Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes: IBM said on Wednesday that it's giving everyone access to one of its quantum computing processors, which can be used to crunch large amounts of data. Anyone can apply through IBM Research's website to test the processor, however, IBM will determine how much access people will have to the processor depending on their technology background -- specifically how knowledgeable they are about quantum technology. With the project being "broadly accessible," IBM hopes more people will be interested in the technology, said Jerry Chow, manager of IBM's experimental quantum computing group. Users can interact with the quantum processor through the Internet, even though the chip is stored at IBM's research center in Yorktown Heights, New York, in a complex refrigeration system that keeps the chip cooled near absolute zero.

An anonymous reader writes: Kim Zetter from WIRED writes an intriguing report about a vulnerability at the heart of our cell phone networks. It centers around Signaling System No. 7 (SS7), which refers to a data network -- and the protocols or rules that govern how information gets exchanged over it. Zetter writes, "It was designed in the 1970s to track and connect landline calls across different carrier networks, but is now commonly used to calculate cellular billing and send text messages, in addition to routing mobile and landline calls between carriers and regional switching centers. SS7 is part of the telecommunications backbone but is not the network your voice calls go through; it's a separate administrative network with a different function." According to WIRED, the problem is that SS7 is based on trust -- any request a telecom receives is considered legitimate. In addition to telecoms, government agencies, commercial companies and criminal groups can gain access to the network. Most attacks can be defended with readily available technologies, but more involved attacks take longer to defend against. T-Mobile and ATT have vulnerabilities with fixes that have yet to be implemented for example.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Networkworld: Magic Leap has made progress. A year ago, the MR apparatus wasn't really wearable. This may have been due to the sheer size of the prototype hardware, or the software that adjusts the illusion for head movement and changes in perspective may not have been completed. The complexity of the mathematics of this head-tracking applied to the complexity of the mathematics of Magic Leap's proprietary light-field chip may have required more development time. The Wired report of Kelly's experience indicates the prototype headset he tested is now wearable, perhaps untethered from a high-powered graphics-rendering computer used by the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. Kelly's report raises the question: Could Magic Leap have implemented hand-tracking, too? He writes, "When I raise a hand, it approaches and extends a glowing appendage to touch my fingertip."

An anonymous reader writes: Cloud computing startup Mesosphere has opted to open-source its data center management platform. This move is backed by Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Cisco Systems and roughly 60 other tech partners. The three-year-old San Francisco company's datacenter operating system (DCOS) was built as an operating system for all services in a data center to function as one pool of resources. Capabilities include the quick, app store-like installation of more than 20 complex distributed systems, including HDFS, Apache Spark, Apache Kafka and Apache Cassandra, Mesosphere said in an announcement. Although some of the company's technologies were already available as open source, others were propriety until now. Mesosphere said it welcomes additional enterprises interested in partnering on this open source project.Wired has more details on this in its slightly enthusiastic report titled You want to build an empire like Google's? This is your OS.

Popular instant messaging app WhatsApp, on Tuesday, announced that it is turning on end-to-end encryption for all its users by default. The company says that every call a user makes, every text message they send, all photos and videos they share will now be more secure. Furthermore, the encryption status of any chat is visible under the chat's preferences screen. The announcement comes a little over a year after the Facebook-owned company partnered with Open Whisper Systems, a nonprofit software group that develops collaborative open source projects with a mission to "make private communication simple." The end-to-end encryption feature is available on the latest version of the app. In a blog post, Open Whisper Systems further explains the feature: Once a client recognizes a contact as being fully e2e capable, it will not permit transmitting plaintext to that contact, even if that contact were to downgrade to a version of the software that is not fully e2e capable. This prevents the server or a network attacker from being able to perform a downgrade attack. In a blog post, WhatsApp writes: While WhatsApp is among the few communication platforms to build full end-to-end encryption that is on by default for everything you do, we expect that it will ultimately represent the future of personal communication. WhatsApp has also made available the technical details about how the two companies implemented this feature (PDF). For those of you who haven't heard of WhatsApp, it's an instant messaging and voice calling app. The free service, which is available across all popular platforms, is used by more than a billion people worldwide every month. A report on Wired says that a team of only 15 engineers enabled this security feature for over a billion users. Privacy researcher and activist Christopher Soghoian rightfully adds, "Google has no excuse."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The U.S. Army has requested industry information on the feasibility of making tiny drones that would help infantry gather intelligence on a small scale, such as peeping over a hill or around a building. its dream recon machine would weigh no more than a third of a pound, launch within one minute and fly for at least 15 minutes. Ideally, the drones would be in service as soon as 2018. "[A nano-drone] will send real-time video back to the operator to give them real-time situational awareness of what's in the immediate vicinity," says Phil Cheatham, the deputy branch chief for electronics at the Army's Maneuvers Center for Excellence (MCOE). Cheatham says he and his team want something cheap enough to deploy with every squad, noting the Army already uses satellite imagery and larger drones to provide broader battlefield intelligence.

theodp writes: If you're wondering what corporate-backed Computer Science for All might look like, check out the new Framework for K-12 CS Education draft, the handiwork of educators, Microsoft, Google, Apple and others, which "identifies the powerful ideas in computer science as core concepts and practices for all K-12 students." Among these is the still-to-be-completed Practice 5 — Fostering an Inclusive Computing Culture — which says that by grade 12, students should be able to: "Identify issues of diversity in depictions of people within computing artifacts. For example, a set of emoji depicts only males playing sports or the avatars in a game present only Caucasian people." In other K-12 CS news, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics suggests CS for All may not be all it's cracked up to be.

