phorm will not be mourned by fans of internet privacy.

Reader theodp writes: Four months after its one hour Minecraft "infomercial" ran in schools around the world as part of the Hour of Code, Microsoft announced the release of Minecraft: Education Edition. From the announcement: "Minecraft: Education Edition early access will be available in 11 languages and 41 countries. During the summer months, we are also going to be focused on working with educators on building out lesson plans, sharing learning activity ideas, and creating re-usable projects." Microsoft bought Minecraft for $2.5 billion back in 2014. "What many may not realize," said Microsoft last November as it announced a Minecraft-themed tutorial that it would inspire students to learn computer science skills, and "that Minecraft has the power to transform learning on a global scale. By creating a virtual world and then advancing in it, students can learn digital citizenship, empathy, social skills and even improve their literacy "while getting real-time feedback on their problem-solving skills from the teacher." At the time, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told teachers that Minecraft is key to getting girls involved in computer science. So is Minecraft really all that?

Lee Fang, reporting for The Intercept, lists more than three-dozen companies that have received funding from CIA. In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture capital firm, the publication claims, has invested in 38 companies that research on "social media mining and surveillance." The unpublicized In-Q-Tel companies are: Aquifi, Beartooth, CliQr, CloudPassage, Databricks, Dataminr, Docker, Echodyne, Epiq Solutions, Geofeedia, goTenna, Headspin, Interset, Keyssa, Kymeta, Lookout, Mapbox, Mesosphere, Nervana, Orbital Insight, Orion Labs, Parallel Wireless, PATHAR, Pneubotics, PsiKick, Rocket Lab, Skincential Sciences, Soft Robotics, Sonatype, Spaceflight Industries, Threatstream, Timbr.io, Transient Electronics, TransVoyant, TRX Systems, Voltaiq, and Zoomdata. From the report: Bruce Lund, a senior member of In-Q-Tel's technical staff, noted in a 2012 paper that "monitoring social media" is increasingly essential for government agencies (PDF) seeking to keep track of "erupting political movements, crises, epidemics, and disasters, not to mention general global trends."CIA also recently funded Clearista, a skin care product company that collects DNA.

An anonymous reader writes: NASA is working on developing a next-generation supersonic jet that can break the sound barrier with a soft "thump" instead of a sonic boom. They are using a technique called schlieren imagery to "visualize supersonic flow phenomena with full-scale aircraft in flight" with the sun as the backdrop for the photos. According to a NASA blog post, viewing shock waves and their density is crucial to the project so engineers can work on a design to minimize those reverberations. While the Quiet Supersonic Technology (QueSST) research aircraft is being developed, stunning images were captured of a supersonic jet flying at Mach 1.05 with the sun in the background. NASA says when QueSST is operational, it could "unlock the future to commercial supersonic flight over land," essentially ushering in a new era of aviation that could allow us to get from point A to point B faster and without the loud roar of the Concorde as it breaks the sound barrier.

schwit1 quotes a report from Reuters: U.S. federal, state and local government agencies rank in last place in cyber security when compared against 17 major private industries, including transportation, retail and healthcare, according to a new report released Thursday. The analysis, from venture-backed security risk benchmarking startup SecurityScorecard, measured the relative security health of government and industries across 10 categories, including vulnerability to malware infections, exposure rates of passwords and susceptibility to social engineering, such as an employee using corporate account information on a public social network. Educations, telecommunications and pharmaceutical industries also ranked low, the report found. Information services, construction, food and technology were among the top performers. And we are supposed to trust them with healthcare? This report comes after President Obama recently unveiled a commission of private, public and academic experts to bolster the U.S. cyber security sector.

An anonymous reader writes: According to the Wall Street Journal, health regulators have proposed pulling the federal license for the company's California laboratory and banning its founder and CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, and company president Sunny Balwani from the blood-testing business for two years. The letter which the WSJ cited in its report found that Theranos had not corrected problems at its lab in Newark, California, and faced possible sanctions as a result. In October 2015, the WSJ reported all but one of Theranos' analyzers in use were off the shelf, and that their tiny samples may not always have been accurate. The company was facing allegations of data manipulation in late December 2015. Earlier this year, U.S. regulators found serious deficiencies at Theranos' laboratory in Newark, California, putting the company's relationship with the Medicare program in danger. Theranos has said that The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has not imposed sanctions on its Newark Lab. "Due to the comprehensive nature of the corrective measures we've taken over the past several months, which has been affirmed by several experts, we are hopeful that CMS won't impose sanctions," the company said in an emailed statement. "But if they do, we will work with CMS to address all of their concerns."

