Slashdot Mirror

wiredmikey writes "The scandal revolving around the News Corporation's now defunct British tabloid, News of the World, has entered a new phase with news that the hacking extended into areas of national security, as detectives working for the Murdoch media empire may have hacked into the computer of a government minister responsible for Northern Ireland. Scary stuff, yet the enterprise security community seems strangely quiet on the topic, aside from showing other journalists how easy it is to do. Potentially, if you know the correct mobile number and you can guess four digits, you too can be listening to your elected leaders' personal messages. The chances are pretty good that it could be their birthday."

Hugh Pickens writes writes "Thierry Breton, CEO of Atos, Europe's Largest IT Company, wants a 'zero email' policy to be in place in 18 months, arguing that only 10 per cent of the 200 electronic messages his employees receive per day on average turn out to be useful, and that staff spend between 5-20 hours handling emails every week. 'The email is no longer the appropriate (communication) tool,' says Breton. 'The deluge of information will be one of the most important problems a company will have to face (in the future). It is time to think differently.' Instead Breton wants staff at Atos to use chat-type collaborative services inspired by social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter as surveys show that the younger generation have already all but scrapped email, with only 11 per cent of 11 to 19 year-olds using it. For his part Breton hasn't sent a work email in three years. 'If people want to talk to me, they can come and visit me, call or send me a text message. Emails cannot replace the spoken word.'"

redletterdave writes "The European Commission plans to put a stop to the way Facebook gathers information about its users, including their political opinions, religious beliefs, whereabouts and sexual preferences, and how the social network sells that information for commercial purposes. A new EC Directive aims to ban targeted advertising unless users specifically allow it, and to amend the current European data protection laws to ensure consistency in how offending sites are dealt with across the EU. If the European Commission has its way, Facebook would suffer big losses in advertising dollars that fund its site, which would further damage the company's plans to go public next year. Facebook has defended itself, claiming its advertisers target wide demographics like age and location, rather than specific individuals. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company denies outright that it misuses or mishandles user information."

Hugh Pickens writes writes "Democracy and free speech activists worldwide have something new to worry about — cyberwarfare via iTunes. The Telegraph reports that Gamma International sells computer hacking services to governments, offering 'zero day' security flaws that allow access to target computers 'with the ability to take control of the target systems functions to the point of capturing encrypted data and communications.' FinFisher spyware, known to be used by British agencies and offered to Egypt's feared secret police, takes advantage of an unencrypted HTTP request that is filed by iTunes when Apple Software Updater is inactive. It redirects users' web browsers to a customized web page that pretends Flash is not installed on the user's computer, then installs a sophisticated piece of spyware that sends info on a user's activities directly to foreign intelligence services. The latest iTunes software update, 10.5.1, released on November 14, appears to have fixed the exploit FinFisher used. A prominent security researcher warned Apple about this dangerous vulnerability in mid-2008, yet Apple 'waited more than 1,200 days to fix the flaw,' writes security researcher Brian Krebs."

New submitter Hermanas writes with the story that South Africa's parliament has passed a Protection of Information Bill which could land whistle blowers and journalists who print classified information in jail for up to 25 years. From the Telegraph: "On the morning of the vote, a joint editorial in the country's largest newspapers heralded [a South African] 'day of reckoning for democracy.' 'The spreading culture of self-enrichment, either corrupt, or merely inappropriate, makes scrutiny fuelled by whistle blowers who have the public interest at heart more essential than ever since 1994,' the front page editorial said. As MPs voted on the bill in Cape Town's parliament, protesters dressed all in black gathered at the gates of the historic building where they were addressed by editors and freedom of information activists."

Rachel Brown, owner of the small Need a Cake bakery, became a victim of the old adage, "Be careful what you wish for. You might just get it." More than 8,500 people took Rachel up on her Groupon offer of a 75% discount on a dozen cupcakes, forcing her to make over 100,000 cupcakes to fill all the orders. In the end Brown lost almost $20k. "We take pride in making cakes of exceptional quality but I had to bring in agency staff on top of my usual staff, who had nowhere near the same skills. I was very worried about standards dropping and hated the thought of letting anybody down. My poor staff were having to slog away at all hours — one of them even came in at 3 a.m. because she couldn't sleep for worry," she told The Telegraph. "We are still working to make up the lost money and will not be doing this again."

New Kohath writes with this news from The Guardian: "Bottled water producers applied to the EU for the right to claim that 'regular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydration'. The health claim was reviewed by a panel of 21 scientists on behalf of the European Food Standards Authority. The application was denied, and now producers of bottled water are forbidden by law from making the claim. They will face a two-year jail sentence if they defy the EU edict."