An anonymous reader writes from a Wired article: A group of German vehicle security researchers has released new findings about the extent of a wireless key hack, and their work ought to convince hundreds of thousands of drivers to keep their car keys next to their Pudding Pops. The Munich-based automobile club ADAC recently made public a study it had performed on dozens of cars to test a radio 'amplification attack' that silently extends the range of unwitting drivers' wireless key fobs to open cars and even start their ignitions (in German). The ADAC researchers say that 24 different vehicles from 19 different manufacturers were all vulnerable, allowing them to not only reliably unlock the target vehicles but also immediately drive them away. "This clear vulnerability in [wireless] keys facilitates the work of thieves immensely," reads the post. "The radio connection between keys and car can easily be extended over several hundred meters, regardless of whether the original key is, for example, at home or in the pocket of the owner." [...] Here's the full list of vulnerable vehicles from their findings, which focused on European models: the Audi A3, A4 and A6, BMW's 730d, Citroen's DS4 CrossBack, Ford's Galaxy and Eco-Sport, Honda's HR-V, Hyundai's Santa Fe CRDi, KIA's Optima, Lexus's RX 450h, Mazda's CX-5, MINI's Clubman, Mitsubishi's Outlander, Nissan's Qashqai and Leaf, Opel's Ampera, Range Rover's Evoque, Renault's Traffic, Ssangyong's Tivoli XDi, Subaru's Levorg, Toyota's RAV4, and Volkswagen's Golf GTD and Touran 5T.

szczys writes: Our global information networks are connected by many many fibre optic cables sitting on the the ocean floor. The precursor to this technology goes all the way back to 1858 when the first telegraph cable connecting North America and Europe was laid. The story of efforts to lay transatlantic cables is fascinating. First attempts were met with many failures including broken cable in the first few miles of installation, and even frying the first successful connection with 2000 volts within a month of completion. But the technology improved quickly and just a century later we laid the first voice cables that used — get this — vacuum tubes in the signal repeaters. This seems a good time to link to one of my favorite-ever pieces in Wired, about a more modern but similarly impressive cable install, as told by Neal Stephenson.

An anonymous reader writes: The FBI and the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are voicing their concerns about the potential risk of cars being hacked. In an advisory note, they urge the public to be aware of cyber-security threats revolving around connected vehicles. From the advisory, "Modern motor vehicles often include new connected vehicle technologies that aim to provide benefits such as added safety features, improved fuel economy, and greater overall convenience. Aftermarket devices are also providing consumers with new features to monitor the status of their vehicles. However, with this increased connectivity, it is important that consumers and manufacturers maintain awareness of potential cyber security threats." They are also advising drivers and manufacturers to ensure the vehicle software is up-to-date, and keeping an eye out for recalls.

An anonymous reader quotes an article on Vanity Fair: Private tech companies are feeling a contraction in Silicon Valley. The funding that venture capitalists have thrown at start-ups is dwindling, in small seed rounds and mega-rounds alike. There's a new postmortem written weekly about a start-up that's run out of cash and shut its doors. Start-up executives are sobering up, realizing that their companies actually need a path to profitability. Now, not wanting to be stuck on a sinking ship, tech employees are thinking about the bubble, too, as they plan their career moves.

New submitter Asep Saepuloh writes: Today, Virgin Galactic will unveil SpaceShipTwo, a vehicle the company hopes will one day take tourists to the edge of space. Just over a year since a test pilot was killed in a crash, Sir Richard Branson's reveal of the newest craft is set to happen in California late Friday at California's Mojave Air and Space Port, where it was assembled. The team behind the latest suborbital spaceplane includes leaders from NASA's mission control and astronaut corps, the militaries from three nations and from high-profile personnel from the aviation and transport industries. Virgin Galactic said: "We've charged them with developing a plan to safely test and operate a reusable spacecraft." The company claims that they have "done their homework" and hope that this time their journey into space can be a success.

New submitter Evan Hansen writes: Everyone likes to pays lip service to "fail fast," but when was the last time your boss gave you a bonus when your project was killed? In his 2016 TED Talk, concluded just moments ago, Astro Teller, the head of Alphabet's X R&D lab shares some never-before revealed stories of his team's failures and iterations, and explains how "fail fast" can be more than a trite cliche. The first X project was the self-driving car, and subsequent ones include Google Glass, Project Loon's Internet service via balloon, Makani energy kites, and a drone delivery service dubbed Project Wing.

