4 Astounding Screw-Ups Government Workers Failed to Notice

By XJ Selman  Published: July 15th, 2013  Screw-ups happen in any line of work — sometimes you file a report with the wrong department, sometimes you forget to include the extra pickles. And on some occasions, your whoopsie is “accidentally passing a law that affects millions of people.” In

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4 Astounding Screw-Ups Government Workers Failed to Notice

Yahoo launches wish list for requesting inactive usernames

If you’re itching to shed that old, embarrassing Yahoo username in favor of something a little more age appropriate, we’ve got good news. Mayer and Co. have just opened up a wish list to request inactive usernames. Plug in your five moniker requests (in order of preference) by August 7th, and if you’re first in line for an account that hasn’t been used in over a year, it’ll be yours by the middle of the month. Once the search giant sends a message to your inbox, simply click the included link within 48 hours and the re-purposed account will be yours. After the initial period, folks will be able to add usernames to a watch list, and will be alerted when they become available. Worried that password recovery messages sent from other services to reused addresses could be a security issue? Yahoo is too. The firm’s leaning on an email header dubbed “Require-Recipient-Valid-Since” that will only allow missives to be delivered if the recipient has confirmed that email with the sender after the date of the account transfer. While Facebook’s already onboard with the solution, other parties will need to bake it into their existing systems. Click the second source link to toss your hat in the ring for the perfect email address. Comments Source: Yahoo (1) , (2)

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Yahoo launches wish list for requesting inactive usernames

Are You Smart Enough to Understand These Super Nerdy Jokes?

Science, chemistry, computer science, medical science, math, programming, physics and basically anything else that requires more than half a person’s brain means that I completely suck at it. Does that make me stupid? Yes. Does that make me useless? Yes. Does that make me scratch my head as the wind passes through my hair? Absolutely yes. Read more…        

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Are You Smart Enough to Understand These Super Nerdy Jokes?

Linux 3.11 Features Fall Into Place With Merge Window

hypnosec writes “The Linux 3.11 merge window is about to close, most probably this Sunday, and most of the pull requests have been merged, including feature additions and improvements to disk & file system, CPU, graphics and other hardware. Some notable merges are: LZ4 compression; Zswap for compressed swap caching; inclusion of a Lustre file-system client for the first time; Dynamic Power Management (DPM) support for R600 GPUs; KVM and Xen virtualization on 64-bit hardware (AArch64); and a new DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) driver for the Renesas R-Car SoC.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Linux 3.11 Features Fall Into Place With Merge Window

Whistleblowing IT Director Fired By FL State Attorney

An anonymous reader writes “Ben Kruidbos, the IT director for the Florida State Attorney’s Office who’d spoken up when important cellphone evidence he’d extracted from Trayvon Martin’s cellphone was withheld by the state from the defense, was fired by messenger at 7:30 PM Friday, after closing arguments in the Zimmerman case. He was told that he could not be ‘trusted to set foot in this office, ‘ and that he was being fired for incompetence. Kruidbos had received a merit pay raise earlier this year. The firing letter also blames him for consulting a lawyer, an obvious sign of evil.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Whistleblowing IT Director Fired By FL State Attorney

NHS Fined After Computer Holding Patient Records Found On eBay

judgecorp writes “NHS Surrey, part of Britain’s health service, has been fined £200, 000 when a computer holding more than 3000 patient records was found for sale on eBay. The system was retired, and given to a contractor who promised to dispose of it securely for free, in exchange for any salvage value… but clearly just put the whole system up for sale.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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NHS Fined After Computer Holding Patient Records Found On eBay

Tiny Ion Engine Runs On Water

symbolset writes “Discovery News is covering a project by two engineers from the University of Michigan to pair cubesats with tiny ion engines for inexpensive interplanetary exploration. The tiny plasma drive called the CubeSat Ambipolar Thruster (CAT) will ionize water and use it as propellant with power provided by solar cells. In addition to scaling down the size of ion engines they hope to bring down the whole cost of development and launch to under $200, 000.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Tiny Ion Engine Runs On Water

Open Source Tortilla For Tor To Be Released At Black Hat

msm1267 writes “A researcher is expected to release Tortilla, an open source tool that anonymously routes TCP and DNS traffic through Tor, at the upcoming Black Hat conference. Tortilla provides a secure, anonymous means of routing traffic through Tor regardless of client software and without the need for a VPN or secure tunnel.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Open Source Tortilla For Tor To Be Released At Black Hat