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10:00 pm - Mon, May 30, 2016
Slashdot Bitcoin Price Jumps 21% Over 4 Days, Reaching a 21-Month High
An anonymous reader shares a TechCrunch report: Bitcoin is back! Or at least, there are positive signs indicating that bitcoin might not be as dead as everybody thought. Bitcoins are now trading at $5...
10:00 pm - Mon, May 30, 2016
Slashdot Eric Holder Says Snowden Performed 'Public Service'
An anonymous reader writes from a report via CNN: Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder says Edward Snowden performed a "public service" by triggering a debate over surveillance techniques, but sti...
10:00 pm - Mon, May 30, 2016
Slashdot Iran Forces Messaging Apps To Move Data To Iranian Servers
An anonymous reader writes: According a report from Reuters, the Iranian government wants to be able to track private and semi-private conversations on messaging apps, and has given companies behind p...
08:00 pm - Mon, May 30, 2016
Slashdot Canada's Energy Superpower Status Threatened As World Shifts Off Fossil Fuel
Robson Fletcher, reporting for CBC News: Canada's status as an "energy superpower" is under threat because the global dominance of fossil fuels could wane faster than previously believed, according to...
08:00 pm - Mon, May 30, 2016
Slashdot Estonian President Expresses Desire For More Digitally-Integrated Europe
In a wide-ranging interview with Ars Technica, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik talked about European Digital Single Market (DSM), an ambitious goal that seeks to make commerce flow as smoothly acros...
08:00 pm - Mon, May 30, 2016
Slashdot Telus To Shutter CDMA Service On January 31, 2017
An anonymous reader writes: With most Canadian mobile devices on some form of HSPA+ or LTE network, you don't hear mention of CDMA that often anymore. And for good reason; carriers like Telus, which s...
06:00 pm - Mon, May 30, 2016
Slashdot ASUS' ZenBook 3 Is Thinner, Lighter and Faster Than the MacBook
At the ongoing Computex trade show in China, Asus unveiled the ZenBook 3 laptop. The ZenBook 3's chassis measures 11.9mm while the whole body weighs 910g. At the event, the company's executive said th...
06:00 pm - Mon, May 30, 2016
Slashdot Tesla To Hold Gigafactory Grand Opening on July 29
Tesla's mammoth 13-acre battery making Gigafactory isn't due to begin production on lithium ion cells until next year, but according to a report on Fortune, the factory's grand opening is to be held o...
06:00 pm - Mon, May 30, 2016
Slashdot Net Neutrality Is Complicated: Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales
In an interview, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales backed the principle of Net neutrality, but added that enabling poor people to access the Internet is equally important. Wales also defended Wikipedia Ze...
04:00 pm - Mon, May 30, 2016
Slashdot Miami Money-Laundering Case May Define Whether Bitcoin Is Really Money
David Gilbert, reporting for IBTimes: Michell Espinoza, a 32-year-old computer programmer, was arrested for attempted money-laundering in 2014 when he sold $1,500 worth of bitcoin to undercover FBI ag...
04:00 pm - Mon, May 30, 2016
Slashdot ARM's New CPU and GPU Will Power Mobile VR In 2017
An anonymous cites a story on The Verge: ARM, the company that designs the processor architectures used in virtually all mobile devices on the market, has used Computex Taipei 2016 to announce new pro...
04:00 pm - Mon, May 30, 2016
Slashdot Hackers Stole 65 Million Passwords From Tumblr
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, reporting for Motherboard: On May 12, Tumblr revealed that it had found out about a 2013 data breach affecting 'a set of users' email addresses and passwords, but the co...
12:00 pm - Mon, May 30, 2016
Slashdot John McAfee Denied Libertarian Party Nomination For President
SonicSpike quotes an article at Reason: In a decisive rout for pragmatism over purity, the Libertarian Party has nominated former New Mexico Republican Governor and 2012 nominee Gary Johnson for presi...
08:00 am - Mon, May 30, 2016
Slashdot WWII Code-Breaker Dies At Age 95
An anonymous reader quotes an article from the Washington Post:Jane Fawcett, a British code-breaker during World War II who deciphered a key German message that led to the sinking of the battleship Bi...
04:00 am - Mon, May 30, 2016
Slashdot Real-World Pong Created by Amateur Builders
sproketboy shares this article about a computer graphic designer who spent two years building a real-world version of the classic videogame Pong, played on a full-sized coffee table using only mechani...
02:00 am - Mon, May 30, 2016
Slashdot Researchers Criticize New DAO Ethereum VC Fund
Three cryptocurrency experts published a scientific paper Friday detailing seven attacks that could influence how the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) allocates its Ether funds. An anonymou...
12:00 am - Mon, May 30, 2016
Slashdot Doubts Raised About Cellphone Cancer Study
Vox is strongly criticizing coverage of a supposed link between cellphones and cancer suggested by a new study, calling it "a breathtaking example of irresponsible science hype." An anonymous reader w...
12:00 am - Mon, May 30, 2016
Slashdot Google Scholar Users Report Badly Malfunctioning Captcha
Google's search engine for academic research materials is blocking many users with a malfunctioning captcha screen, according to complaints on a Google help forum. "I'm a doctoral student and a profes...
10:00 pm - Sun, May 29, 2016
Slashdot Massive Backlash Building Over Windows 10 Upgrades
Some Windows users are now disabling critical updates on their systems rather than face the prospect of mistakenly upgrading to Windows 10. An anonymous reader writes:"By pushing it on users in such a...
10:00 pm - Sun, May 29, 2016
Slashdot Systemd Starts Killing Your Background Processes By Default
New submitter nautsch writes: systemd changed a default value in logind.conf to "yes", which will kill all your processes, when you log out... There is already a bug-report over at debian: Debian bug ...
08:00 pm - Sun, May 29, 2016
Slashdot How The IoT Will Change The Chip
"Get ready for some big changes in the 'silicon' of Silicon Valley," writes tech CEO Narbeh Derhacobian who argues that the need to build tens of billions of connected sensor devices will change the w...
08:00 pm - Sun, May 29, 2016
Slashdot Study Indicates Americans Don't Trust AI
Taco Cowboy writes: It may be brilliant, but it's not all that trustworthy. That appears to be the opinion Americans hold when it comes to Artificial Intelligence systems... And while we may be intera...
06:00 pm - Sun, May 29, 2016
Slashdot William Gibson Announces New Sci-Fi Comic Book
68-year-old science fiction author William Gibson just released a complicated new science fiction comic book, and this weekend Ars Technica proclaimed that "the results are grand". An anonymous reader...
06:00 pm - Sun, May 29, 2016
Slashdot Mugger Arrested After Victim Spots Him On Facebook's 'People You May Know'
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BGR: In a somewhat bizarre story which proves that truth is often stranger than fiction, a serial mugger in England was arrested after one of his victims spott...
04:00 pm - Sun, May 29, 2016
Slashdot Is Denver The Next High-Tech Center?
An anonymous reader write: "The spread of the tech industry outside Silicon Valley has helped make Denver the fastest-growing large city in the U.S.," reports the New Yorker, saying it's now growing f...
04:00 pm - Sun, May 29, 2016
Slashdot Fiverr Suffers Six-Hour DDoS Attack After Removing DDoS-For-Hire Listings
Two days after Fiverr, a marketplace for digital services, removed user listings from its website that advertised DDoS-for-hire services, the company's website suffered a six-hour long DDOS attack. So...
02:00 pm - Sun, May 29, 2016
Slashdot Ray Kurzeil's Google Team Is Building Intelligent Chatbots
An anonymous reader quotes an article from The Verge.Inventor Ray Kurzweil made his name as a pioneer in technology that helped machines understand human language, both written and spoken. In a video ...
12:00 pm - Sun, May 29, 2016
Slashdot Ruby on Rails Creator Supports After-Work Email Bans
An anonymous reader writes: David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails, is applauding talk of an after-work e-mail ban, writing that "the ever-expanding expectations for when someone is av...
08:00 am - Sun, May 29, 2016
Slashdot Upcoming OS/2 Release Will Be Called ArcaOS 5.0
At the annual convention of OS/2 users, Arca Noae announced their new OS/2-OEM distribution will be released in the fourth quarter of 2016, and the project, codenamed "Blue Lion", will officially be c...
04:00 am - Sun, May 29, 2016
Slashdot That North Korean Facebook Clone Has Already Been Hacked
Remember yesterday's story about an off-the-shelf Facebook clone in North Korea? Within a few hours that site was hacked by an 18-year-old college student in Scotland.An anonymous reader writes: Using...
02:00 am - Sun, May 29, 2016
Slashdot Apple CEO Tim Cook: I'd Require All Children To Start Coding In 4th Grade
This week Apple CEO Tim Cook argued at Startup Fest Europe that coding should be a 'second language' taught to all children. theodp shares two quotes from a YouTube video. "We fundamentally believe th...
12:00 am - Sun, May 29, 2016
Slashdot Is Facebook Sabotaging A Face-Recognition Law?
"You know something's up when politicians bring up a bill out of nowhere, and then try to ram it through over Memorial Day weekend," writes Fortune. "That's what's happening in Illinois, where state l...
12:00 am - Sun, May 29, 2016
Slashdot Op-ed: Oracle Attorney Says Google's Court Victory Might Kill the GPL
Annette Hurst, an attorney at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe who represented Oracle in the recent Oracle v. Google trial, has written an opinion piece for Ars Technica in which he urges developers...
10:00 pm - Sat, May 28, 2016
Slashdot NetBSD 7.0.1 Released
New submitter fisted writes: The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 7.0.1, the first security/bugfix update of the NetBSD 7.0 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed ...
10:00 pm - Sat, May 28, 2016
Slashdot Ask Slashdot: What Books Should An Aspiring Coder Read?
Earlier this month Bill Gates released his summer reading list, which included Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson and mathematician Jordan Ellenberg's book How Not to be Wrong. Now an anonymous Slashdot re...
08:00 pm - Sat, May 28, 2016
Slashdot Mark Zuckerberg Is Dictator Of Facebook Nation; There's No Democracy Online: The Pirate Bay Founder
Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg is the "dictator" of "the biggest nation in the world," says Peter Sunde, co-founder of the controversial website The Pirate Bay. Sunde, who appeared at The...
08:00 pm - Sat, May 28, 2016
Slashdot California Mayors Demand Surveillance Cams On Crime-Ridden Highways
An anonymous reader shares an Ars Technica report: The 28 shootings along a 10-mile stretch of San Francisco-area highway over the past six months have led mayors of the adjacent cities to declare tha...
06:00 pm - Sat, May 28, 2016
Slashdot The NSA's Delightfully D&D-inspired Guide To the Internet
"The NSA has a well-earned reputation for being one of the tougher agencies to get records out of, making those rare FOIA wins all the sweeter..." according to Muckrock.com, and "the fact that the rec...
06:00 pm - Sat, May 28, 2016
Slashdot Controversial Surveillance Firm Blue Coat Was Granted a Powerful Encryption Certificate
Joseph Cox, reporting for Motherboard (edited for clarity): A controversial surveillance company called Blue Coat Systems -- whose products have been detected in Iran and Sudan -- was recently issued ...
04:00 pm - Sat, May 28, 2016
Slashdot Department of Homeland Security Still Uses COBOL
The Department of Defense has promised to finally stop managing the U.S. nuclear arsenal with floppy disks "by the end of 2017". But an anonymous reader shares Softpedia's report about another startli...
04:00 pm - Sat, May 28, 2016
Slashdot 62% Americans Get News On Social Media
More people in the United States are now turning to social media instead of traditional media for news. According to Pew Research Center, which surveyed over 4,500 people with various backgrounds, an ...
02:00 pm - Sat, May 28, 2016
Slashdot Finnish Government Criticizes Microsoft For Job Cuts, 'Broken Promises'
jones_supa writes: Softpedia reports: "Microsoft has recently announced a new round of job layoffs at its Mobile unit in Finland, as it moves forward with its restructuring and reorganization plan fol...
02:00 pm - Sat, May 28, 2016
Slashdot EFF Warns of Harsher CFAA
An anonymous reader writes: The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is "vague, draconian, and notoriously out of touch with how we use computers today," warns the EFF. But instead of reforming it, two U.S. S...
12:00 pm - Sat, May 28, 2016
Slashdot ForcePhone App Uses Ultrasonic Tone To Create Pressure-Sensitive Batphone
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Stack: Researchers at the University of Michigan have created an app that makes any smartphone pressure-sensitive without additional hardware. The app, cal...
08:00 am - Sat, May 28, 2016
Slashdot Qualcomm To Manufacture Custom Chips For Chinese Market
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Stack: Qualcomm president Derek Aberle has suggested that the semiconductor giant is preparing to produce its own custom chips for the Chinese market. [A W...
04:00 am - Sat, May 28, 2016
Slashdot FDA Approves First Implant Treatment For Opioid Addiction
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Bloomberg: The Food and Drug Administration cleared the first implant in the U.S. to treat heroin and opioid painkiller addictions. The product, Probuphine...
02:00 am - Sat, May 28, 2016
Slashdot FBI Raids Dental Software Researcher Who Found Patient Records On Public Server
blottsie writes: Yet another security researcher is facing possible prosecution under the CFAA for accessing data on a publicly accessible server. The FBI on Tuesday raided Texas-based dental software...
02:00 am - Sat, May 28, 2016
Slashdot Google Boosts Mobile Web Speed On Apple Devices With Accelerated Mobile Pages
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: The Google iOS app for devices like the iPhone and iPad now supports the search giant's Accelerated Mobile Pages project, created to increase the load...
02:00 am - Sat, May 28, 2016
Slashdot Feinstein-Burr Encryption Legislation Is Dead In The Water
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Reuters: After the San Bernardino terrorist attack, key U.S. lawmakers pledged to require technology companies to give law enforcement agencies a "back doo...
12:00 am - Sat, May 28, 2016
Slashdot Model X Owner Files Lemon Law Suit Against Tesla, Claims Car Is Unsafe To Drive
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BGR: When designing the Model X, Tesla went more than a little bit overboard in trying to trick out its crossover SUV with as many bells and whistles as possib...
12:00 am - Sat, May 28, 2016
Slashdot SpaceX Successfully Lands A Falcon 9 Rocket At Sea For The Third Time
An anonymous reader writes: SpaceX has successfully landed the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean for the third time in a row. The Verge reports: "It was the thir...
12:00 am - Sat, May 28, 2016
Slashdot Possible Cellphone Link To Cancer Found In Rat Study
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: A giant U.S. study meant to help decide whether cellphones cause cancer is coming back with confusing results. A report on the study, conducted in ra...
10:00 pm - Fri, May 27, 2016
Slashdot Amazon Built An Echo Simulator You Can Use In the Browser
Jordan Novet, writing for VentureBeat: Amazon today announced the availability of Echosim.io, a website that simulates the capabilities of the Amazon Echo speaker, which employs Amazon's Alexa voice a...
10:00 pm - Fri, May 27, 2016
Slashdot Wearable 'Backpack PCs' Let You Experience High-End VR On The Go
An anonymous reader writes: Powerful virtual reality headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive require powerful PCs with beefy graphics cards to operate. That means you'll usually be tethered to a PC...
08:00 pm - Fri, May 27, 2016
Slashdot North Korea Linked to the SWIFT Bank Hacks
North Korea could be behind the recent string of digital attacks on Asian banks, says Symantec. The cyber security firms notes that the attacks could be traced as far back as October 2015, two months ...
08:00 pm - Fri, May 27, 2016
Slashdot Hackers Claim to Have 427 Million Myspace Passwords
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, reporting for Motherboard: There's an oft-repeated adage in the world of cybersecurity: There are two types of companies, those that have been hacked, and those that don...
08:00 pm - Fri, May 27, 2016
Slashdot All European Scientific Articles To Be Freely Accessible By 2020
An anonymous reader shares a report on EU2016: All scientific articles in Europe must be freely accessible as of 2020. EU member states want to achieve optimal reuse of research data. They are also lo...
08:00 pm - Fri, May 27, 2016
Slashdot Someone In North Korea Is Hosting a Facebook Clone
Reporter Jason Koebler shares: Someone in North Korea appears to have created a Facebook clone, according to an internet analytics company that traced the site's DNS to the notoriously isolated countr...
06:00 pm - Fri, May 27, 2016
Slashdot Why Are We Spending Billions and Tons of Fossil Fuel On Search of Lost Planes?
Reader Max_W asks: After days of massive search finally, "Report: Signals detected from EgyptAir Flight 804 in Mediterranean" Why not record GPS/GLONASS track constantly into a text file on say twenty...
06:00 pm - Fri, May 27, 2016
Slashdot Microsoft's Get Windows 10 App, KB 3035583, Reappears
An anonymous reader shares an InfoWorld article: Once again, Microsoft has unleashed the GWX Kraken, with no explanation and no description. The latest KB 3035583 appears as a "Recommended" optional p...
06:00 pm - Fri, May 27, 2016
Slashdot Gigabit Internet With No Data Caps May Be Coming To Rural America
Jon Brodkin, writing for Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission is making another $2.15 billion available for rural broadband projects, and it's trying to direct at least some of that mon...
04:00 pm - Fri, May 27, 2016
Slashdot Facebook Begins Tracking Non-Users Around the Internet
Amar Toor, reporting for The Verge: Facebook will now display ads to web users who are not members of its social network, the company announced Thursday, in a bid to significantly expand its online ad...
04:00 pm - Fri, May 27, 2016
Slashdot China Unveils 'Straddling Bus' Design To Beat Traffic Jams
An anonymous reader writes: A Beijing company has unveiled spectacularly futuristic designs for a pollution-busting, elevated bus capable of gliding over the nightmarish mega-jams for which urban Chin...
04:00 pm - Fri, May 27, 2016
Slashdot Slashdot Asks: Would You Pay For Android Updates?
It's no secret that most Android OEMs could do better when it comes to seeding out updates for their existing devices. A report on Bloomberg earlier this week claimed that Google plans to publicly nam...
02:00 pm - Fri, May 27, 2016
Slashdot Secret Text In Senate Bill Would Give FBI Warrantless Access To Email Records
mi quotes a report from The Intercept: A provision snuck into the still-secret text of the Senate's annual intelligence authorization would give the FBI the ability to demand individuals' email data a...
12:00 pm - Fri, May 27, 2016
Slashdot Mars Is Coming Out Of An Ice Age
Taco Cowboy quotes a report from Reuters: An analysis of radar images that peered inside the polar ice caps of Mars shows that Earth's neighbor is coming out of an ice age that is part of an ongoing c...
08:00 am - Fri, May 27, 2016
Slashdot Apple Not Allowed To Open Stores In India
ffkom writes: Reuters reports: "India has said Apple Inc must meet a rule obliging foreign retailers to sell at least 30 percent locally-sourced goods if it wishes to open stores in the country, a sen...
04:00 am - Fri, May 27, 2016
Slashdot Patent Troll VirnetX Wants To Ban FaceTime and iMessage, Increase Damages Award By $190M
An anonymous reader writes: Earlier this year, patent troll VirnetX won a court battle with Apple to the tune of $625 million. Now, the company wants to increase the damages award by $190 million. Law...
02:00 am - Fri, May 27, 2016
Slashdot Smartphone Surveillance Tech Used To Target Anti-Abortion Ads At Pregnant Women
VoiceOfDoom writes: Rewire reports: "Last year, an enterprising advertising executive based in Boston, Massachusetts, had an idea: Instead of using his sophisticated mobile surveillance techniques to ...
02:00 am - Fri, May 27, 2016
Slashdot Anonymous Hackers Turned Stock Analysts Are Targeting US, Chinese Corporations
An anonymous reader writes: A smaller group of Anonymous, called Anonymous Analytics, reached the conclusion that DDoSing is stupid and never fixes anything, so they decided to use their hacking skill...
12:00 am - Fri, May 27, 2016
Slashdot Antibiotic-Resistant E Coli Reaches The US For The First Time
New submitter maharvey writes: A woman in Pennsylvania has contracted a strain of E Coli that is unaffected by all known legal antibiotics, including the antibiotics of last resort. We have had bacter...
12:00 am - Fri, May 27, 2016
Slashdot Study: '50% of Misogynistic Tweets From Women'
An anonymous reader writes: A study performed by researchers behind the Internet campaign "Reclaim," suggests that half of all misogynistic tweets posted on Twitter come from women. The campaign is de...
12:00 am - Fri, May 27, 2016
Slashdot Scott Walker Rents Out Email and Donor Lists To Pay Campaign Debt
An anonymous reader writes: In an effort to pay off his hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt racked up from his failed presidential run, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is renting out his email and do...
10:00 pm - Thu, May 26, 2016
Slashdot Consumer Campaigners Read T&C Of Their Mobile Phone Apps To Prove a Point
From a BBC report: Norwegians have spent more than 30 hours reading out terms and conditions from smartphone apps in a campaign by the country's consumer agency. The average Norwegian has 33 apps, the...
10:00 pm - Thu, May 26, 2016
Slashdot Millennials Value Speed Over Security, Says Survey
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Daily Dot: Millennials stand apart from other Americans in preferring faster Internet access to safer Internet access, according to a new survey. When digi...
10:00 pm - Thu, May 26, 2016
Slashdot Android Is 'Fair Use' As Google Beats Oracle In $9 Billion Lawsuit
infernalC writes: Ars Technica is reporting that the verdict is in, and that the jury decided that Google's duplication of several Java interfaces is fair use. Ars Technica writes that Google's Androi...
08:00 pm - Thu, May 26, 2016
Slashdot Slashdot Asks: Should It Be Legal To Resell E-Books, Software, and Other Digital Goods?
There's no one stopping you from selling the CDs and DVDs that you buy, so why can't you do the same with e-books, music albums, movies, and other things you've downloaded? Ars Technica reports about ...
08:00 pm - Thu, May 26, 2016
Slashdot Microsoft and Facebook Building Underwater Transatlantic 'MAREA' Data Cable
An anonymous reader writes: On Thursday, Microsoft and Facebook announced a partnership to build a transatlantic subsea data cable. Called 'MAREA' (Editor's note: it is Spanish for "tide"), it will co...
08:00 pm - Thu, May 26, 2016
Slashdot A Third Of New Cellular Customers Last Quarter Were Cars
Ina Fried, reporting for Recode: With the U.S. smartphone market saturated, most of the growth in the cellular industry is actually coming from other kinds of devices including tablets, machine-to-mac...
