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Hackers sudafricanos expusieron la identidad de más de 15.000 soplones de la policía
Una gran polémica se originó en Sudáfrica esta semana luego de que un grupo de hackers bajo el seudónimo colectivo de Domainer –y que aseguran pertenecer a Anonymous– hackeó el sitio web de la policía sudafricana y publicó la identidad de 15.767 sudafricanos que han delatado crímenes manteniendo su identidad en secreto (más conocidos coloquialmente como ‘soplones’).
Los hackers publicaron una lista en un sitio web con los nombres de usuario y contraseñas de unos 40 funcionarios de la policía, pero también los nombres, números de teléfono, direcciones de correos electrónicos y números de identificación nacional de soplones de la policía que creían que estaban entregando sus datos de forma confidencial y anónima al sitio web desde el año 2005.
“Las acusaciones van desde violaciones en Durban a brutalidad policial en Puerto Elizabeth. También se encuentran en las listas gente común sudafricana que solicitó ayuda en delitos menores como robo de automóviles o bares ilegales, o personas que se quejaron del comportamiento policial como su lentitud en las respuestas ante emergencias“, afirmó Enca, el medio sudafricano que reveló la filtración.
¿Por qué filtraron esa información?
Según Domainer, esto fue un mensaje a la policía sudafricana respecto a su responsabilidad de los datos que poseían: “¡Tan solo hemos demostrado que no cumplen con su propio Código de Conductas!“. Afirmaron vía Twitter, donde también explicaron que fue debido al asesinato por parte de la policía de 34 mineros que protestaban en una mina de platino.
Message to SAP – Shooting of 34 protesting miners outside Marikana platinum mine.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandr… We Have NOT forgotton #EXPECTUS
—Domainer V2 (@DomainerAnon) 16 de mayo de 2013
Los activistas anónimos se defendieron de poner en riesgo la vida de inocentes asegurando que solo han dado a conocer información de quejas de la ineficacia policial o denuncias de delitos menores. Sin embargo, medios sudafricanos ya han dado a conocer la preocupación de personas que acusaron, por ejemplo, la tardanza en la investigación de la violación de una niña de 14 años.
Pese a que no es la primera vez que recae sobre la policía sudafricana graves acusaciones de violencia desmedida que terminan en asesinatos, el potencial daño colateral a víctimas inocentes es demasiado grande. Al fin y al cabo, ahora muchos criminales saben hasta donde viven sus anónimos delatadores.
Link: Tipsters exposed after South Africa’s national police force hacked (The Register)
Este artículo, fue publicado originalmente aquí: http://www.fayerwayer.com/2013/05/hackers-sudafricanos-expusieron-la-identidad-de-mas-de-15-000-soplones-de-la-policia/
Here’s Your Chance To Influence The Internet Sales Tax Law, For Reals
Congress is on track to passing a nationwide Internet retail sales tax, but it has serious flaws that could majorly muck up the e-commerce industry. We think citizens are often smarter than the government, and we want to give you a chance to make the bill better before it becomes law. So, we’ve teamed up with Congressman Darrell Issa’s Open Government Foundation, which designed a platform for making line-by-line suggestions to proposed laws. In TechCrunch’s version of the “Project Madison” crowdsourcing legislative platform, our readers can add, delete, and amend specific passages in the upcoming tax law.
Suggestions that are voted up by our community will get the most attention of Congressional staffers (which we know are watching our platform). It’s been claimed that the Internet is “democratizing” the world; well, here’s our chance to prove it.
Senate Bill S.743, the “Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013,” passed the Senate with overwhelming support and is on to the House of Representatives. But, it won’t be passed for at least a month, so we have some time to bubble up the best ideas from our community of readers.
As we promised when we first launched our new civics channel, Crunchgov, TechCrunch would source and promote the most insightful ideas from the technology community. A proactive approach to improving law is just the next logical step for how we can support the amazing work you all do.
Go to http://madison.techcrunch.com/ and get your citizen on. Encourage your friends, ping your local expert, and share this opportunity loudly. If we make an impact on the bill, it’ll a watershed moment in American democracy. Go forth!
read moreEstados Unidos acusa a Apple de evadir millonarios impuestos a través de filiales extranjeras
US$74 mil millones es la cifra que evadió Apple en impuestos a través de técnicas financieras y paraísos fiscales, según el informe del subcomité de investigaciones del Senado de los Estados Unidos, prácticas que debieron justificar los abogados y directivos de la empresa de la manzana durante una audiencia a la que fueron citados.