Hugh Pickens writes writes "Variety reports that David Yates, who directed the last four Harry Potter films, is teaming up with the BBC to turn its iconic sci-fi TV series Doctor Who into a Hollywood franchise. 'We're looking at writers now. We're going to spend two to three years to get it right,' says Yates. 'It needs quite a radical transformation to take it into the bigger arena.' But not everyone is enamored with the idea of Doctor Who on the big screen. 'I fear that high production values and the inevitable sexualisation of the lead characters that a Hollywood treatment brings will destroy the show,' writes Andrew M. Brown in the Telegraph. 'The ecosystem of a great television programme is a delicate thing. Please, Hollywood, don't spoil Doctor Who."

Hugh Pickens writes writes "Anyone who is partial to ketchup with their food will know how difficult it is to get the final dregs from the bottle but now the Telegraph reports that scientists have created one of the most slippery materials ever that promises to result in new self-cleaning surfaces that never get dirty, could be used to coat the inside of bottles and jars to help consumers get all of the food inside, or in the energy industry for making oil flow more efficiently through pipes. Professor Joanna Aizenberg, a materials scientists at Harvard University, was inspired by the carnivorous Nepenthes pitcher plants, which has a highly slippery surface at the top of its flute-shaped leaves so that insects tumble down into the digestive juices contained inside. The new material, known as a Slippery Liquid Infused Porous Surface or SLIPS boasts a rare trait called "omniphobicity", which means it can repel both water and oily materials. "If we used substance like ours to coat the inside of bottles, it would be possible to get it all out," says Aizenberg. "The only problem may be that the sauce may come out a little too easily on to their food.""

theshowmecanuck writes "The Telegraph has an article talking about the 60th anniversary of The Lyons Electronic Office I (LEO I), complete with an old video from the mid '50s about LEO II. The LEO I was the first major computer business system. It was installed at a large catering company in the U.K. named J. Lyons and Co. that operated a chain of tea shops among other business interests. So, blame them or praise them, November 17, 2011 will mark 60 years since the day in 1951 that the Brits started the age of business computing. All hail our tea- and biscuit-powered computer overlords."

First time accepted submitter SharkLaser writes "Users of Facebook Connect have previously enjoyed extra privacy as it was harder for Google to index comments made on the platform. Google, which also runs the competing service Google+, has now started indexing Facebook's public comments as well as comments made on platforms Disqus and Intense Debate, which all used programming that was hard for Google to read. Public comments and links made on those platforms will now be directly visible and searchable in Google."

whoever57 writes "According to Prof Kubiatowicz from Berkeley, each time an additional book is downloaded to an e-reader, the mass of the e-reader increases. The effect doesn't really make the devices more difficult to carry: the professor calculates that 4GB of books would increase its weight by a billionth of a billionth of a gram— about the mass of a single virus or DNA molecule."

judgecorp writes "A British man born with one arm has a Nokia phone dock embedded in his prosthetic limb. Apparently, Apple refused to have an iPhone suitably customized for the job. From the article: 'Mr Prideaux, of Wedmore, Somerset, said: "I think this is the first time this has ever been done in the world - and it is brilliant. I can now take calls and make texts just by using my one hand, while the phone sits inside my arm. The phone slots smoothly and securely within my limb and is easily removable, when required. I think this would help a lot of people with prosthetic arms - especially those who were not born with the disability. People who have had motorbike crashes and soldiers who have lost limbs - they could all benefit from this."'"

Stirling Newberry writes "The New York Times reports on the continued expansion of the sea route along the Russian side of the Arctic Ocean. It was only in 2009 that outside ships were allowed to ply this lane, but Russians have used it since the early 20th century. What makes this year a landmark is that the polar ice cap is smaller at its September minimum than before, allowing large container ships and oil tankers — the backbone of sea commerce — to travel between Europe and Asia, saving time and money over the Suez route, as well as avoiding several politically unstable regions of the world. Putin has been pushing development along the route. While the northwest passage is only gradually opening, the opposite side of the Arctic Ocean looks set for expansion. Siberian Riviera anyone?"

An anonymous reader writes "The European Commission has launched a project to recruit 10,000 volunteers across Europe to measure the performance of their broadband connection over two years. The trial, believed to be the world's biggest follows similar projects in the US and the UK, run by the EC's partner SamKnows. The data collected will be used to plan the next generation of services. Those interested in signing up to take part can do so here."

