Slashdot Mirror

Lasrick writes: "I have been involved in government at the state and federal level for a long time and have had my share of political and legal run-ins with government agencies, but rarely in more than 50 years in politics have I encountered a government agency more committed to secrecy—perhaps even deception—than the US Department of Energy." So writes former governor of Idaho Cecil D. Andrus in this account of the U.S. government's plan to ship commercial spent fuel to the Idaho National Lab for what the feds call "research" but what the Andrus (and his predecessor) feel is an attempt to store high level nuclear waste in Idaho. According to him, despite Freedom of Information Act requests, the federal government is not sharing its plan for the waste once it gets to Idaho. This is a disturbing tale of government secrecy and stonewalling, and the problem with nuclear waste: no one wants it in their backyard.

An anonymous reader writes: Drone lawyer and commercial pilot Jonathan Rupprecht believes any drone registration plan is a necessary first step, but he's also doubtful that registering drones will be a valuable solution. "Who is going to regulate this? Point-of-sale? Wal-Mart? Best Buy?" he asked. "What if I'm ordering parts off the Internet and put them together? That's what the gun industry does." A registration number, he said, could quickly be lost if a drone is bought and sold multiple times. Rupprecht believes geofencing will produce far better results by preventing problems as opposed to trying to figure out who is responsible after something has happened.

An anonymous reader writes: Facebook has announced its plans to notify users if they are under threat from state-sponsored cyberattacks. The social media giant proposes a notification system triggered when its algorithms suspect nation-state activity. The alert will pop up on the user's Facebook page, warning them of the danger and advising them to switch on login approvals, which require the individual to enter a security code sent to them from Facebook.

dmr001 writes: As seen previously, Palo Alto startup Theranos planned to put the power of affordable lab work directly in the hands of patients with tiny fingerprick samples taken at Walgreen's, with four hour turnaround. The company claimed their tests were "made possible by advances in the field of microfluidics." But they were cagey about methodology and didn't use FDA approved analyzers.

Now, the Wall Street Journal reports (paywalled) (among others) that all but one of Theranos' analyzers currently in use is off the shelf, and that their tiny samples may not always have been accurate. Typically cagey founder Elizabeth Holmes vigorously disputes the criticism of her $9 billion startup, but entrenched players like Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp (which do quite well charging orders of magnitude above Theranos' prices) are likely doing a happy dance.

Physicians worrying about patients bringing in their own carcinoembryonic antigen levels and Epstein Barr Virus panels to confirm their Internet diagnoses of cancer and chronic fatigue may also be breathing sighs of relief, albeit with bittersweet regret at the potential loss of the price advantage and milliliter samples.

CNET reports (and CTO John Saw explains on the company's blog) that Sprint has decided to taper access to a slice of its "unlimited" wireless data customers, by throttling access (not curtailing it, at least) to those who slurp down more than 23 gigabytes per month -- the same cap that T-Mobile has imposed. If you think "throttled" and "unlimited" don't quite jibe to describe the same service, you're not the only one to quibble: CNET notes that regulators have "begun scrutinizing the carriers' practice [of slowing access past a cap]. In June, the Federal Communications Commission threatened to fine AT&T $100 million for deceiving its customers by mislabeling its service as unlimited. The FCC also challenged Verizon when the company planned to expand its data throttling policy to its 4G customers. The company retracted that policy last fall. In June, Verizon also stopped slowing unlimited-data traffic for 3G customers."

Gizmodo and Engadget are both reporting (and both pointing to a report at NBC News) that the Department of Transportation is expected to announce Monday a plan to regulate drone use in the U.S., based on fears of danger to aviation. From the relied-on report at NBC News: The federal government will announce a new plan requiring anyone buying a drone to register the device with the U.S. Department of Transportation, NBC news has learned. ... Under the plan, the government would work with the drone industry to set up a structure for registering the drones, and the regulations could be in place by Christmas. That sounds like an impossible task, if it's to take in all remote-controlled flying devices that might be described as drones. About this time last year, Chris Anderson (ex-Wired editor, and now head of 3D Robotics) estimated that about half a million drones had already been sold in the U.S., and that sounds like an undercount even for then, given the many cheap-and-cheerful options. From suppliers like Banggood, tiny quadcopters can now be had for less than $20, though it's hard to think of them as a danger to aviation.