Según los investigadores del Congreso, la compleja red de afiliados que utilizaba Apple para evadir impuestos es “una de las más grandes que vimos en nuestras vidas”, e incluye paraísos fiscales en el extranjero, oficinas sin empleados y declaraciones juradas fantasma en países con beneficios impositivos como Irlanda.
Esta situación atípica para una empresa que posee una imagen pública muy alejada del segmento de los gigantes especuladores financieros que mueven dinero de dudosa procedencia, ha generado un debate en torno a la utilización de estas técnicas para evadir impuestos y cómo a lo largo de los años se han convertido en un gran beneficio para ricos y poderosos, por no tener una regulación que los controle con mayor firmeza.
Tim Cook, presidente ejecutivo de Apple, se presentó hoy a la audiencia del congreso para responder a la gran cantidad de cuestionamientos que los investigadores del Senado tenían para que aclarase. Antes de su presentación ante los congresistas y al conocerse la noticia, Cook firmó un comunicado de prensa donde rechazaba haber recurrido a trucos para evitar pagar impuestos y que pedirá una reforma del sistema tributario para que las empresas que incluya un gravamen “razonable”, pero que no dependa de la cantidad de ingresos en el extranjero.
A su vez, finalizó el comunicado destacando que Apple ha sido “un fuerte motor de creación de empleos en el país”, donde se calcula que existen cerca de 600 mil empleados.
Lo particular de este caso es que lo que hizo Apple no es ilegal, sino que aprovechando un resquicio en las leyes tributarias estadounidenses, abusó de técnicas relacionadas con crear filiales en el exterior para girar el equivalente a US$74 mil millones de dólares libres de impuestos, de ganancias obtenidas en el exterior entre 2009 y 2012, cifra que representa cerca del 60% de sus ingresos totales.
“Apple no estaba satisfecho con la transferencia de sus ganancias a un paraíso fiscal libre de impuestos, Apple buscó con éxito el Santo Grial de la evasión fiscal. Ha creado entidades offshore que sostienen decenas de miles de millones de dólares sin aportar información sobre su residencia fiscal”, declaró el senador demócrata por Michigan, Carl Levin, quien también es presidente del Subcomité Permanente de Investigaciones del Senado.
Apple frente al Senado
La compañía dirigida por Tim Cook se presentó a la audiencia en el Senado con un informe donde indica que paga sus impuestos locales sobre ganancias en el extranjero y los impuestos estadounidenses sobre los ingresos por las inversiones que se generan en su filial irlandesa.
Además, destacaron como extremadamente pesada, la “extraordinaria” cantidad de impuestos por ingresos corporativos que pagan, cifras que detallaron como US$6.000 millones en 2012, para aclarar que su tasa efectiva de impuesto federal de ese año fue del 30,5%, apenas unos pocos puntos por debajo del 35% obligatorio.
Para el senador republicano por Arizona, John McCain, quien describe a Apple como “el infractor más distinguido” entre las corporaciones evasoras de impuestos en Estados Unidos, esta investigación carece de sustento ya que “lo que están dejando afuera es la segunda parte de la historia, la ue dice que Apple es uno de los mayores evasores de impuestos en el país”, luego de oir las declaraciones de los directivos que intentaron justificar sus acciones mediante presentaciones de pagos realizados y exigencias para aliviar la carga fiscal.
Links:
Apple’s Web of Tax Shelters Saved It Billions, Panel Finds (NY Times)
Apple’s Tim Cook defend tax strategy in senate (BBC)
Este artículo, fue publicado originalmente aquí: http://www.fayerwayer.com/2013/05/estados-unidos-acusa-a-apple-de-evadir-impuestos-a-traves-de-filiales-extranjeras/
We’re “80% Of The Way” To Fake Meat That’s Indistinguishable From The Real Thing
If you’ve flirted with vegetarianism like I have, then you’re probably aware of a range of meat substitutes, all of which pale in comparison to the real thing. But now Beyond Meat CEO and founder Ethan Brown says that mock meat is about 80 percent of the way to being able to sub in for the real thing without anyone being the wiser, in terms of taste, texture and appearance.
Brown made that claim on stage today at the WIRED Business Conference, where he was discussing the role of proteins in our diet in general and how Silicon Valley investment-backed startups like his own are trying to shake up perhaps one of the oldest and most entrenched industries: the meat market.
Beyond Meat grabbed headlines as an unlikely target for investment by Obvious Corp., the investment vehicle/incubator/idea factory co-founded by Biz Stone and Evan Williams of Twitter fame. In a blog post from August, Stone outlined exactly why Obvious felt that Beyond Meat was a prime investment target, and how it aligned with the Obvious vision.