British Airways is giving their best customers a competitive edge in the event of disaster by offering a course on surviving a plane crash. Beginning next year, members of the airline's Executive Club can cash in air miles to take the four-hour safety class. From the article: "Andy Clubb, the BA manager running the course, told the Independent: 'It makes passengers safer when travelling by giving additional skills and information, it dispels all those Internet theories about the brace position, and it just gives people so much more confidence in flying.'"

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are planning on launching an adult oriented website to help protect animals through a mix of animal suffering footage and porn. I'm not sure how mixing the two will win hearts, minds, or naughty bits, but Lindsay Rajt, PETA's associate director of campaigns, seems to think it's a good idea. She says, "We're hoping to reach a whole new audience of people, some of whom will be shocked by graphic images that maybe they didn't anticipate seeing when they went to the PETA triple-X site."

First time accepted submitter tonyt3 writes "Scientists plan on conducting an unusual climate experiment at a Norfolk airfield next month. They plan to spray water into the air about 20 km high to mimic volcanic particles, hoping that their findings could lead to a solution to global warming. From the article: 'Pouring 10 million tonnes of material into the stratosphere each using 10 to 20 giant balloons could achieve a 2C global drop in temperature, the scientists believe. Sulphate emissions from the Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines in June 1991 reduced world temperature by 0.5C for two years.'"

whoever57 writes "A new transatlantic cable (the first in 10 years) is going to be laid at the cost of $300M. The reason? To shave 6ms off the time to transmit packets from London to New York. The Hibernian Express will reduce the current transmission time — roughly 65 milliseconds — by less than ten percent. However, investors believe the financial community will be lining up to pay premium rates to use the new cable. The article suggests that a one-millisecond advantage could be worth $100M per year to a large hedge fund."

First time accepted submitter ni5dotcom writes "Amazon is soon going to launch an e-book rental service soon for US customers, according to The Wall Street Journal. Publishers, however, have shown mixed reaction to this decision so far. From the article: 'Amazon is believed to have offered book publishers a large fee for joining the service. However, the negotiations are said to still be in their early stages. The Seattle-based technology company, which is expected to imminently launch a tablet device to rival Apple’s iPad, has also said that the digital ebook library would feature older titles and be accessible to those who pay for $79 a year for Amazon Prime, the service which allows people unlimited two-day shipping and films and TV shows on demand.'"

It may be more PR stunt than a viable expansion plan, but the Japanese arm of Domino's Pizza is making plans for a lunar store. Construction firm Maeda Corp has drawn-up the plans for the dome shaped restaurant and figures it will take 70 tons of materials and pizza-making equipment. Even with the cost cutting measure or using mineral deposits on the moon to make the concrete, Domino's estimates the costs at Y1.67 trillion ($21.7 billion). In 2001 rival chain Pizza Hut made a delivery to the International Space Station, but Domino's hopes to become the preferred pizza of space with the moon store plan.

rtfa-troll writes "A picture of vodka fountains, indefinite amounts of Jaegermeister, and sexual harassment is emerging from Microsoft. The former second in command at Microsoft UK was accused of sexual misconduct involving at least five separate women. A Microsoft internal investigation was unable to prove the allegations but decided to fire Simon Negus for having 'behaved dishonestly, and thereby acted in a manner calculated or likely to destroy trust and confidence between him and Microsoft' and sue him £75k. Now Negus, who already has a new job as COO at Upstream Systems has struck back with a £10 million false dismissal suit alleging a culture of drunken parties and claiming that other (Male) management at Microsoft were so drunk they followed a female Microsoft UK manager into the ladies' lavatories. I guess we can now guess why senior managers go away to Microsoft vowing never to buy anything and come back with signed contracts; presumably it was just lying there next to them in the morning and they were too afraid to ask what happened."

Hugh Pickens writes "Christopher Williams writes that the success of HP's fire sale in unloading hundreds of thousands of TouchPads at heavily discounted prices may provide clues to other Apple competitors hoping to loosen the iPad's stranglehold on the tablet computing market. The main Google Android tablets, made by Samsung and Motorola, are pitched at around the same price point as the iPad but, put together with all the other Android tablets, it's estimated the iPad outsells them eight to one so 'the problem becomes circular: the user base is too small for app developers to invest in,' writes Williams, 'so users buy an iPad because there are more apps and the user base gets even smaller relative to Apple's.' According to Williams, Android tablet makers must find a way of breaking the cycle to avoid the TouchPad's fate. 'No doubt acutely aware of this is Amazon, which is rumored to be preparing to release an Android tablet this autumn,' writes Williams, adding that Amazon must price their 'iPad killer' at break-even or a loss to succeed. 'Its online retail empire and the Kindle brand mean Amazon has the marketing clout to take on the iPad, but on the evidence of HP's successful TouchPad sell off, the question is whether it has the courage to put its money on the line. '"

