Roman Kochkanyan from Almaty has developed an engine that will help reduce smog in Almaty or at least significantly decrease its concentration. Dr. Kochkanyan told about his invention to K1.kz.

 

KazSat-3 telecommunications satellite will be launched in the Q1 2014, Newskaz.ru reports, citing Viktor Lefter, President of the National Center for Satellite-assisted Communications as saying.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eyes and ears will be on US President Barack Obama Tuesday evening as he presents the State of the Union address from Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Hacktivists aligned with the Anonymous movement have other plans, however.

A call to arms has been issued by Anonymous, the shadowy underground collective of hackers and activists, and the group says they hope to disrupt select online broadcasts of the annual address in protest of President Obama and his administration’s assaults on the civil liberties and constitutional rights of Americans, as well as the world’s Internet.

“Operation SOTU,” or “OpSOTU,” is latest mission from Anonymous, and members involved in the initiative say it will serve as a decisive factor in the “battle royale for the future of the Internet.”

In a statement drafted by members of Anonymous and circulated on the Web early Tuesday, the group recalls a series of recent victories for Internet activists who waged battles and won against proposed legislation that would have drastically changed the modern landscape of computer and technology law.

“Last year we faced our greatest threat from lawmakers. We faced down SOPA, PIPA, CISPA and ACTA,” the message begins. “But that victory did not come easily. Nor did it come without a price.”

While the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act were killed in Congress before they could come to fruition, opponents of those bills argue that Washington’s assault on computer users has only escalated in the year since.

In January, 26-year-old anti-SOPA advocate Aaron Swartz was found dead of an apparent suicide in the midst of a heated legal battle with the US Justice Department over his allegedly unauthorized downloading of academic and journal files from the website JSTOR. Other young technologists, including those accused of hacking the Stratfor intelligence firm as members of Anonymous, are facing life in prison for nonviolent computer crimes.

But despite calls for the White House and Washington to relinquish their mission to censor the Internet and strip online freedoms away from Americans, a war against overzealous cybersecurity legislation remains rampant. In lieu of reform — reform even advocated by some members of Congress — both the Executive and Legislative branches alike are preparing to push for new rules that some say will only ruin the Internet.

Pres. Obama is believed to have already signed a cybersecurity executive order this week that, when unveiled, is expected to include privacy-damning provisions that will put in place a direct plan of action for the private sector to share consumer information with the government.

According to some reports, the order could be made public as soon as during Tuesday evening’s address. On Wednesday, however, the architects of last year’s Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, plan to reintroduce their bill during a seminar in Washington, rekindling a mission Anonymous says would turn “private companies into government informants.” Regardless of if either is discussed during Tuesday night’s address, however, hacktivists are preemptively asking for a world-wide attack on the State of the Union to be led by a legion of Anons.

“We reject the State of the Union. We reject the authority of the President to sign arbitrary orders and bring irresponsible and damaging controls to the Internet,” Anonymous writes. “The President of the United States of America, and the Joint Session of Congress will face an Army tonight.”

“There will be no State of the Union Address on the web tonight.”

Anonymous is asking for people around the globe to prepare for an online battle Tuesday evening that will take a multi-prong approach in hopes of rendering some Internet streams of the president’s address unavailable and educating the world’s about his administration’s ruthless interpretation of both computer law and the US Constitution alike. In addition to waging a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) against websites carrying the SOTU stream, Anons also plan to spam Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and other social media sites with information about the president’s cybersecurity order, CISPA and other items likely to be left out of Tuesday’s speech.

“He will not be covering the NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act], an act of outright tyrannical legislation allowing for indefinite detention of citizens completely outside due process and the rule of law,” reads the press release in part. “He will not be covering the extra-judicial and unregulated justifications for targeted killings of citizens by military drones within the borders of America, or the fact that Orwellian newspeak had to be used to make words like ‘imminent’ mean their opposite.”

Elsewhere, Anonymous attacks the president’s hesitance to publically discuss Private first class Bradley Manning, the 25-year-old accused whistleblower who has been imprisoned without trial for nearly 1,000 days for allegedly leaking information about the United States’ own war crimes. Nor will he discuss, claims Anonymous, “the secret interpretations of law that allow for warrant-less wiretapping and surveillance of any US citizen without probably cause of criminal acts.”