06:00 pm - Thu, May 26, 2016
Slashdot Virtual Assistants Such As Amazon's Echo Break US Child Privacy Law, Experts Say
Mark Harris, reporting for The Guardian: An investigation by the Guardian has found that despite Amazon marketing the Echo to families with young children, the device is likely to contravene the US Ch...
06:00 pm - Thu, May 26, 2016
Slashdot Lenovo: Motorola Acquisition 'Did Not Meet Expectations'
Lenovo acquired Motorola from Google in 2014. Since then, the Chinese technology conglomerate has been trying to merge Motorola's offering into its large portfolio. But things aren't going as planned....
06:00 pm - Thu, May 26, 2016
Slashdot E-Cigs Are Exploding In Vapers' Faces At An Alarming Rate
E-cigs are becoming increasingly popular, but are they safe enough? BuzzFeed News is reporting about accidents where e-cigs have exploded in vapers' faces. The report claims that these incidents are o...
04:00 pm - Thu, May 26, 2016
Slashdot Adidas To Sell Robot-Made Shoes In Germany
Adidas, the German sportswear and equipment maker, has announced that it will start marketing the first series of sports shoes manufactured by robots in Germany from 2017. Deutsche Welle reports: The ...
04:00 pm - Thu, May 26, 2016
Slashdot Get Ready To Be Bombarded With Ads When Using Google Maps
An anonymous reader writes: The chance to squeeze some extra advertising dollars is something rarely missed by Google. This week the company quietly announced changes to two of its most widely used se...
04:00 pm - Thu, May 26, 2016
Slashdot Comcast Users Must Now Pay $50 Per Month Extra To Avoid Caps
Karl Bode, reporting for DSLReports: In a letter being sent to Comcast customers in usage capped markets, the company says that with the recent announcement of usage caps being bumped to 1 terabyte, t...
02:00 pm - Thu, May 26, 2016
Slashdot American Schools Teaching Kids To Code All Wrong
theodp writes: Over at Quartz, Globaloria CEO Idit Harel argues that American schools are teaching our kids how to code all wrong. She writes, "The light and fluffy version of computer science -- whic...
12:00 pm - Thu, May 26, 2016
Slashdot Xiaomi Unveils Budget-Friendly Mi Drone, $460 For 4K Or $380 For 1080p
An anonymous reader writes: Chinese consumer electronics company Xiaomi has officially journeyed into the drones product category. The Xiaomi Mi Drone is a quadcopter with a three-axis gimbal, 4K came...
08:00 am - Thu, May 26, 2016
Slashdot Tor To Use Distributed RNG To Generate Truly Random Numbers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Softpedia: Tor developers have been working on the next iteration of the Tor network and its underbelly, the Onion routing protocol, in order to create a stron...
04:00 am - Thu, May 26, 2016
Slashdot Researchers Teaching Robots To Feel and React To Pain
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from Leibniz University of Hannover in Germany are developing what they call an "artificial robot nervous system" that would allow robots to "feel" pain and rea...
02:00 am - Thu, May 26, 2016
Slashdot Microsoft May Ban Your Favorite Password
wiredmikey writes from a report via SecurityWeek.Com: Microsoft is taking a step to better protect users by banning the use of weak and commonly-used passwords across its services. Microsoft has annou...
02:00 am - Thu, May 26, 2016
Slashdot FCC Formalizes Massive Fines For Selling, Using Cell-Phone Jammers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Network World: Two years ago the FCC announced its intention to fine a Chinese electronics maker $34.9 million and a Florida man $48,000 for respectively selli...
12:00 am - Thu, May 26, 2016
Slashdot State Dept. IT Staff Told To Keep Quiet About Clinton's Server
dcblogs writes this report from Computerworld: Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's decision to use a private email server ran afoul of the government's IT security and record retention re...
12:00 am - Thu, May 26, 2016
Slashdot CentOS Linux 6.8 Released
An anonymous reader writes: CentOS team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of CentOS Linux 6.8 and install media for i386 and x86_64 Architectures. Release Notes for 6.8 are available h...
12:00 am - Thu, May 26, 2016
Slashdot The Pirate Bay Sails Back To Its .ORG Domain
An anonymous reader writes: Following a report that the Swedish Court would seize the domain names 'ThePirateBay.se' and 'PirateBay.se,' The Pirate Bay is now sailing back to where it started in 2003,...
10:00 pm - Wed, May 25, 2016
Slashdot Former McDonald's USA CEO: $35K Robots Cheaper Than Hiring at $15 Per Hour
An anonymous reader shares an article on Fox Business: As fast-food workers across the country vie for $15 per hour wages, many business owners have already begun to take humans out of the picture. "I...
10:00 pm - Wed, May 25, 2016
Slashdot Google Built an Escape Room, Making People Use Its Apps To Get Out
An anonymous reader writes: Google France has built an escape room created by We Are Social, called "Premiere Piece," that will open in the heart of Paris. Adweek writes: "The campaign builds on the e...
10:00 pm - Wed, May 25, 2016
Slashdot US Military Uses 8-Inch Floppy Disks To Coordinate Nuclear Force Operations
An anonymous reader writes from a report via CNBC: A new report reveals the U.S. Defense Department is still using 8-inch floppy disks in a computer system that coordinates the operational functions o...
08:00 pm - Wed, May 25, 2016
Slashdot Microsoft Backtracks On 'Nasty Trick' Upgrade To Windows 10
Reader Raging Bool writes: Days after angering many users with its so-called "nasty trick", Microsoft has reversed its crazy decision to infuriate users by upgrading them to Windows 10 automatically. ...
08:00 pm - Wed, May 25, 2016
Slashdot Google Steps Up Pressure on Partners Tardy in Updating Android
Google is actively tracking the time its partner OEMs take to release a new version of Android onto their devices. According to a Bloomberg report, the company is drawing up rankings that could shame ...
08:00 pm - Wed, May 25, 2016
Slashdot Google To Bring Official Android Support To the Raspberry Pi 3
An anonymous reader shares an Ars Technica report: The Raspberry Pi 3 is not hurting for operating system choices. The tiny ARM computer is supported by several Linux distributions and even has a vers...
06:00 pm - Wed, May 25, 2016
Slashdot Tech Billionaire Peter Thiel Secretly Bankrolled Hulk Hogan's Lawsuit Against Gawker: Reports
If you're a powerful Silicon Valley billionaire, and there's a media house which actively points out flaws in your investments, can you do something about it? If you're Peter Thiel, you certainly can....
06:00 pm - Wed, May 25, 2016
Slashdot Smaller Xbox One Coming This Year, More Powerful Xbox One In 2017, Says Report
Keza MacDonald and Jason Schreier, reporting for game blog Kotaku: Microsoft is preparing at least two new Xbox models for release in the next two years, sources tell Kotaku. Later this year we'll see...
06:00 pm - Wed, May 25, 2016
Slashdot Genius' Web Annotations Undermined Web Security
New reader BradyDale shares an article on the Verge: Until early May, when The Verge confidentially disclosed the results of my independent security tests, the "web annotator" service provided by the ...
04:00 pm - Wed, May 25, 2016
Slashdot Microsoft Is Laying Off 1,850 to Streamline Its Smartphone Business
Microsoft is making more changes to its smartphone business. The company, which sold its feature phone business last week, on Wednesday announced that it is scaling back hardware -- laying off 1,850 s...
04:00 pm - Wed, May 25, 2016
Slashdot Facebook Could Be Eavesdropping On Your Phone Calls
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook is not just looking at user's personal information, interests, and online habits but also to your private conversations, revealed a new report. According to NBC re...
04:00 pm - Wed, May 25, 2016
Slashdot Foxconn Cuts 60,000 Jobs, Replaces With Robots
An anonymous reader writes: In a bid to accelerate growth and reduce labor costs, Apple supplier Foxconn cut 60,000 jobs at a single factory, work that is now being completed by robots. As many as 600...
02:00 pm - Wed, May 25, 2016
Slashdot Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Fitbit For 'Highly Inaccurate' Heart Rate Trackers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: A class action lawsuit against Fitbit may have grown teeth following the release of a new study that claims the company's popular heart rate trackers...
12:00 pm - Wed, May 25, 2016
Slashdot Billionaire Technologist Accuses NASA Asteroid Mission of Bad Statistics
Taco Cowboy quotes a report from Science Magazine: Nathan Myhrvold, ex-CTO of Microsoft, is accusing NASA of providing bad statistics on asteroid size. Mr. Myhrvold alleged that scientists using a pro...
08:00 am - Wed, May 25, 2016
Slashdot HPE To Spin Out Its Huge Services Business, Merge It With CSC
itwbennett writes from a report via CIO: Hewlett-Packard Enterprise announced Tuesday that it will spin off its enterprise services business and merge it with IT services company Computer Sciences Cor...
04:00 am - Wed, May 25, 2016
Slashdot TSA Replaces Security Chief As Tension Grows At Airports
HughPickens.com writes: Ron Nixon reports at the NYT that facing a backlash over long security lines and management problems, TSA administrator Peter V. Neffenger has shaken up his leadership team, re...
02:00 am - Wed, May 25, 2016
Slashdot E Ink Creates Full-Color Electronic Paper Display
SkinnyGuy writes: The reflective display company finally figured out how to make those ultra tiny balls produce 32,000 colors in one super-low-powered display. It's a breakthrough for E Ink, display a...
02:00 am - Wed, May 25, 2016
Slashdot Apple To Open Up Siri To Developers, Release An Amazon Echo Competitor
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BGR: According to a new report from The Information, Apple is finally ready to let Siri grow up. Specifically, the publication relays that Apple will finally o...
02:00 am - Wed, May 25, 2016
Slashdot Toyota Forms 'Strategic Partnership' With Uber
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Toyota and Uber are forming a "strategic partnership" which will include an investment by the Japanese automaker in the San Francisco-based ride-sha...
12:00 am - Wed, May 25, 2016
Slashdot Microsoft Awards Grants To Deliver Affordable Internet Access
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Microsoft said Tuesday it had awarded grants to 12 businesses as part of the company's Affordable Access Initiative, part of the software giant's effort ...
12:00 am - Wed, May 25, 2016
Slashdot Elderly Use More Secure Passwords Than Millennials, Says Report
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Quartz: A report released May 24 by Gigya surveyed 4,000 adults in the U.S. and U.K. and found that 18- to 34-year-olds are more likely to use bad password...
12:00 am - Wed, May 25, 2016
Slashdot Pastejacking Attack Appends Malicious Terminal Commands To Your Clipboard
An anonymous reader writes: "It has been possible for a long time for developers to use CSS to append malicious content to the clipboard without a user noticing and thus fool them into executing unwan...
10:00 pm - Tue, May 24, 2016
Slashdot American Scientists Working On Creating Chimeras: Half-Human, Half-Animal Embryos
Researchers at the University of California, Davis are working on creating half-human, half-animal hybrid embryos dubbed chimeras to better understand diseases and its progression. But not everybody i...
10:00 pm - Tue, May 24, 2016
Slashdot Google Now Handles At Least 2 Trillion Searches Per Year
Danny Sullivan, reporting for Search Engine Land: How many searches per year happen on Google? After nearly four years, the company has finally released an updated figure today of "trillions" per year...
10:00 pm - Tue, May 24, 2016
Slashdot Google France Being Raided For Unpaid Taxes
jones_supa writes: Investigators in France have raided Google's Paris headquarters amid a probe over the company's tax payments, Reuters reports. The French Finance Ministry is investigating $1.8 bill...
08:00 pm - Tue, May 24, 2016
Slashdot Too Fat For Facebook: Photo Banned For Depicting Body In 'Undesirable Manner'
An anonymous reader shares a report on The Guardian: Facebook has apologized for banning a photo of a plus-sized model and telling the feminist group that posted the image that it depicts "body parts ...
08:00 pm - Tue, May 24, 2016
Slashdot Beware Of Keystroke Loggers Disguised As USB Phone Chargers, FBI Warns
An anonymous reader cites an article on Ars Technica: FBI officials are warning private industry partners to be on the lookout for highly stealthy keystroke loggers that surreptitiously sniff password...
08:00 pm - Tue, May 24, 2016
Slashdot No, Apple Won't Become a Wireless Carrier
Don Reisinger, reporting for Fortune: Apple won't be competing with its carrier partners anytime soon. Speaking at Startup Fest Europe in Amsterdam during an interview on Tuesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook s...
06:00 pm - Tue, May 24, 2016
Slashdot China's Huawei Sues Samsung Claiming Mobile Patent Infringement
An anonymous reader writes: Huawei said on Wednesday it has filed lawsuits against Samsung claiming infringement of smartphone patents, in the first such case by the Chinese firm against the world's b...
06:00 pm - Tue, May 24, 2016
Slashdot Windows 10 Upgrade Activates By Clicking Red X Close Button In Prompt Message
Reader Raging Bool writes: In a move guaranteed to annoy many people, Microsoft has "jumped the shark" on encouraging users to upgrade to Windows 10. Microsoft has faced criticism for changing the pop...
06:00 pm - Tue, May 24, 2016
Slashdot Pebble Unveils Pebble 2, Pebble Time 2, and Pebble Core Smartwatches
Pebble on Tuesday unveiled its latest line of wearable devices. The company announced the Pebble 2 -- a sleeker successor to the company's four-year-old Pebble watch -- and the Pebble Time 2, which co...
04:00 pm - Tue, May 24, 2016
Slashdot AT&T Begins Capping Broadband Users
Karl Bode, reporting for DSLReports (edited for clarity): Just a reminder to AT&T customers: the company's usage caps on U-Verse broadband connections is now in effect. When AT&T originally an...
04:00 pm - Tue, May 24, 2016
Slashdot Apple, Microsoft and Google Hold 23% Of All US Corporate Cash Outside the Finance Sector
An anonymous reader writes: Apple, Microsoft, and Google are the top three cash-rich U.S. companies across all sectors of business, not including banks and other financial institutions -- holding a co...
04:00 pm - Tue, May 24, 2016
Slashdot Apple To Launch Thinner, Lighter MacBook Pro Models With OLED Touch Bar, Touch ID In Fall
Apple plans to refresh its MacBook Pro line later this year. The makeover will see both 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro models replace their function keys atop laptop keyboards with an OLED touch bar,...
02:00 pm - Tue, May 24, 2016
Slashdot Scientists Discover Why Your Dirty Laundry Stinks
HughPickens.com writes: Discovery News reports that dirty laundry smells bad because of certain chemicals called volatile organic compounds, which can't always be washed out on an eco-friendly 20C cyc...
12:00 pm - Tue, May 24, 2016
Slashdot Burning All Fossil Fuels Would Scorch Earth, Says Study
mspohr quotes a report from Phys.Org: A new study published in the Journal Nature Climate Change shows our precarious climate condition: "Using up all known fossil fuel reserves would render Earth eve...
08:00 am - Tue, May 24, 2016
Slashdot Facebook Is Tweaking Trending Topics To Counter Charges of Bias
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook has said once again in an open letter to Sen. John Thune, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, that its Trending Topics section is free of any political bias...
04:00 am - Tue, May 24, 2016
Slashdot Hacker Phineas Fisher is Trying To Start a 'Hack Back' Political Movement
An anonymous reader writes: The hacker who breached Hacking Team and FinFisher is trying to get more people to "hack back" and fight "the system." For some, thanks to his targeted attacks and sophisti...
02:00 am - Tue, May 24, 2016
Slashdot Researchers Set World Record Wireless Data Transmission Rate of 6 GB/Sec Over 37 KM
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Daily: Transmitting the contents of a conventional DVD in under ten seconds by radio transmission is incredibly fast -- and a new world record in wirel...
02:00 am - Tue, May 24, 2016
Slashdot Apple Sued Over iPhones Making Calls, Sending Email
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: A company that seemingly does nothing but license patents or, if necessary, sue other companies to get royalties, has taken aim at Apple. But here's t...
02:00 am - Tue, May 24, 2016
Slashdot Facebook Acquires VR Audio Company, Launches 'Facebook 360 Spatial Workstation'
An anonymous reader writes from a report via The Verge: Facebook is looking to improve its virtual-reality audio experience with the acquisition of Two Big Ears. Facebook is rereleasing Two Big Ears' ...
12:00 am - Tue, May 24, 2016
Slashdot Americans Used Nearly 10 Trillion Megabytes of Mobile Data Last Year
An anonymous reader writes: A report from CTIA released Monday found that consumers have nearly doubled their consumption of mobile data last year. It found that last month, consumers chugged down 804...
12:00 am - Tue, May 24, 2016
Slashdot September: Netflix Will 'Become Exclusive US Pay TV Home of Films From Disney, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Pixar'
An anonymous reader writes: The licensing deal between Netflix and Disney for the rights to all new films that hit movie theaters in 2016 is nothing new. What is new is when exactly the deal will come...
12:00 am - Tue, May 24, 2016
Slashdot FBI Wants Biometric Database Hidden From Privacy Act
Trailrunner7 quotes a report from onthewire.io: The FBI is working to keep information contained in a key biometric database private and unavailable, even to people whose information is contained in t...
10:00 pm - Mon, May 23, 2016
Slashdot Amazon Stops Giving Refunds When an Item's Price Drops After You Purchase It
Amazon has for years issued refunds to users when the price of an item drops after they've purchased it. But lately the e-commerce giant hasn't been doing that on a number of products, except for tele...
10:00 pm - Mon, May 23, 2016
Slashdot Pac-Man 256 Coming To PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC With Multiplayer
Pac-Man is coming to gaming consoles. Publisher Bandai Namco announced on Monday that Pac-Mac 256 will be launching on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC on June 21. The VentureBeat reports: The console ...
10:00 pm - Mon, May 23, 2016
Slashdot Google's 'Science Journal' App Turns Your Android Device Into A Laboratory
An anonymous reader writes about Google's latest 'Science Journal' app that was released at the end of Google I/O last week: Google has launched its 'Science Journal' app that can essentially turn you...
08:00 pm - Mon, May 23, 2016
Slashdot Windows Phone Market Share Sinks Below 1 Percent
Tom Warren, reporting for The Verge: Worldwide smartphone sales increased by nearly 4 percent in the recent quarter, but Microsoft's Windows Phone OS failed to capitalize on the growth and dropped bel...
08:00 pm - Mon, May 23, 2016
Slashdot Sorry, There's Nothing Magical About Breakfast
Is breakfast the most important meal of the day? Plenty of people certainly believe that, but according to a new report, that notion is based on "misinterpreted research and biased studies." The New Y...
06:00 pm - Mon, May 23, 2016
Slashdot Robot Ranchers Monitor Animals On Giant Australian Farms
An anonymous reader writes: Sheep and cattle farms in the Australian outback are vast as well as remote. For example, the country's most isolated cattle station, Suplejack Downs in the Northern Territ...
06:00 pm - Mon, May 23, 2016
Slashdot Xiaomi Revenues Were Flat in 2015
Scott Cendrowski, reporting for Fortune: Xiaomi, the Chinese smartphone maker and second highest-valued startup in the world at $45 billion, barely grew sales at all last year. Revenue for 2015 reache...
06:00 pm - Mon, May 23, 2016
Slashdot Google Plans To Bring Password-Free Logins To Android Apps By Year-End
An anonymous reader shares a report on TechCrunch: Google's plan to eliminate passwords in favor of systems that take into account a combination of signals -- like your typing patterns, your walking p...
04:00 pm - Mon, May 23, 2016
Slashdot Spotify's New Family Plan Is Cheaper, $14.99 For Up To 6 people
An anonymous reader writes: Spotify on Monday announced some changes to its family plan subscriptions, allowing them to use Spotify Premium for $14.99 per month and get six different Spotify accounts ...
04:00 pm - Mon, May 23, 2016
Slashdot How Copyright Law Is Being Misused To Remove Material From the Internet
London-based resident Annabelle Narey posted a negative review of a building firm on Mumsnet. She noted in her review that her ceiling fell down in an upstairs bedroom. The Guardian reports about what...
04:00 pm - Mon, May 23, 2016
Slashdot Tesla Co-Founder Says Hydrogen Fuel Cells Are a 'Scam'
Marc Tarpenning, co-founder of Tesla, believes hydrogen fuel cells are a "scam". Tarpenning, who is not with Tesla anymore appeared on Internet History Podcast last week to outline a number of issues ...
02:00 pm - Mon, May 23, 2016
Slashdot Avoiding BlackBerry's Fate: How Apple Could End Up In a Similar Position
It's almost unbelievable today that BlackBerry ruled the smartphone market once. The Canadian company's handset, however, started to lose relevance when Apple launched the iPhone in 2007. At the time,...
12:00 pm - Mon, May 23, 2016
Slashdot Nevada Startup Stores Energy With Trains
An anonymous reader writes: Nevada's Bureau of Land Management has granted a land lease to a $55 million project by Advanced Rail Energy Storage, which "proposes to use excess off-peak energy to push ...
08:00 am - Mon, May 23, 2016
Slashdot Space Updates From Three Countries
The Indian Space Research Organisation continues developing a reusable launch vehicle, which could cut the costs of satellite launches by 90%. William Robinson quotes the Business Times: India will us...
04:00 am - Mon, May 23, 2016
Slashdot Code Quality Predicted Using Biometrics
An anonymous reader writes: Swiss researchers are unveiling "a not at all sinister-sounding system capable of predicting the quality of code produced by developers based on their biometric data," acco...
02:00 am - Mon, May 23, 2016
Slashdot Microsoft Urged to Open Source Classic Visual Basic
"On the 25th anniversary of classic Visual Basic, return it to its programmers..." reads the plea at UserVoice.com from Sue Gee -- drawing 85 upvotes. "The new Microsoft claims to back open source, wh...
12:00 am - Mon, May 23, 2016
Slashdot Rovio's Desperate Push For 'Angry Birds' Movie
An anonymous reader writes:Last year Rovio "cut 213 jobs, affecting all departments except those working on the film and its related projects," remembers VentureBeat, describing their effort to make a...
12:00 am - Mon, May 23, 2016
Slashdot How the Pentagon Punished NSA Whistleblowers
10 years before Edward Snowden's leak, an earlier whistle-blower on NSA spying "was fired, arrested at dawn by gun-wielding FBI agents, stripped of his security clearance, charged with crimes that cou...
10:00 pm - Sun, May 22, 2016
Slashdot Netflix and Amazon Could Face Content Quotas In Europe
jader3rd quotes an articles from The Daily Mail about a new EU proposal to be published next week:Netflix and Amazon could be forced to make French, German and even Estonian films and TV shows by the ...