Hugh Pickens writes "Christopher Williams writes that the success of HP's fire sale in unloading hundreds of thousands of TouchPads at heavily discounted prices may provide clues to other Apple competitors hoping to loosen the iPad's stranglehold on the tablet computing market. The main Google Android tablets, made by Samsung and Motorola, are pitched at around the same price point as the iPad but, put together with all the other Android tablets, it's estimated the iPad outsells them eight to one so 'the problem becomes circular: the user base is too small for app developers to invest in,' writes Williams, 'so users buy an iPad because there are more apps and the user base gets even smaller relative to Apple's.' According to Williams, Android tablet makers must find a way of breaking the cycle to avoid the TouchPad's fate. 'No doubt acutely aware of this is Amazon, which is rumored to be preparing to release an Android tablet this autumn,' writes Williams, adding that Amazon must price their 'iPad killer' at break-even or a loss to succeed. 'Its online retail empire and the Kindle brand mean Amazon has the marketing clout to take on the iPad, but on the evidence of HP's successful TouchPad sell off, the question is whether it has the courage to put its money on the line. '"

hypnosec noted that Google has stepped up to try to help fundraising for Bletchley Park. From TFA: "The point is that all of us have heroes. At Google our heroes are Alan Turing and the people who worked on breaking the codes at Bletchley Park. It was probably the most inspiring and uplifting achievement in scientific technology over the last hundred years. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that without Alan Turing, Google as we know it wouldn't exist."

As a kid I had a minor obsession with invisible ink after learning about it in a science club. An impressive stack of vinegar and lemon scented papers filled my desk, but the history of invisible ink is much more interesting than a summer enrichment program. Starting with the Roman general Pliny the Elder using milk from the thithymallus plant, to modern inks which are only visible under UV light, the science of invisible ink has grown quite complex. Some of the oldest CIA documents contain recipes for special inks, and MI6 and their very own "adult" mixture during WW1.

fangmcgee writes "London could soon be covered with a free public WiFi network as Virgin Media moves to challenge BT's Openzone network. Virgin Media's network would be freely available to anyone at 0.5Mbps, and to subscribers to its home broadband at speeds up to a blistering 10Mbps. The proposals would see WiFi routers installed in each of the company's street-side cabinets, which distribute its cable network to homes and businesses."

Frankie70 writes with word of a Twitter-account hijacking that's raised eyebrows today, supplying a link to the account in question. From the Telegraph's account: "'The Twitter account of the American Fox News Politics team was compromised and used to falsely announce the death of the U.S. president. Hackers, who identified themselves as 'The Script Kiddies' and said they shared the spirit of prominent hacking group Anonymous, used the account to write: 'BREAKING NEWS: President @BarackObama assassinated, 2 gunshot wounds have proved too much. It's a sad 4th for #america. #obamadead RIP.'"

smitty777 writes "The Telegraph is reporting on an effort by the NHS to put a London hospital's patient records in the cloud. One of the more interesting aspects of this is the suggestion that patients would have control over who has access to their medical data. Many have understandable security concerns, which are even more relevant considering the recent issues with Dropbox cloud storage."

An anonymous reader writes "France will invest one billion euros in future nuclear power development while boosting research into security, President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Monday." The Guardian has a more detailed article. It's not a huge investment, but it is nice to see continued commitment to Generation IV reactors by at least one Western country.

netchaos writes "Secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing have shown there was no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square when China put down student pro-democracy demonstrations 22 years ago." Which is not to say that everything was flowers and wine: "Instead, the cables show that Chinese soldiers opened fire on protesters outside the centre of Beijing, as they fought their way towards the square from the west of the city."

