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The Supreme Court has refused to hear a petition concerning the Department of Homeland Security's secretive internet and cellphone killswitch program. On Monday the Supreme Court declined to hear a petition from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) that sought to force the Department of Homeland Security to release details of a secret 'killswitch' protocol to shut down cellphone and internet service during emergencies. EPIC has been fighting since 2011 to release the details of the program, which is known as Standard Operating Procedure 303. EPIC writes: "On March 9, 2006, the National Communications System ('NCS') approved SOP 303, however...

Well 2016 has rolled around and one of the first articles I saw was about George Hotz and his home-brew self driving car. He is claiming that his car is not programmed by rules to drive, but rather was taught to drive by watching him drive. If this is true, then we need to chat. First, every Freeper should read this article in it's entirety. http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-george-hotz-self-driving-car/ Second, we really need to think about what this will mean to us in a future that is coming a lot faster than any of you all might think. What will it mean when...

State AG sues major tech support provider alleging deceptive scam By Connie Thompson Wednesday, December 16th 2015 State investigators just sued one of the rising stars in the tech-support industry claiming part of the operation is based on a scam. The company, called iYogi, is accused of tricking people into paying for tech support services they don't need. According to investigators iYogi engaged in a different twist on the notorious tech support scams where someone call you claiming your computer has problems. What's significant in this case is workers don't call you, you call them. And iYogi is one of...

As you may have heard, last night Apple CEO Tim Cook was on 60 Minutes. The overall story really wasn't all that insightful for anyone who's been following Apple for any length of time, but what got a lot of attention was Tim Cook reiterating his position on protecting the privacy of Apple users through encryption.... Same basic stuff he's said before. Nothing new. Nothing controversial. But grandstanding Senator Tom Cotton apparently flipped out about it and pushed out a statement that shows a rather stunning ignorance of the law.... Of course, Senator Tom Cotton apparently didn't bother to read...

Sanders campaign suspended over Clinton data Staffer accessed Clinton data when firewall briefly dropped The Democratic National Committee has suspended Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign from accessing its voter database after the campaign took advantage of a software error to access Hillary Clinton's confidential voter information. The suspension is a setback for the Vermont senator because the database is a goldmine of information about voters nationwide. Campaigns usually use that data to plot their next moves. The DNC database keeps the information gathered by different campaigns separated by a firewall. But the data systems vendor that runs the program dropped...

For the past week or so I've been getting multiple posts of the same entry, and the number of replys is always #of#.

Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham renewed his calls on technology companies to give law enforcement entry into its encrypted information to fight terrorism. His message to Silicon Valley: "Change your business model tomorrow."... Companies like Apple and Google have bolstered encryption on smartphones because of heightened consumer privacy concerns in the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations that the government had been spying on its citizens. Graham said that’s a business decision.... Apple, Google and Facebook have all been under mounting pressure to create backdoor keys that would allow law enforcement access to encrypted communications. The companies maintain that this...

Our team has recently monitored and analysed a new stack of drive-by campaigns which aim to spread the Angler exploit kit by injecting malicious code into compromised web pages. Because of the mechanisms involved and the attackers’ objectives, the campaign is prone to achieve large distribution and affect a big number of PCs and their users. The campaign is carried out by installing a cocktail of malware on the compromised PC. The first payload consists of the notorious data thief Pony, which systematically harvests all usable usernames and passwords from the infected system and sends them to a series of...

Proposal would mean passengers wouldn't have to wait to board, and planes would spend less time on the ground...The proposal would see passengers "board" the cabin and take their seats, before it is lifted like a shipping container onto the back of the plane. It is then fixed into place and the plane operates as normal....The idea is designed to speed up the boarding process by allowing ticket-holders to take their seats before their plane is ready and in position at the airport's gate... "The period of imobilisation on the ground of the aeroplanes between two successive flights increases their...

Encrypted email provider ProtonMail is still being hit by a DDoS attack from what appears to be a nation state, as well as a secondary and separate lower-level assault from an identified assailant. However, the service is now operating normally, it seems. Switzerland-based ProtonMail offers an encrypted webmail system able to withstand intelligence agency-level surveillance. However, since last Tuesday the company has continued to be hit by DDoS attacks from two attackers. Talking to The Register, ProtonMail CEO Andy Yen explained: "We have been attacked every day since 3 November, so we're now entering the sixth day of attacks." "There...