An anonymous reader writes: According to the Wall Street Journal, health regulators have proposed pulling the federal license for the company's California laboratory and banning its founder and CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, and company president Sunny Balwani from the blood-testing business for two years. The letter which the WSJ cited in its report found that Theranos had not corrected problems at its lab in Newark, California, and faced possible sanctions as a result. In October 2015, the WSJ reported all but one of Theranos' analyzers in use were off the shelf, and that their tiny samples may not always have been accurate. The company was facing allegations of data manipulation in late December 2015. Earlier this year, U.S. regulators found serious deficiencies at Theranos' laboratory in Newark, California, putting the company's relationship with the Medicare program in danger. Theranos has said that The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has not imposed sanctions on its Newark Lab. "Due to the comprehensive nature of the corrective measures we've taken over the past several months, which has been affirmed by several experts, we are hopeful that CMS won't impose sanctions," the company said in an emailed statement. "But if they do, we will work with CMS to address all of their concerns."

An anonymous reader writes: According to the Wall Street Journal, health regulators have proposed pulling the federal license for the company's California laboratory and banning its founder and CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, and company president Sunny Balwani from the blood-testing business for two years. The letter which the WSJ cited in its report found that Theranos had not corrected problems at its lab in Newark, California, and faced possible sanctions as a result. In October 2015, the WSJ reported all but one of Theranos' analyzers in use were off the shelf, and that their tiny samples may not always have been accurate. The company was facing allegations of data manipulation in late December 2015. Earlier this year, U.S. regulators found serious deficiencies at Theranos' laboratory in Newark, California, putting the company's relationship with the Medicare program in danger. Theranos has said that The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has not imposed sanctions on its Newark Lab. "Due to the comprehensive nature of the corrective measures we've taken over the past several months, which has been affirmed by several experts, we are hopeful that CMS won't impose sanctions," the company said in an emailed statement. "But if they do, we will work with CMS to address all of their concerns."

Todd Bishop, reporting for GeekWire: Microsoft is suing the U.S. Justice Department, asking a federal judge to declare unconstitutional a provision of U.S. law that lets the government keep Microsoft and other tech companies from informing their customers when investigators seek access to emails and other cloud data. The suit, filed moments ago in U.S. District Court in Seattle, targets Section 2705(b) of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which allows the government to seek and obtain secrecy orders preventing companies from letting their customers know when their data is the target of a federal warrant, subpoena or court order. Brad Smith, Microsoft's president and chief legal officer, recently criticized the 30-year-old Electronic Communications Privacy Act as outdated during his testimony in February before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee -- bringing along IBM's first laptop, released the same year, to help illustrate his point.Microsoft argues that these "indefinite gag orders" violate the First Amendment rights to inform customers. Furthermore, the company adds that the law also "flouts" the Fourth Amendment, which requires the government to give a notice to the concerned person when his or her property is being searched or seized. "This is a First Amendment fight that needed to get picked and I'm glad Microsoft picked it. Just as in the real world with physical seizures, secrecy in digital seizures should be the exception and not the rule. Yet as the Microsoft complaint shows, it's receiving thousands of law enforcement gag orders every year and more than two-thirds of them are eternal gags with no end data," said Kevin Bankston, internet freedom advocate and digital rights lawyer. "This is clearly unconstitutional, yet with so many orders per year, it makes sense to strike at the root with a facial challenge to the law rather than try and challenge them all individually. And based on previous similar cases around gag orders in national security cases, I think they'll succeed in striking this overbroad law down."

An anonymous reader writes: The US Federal Bureau of Investigation doesn't own the technique used to unlock the San Bernardino iPhone, so it can't reveal the method to Apple even if it wanted to, Reuters reported, citing unnamed White House sources. The Washington Post reported yesterday, citing unnamed sources, that the FBI had paid a hacker a one-time fee to use a piece of hardware that allowed it to access the iPhone 5c belonging to one of the San Bernardino, California assailants. The vendor that supplied the hack is a non-US company, according to Reuters. But according to the Post report, it is not the Israeli firm Cellebrite, which had previously been named. The FBI would require the vendor's cooperation in order to submit the technique it used to Vulnerabilities Equities Process, a mechanism that allows the government to consider whether it should disclose security flaws to manufacturers. It's a move that mirrors Apple's own efforts to create security systems on its phones that even it wouldn't be able to crack, meaning it can't comply with a government order to hand over user data even if it wanted to.

An anonymous reader writes: The US Federal Bureau of Investigation doesn't own the technique used to unlock the San Bernardino iPhone, so it can't reveal the method to Apple even if it wanted to, Reuters reported, citing unnamed White House sources. The Washington Post reported yesterday, citing unnamed sources, that the FBI had paid a hacker a one-time fee to use a piece of hardware that allowed it to access the iPhone 5c belonging to one of the San Bernardino, California assailants. The vendor that supplied the hack is a non-US company, according to Reuters. But according to the Post report, it is not the Israeli firm Cellebrite, which had previously been named. The FBI would require the vendor's cooperation in order to submit the technique it used to Vulnerabilities Equities Process, a mechanism that allows the government to consider whether it should disclose security flaws to manufacturers. It's a move that mirrors Apple's own efforts to create security systems on its phones that even it wouldn't be able to crack, meaning it can't comply with a government order to hand over user data even if it wanted to.