The British Intelligence agency has unveiled its latest weapon in the war on terror, cupcake recipes published by the Ellen DeGeneres show. MI6 hacked an online al-Queda magazine replacing instructions about how to “Make a bomb in the Kitchen of your Mom" with a web page of recipes for “The Best Cupcakes in America” from Ellen's show. From the article: "It included a recipe for the Mojito Cupcake – 'made of white rum cake and draped in vanilla buttercream'- and the Rocky Road Cupcake – 'warning: sugar rush ahead!' By contrast, the original magazine featured a recipe showing how to make a lethal pipe bomb using sugar, match heads and a miniature lightbulb, attached to a timer."

whoever57 writes "In a case that could have implications for the Ryan Giggs affair, Twitter revealed user details in response to a legal action filed in San Mateo county, CA by lawyers representing South Tyneside council. The alleged libel refers to critical comments made via Twitter. It is possible that one of the people making the critical comments is one of the council members."

whoever57 writes "Ryan Gibbs, a UK footballer (soccer player) had obtained a 'superinjunction' that prevented him being named as the person involved in an affair with a minor celebrity. However, he was named by various users on Twitter. Now, in response to legal action initiated by Mr. Giggs in the UK courts against the users, Twitter has stated that it is prepared to identify the users who broke the injunction if it was 'legally required' to do so. Twitter will attempt to notify the users first in order to give them an opportunity to exercise their rights."

fysdt writes "Engineers from the Tokyo Electric Power company (Tepco) entered the No.1 reactor at the end of last week for the first time and saw the top five feet or so of the core's 13ft-long fuel rods had been exposed to the air and melted down. Previously, Tepco believed that the core of the reactor was submerged in enough water to keep it stable and that only 55 per cent of the core had been damaged."

Just when the students of St John’s College thought the worst job the school could provide was being a lunch server, the administration came up with something even more insidious: babysitting drunks. For a rumored £100 per night, “carer volunteers” will make sure their fellow classmates don't pass out somewhere, get home, and generally stay out of trouble. A college spokesman says: "The college authorities, with the full co-operation of the student body, are putting in place measures to provide support, through trained volunteers, for any students who become incapacitated through excessive alcohol consumption."

The downside of not having ones base of children's stories crafted and maintained by trained storytime engineers from the Disney Corporation has reared its warty head in Russia and Ukraine. A map of purportedly Russian folktale characters' haunts has drawn fire from Ukrainians, who object to what they see as the appropriation (from Ukraine) of such famous characters as miraculously strong Ilya Muromets, the gold-producing Speckled Hen, and Kolobok ("a cheerful talking cake who flees animals eager to eat him"). This seems like nothing that couldn't be cleared up with some artfully mis-pointed highway signs and a few tons of papier-mâché.

Some bugs are worse than others, but when a bug eats over $200,000 it's time to call an exterminator. Indian Police are investigating the claim that termites ate over 10 million rupees from a branch of The State Bank of India. From the article: "The notes had been kept in a ‘currency chest’ at the branch in Barabanki district, Uttar Pradesh, and officials were reported to be ‘horrified’ to have found most of them reduced to dust by termites when they inspected the contents."

Frequent contributor Bennett Haselton is back with an article about how sites with huge amounts of user-generated content struggle to deal with abuse complaints, and could benefit from a crowd-sourced policing system similar to Slashdot's meta-moderation. He writes "In The Net Delusion, Evgeny Morozov cites examples of online mobs that filed phony abuse complaints in order to shut down pro-democracy Facebook groups and YouTube videos criticizing the Saudi royal family. I've got an idea for an algorithm that would help solve the problem, and I'm offering $100 (or a donation to a charity of your choice) for the best suggested improvement, or alternative, or criticism of the idea proposed in this article." Hit the link below to read the rest of his thoughts.

Before you get bored and click away: I'm proposing an algorithm for Facebook (and similar sites) to use to review "abuse reports" in a scalable and efficient manner, and I'm offering a total of $100 (or more) to the reader (or to some charity designated by them) who proposes the best improvement(s) or alternative(s) to the algorithm. We now proceed with your standard boilerplate introductory paragraph.

In his new book The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, Evgeny Morozov cites examples of Facebook users organizing campaigns to shut down particular groups or user account by filing phony complaints against them. One Hong-Kong-based Facebook group with over 80,000 members, formed to oppose the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong-Kong, was shut down by opponents flagging the group as "abusive" on Facebook. In another incident, the Moroccan activist Kacem El Ghazzali found his Facebook group Youth for the Separation between Religion and Education deleted without explanation, and when he e-mailed Facebook to ask why, his personal Facebook profile got canned as well. Only after an international outcry did Facebook restore the group (but, oddly, not El Ghazzali's personal Facebook account), but they refused to explain the original removal; the most likely cause was a torrent of phony "complaints" from opponents. In both cases it seemed clear that the groups did not actually violate Facebook's Terms of Service, but the number of complaints presumably convinced either a software algorithm or an overworked human reviewer that something must have been inappropriate, and the forums were shut down. The Net Delusion also describes a group of conservative Saudi citizens calling themselves "Saudi Flagger" that coordinates filing en masse complaints against YouTube videos which criticize Islam or the Saudi royal family.

