Facebook is going to force you to vote Democrat and love immigration reform - What I am reading 11/3/2014

NY Times- Student Spins Double Life Among Spanish Elite - 

MADRID — How is it that a baby-faced, 20-year-old university student skates his way into the coronation celebration of the new king, passes himself off as a government adviser to reportedly broker a lucrative business deal, and avoids traffic jams by flashing a fake police light?

Simple answer - "He's a witch! Burn him!" More accurate but equally simple answer - Balls of steel.

HITB Security News - Microsoft releases Anti-POODLE fix -

I know what I will be doing tomorrow.  Fortunately it's a registry hack and those are usually easy enough to script.

Ars Technica -  As Earth left the last ice age, CO₂ rose in fits and starts - 

A new study led by University of Wisconsin researcher Shaun Marcott uses this core to show that the increase of atmospheric CO₂ coming out of the last ice age wasn’t smooth. There were periods where CO₂ gradually increased at a rate around 10 parts per million every thousand years. (For comparison, atmospheric CO₂ has recently increased by 120 parts per million over just a few centuries.) But there were also faster jumps of 10-15 parts per million over a century or two, followed by a thousand years or more of roughly constant CO₂. The work also confirms earlier studies showing that the initial rise of atmospheric CO₂ did indeed precede the thawing of the globe, despite previous indications that it lagged behind slightly in ice cores.

Pando Daily - Edward Snowden and the Justice League: A review of Citizenfour -

I can put it more succinctly: for all the film’s superficial slickness, it’s a mess.

Kind of what I figured.  I will probably watch it at some point but it will have to be at a discount because I don't want to give those jerks anymore money than I have to.

ValleyWag - Facebook Is Turning Users Into Voter Data Experiments -

For at least six years, the social network has been mining the political preferences of its users without their consent. 

...

Facebook's research into voter turnout mechanisms has led the company to conclude that they can get more people to the polls. One Facebook-conducted study suggested that the voter megaphone project increased turnout by 340,000 voters between 2006 and 2010.

...

What could concern politicians even more? Facebook told Politico it can now determine a person's "sentiments" regarding politicians and issues—raising the possibility that the company could run issue-based experiments. And Politico reports that ABC News and BuzzFeed will begin receiving this detailed user data to enhance their election coverage.

Those excerpts didn't chop up as nicely as I would have liked but you get the point.  Facebook believes that they can manipulate elections by manipulating your news feed.  You have to love it when Gawker Media's hatred of Silicon Valley overwhelms it's hatred of conservatives.  It's schadenfreudey goodness.

Wired - How Attackers Can Use Radio Signals and Mobile Phones to Steal Protected Data -

Computers housing the world’s most sensitive data are usually “air-gapped” or isolated from the internet. They’re also not connected to other systems that are internet-connected, and their Bluetooth feature is disabled, too. Sometimes, workers are not even allowed to bring mobile phones within range of the computers. All of this is done to keep important data out of the hands of remote hackers.

But these security measures may be futile in the face of a new technique researchers in Israel have developed for stealthily extracting sensitive data from isolated machines—using radio frequency signals and a mobile phone.

Reading further into the article it doesn't seem like a really viable attack yet and it seems to me that if you keep cell phones more than 25 feet away you are probably safe.  Couple other mitigating factors Faraday shielding on video cards and EMC shielding paint on the walls.  (Probably not necessary yet but if this ever develops to the point of viability)

Wired - An Unprecedented Look at Stuxnet, the World’s First Digital Weapon - 

Excerpt of an upcoming book.  Not a lot of new information in this excerpt, but still pretty interesting.