The Phone Dragnet That Caught the World’s Top Drug Lord

Daniel_Stuckey writes “The contacts on Zambada-Ortiz’s phone, which officials seized, would prove critical in pinpointing cartel stash houses strewn across Sinaloa state in mountainous northwest Mexico. Crucially, the episode would breathe new life into the joint US-Mexico dragnet that recently caught Chapo, who’d been at large for 13 years after famously escaping from Mexican prison in a laundry basket. Zambada-Ortiz’s capture and the data scraped from his phone led to more and more Sinaloa phones until a month ago, when Mexican authorities (moving on American intelligence work) successfully carried out a number of raids that scored a cache of weapons and the arrests of a few of Chapo’s senior henchmen. With each apprehension came another phone full of leads, ‘a new trove of information for officials to mine, ‘ as TIME reported. Then, sometime last week, Mexican commandos ‘traced a number stored in a seized cell phone to a stash house outside the provincial capital of Culiacan, where they believed Guzman was hiding, ‘ TIME added.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The Phone Dragnet That Caught the World’s Top Drug Lord

Blood Test of 4 Biomarkers Predicts Death Within 5 Years

retroworks writes “The NHS and the Daily Telegraph report on two studies (original and repeat duplicating results) in Estonia and Finland which predict whether an apparently healthy human will likely die within 5 years. The four biomarkers that appeared to determine risk of mortality in the next five years were: alpha-1-acid glycoprotein – a protein that is raised during infection and inflammation; albumin – a protein that carries vital nutrients, hormones and proteins in the bloodstream; very-low-density lipoprotein (VLDL) particle size – usually known for being ‘very bad’ cholesterol; and citrate – a compound that is an essential part of the body’s metabolism. Researchers found that people in the top 20% of the summary score range were 19 times more at risk of dying in the next five years than people in the lowest 20%.” The NHS’s summary of the news points out that “the implications of such a test are unclear. As this was an observational study, it can only show an association between the biomarkers and risk of death. It does not predict what the underlying cause of death would be for an individual and does not therefore provide an answer in terms of treatment.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Blood Test of 4 Biomarkers Predicts Death Within 5 Years

Find Along Chilean Highway Suggests Ancient Mass Stranding of Whales

sciencehabit writes “In 2010, workers widening a remote stretch of highway near the northwestern coast of Chile uncovered a trove of fossils, including the skeletons of at least 30 large baleen whales. The fossils—which may be up to 9 million years old—are the first definitive examples of ancient mass strandings of whales, according to a new study. The work also fingers a possible culprit.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Find Along Chilean Highway Suggests Ancient Mass Stranding of Whales

Iran’s Hacking of US Navy ‘Extensive,’ Repairs Took $10M and 4 Months

cold fjord sends news that Iran’s breach of a computer network belonging to the U.S. Navy was more serious than originally thought. According to a Wall Street Journal report (paywalled, but summarized at The Verge), it took the Navy four months to secure its network after the breach, and the repair cost was approximately $10 million. From the article: “The hackers targeted the Navy Marine Corps Intranet, the unclassified network used by the Department of the Navy to host websites, store nonsensitive information and handle voice, video and data communications. The network has 800, 000 users at 2, 500 locations, according to the Navy. … The intrusion into the Navy’s system was the most recent in a series of Iranian cyberoffensives that have taken U.S. military and intelligence officials by surprise. In early 2012, top intelligence officials held the view that Iran wanted to execute a cyberattack but had little capability. Not long after, Iranian hackers began a series of major “denial-of-service” attacks on a growing number of U.S. bank websites, and they launched a virus on a Saudi oil company that immobilized 30, 000 computers. … Defense officials were surprised at the skills of the Iranian hackers. Previously, their tactics had been far cruder, usually involving so-called denial of service attacks that disrupt network operations but usually don’t involve a penetration of network security.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Iran’s Hacking of US Navy ‘Extensive,’ Repairs Took $10M and 4 Months

Elon Musk Says Larger Batteries Might Be On the Way

mknewman writes “Elon Musk intimated that more-powerful batteries could be on the way for the Model S. The most potent battery pack currently offered in the Model S holds 85 kWh of juice, or enough for 265 miles of driving. Musk wasn’t terribly specific, however: ‘There is the potential for bigger battery packs in the future, but it would probably be maybe next year or something like that. The main focus is . . . how do we reduce the cost per kWh of storage in the battery pack?’ In other words, Musk seems less concerned with stronger battery packs than making cheaper battery packs for the upcoming mid-size sedan, which is expected to be unveiled at the 2015 Detroit auto show. ‘Our goal is to drop the cost per kWh by 30 percent to 40 percent.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Elon Musk Says Larger Batteries Might Be On the Way

