Category: Uncategorised

Theft in professional baseball used to be about stealing bases and signs. But not any more—not in the era of big data.

The St. Louis Cardinals' former scouting chief pleaded guilty Friday in a Texas federal courtroom to five hacking counts (PDF) in connection to unlawfully accessing a highly confidential database of another Major League Baseball (MLB) team, the Houston Astros.

Court documents said Christopher Correa guessed the password to the Astros' database called "Ground Control." Court documents describe the data as including scouting reports, statistics and other information "to improve the team's scouting, communication, and decision-making for every baseball-related decision." (PDF) The record said that Correa, who faces years in prison when sentenced later this year, used a "variation" of the password that a departed Cardinals employee used before leaving to work for the Astros.

Starting next week, certain state ID cards will no longer be accepted at federal facilities. Five states, along with the territory of American Samoa, aren't compliant with the 2005 "Real ID" law and haven't received an extension from the Department of Homeland Security. On Sunday, January 10, a "grace period" will end and enforcement of the Real ID rules will begin, DHS officials told reporters on a press call today.

The bigger concern for many citizens is whether ID cards from non-compliant states will be accepted for air travel. On that point, there's some breathing room. DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said in a statement today that the law will be enforced with regard to air travel beginning on January 18, 2018. At that time, travelers with ID cards from states that don't meet the law's requirements "must present an alternative form of identification acceptable to the Transportation Security Administration in order to board a commercial domestic flight."

Johnson's statement also says that on October 1, 2020, every air traveler will need a Real ID-compliant license or another acceptable form of ID, such as a passport. (That's essentially the same rule as the 2018 deadline, but there's no talk of states still having "extensions" in 2020.)

After 20 years, UK health experts have updated their recommendations for alcohol consumption—and it’s likely the new rules won’t sit well with many Britons.

The tougher guidelines, released this week, advise men and women to drink no more than 14 alcohol units a week, which equates to six pints of beer, seven glasses of wine, or about half a bottle of whisky. While that doesn’t change anything for women, past recommendations had set limits for men at about nine glasses of wine or beer a week. In releasing the change, health officials there warned that Britons should reduce their drinking and that any amount of alcohol could be harmful to health, including increasing risks of cancer.

The recommendations say that even moderate drinking is linked to “increased risk of breast cancer, violence, drowning, and injuries from falls and motor vehicle crashes.”

T-Mobile USA today continued to face criticism of its online video zero-rating and throttling program with one small video company saying it would quit Binge On.

Slidefuse, maker of 4Stream.TV, was spurred to action in part by T-Mobile CEO John Legere insulting the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

"In light of recent events and of comments made by your CEO, John Legere, we have decided to halt our participation in Binge On and disable our traffic shaping rules for the time being," Slidefuse told T-Mobile.

‘The freeze-dried poop method’ might not sound like a weight-loss strategy that would catch on, but—as some researchers are now testing—it may be an effective way to slim down.

In a randomized, controlled clinical trial starting this year, researchers will test out such a fecal formula for the treatment of obesity. They’ll also try to glean critical details about the human microbiome and its role in our health and metabolism. The trial, led by Elaine Yu, an assistant professor and clinical researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital, will involve taking fecal samples from lean, healthy donors then freeze-drying the stool, putting a gram or two into capsules, and giving them to 20 obese patients.

Such poop-packed pills, which are designed to replace a person’s intestinal microbes with those from a donor via their feces, have proven effective at treating tenacious gut infections. This has led researchers to ponder whether the transplants could remedy other health problems, including obesity and metabolic disorders. A few animal studies and some anecdotal data in humans suggests the answer is yes—and Yu hopes to get a final answer with the upcoming trial.

Broadband industry trade groups are hopping mad about a government report that says fast Internet service isn't being deployed to Americans quickly enough.

The Federal Communications Commission is required by Congress to determine annually whether broadband "is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion" and to take action to encourage deployment if the answer is negative. The FCC's latest report finds that access to broadband—defined as 25Mbps downstream and 3Mbps upstream—has improved significantly but still isn't reaching the whole country.

That's not what Internet service providers wanted to hear.

An Arizona lawmaker is proposing legislation to make it a crime to get too close to the police to film them in action. The proposal from Republican state Sen. John Kavanagh, which includes penalties of a $300 fine and up to six months in jail, comes as lawmakers nationwide grapple with a new YouTube society of sorts. In light of high-profile incidents, filming the police has become a routine endeavor.

Last year, a Texas lawmaker proposed similar legislation but scrapped it following widespread opposition. Colorado and California went to other extremes, approving measures protecting the public from police retaliation for filming them. For their part, police officers across the nation are taking to body cameras to fulfill filming goals as well.

"Basically what this law says is if the officer is engaged in law enforcement activity, so he's making an arrest or he's questioning a suspicious person, you can film, but you've got to stay back 20 feet," Kavanagh told The Associated Press. "The reason being when you get closer, you become a distraction, the officer doesn't know if you're a threat, and that jeopardizes everybody's safety, including the officer."