House set to revise CISPA language to add more privacy protection
Members of the House said on Tuesday that they will modify the language of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) in a nod to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has expressed strong opposition to the bill’s language thus far.
CISPA proposes a new system where the federal government has the authority to share information about Internet-based threats to corporations, and vice versa. However, as the language is currently written, information is defined so broadly so that "any other provision of law" cannot supersede it.
As Ars concluded last week: "CISPA is a solution in search of a problem. And it threatens to undermine important privacy protections."
According to The Hill, the two Congressmen behind CISPA are set to offer amendments on the floor of the House this week to address concerns of the privacy groups including the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT).
"The companies still aren't required to even make an effort to take out sensitive and personal information before sharing cybersecurity data with the government," the ACLU's Richardson told The Hill. "The amendments also still allow this information to be sent directly to the National Security Agency and other military offices instead of keeping civilians in control of Americans' Internet info. The use limitations, while amended, still allow the government to use what it collects for undefined 'national security' purposes."
In a statement published on its website on Tuesday, the CDT said that "good progress has been made," and that the organization would "not oppose the process moving forward in the House."
"However, the bill falls short because of the remaining concerns—the flow of Internet data directly to the NSA and the use of information for purposes unrelated to cybersecurity," the group concluded.
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China deletes accounts on Twitter-like service as part of social media crackdown
Just two days after President Obama and the United States government hit Syria and Iran with new sanctions "to hold accountable those who assist in or enable such [human rights] abuses through the use of information and communications technology," China has now stepped up its online crackdown in the wake of a political scandal.
China has been embroiled in a massive political scandal involving Bo Xilai, a Chinese politician who had been seen as a rising star in the Chinese Communist Party prior to his abrupt downfall over obstruction of justice charges in a murder case involving his wife, as well as local political disputes. Last month, Bo was removed as party chief of the southwestern city of Chongqing.
However, on Tuesday, as discussion of the case continues to explode across the Internet, the Chinese clone of Twitter, Sina Weibo, deleted the accounts of several users, "including that of Li Delin, a senior editor of the Chinese business magazine Capital Week, whose March 19 post helped fuel rumors of a coup in Beijing," according to The Wall Street Journal
Li has since been detained by Chinese authorities.
"The episode demonstrated both the power of China's new digital media and the Chinese Communist Party's increasingly iron-fisted effort to control it," the WSJ added. "In the wake of the coup rumors, authorities announced the detention of six people in relation to the rumors and the arrest of more than 1,000 others for what the authorities said were Internet crimes."
The newspaper also noted that it was not clear if the notice came from the government itself or from the company, Sina.
"But it is the most direct warning yet to Internet users to rein in the freewheeling discussion for which Sina Weibo is known," the paper reported.
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Only App Store, Mac App Store apps eligible for 2012 Apple Design Awards
Apple is now accepting nominations for its annual Apple Design Awards given out during WWDC. Apps that are well-designed, state of the art, and innovative—and available via the App Store or Mac App Store—are eligible for consideration.
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Bugs pick up pesticide resistance from pesticide-eating bacteria
The indiscriminate spraying of pesticides has probably caused as many problems as it has solved, but here's one that was not expected: some bacteria have decided that one insecticide is a very tasty meal. Unfortunately for us, one of the strains of bacteria that has evolved the ability to digest the toxin happens to be able to find a home in an insect's gut. When it does so, it provides the insect with resistance.
Several factors had to come together for this to take place, but one was the heavy use of fenitrothion, which is described as "one of the most popular organophosphorus insecticides used worldwide" by the authors of a study of these insects. It has apparently been so widely deployed that a variety of bacteria have evolved the ability to use it as a food source. Most of these simply inhabit the soil in the fields where it is used and, at worst, cut down on the level of insecticide present and thereby make life a bit easier for the insects.
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Oracle asks court for right to assert third patent against Google
An Oracle patent that was previously invalidated by the US Patent and Trademark Office—only to be reinstated upon further review—may yet be asserted against Google when the blockbuster Android trial heads to its patent phase.
