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Security

Huawei Laptop 'Backdoor' Flaw Raises Concerns (bbc.com) 95

Posted by msmash from the security-woes dept.
A flaw in Huawei Matebook laptops, found by Microsoft researchers, could have been used to take control of machines. From a report: The "sophisticated flaw" had probably been introduced at the manufacturing stage, one expert told BBC News. Huawei is under increasing scrutiny around the world over how closely it is tied to the Chinese government. The company, which denies any collusion with Beijing, corrected the flaw after it was notified about it in January. Prof Alan Woodward, a computer security expert based at Surrey University, told BBC News the flaw had the hallmarks of a "backdoor" created by the US's National Security Agency to spy on the computers of targets. That tool was leaked online and has been used by a wide variety of hackers, including those who are state-sponsored and criminal gangs. "It was introduced at the manufacture stage but the path by which it came to be there is unknown and the fact that it looks like an exploit that is linked to the NSA doesn't mean anything," Prof Woodward said.
Programming

One Of LLVM's Top Contributors Quits Development Over Code of Conduct, Outreach Program (phoronix.com) 1235

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Rafael Avila de Espindola is the fifth most active contributor to LLVM with more than 4,300 commits since 2006, but now he has decided to part ways with the project. From a report: Rafael posted a rather lengthy mailing list message to fellow LLVM developers today entitled I am leaving llvm. He says the reason for abandoning LLVM development after 12 years is due to changes in the community. In particular, the "social injustice" brought on the organization's new LLVM Code of Conduct and its decision to participate in this year's Outreachy program to encourage women and other minority groups to get involved with free software development. "I am definitely sad to lose Rafael from the LLVM project, but it is critical to the long term health of the project that we preserve an inclusive community. I applaud Rafael for standing by his personal principles, this must have been a hard decision," Chris Lattner, tweeted Thursday.

Submission + - SPAM: Tens of Thousands of Malicious Apps Using Facebook APIs

Submitted by lod123
lod123 writes: At least 25,936 malicious apps are currently using one of Facebook’s APIs, such as a login API or messaging API. These allow apps to access a range of information from Facebook profiles, like name, location and email address.
Trustlook discovered the malicious apps using a formula, which created a risk score for apps based on more than 80 pieces of information for each app, including permissions, libraries, risky API calls and network activity.
Link to Original Source
Democrats

Computer Specialist Who Deleted Clinton Emails May Have Asked Reddit For Tips (usnews.com) 612

Posted by BeauHD from the undercover-investigators dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from U.S. News and World Report: An army of reddit users believes it has found evidence that former Hillary Clinton computer specialist Paul Combetta solicited free advice regarding Clinton's private email server from users of the popular web forum. A collaborative investigation showed a reddit user with the username stonetear requested help in relation to retaining and purging email messages after 60 days, and requested advice on how to remove a "VERY VIP" individual's email address from archived content. The requests match neatly with publicly known dates related to Clinton's use of a private email server while secretary of state. Stonetear has deleted the posts, but before doing so, the pages were archived by other individuals. "ARCHIVE EVERYTHING YOU CAN!!!!" a person wrote on a popular thread on the Donald Trump-supporting subreddit r/The_Donald, as the entries disappeared. There are several reasons to believe the reddit user is indeed Combetta, who was granted immunity by the Justice Department during its investigation of Clinton's private server after he deleted a large number of emails. The evidence connecting Combetta to the account is circumstantial, but also voluminous. The inactive website combetta.com is registered to the email address stonetear@gmail.com, a search of domain registration information using the service whois.com indicates. An account for a person named Paul Combetta on the web bazaar Etsy also has the username stonetear. And, perhaps most damningly, there are the dates. Stonetear posted to reddit on July 24, 2014: "Hello all- I may be facing a very interesting situation where I need to strip out a VIP's (VERY VIP) email address from a bunch of archived email that I have both in a live Exchange mailbox, as well as a PST file. Basically, they don't want the VIP's email address exposed to anyone, and want to be able to either strip out or replace the email address in the to/from fields in all of the emails we want to send out..." U.S. News and World Reports adds: "On July 23, 2014, the House Select Committee on Benghazi had reached an agreement with the State Department on the production of records, according to an FBI report released earlier this month on the bureau's probe of her email use." Stonetear submitted an additional post to reddit on Dec. 10, 2014 that reads: "Hello- I have a client who wants to push out a 60 day email retention policy for certain users. However, they also want these users to have a 'Save Folder' in their Exchange folder list where the users can drop items that they want to hang onto longer than the 60 day window. All email in any other folder in the mailbox should purge anything older than 60 days (should not apply to calendar or contact items of course). How would I go about this? Some combination of retention and managed folder policy?"

UPDATE 9/19/2016: Slashdot reader NotInHere points out that there is a Slashdot user named "StoneTear" as well.

Comment Re: By far... (Score 1) 485

by gururise (#52433615) Attached to: DVD Player Found In Tesla Autopilot Crash, Says Florida Officials

Agreed. According to the article, Tesla claims that the forward looking camera may have had difficulty distinguishing the white truck from the sky. What is concerning is that it appears Tesla is using cameras for forward collision detection. Why not something less prone to noise from sunlight, like Ultrasound or laser rangefinding? Relying solely on cameras is worrying in my opinion.
Censorship

World Reacts To The Worst Mass Shooting In U.S. History (cnn.com) 1718

Posted by EditorDavid from the awfulness-in-Orlando dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Fifty people were killed inside Pulse, a gay nightclub, Orlando Police Chief John Mina and other officials said Sunday morning, just hours after a shooter opened fire in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. At least 53 more people were injured, Mina said. Police have shot and killed the gunman, he told reporters.

