Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

Close
typodupeerror

Submission+-Oxford University researchers list 12 global risks to human civilisation

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The 12 greatest threats to civilization have been established by Oxford University scientists, with nuclear war and extreme climate change topping the list. Published by the Global Challenges Foundation, the report explores the 12 most likely ways civilization could end. “[This research] is about how a better understanding of the magnitude of the challenges can help the world to address the risks it faces, and can help to create a path towards more sustainable development,” the study’s authors said. “It is a scientific assessment about the possibility of oblivion, certainly, but even more it is a call for action based on the assumption that humanity is able to rise to challenges and turn them into opportunities.”

Submission+-CIA Lied Over Brutal Interrogations

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: The CIA carried out "brutal" interrogations of terror suspects in the years after the 9/11 attacks on the US, a US Senate report has said. The summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee report said the CIA misled Americans on the effectiveness of "enhanced interrogation". The interrogation was poorly managed and unreliable, the report said. President Obama has previously said that in his view the techniques amounted to torture. The Senate committee's report runs to more than 6,000 pages, drawing on huge quantities of evidence, but it remains classified and only a 480-page summary is being released. Publication had been delayed amid disagreements in Washington over what should be made public.

Submission+-Ubuntu Gets Container Friendly "Snappy" Core (datacenterdynamics.com)

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: Canonical just announced a new Ubuntu Core which uses containers instead of packages. It's the biggest Ubuntu shakeup for 20 years, says Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth, and is based on a tiny core, which will run Docker and other container technology better, quicker and with greater security than other Linuxes. Delivered as alpha code today, it's going to become a supported product, designed to compete with both CoreOS and Red Hat Atomic, the two leading container-friendly Linux approaches. Shuttleworth says it came about because Canonical found it had solved the "cloud" problems (delivering and updating apps and keeping security) by accident — in its work on a mobile version of Ubuntu

Submission+-Edward Snowden says NSA engages in industrial espionage (www.cbc.ca) 2

Submitted by Maow
Maow writes: Snowden has been interviewed by a German TV network and stated that the NSA is involved in industrial espionage, which is outside the range of national security.

He claims that Siemens is a prime example of a target for the data collection.

I doubt this would suprise AirBus or other companies, but it shall remain to be seen what measures global industries take (if any) to prevent their internal secrets from falling into NSA's — and presumably American competitors' — hands.

Submission+-Ask Slashdot: Life After N9002

Submitted by Rydia
Rydia writes: Since it first released, I have been in love with my Nokia N900, and it has satisfied all my needs for a mobile with a high degree of control and utility. Sadly, the little guy is showing his age, both in battery life (even with the powersaving kernel options enabled), and performing in general has been left far, far in the dust by phones that are now considered quite old. The time has come to find its successor, but after a thorough search of smartphone options, I can't find any handset that offers everything for the power user that the N900 did (much less a hardware keyboard). I'd like to avoid supporting Google/Android, but there don't seem to be many options. Have any other techies found a replacement for their N900?

Submission+-Over +36 exploits in latest Java with +140 for all Oracle products discovered (zdnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: More bad press can't seem to escape Oracle.

Oracle is posting patches for all its products next Tuesday which include +36 exploits for Java alone and over 140 for all Oracle products currently supported included over 80 that require no authentication to execute.These patches look to be critical for any administrator. Java 6 users who use equipment or programs that rely on older versions are SOL unless you sign up for a very expensive support contract as these patches are for Java 7 only.

Submission+-Google ports Capsicum to Linux, and other end-of-year Capsicum news (lightbluetouchpaper.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Security researcher Robert Watson at the University of Cambridge has posted a blog article describing recent progress on the Capsicum security model, which will shortly appear in FreeBSD 10.0 enabled by default, and has now been ported to Linux by Google, who have posted patches with the intent to upstream to the Linux kernel.