Patrick O'Neill writes: Cars and streets are now connecting to the Internet for a long list of transportation and safety benefits but the new tech has drawbacks. Experts from government, industry, and academia say they have no confidence they'll develop a secure system that can protect users from tracking and privacy breaches. Their opinions were captured in a recent survey (PDF) from the Government Accountability Office. "The government is coordinating with the transportation industry on the Security Credential Management System (SCMS), a project to verify that basic road-safety messages come from authorized devices. ... At this point, it’s not clear who would even run such a system. Previous plans pointed toward car industry control, but the Transportation Department is now looking into playing 'a more active leadership role' for V2I as well as V2V (vehicle-to-vehicle) networks. That role would include setting security and privacy standards when V2I and V2V networks become operational."

Lucas123 writes: Seven of the world's top 10 smartphone vendors hail from China as does PC giant Lenovo, which is driving up the amount of NAND flash and DRAM the country consumes. This year alone, China is expected to purchase nearly 30% of the world's NAND flash and 21% of its DRAM, according to a report from TrendForce. Additionally, state-backed companies are trying to break into Western markets with SSDs. For example, Sage Microelectronics (SageMicro), a four-year-old company based in Hangzhou, China, plans to release an 8TB SSD next month that will be based on eMMC flash, and it said it will release a 10TB drive next year. Update: 10/16 15:11 GMT by T : Note this interesting highlight from the second story linked above: SageMicron is selling not just drives that emphasize capacity over speed, but also a feature that will do doubt appeal to government agencies or private citizens intent on replicating Mission Impossible-style data wiping. The company's "Smart Destruction" function "can be set to erase encryption keys, perform a drive erase or physically fry the memory chips with a pulse of high voltage ... [and] can be triggered using a digital timer, a mobile phone instruction, or by simply pressing a button. 'Yes, it actually smokes sometimes when you push the button,' [Sage U.S. sales director Troy Rutt] said. 'People like that.'"

JustAnotherOldGuy writes: A Ukrainian man who allegedly tried to frame cyber-security expert Brian Krebs has been extradited to the United States and is due in Newark federal court today, prosecutors said. Sergei Vovnenko, known as "Fly," "Flycracker" or "Flyck," is thought to have been behind a 2013 plot to send heroin to cyber-security blogger Brian Krebs, a plot Krebs himself said he foiled because he was monitoring the site where it was hatched. "Angry that I'd foiled his plan to have me arrested for drug possession," Krebs wrote on his blog, "Fly had a local florist send a gaudy floral arrangement in the shape of a giant cross to my home, complete with a menacing message."

Lucas123 writes: The Irvine Company, a Newport Beach-based real estate developer that is a dominant landlord in Orange County, plans to install Tesla commercial batteries in two dozen of its buildings around Irvine Spectrum and John Wayne Airport. The project is the first of its kind of that size. The batteries will charge during non-peak hours and distribute power to the buildings during peak hours, a process that's expected to save the developer up to 10% of its energy costs or about $1 million a year.

An anonymous reader writes: Updating a full OS distribution is no small task so it is usually no surprise that even a 5-6 month schedule may tend to get pushed back to address issues. However, the Fedora 23 release schedule made it through the Alpha, Beta and Final freeze periods so far on time. This has been accomplished despite having to address plenty of Alpha Blocker and Beta Blocker bugs. Now all that is left is to clear existing and future Final Blocker bugs in the next two weeks. The release of Fedora 23 will provide some nice incremental updates and should result in the end of life of Fedora 21 around the end of November.

MikeChino writes: Your next house could snap together like a jigsaw puzzle without the use of any power tools. Clemson University students designed and built Indigo Pine, a carbon-neutral house that exists largely as a set of digital files that can be e-mailed to a wood shop anywhere in the world, CNC cut, and then assembled on-site in a matter of days. “Indigo Pine has global application,” says the Clemson team. “Because the house exists largely as a set of digital files, the plans can be sent anywhere in the world, constructed using local materials, adapted to the site, and influenced by local culture.”

An anonymous reader writes: Tyne McConnon from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports that a research firm in China plans to"sell its 'micro pig' as a pet after it successfully edited the DNA of the animal to stunt its growth. Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) created the pig, which grows to weigh between 14 and 20 kilograms, by changing the DNA responsible for its growth. The company originally genetically modified the Bama pig breed for research but announced at a Bio Tech Leader summit in China recently their plans to sell it."