AmiMoJo writes: In a blog post Wired has announced that it will begin to block users who block ads on its site: "On an average day, more than 20 percent of the traffic to WIRED.com comes from a reader who is blocking our ads. We know that you come to our site primarily to read our content, but it's important to be clear that advertising is how we keep WIRED going," wrote the editors. The post goes on to offer two options for users blocking ads: whitelist wired.com or subscribe for $1/week.

An anonymous reader links to Wired's description of a surveillance society in miniature assembling right now in San Francisco: Super Bowl 50 will be big in every way. A hundred million people will watch the game on TV. Over the next ten days, 1 million people are expected to descend on the San Francisco Bay Area for the festivities. And, according to the FBI, 60 federal, state, and local agencies are working together to coordinate surveillance and security at what is the biggest national security event of the year.
Previous year's Superbowl security measures have included WMD sensors, database-backed facial recognition, and gamma-ray vehicle scanners. Given the fears and cautions in the air about this year's contest, it's easy to guess that the scanning and sensing will be even more prevalent this time.

An anonymous reader writes: Big systems of hundreds of satellites are under development to provide wireless Internet globally, with Richard Branson's OneWeb and Thales' LeoSat aiming at consumers and business markets respectively. It's like reliving the late 1990s, when Bill Gates' Teledesic and Motorola's Celestri were trying to do the same thing before merging their efforts and then giving up. And now you can simulate OneWeb and LeoSat for yourself, and compare them to older systems, in the new release of the vintage SaVi satellite simulation package, which was created in the 1990s during the first time around. Bear in mind Karl Marx's dictum of history: the first time is tragedy, and the second time is farce. Do these new systems stand a chance?

An anonymous reader writes: You just plug in the HDMI feed, and you're in the cockpit of the drone," the CEO of the new Drone Racing League tells Wired. "Everyone from Oculus on is expecting to have VR headsets in every home for entertainment consumption, and we're a natural use for it." In anticipation of a new mass entertainment, the Drone Racing League released new footage Thursday highlighting one of their complicated competition courses, "a concrete steampunk torture chamber with cast-iron columns and massive hulking turbines from another era" described as The Gates of Hell. "[T]hese young drone pilots are not just enjoying themselves, but also inventing a new sport," reports one technology site, asking whether we'll ultimately see "drone parks" or even drone demolition derbies and flying robot wars. In an article titled "When Video Games Get Real," they quote one pilot who says it feels like skateboarding in the 1990's, "with a small group of people pushing the envelope and inventing every day" — this time wearing virtual reality googles to experience the addictive thrill of flying.

Nerval's Lobster writes: For years, security experts have told people they need better passwords protecting their online accounts: no more '123456' or 'qwerty' or 'password.' Based on SplashData's fifth annual list of the 25 most common passwords, however, it's clear that relatively few people are listening to that advice. The firm based its list on more than 2 million leaked passwords during the year. The most popular, as in 2014, was '123456,' followed by 'password' and the ingenious, uncrackable '12345678.' One new entry on this ignoble list: 'starwars' in 25th place, no doubt thanks in part to the popularity of 'The Force Awakens' and the accompanying marketing campaign. Seems like a lot of people have forgotten (or never learned) that, while it's a pain to create (much less remember) a complicated password with lots of numbers and special characters, it's nothing compared to the pain of having your online accounts compromised. Maybe, as some have proposed, we could someday kill passwords for most services.

HughPickens.com writes: Perry Stein writes in the Washington Post that the fight against noisy leaf blowers is gaining momentum, in part, because residents are framing it as a public health issue. Two-stroke engine leaf blowers mix fuel with oil and don't undergo a complete combustion, emitting a number of toxins, like carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide, which their operators inevitably inhale. Municipalities throughout the country have moved to ban them. "You find two-stroke engines in poorer countries because they're cheap," says James Fallows citing a 2004 National Institutes of Health study showing that two-stroke engines on two- and three-wheeled vehicles in Delhi, India, account for a significant amount of air pollution. "You don't find them in richer countries because they're so dirty and polluting." In Washington DC leaf blowers can't exceed 70 decibels as measured from 50 feet away. (A normal conversation is typically about 60 decibels.) Haskell Small, a composer and concert pianist who is helping to lead the leaf-blower battle in Wesley Heights, describes the sound as "piercing." "When I try to compose or write a letter, there is no way for me to listen to my inner voice, and the leaf blower blanks out all the harmonic combinations."

