An anonymous reader shares a fascinating true-crime story from Pittsburgh. Smithsonian magazine reports:
Like nuclear power plants and sensitive computer networks, the safest rare book collections are protected by what is known as “defense in depth” — a series of small, overlapping measures designed to thwart a thief who might be able to overcome a single deterrent. The Oliver Room, home to…
Tag: Protected
Leaked Salary Spreadsheet Reveals Microsoft Employee Earnings for a Second Year
An anonymous reader shares a report: Over the course of August 2020, more than 300 Microsoft employees shared their salaries, bonuses, and stock awards in a Google spreadsheet to continue their push for fairer compensation. “You are legally protected to share this info, and you should share it so your coworkers can determine if they’re being underpaid; however, you should still…
Lions Are Less Likely To Attack Cattle With Eyes Painted on Their Backsides
An anonymous reader shares a report: The predation of livestock by carnivores, and the retaliatory killing of carnivores as a result, is a major global conservation challenge. Such human-wildlife conflicts are a key driver of large carnivore declines and the costs of coexistence are often disproportionately borne by rural communities in the global south. While current approaches tend to focus on…
Stash of pure, 24-carat gold coins unearthed in Israel
All that protected this jar of gold was a nail and a good hiding spot. Source: https://www.livescience.com/gold-hoard-israel-archaelogy.html
Bridgefy, the Messenger Promoted For Mass Protests, Is a Privacy Disaster
Bridgefy, a popular messaging app for conversing with one another when internet connections are heavily congested or completely shut down, is a privacy disaster that can allow moderately-skilled hackers to take a host of nefarious actions against users, according to a paper published on Monday. The findings come after the company has for months touted the app as a safe and…
Open Source Sustainability is Really a People Problem
Matt Asay, a former COO of Canonical now working at AWS, argues that the question of open source sustainability “is really a people problem.” But to make the case, he cites comments by Tobie Langel, formerly W3C’s testing lead (and a former member of Facebook’s Open Source and Web Standards Team) who’s now founded an open-source strategies consulting firm whose clients…
Researchers track slowly splitting ‘dent’ in Earth’s magnetic field
A small but evolving dent in Earth’s magnetic field can cause big headaches for satellites. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/researchers-track-dent-in-earths-magnetic-field…
The NSA’s Guidelines for Protecting Location Data
American’s National Security Agency (NSA) “has shared new guidance with U.S. military and intelligence personnel, suggesting they take additional precautions to safeguard their location data,” reports Engadget. “The agency argues the information devices and apps collect can pose a national security threat.” Ars Technica reports:
The National Security Agency is recommending that some government workers and people generally concerned about privacy turn…
The First Gene-Edited Squid in History Is a Biological Breakthrough
Squid are among the smartest ocean dwellers. Along with other ink-squirting cephalopods like octopuses and cuttlefish, squid boast the largest brains of all invertebrates. They also have an incredibly complex nervous system capable of instantaneously camouflaging their bodies and communicating with each other using various signals. From a report: Scientists have long marveled at these sophisticated behaviors and have tried to…
Google Beats Song Lyric Scraping Lawsuit
Genius Media Group was pretty clever when it used digital watermarks to show that Google had been copying its huge collection of song lyrics. One of those watermarks spelled “redhanded” in Morse code. That Google was caught lifting another site’s song lyrics made international news — and even merited a mention during Congress’ Big Tech hearing late last month. But was…