Indeed, the matters of Pfc Manning and the recent renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and other Fourth Amendment-eroding legislation have been by-and-large removed from talking points touched on by the president during his first term in office. Next, Anonymous fears, a tightening grip on the Internet could mean even more infringement, authorized by an administration that aims to gain control of the world’s main method of communication.

“We will form a virtual blockade between Capitol Hill and the Internet,” warns Anonymous. In a separate statement issued by the AnonRelations sect, one member writes, “President Obama and the State of the Union Address will be BANISHED from the Internet for the duration of live delivery.”

“This action is being taken to underline a fact that appears to be sorely unrecognized by the Obama Administration — that the Internet is a sovereign territory, and does not fall under the jurisdiction of any nation state.”

In a public discussion held for planning purposes online, one Anon writes, “Anyone and everyone on the Internet who opposes the current efforts by the US government to control the Internet and their actions against liberty at home and abroad will be DIRECTLY ENGAGED in LULZ WARFARE.”

The group has since collected a number of news links relating to relevant White House policies and the URLs for websites that might be momentarily brought down by a coordinated DDoS attack, including the official White House stream for the president’s address. FBI.gov, House.gov and the website for C-SPAN have all been listed as potential targets as well.

“Armed with nothing more than Lulz, Nyancat and PEW-PEW-PEW! Lazers, we will face down the largest superpower on Earth,” the AnonRelations bulletin reads.

OpLastResort, the Anonymous-led mission launched in retribution for the death of Aaron Swartz that is largely attributed to alleged prosecutorial overreach by the Obama administration, has endorsed the planned assault on the State of the Union.

On the website OpLastResort.com, the administrator insists there will be no State of the Union broadcast on the Web “for freedom, for Aaron Swartz, for the Internet, and of course, for the lulz.” A member of AnonRelations calls the latest action a continuation of OpLastResort, but also “a direct response to intelligence gathered about upcoming executive order.”

Since Mr. Swartz’ passing in December, Anonymous has hacked into a database of Federal Reserve emergency numbers, defaced the website of the US Sentencing Commission and posted the log-in credentials for over 4,000 US banking executives on a hacked frontpage for the Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center. When asked whether he thought these maneuvers were making a difference, former Anonymous member Gregg Housh tells RT that the operations are not going unrecognized.

“I think the ops are having an interesting effect,” Housh says in an online chat hours before Tuesday’s State of the Union Address. “It has their attention . . . in a way I haven’t seen before.”

“I think something is happening,” adds Housh, “it is just happening at the pace at which Washington is used to going, and the Internet is used to ‘Internet time,’ which is much faster.”

 

Barack Obama has signed an executive order on cybersecurity aimed at boosting the defense of critical US infrastructure, while also avoiding the criticism over compromising civil liberties that its legislative predecessors suffered from.
 
­The legislative push continues, and will cover the same area and make the increase in security mandatory for the private sector. A new version of the controversial bill CISPA is expected to be introduced to the House on Wednesday.

 

President Obama revealed the long-expected executive order in his State of the Union address on Tuesday. He cited “growing threat from cyber-attacks” as the reason he used his executive power where legislators failed, adding that America must face this rapidly growing threat.

 

“We know hackers steal people’s identities and infiltrate private e-mail,” he said. “We know foreign countries and companies swipe our corporate secrets. Now our enemies are also seeking the ability to sabotage our power grid, our financial institutions, and our air traffic control systems.”

 

Years from now, Americans cannot look back and wonder “why we did nothing in the face of real threats to our security and our economy,” Obama said.

 

The order directs government officials to come up with standards to reduce cybersecurity risks within the next 240 days, and to encourage companies to adopt the new framework. However, it has no legal power to force companies to adopt the framework of cybersecurity best practices.

 

The framework will be technology-neutral and aimed at addressing security gaps in the computer networks of crucial parts of the country's infrastructure – the electric grid, gas lines, water treatment plants and transportation networks.

 

Federal agencies are also being encouraged to share information with private companies on potential cyber threats. This would encompass technical data, such as identifying malicious code, and not private information, senior administration officials said.

 

Not a substitute for legislation

­

The executive order comes in place of cybersecurity legislation that failed to pass legislative scrutiny last year. The issue of protecting infrastructure from cyberattacks was initially free of partisan divide, but became increasingly politicized as work on it progressed.