But help is on the way. A new generation of leaf blowers is more environmentally friendly as the emergence of battery-powered leaf blowers takes us closer to the Holy Grail of equipment that is both (1) powerful and (2) quiet. Fallows supports the notion of a kind of trade-in program, where loud, old leaf blowers are exchanged for the less offensive kind. Ted Rueter, founder of Noise Free America, facilitated one such scheme. In the heat of his front lawn dispute with his neighbor, he offered a solution. "If you agree to use them, I will buy you two new leaf blowers," Rueter told his neighbor. "The offer was accepted and the noise level in his front yard was restored to a peaceful level," says Lawrence Richards. "When it comes to the balancing act of protecting landscaping jobs while reducing noise and emissions, it helps that someone was willing to pay for progress."

An anonymous reader writes: David Chaum, father of many encryption protocols, has revealed a new anonymity network concept called PrivaTegrity. Chaum, on who's work the Onion protocol was based, created a new encryption protocol that works as fast as I2P and the Onion-Tor combo, but also has better encryption. The only downside, according to an interview, is that he built a backdoor into the darn thing, just to please governments. He says that he's not going to use the backdoor unless to unmask crime on the Dark Web. Here's the research paper (if you can understand anything of it).

hackingbear writes: Following similar path of the 19th century America, China has advanced from being copycats to innovators. After its middle class has risen from 4% of population to 2/3 in the last decade, a generation both creative and comfortable with risk-taking are born. "We're seeing people in their early twenties starting companies—people just out of school, and there are even some dropouts," says Kai-Fu Lee, a Chinese venture capitalist and veteran of Apple, Microsoft, and Google, who has spent the past decade crisscrossing the nation, helping youths start firms. Major cities, i.e. Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, are crowded with ambitious inventors and entrepreneurs, flocking into software accelerators and hackerspaces. They no longer want jobs at Google or Apple; like their counterparts in San Francisco, they want to build the next Google or Apple. Venture capitalists pumped a record $15.5 billion into Chinese startups last year, so entrepreneurs are being showered in funding, as well as crucial advice and mentoring from millionaire angels. Even the Chinese government—which has a wary attitude toward online expression and runs a vast digital censorship apparatus—has launched a $6.5 billion fund for startups.

Nerval's Lobster writes: David Foote, an analyst who accurately predicted the tech industry's job growth in 2015, is back with some new predictions about which segments will do well in 2016 (Dice link). At the top of his list: DevOps, cloud and software architects, and cybersecurity experts. Those that won't perform well? SAP specialists, storage 'gurus,' and network managers could all face some headwinds. 'Companies are continuing to outsource infrastructure and that will reduce the need for network specialists except for network security which will remain in-house,' he says. Whether or not he's right about which parts of the tech industry will do better than others, there are also increasing signs that things could get very tight from a funding perspective for startups, as even the so-called 'unicorns' risk seeing investor money (and customers) dry up.

BitterOak writes: Kim Dotcom has lost his extradition case in New Zealand, and will now (probably) have to face trial in the U.S. on charges of money laundering, racketeering, and copyright violation. Three of Dotcom's associates face extradition as well. "Although the U.S. didn't need to prove the charge, counsel had to at least prove there was an answerable case overseas to fulfil extradition requirements. Lawyers for the four argued that the court didn't have jurisdiction to order extradition and that copyright law showed they weren't required or expected to filter every single piece of copyrighted material on Mega." Dotcom's lawyers say they plan to appeal, which would see the case reviewed by New Zealand's High Court. All four will remain free on bail in the meantime.

An anonymous reader writes: Following initial news of the project in March, IBM, under the supervision of the Linux Foundation and in partnership with several major tech interests including Fujitsu, has announced today that it will lead development of a new blockchain — a financial transaction ledger fashioned after the Bitcoin model. Provisionally called Open Ledger, the new initiative is aimed specifically at financial transactions, and though it will be open source in terms of development, but 'semi-private' in operation. Those with an interest in the project are said to include JP Morgan, Wells Fargo and the Bank of England. IBM VP Jerry Cuomo, who has discussed the project with Fortune and Wired, commented "The current blockchain is a great design pattern...Now, how do we make that real for business? What are the key attributes needed to make that happen? That's what this organization is about."

Nerval's Lobster writes: Former CEO Steve Ballmer once publicly referred to Linux as a 'cancer.' Not content to just let Ballmer blow up about it, company also spent a good deal of money and legal effort on claiming that open-source software violated its patents. A decade ago, the idea of Microsoft creating a Linux certification would have seemed like lunacy. But now that very thing has come to pass, (Dice link) with the Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA) Linux on Azure certification, designed in conjunction with the Linux Foundation. Earning the Linux on Azure certification requires tech pros to pass Microsoft Exam 70-533 (Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions) as well as the Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator (LFCS) exam, which collectively require knowledge of Linux and Azure implementation. Microsoft evidently recognizes that open-source technology increasingly powers the cloud and mobile, and that it needs to play nice with the open-source community if it wants to survive and evolve.

