Day: June 7, 2017

At $75,560, Housing a Prisoner in California Now Costs More Than a Year at Harvard

The cost of imprisoning each of California’s 130, 000 inmates is expected to reach a record $75, 560 in the next year, the AP reported. From the article: That’s enough to cover the annual cost of attending Harvard University and still have plenty left over for pizza and beer Gov. Jerry Brown’s spending plan for the fiscal year that starts July 1 includes a record $11.4 billion for the corrections department while also predicting that there will be 11, 500 fewer inmates in four years (alternative source) because voters in November approved earlier releases for many inmates. The price for each inmate has doubled since 2005, even as court orders related to overcrowding have reduced the population by about one-quarter. Salaries and benefits for prison guards and medical providers drove much of the increase. The result is a per-inmate cost that is the nation’s highest — and $2, 000 above tuition, fees, room and board, and other expenses to attend Harvard. Since 2015, California’s per-inmate costs have surged nearly $10, 000, or about 13%. New York is a distant second in overall costs at about $69, 000. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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At $75,560, Housing a Prisoner in California Now Costs More Than a Year at Harvard

Police In Oklahoma Have Cracked Hundreds of People’s Cell Phones

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report via Motherboard: Mobile phone forensic extraction devices have been a law enforcement tool for years now, and the number of agencies using them is only rising. As part of an ongoing investigation, we have finally been able to turn up some usage logs of this equipment, from Tulsa Police Department, and Tucson Police Department. While the logs do not list the cause of the crime or any other notes about why the phone was being searched, it does list the make of the phone, the date, and the type of extraction. First, let’s go over what extraction devices are being used here. Tucson PD opted for the brand that is arguably the worldwide leader in mobile device forensics, the Israeli company Cellebrite. Tulsa Police Department however opted for a few different models — they purchased two different password breakers from Teel Technologies in 2015, and in March 2016 gave about $1, 500 to Susteen for their SecureView extraction device (SecureView was the product Susteen created when the FBI requested they create a more advanced extraction device for them). It does its work instantly, and has an incredible reach into a phone’s data. They renewed this contract in 2017. In August 2016 they also purchased the Detective extraction device from Oxygen Forensics. Oxygen is much less common than Cellebrite, from what we have found. The kicker really is how often these are being used — it is simply really hard to believe that out of the 783 times Tulsa Police used their extraction devices, all were for crimes in which it was necessary to look at all of the phone’s data. Even for the 316 times Tucson PD used theirs in the last year, it is still a real stretch to think that some low-level non-violent offenders weren’t on the receiving end. There are some days where the devices were used multiple times — Tulsa used theirs eight times on February 28th of this year, eight again on April 3rd, and a whopping 14 times on May 10th 2016. That is a whole lot of data that Tulsa was able to tap into, and we aren’t even able to understand the why. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Police In Oklahoma Have Cracked Hundreds of People’s Cell Phones

Trent Reznor blows dust off the ‘Quake’ score for vinyl reissue

Quake was a groundbreaking game in a number of ways, and that included its soundtrack — id Software scored a coup when it got Nine Inch Nails (technically, Trent Reznor ) to score the grim first-person shooter. Until now, though, listening to that soundtrack has usually meant digging up your circa-1996 game CD or (let’s be honest) finding a YouTube rip. Thankfully, you’ll soon have an alternative if you own a turntable. As part of a larger wave of back catalog releases, Reznor is making the Quake soundtrack available on vinyl — you too can listen to that memorable theme in your living room. There’s no date or price for pre-orders, but NIN’s current pricing for single-record LPs suggests you’ll be paying around $20. You might not have to wait long to get your copy after it ships, at least. NIN recently ran into serious delivery problems for other albums, but a recent change in fulfillment partners should have sorted that out. If you haven’t listened to the Quake soundtrack before, it’s important to note that most of it is eerie ambient fare. You’re not getting B-sides to The Downward Spiral , folks. It added to the game’s sinister atmosphere, however, and the star power behind the soundtrack stood out at a time when many developers were just happy to have more than generic-sounding MIDI tunes. This work also led to Reznor being tapped to compose the score for Doom 3 , though he ultimately left the project. Whatever you feel about Quake , consider this: while vinyl game soundtrack releases are relatively common nowadays, this is likely the only one you’ll ever get from an Oscar-winning artist who works in the tech industry . Source: Nine Inch Nails

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Trent Reznor blows dust off the ‘Quake’ score for vinyl reissue