Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes: UK surveillance agency GCHQ is exploring the use of a national 'firewall' in its fight against cybercrime, according to the organisation's head of cybersecurity. Alongside BT, Talk Talk and Virgin Media, GCHQ will work to filter out websites and email campaigns which are known to contain malicious content. The intelligence organisation believes that the best to way to set up such a blockade would be to build a national domain name system (DNS). In a speech delivered at the Billington Cyber Security Summit in Washington DC, director general for cyber security at GCHQ, Ciaran Martin, said: 'We're exploring a flagship project on scaling up DNS filtering: what better way of providing automated defences at scale than by the major private providers effectively blocking their customers from coming into contact with known malware and bad addresses?'

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: SpaceX is aiming to resume flights in November following a launch pad fire that destroyed a Falcon 9 rocket and an Israeli communications satellite it was due to lift into orbit, the company's president said on Tuesday. The space services company suspended Falcon 9 flights while it investigates why the rocket burst into flames on Sept 1 as it was being fueled for a routine prelaunch test at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. "We're anticipating being down for about three months, getting back to flight in the November timeframe," Gwynne Shotwell, president of Elon Musk's space company, said at a satellite industry conference in Paris. SpaceX previously said a nearly-completed second launch site in Florida, located at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC), would be finished in November. The pad was last used to launch NASA's space shuttles five years ago.

As Samsung figures out how to tackle the big Note7 fiasco, it has found a temporary solution for existing users of the phone. It plans to roll out an over-the-air (OTA) update on September 20 which would limit the battery charging cap for the Note7 to 60 percent. ZDNET reports: The Over-the-Air (OTA) software upgrade will commence on September 20, 10 am in South Korea. Samsung is in talks with telcos from nine other countries where the phablet is available to deploy a similar software upgrade. Galaxy Note 7 has a battery capacity of 3,500 mAh, but the forced upgrade will enforce it to 2,100 mAh. The measure is meant to protect consumers who are still using the Note7 despite a recommendation to halt use. When the exchange starts on September 19 in South Korea, the tech giant will also offer to pay parts of the data fee.

Apple released iOS 10, the latest iteration of its mobile operating system, roughly an hour ago. If you're planning to update your shiny Apple iPhone or iPad, we will strongly suggest iPhone users to not update for two-three days, especially if an iPhone is your primary phone because it is causing issues for some users. The Next Web reports: According to a growing number of iPhone owners on Twitter, the new iOS 10 update might be worth waiting on. After releasing earlier today, users flocked to the new mobile operating system, as they always do, and a number of them are reporting it's putting the phone into recovery mode, forcing them to go back to wipe the memory, re-install 9.3.5 and then try upgrading again.It's unclear at this point what's causing the issue. At any rate, this isn't the first time a major iOS update has been seeded to users without ironing some critical bugs. Two years ago, iOS 8 had a range of issues, one of which blocked cellular capability on the device. Earlier this year, iOS 9.3 point update also caused issues. And who can forget the Error 53 fiasco?

Dustin Volz, reporting for Reuters: Major technology companies including Facebook, Google and Twitter are urging Congress to support a plan for the U.S. government to cede control of the internet's technical management to the global community, they said in a joint letter dated on Tuesday. The U.S. Commerce Department has primary oversight of the internet's management, largely because it was invented in the United States. Some Republican lawmakers are trying to block the handover to global stakeholders, which include businesses, tech experts and public interest advocates, saying it could stifle online freedom by giving voting rights to authoritarian governments. The years-long plan to transfer oversight of the nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, is scheduled to occur on Oct. 1 unless Congress votes to block the handover. The California-based corporation operates the database for domain names such as .com and .net and their corresponding numeric addresses that allow computers to connect. In the Sept. 13 letter, a copy of which had been reviewed by Reuters before it was sent, the technology companies said it was "imperative" that Congress does not delay the transition.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Beginning September 19th, [Twitter] will cut down on exactly which types of content count toward the platform's 140-character limit. Media attachments (images, GIFs, videos, polls, etc.) and quoted tweets will no longer reduce the count. The extra room for text will give users more flexibility in composing their messages. Twitter first announced plans to stop counting extras like photos, videos, and user polls toward the limit back in May, but gave no firm date on when the shift would occur. A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by The Verge. The date comes from two sources familiar with the company's business, but plans for the rollout could change. Another new adjustment to the character limit is that usernames will no longer count when they're at the beginning of replies, giving users additional room for discussion. It's unclear whether all of these changes will occur simultaneously; certain content types may gradually stop counting against the character limit in stages. But the company will at least kick off the move next Monday.

