Barrett Brown Will Spend 5 Years In Jail For Linking to Hacked Material

A federal judge just sentenced journalist Barrett Brown to 63 months in prison and ordered him to pay nearly $890, 000 in restitution for charges related to the 2011 hack of Stratfor Global Intelligence. Brown’s supporters maintain that the young writer and activist was “merely linking to hacked material.” For that, he’ll spend about five years behind bars. That sucks. Read more…

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Barrett Brown Will Spend 5 Years In Jail For Linking to Hacked Material

Smart Home Security Guard Piper Now Has Night Vision

Piper is many things in a tiny package. The pint-sized home security device—it’s literally the size of a pint glass—watches over your house, automates your connected devices, and helps you keep in touch with friends. And now, with night vision too. Read more…

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Smart Home Security Guard Piper Now Has Night Vision

Revert.io Backs Up Your Evernote, Tumblr, and Other Cloud Data

When your data is in the cloud, you’re relying on someone else to back up your stuff. If your account gets hacked or the service glitches, your data could go up in a puff of smoke. Revert.io automatically backs up your Evernote, Tumblr, and other data online. Read more…

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Revert.io Backs Up Your Evernote, Tumblr, and Other Cloud Data

Hackers Break Into HealthCare.gov

mpicpp is one of many to point out that hackers broke into the HealthCare.gov website in July and uploaded malicious software. “Hackers silently infected a Healthcare.gov computer server this summer. But the malware didn’t manage to steal anyone’s data, federal officials say. On Thursday, the Health and Human Services Department, which manages the Obamacare website, explained what happened. And officials stressed that personal information was never at risk. “Our review indicates that the server did not contain consumer personal information; data was not transmitted outside the agency, and the website was not specifically targeted, ” HHS spokesman Kevin Griffis said. But it was a close call, showing just how vulnerable computer systems can be. It all happened because of a series of mistakes. A computer server that routinely tests portions of the website wasn’t properly set up. It was never supposed to be connected to the Internet — but someone had accidentally connected it anyway. That left it open to attack, and on July 8, malware slipped past the Obamacare security system, officials said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hackers Break Into HealthCare.gov

Congressman Asks NSA To Provide Metadata For "Lost" IRS Emails

An anonymous reader writes in with news that the IRS lost email scandal is far from over. Representative Steve Stockman (R-TX) has sent a formal letter to the National Security Agency asking it to hand over “all its metadata” on the e-mail accounts of a former division director at the Internal Revenue Service. “Your prompt cooperation in this matter will be greatly appreciated and will help establish how IRS and other personnel violated rights protected by the First Amendment, ” Stockman wrote on Friday. The request came hours after the IRS told a congressional committee that it had “lost” all of the former IRS Exempt Organizations division director’s e-mails between January 2009 and April 2011. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Congressman Asks NSA To Provide Metadata For "Lost" IRS Emails

A New Rapid DNA Test Helped Save a Kid From an Obscure Infection

When we think of medicine, we usually think of the treatment: drugs, surgery, therapy. But before all that comes the diagnosis—a tricky proposition when symptoms are confusing and information scant. Now for the first time ever, doctors were able to use rapid DNA sequencing to identify an obscure bacterium in time to save a boy’s life. Read more…

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A New Rapid DNA Test Helped Save a Kid From an Obscure Infection

Iron Man Exosuit Will Look for 2000-Year-Old Computer Underwater

Remember that nutso Exosuit—basically a wearable submarine—we showed you back in February ? The Exosuit is about to embark on its first real mission : the hunt for one of the world’s oldest computers in the Aegean Sea. It’s a quest that has paralyzed and, in one case, even killed divers in the past, but the Exosuit will let humans safely dive deeper and longer than ever before. Read more…

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Iron Man Exosuit Will Look for 2000-Year-Old Computer Underwater

The curious story of why the Jedi are called Jedi

If you’re a cinema fan you may know part of this story but, if you aren’t, this video is a throughout summary of how American westerns influenced the samurais of Akira Kurosawa—and how the samurais of Akira Kurosawa influenced that galactic western known as Star Wars. Read more…

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The curious story of why the Jedi are called Jedi

Cisco Complains To Obama About NSA Adding Spyware To Routers

pdclarry (175918) writes “Glenn Greenwald’s book No Place to Hide reveals that the NSA intercepts shipments of networking gear destined for overseas and adds spyware. Cisco has responded by asking the President to intervene and stop this practice, as it has severely hurt their non-US business, with shipments to other countries falling from 7% for emerging countries to over 25% for Brazil and Russia.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Cisco Complains To Obama About NSA Adding Spyware To Routers

HealthCare.gov Back-End Status: See You In September

theodp writes: “The consumer-facing parts of the Obamacare website may now work (most of the time) for people buying insurance, writes Politico, but beneath the surface, HealthCare.gov is still missing massive, critical pieces that are essential for key functions such as accurately paying insurers — and the deadline for finishing them keeps slipping. Without a fully built and operational system, federal officials can’t determine how many of the 8 million Obamacare sign-ups announced last week will have actually paid their premiums. The Obama administration earlier this month indicated that insurers will continue to be paid through an ‘interim’ accounting process — pretty much a spreadsheet and some informed estimates — until at least September, when what is being called ‘the mother of all reconciliations’ will be conducted, which some fear could reveal the need for a massive correction and rate adjustments. Still, Oregon decided Friday to switch to Healthcare.gov from its own nothing-wrong-that-$78-million-couldn’t-fix Cover Oregon online healthcare exchange.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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HealthCare.gov Back-End Status: See You In September