An anonymous reader writes: In a lengthy exposé, Wired lays out its case that Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto is actually Australian businessman Craig Wright. As evidence, Wired cites leaked communications and posts on Wright's blog from 2008 and 2009 establishing a connection between him and the launch of Bitcoin. Wright is also known to have amassed a significant Bitcoin fortune early on. Wired tried to contact Wright and got some perplexing responses, and they admit that it could all be a (long and extremely elaborate) hoax. But hours after publishing, Gizmodo followed up with the results of their own investigation, which came to the conclusion that Satoshi is a pseudonym for two men: Wright and Dave Kleiman, a computer forensics expert who died in 2013. After questioning (read: harassment) from both publications, Wright seems to have withdrawn from public comment. Regardless, both articles are quite detailed, and it will be interesting to see if the leaked documents turn out to be accurate.

An anonymous reader writes: Nuclear weapons specialists are limited in their research today. Prudence and international treaties prevent them from setting off any nuclear weapons, so they have to run tests through other means and interpret the results. But this wasn't always the case. In the '50s and '60s, the U.S. government performed a huge number of nuclear weapons tests, and filmed most of them. As happened with a lot of film from that time, most laid untouched in storage facilities until people generally forgot about them. But physicist Greg Spriggs recently realized they could be a trove of useful information, so he started tracking them down, eventually locating thousands of them. His team has started scanning and analyzing them. They've finished about 3,000 so far, with more than half yet to go. "Now, of course, scientists have computer programs that can analyze every single pixel in a frame over hundreds of frames. What might have taken days by hand takes only minutes. With computer analysis, Spriggs is pinpointing more precise yields. Computer models then use yield to estimate the damage from a bomb in different situations."

An anonymous reader writes: The Digital Foundry blog reports that Sony has added functionality to the PlayStation 4 that allows it to act as an emulator for some PlayStation 2 games. Surprisingly, the company did not mention that this functionality is live; a new Star Wars game bundle just happened to include three titles that were released on the PS2. From the article: "How can we tell? First of all, a system prompt appears telling you that select and start buttons are mapped to the left and right sides of the Dual Shock 4's trackpad. Third party game developers cannot access the system OS in this manner. Secondly, just like the PS2 emulator on PlayStation 3, there's an emulation system in place for handling PS2 memory cards. Thirdly, the classic PlayStation 2 logo appears in all of its poorly upscaled glory when you boot each title." Sony has confirmed the games are being emulated, but declined to provide any further details.

New submitter webdesignerdudes writes with news that Carnegie Mellon University now implies it may have been subpoenaed to give up its anonymity-stripping technique, and that it was not paid $1 million by the FBI for doing so. Wired reports: "In a terse statement Wednesday, Carnegie Mellon wrote that its Software Engineering Institute hadn’t received any direct payment for its Tor research from the FBI or any other government funder. But it instead implied that the research may have been accessed by law enforcement through the use of a subpoena. 'In the course of its work, the university from time to time is served with subpoenas requesting information about research it has performed,' the statement reads. 'The university abides by the rule of law, complies with lawfully issued subpoenas and receives no funding for its compliance.'"

New submitter kevin lyda writes: The creator of MST3K wants to bring it back. Anywhere from just three episodes up to a full season. Joel is also including options to make it DRM-free. Wired reports: "Hodgson officially launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund new episodes of the series. The initial goal of $2 million would fund only three episodes, but if the campaign does well enough, the project could make as many as 12 episodes (that maximum order would require $5.5 million). The rewards run the gamut from the typical t-shirt all the way up to fans contributing riffs to the episodes or hosting live installments of the show. But the real fun begins if MST3K finds an angel investor willing to splash some serious cash: 'Finally, if we raise $1 BILLION—stay with me on this one—we’re going to adopt a real live teenage boy and "Truman Show" him into believing he is the Pumaman!'"

smaxp writes: Google has announced the open source release of TensorFlow, its machine learning software library. "TensorFlow has extensive built-in support for deep learning, but is far more general than that -- any computation that you can express as a computational flow graph, you can compute with TensorFlow (see some examples). Any gradient-based machine learning algorithm will benefit from TensorFlow’s auto-differentiation and suite of first-rate optimizers. And it’s easy to express your new ideas in TensorFlow via the flexible Python interface." This comes alongside some dramatic speed increases (PDF). The code is available at GitHub under an Apache 2.0 license. "Deep learning, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are all some of Google's core competencies, where the company leads Apple and Microsoft. If successful, Google's strategy is to maintain this lead by putting its technology out in the open to improve it based on large-scale adoption and code contributions from the community at large.

An anonymous reader writes: According to an article at Wired, the era of 'unlimited' data services is coming to an end. Carriers don't give them out anymore unless they're hobbled, and they're even increasing the prices of grandfathered plans. Comcast's data caps are spreading, and Time Warner has been testing them for years as well. It's not even just about internet access — Microsoft recently decided to eliminate its unlimited cloud storage plan. The big question now is: were these companies cynical, or just naive? We have no way of evaluating their claims that a small number of users who abused the system caused it to be unprofitable for them. (A recent leaked memo from Comcast suggests it's about extracting more money, rather than network congestion.) But it's certainly true that limited plans make costs and revenue much easier to predict. Another question: were we, as consumers, naive in expecting these plans to last? As the saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Unlimited data plans clearly won't work too well if everybody uses huge amounts. So did we let ourselves get suckered by clever marketing? T-Mobile plans may also be dropping unlimited data in 2016.