A large number of abuse reports against a single Facebook group or YouTube video probably has a good chance of triggering a takedown; with 2,000 employees managing 500 million users, Facebook surely doesn't have time to review every abuse report properly. About once a month I still get an email from Facebook with the subject "Facebook Warning" saying:

You have been sending harassing messages to other users. This is a violation of Facebook's Terms of Use. Among other things, messages that are hateful, threatening, or obscene are not allowed. Continued misuse of Facebook's features could result in your account being disabled.

I still have no idea what is triggering the "warnings"; the meanest thing I usually say on Facebook is to people who write to me asking for tech support (usually with the proxy sites to get on Facebook at school), when they say "It gives me an error", and I write back, "TELL ME THE ACTUAL ERROR MESSAGE THAT IT GIVES YOU!!" (Typical reply: "It gave me an error that it can't do it." If you work in tech support, I feel your pain.) I suspect the "abuse reports" are probably coming from parents who hack into their teenagers' accounts, see their teens corresponding with me about how to get on Facebook or YouTube at school, and decide to file an "abuse report" against my account just for the hell of it. If Facebook makes it that easy for a lone gunman to cause trouble with fake complaints, imagine how much trouble you can make with a well-coordinated mob.

But I think an algorithm could be implemented that would enable users to police for genuinely abusive content, without allowing hordes of vigilantes to get content removed that they simply don't like. Taking Facebook as an example, a simple change in the crowdsourcing algorithm could solve the whole problem: use the votes of users who are randomly selected by Facebook, rather than users who self-select by filing the abuse reports. This is similar to an algorithm I'd suggested for stopping vigilante campaigns from "burying" legitimate content on Digg (and indeed, stopping illegitimate self-promotion on Digg at the same time), and as an general algorithm for preventing good ideas from being lost in the glut of competing online content. But if phone "abuse reports" are also being used to squelch free speech in countries like China and Saudi Arabia, then the moral case for solving the problem is all that more compelling.

Here's how the algorithm would work: Facebook can ask some random fraction of their users, "Would you like to be a volunteer reviewer of abuse reports?" (Would you sign up? Come on. Wouldn't you be a little bit curious what sort of interesting stuff would be brought to your attention?) Wait until they've built up a roster of reviewers (say, 20,000). Then suppose Facebook receives an abuse report (or several abuse reports, whatever their threshold is) about a particular Facebook group. Facebook can then randomly select some subset of its volunteer reviewers, say, 100 of them. This is tiny as a proportion of the total number of reviewers (with a "jury" size of 100 and a "jury pool" of 20,000, a given reviewer has only a 1 in 200 chance of being called for "jury duty" for any particular complaint), but still large enough that the results are statistically significant. Tell them, "This is the content that users have been complaining about, and here is the reason that they say it violates our terms of service. Are these legitimate complaints, or not?" If the number of "Yes" votes exceeds some threshold, then the group gets shuttered.

It's much harder to cheat in this system, than in an "abuse report" system in which users simply band together and file phony abuse reports against a group until it gets taken down. If the 200 members of "Saudi Flagger" signed up as volunteer reviewers, then they would comprise only 1% of a jury pool of 20,000 users, and on average would only get one vote on a jury of 100. You'd have to organize such a large mob that your numbers would comprise a significant portion of the 20,000 volunteer reviewers, so that you would have a significant voting bloc in a given jury pool. (And my guess is that Facebook would have a lot more than 20,000 curious volunteers signed up as reviewers.) On the other hand, if someone creates a group with actual hateful content or built around a campaign of illegal harrassment, and the abuse reports start coming in until a jury vote is triggered, then a randomly selected jury of reviewers would probably cast enough "Yes" votes to validate the abuse reports.

Jurors could in fact be given three voting choices:

• "This group really is abusive" (i.e. the abuse reports were legitimate), or;
• "This group does not technically violate the Terms of Service, but the users who filed abuse reports were probably making an honest mistake" (perhaps a common choice for groups that support controversial causes, or that publish information about semi-private individuals); or
• "This group does not violate the TOS, and the abuse reports were bogus to begin with" (i.e. almost no reasonable person could have believed that the group really did violate the TOS, and the abuse reports were probably part of an organized campaign to get the group removed).

