Serious SIM Card Security Flaw Affects Millions of Mobile Phones
July 21st, 2013Via: Cnet:
A vulnerability on SIM cards used in some mobile phones could allow malware infection and surveillance, a security researcher warns.
Karsten Nohl, founder of Security Research Labs in Berlin, told The New York Times that he has identified a flaw in SIM encryption technology that could allow an attacker to obtain a SIM card’s digital key, the 56-digit sequence that allows modification of the card. The flaw, which may affect as many as 750 million mobile phones, could allow eavesdropping on phone conversations, fraudulent purchases, or impersonation of the handset’s owner, Nohl warned.
U.S. Expanding Military Drone Surveillance Operations Around the World
July 21st, 2013Via: Washington Post:
As the Obama administration dials back the number of drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, the U.S. military is shifting its huge fleet of unmanned aircraft to other hot spots around the world. This next phase of drone warfare is focused more on spying than killing and will extend the Pentagon’s robust surveillance networks far beyond traditional, declared combat zones.
Over the past decade, the Pentagon has amassed more than 400 Predators, Reapers, Hunters, Gray Eagles and other high-altitude drones that have revolutionized counterterrorism operations. Some of the unmanned aircraft will return home with U.S. troops when they leave Afghanistan. But many of the drones will redeploy to fresh frontiers, where they will spy on a melange of armed groups, drug runners, pirates and other targets that worry U.S. officials.
Norwegian Woman Fighting Jail Sentence in Dubai for Reporting Rape
July 21st, 2013Dubai: The “cosmopolitan city” where rape victims are sentenced to prison.
Via: AP:
A Norwegian woman sentenced to 16 months in jail in Dubai for having sex outside marriage after she reported an alleged rape said she decided to speak out in hopes of drawing attention to the risks of outsiders misunderstanding the Islamic-influenced legal codes in this cosmopolitan city.
A Shuffle of Aluminum, but to Banks, Pure Gold
July 21st, 2013If the left hand isn’t sharing information with the right hand, with hundreds of millions of dollars in potential trading profits hanging in the balance, I’m Santa Claus.
—Usual Suspects Now Heavily Involved with Commodity Warehousing
Via: New York Times:
Hundreds of millions of times a day, thirsty Americans open a can of soda, beer or juice. And every time they do it, they pay a fraction of a penny more because of a shrewd maneuver by Goldman Sachs and other financial players that ultimately costs consumers billions of dollars.
The story of how this works begins in 27 industrial warehouses in the Detroit area where a Goldman subsidiary stores customers’ aluminum. Each day, a fleet of trucks shuffles 1,500-pound bars of the metal among the warehouses. Two or three times a day, sometimes more, the drivers make the same circuits. They load in one warehouse. They unload in another. And then they do it again.
This industrial dance has been choreographed by Goldman to exploit pricing regulations set up by an overseas commodities exchange, an investigation by The New York Times has found. The back–and-forth lengthens the storage time. And that adds many millions a year to the coffers of Goldman, which owns the warehouses and charges rent to store the metal. It also increases prices paid by manufacturers and consumers across the country.
Tyler Clay, a forklift driver who worked at the Goldman warehouses until early this year, called the process “a merry-go-round of metal.”
Only a tenth of a cent or so of an aluminum can’s purchase price can be traced back to the strategy. But multiply that amount by the 90 billion aluminum cans consumed in the United States each year — and add the tons of aluminum used in things like cars, electronics and house siding — and the efforts by Goldman and other financial players has cost American consumers more than $5 billion over the last three years, say former industry executives, analysts and consultants.
The inflated aluminum pricing is just one way that Wall Street is flexing its financial muscle and capitalizing on loosened federal regulations to sway a variety of commodities markets, according to financial records, regulatory documents and interviews with people involved in the activities.
The maneuvering in markets for oil, wheat, cotton, coffee and more have brought billions in profits to investment banks like Goldman, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, while forcing consumers to pay more every time they fill up a gas tank, flick on a light switch, open a beer or buy a cellphone. In the last year, federal authorities have accused three banks, including JPMorgan, of rigging electricity prices, and last week JPMorgan was trying to reach a settlement that could cost it $500 million.
Using special exemptions granted by the Federal Reserve Bank and relaxed regulations approved by Congress, the banks have bought huge swaths of infrastructure used to store commodities and deliver them to consumers — from pipelines and refineries in Oklahoma, Louisiana and Texas; to fleets of more than 100 double-hulled oil tankers at sea around the globe; to companies that control operations at major ports like Oakland, Calif., and Seattle.
San Jose State Suspends Online Classes Project Udacity After As Many As 80% of Students Fail
July 21st, 2013Via: Los Angeles Times:
San Jose State University is suspending a highly touted collaboration with online provider Udacity to offer low-cost, for-credit online courses after finding that more than half of the students failed to pass the classes, officials said Thursday.
Preliminary results from a spring pilot project found student pass rates of 20% to 44% in remedial math, college-level algebra and elementary statistics courses. In a somewhat more promising outcome, 83% of students completed the classes.