10:00 pm - Sun, May 22, 2016
Slashdot Hundreds of Drupal Sites Targeted With Fake Ransomware
An anonymous reader writes: A group of hackers have created a ransomware strain that specifically targets Drupal sites. Infection occurs thanks to an automated bot which scans Drupal sites and then us...
08:00 pm - Sun, May 22, 2016
Slashdot Segway Inventor To Build Powerful Wheelchair With Toyota
Toyota is working with Segway PT inventor Dean Kamen on advanced wheelchairs for the aged and disabled. Slashdot reader necro81 writes: Most people don't know that the two-wheeled balancing technology...
08:00 pm - Sun, May 22, 2016
Slashdot Ask Slashdot: Have You Migrated To Node.js?
A developer maintaining his company's "half-assed LAMP / WordPress stack pipeline for web and web application development" is considering something more scalable that could eventually be migrated into...
06:00 pm - Sun, May 22, 2016
Slashdot Student Exposes Bad Police Encryption, Gets Suspended Sentence
An anonymous reader shares a story about Dejan Ornig, a security analyst in Slovenia who warned the Slovenian police department about vulnerabilities in their supposedly secure communication system TE...
06:00 pm - Sun, May 22, 2016
Slashdot Attackers Steal $12.7M In Massive ATM Heist
Within two hours $12.7 million in cash was stolen from 1,400 ATMs located at convenience stores all across Japan, investigators announced Sunday. An anonymous reader quotes a Japanese newspaper:Police...
04:00 pm - Sun, May 22, 2016
Slashdot Ransomware Adds DDoS Attacks To Annoy More People
An anonymous reader writes: Ransomware developers have found another method of monetizing their operations by adding a DDoS component to their malicious payloads. So instead of just encrypting your fi...
04:00 pm - Sun, May 22, 2016
Slashdot Researchers Generate Electricity Using Seawater and Sunlight
Slashdot reader sosume writes: Scientists at Osaka University have created a new method to use sunlight to turn seawater into hydrogen peroxide which can then be used in fuel cells to generate electri...
02:00 pm - Sun, May 22, 2016
Slashdot Google-Backed Solar Plant Catches on Fire
An anonymous reader writes:"The world's largest solar plant just torched itself," read the headline at Gizmodo, reporting on a fire Thursday at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System. Built on 4...
12:00 pm - Sun, May 22, 2016
Slashdot Node.js Now Runs COBOL and FORTRAN
Last summer a developer created a plugin which made it possible to run snippets of COBOL code embedded in JavaScript using the Node.js interpreter. Now Slashdot reader techfilz writes: Romanian develo...
08:00 am - Sun, May 22, 2016
Slashdot Japanese Startup Wants To Rain Down Man-Made Meteor For Tokyo Olympics
A startup called Star-ALE wants to create a man-made meteor shower over the city of Tokyo for the 2020 Olympics opening ceremonies. The pyrotechnics show, Star-ALE says, will be visible from an area 2...
04:00 am - Sun, May 22, 2016
Slashdot How Militarized Cops Are Zapping Rights With Stingray
"Police nationwide are secretly exploiting intrusive technologies with the feds' complicity," argues a new article on Alternet -- calling out Stingray, which mimics a cellphone tower to identify every...
02:00 am - Sun, May 22, 2016
Slashdot Abrams Says Paramount Will Drop Star Trek/Axenar Lawsuit
An anonymous reader writes:At a fan event Friday for the upcoming Star Trek movie, producer J. J. Abrams said Paramount Pictures' lawsuit against Axanar Productions was "going away." Director Justin L...
12:00 am - Sun, May 22, 2016
Slashdot The World's Largest Cruise Ship and Its Supersized Pollution Problem
An anonymous reader cites a report on the Guardian: When the gargantuan Harmony of the Seas slips out of Southampton docks on Sunday afternoon on its first commercial voyage, the 16-deck-high floating...
12:00 am - Sun, May 22, 2016
Slashdot Fake Facebook Event Draws Police, Spawns New Meme
An anonymous reader writes: A fake event announcement on Facebook has now launched "a long string of viral jokes featuring fake concert events for music acts at oddly appropriate venues," according to...
10:00 pm - Sat, May 21, 2016
Slashdot Linux Advocate Suggests Using More Closed-Source Software
An anonymous reader writes: Open Source advocate Jack Wallen is a writer for Linux.com and Tech Republic. He predicts that both Windows and OS X will be Open Source within 5 years, writing that "neith...
10:00 pm - Sat, May 21, 2016
Slashdot Did A German Nuclear Plant Intentionally Leak Radioactive Waste?
mdsolar shares this report from a Berlin news site: A former engineer at one of Germanyâ(TM)s nuclear reactors has made an astonishing claim: that the plant intentionally pumped radioactive waste...
08:00 pm - Sat, May 21, 2016
Slashdot Civil Liberties Expert Argues Snowden Was Wrong
An anonymous reader writes that in 2014, Geoffrey Stone was given access to America's national security apparatus as a member of the President's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technol...
08:00 pm - Sat, May 21, 2016
Slashdot 'Eat, Sleep, Code, Repeat' Approach Is Such Bullshit
At its I/O developer conference, Google had the message "Eat. Sleep. Code. Repeat." spread everywhere -- walls, t-shirts you name it. Dan Kim, a programmer at Basecamp, has shared an interesting view ...
06:00 pm - Sat, May 21, 2016
Slashdot TV Journalists Try Buying AK-47 On Dark Web, Fail
An anonymous reader writes: "It was supposed to be a great story about terrorism, uncertainty and the evils of the DarkNet," writes Deep Dot Web, describing an investigative report titled "Fear of Ter...
06:00 pm - Sat, May 21, 2016
Slashdot Motorola's Legendary RAZR Flip Phone Is Making a Comeback
An anonymous reader shares an Engadget article: The year was 2004, and Motorola had just announced what was then an insanely thin flip phone, the RAZR V3. It was -- and still is -- a head-turner, and ...
04:00 pm - Sat, May 21, 2016
Slashdot Terrorists No Longer Welcome On OneDrive, Outlook, Xbox Live
Microsoft has updated its anti-terrorism policies. In a blog post, the Redmond, Washington-based company said that it would remove "terrorist content" from a fleet of its services including OneDrive, ...
04:00 pm - Sat, May 21, 2016
Slashdot New Clues About Why Mt. Gox Failed
An anonymous reader writes: The Daily Beast is investigating internal emails, contracts, and new information provided by a former accounting employee at Mt. Gox for clues about how and why the world's...
02:00 pm - Sat, May 21, 2016
Slashdot Ask Slashdot: Can You Have A Smart Home That's Not 'In The Cloud'?
With the announcement of Google Home on Wednesday, one anonymous Slashdot reader asks a timely question about cloud-based "remote control" services that feed information on your activities into someon...
10:00 am - Sat, May 21, 2016
Slashdot Scientists Say Nuclear Fuel Pools Pose Safety, Health Risks
mdsolar quotes a report from NBC News: Ninety-six aboveground, aquamarine pools around the country that hold the nuclear industry's spent reactor fuel may not be as safe as U.S. regulators and the nuc...
08:00 am - Sat, May 21, 2016
Slashdot DARPA Extreme DDOS Project Transforming Network Attack Mitigation
coondoggie quotes a report from Networkworld: Researchers with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have quickly moved to alter the way the military, public and private enterprises pr...
04:00 am - Sat, May 21, 2016
Slashdot Microsoft Finds Legal Path To Launch Minecraft In China
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Minecraft's PC and smartphone versions are finally coming to China. On Friday, Microsoft and Mojang announced the beginning of a "five-year exclu...
02:00 am - Sat, May 21, 2016
Slashdot Apple Opens First 'Next Generation' Retail Store
An anonymous reader writes: Apple has opened its new flagship store on Thursday in San Fransisco, throwing the curtain back on a design that puts a premium on hanging out over shopping. About 20 perce...
02:00 am - Sat, May 21, 2016
Slashdot A Third Of Cash Is Held By 5 US Tech Companies
An anonymous reader writes: Moody's Investors Service released an analysis Friday that shows Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Cisco Systems, and Oracle are sitting on $504 billion, which is roughly 30% of ...
12:00 am - Sat, May 21, 2016
Slashdot AI Will Create 'Useless Class' Of Human, Predicts Bestselling Historian
An anonymous reader writes: Yuval Noah Harari, author of the international bestseller "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind," doesn't have a very optimistic view of the future when it comes to artifi...
12:00 am - Sat, May 21, 2016
Slashdot Real-Life RoboCop Guards Shopping Centers In California
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Metro: While machines from the likes of RoboCop and Chappie might just be the reserve of films for now, this new type of robot is already fighting crime. This ...
12:00 am - Sat, May 21, 2016
Slashdot Wristband Gives You An Electric Shock When You Overspend
An anonymous reader writes: "Intelligent Environments, the company that brought us emoji passwords, has launched another original product, a banking platform integrated with IoT devices working on the...
10:00 pm - Fri, May 20, 2016
Slashdot Judge Orders 'Intentionally Deceptive' DOJ Lawyers To Take Remedial Ethics Class
According to the Daily Caller, "The judge overseeing the challenge by 26 states to President Obama's executive action in immigration has ordered all lawyers 'employed at the Justice Department in Wash...
10:00 pm - Fri, May 20, 2016
Slashdot Oculus No Longer Lets Customers Move Purchased Software To Non-Oculus Hardware
AmiMoJo quotes a report from Boing Boing: As recently as 5 months ago, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey was promising his customers that they could play the software they bought from the Oculus store on "...
08:00 pm - Fri, May 20, 2016
Slashdot Uber Knows Exactly When You'll Pay Surge Pricing
An anonymous reader writes: Uber has figured out exactly when you are more likely to pay double or triple the cost of your ride: when your phone battery is low. Uber's head of economic research, Keith...
08:00 pm - Fri, May 20, 2016
Slashdot Project Ara Lives: Google's Modular Smartphones Coming To Developers This Fall
Finally, there's some update on Project Ara, an open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones. Google announced on Friday that a test version of the modular smartphone will be release...
08:00 pm - Fri, May 20, 2016
Slashdot Silicon Valley Tech Workforce Is Vastly Different From US, Say Feds
Reader dcblogs shares an article on Computer World: In recent years, major high-tech firms have started releasing workforce diversity data, along with a promise to improve. And there is much room for ...
06:00 pm - Fri, May 20, 2016
Slashdot Fox 'Stole' a Game Clip, Used It In Family Guy and DMCA'd the Original
An anonymous reader shares a TorrentFreak report: This week's episode of Family Guy included a clip from 1980s Nintendo video game Double Dribble showing a glitch to get a free 3-point goal. Perhaps s...
06:00 pm - Fri, May 20, 2016
Slashdot Foul-Mouthed Worm Takes Control Of Wireless ISPs Around the Globe
Dan Goodin, reporting for Ars Technica (edited and condensed): ISPs around the world are being attacked by self-replicating malware that can take complete control of widely used wireless networking eq...
06:00 pm - Fri, May 20, 2016
Slashdot IMAX Embraces Virtual Reality, To Open Six VR Theaters This Year
An anonymous reader writes: IMAX is getting into the virtual reality business. Tthe company has announced that it is teaming up with Google to build cinema-quality virtual reality video cameras. It is...
04:00 pm - Fri, May 20, 2016
Slashdot China Fakes 488 Million Social Media Posts a Year To Deceive Its Citizens
In an attempt to keep its citizens from seeing bad news and getting involved in sensitive political debates, China's government fabricates about 488 million social media comments a year, reports Bloom...
04:00 pm - Fri, May 20, 2016
Slashdot Declaring Code Is Not Code, Says Larry Page
Alphabet CEO Larry Page says his company never considered getting permission from Oracle for using the latter's Java APIs in Android. Page, who appeared in a federal court, said Java APIs are open and...
04:00 pm - Fri, May 20, 2016
Slashdot India Records Its Hottest Day Ever As Temperature Hits 51C (123.8F)
An anonymous reader writes: A city in northern India has shattered the national heat record, registering a searing 51C -- the highest since records began -- amid a nationwide heatwave. The new record ...
02:00 pm - Fri, May 20, 2016
Slashdot New Surveillance System May Let Cops Use All Of The Cameras
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: [Computer scientists have created a way of letting law enforcement tap any camera that isn't password protected so they can determine where to send help...
12:00 pm - Fri, May 20, 2016
Slashdot ARM Announces Next-Gen 64-Bit Artemis Mobile Chip On 10nm TSMC FinFET Process
MojoKid writes from a report via Hot Hardware: ARM has been working closely with TSMC for years now. Over the last six years or so especially, ARM and TSMC have collaborated to ensure that TSMC's cutt...
08:00 am - Fri, May 20, 2016
Slashdot Google Appeals French Order For Global 'Right To Be Forgotten'
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Alphabet Inc's Google appealed on Thursday an order from the French data protection authority to remove certain web search results globally in respons...
04:00 am - Fri, May 20, 2016
Slashdot Why Don't Scientists Kill The 'Demon In The Freezer'?
HughPickens.com writes: Smallpox was one of the most devastating diseases humanity has ever faced, killing more than 300 million people in the 20th century alone. But thanks to the most successful glo...
02:00 am - Fri, May 20, 2016
Slashdot There Were Mega-Tsunamis On Mars
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Mechanics: Today, a team of scientists has announced the first discovery of extraterrestrial tsunamis. A team of astronomers and geologists led by J. A...
02:00 am - Fri, May 20, 2016
Slashdot Google Is A Serial Tracker
An anonymous reader writes: Two Princeton academics conducted a massive research into how websites track users using various techniques. The results of the study, which they claim to be the biggest to...
02:00 am - Fri, May 20, 2016
Slashdot US Bans Electronic Cigarettes From Checked Baggage Over Fire Risks
An anonymous reader writes: Earlier this month, the FDA announced it would regulate electronic cigarettes and other new tobacco products. Now, the U.S. Transportation Department announced it is perman...
12:00 am - Fri, May 20, 2016
Slashdot TeslaCrypt Ransomware Maker Shuts Down, Releases Master Key
An anonymous reader writes: The TeslaCrypt ransomware makers have officially closed down shop and apologized for all the damage they have caused in the past. TeslaCrypt upset a lot of gamers as it wou...
12:00 am - Fri, May 20, 2016
Slashdot Google Patents Self-Driving Car That Glues Pedestrians To The Hood In A Crash
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Google just got a patent for a special kind of coating on self-driving cars that could help prevent pedestrian injuries. The company wants to coat autonom...
12:00 am - Fri, May 20, 2016
Slashdot Superjet Technology Nears Reality After Successful Australia Test
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Yahoo: A two-hour flight from Sydney to London is a step closer to reality after the latest successful test Wednesday of hypersonic technology in the Australia...
10:00 pm - Thu, May 19, 2016
Slashdot The Average Age For a Child Getting Their First Smartphone Is Now 10.3 Years
An anonymous reader writes: A TechCrunch article, citing a report on Influence Central, states that the average age for a child getting their smartphone is now 10.3 years. The report adds that 64% of ...
10:00 pm - Thu, May 19, 2016
Slashdot Humanoid 'Pepper' Robot Needs US Android Programmers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from USA Today: Japan-based SoftBank Robotics announced Wednesday at Google I/O, the company's annual developer's conference, that it is opening a new Pepper-focuse...
10:00 pm - Thu, May 19, 2016
Slashdot Google Chrome To Disallow Backspace As a 'Back' Button
An anonymous reader writes: Google Chrome is going to stop people from accidentally deleting everything they've been doing. A future version of the app will stop the backspace button from also functio...
08:00 pm - Thu, May 19, 2016
Slashdot Don't Use Google Allo
At its developer conference on Wednesday, Google announced Allo, a chatbot-enabled messaging app. The app offers a range of interesting features such as the ability to quickly doodle on an image and g...
08:00 pm - Thu, May 19, 2016
Slashdot Men Are Sabotaging The Online Reviews Of TV Shows Aimed At Women
FiveThirtyEight has an interesting article today which accuses men of sabotaging the online reviews of TV shows aimed at women. The publication cites an example of "Sex and the City", a show which app...
08:00 pm - Thu, May 19, 2016
Slashdot Google Play Store and Over a Million Android Apps Coming To Chromebooks
It's official: the Google Play Store is coming to Chrome OS. The company announced on Thursday that it is bringing more than 1.5 million Android apps to Chromebooks. Google adds that zero efforts are ...
06:00 pm - Thu, May 19, 2016
Slashdot Federal Judge Says Internet Archive's Wayback Machine A Perfectly Legitimate Source Of Evidence
Tim Cushing, reporting for TechDirt (condensed): Those of us who dwell on the internet already know the Internet Archive's "Wayback Machine" is a useful source of evidence. So, it's heartening to see ...
06:00 pm - Thu, May 19, 2016
Slashdot Robin Hood Hacker Donates $11,000 of Stolen Bitcoin to Help Fight ISIS
An anonymous reader writes: A Kurdish region of Syria that borders territory held by the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) has received an $11,000 donation in allegedly stolen bitcoin from a vigilan...
06:00 pm - Thu, May 19, 2016
Slashdot Computers and Warrants: Some Senators Oppose Justice Plan
A group of bipartisan senators introduced a bill on Thursday that blocks a pending judicial rule change allowing U.S judges to issue search warrants for remote access to computers in any jurisdiction,...
04:00 pm - Thu, May 19, 2016
Slashdot Theranos Withdraws Two Years of Blood Test Results
Reader Major Blud writes: Theranos, the company valued at $9 billion that promised to revolutionize the way blood testing is done, has just announced that it has withdrawn all of the test done using i...
04:00 pm - Thu, May 19, 2016
Slashdot Filmmakers Ask 'Pirate' to Take Polygraph, Backtrack When He Agrees
The makers of Dallas Buyers Club (a 2014 movie, which won three Academy awards) are going to great lengths to crackdown on BitTorrent pirates. According to a report on piracy news blog TorrentFreak, t...
04:00 pm - Thu, May 19, 2016
Slashdot Chromebooks Outsell Macs For the First Time In the US
An anonymous reader shares a report on The Verge: Google's low-cost Chromebooks outsold Apple's range of Macs for the first time in the U.S. recently. IDC analyst Linn Huang confirmed the milestone to...
02:00 pm - Thu, May 19, 2016
Slashdot Android Wear 2.0 Gets A Keyboard, Standalone Apps, Activity Recognition, New UI
An anonymous reader writes: Google unveiled the biggest update to Android Wear yet at Google I/O -- Android Wear version 2.0. Google VP of Engineering for Android Wear David Singleton said the new ver...
12:00 pm - Thu, May 19, 2016
Slashdot PornHub's 'Bangfit' Program Uses Sexy Exercise To Build Muscle
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Mashable: A new program created by PornHub called "BangFit" features 'sexercises' that allow players to build and tone muscle. Instead of forcing people to go ...
08:00 am - Thu, May 19, 2016
Slashdot EgyptAir Flight 804 Missing
dark.nebulae writes: An EgyptAir flight disappeared on it's way from Paris to Egypt resulting in loss of 56 passengers and 10 crew members. The plane was flying at 37,000 feet when it vanished shortly...
04:00 am - Thu, May 19, 2016
Slashdot Pfizer Blocks The Use Of Its Drugs In Executions
HughPickens.com writes: Erik Eckholm reports in the NYT that the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has announced that it has imposed sweeping controls on the distribution of its products to ensure that none...
02:00 am - Thu, May 19, 2016
Slashdot Google's Tensor Processing Unit Could Advance Moore's Law 7 Years Into The Future
An anonymous reader writes from a report via PCWorld: Google says its Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) advances machine learning capability by a factor of three generations. "TPUs deliver an order of magn...
02:00 am - Thu, May 19, 2016
Slashdot Updated Skimer Malware Infects ATMs Worldwide
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at Kaspersky have discovered an improved version of Backdoor.Win32.Skimer infecting ATM machines worldwide. The new Skimer allows criminal access to card data, ...
02:00 am - Thu, May 19, 2016
Slashdot Nintendo May Start Selling 'Computer Software'
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Nintendo's most recent fiscal-year disclosure made headlines for announcing a release window for the new "Nintendo NX" console and yet another Ze...
12:00 am - Thu, May 19, 2016
Slashdot Google Announces New Virtual Reality Platform 'Daydream'
ErnieKey writes: At Google I/O today, the company announced what they are calling "Google Daydream." This is their upcoming virtual-reality platform that takes Google Cardboard several steps further. ...
12:00 am - Thu, May 19, 2016
Slashdot Scientists Find A 'Weak Spot' In HIV That May Pave The Way To A Vaccine
iONiUM quotes a report from Futurism: Research conducted by a team from the National Institutes of Health reported a new vulnerable site on HIV for vaccines to target. It is based on an antibody from ...
12:00 am - Thu, May 19, 2016
Slashdot Google Turns Firebase Into Its Unified Platform For Mobile Developers
An anonymous reader writes: Google has announced a plethora of new features to Firebase, its cloud services provider that mobile developers can use to power their apps. TechCrunch reports: "In its pre...
10:00 pm - Wed, May 18, 2016
Slashdot Spy Chief: Foreign Hackers May Be Targeting Presidential Candidates
An anonymous reader writes from a report via NBC News: Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned Wednesday that foreign hackers may be targeting the campaigns of U.S. presidential candida...
10:00 pm - Wed, May 18, 2016
Slashdot Snapchat Faces An Outcry Against 'Whitewashing' Filters
Last month Snapchat was thrown under the bus for a feature that many found downright racist. The photo-sharing app had added a face-altering filter that made users look like Bob Marley. Less than a mo...
10:00 pm - Wed, May 18, 2016
Slashdot Europa's Ocean Chemistry Could Be Earth-Like
An anonymous reader writes: Alien life in the universe could be close to home, swimming around Europa's ocean. The idea has been floating around scientific minds for more than a decade: beneath the ic...
08:00 pm - Wed, May 18, 2016
Slashdot iOS 9.3.2 Bricking Some 9.7-inch iPad Pro Devices With 'Error 56' Message
An anonymous reader writes: iOS 9.3.2 is causing problems for some 9.7-inch iPad Pro owners, with multiple users reporting issues shortly after installing the update over the air. Affected users are s...
08:00 pm - Wed, May 18, 2016
Slashdot Google Announces Allo, Duo, Stable Android N Preview, Instant Apps
Also at the conference, Google announced Allo, a new smart messaging app, and Duo, a high-definition video chat app for Android and iOS devices. TechCrunch reports: Why the decision to launch two sepa...
