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Submission + - Sorority Files Lawsuit After Sacred Secrets Posted on Penny Arcade Forums (seattlepi.com) 1

Submitted by Limekiller42
Limekiller42 writes: Lawyers for the Phi Sigma Sigma sorority have filed suit in Seattle's King County Superior Court against an unidentified person for "publicizing the sorority’s secret handshake, robe colors and other practices." The well-written article is by Levi Pulkkinen of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and states that the sorority is seeking a restraining order and financial compensation for damages.

Submission + - AMD outlines plans for Zen-based processors, first due in 2016

Submitted by crookedvulture
crookedvulture writes: AMD laid out its plans for processors based on its all-new Zen microarchitecture today, promising 40% higher performance-per-clock from from the x86 CPU core. Zen will use simultaneous multithreading to execute two threads per core, and it will be built using "3D" FinFETs. The first chips are due to hit high-end desktops and servers next year. In 2017, Zen will combine with integrated graphics in smaller APUs designed for desktops and notebooks. AMD also plans to produce a high-performance server APU with a "transformational memory architecture" likely similar to the on-package DRAM being developed for the company's discrete graphics processors. This chip could give AMD a credible challenger in the HPC and supercomputing markets—and it could also make its way into laptops and desktops.

Submission + - Self-destructing virus kills off PCs (bbc.com)

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: A computer virus that tries to avoid detection by making the machine it infects unusable has been found.

If Rombertik's evasion techniques are triggered, it deletes key files on a computer, making it constantly restart.

Analysts said Rombertik was "unique" among malware samples for resisting capture so aggressively.

On Windows machines where it goes unnoticed, the malware steals login data and other confidential information.

Rombertik typically infected a vulnerable machine after a booby-trapped attachment on a phishing message had been opened, security researchers Ben Baker and Alex Chiu, from Cisco, said in a blogpost.

Some of the messages Rombertik travels with pose as business enquiry letters from Microsoft.

The malware "indiscriminately" stole data entered by victims on any website, the researchers said.
And it got even nastier when it spotted someone was trying to understand how it worked.

"Rombertik is unique in that it actively attempts to destroy the computer if it detects certain attributes associated with malware analysis," the researchers said.

Submission + - New Screenshots Detail Microsoft Spartan Web Browser For Windows 10 Smartphones (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: One of the most anticipated new features in Windows 10 is the Spartan web browser, which will replace the long-serving Internet Explorer. We've seen Spartan in action on the desktop/notebook front, but we're now getting a closer look at Spartan in action on the mobile side thanks to some newly leaked screenshots. Perhaps the biggest change with Spartan is the repositioning of the address bar from the bottom of the screen to the top (which is also in line with other mobile browsers like Safari and Chrome). The refresh button has also been moved from its right-hand position within the address bar to a new location to the left of the address bar. Reading Lists also make an appearance in this latest build of Spartan along with Microsoft's implementation of "Hubs" on Windows 10 for mobile devices.

Submission + - No Child Left Unspied On: Pearson Monitoring Social Media for Test References

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: As if people haven't found enough to hate about the new 11+ hour K-12 PARCC standardized testing (thank you, Bill Gates, may I have another!), the Washington Post reports that Pearson, the world’s largest education company, is monitoring social media during the administration of the PARCC Common Core test to detect any security breaches, saying it is "obligated" to alert authorities when any problems are discovered. The monitoring of social media was revealed in a message that a New Jersey School Superintendent sent to colleagues about a "Priority 1 Alert" initiated by Pearson in response to a student who referenced a PARCC test question in an after school Tweet. The news was broken in a blog entry by former NJ Star-Ledger reporter Bob Braun, who also posted the Superintendent's message and called the monitoring of social media nothing less than "spying." Pearson has a contract of more than $100 million to administer the PARCC in New Jersey.

Submission + - Lawsuit over quarter horse's clone may redefine animal breeding (latimes.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Lynx Melody Too, a clone of a renowned quarter horse, is at the center of a lawsuit that could change the world of animal breeding and competition.

Texas horse breeder Jason Abraham and veterinarian Gregg Veneklasen sued the American Quarter Horse Assn., claiming that Lynx Melody Too should be allowed to register as an official quarter horse. A Texas jury decided in their favor in 2013, but a three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that ruling in January, saying there was "insufficient" evidence of wrongdoing by the association.

The Jockey Club, which registers thoroughbreds, has banned them from racing. But clones are allowed in other competitions, such as dressage and rodeo. There is little uniformity among other animal groups. The American Kennel Club has banned clones; the Cat Fanciers' Assn. has no policy yet since no one has tried to register a cloned cat.

Submission + - Russia abandons super-rocket designed to compete with SLS

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Russia has decided to abandon an expensive attempt to build an SLS-like super-rocket and will instead focus on incremental development of its smaller but less costly Angara rocket.

Facing significant budgetary pressures, the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, has indefinitely postponed its ambitious effort to develop a super-heavy rocket to rival NASA's next-generation Space Launch System, SLS. Instead, Russia will focus on radical upgrades of its brand-new but smaller Angara-5 rocket which had its inaugural flight in Dec. 2014, the agency's Scientific and Technical Council, NTS, decided on Thursday, Mar. 12.

