Month: October 2017

Enlarge / This image, taken from Nashoba's site, doesn't resemble the loveless scene reported by the FDA this week. (credit: Nashoba)

The Food and Drug Administration showed no fondness to a bakery that listed love as an ingredient on its granola label. Love is not an ingredient, according to the agency.

Dozens of news headlines appeared today and late yesterday reporting the fact, citing a warning letter released yesterday that the agency sent late last month to the Massachusetts bakery, Nashoba Brook Bakery, LLC.

The media seemed to savor the ostensibly heartless move by the stony federal agency. Chuckles aside, the FDA's quibble over the ingredient list is a minor point in the letter. The rest of the warning lays out a disturbing and extensive list of sanitation violations by Nashoba. Together the violations paint a picture of a filthy, neglected facility—not a place where one could imagine things are lovingly baked.

Enlarge / Justices pose for a group portrait in the East Conference Room of the Supreme Court. (credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The Supreme Court is setting aside a request to live stream its oral arguments. The attorney for Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. told members of Congress that live streaming even the audio portion of its oral arguments might impact the outcome.

"The Chief Justice appreciated and shares your ultimate goal of increasing public transparency and improving public understanding of the Supreme Court," Roberts' attorney, Jeffrey P. Minear, wrote (PDF) the four members of Congress seeking (PDF) to have the court's gerrymandering case live streamed in audio. "I am sure you are, however, familiar with the Justices' concerns surrounding the live broadcast or streaming of oral arguments, which could adversely affect the character and quality of the dialogue between the attorneys and Justices. Consequently, the Court is unable to accommodate your request."

For years, members of Congress and the public have been trying to get the high court to televise or to live stream the audio of their oral arguments, in a bid to make the court more transparent. The response has always been an affirmative "NO" out of fear that it could affect the proceedings. The court's oral arguments are open to the public, however, and the audio version of an oral argument is usually made publicly available on the Friday of the week that the case was argued. The court's opinions are also posted to its website when the court releases them.

SAN FRANCISCO—I have touched the new Pixel phone. It's tough to write about Google's new smartphones because, well, it's not about the hardware. The phones are delivery mechanisms for Google's software and AI algorithms, and none of that is really done yet.

The hardware is fine. The Pixel 2 XL, with its slimmer bezels and 18:9 screen, looks more modern than the Pixel 2. In fact, the most striking thing about Google's hardware is the decision to make two completely different phones.

Somebody didn't hear that whistle blowing. (credit: Securities and Exchange Commission Office of the Whistleblower)

Last month, the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed a 2016 breach of a test system that allowed an unknown party to get access to unpublished corporate information in the SEC's Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval (EDGAR) system. The breach potentially allowed the bad actors to profit from trades based on the information. SEC Chairman Jay Clayton revealed the extent of that breach in a policy statement on the importance of the commission's cyber-security mission. But just a few months before the SEC discovered the initial breach last year, as Reuters reports, members of the SEC's own internal digital forensics and security team wrote a letter bemoaning the lack of support they received from the agency's Office of Information Technology and SEC leadership.

In a memo sent to the SEC's inspector general, the head of the SEC's Digital Forensics and Investigations Unit complained that his team was woefully underfunded, undertrained, and forced to work with repurposed equipment and hard drives that had been designated by other branches of the SEC for disposal. The memo to SEC Inspector General Carl Hoecker, shared with Reuters by a congressional staffer, cited "serious deficiencies" in funding and support. The entire hardware budget for the unit was $100,000 for fiscal year 2017—half a million under the amount needed.

Normally, complaints to the inspector general of an agency get significant attention. However, in this case, the complaint was directed to Hoeker because he oversaw the unit. The Digital Forensics and Investigation Unit was created by Hoeker in 2015 not just for internal security investigations but so his office could play a role in the SEC's law enforcement role—providing forensic support to SEC criminal investigations. In a 2016 report to Congress, Hoeker described the role of the unit within the SEC Office of Investigations:

Enlarge (credit: Free Barrett Brown)

A federal judge in San Francisco has denied the FBI’s attempt to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a local activist who raised money for Barrett Brown. Brown is a journalist who was released from prison last year.

As Ars reported previously, in April 2014 Brown took a plea deal admitting guilt on three charges: “transmitting a threat in interstate commerce," interfering with the execution of a search warrant, and being "accessory after the fact in the unauthorized access to a protected computer.” Brown was arrested in 2012 when he shared a link related to Anonymous’ hack of Stratfor.

During Brown’s incarceration, activist Kevin Gallagher solicited over $40,000 in donations on the WePay website. However, he soon found that the FBI had successfully subpoenaed WePay to obtain information about the myriad donors whose identities Gallagher had pledged to keep secret.

(credit: OneWeb)

Thousands of new satellites are expected to be launched into low-Earth orbit in the coming years to provide high-speed broadband, and the projects have caused concern for experts and government officials who worry about a worsening space debris problem.

As the Federal Communications Commission considers satellite applications from SpaceX, OneWeb, Boeing, and others, two US senators asked the FCC to coordinate with other agencies to prevent space debris.

"As the Commission considers multiple requests for new LEO [low-Earth orbit] satellite constellations, we ask that you formally coordinate with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to establish an interagency working group on space debris and to develop a comprehensive domestic policy on space debris mitigation," Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) told FCC Chairman Ajit Pai in a letter this week.