08:00 pm - Wed, May 18, 2016
Slashdot Google Assistant and Google Home: Amazon Echo, But From Google
At its developer conference I/O, Google on Wednesday unveiled Google Home, a small round gadget with microphones and speakers that listens and responds to your questions and commands. As you may have ...
06:00 pm - Wed, May 18, 2016
Slashdot LinkedIn User? Your Data May Be Up For Sale
An anonymous reader cites a ZDNet report: Reports indicate that a LinkedIn data breach may have led to the sale of sensitive data belonging to 117 million users. The company's website experienced a da...
06:00 pm - Wed, May 18, 2016
Slashdot Australia Engineers Set New Solar Energy World Record With 34.5% Sunlight To Energy Efficiency
An anonymous reader writes: Australian engineers have edged closer to the theoretical limits of sunlight-to-electricity conversion by photovoltaic cells with a device that sets a new world efficiency ...
06:00 pm - Wed, May 18, 2016
Slashdot Transparent Displays Are Here, But They're Pretty Useless
An anonymous reader writes: Samsung has debuted the first commercial installation of its 55-inch 'mirror' displays at a salon in South Korea with a transparent OLED screen overlaid over a mirrored sur...
04:00 pm - Wed, May 18, 2016
Slashdot Wikipedia Editor Says Site's Toxic Community Has Him Contemplating Suicide
An anonymous reader writes: A longtime Wikipedia editor wrote an email to a large public mailing list Tuesday, saying he was contemplating suicide due to online abuse by his fellow Wikipedians. "Nobod...
04:00 pm - Wed, May 18, 2016
Slashdot Nokia Announces Return To Smartphone, Tablet Markets
Nokia is making a return to phones and tablets. The Finnish company on Wednesday announced that it will license its brand and IP to a newly created company called HMD global. The company in question, ...
04:00 pm - Wed, May 18, 2016
Slashdot Netflix Launches Fast.com To Show How Fast Your Internet Connection Really Is
Paul Sawers, writing for VentureBeat (condensed): Netflix really wants to show you how fast (or slow) your Internet connection is, and to do so it has launched a new website at Fast.com that conveys t...
02:00 pm - Wed, May 18, 2016
Slashdot Developer Of Anonymous Tor Software Dodges FBI, Leaves US
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: FBI agents are currently trying to subpoena one of Tor's core software developers to testify in a criminal hacking investigation, CNNMoney has learned. Bu...
12:00 pm - Wed, May 18, 2016
Slashdot Backblaze Releases Billion-Hour Hard Drive Reliability Report
jones_supa writes: The storage services provider Backblaze has released its reliability report for Q1/2016 covering cumulative failure rates of mechanical hard disk drives by specific model numbers an...
08:00 am - Wed, May 18, 2016
Slashdot Employers Struggle To Find Workers Who Can Pass A Drug Test
HughPickens.com writes: Jackie Calmes writes in the NYT that all over the country, employers say they see a disturbing downside of tighter labor markets as they try to rebuild from the worst recession...
04:00 am - Wed, May 18, 2016
Slashdot Copyright Trolls Rightscorp Are Teetering On The Verge Of Bankruptcy
JustAnotherOldGuy writes: Rightscorp, the copyright trolls whose business model was convincing ISPs to freeze their customers' Internet access in response to unsubstantiated copyright accusations, and...
02:00 am - Wed, May 18, 2016
Slashdot Connecting Everyone To Internet 'Would Add $6.7 Trillion To Global Economy'
An anonymous reader writes: A report, titled Connecting the world: Ten mechanisms for global inclusion, and prepared for Facebook by PwC, says that global economic output would increase by $6.7 trilli...
02:00 am - Wed, May 18, 2016
Slashdot Iraq Shuts Down Internet In Entire Country To Prevent Exam Cheating
An anonymous reader writes: The Iraqi government has ordered ISPs to shut down Internet access in the entire country to prevent exam cheating for Iraq's official exams for secondary and high schools. ...
02:00 am - Wed, May 18, 2016
Slashdot Live-Action Tetris Movie Secures $80 Million Funding, Plans To Be Part Of A Trilogy
An anonymous reader writes: In 2014, Threshold Entertainment announced it would be producing a live-action film based on the Russian stacking game Tetris. Today, Threshold Entertainment announced it h...
12:00 am - Wed, May 18, 2016
Slashdot Firefox Tops Microsoft Browser Market Share For First Time
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Ars Technica: For the first time, Firefox has pulled ahead of Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Edge browsers. Mozilla's Firefox grabbed 15.6 percent of wo...
12:00 am - Wed, May 18, 2016
Slashdot Google Unveils 'Gigapixel' Camera To Preserve and Archive Art
An anonymous reader writes: The Google Institute has developed an ultra-high resolution gigapixel Art Camera which can automatically recompose images into single works of extraordinary detail. The fir...
12:00 am - Wed, May 18, 2016
Slashdot Genetically Modified Crops Are Safe, Report Says
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: Genetically modified crops on the market are not only safe, but appear to be good for people and the environment, experts determined in a report rele...
10:00 pm - Tue, May 17, 2016
Slashdot It's Trivially Easy To Identify You Based On Records of Your Calls and Texts
Reader erier2003 shares an article on Daily Dot: Contrary to the claims of America's top spies, the details of your phone calls and text messages -- including when they took place and whom they involv...
10:00 pm - Tue, May 17, 2016
Slashdot SourceForge Tightens Security With Malware Scans
Christine Hall at FOSS Force reports: It appears as if the new owners at SourceForge are serious about fixing the mistakes made by the sites previous owners. FOSS Force has just learned that as of tod...
10:00 pm - Tue, May 17, 2016
Slashdot Theoretical Breakthrough Made In Random Number Generation
msm1267 quotes a report from Threatpost: Two University of Texas academics have made what some experts believe is a breakthrough in random number generation that could have longstanding implications f...
08:00 pm - Tue, May 17, 2016
Slashdot Gadget Claims To Fit In Your Ear and Translate Foreign Languages In Real-Time
An anonymous reader cites a report on the Telegraph about a tiny gadget that lets two people who speak a different language understand each other. The gadget dubbed Pilot translates English, French, S...
08:00 pm - Tue, May 17, 2016
Slashdot Symantec Antivirus Products Vulnerable To Horrid Overflow Bug
An anonymous reader writes: Tavis Ormandy of Google's Project Zero team has discovered a vulnerability in Symantec Antivirus Engine. The said engine is vulnerable to a buffer overflow when parsing mal...
08:00 pm - Tue, May 17, 2016
Slashdot IBM's Optical Storage Is 50 Times Faster Than Flash, And Also Cheaper
Flash storage is not as fast as the main memory (RAM); but RAM can't be used to store your regular files because of its volatile nature (and also because it's expensive). It appears we may soon have t...
08:00 pm - Tue, May 17, 2016
Slashdot Microsoft Releases Big 'Convenience Rollup' Update For Windows 7
Microsoft has released a "convenience rollup" update for Windows 7 computers. The update to the nearly seven-year-old operating system brings with it a number of security fixes and patches that Micros...
06:00 pm - Tue, May 17, 2016
Slashdot Face Recognition App Taking Russia By Storm May Bring End To Public Anonymity
An anonymous reader writes: Anonymity in public could soon become a thing of the past. A service called FindFace allows users to photograph people in a crowd and work out their identities with 70% rel...
06:00 pm - Tue, May 17, 2016
Slashdot Microsoft Needs To Fix Skype
It's no secret that Microsoft has long stopped caring about Skype for Linux. But the VoIP and instant messaging service isn't exactly working well on other platforms either. Microsoft reporter and cri...
06:00 pm - Tue, May 17, 2016
Slashdot YouTube Is Guilty Of Criminal Racketeering, Grammy Winner Says
An anonymous reader cites a TorrentFreak report (edited and condensed): YouTube is guilty of criminal racketeering. That's the headline-grabbing claim of Grammy award winning musician Maria Schneider,...
04:00 pm - Tue, May 17, 2016
Slashdot Apple, Microsoft and Other US Tech Companies Undergoing 'Security Reviews' in China
An anonymous reader writes: Chinese government is keeping an ever watchful eye on the companies doing business in the country, especially when foreign companies compete with local ones. To that end, t...
04:00 pm - Tue, May 17, 2016
Slashdot Campaign Demands Telecoms Unlock the FM Radio Found in Many Smartphones
An anonymous reader cites an article on CBC: Your smartphone may include an FM radio chip but, chances are, it doesn't work. Now, an online campaign has launched in Canada, putting pressure on telecom...
04:00 pm - Tue, May 17, 2016
Slashdot Hackers' Website Breached by Hacker
The Nulled, one of the most popular hacker forums with more than 470,000 members has suffered a data breach. As a result of which, email addresses and private messages of all these members have leaked...
02:00 pm - Tue, May 17, 2016
Slashdot Warren Buffett Buys $1 Billion Stake In Apple
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate run by Buffett, disclosed in a regulatory filing Monday that it purchased more than 9.8 million shares in Apple durin...
12:00 pm - Tue, May 17, 2016
Slashdot Twitter To Stop Counting Photos And Links In 140-Character Limit
An anonymous reader writes: Twitter will stop counting photos and links as part of its 140-character limit for tweets in as soon as two weeks, according to a source familiar with the matter. Right now...
08:00 am - Tue, May 17, 2016
Slashdot Fake Hacker Found Guilty Following Gutsy Mitt Romney Extortion Scheme
An anonymous reader writes: "Michael Mancil Brown, 37, of Franklin, Tennessee, faces up to thirty years in prison, a fine up to $250,000, and orders of restitution to victims, because of a daring stun...
04:00 am - Tue, May 17, 2016
Slashdot ISS Completes 100,000th Orbit of Earth
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: The International Space Station, the space laboratory that showcases cooperation between Russia and the United States, on Monday orbited Earth for th...
02:00 am - Tue, May 17, 2016
Slashdot Highly-Conductive Shark Jelly Could Inspire New Tech
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from UC Santa Cruz, the University of Washington, and the Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason found shark jelly to have the highest proton conductivit...
02:00 am - Tue, May 17, 2016
Slashdot Raspberry Pi Zero Gains Camera Support, Keeps $5 Price
An anonymous reader writes: The Raspberry Pi Zero has received its first major hardware upgrade today: a camera connector. The new addition of a camera connector works well with the two new Sony imagi...
02:00 am - Tue, May 17, 2016
Slashdot Microsoft To License Nokia Brand To Foxconn, Says Report
SmartAboutThings quotes a report from Windows Report: It's no secret that Microsoft's phone business isn't going according to plan. Last quarter alone saw a 46% drop in phone revenue, slightly better ...
12:00 am - Tue, May 17, 2016
Slashdot Amazon To Sell Its Own Private-Label Groceries
An anonymous reader writes: The Wall Street Journal reports Amazon will soon roll-out its own private-label brands of common household items like coffee, diapers, and other perishable groceries. Such ...
12:00 am - Tue, May 17, 2016
Slashdot Iran Is Arresting Models Who Pose Without Headscarves On Instagram
An anonymous reader writes: The Tehran cybercrimes court said the country has arrested eight people working for online modeling agencies deemed to be "un-Islamic." The women models were arrested for s...
12:00 am - Tue, May 17, 2016
Slashdot CIA Watchdog 'Mistakenly' Destroyed Its Only Copy Of A Senate Torture Report
An anonymous reader writes: According to Yahoo News, the CIA inspector general's office "mistakenly" destroyed its only copy of a mammoth Senate torture report at the same time lawyers for the Justice...
10:00 pm - Mon, May 16, 2016
Slashdot One Million Dormant Xbox Live Gamertags Can Be Yours Starting Wednesday
An anonymous reader shares an Ars Technica report: Are you the type to dash madly toward any new online service's sign-up page even if you think you'll never touch it again, just to lock down your use...
10:00 pm - Mon, May 16, 2016
Slashdot The Intercept Releases First Batch Of New Docs Leaked By Snowden
executioner quotes a report from The Intercept: The Intercept's first SIDtoday release comprises 166 articles, including all articles published between March 31, 2003, when SIDtoday began, and June 30...
08:00 pm - Mon, May 16, 2016
Slashdot Apple To Launch Startup Accelerator, Three Apple Stores In India, Says Report
Apple plans to set up three of its own retail stores -- the iconic Apple Store -- in India, reports FactorDaily. The stores will be setup in Delhi, Bangalore, and Mumbai in the next 18 months. The rep...
08:00 pm - Mon, May 16, 2016
Slashdot Jail Sentence For Popular YouTube Pranksters
Turns out crossing a line, even for a prank by a YouTube star, can go bonkers. An anonymous reader cites a BBC report: Four members of the controversial Trollstation YouTube channel have been jailed i...
08:00 pm - Mon, May 16, 2016
Slashdot John McAfee Tried to Trick Reporters Into Thinking He Hacked WhatsApp
John McAfee, best known for creating McAfee security suite, apparently tried to trick journalists into believing that he is capable of breaking WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption and reading the private...
06:00 pm - Mon, May 16, 2016
Slashdot Google Releases Spaces Group-Sharing App On Android, iOS, and Desktop
Google on Monday released Spaces, an app that is designed to make it easier to share links, videos and other things from the Web in group conversations. The app, which has been in private beta for a f...
06:00 pm - Mon, May 16, 2016
Slashdot Girls From Progressive Societies Do Better At Math, Study Finds
An anonymous reader writes: (edited and condensed)Research by Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) has found that the 'maths gender gap', the relative under performance of girls at maths, is much wi...
06:00 pm - Mon, May 16, 2016
Slashdot Al-Qaeda Calls For the Execution Of Bill Gates and Others To 'Damage the US Economy'
An anonymous reader writes: Al-Qaeda's official online propaganda magazine, Inspire, contains a montage of violent images -- things like guns and blood -- next to an image of Bill Gates. The terrorist...
04:00 pm - Mon, May 16, 2016
Slashdot Microsoft Adding More Ads To Windows 10 Start Menu
Microsoft plans to double the number of promoted apps in Start menu. The change, which is scheduled to come with the upcoming Anniversary Update to Windows 10, will see the promoted apps count rise to...
04:00 pm - Mon, May 16, 2016
Slashdot Facebook Monitoring Your Reactions To Serve You Ads, Warn Belgian Police
An anonymous reader writes: Belgian police have asked citizens to shun Facebook's "Reactions" buttons to protect their privacy. In February, five new "Reaction" buttons were added next to the "Like" b...
02:00 pm - Mon, May 16, 2016
Slashdot Tesla's New Factory Project Imported Foreign Laborers
An anonymous reader writes: "Overseas contractors are shipping workers from impoverished countries to American factories, where they work long hours for low wages, in apparent violation of visa and la...
02:00 pm - Mon, May 16, 2016
Slashdot History Buffs Discover Inaccuracies In Battlefield 1 Trailer
MojoKid shares an interesting article from Tom's Hardware. While the new Battlefield 1 trailer may be the most-liked trailer in the history of YouTube, it's also historically inaccurate, according to ...
12:00 pm - Mon, May 16, 2016
Slashdot 2015 Nebula Award Winners Announced
Dave Knott writes: The winners of the 2015 Nebula Awards (presented 2016) have been announced. The Nebulas are voted on by members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and (along with...
08:00 am - Mon, May 16, 2016
Slashdot Linux Kernel 4.6 Officially Released
An anonymous coward writes: Just like clockwork, the Linux 4.6 kernel was officially released today. Details on the kernel changes for Linux 4.6 can be found via Phoronix and KernelNewbies.org. NVIDIA...
04:00 am - Mon, May 16, 2016
Slashdot Malware Bank Attacks May Be Linked To Sony Pictures Hack
itwbennett writes: Researchers at BAE Systems have found a long chain of coding coincidences linking attempted fraud over the SWIFT network to the 2014 Sony Pictures hack. "The overlaps between these ...
02:00 am - Mon, May 16, 2016
Slashdot Slashdot Asks: What's Your Favorite Doom Story?
I remember loading Doom for the first time from a 3.5-inch disk back in 1994. In 1997 the source code for Doom's Linux version was released just before Christmas. A hidden Doom level appeared in Micro...
12:00 am - Mon, May 16, 2016
Slashdot Will Self-Driving Cars Clog Our Highways?
An anonymous reader writes: While self-driving cars may be safer and cheaper, the Associated Press warns they could also create massive traffic congestion. "The problem, say transportation researchers...
10:00 pm - Sun, May 15, 2016
Slashdot Scientists Crowdfund The Theory of Everything
einar.petersen writes: Danish scientists are seeking to fund their research on the theory of everything in a rather unconventional way, namely via crowdfunding. The two researchers have launched a cam...
08:00 pm - Sun, May 15, 2016
Slashdot Anonymous Begins Teaching Hacktivism on IRC
Softpedia reports that "At the end of April, members of the Anonymous hacker collective announced the launch of the OnionIRC, an internet relay chat network where the group says it aims to teach peopl...
08:00 pm - Sun, May 15, 2016
Slashdot Amazon "Invades" College Campus With Media Center
An anonymous reader writes: Amazon opened its first media center on a college campus, including couches, conference tables and TVs with game controllers, as well as a full-time Amazon staffer and a pa...
06:00 pm - Sun, May 15, 2016
Slashdot Microsoft Kills Its Game-Building Platform Spark
An anonymous reader writes:"Starting 5/13/16, 'Project Spark' will no longer be available for download on the Xbox Marketplace or Windows Store," Microsoft wrote in a blog post, adding that it will go...
06:00 pm - Sun, May 15, 2016
Slashdot Ethical Hackers Donate 1,000,000 Air Miles To Charity
An anonymous reader writes:Certified ethical hackers at Offensi.com identified a bug allowing remote code execution on one of United Airlines' sites, and submitted their findings to the airline's "bug...
04:00 pm - Sun, May 15, 2016
Slashdot 890 College Students Sue Google Over Email Scanning
An anonymous reader quotes this report from Bay Area Newsgroup: Legal action against Google by four UC Berkeley students has ballooned into two lawsuits by 890 U.S. college students and alumni allegin...
04:00 pm - Sun, May 15, 2016
Slashdot Microsoft Auto-Scheduling Windows 10 Updates
Pikoro quotes this report from Tom's Hardware: Windows 10 has been with us for a little over eight months now, which means there are only about four months remaining to get a free upgrade from an olde...
02:00 pm - Sun, May 15, 2016
Slashdot EFF Confronts World Copyright Committee
The EFF debated delegates on WIPO's Standing Committee on Copyright this week, joking the whole week could be summarized as "proposals for a broadcasting treaty continue to edge forward, while rich co...
12:00 pm - Sun, May 15, 2016
Slashdot Attacker Compromises Pornhub, Sells Shell Access for $1,000, Says Columnist
An anonymous reader writes: Four days after launching a bug bounty program, Pornhub is said to be compromised. The person responsible used a vulnerability in the user profile script that handles image...
08:00 am - Sun, May 15, 2016
Slashdot Hidden FBI Microphones Exposed In California
An anonymous reader writes: "Federal agents are planting microphones to secretly record conversations," reports CBS Local, noting that for 10 months starting in 2010, FBI agents hid microphones inside...
04:00 am - Sun, May 15, 2016
Slashdot Amazon and Microsoft Directors Charged in Prostitution Sting
An anonymous reader writes: A director from Microsoft and a former Amazon director have been charged with promoting prostitution after an investigation into Seattle-area sex trafficking, according to ...
02:00 am - Sun, May 15, 2016
Slashdot Oracle V. Google Being Decided By Clueless Judge and Jury
theodp writes: The problem with Oracle v. Google," explains Motherboard's Sarah Jeong, "is that everyone actually affected by the case knows what an API is, but the whole affair is being decided by pe...
12:00 am - Sun, May 15, 2016
Slashdot Researchers Release Profile Data on 70,000 OkCupid Users Without Permission
An anonymous users shares a Vox report: A group of researchers has released a data set on nearly 70,000 users of the online dating site OkCupid. The data dump breaks the cardinal rule of social scienc...
12:00 am - Sun, May 15, 2016
Slashdot Wikipedia Announces Their 10 Longest Featured Articles
The Wikimedia blog shared a list of their ten longest "featured" articles, highlighting their collection of more than 4,700 articles which have rigorously reviewed before being awarded a gold star ico...
10:00 pm - Sat, May 14, 2016
Slashdot Homeland Security Cuts Causing Extreme Delays And Missed Flights
An anonymous reader writes: The Chicago Tribune reports on "a growing backlash over extremely long airport security lines," which the Transportation Security Administration is blaming on a loss of 4,6...
10:00 pm - Sat, May 14, 2016
Slashdot Privacy Fears Deterring Almost Half of American Households From Online Shopping
Many Americans are growing increasingly concerned about privacy and security. According to a survey, almost half of American households with at least one Internet user have been deterred from online a...
08:00 pm - Sat, May 14, 2016
Slashdot Police Reveal Tactics For Fighting Botnets
Botnet herders have sophisticated "disaster recovery" plans, according to speakers at a recent cybersecurity conference, with many splitting their botnets into smaller herds, making them more resilien...
08:00 pm - Sat, May 14, 2016
Slashdot Original 'Doom' Level Remade in the New 'Doom'
An anonymous reader writes:After the new Doom was released yesterday, Vice discovered its SnapMap feature had already been used to recreate one of the levels from the original Doom. "The original Doom...
06:00 pm - Sat, May 14, 2016
Slashdot Former Employee Accuses Wireless Charging Startup uBeam of Being a Sham
uBeam, a startup which has raised over $25 million for its transmitter that can charge phones, tablets, and other devices wirelessly, is under attack. Paul Reynolds, former VP of engineering at the co...
06:00 pm - Sat, May 14, 2016
Slashdot Apple Says It Doesn't Know Why iTunes Users Are Losing Their Music Files
Earlier this month, an Apple Music user James Pinkstone claimed that the online music streaming service deleted 122GB of music from his library for no apparent reason. Several Slashdot readers noted t...
04:00 pm - Sat, May 14, 2016
Slashdot EFF Announces Certbot Client For Let's Encrypt
Peter Eckersley, the staff technologist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, writes: EFF has just launched Certbot, which is the next iteration of the Let's Encrypt client. It's a powerful tool for...
04:00 pm - Sat, May 14, 2016
Slashdot Ingestible Medical Robots Could Remove Batteries From Stomachs
"A child swallows a battery every 3 hours," reports a new article in the Washington Post. But now, gurps_npc writes: MIT has developed a small ingestible robot to remove watch batteries that kids swal...