New submitter lesedeuezghe writes with this Wired story by W. Ralph Eubanks about the efforts of the Extension Service to broaden its scope from mostly agricultural information to bringing broadband to rural communities. "In sleepy public libraries, at Rotary breakfasts, and in town halls, he [Assistant Extension Professor Roberto Gallardo] gives PowerPoint presentations that seem calculated to fill rural audiences with healthy awe for the technological sublime. Rather than go easy, he starts with a rapid-fire primer on heady concepts like the Internet of Things, the mobile revolution, cloud computing, digital disruption, and the perpetual increase of processing power. ('It’s exponential, folks. It’s just growing and growing.') The upshot: If you don’t at least try to think digitally, the digital economy will disrupt you. It will drain your town of young people and leave your business in the dust. Then he switches gears and tries to stiffen their spines with confidence. Start a website, he’ll say. Get on social media. See if the place where you live can finally get a high-speed broadband connection—a baseline point of entry into modern economic and civic life."

An anonymous reader writes: The same group of hackers who hacked into the personal email account of CIA director John Brennan have now exploited a vulnerability to gain access to a private law enforcement portal. They demonstrated access to a system called JABS — the Joint Automated Booking System — which is a database of arrest records. "It was through the vulnerable law enforcement portal that the hackers say they also obtained a list of about 3,000 names, titles, email addresses and phone numbers for government employees that they posted to Pastebin on Thursday. The posting, which they indicated was just "Part 1" of a presumably multi-part leak, consisted of a snippet of an alphabetical list of government employees working for the FBI and other federal agencies as well as various local police and sheriff departments around the country. It included job titles, email addresses and phone numbers."

An anonymous reader writes: VR is easy for video games, but hard for live action: you don't know where the viewer will be in the virtual world, so you can't put the camera in the right place in the real world. Light field cameras are perfect for VR though, because they're essentially holographic, and capture lots of positions at once. And Lytro has announced the first system that's both 'light field' and 'holographic', which changes everything. Wired seems similarly excited.

The New York Times reports that the European Parliament has voted to adopt "a nonbinding but nonetheless forceful resolution" urging the EU's member nations to recognize Edward Snowden as a whistleblower, rather than aid in prosecuting him on behalf of the United States government. From the article: Whether to grant Mr. Snowden asylum remains a decision for the individual European governments, and thus far, none have done so. Still, the resolution was the strongest statement of support seen for Mr. Snowden from the European Parliament. At the same time, the close vote — 285 to 281 — suggested the extent to which some European lawmakers are wary of alienating the United States. ... The resolution calls on European Union members to "drop any criminal charges against Edward Snowden, grant him protection and consequently prevent extradition or rendition by third parties." Also at Wired, USA Today and many others; Snowden himself has tweeted happily about the news.

An anonymous reader writes: Automotive software issues such as the Jeep hack and Volkswagen cheating on emissions tests have made headlines this year, which means the public is thinking about software in cars like never before. Some experts have argued that mandating that such software be open source is a solution to the problem. In an article on Opensource.com, Ben Cotton writes that although there are definite benefits to public scrutiny of the software, code visibility alone is no guarantee. It's an important thing to bear in mind, because "Open, therefore secure" is an easy straw man to knock down.

Zothecula writes: Commercial spaceflight company World View came a step closer to carrying tourists to the edge of space with a successful test flight last weekend. At Page, Arizona, a one-tenth scale replica spacecraft was carried by high-altitude ballon to a height of 100,475 ft (30,624 m) to demonstrate the technology that is intended for use in a full-size version slated to begin commercial flights next year. And with a note on the other end of the size spectrum for private access to space, reader Habberhead writes: As reported first by Wired Magazine and followed on by others including Discovery News, start-up company ThumbSat is aiming to provide turn-key access to space for students, experimenters and citizen scientists with a new femto-satellite and creative business model. Small payloads and experiments in space for $20k, including the launch? Sign me up!

theodp writes: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan's latest initiative to tackle educational inequity is The Primary School, a "private, non-profit school" which will eventually provide both free education and free healthcare for 700 low-income students from the Palo Alto area. "In addition to early childhood and K-12 education," Zuckerberg explained in a Facebook post, "The Primary School will also provide prenatal support for families and on-site healthcare for children. By bringing healthcare and education together in one place, the goal is to support families and help children from underserved communities reach their full potential." A job listing for Assistant Teachers notes that "the school will admit students at or before birth." Zuckerberg joins other Silicon Valley luminaries like Elon Musk and Sal Khan in what Wired calls The Tech Elite's Quest to Reinvent School in Its Own Image.