We wrote on Monday that Oracle was successful in overturning the USPTO’s prior decision to invalidate the patent. Given that Oracle initially asserted seven Java patents against Google, only to see five of them invalidated, Oracle would certainly like to get this patent in front of the jury, giving it three instead of two to assert.
The problem is that Oracle had already agreed to drop the patent from the case, on the condition that the rejection wasn’t overturned in time for the trial to begin. The trial did begin before the Patent Office reversed its decision, but the trial is in its first phase, covering only copyright issues. The patent questions haven’t been addressed yet, and Oracle is suing Google over both copyright and patent infringement.
Google has insisted that Oracle cannot assert the patent, and claims in statements to the press that the judge dismissed the patent with prejudice. That wasn’t quite true, based on our reading of the court documents (we are not lawyers, however). Oracle made its dismissal of the patent conditional on the timing of the trial, and the judge made a reference to the conditional dismissal in order to let the trial get started, but he didn’t explicitly order the patent to be dismissed with prejudice.
In a brief filed late yesterday, Oracle argued that since the patent phase of the trial has not yet begun, its conditional withdrawal of the patent has not yet taken effect. Not allowing the patent into the trial “would deprive Oracle of a significant intellectual property right,” Oracle wrote.
Google immediately filed its own brief opposing Oracle’s request, arguing that Oracle “agreed irrevocably to dismiss no later than the day that trial commenced.” The decision on this patent may come down to Judge William Alsup’s response to Oracle’s conditional withdrawal, which read in part, “in reliance on Oracle’s withdrawal with prejudice” of the patent in question, “this order now sets April 16 as the first day of trial.”
Google points to that statement as proof that Oracle lost its right to assert the patent the day the trial began. Oracle points to the same statement and the wording of its own conditional withdrawal and argues that the patent can still be asserted because the patent phase of the trial hasn’t yet begun.
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Solar cells must emit light to attain perfection, research suggests
Researchers at the University of California-Berkeley claim to have hit upon a counterintuitive means of boosting the efficiency of flatplate solar cells by making them emit light. "What we demonstrated is that the better a solar cell is at emitting photons, the higher its voltage and the greater the efficiency it can produce," said principal researcher, UC Berkeley Professor of Electrical Engineering Eli Yablonovitch.
To briefly recap the mechanism behind the photovoltaic effect itself, photons from some external light source (the sun, preferably) entering a solar cell excite the electrons in the semiconductor into higher energy states. This frees them from confinement so that they can convey current. (The charge itself is created by using two materials. Free electrons find it easier to move in one direction between the materials, creating a negative charge in one and a positive charge in the other.)
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Apple's WWDC 2012 will be June 11-15, focusing on iOS and OS X (Update: sold out)
After some nervous waiting on behalf of Apple's developer community, the dates for Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference have been announced. The conference will take place from June 11-15 in San Francisco, where developers will "learn about the future of iOS and OS X."
Like the previous two years, the ticket price to attend WWDC as a developer is $1,599 before flights and accommodations—Apple bumped the price in 2010 after the previous few years sold out instantly. That didn't stop WWDC from selling out quickly in 2011, however—based on the conversations we've observed on Twitter so far, we wouldn't be surprised to hear that 2012's WWDC is in the process of selling out as we write.
Apple is now allowing developers as young as 13 a chance to attend WWDC. A parent or guardian that is a registered developer must purchase the ticket, but can put it in the name of a minor aged 13-17. Apple is also offering a limited number of scholarships for young developers, though the application deadline is just days away—May 2.
According to Apple, some of the WWDC 2012 activities will include the usual technical sessions led by Apple engineers, hands-on labs where there'll be coding assistance and insight into development techniques, and (the best part) "the opportunity to connect with thousands of fellow iOS and OS X developers from around the world." (Translation: beer.) Apple doesn't usually announce the specific topics of its tech talks until much closer to the event, and those are usually kept under NDA so the developers don't leak any secret info. The keynote has not yet been announced either, but if and when it is announced, we expect the topic to largely revolve around iOS and OS X—not any kind of iPhone (or other) hardware.