02:00 pm - Sat, May 14, 2016
Slashdot ZFS For Linux Finally Lands In Debian GNU/Linux Repos
prisoninmate quotes a report from Softpedia: It took the Debian developers many years to finally be able to ship a working version of ZFS for Linux on Debian GNU/Linux. For those not in the known, ZFS...
12:00 pm - Sat, May 14, 2016
Slashdot Brazilian Devs Launch Tiny $1 STEM-Oriented Microcontroller Board On Indiegogo
DeviceGuru writes: A team of Brazilian developers has just launched an open-source microcontroller board called the "One Dollar Board," that's so simple and inexpensive that it can be distributed as s...
08:00 am - Sat, May 14, 2016
Slashdot Disney Research Leverages RFID Tech For Low Cost Interactive Games With Physical Objects
MojoKid quotes a report from HotHardware: Researchers at Disney Research and Carnegie Mellon University have been toying around with radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. RFID tags are typically...
06:00 am - Sat, May 14, 2016
Slashdot Google Devs Planning Flash's Demise With New 'HTML5 By Default' Chrome Setting
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Softpedia: In a Google Groups thread named "Intent to implement: HTML5 by Default," the Google developers announced initial plans to implement a new feature in...
04:00 am - Sat, May 14, 2016
Slashdot Google Devs Planing Flash's Demise With New 'HTML5 By Default' Chrome Setting
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Softpedia: In a Google Groups thread named "Intent to implement: HTML5 by Default," the Google developers announced initial plans to implement a new feature in...
04:00 am - Sat, May 14, 2016
Slashdot Scientists Hold A Secret Meeting To Consider Creating A Synthetic Human Genome
An anonymous reader writes from a report via The New York Times, summarized by Gizmodo: Earlier this week, over a hundred scientists, lawyers, and entrepreneurs held a secret meeting to discuss the po...
02:00 am - Sat, May 14, 2016
Slashdot Professor Surprises Students With AI Teacher Assistant
An anonymous reader writes: Jill Watson is an artificial intelligence bot, it is also Ashok Goel's teaching assistant. Ashok Goel, a computer science professor at Georgia Tech, hired Jill Watson to an...
02:00 am - Sat, May 14, 2016
Slashdot The Pirate Bay Loses Its Main Domain Name In Court Battle
Dave Knott writes: The world's most popular torrent website, The Pirate Bay, is suffering a major blow after the Swedish Court ruled Thursday that it will seize the domain names 'ThePirateBay.se' and ...
02:00 am - Sat, May 14, 2016
Slashdot Google Paying Arizona Residents $20/Hr To Test Self-Driving Cars
An anonymous reader writes from a report on Mashable: Google is paying Arizona residents $20 per hour to test its self-driving vehicles. The 'Self-Driving Vehicle Operator/Operations Associate' needs ...
12:00 am - Sat, May 14, 2016
Slashdot Mac Users Reporting Widespread System Freezes With OS X El Capitan 10.11.4 Update
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Mac Rumors: A large number of MacBook Pro owners running OS X El Capitan are reporting widespread system freezes since installing the 10.11.4 update to Apple's...
12:00 am - Sat, May 14, 2016
Slashdot Hyundai's New 'Wearable Robot' Gives You Super-Strength
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: South Korean automaker Hyundai has unveiled what is apparently a new robotic exoskeleton. In a blog post the company compares its "wearable robot" p...
12:00 am - Sat, May 14, 2016
Slashdot Ask Slashdot: What Was The Greatest Era Of Innovation?
speedplane writes: The New York Times is running a story on innovation over the past 150 years. [The story starts at the end of the American Civil War with the newly completed transcontinental railway...
10:00 pm - Fri, May 13, 2016
Slashdot Amazon Introduces $20 Dash-Like Button For IoT
An anonymous reader shares a Slashgear article: Amazon has revealed a programmable Dash Button which can be assigned to any product or purpose, a customizable version of its one-touch reordering gadge...
10:00 pm - Fri, May 13, 2016
Slashdot China's Tech Work Culture Is So Intense People Sleep and Bathe In Their Offices
An anonymous reader writes: China's technology sector is booming at an intensely fast pace. Many startups are seeing their business grow faster than they can hire, placing a heavy burden on those alre...
10:00 pm - Fri, May 13, 2016
Slashdot Ontario Parents Refusing To Vaccinate Their Children Could Be Forced to Take Science Class
Ontario is considering making parents who choose to not vaccinate their children for non-medical reasons take a science class. The health ministry of Canada's most populous province has proposed a bil...
08:00 pm - Fri, May 13, 2016
Slashdot Raspbian Linux OS Gets Major Update, Adds Bluetooth Support to Pi 3
An anonymous reader writes: The Raspberry Pi 3 was launched with built-in chip for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi support, however, software support for Bluetooth was lacking until now. The drivers were there, b...
08:00 pm - Fri, May 13, 2016
Slashdot Fitness App Runkeeper Secretly Tracks Users At All Times, Sends Data to Advertisers
An anonymous reader writes: FitnessKeeper, the company behind running app Runkeeper, is in hot water in Europe. The company has received a formal complaint from the Norwegian Consumer Council for brea...
08:00 pm - Fri, May 13, 2016
Slashdot Bing Bans 'Computer Support' Ads From Its Network
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft has changed the terms of service for its Bing Ad network to disallow ads which offer computer support service. Its Bing Ads User Safety Policy now reads: Bing Ads...
06:00 pm - Fri, May 13, 2016
Slashdot Linksys WRT Routers Won't Block Open Source Firmware, Despite FCC Rules
The FCC requires all manufacturers to prevent users from having any direct ability to change RF parameters (frequency limits, output power, country codes, etc). The easiest way for a router manufactur...
06:00 pm - Fri, May 13, 2016
Slashdot France's After Work Email Ban Is 1 Step Closer To Reality
Jesse Ferreras, writing for Huffington Post: France is that much closer to becoming the first country to ban after-work emails. The country's lower parliamentary house passed a bill this week that wou...
06:00 pm - Fri, May 13, 2016
Slashdot Second Bank Hit By 'Sophisticated' Malware Attack, Says Swift
An anonymous reader cites an article on The Guardian: Swift, the global financial messaging network that banks use to move billions of dollars every day, warned of a second malware attack similar to t...
04:00 pm - Fri, May 13, 2016
Slashdot Tech Layoffs More Than Double In Bay Area
An anonymous reader shares an article on Mercury News: In yet another sign of a slowdown in the booming Bay Area economy, tech layoffs more than doubled in the first four months of this year compared ...
04:00 pm - Fri, May 13, 2016
Slashdot Oregon ISP Now Forcing Cordcutters to Sign up For TV to Avoid Caps
An anonymous reader writes: Oregon ISP BendBroadband has revised its usage-based broadband policies to favor customers that subscribe to TV services as well. According to a blog post by the company, B...
04:00 pm - Fri, May 13, 2016
Slashdot Astronauts Won't Be Flying To Space In Boeing's Starliner Until 2018
An anonymous reader writes: The Boeing Starliner, one of two new spacecraft meant to break the Russian stranglehold on sending people to orbit, has hit a snag. Originally scheduled to start flying nex...
02:00 pm - Fri, May 13, 2016
Slashdot National Microbiome Initiative To Harness Microbes For Health, Environment
An anonymous reader quotes a report from WTOP: The National Microbiome Initiative being announced by White House science officials Friday aims to bring together scientists who study the microbes that ...
12:00 pm - Fri, May 13, 2016
Slashdot Wendy's Plans To Automate 6,000 Restaurants With Self-Service Ordering Kiosks
An anonymous reader writes: In response to the rising minimum wage, the fast-food chain Wendy's plans to start automating all of its restaurants. The company said it will have self-service ordering ki...
08:00 am - Fri, May 13, 2016
Slashdot Apple Invests $1 Billion In Uber's Chinese Rival Didi
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Apple Inc. invested $1 billion in Chinese ride-sharing service Didi, making one of its biggest bets on software and services and dealing a blow to U...
04:00 am - Fri, May 13, 2016
Slashdot Mark Zuckerberg: 'No Evidence' Facebook Staff Suppressed Stories With Conservative Viewpoints
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Mark Zuckerberg has issued a statement in response to the controversy alleging that Facebook staff intentionally prevented stories with a conservati...
02:00 am - Fri, May 13, 2016
Slashdot Google Launches 'Gboard' Keyboard For iOS, Featuring Built-In Google Search
An anonymous reader writes: Google launched a new keyboard application called "Gboard" for iOS today that features Google Search built-in to the keyboard itself. In addition, it offers swipe-based typ...
02:00 am - Fri, May 13, 2016
Slashdot Government Spy Truck Is Disguised As A Google Street View Car
An anonymous reader writes: Matt Blaze, a University of Pennsylvania computer and information science professor, discovered a SUV "tucked away in the shadows of the Philadelphia Convention Center's tu...
02:00 am - Fri, May 13, 2016
Slashdot Dangerous 7-Zip Vulnerabilities Flow To Top Security, Software Tools
mask.of.sanity quotes a report from The Register: Some of the world's biggest security and software vendors will be rushing to patch holes in implementations of the popular 7-Zip compression tool to s...
12:00 am - Fri, May 13, 2016
Slashdot Scientists Find Gut Microbe That Survives Without Mitochondria
An anonymous reader writes: Scientists have found a eukaryote microbe that completely lacks mitochondria, which are the powerhouses inside eukaryotic cells, the type of cells that make up humans, anim...
12:00 am - Fri, May 13, 2016
Slashdot Google Open-Sources SyntaxNet Natural-Language Understanding Library, Parsey McParseface Training Model
Google announced on Thursday that it is open sourcing its new language parsing model called SyntaxNet. It's a piece of natural-language understanding software, Google says, that you can use automatica...
12:00 am - Fri, May 13, 2016
Slashdot Mozilla Fights FBI In Court For Details On Tor Browser Hack
An anonymous reader writes from a report on Help Net Security: Mozilla has asked a Washington State District Court to compel FBI investigators to provide details about a vulnerability in the Tor Brows...
10:00 pm - Thu, May 12, 2016
Slashdot Breathalyzer That Detects Lung Cancer Early From a Single Breath Wins $100K Entrepreneurship Competition
Lung cancer "breathalyzer," developed by a team of MIT and Harvard University students, has won $100K Entrepreneurship Competition. The breathalyzer connects to a smartphone and is able to detect lung...
10:00 pm - Thu, May 12, 2016
Slashdot BakerHostetler Hires Artificial Intelligent Attorney 'Ross'
An anonymous reader writes: Futurism reports, Ross, the first artificially intelligent attorney, was just hired by the global law firm Baker and Hostetler. The firm announced they hired a robot lawyer...
10:00 pm - Thu, May 12, 2016
Slashdot Opera Adds Power-Saving Mode, Offers 'Up To 50 Percent' Longer Battery Life
An anonymous reader writes: Opera Software has added a power-saving mode to its desktop web browser that "can increase the battery life by as much as 50 percent." The company claims optimizations are ...
08:00 pm - Thu, May 12, 2016
Slashdot DVDFab Has Ignored Court's Shut Down Order, AACS Says
An anonymous reader cites a report on TorrentFreak: DVDFab has failed to cease its operations in the U.S. and should be sanctioned, AACS says. The decryption licensing outfit founded by Warner Bros, D...
08:00 pm - Thu, May 12, 2016
Slashdot Linux Is the Largest Software Development Project On the Planet: Greg K-H
sfcrazy writes: Greg Kroah-Hartmant, the Linux superstar, delivered a keynote at CoreOS Fest where he gave some impressive details on how massive is the Linux project. Kroah-Hartman said the latest re...
08:00 pm - Thu, May 12, 2016
Slashdot Where Does America's E-Waste End Up? GPS Tracker Tells All
The United States produces more e-waste than any country in the world, reports PBS News Hour. But where does this e-waste go? The publication utilized the GPS coordinates in some of the e-waste to fin...
06:00 pm - Thu, May 12, 2016
Slashdot US Congress Bans Members From Using Yahoo Mail
A week after we learned that the House of Represantives had banned its members from using Google's appshot.com, more details about the blockage have surfaced. Reader Big Hairy Ian writes: A series of ...
06:00 pm - Thu, May 12, 2016
Slashdot The NYPD Was Ticketing Legally Parked Cars; Open Data Put an End to It
Data analyst Ben Wellington claims that that the NYPD has been systematically ticketing legally parked cars for years. Doing so, he says, helps NYPD collect millions of dollars every year. In a blog p...
06:00 pm - Thu, May 12, 2016
Slashdot Internal Docs Show Human Intervention at Almost Every Stage Of Facebook's News Operation
More evidence has surfaced to support Gawker's two recent reports that claimed editors manipulate the trending news and a few other aspects on Facebook. The Guardian, citing leaked documents it obtain...
04:00 pm - Thu, May 12, 2016
Slashdot Google Chirp To Rival Amazon Echo
An anonymous reader writes: Google is working on a competitor to the Amazon Echo, the smart speaker that has proved to be a sleeper hit for Amazon. The device, which will resemble an OnHub router, has...
04:00 pm - Thu, May 12, 2016
Slashdot Germany Set To End Copyright Liability For Open Wi-Fi Operators
An anonymous reader writes: People who travel to Germany are often surprised at the lack of public, open Wi-Fi networks. That's because German law holds operators of public hotspots liable for everyth...
04:00 pm - Thu, May 12, 2016
Slashdot Huawei Prepares For Robot Overlords and Communication With the Dead
An anonymous reader shares a report on Bloomberg: Chinese technology giant Huawei is preparing for a world where people live forever, dead relatives linger on in computers and robots try to kill human...
02:00 pm - Thu, May 12, 2016
Slashdot Drones Could Replace $127 Billion Worth Of Human Labor
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: A new report from PwC finds that drones could replace $127 billion worth of human labor and services across several industries. Infrastructur...
12:00 pm - Thu, May 12, 2016
Slashdot Attackers Targeting Critical SAP Flaw Since 2013
msm1267 quotes a report from Threatpost: Three dozen global enterprises have been breached by attackers who exploited a single, mitigated vulnerability in SAP business applications. The attacks were c...
08:00 am - Thu, May 12, 2016
Slashdot Pornhub Launches Bug Bounty Program With Rewards Up To $25,000
Mickeycaskill quotes a report from TechWeekEurope UK: Pornhub is launching a bug bounty program for security researchers and pornography enthusiasts who are able to identify flaws on its platform. Hun...
06:00 am - Thu, May 12, 2016
Slashdot FBI Has Sights On Larger Battle Over Encryption After Apple Feud
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Bloomberg: FBI Director James Comey said the FBI is exploring how to make broader use of the hack, used to access a San Bernardino terrorist's encrypted iP...
04:00 am - Thu, May 12, 2016
Slashdot AAA Study: Blood THC Levels After Smoking Pot Are Useless In Defining 'Too High To Drive'
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Blood tests that try to quantify marijuana use are in fact useless at assessing how impaired a driver is, according to a study by the AAA Foundat...
02:00 am - Thu, May 12, 2016
Slashdot Tesla Model S Owner Claims Vehicle Went Rogue Causing An Accident By Itself
MojoKid writes: A Tesla Model S owner is laying blame on the company and its product for an accident involving his pricey electric vehicle and a parked trailer. Jared Overton claims that on April 29th...
02:00 am - Thu, May 12, 2016
Slashdot Harvard Scientist: Rio Olympics Could Spark 'Full Blown Global Health Disaster'
An anonymous reader writes: Doctors have warned that the upcoming 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro could spark a "full-blown public health disaster" with the spread of the Zika virus. The World He...
02:00 am - Thu, May 12, 2016
Slashdot Hyperloop One Technology Tested Successfully In Nevada Desert
Dave Knott quotes a report from CBC.ca: Hyperloop One (formerly known as Hyperloop Technologies) conducted a successful test of its high speed transportation technology Wednesday in the desert outside...
12:00 am - Thu, May 12, 2016
Slashdot Samsung Unveils 256GB MicroSD Card, Highest Capacity In Its Class
Samsung recently unveiled its EVO Plus 256GB microSD card, capable of storing more than 12 hours of 4K video footage, 33 hours of full HD recording, 55,200 photos or 23,500 MP3s. While you most likely...
12:00 am - Thu, May 12, 2016
Slashdot Renewables Fastest-Growing Energy Sources, Feds Say
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Computerworld written by Lucas Mearian: By 2040, coal, natural gas and renewable energy sources will provide roughly equal shares (28%-29%) of world electricit...
12:00 am - Thu, May 12, 2016
Slashdot Google Bans Ads For Payday Loans
An anonymous reader writes: Google has decided it doesn't want to promote predatory lending practices that are harmful to consumers, so the company has decided to ban ads for payday loans and some rel...
10:00 pm - Wed, May 11, 2016
Slashdot French Inquiry Launched After Live Suicide Broadcast On Periscope
An anonymous reader writes: French authorities have launched an investigation after a young woman recorded her suicide which streamed live to over 1,000 connected followers on the online video app Per...
10:00 pm - Wed, May 11, 2016
Slashdot Guy Who Didn't Invent Email Sues Gawker For Pointing Out He Didn't Invent Email
Mike Masnick, reporting for TechDirt: Oh boy. Remember Shiva Ayyadurai? The guy who has gone to great lengths to claim that he "invented email," when the reality is that he appears to have (likely ind...
08:00 pm - Wed, May 11, 2016
Slashdot Peachy Printer Funds Embezzled To Build New Home Instead of $100 3D Printer
Reader szczys writes (edited): Peachy Printer made it big on Kickstarter, raising over half a million dollars on the promise to build the first 3D printer and scanner costing $100. The company has now...
08:00 pm - Wed, May 11, 2016
Slashdot 'I Know How To Program, But I Don't Know What To Program'
An anonymous reader has shared an interesting article that talks about one of the most common challenges faced by novice developers: "I know how to program, but I don't know what to program." The auth...
08:00 pm - Wed, May 11, 2016
Slashdot Scientists Found 74 Genetic Variants Linked To Education Level
An anonymous reader shares a report on The Verge: Scientists have found 74 genetic variants that are associated with educational attainment. In short, that means some people have variants of genes in ...
06:00 pm - Wed, May 11, 2016
Slashdot Microsoft Removes Wi-Fi Sense Feature From Windows 10 Which Shared Your Wi-Fi Password
Microsoft says it has removed the controversial Wi-Fi Sense feature that shared a user's password with their friends and people in the contact list. "We have removed the Wi-Fi Sense feature that allow...
06:00 pm - Wed, May 11, 2016
Slashdot Slashdot Asks: How Long Before Self-Driving Cars Become Mainstream?
Here's the thing, regardless of one's stand on self-driving cars, they are no longer a futuristic idea. Major car companies such as Tesla, BMW, and Mercedes have already released an autonomous vehicle...
04:00 pm - Wed, May 11, 2016
Slashdot WhatsApp Now Has a Desktop App, Available on Windows, OS X
WhatsApp is now also available as a native desktop app on Windows and OS X, the Facebook-owned instant messaging and voice calling company announced. The app supports desktop notifications, keyboard s...
04:00 pm - Wed, May 11, 2016
Slashdot Italian Military To Save Up To 29 Million Euro By Migrating To LibreOffice
Reader prisoninmate writes: Following on last year's bold announcement that they will attempt to migrate from proprietary Microsoft Office products to an open-source alternative like LibreOffice, Ital...
04:00 pm - Wed, May 11, 2016
Slashdot Facebook Open-Sources Capture the Flag Competition Platform As It Encourages Students
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook announced today that it is making its gamified security training platform called Capture the Flag (CTF) open source in an effort to encourage students and develope...
02:00 pm - Wed, May 11, 2016
Slashdot Mozilla Launches Test Pilot, A Firefox Add-On For Trying Experimental Features
An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today launched Test Pilot, a program for trying out experimental Firefox features. To try the new functionality Mozilla is offering for its browser, you have to dow...
02:00 pm - Wed, May 11, 2016
Slashdot Jeremy Clarkson's Amazon Show To Be Called The Grand Tour
Jasper Jackson and Dugald Baird, writing for The Guardian: Amazon's new motoring show starring Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May will be called The Grand Tour. In a statement, the former...
12:00 pm - Wed, May 11, 2016
Slashdot NASA's Planet Hunter Spots Record 1,284 New Planets, 9 In A Habitable Zone
coondoggie quotes a report from Network World: NASA's planet hunting space telescope Kepler added a record 1,284 confirmed planets to its already impressive discoveries of extraterrestrial worlds. [Th...
08:00 am - Wed, May 11, 2016
Slashdot Atomic Oxygen Detected In Martian Atmosphere
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Atomic oxygen has been detected in the atmosphere of Mars, according to NASA. The atoms were discovered in the Martian mesosphere, the upper layers of the...
06:00 am - Wed, May 11, 2016
Slashdot Open Source Artificial Pancreas Helps Engineer's Son Survive With Type 1 Diabetes
HughPickens.com writes: More than one million Americans live with Type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune condition in which the pancreas stops producing insulin, a hormone needed to turn sugar into energy. No...
04:00 am - Wed, May 11, 2016
Slashdot Sue Googe Uses Google's Font To Run For US Congress
An anonymous reader writes: Sue Googe is running to represent the 4th Congressional District of North Carolina in United States Congress. Since her last name resembles "Google," she has decided to use...
02:00 am - Wed, May 11, 2016
Slashdot Billionaire Tech Investor Peter Thiel To Back Trump As GOP Presidential Candidate
An anonymous reader writes: Billionaire tech investor, co-founder and former CEO of PayPal Peter Thiel has agreed to back Trump as a California delegate in Cleveland this summer. He will be one of 172...
02:00 am - Wed, May 11, 2016
Slashdot Netflix Cuts Out Over 6 Days Of Commercials From Your Life Per Year, Compared To Cable TV
An anonymous reader writes: Netflix knows their customers hate ads. "We know one of the benefits of an ecosystem like Netflix is its lack of advertising," Howard Shimmel, a chief research officer at T...
02:00 am - Wed, May 11, 2016
Slashdot A Bored Hacker Easily Stole And Defaced More Than 70 Subreddits
An anonymous reader writes: Hacker, BVM, said he's "lost count" of the number of subreddits he's stolen and defaced, but estimates that the number is more than 70. Subreddits like r/pics, r/starwars, ...