Kashmir Hill reports at Fusion that DNA results from companies like 23andMe are being requested by law enforcement agencies, something that is likely to start happening more and more. From the article: Both Ancestry.com and 23andMe stipulate in their privacy policies that they will turn information over to law enforcement if served with a court order. 23andMe says it's received a couple of requests from both state law enforcement and the FBI, but that it has "successfully resisted them." ... Ancestry.com would not say specifically how many requests it's gotten from law enforcement. ... "On occasion when required by law to do so, and in this instance we were, we have cooperated with law enforcement and the courts to provide only the specific information requested but we don’t comment on the specifics of cases,” said a spokesperson. (Related Wired article here.)

An anonymous reader writes: A little over two years ago, Edward Snowden leaked a giant batch of NSA documents. Chelsea Manning handed Wikileaks a pile of government secrets in 2010, and now another source has leaked an equally impressive cache of papers focusing on Obama's drone program. The Intercept published the documents covering the U.S.'s use of drones to kill targets. Perhaps most eye-opening is the disclosure that as much as 90% of attacks over a five-month period hit the wrong targets. According to The Intercept: "When the Obama administration has discussed drone strikes publicly, it has offered assurances that such operations are a more precise alternative to boots on the ground and are authorized only when an 'imminent' threat is present and there is 'near certainty' that the intended target will be eliminated. Those terms, however, appear to have been bluntly redefined to bear almost no resemblance to their commonly understood meanings."

schwit1 writes: There have been rumors for years that the NSA can decrypt a significant fraction of encrypted Internet traffic. In 2012, James Bamford published an article quoting anonymous former NSA officials stating that the agency had achieved a "computing breakthrough" that gave them "the ability to crack current public encryption." The Snowden documents also hint at some extraordinary capabilities: they show that NSA has built extensive infrastructure to intercept and decrypt VPN traffic and suggest that the agency can decrypt at least some HTTPS and SSH connections on demand.

However, the documents do not explain how these breakthroughs work, and speculation about possible backdoors or broken algorithms has been rampant in the technical community. Yesterday at ACM CCS, one of the leading security research venues, we and twelve coauthors presented a paper that we think solves this technical mystery.

If a client and server are speaking Diffie-Hellman, they first need to agree on a large prime number with a particular form. There seemed to be no reason why everyone couldn't just use the same prime, and, in fact, many applications tend to use standardized or hard-coded primes. But there was a very important detail that got lost in translation between the mathematicians and the practitioners: an adversary can perform a single enormous computation to "crack" a particular prime, then easily break any individual connection that uses that prime.

An anonymous reader writes: The emissions scandal that's plagued Volkswagen over the past month will be tough to recover from. But they're trying. The company announced a number of changes they're making to their line of vehicles. First, they'll be revamping their flagship Phaeton vehicles to be all-electric. (If you live in the U.S. and haven't heard of these, don't be surprised — they aren't marketed there.) Second, they've announced their intention to install top-of-the-line environmental protection systems in their new diesel cars. (In other words, they'll actually do what they're required by law to do, but vehicle prices will jump significantly.) Their press release is difficult to decipher, given the density of buzzwords and vague promises, but they indicate a greater general focus on hybrids and electric vehicles in the future.

Esther Schindler writes: In addition to writing the story of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien drew it. The maps and sketches he made while drafting it "informed his storytelling, allowing him to test narrative ideas and illustrate scenes he needed to capture in words," reports Ethan Gilsdorf at Wired. "For Tolkien, the art of writing and the art of drawing were inextricably intertwined."

It's all coming out in a new book, but here we get a sneak preview, along with several cool observations, such as: "If Tolkien's nerdy use of graph paper feels like a secret message to future Dungeons & Dragons players, then so does his 'Plan of Shelob's lair.' Tolkien's map of tunnels stocked with nasties—here, a spider named Shelob—would be right at home in any Dungeon Master's campaign notes. He even marks the place for a classic dungeon crawl feature: 'trap.'"

HughPickens.com writes: Sales of personal computers have been declining for so long — 14 consecutive quarters — that it's hard remember a time when PCs ruled the tech world. Now Nick Wingfield writes in the NY Times that Microsoft is leading the way on a mission to re-ignite the PC market by taking the once-unthinkable step of competing with its hardware partners. This week, Microsoft dived even further into the business with a laptop device, the Surface Book. The stated reason that Microsoft got into the PC hardware business three years ago, with the original Surface, was not to put PC companies out of business — but to better illustrate the capabilities of its software, providing devices that would inspire PC makers to be more innovative.

One of the most remarkable things about Microsoft's growing presence in the hardware business is that it has not led to open revolt among its partners. Initially, many of them were not happy about Microsoft's moves, complaining in private. "It's positioned as a laptop, very squarely against the MacBook Pro as an example. But that could also be extended to a Dell XPS 13, or an HP x360," says Patrick Moorhead. One reason there hasn't been more pushback from OEMs is that Microsoft's Surface business is still relatively small. Another is that the money Microsoft has poured into marketing Surface has raised the broader profile of Windows PCs. While Microsoft obviously risks alienating its partners, it's doing so with a much bigger fight in mind. "Right now Microsoft really believes that it has to have a combined hardware, software, and services play to go up against the likes of Apple," says Moorhead. "That's why it's doing this. That's why it's taking such an aggressive stance now, moving to laptops."