Update: We have now heard that WWDC tickets are sold out only two hours after they went on sale. Hope those of you who were interested managed to get a ticket!
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Backdoor in mission-critical hardware threatens power, traffic-control systems
In the world of computer systems used to flip switches, open valves, and control other equipment inside giant electrical substations and railroad communications systems, you'd think the networking gear would be locked down tightly to prevent tampering by vandals. But for customers of Ontario, Canada-based RuggedCom, there's a good chance those Internet-connected devices have backdoors that make unauthorized access a point-and-click exercise.
That's because equipment running RuggedCom's Rugged Operating System has an undocumented account that can't be modified and a password that's trivial to crack. What's more, researchers say, for years the company hasn't bothered to warn the power utilities, military facilities, and municipal traffic departments using the industrial-strength gear that the account can give attackers the means to sabotage operations that affect the safety of huge populations of people.
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Firefox 12 released with UAC-less update system on Windows
Mozilla announced today the availability of Firefox 12, a new version of the popular open source Web browser. The release brings some minor incremental feature improvements, a number of fixes under the hood, and a significant change to the browser’s update system on Windows.
Ever since Mozilla transitioned Firefox to a shorter development cycle, the organization has been working to make browser updates less intrusive and more seamless. The eventual goal is to make updates completely silent, performing them in the background without user intervention.
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Feature: Windows 8 on the desktop—an awkward hybrid
Windows 8's new user interface has proven nothing short of polarizing. The hybrid operating system pairs a new GUI concept, the touch-friendly Metro interface, to the traditional windows, icons, menus, and pointer concept that Windows users have depended on for decades. In so doing, it removes Windows mainstays such as the Start button and Start menu.
While few are concerned about Windows 8's usability as a tablet operating system, desktop users remain wary. Will the new operating system take a huge step back in terms of both productivity and usability? Specific concerns voiced in our forums have included the mandated fullscreen view and a lack of resizable windows, the tight restrictions on what applications are permitted to do, and the automatic termination of background applications.
The good news is that these specific criticisms are largely off-base. Windows 8 includes a full desktop with all the applications and behavior that you expect a Windows desktop to include. This means full multitasking (no background suspension or termination), full system access (to the extent that your user permissions allow), resizable non-maximized windows, Aero snap, pinned taskbar icons, alt-tab—it's all still there and it all still works.
The bad news is that the various pieces of the operating system do not in fact mesh together smoothly; the seams, especially between the Metro and legacy interfaces, remain obvious and jarring. For desktop users, the experience remains decidedly mixed.
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Chinese court, government still trying to settle iPad trademark dispute
A Chinese court is trying to mediate a settlement between Apple and a company named Proview over control of the iPad trademark in China. A Chinese official claims that the trademark rightfully belongs to Proview according to Chinese law, despite the fact that the company sold the trademark in 2009. In a separate American suit, Proview alleges its sale of the trademark is invalid because the buyer was an Apple shell company.
Apple and Proview have been locked in a dispute over who owns the iPad trademark in China for some time. Proview originally obtained the trademark for a product it developed with National Semiconductor in 1999 known as the Internet Personal Access Device, or "I-PAD." That device was a low-cost, low-powered computer running Windows that, unlike a tablet of any kind, used a bulky CRT display.
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Tor Books to release only DRM-free e-books
On Tuesday, Tom Doherty Associates, which publishes Tor Books, the world's largest science fiction imprint, announced that it would be making all of its e-books available in a DRM-free format by early July 2012. The move comes just six weeks after the United States Department of Justice filed an anti-trust lawsuit over e-book pricing against Macmillan, Tom Doherty Associates' parent company, and five other publishers.
"Our authors and readers have been asking for this for a long time," said president and publisher Tom Doherty, in a statement on the company's website. "They're a technically sophisticated bunch, and DRM is a constant annoyance to them. It prevents them from using legitimately-purchased e-books in perfectly legal ways, like moving them from one kind of e-reader to another."