The San Jose State experiment with online education was being closely watched by other universities as they begin to step farther into the virtual classroom.
Udacity, a private Silicon Valley education group, and San Jose State announced jointly that they have agreed to pull the courses this fall to examine results in greater detail and fine-tune many aspects of the project.
“There are many complex factors that relate to student performance, and we’re trying to study the factors that help or hinder students in this environment,” said San Jose State Provost Ellen Junn.
The courses were initially limited to 100 students. The project received a grant from the National Science Foundation to evaluate student outcomes.
The program was expanded this summer with two new courses: computer science and introduction to psychology. Each of the classes costs $150, with no state or federal support.
Udacity co-founder and chief executive Sebastian Thrun could not be reached for comment.
States Attempt to Get Israel to Admit Nuclear Arsenal
July 21st, 2013Good luck.
Via: AP:
After a two-year hiatus, Arab nations are relaunching efforts to single out Israel for criticism at a major international conference by preparing a resolution over the country’s alleged nuclear arsenal, suggesting that the Jewish state’s refusal to acknowledge it has such arms is threatening Middle East peace.
The Arab push was a mainstay of recent annual meetings of the 159-nation International Atomic Energy Agency, where it was usually narrowly voted down by Israel’s allies. It was suspended in 2011 and 2012, in what Arab nations viewed as a concession to keep hopes alive of high-profile talks on banning weapons of mass destruction from the Mideast.
That attempt, co-sponsored by the United States, Russia and Britain, was called off late last year. While Syria’s civil war, nuclear tensions with Iran and other Middle East frictions were cited as the official motive for the cancellation, diplomats then acknowledged that the real reason was the failure to bridge Arab-Israeli differences.
Israel has long said that a full Palestinian-Israeli peace plan must precede any creation of a Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction. The Israelis refuse to confirm or deny whether they have nuclear weapons. They also describe Iran and its alleged work on nuclear weapons as the real regional menace.
Research Credit: almaverdad2
Google: Ultimately, “The Goal Is To Insert A Chip Inside Your Head”
July 20th, 2013Via: Independent:
Ultimately, as Page and co-founder Sergey Brin have asserted, the goal is to insert a chip inside your head for the most effortless search engine imaginable.
…
In Building 43 of the Googleplex, Ben Gomes talks with barely concealed excitement about a “new epoch”. A Google fellow and the company’s Vice President of Search he has been working on these technologies for 14 years. “[Knowledge Graph] is everything you have at some point asked a query about – plus everything that everyone else has thought of!” he exclaims. “It’s a meld of all the world’s interests and information needs.”
…
“If you look back 10 years there was a computer on my desk and today there’s a computer in my pocket and it still has a screen and a keyboard,” says Huffman.
“But fast forward a bit and… I think there is going to be a device in the ceiling with microphones, and it will be in my glasses or my wristwatch or my shirt. And like the Google Glass it won’t have a keyboard… you just say ‘OK Google, blah-blah-blah’ and you get what you want.”
The One About Jimmy Carter Supporting Edward Snowden
July 19th, 2013Well, this is interesting, since the USS Jimmy Carter is effectively a purpose built NSA submarine that taps undersea fiber optic cables all over the world.
Via: Huffington Post:
Former President Jimmy Carter announced support for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden this week, saying that his uncovering of the agency’s massive surveillance programs had proven “beneficial.”
Speaking at a closed-door event in Atlanta covered by German newspaper Der Spiegel, Carter also criticized the NSA’s domestic spying as damaging to the core of the nation’s principles.
“America does not have a functioning democracy at this point in time,” Carter said, according to a translation by Inquisitr.
No American outlets covered Carter’s speech, given at an Atlantic Bridge meeting, which has reportedly led to some skepticism over Der Spiegel’s quotes. But Carter’s stance would be in line with remarks he’s made on Snowden and the issue of civil liberties in the past.
Pay What You Want for Eleven Jim Guthrie Albums + More
July 19th, 2013I like Jim Guthrie’s music and I like Humble Bundle, so I thought I’d mention it:
The Humble Weekly Sale: Jim Guthrie and Friends
Recovery: Detroit Goes Bankrupt, Largest Municipal Filing in U.S. History
July 19th, 2013Via: Washington Post:
Detroit filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in the nation’s history Thursday, marking a new low in a long decline that has left the U.S. automaking capital bleeding residents and revenue while rendering city services a mess.
The city, which was the nation’s fourth-largest in the 1950s, with nearly 2 million inhabitants, has seen its population plummet to 700,000 as residents fled rising crime and deteriorating basic services, taking their tax dollars with them.
In March, as Detroit faced an estimated debt of $19 billion, Michigan appointed an emergency manager vested with extraordinary powers to rewrite contracts and liquidate some of the city’s most valuable assets. That led to once-unthinkable proposals such as forcing public employees to cut their retirement benefits or demanding that investors in municipal bonds — long considered among the safest investments — take pennies on the dollars they lent to Detroit. In recent days, both of those groups objected, propelling the city to file for bankruptcy.
