Tag: jobs

South Australia Hits 33% Renewal Energy Target 6 Years Early

ferrisoxide.com writes: South Australia has hit its target of 33% renewable energy by 2020, 6 years earlier than expected, delivering clean power to the state through investment in wind, solar and geothermal energy — mothballing one coal-fired power station in the process. Not content to rest on their laurels, the SA government has now announced a new “stretch” target of 50% by 2025. South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill declared that despite initial upfront costs to renewable energy generators such as wind farms, the 50 per cent target will not add one extra dollar to energy prices. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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South Australia Hits 33% Renewal Energy Target 6 Years Early

To Fight $5.2B In Identity Theft, IRS May Need To Change the Way You File Taxes

coondoggie writes: Based on preliminary analysis, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) estimates it paid $5.2 billion in fraudulent identity theft refunds in filing season 2013 while preventing an additional $24.2 billion (based on what it could detect). As a result, the IRS needs to implement changes (PDF) in a system that apparently can’t begin verifying refund information until July, months after the tax deadline. Such changes could impact legitimate taxpayers by delaying refunds, extending tax season and likely adding costs to the IRS. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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To Fight $5.2B In Identity Theft, IRS May Need To Change the Way You File Taxes

Steam Is Getting A Massive Overhaul

Valve is changing Steam in a big way, overhauling the front page and adding some brand new features that will drastically change the way we find and buy PC games on the ubiquitous digital store. Read more…

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Steam Is Getting A Massive Overhaul

Foolish Scientists Have Just Created Shape-Shifting Metal

Most movies are works of fiction, but the plots are based on real-world ideas. Including, apparently, the nightmarish future put forth in Terminator 2 . A team of researchers from North Carolina State University decided the world would be a better place with terrifying shape-shifting T-1000s, and so have developed a way to control and manipulate liquid metals. Maybe they didn’t watch the whole movie? Read more…

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Foolish Scientists Have Just Created Shape-Shifting Metal

Emails Cast Unflattering Light On Internal Politics of Obamacare Website Rollo

An anonymous reader writes with this report from The Verge linking to and excerpting from a newly released report created for a committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, including portions of eight “damning emails” that offer an unflattering look at the rollout of the Obamacare website. The Government Office of Accountability released a report earlier this week detailing the security flaws in the site, but a report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released yesterday is even more damning. Titled, “Behind the Curtain of the HealthCare.gov Rollout, ” the report fingers the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversaw the development of the site, and its parent Department of Health and Human Services. “Officials at CMS and HHS refused to admit to the public that the website was not on track to launch without significant functionality problems and substantial security risks, ” the report says. “There is also evidence that the Administration, to this day, is continuing its efforts to shield ongoing problems with the website from public view.” Writes the submitter: “The evidence includes emails that show Obamacare officials more interested in keeping their problems from leaking to the press than working to fix them. This is both both a coverup and incompetence.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Emails Cast Unflattering Light On Internal Politics of Obamacare Website Rollo

The Reality of the iPhone Line Is a Black Market Nightmare

This week, people camped outside Apple stores for days anticipating the iPhone 6. But those line-waiters weren’t all frenzied Apple fans high on the joy of a new smartphone: As filmmaker Casey Neistat portrays it , many of the line-sitters were buying the new iPhone to immediately resell it on the black market. Read more…

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The Reality of the iPhone Line Is a Black Market Nightmare

So This Is How You Move a Neighborhood of Houses Across San Francisco

San Francisco’s current tech-led boom has seen slick new housing high-rises pop up all across the grid, but Bay Area urban renewal in the 1970s had a very different look. Photographer Dave Glass is a native of the city’s Western Addition, and snapped these images of Victorians being driven around town like massive domestic trailers almost 30 years ago. Read more…

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So This Is How You Move a Neighborhood of Houses Across San Francisco

Google’s Doubleclick Ad Servers Exposed Millions of Computers To Malware

wabrandsma (2551008) writes with this excerpt from The Verge: Last night, researchers at Malwarebytes noticed strange behavior on sites like Last.fm, The Times of Israel and The Jerusalem Post. Ads on the sites were being unusually aggressive, setting off anti-virus warnings and raising flags in a number of Malwarebytes systems. After some digging, researcher Jerome Segura realized the problem was coming from Google’s DoubleClick ad servers and the popular Zedo ad agency. Together, they were serving up malicious ads designed to spread the recently identified Zemot malware. A Google representative has confirmed the breach, saying “our team is aware of this and has taken steps to shut this down.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google’s Doubleclick Ad Servers Exposed Millions of Computers To Malware

TrueCrypt Gets a New Life, New Name

storagedude writes: Amid ongoing security concerns, the popular open source encryption program TrueCrypt may have found new life under a new name. Under the terms of the TrueCrypt license — which was a homemade open source license written by the authors themselves rather than a standard one — a forking of the code is allowed if references to TrueCrypt are removed from the code and the resulting application is not called TrueCrypt. Thus, CipherShed will be released under a standard open source license, with long-term ambitions to become a completely new product. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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TrueCrypt Gets a New Life, New Name

Home Depot Says Breach Affected 56 Million Cards

wiredmikey writes: Home Depot said on Thursday that a data breach affecting its stores across the United States and Canada is estimated to have exposed 56 million customer payment cards between April and September 2014. While previous reports speculated that Home Depot had been hit by a variant of the BlackPOS malware that was used against Target Corp., the malware used in the attack against Home Depot had not been seen previously in other attacks. “Criminals used unique, custom-built malware to evade detection, ” the company said in a statement. The home improvement retail giant also that it has completed a “major payment security project” that provides enhanced encryption of payment card data at point of sale in its U.S. stores. According to a recent report from Trend Micro (PDF), six new pieces of point-of-sale malware have been identified so far in 2014. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Home Depot Says Breach Affected 56 Million Cards