It's no secret the Lumia brand is struggling to gain any significant market share these days. Earlier this year, it was reported that Microsoft's Windows Phone OS dropped below 1 percent mark share, all but confirming the death of Windows Phone. A new report suggests that, despite the irrelevance of Windows Phone, Microsoft will not be giving up on its mobile OS. Instead, the company plans to drop the Lumia brand by the end of the year and replace it with a brand new Surface Phone in an effort to breathe new life into its flagging smartphone business. The Next Web reports: There is some credibility to the claims. Microsoft's Lumia lineup has shrunk to just four models, and there's nothing to indicate it's working on a successor. In the U.S., where Microsoft has struggled to shift Lumia phones, it has removed the link to buy them from its website. On the retail side, stores have started removing units from display, and are trying to shift remaining stock by offering steep discounts. Further evidence comes from two since-deleted tweets from Laura Butler, engineering director at Microsoft, who posted "Surface iPhone ;-)" on September 6, and "Surface Phone not NOT confirmed. :-)" on September 7, in reply to questions posed by other Twitter users. Microsoft is expected to hold an event in October, where it's believed it will announce a new Surface all-in-one. As Ars Technica pointed out, this could be when Microsoft announces its new Surface Phone, just in time for Christmas.

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: "Curiosity is making us giddy by showing us some of the most amazing vistas we have ever seen on Mars," reports NASA. On the web site for their Mars Science Lab, they're sharing mission updates, but also all the raw photos as they're transmitted back by their Curiosity rover, which is travelling up a Martian mountain. "The plan so far has been to drive about 1/3 mile, stop to drill and drive again sampling the layers of the mountain as Curiosity makes her way up."
Curiosity is trying to determine whether Mars ever had environments capable of supporting simple life forms. NASA points out that it took Curiosity four years to reach its current location, joking about one wall of layered sandstone, "Wait, is this the Utah or Mars?"

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: Amazon plans to open "as many as 100" retail stores in shopping malls by the end of next year, according to Business Insider. The 300- to 500-square-foot stores will sell familiar Amazon hardware products like Kindles and Fire TV, "but the broader goal is to drive more traffic to Amazon's online store, as these devices make it easier to purchase items there" -- and to promote Amazon's Echo personal assistant.

Amazon stores have already quietly opened in 12 states, including six stores in California and more stores in New York, Texas, Virginia, and Massachusetts. But now the brick-and-mortar stores "have emerged from the test phase with a goal to expand and grow," according to one Amazon job posting, and Business Insider reports that new Amazon stores "are popping up almost every week in shopping malls across the country."
The article has pictures of the new Amazon stores, and points out that the company also experienced disappointing results from an earlier experiment with Amazon trucks.

China's plan to build a particle collider that's four times the size of the Large Hadron Collider in Europe "may be in jeopardy" after criticisms of its cost went viral. Long-time Slashdot reader hackingbear quotes the South China Morning Post: On Sunday, Dr Yang Chen-ning, co-winner of the Nobel Prize in physics in 1957...released an article on WeChat opposing the construction of the collider. He said the project would become an investment "black hole" with little scientific value or benefit to society, sucking resources away from other research sectors such as life sciences and quantum physics... Yang's article hit nearly all social media platforms and internet news portals, drawing tens of thousands of positive comments over the last couple of days...

Yang's main argument was that China would not succeed where the United States had failed. A similar project had been proposed in the U.S. but was eventually cancelled in 2012 as the construction far exceeded the initial budget... Yang said existing facilities including the Large Hadron Collider contributed little to the increase of human knowledge and was irrelevant to most people's daily lives. But Dr Wang Yifang, lead scientist of the project with the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of High Energy Physics, argued research in high energy physics lead to the world wide web, mobile phone touch screens and magnetic resonance imaging in hospitals, among other technological breakthroughs.
The collider is expected to cost $21 billion, and won't be completed until 2050.