Beyond Meat will become the market leader in the development and introduction of new plant protein products. Together, we are focused on perfectly replacing animal protein with plant protein where doing so creates nutritional value at lower cost. Aside from the fact that the products are healthy, sustainable, kind, and delicious, we are involved because with one company, we have an impact on climate change, resource scarcity, human health, animal welfare, and more. With this company, we can move into new territory while staying true to Obvious’ mission.
The Obvious goal is to “build systems that help people work together to make the world a better place,” and Beyond Meat definitely fits within that broad aim. On stage, Brown talked about the time saved in raising non-meat protein versus that which comes from animal sources, which is a comparison of minutes for his company’s products to days for even the fastest-grown animal protein, which doesn’t even begin to get into ethical concerns.
For Brown, a big part of winning the war with the consumer over meat alternatives is convincing them to try it to begin with, and that starts with giving them a recognizable product. Already, he says people find it challenging to identify Beyond Meat’s own chicken substitute as something other than chicken, except when it’s placed side-by-side with the real thing. But the key to wide adoption, and winning over a much bigger percentage of the roughly $177 billion annual animal protein market that exists today, will be achieving full verisimilitude. And part of that means getting equal billing with the red and bloody stuff.
“The meat counter for me is about an unlevelled playing field,” Brown explained on stage at the Wired event today. “They should be selling protein, not meat and meat alternatives. So when you go back to that section in the store it should be about protein, because often when you go back and are looking for a meat alternative, those products are off in a penalty box in the corner.”
Many vegetarians claim not to want meat substitutes that look, feel and taste like the real thing, but there’s an even larger market of people who are trying to limit their meat intake for health purposes but don’t want to leave the satisfaction of biting into a chicken breast or flank steak behind. That’s what has helped Beyond Meat’s business grow at a rate of 60 percent this past quarter, and 30 percent in the last month alone, according to Brown.
Solving the meat eater’s dilemma is a tech problem, and so it makes sense that investors like Obvious Corp., Vinod Khosla, and many others are interested in the space. But will we ever really get to a singularity point where we can’t tell our turkey from our Tofurky? Or will we all fall down in the uncanny valley just short of finding a perfect copy? Either way, it’s bound to be an exciting space to watch.
read moreUn software ofrece reconocimiento facial para comercios por US$40 al mes
Para un comercio es simple poder obtener estadísticas de sus potenciales clientes. Con sólo diponer de un sitio web y una herramienta de estadísticas tendrá al alcance y en tiempo real la ubicación, sexo, franja de edad y en los casos de usuarios registrados, sus nombres y mails.
Pero para un negocio que depende en gran parte de las personas que pasan frente a su local o las que entran, las posibilidades se acotan bastante y tediosos pedidos de registro suelen ser rechazados por quienes entran a esos comercios a pegar un vistazo y seguir su camino.
Para explotar este tráfico anónimo de clientes posibles o interesados en un producto, la empresa IMRSV ha diseñado el software “Cara”, una herramienta que detecta rostros a casi 8 metros de distancia, utilizando una webcam convencional y obteniendo como resultado del análisis franja de edad y género con un 90% de precisión, todo por apenas US$40 al mes.
¿Es perjudicial para la privacidad de la personas? Según sus creadores, este software no violaría ningún tipo de privacidad ya que la información que recoge (de momento) es 100% anónima, no es almacenada y no es contrastada con ninguna base de datos, sino que se utiliza para obtener información que podría servirle al comercio para definir desde una línea de productos hasta la ubicación de los mismos en el local.
Como prueba piloto, el software “Cara” ya se encuentra instalado en la tienda Reebok de la 5ta Avenida en Nueva York, donde es utilizada para recopilar información sobre la cantidad de tiempo que pasa un usuario delante de cada modelo de zapatillas y algunas de sus reacciones.
“Siempre estamos tratando de comprender y aprender lo más que podamos acerca de nuestros consumidores para que lograr crear mejores productos y una mejor experiencia para ellos”, comentó Inga Stenta, un ejecutivo de marketing de Reebok.
¿Cómo podrían las marcas explotar esta información recopilada para lograr ventas? Si la prueba piloto de Reebok tiene éxito, el próximo paso de la marca sería devolverle al cliente que se encuentra delante de un producto, información detallada sobre la tecnología de fabricación, sus usos y sus prestaciones.
IMRSV trabajó durante dos años haciendo pruebas en seis países diferentes para lograr calibrar “Cara” en la detección de barbas, bufandas y sombreros, lo que, según la compañía, le permite lograr un máximo de un 93% de precisión.