 

Democrats favored the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, a bill that would have the Department of Homeland Security identify private owners of infrastructure considered critical and force them to introduce tighter defenses against hacker attacks, as advised by the federal government. Business lobbyists and Republican lawmakers opposed and eventually killed the bill, saying it would over-regulate the private sector and cost too much.

 

The Republican-backed Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, passed the House only to be later strangled in the Senate amid criticism from Internet privacy and civil liberties advocates. Among other things, the bill would allow legal blanket protection to companies volunteering private information to the government, and would allow the National Security Agency, which is normally restricted to foreign intelligence, to collect data domestically.

 

The new executive order has yet to raise any red flags from business owners or rights groups. The ACLU said it was "encouraged" by the move, and – in an apparent reference to CISPA – added that it shows "there are smart ways to bolster cybersecurity while protecting privacy."

 

However the administration does not view the order as a replacement for the legislative process. Obama urged Congress to follow his lead and pass legislation giving Washington “a greater capacity to secure networks and deter attacks.”

 

In a joint statement, Republican Senators John McCain, Saxby Chambliss and John Thune said the executive action could not "achieve the balanced approach" that a Congressional law would.

 

“The Senate should follow regular order and craft legislation that will have an immediate impact on our nation's cybersecurity without adding or prompting regulations that could discourage innovation and negatively impact our struggling economy,” they said.

 

On Wednesday, the key sponsor of CISPA, Republican Representative Mike Rogers, who also chairs the House Intelligence Committee, is expected to reintroduce the bill.

 

“We agree that our biggest barriers to bolster our cyber defenses can be fixed only with legislation,” Rogers said.

 

The executive order comes as the number of government agencies and companies targeted by hackers is growing. Over the past two weeks, the Federal Reserve, the Energy Department and the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have all disclosed that their networks were breached by hackers.

An Egyptian court ordered a one-month ban on YouTube on Saturday, after it said the video-sharing Web site had failed to remove an American-made anti-Islam video.

 

Cairo’s administrative court ruled in response to a suit filed by an independent Egyptian lawyer. Judge Hassouna Tawfiq, who presided over the case, said the ban would also apply to other Web sites that circulated the video, including, potentially, social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

 

It was not clear when the ban would come into effect. Implementation of the ruling is left to Egypt’s prime minister and communications minister. The court’s decision can also be appealed.

 

“This is a temporary punishment, you could say, for these Web sites for participating in this,” Tawfiq said.

 

The video in question, titled “The Innocence of Muslims,” portrayed Islam’s prophet Muhammad as a fool and a womanizer and sparked violent protests across the Muslim world last September.

 

In November, an Egyptian court imposed death sentences on seven Egyptian Coptic Christians, including the filmmaker, along with Florida-based pastor Terry Jones, in connection with the film. Analysts interpreted the sentences as largely symbolic because all were tried in absentia.

 

It is unclear what public reaction the ban would trigger if it were enforced. Activists have used YouTube and social media sites to circulate video footage of protests and police brutality over recent months of political unrest. But only about 18 percent of Egyptians are Internet-users, according to a 2010 government survey.

 

In November, an Egyptian court ordered a ban on pornographic Web sites, but the government has had difficulty enforcing it.

 

(Al Arabiya)

Those concerned about Facebook’s controversial privacy policies may have yet another reason to worry. The social network is reportedly developing a smartphone application which will track the location of its users – even when the app isn't running.

The app is scheduled to be released in mid-March, two anonymous sources told Bloomberg.

It’s allegedly designed to help users find nearby friends by revealing those friends’ locations. But unlike Facebook’s current mobile app, which allows users to let others know where they are by “checking in” at a location, the new app would continuously follow the user once the program is activated.

The app would track user whereabouts in the “background” of Apple’s mobile operating system – even when the app isn’t open on the phone, one of the sources said. It remains unclear whether the app will run on other platforms.

It’s a technique that would likely require the social networking site to ask permission from users. But there’s a loophole – Facebook may have already gotten consent from its users to run the feature.

The app may fall under Facebook’s data policy – which tells users that a company may use location information “to tell you and your friends about people or events nearby, or to offer deals to you that you might be interested in.”

“When we get your GPS location, we put it together with other location information we have about you (like your current city)…but we only keep it until it is no longer useful to provide you services, like keeping your last GPS coordinates to send you relevant notifications,” the data use policy says.

The app isn’t drastically different from current applications, such as Apple’s “Find My Friends” and Math Camp Inc.’s “Highlight,” which constantly track user locations to help people find friends or places of interest.