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Thinking in foreign language makes decisions more rational
To judge a risk more clearly, it may help to consider it in a foreign language.
A series of experiments on more than 300 people from the US and Korea found that thinking in a second language reduced deep-seated, misleading biases that unduly influence how risks and benefits are perceived.
"Would you make the same decisions in a foreign language as you would in your native tongue?" asked psychologists led by Boaz Keysar of the University of Chicago in an April 18 Psychological Science study.
"It may be intuitive that people would make the same choices regardless of the language they are using, or that the difficulty of using a foreign language would make decisions less systematic. We discovered, however, that the opposite is true: Using a foreign language reduces decision-making biases," wrote Keysar’s team.
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Apple: we could settle patent fights if others would "invent their own stuff"
Apple largely impressed investors on Tuesday by announcing a record second-quarter performance that nearly doubled its year-over-year earnings. The company posted quarterly revenues of $39.2 billion and a net profit of $11.6 billion in a quarter that typically sags after the holiday season, citing "fabulous" levels of success globally with both the iPhone and iPad and better-than-market growth when it came to Mac sales. But in addition to the numbers, Apple CEO Tim Cook offered some strong words on the company's position regarding lawsuit settlements and discussed the possibility of merging the iPad with the MacBook Air—two hot topics among the analysts on the call.
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Mexican "Geolocalization Law" draws ire of privacy activists
Last week, revisions to Mexican federal law took effect that give public authorities and law enforcement unprecedented ability to compel mobile phone companies to disclose real-time geographic data from mobile phone companies in a wide variety of cases.
The group of legal revisions, popularly known collectively online as the #LeyGeolocalización (Geolocalization Law), appears to be squarely aimed at expanding police power to fight drug violence and gangs in a massive conflict primarily fought along the United States-Mexico border for decades. As new data found from the ACLU and EFF shows, local law enforcement across the United States are likely routinely using a similar practice. The Mexican law codifies what local and federal government in the US have been doing in practice for years.
The bill passed the lower house of the Mexican parliament on March 1 by an overwhelming margin, 315 votes in favor, seven against, and six abstentions. The Mexican government and law enforcement have argued that they need more extensive surveillance power as a way to fight cartel-related violence and kidnappings.
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Sun wanted up to $50 million from Google for Java license, Schmidt says
Sun Microsystems wanted $30 million to $50 million from Google for a Java license, but Google decided to build its own implementation for Android after negotiations broke down, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt reportedly said during testimony in the Oracle/Google trial today.
Jurors were shown an e-mail exchange between Schmidt and Jonathan Schwartz, the two CEOs of Google and Sun at the time Google developed and released Android. The e-mails showed the companies discussing a potential partnership between Google and Sun. Google didn’t object to the amount of money Sun wanted, but it didn’t want to give up too much control over Android.
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Judges, don't sext your bailiffs
Judge McCree
The courtroom bailiff for Michigan state judge Wade McCree claims that the judge sent her a shirtless picture of himself by text message. Sound wildly inappropriate? The woman's husband thought so when he found the photos, and he filed a complaint with the state's Judicial Tenure Commission.
A local Fox reporter in Detroit went to Judge McCree and showed him the photo. "Hot dog, yep that's me," said the judge. "I've got no shame in my game. I ain't talked to nobody else's wife."
When the reporter asks the judge (watch the crazy video) whether he sent the photo to other women as well, the judge added, "Oh yeah, I've sent that out to other women, sure."
"And that's alright with your wife?"
"Uh... you know, I mean... There's nothing nude about it. I am in no more clothes than I'll be at the Y this afternoon when I swim my mile."