For Russia's space industry, it appears that these budgetary pressures have been a blessing in disguise. Rather than waste billions on an inefficient rocket for which there is no commercial demand — as NASA is doing with SLS (under orders from a wasteful Congress) — they will instead work on further upgrades of Angara, much like SpaceX has done with its Falcon family of rockets. This will cost far less, is very efficient, and provides them a better chance to compete for commercial launches that can help pay for it all. And best of all, it offers them the least costly path to future interplanetary missions, which means they might actually be able to make those missions happen. To quote the article again:

By switching upper stages of the existing Angara from kerosene to the more potent hydrogen fuel, engineers might be able to boost the rocket's payload from current 25 tons to 35 tons for missions to the low Earth orbit. According to Roscosmos, Angara-A5V could be used for piloted missions to the vicinity of the Moon and to its surface.

In a sense, the race is now on between Angara-A5V and Falcon Heavy.

Submission + - Uber sued over driver data breach, adding to legal woes (reuters.com)

Submitted by wabrandsma
wabrandsma writes: (Reuters) — Uber Technologies Inc has been hit with a proposed class action lawsuit over a recently disclosed data breach involving the personal information of about 50,000 drivers, the latest in a series of legal woes to hit the Internet car service.

The suit, filed Thursday in federal court in San Francisco by Sasha Antman, an Uber driver in Portland, Oregon, says the company did not do enough to prevent the 2014 breach and waited too long — about five months — to disclose it.

Antman says Uber violated a California law requiring companies to safeguard employee's personal information.

Submission + - Microsoft Has Received Million Pieces of Feedback for Windows 10 (neowin.net)

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: Microsoft's Windows Insider lead, Gabe Aul, has announced that the company has received one million pieces of feedback through the Windows 10 Technical Preview Feedback app. The app opens right from the Start Menu and it has been critical to the operating system's development allowing testers to send details to Microsoft about what they think of Windows, problems they have been facing, and if there are any improvements they would like to see. The app has been part of both desktop and phone flavors of the OS. Microsoft seems to have made a real effort lately to listen to consumer feedback and has been opening up avenues to discuss new features for some time. Have you sent feedback through the app?

Submission + - Pi day Extraordinaire (bbc.com)

Submitted by DrTJ
DrTJ writes: Today's Pi day: http://www.piday.org/. This year is a bit more extraordinary as it is 2015: 3/14/15 (in american date format). If you add time you get increased accuracy, up to nine digits: 3/14/15 9:26:54. Be sure to celebrate this pi second properly, as it will never occur again (in your time zone).

Submission + - Self-Driving car will make trip from San Francisco to New York City

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Lots of people decide, at one point or another, to drive across the US. College kids. Beat poets. Truckers. In American folklore, it doesn’t get much more romantic than cruising down the highway, learning about life (or, you know, hauling shipping pallets). Now that trip is being taken on by a new kind of driver, one that won’t appreciate natural beauty or the (temporary) joy that comes from a gas station chili dog: a robot. On March 22, an autonomous car will set out from the Golden Gate Bridge toward New York for a 3,500-mile drive that, if all goes according to plan, will push robo-cars much closer to reality. Audi’s taken its self-driving car from Silicon Valley to Las Vegas, Google’s racked up more than 700,000 autonomous miles, and Volvo’s preparing to put regular people in its robot-controlled vehicles. But this will be one of the most ambitious tests yet for a technology that promises to change just about everything, and it’s being done not by Google or Audi or Nissan, but by a company many people have never heard of: Delphi.

Submission + - The Internet of Things Just Found Your Lost Wallet (dice.com)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Ever forgotten your wallet in a coffee shop or restaurant? Now there’s a way to ensure it’ll never happen again: Woolet, which its creators bill as a “smart wallet.” It features a rechargeable battery, Bluetooth support, and the ability to synchronize with a smartphone app; if you walk 20-85 feet away from your wallet, the app will make a sound and guide you back to it. The platform's being financed on Kickstarter, and attracted attention from TechCrunch and some other places, but it begs the question: is this yet another example of connected devices run amok—shiny and interesting as a concept but not nearly useful enough for the population at large? What would it take for a connected device, whether a wallet or a smoke detector, to gain mass appeal?

Submission + - UK Police and PRS Shutdown Karaoke Torrent Site (torrentfreak.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The City of London's Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit and copyright and royalty group PRS for Music have teamed up for what appears to be a first-of-its-kind action. Arresting a 46-year-old man, this week police shutdown one of the Internet's few karaoke-focused BitTorrent trackers.

While at some stages wildly popular in the East, to most in the West a night at a karaoke bar is probably more closely associated with too many beers and individuals belting out classics wearing the aural equivalent of beer goggles.

The pastime is considered by some as a bit of a joke but karaoke is big business. According to the people behind the web-based Playstation software SingOn, the global karaoke market could be worth as much as $10 billion.

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