12:00 am - Wed, May 11, 2016
Slashdot British Hacker Love Wins Court Battle Over Encryption Keys
An anonymous reader writes: A judge in Westminster has ruled that alleged hacktivist Lauri Love cannot be forced to provide encryption keys to the National Crime Authority. This move has been called a...
12:00 am - Wed, May 11, 2016
Slashdot Germany Had So Much Renewable Energy That It Had To Pay People To Use Electricity
Quartz reports Germany produced so much renewable energy on Sunday, May 8, that commercial customers were being paid to consume electricity: "Thanks to a sunny and windy day, at one point around 1pm t...
12:00 am - Wed, May 11, 2016
Slashdot 15-Year-Old Boy Discovers Long-Lost Ancient Mayan City Using Constellations And Google
Master Moose quotes a report from NZ Herald: Deep within a dense Central American forest sit the ruins of an ancient city the world forgot. And it has just been discovered by a precocious 15-year-old ...
10:00 pm - Tue, May 10, 2016
Slashdot MegaBots Raises $2.4M To Create League Of Human-Piloted, Giant Fighting Robots
Remember MegaBots? The Kickstarter success story that was raising money last year to pilot fighting robot named Mk II. Labeling it as a contest for world supremacy, the co-founders challenged a Japane...
10:00 pm - Tue, May 10, 2016
Slashdot Microsoft Unlocks Framerates For Smoother Gameplay On Windows 10
An anonymous user writes: Back in March, Microsoft's Phil Spencer addressed some of the concerns over the Unified Windows Platform and PC gaming. He noted that Microsoft would "plan to open up VSync o...
10:00 pm - Tue, May 10, 2016
Slashdot Obama To Become First US President To Visit Hiroshima Since 1945 Nuclear Attack
An anonymous reader writes: The White House announced U.S. President Barack Obama will visit Hiroshima, becoming the first American President to do so since the city was destroyed in 1945 by a U.S. nu...
08:00 pm - Tue, May 10, 2016
Slashdot 'Technology Will Replace the Need For Big Government'
New submitter axlash writes: There's a lot of dissatisfaction with governments today, as can be seen by the rise of left-wing parties in Europe, to the rise of non-mainstream political candidates in A...
08:00 pm - Tue, May 10, 2016
Slashdot Latest Update to ES File Explorer Android App Brings Adware To Your Lockscreen
An anonymous reader writes: ES File Explorer (Google Play link) is one of the handiest file manager apps in the post-Android Gingerbread era, and it continues to ride up on its popularity (Editor's no...
08:00 pm - Tue, May 10, 2016
Slashdot 11 Years After Git, BitKeeper Is Open-Sourced
An anonymous reader writes: Eleven years after Linus Torvalds developed Git after a falling out with BitKeeper for managing the Linux kernel source code, BitMover Inc has finally decided to open-sourc...
06:00 pm - Tue, May 10, 2016
Slashdot Software Security Suffers as Startups Lose Access To Google's Virus Data
Iain Thomson, writing for The Register: Security firms that use the Google-owned VirusTotal malware database but don't contribute to the silo are going to find themselves out on a limb. For the past 1...
06:00 pm - Tue, May 10, 2016
Slashdot Seattle Seventh Grader Wins National Math Bee
Edward Wan, a Seattle-based seventh grader has won the national math bee. Wan, who studies at Lakeside Middle School, beat 224 other middle school students nationwide to win the 2016 Raytheon Mathcoun...
06:00 pm - Tue, May 10, 2016
Slashdot Senate GOP Launches Inquiry Into Facebook's News Curation
Michael Nunez, reporting for Gizmodo: The US Senate Commerce Committee -- which has jurisdiction over media issues, consumer protection issues, and internet communication -- has sent a letter to Mark ...
04:00 pm - Tue, May 10, 2016
Slashdot Fedora Project Releases Fedora 24 Beta; Stable Version Comes Next Month
A month ahead of its final release, Fedora Project on Tuesday released Fedora 24 beta for users and enthusiasts to try. An anonymous reader writes: The workstation version -- the one most home users w...
04:00 pm - Tue, May 10, 2016
Slashdot Sales Of PCs, Laptops, Tablets Continue to Fall, Hit Lowest Point Since 2011
According to the latest numbers provided by marketing research firm Canalys, the shipments of PC devices -- which includes desktops, notebooks, all-in-ones, two-in-ones, and tablets -- amounted to 101...
04:00 pm - Tue, May 10, 2016
Slashdot Amazon Goes After YouTube With New Online Video Posting Service
Spencer Soper, writing for Bloomberg (edited and condensed): Amazon will let people post videos to its website and earn money from advertising, royalties and other sources, putting the company in more...
02:00 pm - Tue, May 10, 2016
Slashdot This Unusual Botnet Targets Scientists, Engineers, and Academics
schwit1 quotes a report from ZDNet: A botnet and cyberattack campaign is infecting victims across the globe and appears to be tracking the actions of specially selected targets in sectors ranging from...
12:00 pm - Tue, May 10, 2016
Slashdot Swarm AI Correctly Predicts Kentucky Derby Superfecta, Turns $20 Into $11,000
New "Swarm Intelligence" platform UNU from Unanimous A.I. made a bet on the Kentucky Derby this weekend and won big. The bet is called the Superfecta and it paid 540 to 1 odds. "Swarm Intelligence" al...
08:00 am - Tue, May 10, 2016
Slashdot Tesla's Inherent Safety Saves Five Joyriding Teenagers In Germany
According to German newspaper Merkur, one 18-year old and four of her friends lost control of her father's Model S electric vehicle. The car reportedly flew more than 80 feet into a field before it ca...
06:00 am - Tue, May 10, 2016
Slashdot Google News Will Now Highlight Local News Sources For Major Stories
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Google's News section will now highlight the importance of local news sources. "When a local story is picked up by national publishers, it can be di...
04:00 am - Tue, May 10, 2016
Slashdot Scientists: Electric Vehicles Produce As Many Toxins As Dirty Diesels
An anonymous reader writes: Thanks to ongoing efforts to reduce engine emissions, nowadays only 10% to 15% of particulate emissions from traffic are coming from vehicles' tailpipes. The remainder orig...
02:00 am - Tue, May 10, 2016
Slashdot Five Solomon Islands Disappear Into The Pacific Ocean As A Result Of Climate Change
An anonymous reader writes: Climate change strikes again. A paper published in the journal Environmental Research Letters says five of the Solomon Islands have completely submerged underwater due to m...
02:00 am - Tue, May 10, 2016
Slashdot Scientists Develop 'Second Skin' To Smooth Wrinkles
An anonymous reader writes a report from CBS News: MIT researchers have developed a "second skin" that could be used to smooth wrinkles, protect skin from damage, or administer medications to treat sk...
12:00 am - Tue, May 10, 2016
Slashdot Panama Papers Affair Widens As Database Goes Online
In late April, it was reported there would be a huge new 'Panama Papers' data dump on May 9th. The report did not disappoint as today the Panama Papers affair has widened, with a huge database of docu...
12:00 am - Tue, May 10, 2016
Slashdot Newspaper Chain CEO 'Pleased' To Announce IT Plan, Then Fires Tech Staff
dcblogs writes from a report on Computerworld: The McClatchy Company, which operates a major chain of newspapers in the U.S., is moving IT work overseas. The number of affected jobs, based on employee...
12:00 am - Tue, May 10, 2016
Slashdot 'Battlefield 1' Trailer Most Liked In YouTube History, 'Infinite Warfare' Trailer Most Disliked
An anonymous reader writes: The Battlefield 1 reveal trailer has officially passed 20 million views, with around 1 million likes and just 18,500 dislikes. Meanwhile, Infinite Warfare's announcement tr...
10:00 pm - Mon, May 9, 2016
Slashdot Opera Launches 'Free And Unlimited' VPN App For iOS
Opera has launched a new VPN app for iOS that is free to use and includes unlimited data. The app uses the US-based SurfEasy VPN service acquired by Opera last March. Opera is promising that its mobil...
10:00 pm - Mon, May 9, 2016
Slashdot Uganda, Where a Book Can Cost a Month's Salary
An anonymous reader shared with us a BBC report on Uganda, where books are unbelievably expensive to afford. The publication reports that it almost feels like a black market for people looking to purc...
10:00 pm - Mon, May 9, 2016
Slashdot FTC Orders Apple, Google, Microsoft, BlackBerry, Samsung To Divulge Mobile Security Practices
coondoggie quotes a report from Networkworld: The Federal Trade Commission today said it issued a 10-page letter to eight leading players in the mobile communications arena requiring them to tell the ...
08:00 pm - Mon, May 9, 2016
Slashdot 4Mbps Still The Standard For One Govt Broadband Grant Program
An anonymous reader cites an Ars Technica report: Four U.S. senators say that the Internet speed standard for a government grant program shouldn't be stuck at 4Mbps. The Community Connect program run ...
08:00 pm - Mon, May 9, 2016
Slashdot Security Expert Jailed For Reporting Vulnerabilities In Lee County, FL Elections
rootmon writes: Information Security Professional David Levin was arrested 3 months after reporting un-patched SQL injection vulnerabilities in the Lee County, Florida Elections Office run by Sharon H...
08:00 pm - Mon, May 9, 2016
Slashdot Google Testing a Radical Change By Turning People's Search Results Black
Google may have plans to do a visual tweak to its search results. The company appears to be testing black search result links since the weekend, according to multiple reports. While some users are ple...
06:00 pm - Mon, May 9, 2016
Slashdot Twitter Blocks Feds From Data Mining Service
An anonymous reader cites a report on USA Today: Online social media company Twitter has reportedly blocked U.S. intelligence agencies from access to a widely used data mining service it partly owns. ...
06:00 pm - Mon, May 9, 2016
Slashdot Creators Of Siri Demo Their Next AI Assistant Viv, It's Far More Open Platform
A small company called Viv on Monday unveiled a "frictionless", artificially intelligent software also called Viv, which understands complicated human queries and connects with other apps to get your ...
06:00 pm - Mon, May 9, 2016
Slashdot Microsoft Hits $1 Trillion In Total Cumulative Revenue: Reports
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft has hit a major milestone: $1 trillion in all-time cumulative revenue. The finding was first spotted by Jeff Reifman, a tech consultant. According to him, Microso...
04:00 pm - Mon, May 9, 2016
Slashdot Microsoft: Windows 10 Will Remain Free For People With Accessibility Needs
Reader Mark Wilson writes: The free ride is coming to an end. Windows 10 was always going to be free for the first year after release, and this year is up on 29 July. There are, of course, still ways ...
04:00 pm - Mon, May 9, 2016
Slashdot Parents Could Be Sued By Their Kids For Posting Pictures of Them On Facebook
Next time you share pictures of your children on Facebook, you will want to take their permission before doing that. French authorities have warned parents in France of fines of up to $50,000 and a ye...
04:00 pm - Mon, May 9, 2016
Slashdot Email Mishap Leaks Google Staff Data
An anonymous reader writes: Google has suffered a data breach which compromised the security of its employees, after the company's staff benefits vendor mistakenly sent an email containing sensitive d...
04:00 pm - Mon, May 9, 2016
Slashdot Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News
Michael Nunez, reporting for Gizmodo: Facebook workers routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network's influential "trending" news section, according to...
02:00 pm - Mon, May 9, 2016
Slashdot Combat Lasers To Be Added To US Fighter Jets
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NextBigFuture: The US Air Force plans to arm its fleet of drones and fighter jets with high-tech laser weapons.... Ground testing of a laser weapon called the ...
12:00 pm - Mon, May 9, 2016
Slashdot Swiss City of Zug Will Accept Bitcoin For Public Service Payments
Slashdot reader Mickeycaskill writes: The Swiss city of Zug, famed for its financial sector and low tax rates, will accept Bitcoin as payment for public services up the value of 200 Swiss Francs.The c...
08:00 am - Mon, May 9, 2016
Slashdot Neuroscience Explains Why Dieters Rarely Lose Weight
HughPickens.com writes: According to a new study, the chance of an obese person attaining normal body weight is 1 in 210 for men and 1 in 124 for women, increasing to 1 in 1,290 for men and 1 in 677 f...
04:00 am - Mon, May 9, 2016
Slashdot Debian Dropping Support For Older CPUs
An anonymous reader shares DistroWatch's report that the Debian distribution will soon be dropping support for older, 32-bit processors. The Debian project supports a wide range of hardware architectu...
02:00 am - Mon, May 9, 2016
Slashdot NVIDIA Shows New Doom Demo On GeForce GTX 1080
MojoKid shares a video showing the upcoming Doom game on NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 1080 graphics card using the Vulkan API, quoting this report from HotHardware: At a private briefing with NVIDIA, repr...
12:00 am - Mon, May 9, 2016
Slashdot Are US Courts 'Going Dark'?
An anonymous reader writes: Judge Stephen Wm. Smith argues that questions about the government's "golden age of surveillance" miss an equally significant trend: that the U.S. Courts are "going dark". ...
12:00 am - Mon, May 9, 2016
Slashdot UAE Bank Suffers Massive Data Breach
An anonymous reader writes: Two weeks ago, Qatar's National Bank suffered a massive data breach at the hands of Turkish hackers. That data included details about Qatar's royal family and Al Jazeera re...
10:00 pm - Sun, May 8, 2016
Slashdot Microsoft Will Stop Supporting Windows Live Mail 2012
An anonymous reader writes: "Windows Live Mail 2012 users are on notice: Switch to a modern email client or lose access to any Microsoft email accounts they have," reports InfoWorld. In a Thursday blo...
10:00 pm - Sun, May 8, 2016
Slashdot Lego Robots Crack Gesture-Based Security
An anonymous reader writes: Lego Robots outfitted with a "finger" made from molded Play-Doh were able to bypass seven different gesture-based security systems at least 70% of the time, according to a ...
08:00 pm - Sun, May 8, 2016
Slashdot Uber and Lyft Spend $8.2 Million To Lose Fingerprint Election, Vow To Leave Austin
On Saturday voters in Austin, Texas refused to repeal a new regulation that requires fingerprinting drivers for ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft. In Austin's most expensive election ever, the ...
08:00 pm - Sun, May 8, 2016
Slashdot New "Perfect Game" Donkey Kong Record May Be Unbeatable
An anonymous reader writes: Standing in front on a Donkey Kong arcade cabinet, Wes Copeland set a new all-time high score on Thursday, playing Donkey Kong for 3 hours, 20 minutes, and scoring 1,218,00...
06:00 pm - Sun, May 8, 2016
Slashdot Prisons Moving To All-Video Visitation
"A new system called 'video visitation' is replacing in-person jail visits with glitchy, expensive Skype-like video calls," reports Tech.Mic. "It's inhumane, dystopian and actually increases in-prison...
06:00 pm - Sun, May 8, 2016
Slashdot Dropbox Cuts Several Employee Perks as Silicon Valley Startups Brace For Cold
Not everything is working out at Dropbox, popular cloud storage and sharing service, last valued at $10 billion. Business Insider is reporting a major cost cutting at the San Francisco-based company. ...
04:00 pm - Sun, May 8, 2016
Slashdot Linux Mint 18 Will Ship Without Multimedia Support
An anonymous reader quotes this report from Distrowatch: Linux Mint 18 will no longer provide separate, codec-free installation media for OEM and magazine distribution. Instead, the distribution will ...
04:00 pm - Sun, May 8, 2016
Slashdot Airline Delays Flight Over Passenger's Suspicious Math Equations
Earthquake Retrofit shares this article from the Associated Press: "An Ivy League professor said his flight was delayed because a fellow passenger thought the math equations he was writing might be a ...
02:00 pm - Sun, May 8, 2016
Slashdot Researcher Writes A Machine Language For The Universe
Slashdot reader smugfunt shares a blog post from systems scientist George Mobus:"There is a fundamental language of systems that provides a way to describe both structures and functions that is univer...
02:00 pm - Sun, May 8, 2016
Slashdot Lyft Plans Self-Driving Taxi Fleet By 2017
An anonymous reader writes:Lyft hopes to launch a self-driving fleet of taxis as soon as next year, according to reports, arriving in the market years before Apple and Google. "There will still be a h...
12:00 pm - Sun, May 8, 2016
Slashdot Siri Voice Actress Doesn't Use Siri
An anonymous coward writes: Susan Bennett, the actress who provided the voice of Apple's Siri assistant, says she "doesn't really" use Siri herself. "It's too weird," she says in a new interview. Whil...
08:00 am - Sun, May 8, 2016
Slashdot Kobo Customers Losing Books From Their Libraries After Software Upgrade
Reader Robotech_Master writes: After a recent Kobo software upgrade, a number of Kobo customers have reported losing e-books from their libraries -- notably, e-books that had been transferred to Kobo ...
04:00 am - Sun, May 8, 2016
Slashdot Amazon Bows To Pressure To Bring Same-Day Deliveries To Poor Areas
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune:After pressure from lawmakers, Amazon is revamping its same-day delivery service in response to complaints that it failed to provide service to poor, m...
02:00 am - Sun, May 8, 2016
Slashdot The Pirate Bay Now Blocked In Chrome, Firefox, And Safari
An anonymous reader writes: Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari are actively blocking direct access to The Pirate Bay. Kickass Torrents suffered such a similar incident last month, because of the interm...
12:00 am - Sun, May 8, 2016
Slashdot Tucows Bans Pop-Up Ads, Goes Ad-Free
HughPickens.com writes: Tucows began as a software downloads site nearly 25 years ago and has since evolved beyond that early core business and into domain names, mobile phone service and symmetrical ...
12:00 am - Sun, May 8, 2016
Slashdot Ask Slashdot: Should I Expect Tracking When Subscribing To News Sites?
Long-time Slashdot reader robot5x writes: I'm a fan of online privacy and, where possible, don't automatically permit cookies and tend to set Ghostery to block all trackers in my browser. This rarely ...
10:00 pm - Sat, May 7, 2016
Slashdot The House of Representatives Is Blocking All Apps Using Google's Appspot.com
New reader calewithac writes: In an attempt to stop ransomware attacks, the House's security team has banned all apps hosted on appspot.com from being used on its servers. This means that all appspot ...
10:00 pm - Sat, May 7, 2016
Slashdot Legendary Sound Designer Jory Prum Passes Away At 41
New submitter loren writes: It is with much sadness that I report that legendary sound designer Jory K. Prum, who worked on more than 120 video game titles, passed away April 22, 2016, at age 41, from...
08:00 pm - Sat, May 7, 2016
Slashdot Researchers Are Reconstructing Babbage's Analytical Engine
Slashdot reader RockDoctor brings an update on a project to build Babbage's Analytical Engine:Between 1822 and 1847, Charles Babbage worked on a number of designs for general-purpose programmable comp...
08:00 pm - Sat, May 7, 2016
Slashdot Hacker Magazine Phrack Returns After Four-year Hiatus
Earthquake Retrofit quotes this report from The Register: More than four years since its previous issue, iconic hacker zine Phrack has published a new issue. Phrack issue number 69 contains articles f...
06:00 pm - Sat, May 7, 2016
Slashdot NVIDIA Unveils GeForce GTX 1080, GTX 1070, Faster Than Titan X For a Lot Less
MojoKid writes (edited and condensed): NVIDIA has unveiled its next-generation Pascal-based GeForce graphics cards -- known as the GeForce GTX 1080 and GeForce GTX 1070. NVIDIA's Pascal architecture i...
06:00 pm - Sat, May 7, 2016
Slashdot Disposable Lasers Created Using Inkjet Printer
An anonymous reader quotes this report from The Daily Mail:Researchers have invented a way to print lasers that's so cheap, easy and efficient they believe the core of the laser could be disposed of a...
04:00 pm - Sat, May 7, 2016
Slashdot Amid Data Breach, Google, Mail.ru and Yahoo Claim 98% of Leaked Credentials Bogus
Hundreds of millions of email login credentials -- affecting Gmail, Yahoo, Mail.ru (Russia's most popular email service), and Hotmail among other websites -- were being traded earlier this week in Rus...
04:00 pm - Sat, May 7, 2016
Slashdot Does Free Comic Book Day Help Retailers?
An anonymous reader writes:Today comic book stores around the world celebrate "Free Comic Book Day," offering free comic books to anyone who pays them a visit. Celebrating its 15th anniversary, the ev...
02:00 pm - Sat, May 7, 2016
Slashdot Creator of Online Money Gets 20 Years in Prison
An anonymous reader quotes this report from CNN:Before the virtual currency Bitcoin there was Liberty Reserve -- and its founder just got sentenced to 20 years in prison. Arthur Budovsky, 42, ran an o...
02:00 pm - Sat, May 7, 2016
Slashdot Homeland Security Wants To Subpoena Techdirt Over The Identity Of A Hyperbolic Commenter
Techdirt is in hot water with the Department of Homeland Security all thanks to a commenter known as Digger. Techdirt's Tim Cushing published a story about the Hancock County, IN Sheriff's Department ...
12:00 pm - Sat, May 7, 2016
Slashdot Streaming Surpasses CD Sales At Warner Music
An anonymous reader writes: The times are a changin'. "Warner Music Group has become the first major record company to report that streaming has become its largest source of revenue, surpassing sales ...
08:00 am - Sat, May 7, 2016
Slashdot Microsoft Sees Over 10 Million Cyberattacks Per Day On Its Online Infrastructure
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft's user identity management systems, made up by Microsoft Account (formerly Live ID, for home users) and Azure Active Directory (for its cloud/corporate services),...
04:00 am - Sat, May 7, 2016
Slashdot Facebook Exec's New Startup 'Open Water' Targets Wearable Brain Imaging
gthuang88 writes: Display-tech guru Mary Lou Jepsen is leaving her post at Facebook/Oculus to work on a new startup called Open Water. Jepsen, a veteran of Google X and the MIT Media Lab, says the com...
02:00 am - Sat, May 7, 2016
Slashdot Panama Papers Source Breaks Silence Over 'Scale Of Injustices'
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The whistleblower behind the Panama Papers broke their silence on Friday to explain in detail how the injustices of offshore tax havens drove the...
02:00 am - Sat, May 7, 2016
Slashdot Microsoft To End Nagging Windows 10 Upgrade Notifications In July
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft has officially announced today it will end the annoying "Get Windows 10" notifications in July, when they end the free Windows 10 upgrade offer. In a statement to...
02:00 am - Sat, May 7, 2016
Slashdot NASA Launches Searchable Database Of Public Domain Patents
An anonymous reader quotes a report from SlashGear: NASA has released a bunch of patents for its technologies so that anyone can use them. A total of 56 'formerly-patented' technologies developed by t...