McCree—also married—comes from a famous legal family. His father, Wade McCree Jr. served as the first African-American judge on the federal Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and in 1977 became the US solicitor general under President Jimmy Carter. At McCree Jr.'s death, a colleague on the Sixth Circuit remembered the judge (PDF) as a towering intellect with a "remarkable memory" whose "ability to recite poetry and song lyrics, both familiar and obscure, was legendary." McCree Jr. even relieved tension among his colleagues with "bits of doggerel" or a "hastily written limerick."
Sexy texting also played a key role in the scandal that brought down Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick back in 2008. In both cases, the use of digital devices meant that the texts and images left the texter's control. While simple communications tech makes affairs, indiscretions, and harassment easier than ever, it also makes them harder to hide in the end.
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ITC rules Apple violates one Motorola 3G patent
The US International Trade Commission has entered an initial determination that Apple is infringing on one of Motorola Mobility's patents related to 3G wireless standards. However, there is some question as to whether the decision will result in any adverse action toward Apple.
Administrative Law Judge Thomas Pender ruled that Apple did infringe on two of Motorola's patents, but that the infringed claim on one patent was invalid. That leaves Apple potentially on the hook for infringement of one patent related to wireless 3G standards.
However, the outcome may not result in an import ban on iPhones or iPads any time soon. A German court has already ruled that Apple could plausibly work around the claims of this particular 3G-related patent. It's also possible that Apple's current Qualcomm-equipped products do not infringe the patent due to "patent exhaustion"—in other words, Qualcomm's license to the patent very likely covers Apple's use of its chips.
Furthermore, Motorola's attempt to garner an import ban from the ITC on Apple's products using the patent in question may violate its pledge to license patents it declared essential to 3G standards on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. The European Commission just launched an official investigation over Motorola's actions with respect to FRAND-encumbered patents earlier this month.
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Planetary Resources set to begin hunt for asteroids to mine in 18-24 months
Some time in the next 18 to 24 months, Planetary Resources, Inc. will launch a series of mass-produced 9" space telescopes, dubbed Arkyd Series 100 spacecraft. They're specifically designed to identify which of the roughly 8,900 near-Earth asteroids are both smaller than 50 meters and suitable targets for retrieval back to Earth orbit. These small near-Earth asteroids represent a transient population, with life spans in the millions of years, typically cut short by running into a planet or being thrown out of the solar system by Jupiter.
That mission, according to Planetary Resources co-founder Eric Anderson, will be completed well enough within the ensuing year or two that the follow-up spacecraft, the Arkyd Series 200, can track some of these asteroids as they fly by in high Earth orbit. Still later, Arkyd Series 300 swarm spacecraft can begin launching to survey those asteroids from a closer perspective, gathering information on spin, shape, and composition.
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Google Drive SDK announced, but APIs are only for Web apps right now
Google launched its long-awaited cloud storage offering today. The service, which is called Google Drive, will compete with incumbent Dropbox and Microsoft’s Skydrive. Alongside the launch this morning, Google also announced the availability of an SDK that will allow third-party developers to integrate with the service.
The new Google Drive APIs provide programmatic access to the contents of a user’s storage account, but with a number of significant restrictions that limit the scope of how developers can presently use the service. The APIs are only available to Web applications, which the user must "install" into their Google Drive account through the Chrome Web Store.
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Archaeoacoustics reconstructs the sound of Stonehenge
A team of scientists lead by Dr. Bruno Fazenda of the University of Salford in the UK has reconstructed the soundscape of the Stonehenge circle. Using the practice of archaeoacoustics and state-of-the-art sound equipment at both the original cultic circle in England's Salisbury Plains and the reconstruction in the US state of Washington, the scientists behind a new study have resurrected a part of the structure's sonic awe.
Because the original Stonehenge is incomplete, with some of the stones toppled, and because electric generators are not permitted, as well as the relative nearness of a main highway, the study's authors decided to augment the measurements they took there with measurements from the World War I memorial Stonehenge replica at Maryhill Museum.
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Liveblog: Apple's FY2012 Q2 earnings call today at 5pm EDT
Apple plans to announce earnings for the second fiscal quarter of 2012 this afternoon, April 24, 2012 at 2pm PT (5pm ET). The results will be followed by the typical conference call where Apple executives will delve into the details of the results and answer questions from analysts.