Google Earth’s New Satellites

Rambo Tribble writes “The BBC provides some insights into the next generation satellites being built for Google by contractor DigitalGlobe in Colorado. The resolution of these satellites’ cameras is sufficient to resolve objects that are only 25cm wide. Unfortunately, the public will be allowed only half that image quality, the best being reserved for the U.S. military. ‘The light comes in through a barrel structure, pointed at the Earth, and is bounced around by a series of mirrors, before being focused onto a CCD sensor. The big difference – apart from the size – between this and a typical handheld digital camera, is that the spacecraft will not just take snapshots but continuous images along thin strips of land or sea.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google Earth’s New Satellites

Blogger Fined €3,000 for ‘Publicizing’ Files Found Through Google Search

mpicpp points out an article detailing the case of French blogger Olivier Laurelli, who had the misfortune to click links from search results. Laurelli stumbled upon a public link leading to documents from the French National Agency for Food Safety, Environment, and Labor. He downloaded them — over 7 Gb worth — and looked through them, eventually publishing a few slides to his website. When one of France’s intelligence agencies found out, they took Laurelli into custody and indicted him, referring to him as a ‘hacker.’ In their own investigation, they said, “we then found that it was sufficient to have the full URL to access to the resource on the extranet in order to bypass the authentication rules on this server.” The first court acquitted Laurelli of the charges against him. An appeals court affirmed part of the decision, but convicted him of “theft of documents and fraudulent retention of information.” He was fined €3, 000 (about $4, 000). Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Blogger Fined €3,000 for ‘Publicizing’ Files Found Through Google Search

Godot Game Engine Released Under MIT License

goruka writes with news that a new game engine has been made available to Free Software developers under the permissive MIT license “Godot is a fully featured, open source, MIT licensed, game engine. It focuses on having great tools, and a visual oriented workflow that can deploy to PC, Mobile and Web platforms with no hassle. The editor, language and APIs are feature rich, yet simple to learn. Godot was born as an in-house engine, and was used to publish several work-for-hire commercial titles. With more than half a million lines of code, Godot is one of the most complex Open Source game engines at the moment, and one of the largest commitments to open source software in recent years. It allows developers to make games under Linux (and other unix variants), Windows and OSX.” The source is available via Github, and, according to Phoronix, it’s about as featureful as the Unity engine. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Godot Game Engine Released Under MIT License

Windows Replacement? ReactOS 0.3.16 Gets Themes, CSRSS Rewrite, and More

jeditobe writes with this announcement from the ReactOS home page: “The ReactOS Project is pleased to announce the release of version 0.3.16. A little under a year has passed since the previous release and a significant amount of progress has been made. More than 400 bugs were eliminated. Some of the most significant include completion of the CSRSS rewrite and the first stages of a shell32 rewrite. 0.3.16 is in many ways a prelude to several new features that will provide a noticeable enhancement to user visible functionality. A preview can be seen in the form of theme support, which while disabled by default can be turned on to demonstrate the Lautus theme developed by community member Maciej Janiszewki. Another user visible change is a new network card driver for the RTL8139, allowing ReactOS to support newer versions of QEMU out of the box.” You can download release images here. Want to see how it handles Windows software? Here are demos of Office 2003, Photoshop CS2, and OpenMPT. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Windows Replacement? ReactOS 0.3.16 Gets Themes, CSRSS Rewrite, and More

Bitcoin Plunges After Mt. Gox Exchange Halts Trades

krakman writes with this excerpt from Bloomberg News: “Bitcoin plunged more than 8 percent [Friday] after a Tokyo-based exchange halted withdrawals of the digital currency, citing technical malfunction. Mt. Gox, claimed in a blog post it needed to ‘temporarily pause on all withdrawal requests to obtain a clear technical view of the currency processes.’ It promised an ‘update’ — not a reopening — on Monday, Feb. 10, Japan time. This is day after Russia’s Prosecutor General concluded Bitcoin and other digital currencies are illegal under current law.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Bitcoin Plunges After Mt. Gox Exchange Halts Trades