MarkWhittington writes: NASA released a document describing the steps involved in its Journey to Mars program (PDF). But, as the Wall Street Journal suggests, the "plan" has a conspicuous lack of specifics. It doesn't go into how much the program will cost or what intermediate steps have to be taken before human beings set foot on Mars in the 2030s. This is likely because of the upcoming and subsequent changes of governing administrations — the space agency's deep space exploration goals are likely to get a reevaluation. The plan serves as a public relations document more than anything else.

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.'"

An anonymous reader writes: An article at Ars Technica tells the story of Shuttle-Centaur, a NASA project during the mid-1980s to carry a Centaur rocket to orbit within the cargo bay of a space shuttle. As you might expect, shuttle launches became vastly more complex with such heavy yet delicate cargo. Still, officials saw it as an easy way to send probes further into the solar system. They developed a plan to launch Challenger and Atlantis within 5 days of each other in mid-1986 to bring the Ulysses and Galileo probes to orbit, each with its own Shuttle-Centaur. Though popular opinion at the time was that the shuttle program was "unstoppable," individuals within NASA were beginning to push back against slipping safety standards. "While a host of unknowns remained concerning launching a volatile, liquid-fueled rocket stage on the back of a space shuttle armed with a liquid-filled tank and two solid rocket boosters, NASA and its contractors galloped full speed toward a May 1986 launch deadline for both spacecraft." The destruction of Challenger in January, 1986 put Shuttle-Centaur on hold. The safety investigation that ensued quickly came to the conclusion that it presented unacceptable risks, and the project was canceled that June.

An anonymous reader writes: Just a few days ago, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey returned to the company and took over the role of CEO. Now, the NY Times reports that the company will be facing layoffs as he cuts the company's costs. Twitter somehow manages to employ over 4,100 people across 35+ offices, so many investors are thrilled with the news. "Twitter's spending has been rising. In the last quarter for which Twitter reported financial results, costs and expenses totaled $633 million, up 37 percent from a year earlier. The layoffs will most likely affect multiple areas of the company, including the engineering and media teams, according to the people with knowledge of the plans." The company is also dropping plans to build a 100,000 square-foot expansion to its headquarters.

Mickeycaskill writes: Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, has outlined the organization's plans to improve open source security. He says failing to do so could threaten a "golden age" which has created billion dollar companies and seen Microsoft, Apple, and others embrace open technologies. Not long ago, the organization launched the Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII), a body backed by 20 major IT firms, and is investing millions of dollars in grants, tools, and other support for open source projects that have been underfunded. This was never move obvious than following the discovery of the Heartbleed Open SSL bug last year. "Almost the entirety of the internet is entirely reliant on open source software," Zemlin said. "We've reached a golden age of open source. Virtually every technology and product and service is created using open source. Heartbleed literally broke the security of the Internet. Over a long period of time, whether we knew it or not, we became dependent on open source for the security and Integrity of the internet."

nicholasjay writes: In November, Verizon Wireless is going to start charging its customers with the grandfathered "unlimited data" plans an extra $20 for the data. This is obviously an attempt to get people off of the old unlimited data plans. Even though a Verizon spokesperson confirmed the change, I'm hoping they won't go through with this plan — but right now I'm weighing all my options.

szczys writes: You'd think tide prediction would be quite easy: it comes in, it goes out. But of course it's driven by gravity between the moon and earth and there's a lot more to it. Today, computer models make this easy, but before computers we used incredible analog machines to predict the tides. The best of these machines were the deciding factor in setting a date for the Allies landing in Europe leading to the end of the second world war. From the Hackaday story: "In England, tide prediction was handled by Arthur Thomas Doodson from the Liverpool Tidal Institute. It was Doodson who made the tidal predictions for the Allied invasion at Normandy. Doodson needed access to local tide data, but the British only had information for the nearby ports. Factors like the shallow water effect and local weather impact on tidal behavior made it impossible to interpolate for the landing sites based on the port data. The shallow water effect could really throw off the schedule for demolishing the obstacles if the tide rose too quickly. Secret British reconnaissance teams covertly collected shallow water data at the enemy beaches and sent it to Doodson for analysis. To further complicate things, the operatives couldn't just tell Doodson that the invasion was planned for the beaches of Normandy. So he had to figure it out from the harmonic constants sent to him by William Ian Farquharson, superintendent of tides at the Hydrographic Office of the Royal Navy. He did so using the third iteration of Kelvin's predictor along with another machine. These were kept in separate rooms lest they be taken out by the same bomb.