The second quarter is typically less exciting than the first for Apple—the first quarter includes the holiday season and numbers are usually down immediately afterwards. We may not hear much from Tim Cook or Peter Oppenheimer about unannounced products, but we do expect to hear how well the iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, and various Macs performed up to this point, and it's likely we'll hear some early comments about the third-generation iPad's sales since it hit the streets in mid-March.
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BP engineer arrested for allegedly deleting oil spill text messages
Kurt Mix, a drilling and completions project engineer for BP during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, has become the first employee of the oil company to be arrested. Mix is charged with obstruction of justice and allegedly deleting over 200 text messages from his iPhone pertaining to the explosion and repair of the oil well and rig in what became America's worst offshore oil spill.
Mix was involved with estimating the flow rate of the oil from the ruptured well on the sea floor, and authorities are investigating his involvement with the Top Kill efforts, which pumped heavy mud into the broken well to try to stop the spill. Experts knew that if the oil was spilling out at the rate of 15,000 barrels per day or greater, Top Kill couldn't work, but BP publicly claimed the well was spilling 5,000 barrels per day.
Forensic experts apparently recovered a deleted text from Mix's iPhone from the first day of BP's Top Kill effort saying "Too much flowrate—over 15,000." The texts were allegedly deleted after Mix had been instructed to preserve documentation pertaining to the spill. In a statement, BP would not comment on the case but said it was cooperating with the Justice Department.
If convicted, Mix faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each of the two counts with which he's charged.
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Amazon releases "Send to Kindle" desktop software for the Mac
More than three months after releasing software for Windows-users to send documents to a Kindle, Amazon has now released the Mac version. Announced on Tuesday afternoon, the "Send to Kindle for Mac" application allows Mac users to wirelessly send personal documents to their Kindles via drag-and-drop in the Dock or within the app itself. Users can also send documents to the Kindle by printing from any Mac application.
As we wrote in January when the Windows version was released, each Kindle already comes with its own e-mail address so users can send files to themselves. (There's also an Instapaper mechanism for sending documents to Kindle.) The desktop software aims to make that process easier, however, by eliminating the need to involve an e-mail client (especially convoluted in the case of printing from an app, which would involve printing to PDF and then sending that PDF to your Kindle). Users don't have to be sending documents to a hardware Kindle either—files can be sent to a Kindle app on a mobile device, too (such as the iPad or an Android phone).
According to Amazon, users can also use the Mac software to archive documents in your Kindle library for download later if you don't want those files to show up and take up space on your device right away. "Your last page read along with bookmarks, notes, and highlights are automatically synchronized for your documents (with the exception of PDFs) across your Kindle devices and Kindle apps for iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, and Android," the company said in a statement.
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Small objects blazing a path through Saturn's F ring
From a distance, Saturn's rings look flawlessly smooth, as if they've been in their current state indefinitely. But as the Voyager and Cassini probes have witnessed, the rings are incredibly dynamic. Small moons shepherd the ice and dust that comprise the rings, providing them with structure. At the same time, the passing of the moons creates gravitational distortions in the rings: spokes, ripples, and gaps within the ring material. As the ring material gets pushed together or pulled apart, smaller bodies can form within the ring, or be pulled apart into tiny ring particles.
While watching one of Saturn's moons, Prometheus, shepherd the edges of the F ring, researchers were surprised to find what they've termed "minijets," trails of ring particles that can be over 100 kilometers long. Although they don't have the ability to image the objects causing these jets, researchers think that they're simply large snowballs that have been aggregated under the influence of gravity, and were gradually pushed out of the plane of the ring, pulling some of the ring material with them as they left.
These aren't violent events—the objects that create the minijets are probably only moving at about four miles an hour (that's two meters a second). So, NASA's title for the article describing these results as "blazing a trail" is a bit of an overstatement. But it does have a very good video describing the discovery of these events.
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