This strongly discourages users from organizing mob efforts against legitimate groups; if most of the jury ends up voting for the third choice, "This is an obviously legitimate group and the complaints were just an organized vigilante campaign", then the users who filed the complaints could have their own accounts penalized.

What I like about this algorithm is that the sizes and thresholds can be tweaked according to what you discover about the habits of the Facebook content reviewers. Suppose most volunteer reviewers turn out to be deadbeats who don't respond to "jury duty" when they're actually called upon to vote in an abuse report case. Fine — just increase the size of the jury, until the average number of users in a randomly convened jury who do respond, is large enough to be statistically significant. Or, suppose it turns out that people who sign up to review content to be deleted, are a more prudish bunch than average, and their votes tend to skew towards "delete it now!" in a way that is not representative of the general Facebook community. Fine — just raise the threshold for the percentage of "Yes" votes required to get content deleted. All that's required for the algorithm to work, is that content which clearly does violate the Terms of Service, gets more "Yes" votes on average than content that doesn't. Then make the jury size large enough that the voting results are statistically significant, so you can tell which side of the threshold you're on.

Another beneficial feature of the algorithm is that it's scaleable — there's no bottleneck of overworked reviewers at Facebook headquarters who have to review every decision. (They should probably review a random subset of the decisions to make sure the "juries" are getting what seems to be the right answer, but they don't have to check every one.) If Facebook doubles in size — and the amount of "abusive content" and the number of abuse reports doubles along with it — then as long as the pool of volunteers reviewers also doubles, each reviewer has no greater workload than they had before. But the workload of the abuse department at Facebook doesn't double.

Now, this algorithm ducks the question of how to handle "borderline" content. If a student creates a Facebook group called "MR. LANGAN IS A BUTT BRAIN," is that "harassment" or not? I would say no, but I'm not confident that a randomly selected pool of reviewers would agree. However, the point of this algorithm is to make sure that if content is posted on Facebook that almost nobody would reasonably agree is a violation of their Terms of Service, then a group of vigilantes can't get it removed by filing a torrent of abuse reports.

Also, this proposal can't do much about Facebook's Terms of Service being prudish to begin with. A Frenchman recently had his account suspended because he used a 19th-century oil painting of an artistic nude as his profile picture. Well, Facebook's TOS prohibits nudity -- not just sexual nudity, but all nudity, period. Even under my proposed algorithm, jurors would presumably have to be honest and vote that the painting did in fact violate Facebook's TOS, unless or until Facebook changes the rules. (For that matter, maybe this wasn't a case of prudishness anyway. I mean, we know it's "artistic" because it's more than 100 years old and it was painted in oils, right? Yeah, well check out the painting that the guy used as his profile picture. It presumably didn't help that the painting is so good that the Facebook censors probably thought it was a photograph.)

But notwithstanding these problems, this algorithm was the best trade-off I could come up with in terms of scalability and fairness. So here's the contest: Send me your best alternative, or best suggested improvement, or best fatal flaw in this proposal (even if you don't come up with something better, the discovery of a fatal flaw is still valuable) for a chance to win (a portion of) the $100 -- or, you can designate a charity to be the recipient of your winnings. Send your ideas to bennett at peacefire dot org and put "reporting" in the subject line. I reserve the right to split the prize between multiple winners, or to pay out more than the original $100 (or give winners the right to designate charitable donations totalling more than $100) if enough good points come in (or to pay out less than $100 if there's a real dearth of valid points, but there are enough brainiacs reading this that I think that's unlikely). In order for the contest not to detract from the discussion taking place in the comment threads, if more than one reader submits essentially the same idea, I'll give the credit to the first submitter -- so as you're sending me your idea, you can feel free to share it in the comment threads as well without worrying about someone re-submitting it and stealing a portion of your winnings. (If your submission is, "Bennett, your articles would be much shorter if you just state your conclusion, instead of also including a supporting argument and addressing possible objections", feel free to submit that just in the comment threads.)

In The Net Delusion, Morozov concludes his section on phony abuse reports by saying, "Good judgment, as it turns out, cannot be crowdsourced, if only because special interests always steer the process to suit their own objectives." I think he's right about the problems, but I disagree that they're unsolvable. I think my algorithm does in fact prevent "special interests" from "steering the process", but I'll pay to be convinced that I'm wrong. Today I'm just choosing the "winners" of the contest myself; maybe someday I'll crowdsource the decision by letting a randomly selected subset of users vote on the merits of each proposal... but I'm sure some of you are dying to tell me why that's a bad idea.