Submission+-FBI Edits Mission Statement: Removes Law Enforcement as 'Primary' Purpose... (foreignpolicy.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Following the 9/11 attacks, the FBI picked up scores of new responsibilities related to terrorism and counterintelligence while maintaining a finite amount of resources. What's not in question is that government agencies tend to benefit in numerous ways when considered critical to national security as opposed to law enforcement. "If you tie yourself to national security, you get funding and you get exemptions on disclosure cases," said McClanahan. "You get all the wonderful arguments about how if you don't get your way, buildings will blow up and the country will be less safe."

Submission+-Ask Slashdot: Best way to implement Wave protocol self hosted? (rizzoma.com)

Submitted by zeigerpuppy
zeigerpuppy writes: It's time to revisit Wave, or is it? I have been looking to implement a Wave installation on my server for private group collaboration. However, all evolutions of Wave seem to be closed-source or experiencing minimal development. I was excited about Kune, but its development looks stalled and despite Rizzoma claiming to be Open-Source, their code is nowhere to be found! Wave-in-a-box looks dead. So Slashdotters, do any of you have a working self-hosted wave implementation?

Submission+-Federal judge rules NSA data collection legal (foxnews.com) 2

Submitted by CheezburgerBrown .
CheezburgerBrown . writes: A federal judge in New York has ruled the National Security Agency's massive data collection program is legal, one week after another federal judge ruled the opposite.

The conflicting rulings increase the likelihood that the challenges could someday end up before the Supreme Court.

The ruling on Friday came from District Judge William H. Pauley III, in the case of the ACLU vs. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence. The judge agreed with the federal government's request to dismiss the court.

copy and pasted from fox news

Submission+-Ask Slashdot: Can commercial hardware routers be trusted?1

Submitted by monkaru
monkaru writes: Given reports that various vendors and encrytion algorithms have been compromised. Is it still possible to trust ANY commercial hardware routers or is "roll your own" the only reasonable path going forward?

Submission+-Charles Stross cancels trilogy: the NSA is already doing it1

Submitted by doom
doom writes: Charles Stross has announced that there won't be a third book in the 'Halting State' trilogy because reality (in a manner of speaking) has caught up to him too fast. The last straw was apparently the news that the NSA planted spies in networked games like WoW. Stross comments: "At this point, I'm clutching my head. 'Halting State' wasn't intended to be predictive when I started writing it in 2006. Trouble is, about the only parts that haven't happened yet are Scottish Independence and the use of actual quantum computers for cracking public key encryption (and there's a big fat question mark over the latter-- what else are the NSA up to?)."

Submission+-Life Could Have Evolved 15 Million Years After The Big Bang, Says Cosmologist (medium.com)

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: Goldilocks zones are regions around stars that are 'just right' for liquid water and for the chemistry of life as we know it. Now one cosmologist points out that the universe must have been through a Goldilocks epoch, a period in which warm, watery conditions could have existed on almost any planet in the entire cosmos. The key phenomenon here is the cosmic background radiation, the afterglow of the Big Bang which was blazing hot when it first formed. But as the universe expanded, the wavelength of this radiation increased, lowering its energy. Today, it is an icy 3 Kelvin. But somewhere along the way, it must have been between 273 and 300 Kelvin, just right to keep water in liquid form. According to the new calculations, this Goldilocks epoch would have occurred when the universe was about 15 million years old and would have lasted for several million years. And since the first stars had a lifespan of only 3 million years or so, that allows plenty of time for the heavy elements to have formed which are necessary for planet formation and the chemistry of life. Indeed, if live did evolve a this time, it would have predated life on Earth by about 10 billion years.

Submission+-NSA tracking cellphone locations worldwide, Snowden documents show (washingtonpost.com) 1

Submitted by tramp
tramp writes: The National Security Agency is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world, according to top-secret documents and interviews with U.S. intelligence officials, enabling the agency to track the movements of individuals — and map their relationships — in ways that would have been previously unimaginable.

Of course it is "only metadata" and absolutely not invading privacy if you ask our "beloved" NSA.

Slashdot Top Deals

If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong. -- Norm Schryer

Close
close