When approached by Bloomberg to speak about the tracking application, Facebook Spokesman Derick Mains declined to comment.

Based on past precedents, the new app is bound to raise concern from users who value their privacy.

Facebook is no stranger to controversy surrounding its privacy settings. The site has already been under fire from US and European regulators, who claim it doesn’t do enough to keep user data private.

In early January, the EU pressured internet giants such as Facebook to boost personal security controls and limit the collection of data without users’ consent.

Last September, the site was forced to stop using its facial recognition software in Europe following an investigation by the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner in Ireland.

And now, the social network’s new “Graph Search” system – which is waiting to be tested – is raising red flags.

The system is designed to search Facebook for very specific information, such as ‘Friends who like Star Wars and Harry Potter’ and ‘Languages my friends speak.’

But after using the system, computer programmer and ‘Gadget Geek’ Tom Scott found the program can conduct much juicier searches.

For instance, it will easily find ‘Married people, who like prostitutes’ or ‘Current employers of people who like racism,’ Scott revealed in a blogpost.

News of the location tracking app comes less than one week after Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg emphasized the need for new mobile products during Facebook’s Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call, which was broadcast on the internet.

“A lot of what we had to do last year was simply to improve our mobile development process…the next thing we’re going to do is get really good at building new mobile-first experiences,” Zuckerberg said during the call.

And while this may, indeed, be a “mobile-first experience,” it remains unclear whether it’s an experience that Facebook users will actually want.
 

Michael Dell has said he will buy back the world's number three PC-maker that he founded and that carries his name.

Along with technology investor Silver Lake, and with financial backing from Microsoft, he will offer to buy the firm for $24.4bn (£15.5bn).

The move will take Dell off the Nasdaq stock exchange after 25 years.

Mr Dell hopes to turn the tide for a firm that has struggled to compete with cheap Asian rivals and the boom in smartphones and tablet computers.

Dell's success over the last 29 years has made its founder one of the richest men in America.

The chief executive and chairman already owns about 14% of the firm. He and fellow senior executives will retain their existing stakes.

The buy-out of the remaining shares will be carried out by a consortium made up of Mr Dell himself, his own investment fund, and Silver Lake. It will be financed by loans from four banks, and by a $2bn loan from Microsoft.
Buying time

Analysts said the move would give Mr Dell greater flexibility in turning the company around, by dispensing with the need to deliver strong results every quarter to shareholders on the stock market.

The entrepreneur said that the firm's long-term strategy would "still take more time, investment and patience, and I believe our efforts will be better supported by partnering with Silver Lake in our shared vision".

"One of the key questions is going to be how much influence Microsoft is going to have over Dell's strategy," said Cindy Shaw, analyst at Discern Group.

Microsoft provides the Windows operating systems for Dell's computers, as well as for rival PC makers such as Hewlett Packard.

Michael Dell founded the company - originally named "PCs Limited" - in 1984 at the age of 19, operating out of his dorm room at the University of Texas.

He later dropped out of university in order to develop his PCs, including innovative laptops, and to expand his business overseas.

But over the last decade, Dell has faced increasingly steep competition, from cheaper Asian PC manufacturers such as China's Lenovo, and from innovative rivals such as Apple and Samsung whose tablets and smartphones have superseded the desktop and laptop.

'Streak'

The company appeared to lose its direction between 2004-07, when Mr Dell stepped down from day-to-day management of the company, and has suffered a number of false starts since his return, including the unsuccessful launch of its "Streak" tablet computer in 2010.

Mr Dell first approached the board with a buy-out proposal in August, and news of the talks emerged in mid-January, propelling the company's share price higher.

Together with Silver Lake, he is offering shareholders $13.65 in cash per share.

Dell's share price jumped a relatively modest 11 cents to $13.38 in morning trading on Wall Street following the announcement - reflecting the fact that the news was already well anticipated by the market.

The company's board pointed out the offer represented a 25% premium over Dell's share price in mid-January when rumours of the deal first broke.

However, the share price still remains some way below the $17-$18 level it was trading at a year ago, and well below its all-time high of just under $60 in 2000.

Completion of the buy-out, which will require shareholder approval, is far from agreed.

Before completing the deal, Dell's board said it will conduct what it called a "go shop" period of 45 days during which it would actively seek competing offers to buy the firm at a better price.