At 102 feet and 3 inches, the world's largest Lego tower resides in Sao Paulo, Brazil. An intense need to smash Lego constructs as a child means this beat my record by at least 100 feet.

If you happen to be in London on April 19th you have a chance to own a piece of history. A Marconi type–702 television set, which was built using England's then secret radar research, is going up for auction at Bonhams Mechanical Music and Scientific Instruments sale. Built in 1936, the set is believed to be the oldest working television in Britain. From the article: "The machine was bought for almost £100 three weeks after television transmissions began. But Mr GB Davis of Dulwich, south–east London would have only been able to able to watch it for a few hours. The nearby Crystal Palace and its transmitter burned down three days after Mr Davis bought the Marconi type–702 set on November 26. The area could not receive pictures again until 1946."

hackingbear writes "Scientists from China Agricultural University have produced 17 healthy cloned cattle expressing recombinant human lysozyme using somatic cell nuclear transfer. Lysozyme, a bactericidal protein that protects human infants from microbial infections, is highly expressed in human milk but is found in only trace amounts in cow milk. The cloned cows produce milk with similar nutritional benefits as human milk, and the scientists hope their results will lead to new techniques that could be further refined for production of active human lysozyme on a large scale."

jones_supa writes "A previously unknown dinosaur has been identified from fossils dug up in China and has been nicknamed as 'T-Rex's cousin.' The gigantic creature roamed North America and east Asia between about 65 million and 99 million years ago. Named in honour of Zhucheng as Zhuchentyrannus magnus, this animal was about 11 metres long, 4 metres tall and it weighed about 6 tonnes. The research team was led by Dr. David Hone, from University College Dublin school of biology and environmental science."

Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that the Roman Catholic Church has warned that the internet has fueled a surge in Satanism that has led to a sharp rise in the demand for exorcists. 'The internet makes it much easier than in the past to find information about Satanism. In just a few minutes you can contact Satanist groups and research occultism,' says Carlo Climati, a member of the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University in Rome who specializes in the dangers posed to young people by Satanism. Organizers of a six-day conference that has brought together more than 60 Catholic clergy as well as doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, teachers and youth workers, co-sponsored by the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments and the Congregation for Clergy, say the rise of Satanism has been dangerously underestimated in recent years."

Having lost the space race, and the cold war Russian officials know that they can ill afford falling behind in the field of yeti research. To ensure they reach an accord with the hairy giants before the next ice age, a new yeti research institute has been proposed. From the article: "...some believe Russia also holds a population of yetis, which it calls Snow Men, in remote areas of Siberia such as the mountains in the southern part of Kemerovo around Tashtagol. Kemerovo officials cited yeti researcher Igor Burtsev as saying that around 30 Russian scientists are studying yetis and could work together at the planned institute."

Yesterday we noted that Firefox 4 is out in the wild. Since then, the popular browser has been downloaded 6 million times, double the numbers reported for MSIE9. Now the development team is talking about a new development process and what to expect for FF 5 and 6. And unsurprisingly, naysayers proclaim that IE will survive, while Firefox will die.

chrb writes "The Guardian and The Telegraph are reporting that US based Ntrepid Corporation has been awarded a $2.76 million contract to develop software aimed at manipulating social media. The project aims to enable military personnel to control multiple 'sock puppets' located at a range of geographically diverse IP addresses, with the aim of spreading pro-US propaganda. The project will not target English speaking web sites (yet) but will be limited to foreign languages, including Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Pashto. The project will be funded as part of the $200 million Operation Earnest Voice program run by US Central Command."

Anonymous Coward writes "In England it has been proposed that the clocks move forward by 2 hours this summer to give us more daylight time in the day, and hopefully in turn stimulate the economy. My question is what impact will this hold for computers that automatically adjust the time to British Summer Time? Could this cause another 'millennium Bug' fiasco?"

belmolis writes "Algeria is reported to be shutting down ISPs and deleting Facebook accounts in an effort to prevent anti-government protests from escalating as they did in Egypt. Is it likely that they are deleting FB accounts? Unless Facebook is cooperating, this would either require hacking FB to obtain administrator privileges or cracking the password of each account they wish to delete."

Israeli scientists have created an explosive detector using specially trained mice. Researchers claim the mice are more accurate than dogs or x-ray machines and best of all, they work for peanuts. From the article: "The device was tested last year on 1,000 shoppers in a Tel Aviv shopping mall when the mice successfully picked out 22 people carrying mock explosives."