Long-time Slashdot reader randomErr writes: In a big blow to Qualcomm, Apple plans to incorporate Intel baseband chips into at least some models of the new iPhone 7. The selection of Intel chip means that in newer iPhones Apple will no longer support CDMA technology popularized by Qualcomm. The Wall Street Journal states that many industry analysts believe Intel could be supplying as many as half of of baseband chips for Apple's handsets.
This was the last key iPhone component that didn't have two sources, and the Journal estimates that Intel's revenues could now increase by up to $700 million before the end of 2016.

Can we teach future generations how to solve their problems with computers? Slashdot reader mirandakatz writes: Doctors, lawyers, teachers, farmers -- whatever the profession, it'll soon be full of computational thinking. Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha creator Stephen Wolfram argues on Backchannel that it's essential we start teaching kids to talk to computers today to ensure their success in the future -- and he's got a comprehensive lesson plan.
Arguing that Wikipedia popularized "a more direct style of presenting information," Wolfram writes that computer-assisted education continues the trend, "taking things which could only be talked around, and turning them into things that can be shown through computation directly and explicitly." Wolfram's 11,000-word essay adds that "with all the knowledge and automation that we've built into the Wolfram Language we're finally now to the point where we have the technology to be able to directly teach broad computational thinking, even to kids.." (And without having to start off with loops and conditionals...)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MSPoweruser: Microsoft today announced that the company is bringing support for WebVR to Microsoft Edge on Windows 10. With WebVR, users can experience Virtual Reality content from their web browser on a virtual reality headset such as the Oculus Rift. WebVR support on Microsoft Edge may also be useful for the Windows Holographic Shell on Windows 10, which is expected to arrive sometime later this year. For those unfamiliar, Microsoft will be allowing virtual reality headset owners to use Windows Holographic on their Windows 10 PC -- therefore, Microsoft Edge supporting WebVR can turn out to be very useful. WebVR is already supported in browsers like Google Chrome and Firefox, but it'll be coming to Microsoft Edge in the near-future. At the moment, Microsoft isn't sharing many details about WebVR on Microsoft Edge. While there isn't any official info on when the company plans to release this feature, we suspect it'll be coming with Windows 10 Redstone 2 which is expected to arrive in early 2017.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from FedScoop: Smartphones equipped with special programming can become a sophisticated spy sensor capable of stealing designs from a 3D printer -- just by measuring the noise and electromagnetic radiation the printer emits. Researchers from the University of Buffalo recently discovered how a smartphone on a bench about 8 inches away from a 3D printer could allow someone to reconstruct a simple object being printed with 94 percent accuracy. Complex objects can be copied with 90 percent accuracy. The attack basically reverse-engineers the printing blueprint by reconstructing the movement of the nozzle from the electromagnetic and acoustic energy it generates while working. Most information came from electromagnetic waves, which accounted for about 80 percent of the useful data. The remaining 20 percent came from acoustic waves. Wenyao Xu, assistant professor in the University of Buffalo's Department of Computer Science and Engineering, is the lead author of the study, "My Smartphone Knows What You Print: Exploring Smartphone-Based Side-Channel Attacks Against 3D Printers," which will be presented at the Association for Computing Machinery's 23rd annual Conference on Computer and Communications Security next month in Austria.

Reuters reports:Global ride-hailing company Uber Technologies has aborted plans to pull out of Macau, citing support from residents in the Chinese-ruled gambling hub. Uber launched in Macau less than a year ago but announced at the end of August that it would withdraw from the former Portuguese colony because its drivers faced total fines of 10 million patacas ($1.25 million). The Macau government has taken a firm stance against Uber, with Secretary for Security Wong Sio Chak stating that the service violated local laws. "After much deliberation, Uber will continue to serve the riders and drivers of Macau, the company said in a statement on its website. "The unprecedented amount of support we received over the past few weeks has been overwhelming."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The White House on Thursday named a retired U.S. Air Force general as the government's first federal cyber security chief, a position announced eight months ago that is intended to improve defenses against hackers. Gregory Touhill's job will be to protect government networks and critical infrastructure from cyber threats as federal chief information security officer, according to a statement. President Barack Obama announced the new position in February alongside a budget proposal to Congress asking for $19 billion for cyber security across the U.S. government. Touhill is currently a deputy assistant secretary for cyber security and communications at the Department of Homeland Security. He will begin his new role later this month, a source familiar with the matter said. Grant Schneider, who is the director of cyber security policy at the White House's National Security Council, will be acting deputy to Touhill, according to the announcement. wiredmikey adds from a report via SecurityWeek.Com: The White House today announced that Brigadier General (retired) Gregory J. Touhill has been named the first Federal Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). Back in February, President Barack Obama unveiled a cybersecurity "national action plan" (CNAP) which called for an overhaul of aging government networks and a high-level commission to boost security awareness. As part of the plan, the White House said it would hire a federal CISO to direct cybersecurity across the federal government. General Touhill is currently the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity and Communications in the Office of Cybersecurity and Communications at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The key hire comes at a time when the government needs cybersecurity talent more than ever. Earlier this week a report published by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee said the data breaches disclosed by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) last year were a result of culture and leadership failures, and should not be blamed on technology.