HughPickens.com writes: Sales of personal computers have been declining for so long — 14 consecutive quarters — that it's hard remember a time when PCs ruled the tech world. Now Nick Wingfield writes in the NY Times that Microsoft is leading the way on a mission to re-ignite the PC market by taking the once-unthinkable step of competing with its hardware partners. This week, Microsoft dived even further into the business with a laptop device, the Surface Book. The stated reason that Microsoft got into the PC hardware business three years ago, with the original Surface, was not to put PC companies out of business — but to better illustrate the capabilities of its software, providing devices that would inspire PC makers to be more innovative.

One of the most remarkable things about Microsoft's growing presence in the hardware business is that it has not led to open revolt among its partners. Initially, many of them were not happy about Microsoft's moves, complaining in private. "It's positioned as a laptop, very squarely against the MacBook Pro as an example. But that could also be extended to a Dell XPS 13, or an HP x360," says Patrick Moorhead. One reason there hasn't been more pushback from OEMs is that Microsoft's Surface business is still relatively small. Another is that the money Microsoft has poured into marketing Surface has raised the broader profile of Windows PCs. While Microsoft obviously risks alienating its partners, it's doing so with a much bigger fight in mind. "Right now Microsoft really believes that it has to have a combined hardware, software, and services play to go up against the likes of Apple," says Moorhead. "That's why it's doing this. That's why it's taking such an aggressive stance now, moving to laptops."

An anonymous reader writes: Prolific tweeter and former Reuters social media editor Matthew Keys, charged with computer hacking under the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act, was found guilty today on all counts and faces up to 25 years in prison when sentenced in January. Wired reports: "According to authorities, during a recorded FBI interview with Keys in October 2012 at his home, prior to his indictment, he admitted to his involvement in the hacking of the L.A. Times, and to sending a series of disparaging, sometimes threatening e-mails to a former employer. Keys waived his Miranda rights at the time of the interview and was concerned that the case not be publicized, apparently believing he might get off as a cooperating witness."

An anonymous reader writes with news that Tesla has officially unveiled its Model X SUV. It's their third vehicle, after the Roadster and Model S. Its 90kWh battery provides 250 miles of range, and the vehicle can go from zero to 60 mph in 3.2 seconds. According to Reuters, the high-end versions of the Model X will cost between $132,000 and $144,000, while the base model's pricing is not yet known. The vehicle's doors open upward, and it can have seating for either six or seven passengers, depending on layout. The back row of seats can fold down when not in use. The Model X has automatic emergency braking, a 5,000 pound towing capacity, and a so-called "bioweapon defense mode" for its air circulation system that keeps positive pressure within the cabin.

Two of the products officially unveiled at Google's much-anticipated (at least much-hyped) release announcement were widely and correctly predicted: a pair of new Nexus phones. The flagship is the all-metal Huawei 6P, with a 5.7" AMOLED display (2,560x1,440), 3GB of RAM, and a Snapdragon 810 chip. The Huawei overshadows the nonetheless respectable second offering, the LG-made Nexus 5X, which makes concessions in the form of less RAM (2GB instead of the 6P's 3), smaller battery (2700mAh, instead of 3450) and a lesser Snapdragon chip inside (808, rather than 810). Both phones, though, come with USB-C and with a big upgrade for a line of phones not generally praised for its cameras: a large-pixel 12.3-megapixel Sony camera sensor. Much less predicted: Google announced a new bearer for the Pixel name, after its line of high-end Chromebooks; today's entrant is a tablet, not running Chrome, and it's running Android rather than Chrome OS. The Pixel C tablet will debut sometime later this year; google touts it as "the first Android tablet built end-to-end by Google." Also on the agenda today, news that Android 6 will start hitting Nexus devices next week.

New submitter poity writes: After the news first broke of the 9th grader getting cuffed for scaring school officials with what turned out to be a digital clock, Ahmed Mohamed has experienced a surge of popular support — hailed as a genius and a hero, with college scholarships, internship offers, and even an invitation to the White House by President Obama himself. Now, amid rumors of possible racial discrimination lawsuits against the school and local police, some people have begun to more deeply scrutinize the details of the case, especially on the tech side with regard to the homemade clock in question. Recently, a writer at the creative site Artvoice posted a remarkable analysis of Ahmed's clock project, which raises new questions about the case and the manner in which people and the media alike have reacted. The linked analysis posits that Ahmed's clock started out as another clock, rather than a box of parts, and Ahmed can be said to have repackaged rather than "invented" a wholly new clock, but acknowledges that "none of us were there and knows what happened."