Tag: government

New York Judge OKs Warrant To Search Entire Gmail Account

jfruh writes While several U.S. judges have refused overly broad warrants that sought to grant police access to a suspects complete Gmail account, a federal judge in New York State OK’d such an order this week. Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein argued that a search of this type was no more invasive than the long-established practice of granting a warrant to copy and search the entire contents of a hard drive, and that alternatives, like asking Google employees to locate messages based on narrowly tailored criteria, risked excluding information that trained investigators could locate. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New York Judge OKs Warrant To Search Entire Gmail Account

One Man and His Bot Have Written Almost 10% of Wikipedia

You’ve probably never heard of Sverker Johansson, but you probably should have. He is, afterall, the most prolific WIkipedia author on the internet—having written 2.7 million articles for the online encyclopaedia. Read more…

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One Man and His Bot Have Written Almost 10% of Wikipedia

FCC Approves Plan To Spend $5B Over Next Five Years On School Wi-Fi

itwbennett writes: The Federal Communications Commission, in a 3-2 party-line vote Friday, approved a plan to revamp the 17-year-old E-Rate program, which pays for telecom services for schools and libraries, by phasing out funding for voice service, Web hosting and paging services, and redirecting money to Wi-Fi. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler had proposed a $5 billion budget for Wi-Fi, but Republican commissioners and some lawmakers had questioned where the money would come from. Still, the E-Rate revamp (PDF) approved Friday contemplates a $1 billion-a-year target for Wi-Fi projects “year after year, ” Wheeler said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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FCC Approves Plan To Spend $5B Over Next Five Years On School Wi-Fi

Foxconn Beings Replacing Workers With Robots

redletterdave (2493036) writes The largest private employer in all of China and one of the biggest supply chain manufacturers in the world, Foxconn announced it will soon start using robots to help assemble devices at its several sprawling factories across China. Apple, one of Foxconn’s biggest partners to help assemble its iPhones, iPads, will be the first company to use the new service. Foxconn said its new “Foxbots” will cost roughly $20, 000 to $25, 000 to make, but individually be able to build an average of 30, 000 devices. According to Foxconn CEO Terry Gou, the company will deploy 10, 000 robots to its factories before expanding the rollout any further. He said the robots are currently in their “final testing phase.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Foxconn Beings Replacing Workers With Robots

India Launches Five Foreign Satellites

vasanth writes: “India has put into orbit five foreign satellites, including one built by France two from Canada and one each from Singapore and Germany. The PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) has so far successfully launched 67 satellites, including 40 foreign ones, into space. The PSLV costs about 17 million USD and the cost is seen as a major advantage India has over other countries in terms of commercial launches. When talking about the cost of the project, the Prime Minister of India noted that the launch was cheaper than Hollywood film Gravity. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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India Launches Five Foreign Satellites

IRS Recycled Lerner Hard Drive

phrackthat (2602661) writes The Senate Finance Committee has been informed that the IRS recycled the hard drive of Lois Lerner, which will deprive investigators of the ability to forensically retrieve emails which were supposedly deleted or lost in a “crash.” This news comes after the IRS revealed that it had lost the emails of Lois Lerner and six other employees who were being investigated regarding the targeting of conservative groups and donors. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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IRS Recycled Lerner Hard Drive

IRS Lost Emails of 6 More Employees Under Investigation

phrackthat writes with an update to Friday’s news that the IRS cannot locate two years worth of email from Lois Lerner, a central figure in the controversy surrounding the IRS’s apparent targeting of Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny. Now, the IRS says there are another six workers for whom the agency cannot locate emails. As with Lerner, they attribute the unrecoverable emails to computer crashes. Among them was Nikole Flax, who was chief of staff to Lerner’s boss, then-deputy commissioner Steven Miller. Miller later became acting IRS commissioner, but was forced to resign last year after the agency acknowledged that agents had improperly scrutinized tea party and other conservative groups when they applied for tax-exempt status. Documents have shown some liberal groups were also flagged. … Lerner’s computer crashed in the summer of 2011, depriving investigators of many of her prior emails. Flax’s computer crashed in December 2011, Camp and Boustany said. The IRS said Friday that technicians went to great lengths trying to recover data from Lerner’s computer in 2011. In emails provided by the IRS, technicians said they sent the computer to a forensic lab run by the agency’s criminal investigations unit. But to no avail. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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IRS Lost Emails of 6 More Employees Under Investigation

Chicago Robber Caught By Facial Recognition Sentenced To 22 Years

mpicpp (3454017) writes with this excerpt from Ars: “The first man to be arrested in Chicago based on facial recognition analysis was sentenced last week to 22 years in prison for armed robbery. … In February 2013, Pierre Martin robbed a man at gunpoint while on a Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) train. After taking the man’s phone, Martin jumped off the train. However, his image was captured by CTA surveillance cameras and was then compared to the Chicago Police Department’s database of 4.5 million criminal booking images. Martin, who already had priors, had a mugshot in the database. He was later positively identified by witnesses. At trial, Martin also admitted to committing a similar robbery also on the Pink Line in January 2013—his face was captured during both robberies.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Chicago Robber Caught By Facial Recognition Sentenced To 22 Years

Microsoft Won’t Bring Back the Start Menu Until 2015

DroidJason1 (3589319) writes “Microsoft recently announced plans to reintroduce the Start Menu to Windows in an upcoming version of the operating system. While the plan was to roll out an update to Windows 8.1 and offer the Start menu later this year, it seems like this is no longer the case. Now Microsoft is reportedly looking to release the Start Menu with Windows 9, which is expected in April of 2015. Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 have faced a boat load of criticism and hatred, partly due to the removal of the Start button and Start menu. The restoration of a visible Start button on the taskbar was one of the key features of the Windows 8.1 update, released back in October of 2013.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Microsoft Won’t Bring Back the Start Menu Until 2015