An anonymous reader writes: The former Reuters journalist convicted last year for aiding the hacker group Anonymous has been sentenced to 24 months in prison today. Matthew Keys faced up to a possible 25 years for three counts of hacking. Keys will be on supervised release and he is set to surrender on June 15th. In October 2015, Keys was found guilty for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act when he provided website login credentials to The Los Angeles Times, a Tribune Media-owned newspaper. In the past, he's worked for a companion Tribune property, KTXL Fox 40 in Sacramento, California, which gave him possession of the login information to the join content management system. As a result, Anonymous members altered one story on the Los Angeles Times website. He then went to work for Reuters, where he was fired from his position as social media editor after charges were filed in March 2013.

An anonymous reader writes: The former Reuters journalist convicted last year for aiding the hacker group Anonymous has been sentenced to 24 months in prison today. Matthew Keys faced up to a possible 25 years for three counts of hacking. Keys will be on supervised release and he is set to surrender on June 15th. In October 2015, Keys was found guilty for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act when he provided website login credentials to The Los Angeles Times, a Tribune Media-owned newspaper. In the past, he's worked for a companion Tribune property, KTXL Fox 40 in Sacramento, California, which gave him possession of the login information to the join content management system. As a result, Anonymous members altered one story on the Los Angeles Times website. He then went to work for Reuters, where he was fired from his position as social media editor after charges were filed in March 2013.

An anonymous reader writes: Google on Wednesday released the second developer preview of Android N. The update, which comes a month after the release of first Android N developer preview, brings with it a number of features and improvements. On a blog post, Google wrote that it is adding Vulkan, a low-overhead graphics API to the package. This would supposedly offload some CPU-bound processes to GPU. Also in the build are new "human-looking" emojis. Improvements can be found here.

Reader Mickeycaskill writes: The USB 3.0 Promoter Group, of which HP, Intel and Microsoft are members, has developed authentication protocols for USB-C and will offer free software to detect faulty or malicious cables.This tool will alert users if they are using a non-authenticated cable. It has been suggested that hardware manufacturers could ship devices with an authentication system already installed. It is hoped that the specification will help end a number of recent incidents where sub-standard cables have either ripped off buyers or damaged devices. Most recently, Amazon said it would be adding USB-C cables and adapters that do not comply with standard regulations to its list of prohibited electronics items.

There's another new wrinkle in the never-ending FBI vs Apple saga. The Washington Post is claiming that FBI did not require Cellebrite's assistance in hacking San Bernardino iPhone. Instead, the report claims, the government intelligence organization bought a previously unknown security bug from a group of professional hackers. According to the report, the hacker group provided FBI with at least one zero-day flaw in the iPhone 5c's security, which enabled FBI to circumvent the lockscreen and other security features. The bug hasn't been disclosed. FBI has previously noted that the technique it utilized in breaking into the iPhone 5c does not work with any new iPhone models (iPhone 5s or newer).

There's another new wrinkle in the never-ending FBI vs Apple saga. The Washington Post is claiming that FBI did not require Cellebrite's assistance in hacking San Bernardino iPhone. Instead, the report claims, the government intelligence organization bought a previously unknown security bug from a group of professional hackers. According to the report, the hacker group provided FBI with at least one zero-day flaw in the iPhone 5c's security, which enabled FBI to circumvent the lockscreen and other security features. The bug hasn't been disclosed. FBI has previously noted that the technique it utilized in breaking into the iPhone 5c does not work with any new iPhone models (iPhone 5s or newer).

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Independent: The European Commission is bringing forward plans to make major multinationals such as Google, Amazon and Facebook disclose exactly where and how much tax they pay across the continent. The plan was expected to include rules requiring businesses earning more than 600 million euros a year (nearly $700 USD) to open up their tax affairs to public scrutiny, revealing their profits and accounts in every country in which they operate within the EU. Since the Panama Papers, a new clause has reportedly been added to require the companies to say how much money they make in so-called "tax havens." A final, more general statement would reveal profits in the rest of the world, treated as a single item. The plans will be presented by Britain's EU Commissioner, Lord Hill, who told the BBC: "This is a carefully thought through but ambitious proposal for more transparency on tax. While our proposal on [country-by-country reporting] is not of course focused principally on the response to the Panama Papers, there is an important connection between our continuing work on tax transparency and tax havens that we are building into the proposal."