02:00 am - Sat, May 7, 2016
Slashdot Cellphones Do Not Cause Brain Cancer, Says 29-Year Study
A study from Australia reassures us that cellphones are reasonably safe, and do not cause brain cancer. Chris Mills writes from Gizmodo: "The study examines the incidence of brain cancer in the Austra...
12:00 am - Sat, May 7, 2016
Slashdot 'Recommended' Windows 7 Update Is Breaking PCs With ASUS Motherboards
Microsoft has made a bizarre tweak to an update for Windows 7 that can prevent some systems from booting. The Windows 7 update KB3133977 was switched from 'Optional' to 'Recommended' and Microsoft kne...
12:00 am - Sat, May 7, 2016
Slashdot San Diego To Run 100 Percent On Renewable Energy By 2035
The city of San Diego has announced a bold new plan to run completely on renewable energy by 2035. While the city already produces the second largest electrical output from solar energy in the U.S., t...
12:00 am - Sat, May 7, 2016
Slashdot 3D Printing Industry To Triple In Four Years To $21 Billion
Year-over-year the 3D printing industry has grown by as much as 30%. Now, it's set to triple in revenue over the next four years, according to a new report. For comparison, this year the industry will...
10:00 pm - Fri, May 6, 2016
Slashdot YouTube: Our Primetime Audience Is Bigger Than the Top 10 TV Shows Combined
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki: "Today, I'm happy to announce that on mobile alone YouTube now reaches more 18-49-year-olds than any network -- broadcast or cable. In fact, we reach more 18-49-year-olds d...
10:00 pm - Fri, May 6, 2016
Slashdot Scientists Reveal How We Can Forget On Purpose
An anonymous reader writes: When people say, "Forget you heard that," they don't usually mean literally. But it turns out that you can stop yourself from remembering, at least on a small scale. People...
10:00 pm - Fri, May 6, 2016
Slashdot 'Boaty McBoatface' Polar Ship Named After Attenborough Despite Less Votes
The UK's 200 Million Euro polar research ship won't be called Boaty McBoatface. Instead, the new ship will be called RRS (Royal Research Ship) Sir David Attenborough. The Natural Environment Research ...
08:00 pm - Fri, May 6, 2016
Slashdot Solar Planes Aren't the Green Future Of Air Travel
An anonymous reader writes: By any standard, the Solar Impulse 2 is a marvel of engineering. This solar-powered plane didn't use a drop of kerosene on its epic trip across the Pacific Ocean. It's a re...
08:00 pm - Fri, May 6, 2016
Slashdot Facebook's Newest Privacy Problem: 'Faceprint' Data
Katie Collins, reporting for CNET: Facebook knows you so well these days that it can recognize you just by seeing your face. You may not have a problem with this, but that doesn't mean it's all good i...
08:00 pm - Fri, May 6, 2016
Slashdot Lenovo Patches Serious Flaw In Pre-Installed Support Tool
Reader itwbennett writes: Lenovo has made available a patch for the vulnerability in its Lenovo Solution Center, a support tool which comes pre-installed on many Lenovo laptops and desktops. The vulne...
06:00 pm - Fri, May 6, 2016
Slashdot The World Video Game Hall of Fame 2016 Inductess
Reader Dave Knott writes: The World Video Game Hall Of Fame has announced its inductees for the year 2016, the second group of games to be so honoured since the award's inception in 2015. The Hall Of ...
06:00 pm - Fri, May 6, 2016
Slashdot Google's AI Is Devouring Romance Novels
An anonymous reader writes: Google engineers have been feeding text from steamy romance novels to an artificial intelligence (AI) engine in order to give Google's technology -- like its mobile app -- ...
06:00 pm - Fri, May 6, 2016
Slashdot Google-Backed Yieldify Has Acquired IP From 'World's Biggest Patent Troll'
An anonymous reader cites an article on The Register: Yieldify, the Google-backed startup accused of stealing code from British adtech company Bounce Exchange, has been making some unusual friends. Yi...
04:00 pm - Fri, May 6, 2016
Slashdot Elon Musk: 'We Need a Revolt Against the Fossil Fuel Industry'
An anonymous reader writes: Tesla's chief executive Elon Musk has accused politicians of bowing to the "unrelenting and enormous" lobbying power of the fossil fuel industry, warning that a global "rev...
04:00 pm - Fri, May 6, 2016
Slashdot Huge Number Of Sites Imperiled By Critical Image-Processing Vulnerability
Dan Goodin, reporting for Ars Technica: A large number of websites are vulnerable to a simple attack that allows hackers to execute malicious code hidden inside booby-trapped images. The vulnerability...
02:00 pm - Fri, May 6, 2016
Slashdot Netflix Enables Streaming Quality Control To Reign In Mobile Data Usage
MojoKid writes from a report on HotHardware: Netflix wants to put users in control of their mobile data usage when it comes to its iOS and Android apps. Up until today, Netflix held all the cards and ...
02:00 pm - Fri, May 6, 2016
Slashdot Judge Rodney Gilstrap Sees A Quarter Of The Nation's Patent Cases
derekmead quotes a report from Motherboard: Since taking the bench in 2011 -- moving literally across the street from his law office into the district courthouse -- Judge Rodney Gilstrap has become on...
12:00 pm - Fri, May 6, 2016
Slashdot GoPro Footage Gives You A Rocket's-Eye View Of Spaceflight
Eloking quotes a report from Gizmag: Action cameras have been strapped to dogs, chainsaw-wielding drones and everything in between, but there's a new benchmark for homegrown heroes and their action-ca...
10:00 am - Fri, May 6, 2016
Slashdot AG Scores Victory In Bid To Shut Down Indian Point
mdsolar quotes a report from The Journal News: Federal safety regulators used the wrong data to analyze the potential economic impacts of a severe accident at the Indian Point nuclear power plant, a p...
08:00 am - Fri, May 6, 2016
Slashdot SpaceX Successfully Lands Its Rocket On A Floating Drone Ship Again
Early Friday morning, SpaceX successfully landed its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship at sea for the second time. The company has recovered the post-launch vehicle a total of three times, two of which ...
04:00 am - Fri, May 6, 2016
Slashdot Finger-Tracking Tech Turns Your Arm Into A Touchpad
New submitter Keys of Cars quotes a report from Gizmag: Smartwatches may be handy, but their tiny touchscreens can easily be obscured by your fingers as you're using them on the device. As a result, w...
02:00 am - Fri, May 6, 2016
Slashdot Tesla Plans To Produce 500,000 Electric Cars In 2018, 1 Million In 2020
"Tesla Motors Inc said it was stepping up production plans for its upcoming Model 3 mass-market sedan and would build a total of 500,000 all-electric vehicles in 2018, two years ahead of schedule, but...
02:00 am - Fri, May 6, 2016
Slashdot India Plans To Spend $6 Billion On Creating New Forests
The Narendra Modi government plans to spend $6.2 billion to create new forests through the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Bill, 2015, which has been passed by lawmakers in India's lower house this we...
02:00 am - Fri, May 6, 2016
Slashdot Meet The Company That Poached The FBI's Entire Silk Road Investigation Team
Patrick O'Neill quotes a report from The Daily Dot: The FBI team that brought down Silk Road has a new home. After headline-grabbing investigations, arrests, and prosecutions on some of America's high...
12:00 am - Fri, May 6, 2016
Slashdot As Robots Eat Our Jobs, Fed Should 'Drop the Money From Helicopters,' Says Bill Gross
As technology continues to change the world -- and kill many jobs -- it may soon change the very nature of what is considered work, said Bill Gross, a renowned American financial manager in his recent...
12:00 am - Fri, May 6, 2016
Slashdot SAP Partners With Apple To Expand iOS In The Enterprise
SAP has announced a partnership with Apple to bring iOS to SAP's enterprise customers. Steve Lucas, president for SAP's Digital Enterprise Platform, says SAP is firmly an enterprise company which has ...
12:00 am - Fri, May 6, 2016
Slashdot Microsoft No Longer Allows Admins To Block Windows Store Access In Windows 10 Pro
If you're an administrator, you will no longer be able to block Windows 10 Pro users on your watch from accessing the Windows Store. Mary Jo Foley reports for ZDNet: Up until a month ago, admins could...
12:00 am - Fri, May 6, 2016
Slashdot LAPD Hacked An iPhone 5s Before The FBI Hacked San Bernardino Terrorist's iPhone 5c
According to recently released court papers, Los Angeles police investigators found a way to break into a locked iPhone 5s belonging to April Jace, the slain wife of "The Shield" actor Michael Jace. T...
10:00 pm - Thu, May 5, 2016
Slashdot Unity 8 And Snaps Are Conquering The Ubuntu Desktop After Ubuntu 16.10
prisoninmate writes: Today is the last day of the Ubuntu Online Summit 2016, and the Ubuntu developers discussed the future of the Ubuntu Desktop for Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) and beyond. It looks li...
10:00 pm - Thu, May 5, 2016
Slashdot FDA To Regulate E-Cigarettes Like Tobacco
An anonymous reader writes: Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) have been all the rage lately, as many claim they are healthier than traditional tobacco cigarettes. Since they are so relatively new t...
10:00 pm - Thu, May 5, 2016
Slashdot After ISIS, Americans Fear Cyberattacks Most
An anonymous reader writes: According to Pew Research Center, there's an increasingly growing fear among Americans about cyberattacks. In fact, it's the second most feared entity to them, the first be...
08:00 pm - Thu, May 5, 2016
Slashdot Cupertino's Mayor: Apple 'Abuses Us' By Not Paying Taxes
An anonymous reader shares a report on The Guardian: Apple pays a 2.3% effective tax rate on its $181bn in cash held offshore, according to Citizens for Tax Justice, a not-for-profit research group fo...
08:00 pm - Thu, May 5, 2016
Slashdot NY Approves New Digital Currency For Winklevoss Bitcoin Exchange
An anonymous reader writes (edited and condensed): The New York State Department of Financial Services has approved the application of Gemini Trust Company, founded by investors Tyler and Cameron Wink...
08:00 pm - Thu, May 5, 2016
Slashdot Cops Deploy StingRay Anti-Terror Tech Against $50 Chicken-Wing Thief
An anonymous reader shares a report on The Register: Police in Maryland, U.S., used controversial cellphone-tracking technology intended only for the most serious crimes to track down a man who stole ...
06:00 pm - Thu, May 5, 2016
Slashdot Windows 10 Now Runs On 300M Active Devices; Upgrade To Cost $119 After July 29
On Thursday (May 5), Microsoft announced that Windows 10 is now running on 300 million active devices, up from 270 million monthly active devices as of March 30. The feat comes nine months after Micro...
06:00 pm - Thu, May 5, 2016
Slashdot Sci-Hub Faces Millions Of Dollars In Damages, Elsevier Complaint Shuts Down Domain
Reader Taco Cowboy writes: Sci-Hub is facing millions of dollars in damages in a lawsuit filed by Elsevier, one of the largest academic publishers. As a result of the legal battle the site just lost o...
06:00 pm - Thu, May 5, 2016
Slashdot Snapchat Sued For Facilitating 107 MPH Car Crash
An anonymous reader writes: A Georgia couple is suing Snapchat, a popular instant messaging and photo sharing app, after a car accident last year seriously injured the husband, leaving him permanently...
04:00 pm - Thu, May 5, 2016
Slashdot Bitcoin 'Creator' Reneges On Promise To Provide More Proof, Says He's Sorry
Craig Wright, the Australian computer scientist who claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto -- the creator of bitcoin -- has backtracked on a pledge to provide more proof of his earlier claims. Wright says tha...
04:00 pm - Thu, May 5, 2016
Slashdot Old Qualcomm Vulnerability Exposes Android User Data
Reader wiredmikey writes: Researchers from FireEye have disclosed the details of a serious information disclosure vulnerability affecting a Qualcomm software package found in hundreds of Android devic...
04:00 pm - Thu, May 5, 2016
Slashdot 'Apple Stole My Music. No, Seriously'
Vellum's James has written about his ordeal with Apple Music which many people can relate to. Apple Music, the Cupertino-based giant's online music streaming service, deleted 122GB of music files that...
02:00 pm - Thu, May 5, 2016
Slashdot Medical Equipment Crashes During Heart Procedure Because Of Antivirus Scan
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Softpedia: The device in question is Merge Hemo, a complex medical equipment used to supervise heart catheterization procedures, during which doctors insert a ...
12:00 pm - Thu, May 5, 2016
Slashdot Scientists Grow Two-Week-Old Human Embryos In Lab For The First Time
An anonymous reader writes: According to Reuters, "Using a culture method previously tested to grow mouse embryos outside of a mother, the teams were able to conduct almost hour by hour observations o...
08:00 am - Thu, May 5, 2016
Slashdot Star Wars Buttons And Lights You May Have Missed
tedlistens writes: At Motherboard, Alex Pasternack writes: "Star Wars is set in a world of wildly advanced technology. But take a good look at the machinery of Star Wars, and you may be surprised to s...
04:00 am - Thu, May 5, 2016
Slashdot Hacker Guccifer Claims He Easily and Repeatedly Broke Into Hillary Clinton's Email Server
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fox News: The infamous Romanian hacker known as "Guccifer," speaking exclusively with Fox News, claimed he easily -- and repeatedly -- breached former Secretar...
02:00 am - Thu, May 5, 2016
Slashdot Man Sets World Record With 25 Continuous Hours In Virtual Reality
An anonymous reader writes: Derek Westerman has made it in the Guinness Book of World Records by spending 25 straight hours in virtual reality. He used the HTC Vive and spent his entire time playing T...
02:00 am - Thu, May 5, 2016
Slashdot Microsoft Overhauls SharePoint To Compete With Slack In The Mobile Era
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Microsoft is overhauling SharePoint today, and introducing iOS, Android, and Windows 10 Mobile apps. The iOS SharePoint app will arrive by the end o...
02:00 am - Thu, May 5, 2016
Slashdot DuckDuckGo Is Giving Away $225,000 To Support Open Source Projects
An anonymous reader writes: Google Search competitor DuckDuckGo announced it will be giving away a total of $225,000 to support nine open source projects, each project will receive $25,000. DuckDuckGo...
12:00 am - Thu, May 5, 2016
Slashdot 'Largest Recall In American History': Takata To Recall Nearly 70 Million Airbags
An anonymous reader writes: Federal regulators are ordering Japanese supplier Takata to recall as many as 40 million additional airbags linked to a defect already blamed for at least 11 deaths, bringi...
12:00 am - Thu, May 5, 2016
Slashdot In Search Of A Healthy Gut, One Man Turned To An Extreme DIY Fecal Transplant
Josiah Zayner writes: Arielle Duhaime-Ross at The Verge followed Dr. Josiah Zayner, a former Scientist at NASA turned BioHacker, as he attempted the first ever full-body microbiome transplant. She wri...
10:00 pm - Wed, May 4, 2016
Slashdot Students Can Now Fly Drones At School, FAA Says
An anonymous reader writes: It will now be easier for students to pilot drones as part of their schoolwork, thanks to new Federal Aviation Administration rules that exempt high schools and colleges fr...
10:00 pm - Wed, May 4, 2016
Slashdot Google Encrypts All Blogspot Domains With HTTPS
Reader Mickeycaskill writes: Google is continuing its crusade to encrypt the web by enabling an HTTPS version of every single domain hosted on Blogspot. The search giant started the rollout last Septe...
10:00 pm - Wed, May 4, 2016
Slashdot Robot Stitches Tissue By Itself Without A Real Doctor Pulling The Strings
An anonymous reader writes: Scientists have created a robotic system that is capable of stitching up tissue in living animals without a human doctor pulling the strings. Wednesday's research brings us...
10:00 pm - Wed, May 4, 2016
Slashdot YouTube To Launch 'Unplugged' Online TV Service In 2017
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: YouTube is working on a paid subscription service called Unplugged that would offer customers a bundle of cable TV channels streamed over the Intern...
08:00 pm - Wed, May 4, 2016
Slashdot Windows 10 Updates Are Now Ruining Pro-Gaming Streams
An anonymous reader cites a report on The Guardian: Perhaps there's nothing more annoying than going in for the kill to suddenly be "pooped on" by a Windows 10 automatic installation taking out your c...
08:00 pm - Wed, May 4, 2016
Slashdot Aging and Bloated OpenSSL Is Purged of 2 High-Severity Bugs
An anonymous reader cites a story on Ars Technica: Maintainers of the OpenSSL cryptographic library have patched high-severity holes that could make it possible for attackers to decrypt login credenti...
08:00 pm - Wed, May 4, 2016
Slashdot No One Should Have To Use Proprietary Software To Communicate With Their Government
Donald Robertson, writing for Free Software Foundation: Proprietary JavaScript is a threat to all users on the Web. When minified, the code can hide all sorts of nasty items, like spyware and other se...
06:00 pm - Wed, May 4, 2016
Slashdot Half Of Teens Think They're Addicted To Their Smartphones
An anonymous reader writes: A new poll confirms just how much teens depend on their phones. Fifty percent of teens feel they are addicted to their mobile devices, according to the poll, which was cond...
06:00 pm - Wed, May 4, 2016
Slashdot John Kasich To Drop Out, Leaving Trump as GOP Nominee
Multiple outlets are reporting that Ohio Gov. John Kasich plans to suspend his run to be the GOP presidential nominee. The move, if happens, would make Donald Trump the presumptive nominee for the GOP...
06:00 pm - Wed, May 4, 2016
Slashdot Are We Alone In the Universe? Not Likely, According To Math
An anonymous reader writes: An equation, which calculates the probability of the evolution of other technological civilizations, has found that it's wildly unlikely we're the only time advanced societ...
04:00 pm - Wed, May 4, 2016
Slashdot Life's Too Short For Slow Computers
Nilay Patel, the Editor-in-Chief of The Verge looks back the Apple Watch, the company's first wearable device which went on sale roughly a year ago. In the article, Patel notes that Apple Watch, a com...
04:00 pm - Wed, May 4, 2016
Slashdot New Record Set for World's Cheapest Solar, Now Undercutting Coal
Anna Hirtenstein, reporting for Bloomberg: Solar power set another record-low price as renewable energy developers working in the United Arab Emirates shrugged off financial turmoil in the industry to...
04:00 pm - Wed, May 4, 2016
Slashdot Millions of Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail Email Accounts Being Traded in Russian Underworld
Eric Auchard, reporting for Reuters (edited and condensed): Hundreds of millions of hacked usernames and passwords for email accounts and other websites are being traded in Russia's criminal underworl...
02:00 pm - Wed, May 4, 2016
Slashdot IBM Gives Everyone Access To Its Five-Qubit Quantum Computer
An anonymous reader writes: IBM said on Wednesday that it's giving everyone access to one of its quantum computing processors, which can be used to crunch large amounts of data. Anyone can apply throu...
12:00 pm - Wed, May 4, 2016
Slashdot Study Suggests Free Will Is An Illusion
An anonymous reader quotes a report from IFLScience: A new paper published in the journal Psychological Science has attempted to define and investigate the subject of free will. By asking participants...
08:00 am - Wed, May 4, 2016
Slashdot Facebook Paid $10,000 To A 10-Year-Old For Hacking Instagram
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook has paid $10,000 to a 10-year-old hacker who discovered how one could hack into Instagram and delete comments made by users. Speaking to local publication Iltaleht...
04:00 am - Wed, May 4, 2016
Slashdot Medical Errors Are Number 3 Cause of US Deaths, Researchers Say
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: A study by researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine says medical errors should rank as the third-leading cause of death in the United States -- and highlight...
02:00 am - Wed, May 4, 2016
Slashdot Google, Fiat Chrysler Plan Partnership On Self-Driving Minivans
An anonymous reader writes: Google and Fiat Chrysler were in "late stage talks" last week about working out a partnership where the two could build some self-driving cars together. Google has the tech...
02:00 am - Wed, May 4, 2016
Slashdot Apple Loses Exclusive Rights To 'iPhone' Trademark For Non-Smartphone Products In China
An anonymous reader quotes a report from AppleInsider: Adding to the company's problems in the region, Apple has lost exclusivity on the use of the "iPhone" trademark in China, and must now share it w...
02:00 am - Wed, May 4, 2016
Slashdot Ted Cruz Drops Out Of The Republican Presidential Race
rmdingler writes: Ted Cruz drops out of the presidential race after losing in Indiana. Donald Trump has become the presumptive nominee before Hillary has locked things up versus Bernie. This is huge. ...
12:00 am - Wed, May 4, 2016
Slashdot Slashdot Asks: What Do You Think Is The Most Influential Gadget Of All Time?
TIME has published a list ranking the 50 most influential gadgets of all time, from cameras and TVs to music players, smartphones, and drones. Can you guess what was the number one most influential ga...
12:00 am - Wed, May 4, 2016
Slashdot 76% Of Netflix Subscribers Think Netflix Can Replace Traditional TV
An anonymous reader writes: It turns out plenty of people think Netflix is ready to replace their traditional TV. According to a survey on AllFlicks (Editor's note: the site is Netflix focused, so it'...
12:00 am - Wed, May 4, 2016
Slashdot Ellen Pao Launches Advocacy Group To Improve Diversity In The Tech Industry
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Ellen Pao, a former Silicon Valley venture capitalist, today announced the launch of Project Include, an advocacy group aimed at improving diversity...
10:00 pm - Tue, May 3, 2016
Slashdot A Small Group of Journalists Control and Decide What Should Trend On Facebook
An anonymous reader writes: According to five former members of Facebook's trending news team, "news curators" as they're known internally, Zuckerberg and company take a downright dim view of the medi...
10:00 pm - Tue, May 3, 2016
Slashdot Snowden: 'Governments Can Reduce Our Dignity To That Of Tagged Animals'
An anonymous reader writes: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden writes a report on The Guardian explaining why leaking information about wrongdoing is a vital act of resistance. "One of the challenges of...
10:00 pm - Tue, May 3, 2016
Slashdot Uber Plans To Kill Surge Pricing With Machine Learning
An anonymous reader writes: Surge pricing is a familiar term for any regular Uber rider -- or driver. It's when you call an Uber, and the price of a ride is two, three, or four times more as a result ...
08:00 pm - Tue, May 3, 2016
Slashdot Should You Pay Sales Tax on Internet Purchases? South Dakota Law Could Be The Test
An anonymous reader shares a PCWorld report: A new South Dakota law may end up determining whether most U.S. residents are required to pay sales taxes on their Internet purchases. The South Dakota law...