As Dell processes the acquisition of EMC Corp, its largest buyout ever, it plans to cut about 2,000 to 3,000 jobs, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. The layoffs are expected to happen later this year, and regions such as the United States will be impacted the most by it. From the report:The reductions are planned for later this year and will be mostly in the U.S. and in areas such as supply chain and general and administrative positions, as well as some marketing jobs, said the people. Dell is looking for cost savings of about $1.7 billion in the first 18 months after the transaction but is largely focused on using the deal to boost sales by several times that amount, the people added. The new company has 140,000 employees. "As is common with deals of this size, there will be some overlaps we will need to manage and where some employee reduction will occur. We will do everything possible to minimize the impact on jobs," Dave Farmer, spokesman for Dell, wrote in an e-mail. "We expect revenue gains will outweigh any cost savings, and revenue growth drives employment growth."

The top U.S. communications regulator plans to unveil a revised plan to allow about 100 million pay TV subscribers to replace expensive set-top boxes with less-costly apps that provide access to television and video programs, Fortune reports. From the report: Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler proposed in January opening the $20 billion cable and satellite TV set-top box market to new competitors and allow consumers to access multiple content providers from a single app or device. The plan, aimed at breaking the cable industry's long grip on the lucrative pay TV market and lowering prices for consumers, drew fierce opposition from TV and content providers, including AT&T, Comcast and Twenty-First Century Fox. The FCC has said Americans spend $20 billion a year to lease pay-TV boxes, or an average of $231 annually. Set-top box rental fees have jumped 185 percent since 1994, while the cost of TVs, computers and mobile phones has dropped 90 percent, the FCC has estimated. Update: 09/08 19:18 GMT by M :Tom Wheeler has just published the proposed laws at LATimes.

Microsoft plans to launch at least one Surface all-in-one PC next month, reports ZDNet. The company has been testing 21-inch, 24-inch, and 27-inch models for quite some time, but it is unclear which variant it plans to launch at its event in October. ZDNet reports:I've heard that Surface Cardinal could be positioned as a product that can turn your desk into "a studio." My bet: Cardinal is the rumored Surface All-in-One device running Windows 10, which may come in one, two and/or three different screen sizes (21, 24 or 27), as first reported by Windows Central. This may be the consumer-focused version of Microsoft's Surface Hub, as Windows Central speculated, using the Perceptive Pixel screen technology that's at the core of Surface Hub.

dcblogs writes from a report via Computerworld: The University of California is laying off a group of IT workers at its San Francisco campus as part of a plan to move work offshore. Laying off IT workers as part of a shift to offshore is somewhere between rare and unheard-of in the public sector. The layoffs will happen at the end of February, but before the final day arrives the IT employees expect to train foreign replacements from India-based IT services firm HCL. The firm is working under a university contract valued at $50 million over five years. This layoff affects 17% of UCSF's total IT staff, broken down this way: 49 IT permanent employees will lose their jobs, along with 12 contract employees and 18 vendor contractors. This number also includes 18 vacant IT positions that won't be filled, according to the university. Governments and publicly supported institutions, such as UC, have contracted with offshore outsourcers, but usually it's for new IT work or to supplement an existing project. The HCL contract with UCSF can be used by other UC campuses, which means the layoffs may expand across its 10 campuses. HCL is a top user of H-1B visa workers.