Transmittance spectrum of the 54Al2O3-46Ta2O5 glass in the UV/vis region. The inset picture shows the glass sample used for the transmittance experiment. Credit: (c) 2015 Scientific Reports (2015). DOI: 10.1038/srep15233 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ (Phys.org)—A team of researchers with The University of Tokyo and Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute has created a type of glass that is stronger than many metals. In their paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers describe how they overcame one of the major hurdles in creating glass imbued with extra amounts of an oxide of aluminum, by using what they call aerodynamic levitation. Glass that does...

The U.S. government is keen on internet freedom… but only in countries it doesn’t like. This September, the U.S invested another $10 million toward helping activists in authoritarian regimes circumvent state censorship of the internet. But the goverment’s attitude to web freedom within its own borders suggests that what it wants for its enemies may not necessarily be what it wants for itself.

Ten years ago, if you wanted to offend people using the internet, you had to send annoying email forwards to all of your contacts. These days, however, it's as easy as getting on Facebook and broadcasting your worst self for the entire world to see. The ways to be off-putting on Facebook are endless — God only knows how many people I’ve offended over the years. So if you’re looking to make some new Facebook frenemies, you can count on a handful of repeat offenses to do the trick, starting with this one: 1. Post flattering bathroom selfies. Listen, I...

If you think the image above looks frightening, you’re right. The crazy contraption pictured in the image is the first portable railgun, a futuristic projectile launcher associated most commonly with the military or NASA. The man in the image above isn’t in the military, and he’s not a NASA engineer. Instead, he’s a civilian who used some engineering smarts, some widely available parts and a 3D printer to create a functioning weapon that can fire graphite, aluminum, tungsten and even plasma projectiles at speeds of more than 560 mph. And then there’s the best part: There are videos of this...

Why We Need Swarms Of Autonomous Drones by ClaudiaR 12/10/2015 Most drones fly high above the terrain, connected to their human operators, alone, one by one for now. The main beneficiary of this semi-unmanned technology has been the army so far. Fly alone, identify the target, controlled from the center the get the green light to launch the missile. The autonomous drone of the future are independent and no longer alone, instead, fly and swim in groups. Just like locusts, we’ll have swarms of drones, communicating to each other and surrounding environment, like a mobile network of connected robots. Passed...

A forthcoming report by the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission provides new details of China’s space-weapons programs, dubbed counterspace arms, that are aimed at destroying or jamming U.S. satellites and limiting American combat operations around the world. “China is pursuing a broad and robust array of counterspace capabilities, which includes direct-ascent anti-satellite missiles, co-orbital anti-satellite systems, computer network operations, ground-based satellite jammers and directed energy weapons,” a late draft of the commission’s annual report states. “China’s nuclear arsenal also provides an inherent anti-satellite capability.”

If you are one of the many long-suffering people who have gone for a coffee break and come back to a computer screen full of gibberish or a crashed system, PawSense is for you! "PawSense is a software utility that helps protect your computer from cats. It quickly detects and blocks cat typing, and also helps train your cat to stay off the computer keyboard" is how BitBoost described the product. Chris Niswander, a graduate in computer science from Arizona State University, is the creator of this path-breaking product. "One day, my sister's cat, Amos, walked across her computer keyboard...

Thanks to Adrian Ashfield for sharing this information with me who tells me this information comes from the research notes of Louis F. DeChiaro, Ph.D, a physicist with the US Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), Dahlgren Warfare Center. I am told this text has been cleared for public dissemination. As for duplicating the Pons and Fleischmann results, we now have a much better understanding of the phenomenon, and the list of prerequisite conditions is rather lengthy. Failure to meet even one of those conditions results in zero excess energy output. The data suggest that there may be more than one...

If Earth didn’t have an atmosphere, then, when the moon was entirely eclipsed within Earth’s shadow, the moon would would appear dark … During a lunar eclipse, you’ll see the Earth’s shadow creeping across the moon’s face. The shadow will appear dark, like a bite taken out of a cookie, until the shadow completely covers the moon. Then, during the breathtaking time of totality, the shadow on the moon’s face often suddenly changes. Instead of dark, it appears red. Why? The reason stems from the air we breathe. During a total lunar eclipse, the Earth lies directly between the sun...

In the wake of the VW diesel scandal, German magazine Autobild found the Euro-market BMW X3 xDrive 20d also exceeds emissions limits by a significant amount. Volkswagen's unfolding diesel emissions crisis may prove to involve other automakers as well: German magazine Autobild reports that ​a German-market, diesel-powered BMW X3 xDrive 20d put out 11 times the legal limit of pollution in a test commissioned by the magazine. (Update below) Automotive News, which translated the Autobild report, explains that the BMW was tested by the International Council on Clean Transportation, the same group whose findings led U.S. regulators to investigate Volkswagen's...