08:00 pm - Tue, May 3, 2016
Slashdot Prince Quietly Helped Launch a Coding Program For Inner City Youth
An anonymous reader writes: Though many would say Prince changed the world through his music, the artist also took a hands-on approach to changing the world beyond music. The global superstar was the ...
08:00 pm - Tue, May 3, 2016
Slashdot Biotech Company To Attempt Revitalizing Nervous Systems of Brain-Dead Patients
Sarah Knapton, writing for The Telegraph: A groundbreaking trial to see if it is possible to regenerate the brains of dead people, has won approval from health watchdogs. A biotech company called BioQ...
06:00 pm - Tue, May 3, 2016
Slashdot 'I'll Make Their Life Miserable': Tech CEO Bullies Low-income Vendors By His Home
An anonymous reader quotes an article on The Guardian that has caused a spark on social media: A Silicon Valley tech CEO has sparked backlash for comments slamming local fruit vendors, saying he would...
06:00 pm - Tue, May 3, 2016
Slashdot Taking a 'Gap Year' Before College Is a British Tradition That's Becoming a Big Trend In The US
An anonymous user cites an article on Quartz: Today, many U.S. universities not only allow admitted students to take a year off before beginning their studies, but encourage it. In 2000, Harvard's adm...
06:00 pm - Tue, May 3, 2016
Slashdot Samsung Smart Home Flaws Let Hackers Pick Connected Doors From Anywhere In the World
Researchers have discovered flaws in Samsung's Smart Home automation system, which if exploited, allows them to carry a range of remote attacks. These attacks include digitally picking connected door ...
04:00 pm - Tue, May 3, 2016
Slashdot Ubuntu Founder Pledges No Back Doors In Linux
Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical and Ubuntu Foundation, gave an interview to eWeek this week ahead of Ubuntu Online Summit (UOS). In the wide-ranging interview, Shuttleworth teased some feature...
04:00 pm - Tue, May 3, 2016
Slashdot Lab-Grown Meat Is In Your Future, and It May Be Healthier Than the Real Stuff
An anonymous reader shares an article on The Sydney Morning Herald:Scientists and businesses working full steam to produce lab-created meat claim it will be healthier than conventional meat and more e...
04:00 pm - Tue, May 3, 2016
Slashdot Oceans Could Soon Not Have Enough Oxygen To Support Marine Life
An anonymous reader writes: As the climate continues to change in response to the increasing amount of carbon humans pump into the atmosphere, the oceans are being particularly hard hit from melting A...
02:00 pm - Tue, May 3, 2016
Slashdot Tim Cook Defends Apple, Teases Exciting New Products In The Pipeline
anderzole quotes a report from BGR: Apple's earnings report last week saw the company report a year over year decline in profits for the first time since 2003. The biggest contributing factor to the d...
12:00 pm - Tue, May 3, 2016
Slashdot Researchers Solve One Of The Biggest Mysteries About How Water Flows On Mars
An anonymous reader writes: Not only is water flowing on Mars, it's also boiling. This experiment published today in Nature Geoscience solves one of the major mysteries about the surface of the red pl...
08:00 am - Tue, May 3, 2016
Slashdot Novel Model Illustrates The Finer Details Of Nuclear Fission
mdsolar quotes a report from Phys.Org: For nearly 80 years, nuclear fission has awaited a description within a microscopic framework. In the first study of its kind, scientists collaborating from the ...
04:00 am - Tue, May 3, 2016
Slashdot UAE To Build Artificial Mountain To Improve Rainfall
An anonymous reader writes: The United Arab Emirates is in the early stages of developing an artificial mountain that would force air upwards and create clouds that could produce additional rainfall. ...
04:00 am - Tue, May 3, 2016
Slashdot China Creates World's First Graphene Electronic Paper
An anonymous reader writes from a report published on Tech Times: China has developed the world's first graphene electronic paper that can possibly revolutionize the screen displays on electronic gadg...
02:00 am - Tue, May 3, 2016
Slashdot LG's New Fingerprint Sensor Doesn't Need A Button
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Mashable: LG Innotek has developed a fingerprint sensor that's placed under a glass surface instead of in a physical button, the company announced Sunday. The ...
02:00 am - Tue, May 3, 2016
Slashdot China Probes Baidu Over False Medical Ads After Student Dies
hackingbear writes: China's Internet regulator said on Monday it will send a team to investigate Baidu Inc over the death of a university student who used the Chinese search engine to look for treatme...
02:00 am - Tue, May 3, 2016
Slashdot Kim Jong-Un Bans All Weddings, Funerals And Freedom Of Movement In North Korea
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Independent: Weddings and funerals have been banned and Pyongyang is in lockdown as preparations for a once-in-a-generation party congress get underway in ...
12:00 am - Tue, May 3, 2016
Slashdot Greenpeace Leaks Big Part Of Secret TTIP Documents
An anonymous reader writes: The environmental group Greenpeace has obtained 248 pages of classified documents from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) trade talks. The group warn...
12:00 am - Tue, May 3, 2016
Slashdot Self-Driving Features Could Lead To More Sex In Moving Cars, Expert Warns
An anonymous reader writes: According to CBC.ca, "At least one expert is anticipating that, as the so-called 'smart' cars get smarter, there will eventually be an increase in an unusual form of distra...
10:00 pm - Mon, May 2, 2016
Slashdot Without Encryption, Everything Stops, Says Snowden
An anonymous reader writes about Snowden's appearance on a debate with CNN's Fareed Zakaria: Edward Snowden defended the importance of encryption, calling it the "backbone of computer security." He sa...
10:00 pm - Mon, May 2, 2016
Slashdot Samsung, Nvidia End Their Patent Lawsuits
Reader itwbennett writes: In September 2014, Nvidia sued both Samsung and Qualcomm, asking for shipments of Galaxy phones and tablets with graphics processors from Qualcomm, ARM and Imagination Techno...
10:00 pm - Mon, May 2, 2016
Slashdot 20-Yr-Old Compaq Laptop Is Still Crucial to Maintaining McLaren's Multi-Million Dollar Cars
An anonymous reader writes: It may come as a surprise to many, but the 20-year-old Compaq LTE 5280 still plays a vital role in maintaining multi-million dollar McLaren F1s. Jalopnik recently visited M...
10:00 pm - Mon, May 2, 2016
Slashdot Climate-Exodus Expected In The Middle East And North Africa
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia have calculated that the Middle East and North Africa could...
08:00 pm - Mon, May 2, 2016
Slashdot Chrome Overtakes Internet Explorer For Most Popular Desktop Browser
Google Chrome is now the most widely used desktop browser. According to the latest figures from marketing and research firm Net Applications (which looked into data from over 40,000 websites), in Apri...
08:00 pm - Mon, May 2, 2016
Slashdot WhatsApp Blocked in Brazil for 72 Hours Over Data Dispute
An anonymous reader cites an article on TechCrunch: WhatsApp, Facebook's messaging service that recently rolled out end-to-end encryption to its users, will be blocked in Brazil for 72 hours, starting...
08:00 pm - Mon, May 2, 2016
Slashdot Gas Delivery Startups Want to Fill Up Your Car Anywhere, But It Might Not Be Legal
Eric Newcomer, reporting for Bloomberg: A new crop of startups are trying to make gas stations obsolete. Tap an app, and they'll bring the gas to you, filling up your car while you're at work or at ho...
06:00 pm - Mon, May 2, 2016
Slashdot Audiophile Torrent Site What.CD Fully Pwnable Thanks To Wrecked RNG
Reader mask.of.sanity writes: Users of popular audiophile torrent site What.CD can make themselves administrators to completely compromise the private music site and bypass its notorious download rati...
06:00 pm - Mon, May 2, 2016
Slashdot With AI Getting Better at Cognitive Abilities, Humans Will Have Even Fewer Jobs
An anonymous reader writes: It is no secret that machines have come to largely replace physical labor, and computers surpass human beings in processing data. But in the future, the development of arti...
06:00 pm - Mon, May 2, 2016
Slashdot Scientists Discover Three Potentially Habitable Planets
Scientists have discovered three Earth-sized planets that look ideally suited to search for signs of life beyond our solar system. A team of astronomers from MIT and the University of Liege detected t...
04:00 pm - Mon, May 2, 2016
Slashdot Craig Wright Claims He's Satoshi Nakamoto, the Creator Of Bitcoin
Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright has put an end to the years-long speculation about the creator of Bitcoin. In an interview with the BBC, The Economist (may have a paywall), and GQ, Wright claimed...
04:00 pm - Mon, May 2, 2016
Slashdot Ubuntu Quietly Raises Install Image Size to 2GB
Joey-Elijah Sneddon, reporting for OMGUbuntu: You can expect to see a larger Ubuntu desktop installation image by the time the Yakkety Yak yips out. Developers are currently debating the exact size li...
04:00 pm - Mon, May 2, 2016
Slashdot Datto Launches Datto Drive For SMBs; Offers 1TB at $10 a Month For Unlimited Users
Founder of OwnCloud writes: In the era of nearly free cloud storage why on earth am I paying $15 a month per user (for Dropbox and Box). This seems absurd. As the founder of a cloud storage company I ...
02:00 pm - Mon, May 2, 2016
Slashdot 3 Years Ago, Microsoft Said Tech Should Fund K-12 CS Education. What Changed?
theodp writes: Last week, Microsoft and some of the biggest names in tech and corporate America threw their weight behind a Change.org petition that urged Congress to fund K-12 Computer Science educat...
02:00 pm - Mon, May 2, 2016
Slashdot Marketers Hunger For Data From Wearables
An anonymous reader writes:Marketers would love to access information about your daily routines and your precise location, both data sets that would be trivially easy to extract from wearable devices....
12:00 pm - Mon, May 2, 2016
Slashdot Elon Musk Open Sources New 'AI Gym'
An anonymous reader writes: OpenAI, a billion-dollar research non-profit backed by Elon Musk and other Silicon Valley executives, just released a public beta of a new Open Source gym for computer prog...
08:00 am - Mon, May 2, 2016
Slashdot Global Catastrophe, Even Human Extinction, Isn't All That Unlikely
HughPickens.com writes: Robinson Meyer writes in The Atlantic that in its annual report on "global catastrophic risk," the Global Challenges Foundation estimates the risk of human extinction due to cl...
04:00 am - Mon, May 2, 2016
Slashdot The Pirate Bay Gets a 'Massive' $9 in Donations Per Day
An anonymous reader writes: When The Pirate Bay and other torrent sites started accepting Bitcoin donations a few years ago, copyright holders voiced concerns about this new 'unseizable' revenue strea...
02:00 am - Mon, May 2, 2016
Slashdot Robots Battle In 25th Annual FIRST Competition
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Vice: Saturday marked the conclusion of the 2016 FIRST Robotics Competition, which saw over 20,000 high school students from around the world descend on St. Lo...
12:00 am - Mon, May 2, 2016
Slashdot The Government Wants Your Fingerprint To Unlock Phones
schwit1 quotes this report from the Daily Gazette: "As the world watched the FBI spar with Apple this winter in an attempt to hack into a San Bernardino shooter's iPhone, federal officials were quietl...
12:00 am - Mon, May 2, 2016
Slashdot Windows Desktop Market Share Drops Below 90%
An anonymous reader quotes VentureBeat's new article about desktop operating systems: Windows 7 is still the king, but it no longer holds the majority. Nine months after Windows 10's release, Windows ...
10:00 pm - Sun, May 1, 2016
Slashdot CV of Failures: Princeton Professor Publishes Resume of His Career Lows
An anonymous reader shares a Guardian report: A professor at Princeton University has published a CV listing his career failures (PDF), in an attempt to "balance the record" and encourage others to ke...
10:00 pm - Sun, May 1, 2016
Slashdot What Happened to Google Maps?
Google Maps has reduced the number of cities it shows by up to 83% over the past few years, according to Justin O'Beirne. Maps, in addition, has increased the number of roads it showcases. O'Beirne, w...
08:00 pm - Sun, May 1, 2016
Slashdot Apple's Smartwatch Draws Competition And A Very Bad Review
Apple's share of the smartwatch market actually started declining in 2016, dropping down to just 52.4% (down from 63%), according to Business Insider. And following up on Apple's first drop in earning...
08:00 pm - Sun, May 1, 2016
Slashdot Government Could Ban BBC From Showing Top Shows at Peak Times
An anonymous reader writes: The BBC is on a collision course with the government over reported efforts to bar it from showing popular shows at peak viewing times. The culture secretary, John Whittingd...
08:00 pm - Sun, May 1, 2016
Slashdot RIP Kuro5hin
themusicgod1 writes: Can we please get a moment of silence? Long-time sister site to Slashdot, Kuro5hin has finally gone offline. ...
06:00 pm - Sun, May 1, 2016
Slashdot Engineers Plan The Most Expensive Object Ever Built
HughPickens.com writes: Ed Davey has an interesting story at BBC about the proposed nuclear plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset, UK which at $35 billion will be the most expensive object ever put toget...
06:00 pm - Sun, May 1, 2016
Slashdot New Chip Offers Artificial Intelligence On A USB Stick
An anonymous reader writes: "Pretty much any device with a USB port will be able to use advanced neural networks," reports PC Magazine, announcing the new Fathom Neural Compute Stick from chip-maker (...
04:00 pm - Sun, May 1, 2016
Slashdot Can Quantum Entanglement Create Faster-Than-Light Communication?
Slashdot reader StartsWithABang writes: If you were to send a space probe to a distant star system, gather information about it and send it back to Earth, you'd have to wait years for the information ...
04:00 pm - Sun, May 1, 2016
Slashdot Ask Slashdot: How Could You Statistically Identify The Best Sci-Fi Books?
jimharris writes: Over at SF Signal I wrote a piece "How Well-Read Are You in Science Fiction?" There are three databases that collect lists of popular science fiction books that try to statistically ...
02:00 pm - Sun, May 1, 2016
Slashdot Drones Being Used By Peeping Toms, The Military, And Terrorists
An anonymous reader writes: A 19-year-old woman called Massachusetts police about a drone peeking through her second-story window at 3 a.m. -- and was told no laws had been violated. Kansas is now pas...
02:00 pm - Sun, May 1, 2016
Slashdot Flexible Floating Football-Field Sized Solar Panels
mdsolar writes: Offshore wind farms are growing in popularity as energy providers look for different ways of harvesting power from the sun without using valuable land resources. One unique idea being ...
12:00 pm - Sun, May 1, 2016
Slashdot The Future of Shopping: Trapping You in a Club You Didn't Know You Joined
Just a word of caution: the next time you spot a great deal on a shopping portal, you will want to carefully look for all the radio buttons, and tick boxes -- and perhaps also skim through the ToS -- ...
08:00 am - Sun, May 1, 2016
Slashdot Google Helps Police With Child Porn WebCrawler
The San Jose Mercury News is reporting that the Internet Watch Foundation, "an organization that works with police worldwide to remove images of child sexual abuse from the Internet, has credited Goog...
04:00 am - Sun, May 1, 2016
Slashdot US Spy Court Didn't Reject a Single Government Surveillance Request In 2015
schwit1 shares news from ZDNet's security blog: In more than three decades years, the FISA Court has only rejected 12 requests. A secret court that oversees the US government's surveillance requests a...
02:00 am - Sun, May 1, 2016
Slashdot Australia: VPN Users Aren't Breaching Copyright
Slashdot reader Zanadou writes: The Australian Government Productivity Commission in a draft report recommended that Australian consumers should be able to legally circumvent geoblocking restrictions ...
12:00 am - Sun, May 1, 2016
Slashdot Humble Bundle Announces 'Hacker' Pay-What-You-Want Sale
An anonymous reader writes: Humble Bundle announced a special "pay what you want" sale for four ebooks from No Starch Press, with proceeds going to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (or to the charit...
12:00 am - Sun, May 1, 2016
Slashdot Amazon Beats Microsoft In 'The Battle of Seattle'
An anonymous reader writes: Yesterday Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos earned $5 billion in one afternoon when the company's stock price jumped 9.6%. Amazon reported an actual profit of $513 million (nearly doub...
12:00 am - Sun, May 1, 2016
Slashdot Germany Plans $1.4 Billion In Incentives For Electric Cars
An anonymous reader shares a Bloomberg article: German Chancellor Angela Merkel's government reached a deal with automakers to jointly spend 1.2 billion euros ($1.4 billion) on incentives to boost slu...
10:00 pm - Sat, April 30, 2016
Slashdot Ask Slashdot: Should This Photographer Sue A Hotel For $2M?
Unhappy Windows User writes: An Austrian photographer was contracted by the luxury [hotel] Sofitel in Vienna to photograph the bar with an amazing view over the skyline. He was paid for his time (4200...
10:00 pm - Sat, April 30, 2016
Slashdot Malware Taps Windows' 'God Mode'
Reader wiredmikey writes: Researchers at McAfee have discovered a piece of malware dubbed "Dynamer" that is taking advantage of a Windows Easter Egg -- or a power user feature, as many see it -- calle...
08:00 pm - Sat, April 30, 2016
Slashdot Neil Gaiman Celebrates Independent Bookstore Day
An anonymous reader writes: Today is "Independent Bookstore Day," a national event promoting local bookstores which will feature exclusive bookstore-only offerings, including a Neil Gaiman coloring bo...
08:00 pm - Sat, April 30, 2016
Slashdot Wireless Carriers To Adopt a New Real-Time Text Protocol To Help People With Disabilities
The FCC, an independent agency of the United States government, says it is ready to adopt a proposal which would help people with disabilities communicate more efficiently and conveniently (PDF). Dubb...
06:00 pm - Sat, April 30, 2016
Slashdot Design, Hardware, Software Errors Doomed Japanese Hitomi Spacecraft
Reader Required Snark writes: The Japanese space agency JAXA said its recently launched X-Ray observation satellite Hitomi has been destroyed. After a successful launch on February 17, contact with th...
06:00 pm - Sat, April 30, 2016
Slashdot Language Creation Society Says Klingon Language Isn't Covered By Copyright
Reader AmiMoJo writes: Earlier this year Paramount Pictures and CBS Studios filed a lawsuit against the makers of a Star Trek inspired fan film, accusing them of copyright infringement. In their amicu...
06:00 pm - Sat, April 30, 2016
Slashdot Humble Bundle Announces "Hacker" Pay-What-You-Want Sale
An anonymous reader writes: Humble Bundle announced a special "pay what you want" sale for four ebooks from No Starch Press, with proceeds going to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (or to the charit...
04:00 pm - Sat, April 30, 2016
Slashdot Design, Hardware, Software Error Doomed Japanese Hitomi Spacecraft
Reader Required Snark writes: The Japanese space agency JAXA said its recently launched X-Ray observation satellite Hitomi has been destroyed. After a successful launch on February 17, contact with th...
04:00 pm - Sat, April 30, 2016
Slashdot Yahoo's Marissa Mayer In Line For $55M Severance If Fired Within A Year Of Sale
whoever57 writes: A Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing on Friday revealed that Yahoo's board has agreed to a $55 million severance package for Marissa Mayer if she loses her job within a ...
02:00 pm - Sat, April 30, 2016
Slashdot Slack To Disable Thousands of Logins Leaked on GitHub
An anonymous reader writes: Thursday one technology site reported that thousands of developers building bots for the team-collaboration tool Slack were exposing their login credentials in public GitHu...
02:00 pm - Sat, April 30, 2016
Slashdot Berkeley Researchers Examine Five Worst-Case Security Nightmares
An anonymous reader writes: Berkeley researchers have gamed out five worst-case security scenarios at their Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity, calling it "a disciplined, imaginative approach to model...
12:00 pm - Sat, April 30, 2016
Slashdot Bison To Become First National Mammal Of The US
mdsolar quotes a report from Washington Post: North America used to be teeming with bison. But in one century, their numbers plummeted from tens of millions to just a few dozen in the wild after hunte...
08:00 am - Sat, April 30, 2016
Slashdot Wireless Carriers To Adopt New Real-Time Text Protocol By December 2017
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The FCC is ready to adopt a proposal that'll bring a new protocol to wireless networks to help people with disabilities communicate. It's called real...
04:00 am - Sat, April 30, 2016
Slashdot White House Releases Report On How To Spur Smart-Gun Technology
Lucas123 writes: A report commissioned by the White House involving the Defense, Justice and Homeland Security Departments has begun a process to define, for the first time, the requirements that manu...
04:00 am - Sat, April 30, 2016
Slashdot Developer Installs Windows 95 On An Apple Watch
An anonymous reader writes: Developer Nick Lee has successfully installed Windows 95 on his Apple Watch. It works, but it runs very slow. For example, it takes about an hour for the OS to boot up. In ...
02:00 am - Sat, April 30, 2016
Slashdot Devuan Releases Beta of Systemd-Free 'Debian Fork' Base System
jaromil writes: Devuan beta is released today, following up the Debian fork declaration and progress made during the past two years. Devuan now provides an alternative upgrade path to Debian, and swit...
02:00 am - Sat, April 30, 2016
Slashdot Billionaire Investor Carl Icahn Sells Entire Stake In Apple
An anonymous reader writes: Billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn said he has sold his entire stake in Apple, citing the risk of China's influence on the stock. The report comes after Apple announc...
02:00 am - Sat, April 30, 2016
Slashdot US Steel Says China Is Using Cyber Stealth To Steal Its Secrets
An anonymous reader writes: U.S. Steel Corp. filed a trade complaint with the International Trade Commission: "The Chinese industry has formed a cartel that sets purchase and sale prices, and controls...
12:00 am - Sat, April 30, 2016
Slashdot Cable Industry Threatens To Sue If FCC Tries To Bring Competition To Cable Set Top Boxes
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: Back in February the FCC voted on a new plan to open up the traditional cable box to competition. According to a fact sheet being circulated by the a...
12:00 am - Sat, April 30, 2016
Slashdot Rovi Acquires DVR Company TiVo For $1.1 Billion
Major Blud writes: TiVo, maker of one of the first consumer DVR's, has been purchased by IP powerhouse Rovi (formerly known as Macrovision) for $1.1 Billion. The combined company will go by the TiVo n...
12:00 am - Sat, April 30, 2016
Slashdot Google Files Patent For Injecting A Device Directly Into Your Eyeball
An anonymous reader writes: It's no secret Google and their parent company Alphabet are interested in developing smart contact lenses for monitoring diabetes. Well, Google-parent Alphabet has filed a ...