Por US$39,95 se puede acceder a una licencia por cámara, e incluso utilizarla en cualquier computadora de gama media o baja. También ofrecen una API gratuita para crear aplicaciones.
La empresa dice que no está interesado en el reconocimiento facial, sino en ofrecer una herramienta para la gama baja del mercado que a través de la detección de rostros y quizás en el futuro también expresiones, le agregue valor al comerciante y obviamente, los aleje de las controvertidas opiniones sobre la privacidad de la información.
Link: New software brings face detection to stores and streets for $40 a month (The Verge)
Este artículo, fue publicado originalmente aquí: http://www.fayerwayer.com/2013/05/un-software-ofrece-reconocimiento-facial-para-comercios-por-us40-al-mes/
Up Close With The Next Big Home Commodity: LED Lighting
Editor’s note: Sal Cangeloso is the editor of Geek.com and wrote a new book on an odd topic. It’s called LED Lighting: A Primer to Lighting the Future and it focuses on the upcoming explosion in LED manufacturing, offering a basic understanding of the technology and an interesting look at the history of LED lights.
You can buy LED Lighting: A Primer to Lighting the Future here and the first three commenters below get a copy of the book. Here is an excerpt from the first chapter of the book discussing the growth of lighting from old-timey incandescents to modern LED technology.
The incandescent bulb is a good place to start with any talk about lighting. This design has had tremendous longevity (over 130 years) and it makes for a cheap, versatile bulb. Unfortunately, this design is also power-hungry, inefficient, short-lived (with some exceptions), and fragile. They produce a minimum amount of lumens-per-watt, though they’ve made appreciable gains over the years, and are highly sensitive to power conditions. For example, a 5% reduction in voltage could double the life of a bulb while only decreasing light output by 20%.
One of the most notable strengths of the incandescent is the quality of the light it provides. This isn’t as easy to define as some of the other characteristics that will be covered, but it’s an important one when it comes to consumer adoption. After all, it’s nice to try to sell people on longevity and power savings, but if they think that the new bulbs are ugly or are too different from what they know, you’ll find them hoarding 75W and 100W incandescents before such bulbs are removed from the shelves.
Quality of light means that in order for people to be comfortable with the light these bulbs provide, the bulbs will need a color temperature that they find to be in an acceptable range, a high degree of color accuracy (usually measured by CRI), and a usable light pattern, to name a few qualities. The bigger point, as any early CFL or LED bulb buyer could tell you, is that if the bulbs don’t produce attractive light that people are comfortable being around, it won’t matter how long they last or how little power they consume.
Incandescents have good qualities, but ultimately their inefficiency means they are not a viable solution moving forward. Even modern incandescents can turn about 90% of the energy they take in into heat, which is obviously wasteful and inefficient in the extreme. Physicists might argue that this isn’t wasteful at all, and you might enjoy the heat they provide, but most of us want to leave the lighting to the lights and the heating to our furnaces. Before we demonize the long-standing bulb design, it’s worth noting that there is such a thing as efficient incandescence. While these are in fact more efficient versions of the incandescent bulb, they are still not at the level of top CFLs and LEDs. In fact, GE was working on a high-efficiency incandescent (HEI) for about 18 months, but gave up on it in order to focus its efforts on LED and organic LED (OLED) bulbs. HEIs were said to produce about 30 lm/W with the ultimate goal of doubling that amount.The halogen lamp is a type of incandescent that operates hotter and lasts longer, but its efficiency gains are minimal.
The much-maligned CFL solves some of the efficiency problems of incandescent bulbs, usually producing around 50 lm/W. Unfortunately, each bulb contains a small amount of mercury (about 4 milligrams per bulb), so disposal can be a problem, especially if the thin, usually helical, glass breaks. The bulbs have reasonably long lives, usually rated for 5,000 to 15,000 hours—but they don’t last nearly that long if they are used in short time spans as rapid cycling is bad for the bulbs. That means a CFL in a bathroom or closet might not last much longer than an incandescent bulb, despite what it says on the package. In fact, a CFL that runs for an average of 15 minutes at a time might last just 40% of its rated lifespan. Alternatively, a CFL that is used continuously from the first time it was turned on might last close to twice its expected lifespan.
CFLs saw a big jump in marketshare in 2007, capturing around23% of the market, but have been in decline over the last year or so, despite the bulbs being widely available, affordable to purchase, and much cheaper to operate than incandescents. Part of this is due to an increasing number of consumers learning about the CFL’s use of mercury, but current economic conditions also indicate that people have simply been looking for a more affordable option. In that respect, incandescents still cannot be beat.