The shooter is not from the Orlando area, Mina said. He has been identified as Omar Saddiqui Mateen, 29, of Fort Pierce, about 120 miles southeast of Orlando, two law enforcement officials tell CNN.

Orlando authorities said they consider the violence an act of domestic terror. The FBI is involved. While investigators are exploring all angles, they "have suggestions the individual has leanings towards (Islamic terrorism), but right now we can't say definitely..."
In the discussion on this submission, Slashdot readers reported that Reddit is among the sites that have removed some discussions about the shooter's identity, with one reader even reporting "Posts directing people where and how to give blood have been removed."
Education

Girls-Only Computer Camps Formed At Behest of Top Google, Facebook Execs 449

Posted by samzenpus from the girls-only dept.
theodp writes: Reporting on Google exec Susan Wojcicki's appearance at DreamForce, Inc.'s Tess Townsend writes: "The YouTube CEO said her daughter had stated point-blank that she did not like computers, so Wojcicki enrolled her in a computer camp. The camp made her daughter dislike tech even more. Wojcicki reported her daughter came back saying, 'Everyone in the class was a boy and nobody was like me and now I hate computers even more.' So, mom called the camp and spoke to the CEO, asking that the camp be made more welcoming to girls" (video). Fortune reported last July that it was the urging of Wojcicki and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg that prompted iD Tech Camps — which Wojcicki's and Sandberg's kids had attended — to spin off a girls-only chain of tech camps called Alexa Cafe, which was trialed in the Bay Area in 2014 and expanded to nine locations in 2015. Earlier this month, Fortune noted that Wojcicki's daughter attended the $949-a-week Alexa Cafe summer camp at Palo Alto High, which was coincidentally hosted in the multi-million dollar Media Center (video) that was built thanks to the efforts of Wojcicki's mother Esther (a long-time Paly journalism teacher) and partially furnished and equipped by sister Anne (23andMe CEO) and ex-brother-in-law Sergey Brin's charitable foundation.

Comment We are not there yet folks! (Score 1) 1083

by gururise (#50000803) Attached to: Supreme Court Ruling Supports Same-Sex Marriage

While this decision to allow homosexual people to marry is to be praised, there are groups of other people still being discriminated against and prevented from marrying even though they love and commit to each other.

A good example of a group still being discriminated against are consenting adults who wish to marry into polygamous relationships. Why do these people not deserve the same rights and protections as homosexual and heterosexual people?

#EqualRightsForAllHumans
Education

Cornell Study: For STEM Tenure Track, Women Twice As Likely To Be Hired As Men 517

Posted by timothy from the whose-bias-is-called-bias dept.
_Sharp'r_ writes In the first "empirical study of sexism in faculty hiring using actual faculty members", Cornell University researchers found that when using identical qualifications, but changing the sex of the applicant, "women candidates are favored 2 to 1 over men for tenure-track positions in the science, technology, engineering and math fields." An anonymous reader links to the study itself.

Comment Re:What about range on this smaller car? (Score 1) 247

by gururise (#47384653) Attached to: Tesla Aims For $30,000 Price, 2017 Launch For Model E

Yes, the Chevy Volt mostly does this. It operates in Series Hybrid mode (ie. uses a 1.4L ICE with 9 gallon tank to charge the battery) when speeds are low and switches to a sort of parallel hybrid mode when speeds are higher. The Chevy Volt gets a combined 37MPG when driven in this mode.

A true series Hybrid, like the BMW i3 ReX utilizes a much smaller 0.4L ICE with a 1.9 gallon tank to charge the battery and give you an additional 92 miles of range on gasoline.

Bunk Camp - Apple Gets It Wrong? 731

Posted by Zonk from the see-it's-a-clever-twist-of-one-letter dept.
An anonymous reader writes "CNET.com.au has posted a commentary that attempts to cut away the hype surrounding Boot Camp. From the article: 'Boot Camp will do little to coax Windows XP users into switching to Mac OS X. For this to happen, Apple needs to either license out OS X to all users -- not just Mac owners -- or support a true Mac virtualisation application.'"

Two Legged Robot Sets Speed Record 149

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the see-bot-run-runbot-run dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers in Germany and Scotland have made the fastest two-legged robot yet (for its size) called RunBot. It is controlled by a simple program that mimics the way neurons control reflexes in humans and other animals. From the article: 'We wanted to show that a very simple system with a simple neuronal controller could walk in a natural manner - and fast,' says Florentin Wörgötter, from the University of Göttingen in Germany. The story also features couple of videos of RunBot in action."

Cosmic Radiation Speeds up Aging in Space? 218

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the space-raisins dept.
SpaceAdmiral writes "The Theory of Relativity tells us that the faster a person travels the slower time passes for that person relative to someone left on Earth. This means that traveling at high velocities in a spacecraft should reduce one's aging. However, recent research suggests that cosmic radiation may counteract that anti-aging effect. Iron-nuclei radiation affects the aging of cells, which is possibly one of the reasons astronauts who have been to the Moon tend to get cataracts about 7 years earlier than other astronauts."

IBM Germany Leaving Vista for Linux 351

Posted by CmdrTaco from the that-just-seems-strange dept.
UltimaGuy writes "During a presentation on IBM's involvement with Open Source, Andreas Pleschek from IBM in Stuttgart, Germany, who heads open source and Linux technical sales across North East Europe for IBM made a very interesting statement..."Andreas Pleschek also told that IBM has cancelled their contract with Microsoft as of October this year. That means that IBM will not use Windows Vista for their desktops. Beginning from July, IBM employees will begin using IBM Workplace on their new, Red Hat-based platform. Not all at once - some will keep using their present Windows versions for a while. But none will upgrade to Vista." "

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