One of the most important characteristics of LED lighting is that they are solid-state. “Solid-state” might be a term we normally associate with computer parts (as in the solid-state drive) but it’s not something the casual LED buyer will ever consider. The concept is quite simple: rather than generating light through burning or gas-discharge, LEDs use semiconductors. The is the most fundamental and important distinction that determines why LED lights have their unique characteristics and will be able to have such an impact on the lighting market. As seen in other industries, semiconductors improve at an exponential rate and have a way of taking over wherever they are used. Lighting should prove to be no different.
Of course, LEDs are just one type of solid-state lighting; there are also organic LEDs (OLEDs) and polymer LEDs (PLEDs). Right now, the LED is the main focus of SSL adoption and its future looks quite promising, thanks to the efficiency gains it brings to the market. OLEDs and their carbon-based semiconductors have potential, but high costs mean they won’t be a viable option as soon as standard LEDs.
The advent of solid-state lighting doesn’t just mean more efficiency. Just as with the introduction of high technology to other parts of our lives—from our phones, to our mail, to our televisions—light is now high-tech. In this case, it’s not the tech that makes the difference, it’s that this latest step means our lights could soon be gadgets. Today’s technology brings with it intelligence and connectivity, which makes way for lights that can be tracked, controlled remotely, and designed to work with other devices. While the humble incandescent was just a conduit for electricity and output both light and heat, a modern-day bulb can be and do much more.
What does this all mean for the LED lamp? Basically, the time is ripe for growth. LED adoption is low at the moment, but not because purchasing one won’t pay off. An LED bulb will pay for itself many times over thanks to its energy savings, but the high initial cost is just too much of a hurdle for many businesses and is unpalatable for even more consumers. As prices drop we’ll see a dramatic growth, just as CFLs grew when it was clear that they could lead to long-term savings and could, in fact, provide acceptable light for our kitchens and living rooms, not just offices.
Web: http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/30/up-close-with-the-next-big-home-commodity-led-lighting/
read moreThe First Ever Synthetic Biology Kickstarter Is About Growing ‘Glowing Plants’
Kickstarter might be better known for funding films and hardware projects, but it’s now getting its first synthetic biology proposal. A Singularity University alum, a Stanford post-doc and a Stanford Ph.D. are looking to use synthetic biology and software from startup Genome Compiler to creating plants that glow.
While the first several generations of plants might be weaker at emitting light, the long-term idea is to replace electric or gas lighting with natural lighting from plants.
“We live in a world that is generating too much carbon dioxide,” said Antony Evans, who is one of the three people behind the project. “Nature has figured out ways of creating energy that don’t require so much CO2 use, and what we really want to do is awaken people to the potential of that. Instead of having all these expensive street lights, why don’t we get plants?”
With the project, they’re inserting bioluminescence genes into a small flowering plant called Arabidopsis that’s part of the mustard family.
They’re looking for $65,000 in funding to print DNA sequences they’ve designed using the Genome Compiler software and then to create rewards for backers like “Maker” kits that let you create your own glowing plants. The startup associated with the project, Genome Compiler, lets people easily design genetic sequences and order them online.
The project comes at a time when costs around both genome sequencing and DNA printing are falling precipitously. Printing DNA at this points costs at least 25 cents per base pair. So for an 8,000-character sequence, they’re looking at at least $2,000 per unique sequence.
They’ll test a number of experimental sequences and print them with partner and Silicon Valley startup Cambrian Genomics, which has made a DNA laser printing system that cuts the cost of DNA synthesis dramatically. Then they’ll use bacteria as a vector to insert the new DNA into the plant.
Evans, who doesn’t have a background in biology at all, got into the field through Singularity University and Biocurious, a bio-hacking space down in Sunnyvale.
His bet is that the next decade will usher in a new era where it’s as easy to hack on animal or plant genomes as it is to build software with Python or Rails. The cost of sequencing a full human genome is falling even faster than Moore’s law would suggest at a current rate $8,000 down from $100 million in 2001. Not only that, DNA printing is getting cheaper as well with companies like Genscript.
They’ve also gone through the regulatory process to ensure that the project is compliant with U.S. law. Regulators from the USDA and EPA are naturally concerned that synthetic plants could become pests and crowd out or compete with natural plants for resources. They check for whether newly designed life forms have genes associated with pests; Evans has cleared this. The third agency that regulates synthetic biology experiments, the FDA, isn’t really involved here because these “Glowing Plants” are inedible.
Source: http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/23/glowing-plants/
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