Articles by Slashdot from March 2018
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11:20 pm - Fri, March 30, 2018
Slashdot
The Gig Economy Keeps Growing, But Worker Benefits Aren't
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: According to a new report out from Brookings, the number of non-employer firms -- primarily incorporated freelancers and gig-economy wor...
10:40 pm - Fri, March 30, 2018
Slashdot
Huawei Commits To Bringing Its Products To the US Despite Government Security Concerns
Within the last few months, AT&T and Verizon have reportedly decided not to sell Huawei's flagship smartphone due to pressure from the U.S. government, with Best Buy opting to stop offering all Hu...
10:00 pm - Fri, March 30, 2018
Slashdot
Airbnb To Share Information With Authorities On Guests In China
Airbnb has notified users in China that, as required by law, their information will soon be automatically logged with the government. Bloomberg reports: This week, it sent an email to hosts declaring ...
09:20 pm - Fri, March 30, 2018
Slashdot
Waymo Starts To Eclipse Uber in Race To Self-Driving Taxis
Uber barreled into autonomous driving out of fear that it could end up as the MySpace or Yahoo of ride-hailing, a company with early gargantuan success that stumbled as times changed. Waymo, the self-...
08:40 pm - Fri, March 30, 2018
Slashdot
Ajit Pai Faces Heat Over Proposal To Take Away Poor People's Broadband Plans
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Democratic senators yesterday asked Ajit Pai to abandon a proposal that the senators say would take subsidized broadband plans away from "million...
08:00 pm - Fri, March 30, 2018
Slashdot
EPA Prepares To Roll Back Rules Requiring Cars To Be Cleaner and More Efficient
Coral Davenport and Hiroko Tabuchi, reporting for The New York Times: The Trump administration is expected to launch an effort in coming days to weaken greenhouse gas emissions and fuel economy standa...
07:28 pm - Fri, March 30, 2018
Slashdot
AI Tool, Which Has Digested Nearly Every Reaction Ever Performed, Can Invent New Ways To Create Complex Molecules
An anonymous reader shares a research paper: Researchers have developed a 'deep learning' computer program that produces blueprints for the sequences of reactions needed to create small organic molecu...
06:55 pm - Fri, March 30, 2018
Slashdot
A Struggling Town Is Reviving Itself With... Geocaching
An anonymous reader shares a report: In the town of Wilberforce, Ontario, a quick detour from the main street will take you to a seven-foot-tall wooden fork that sits at the point where the road split...
06:16 pm - Fri, March 30, 2018
Slashdot
Amazon's Music Storage Service Will Remove MP3 Files on April 30
Amazon announced last year that it intends to shut down its dedicated cloud music locker. Now, the company has elaborated on its thinking. From a report: In an email to Amazon Music users, the company...
05:32 pm - Fri, March 30, 2018
Slashdot
Intel Files Patent For Energy-Efficient Bitcoin Mining Hardware
Intel is exploring the creation of specialty hardware for mining the popular cryptocurrency Bitcoin, according to a U.S. patent application released Thursday. From a report: The patent, filed on Sept....
04:52 pm - Fri, March 30, 2018
Slashdot
'GTA V' Character Doesn't Resemble Lindsay Lohan, Court Rules
Actress Lindsay Lohan has failed in her latest attempt to sue the maker of the video game Grand Theft Auto V. From a report: While the court said in an opinion a computer generated image may be consid...
04:11 pm - Fri, March 30, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Issues Out-Of-Band Security Update To Patch a Meltdown Patch It Released Earlier This Year
On Friday, Microsoft issued an out-of-band security update for 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. From a report: The security update -- KB4100480 -- addresses a security bug disc...
03:26 pm - Fri, March 30, 2018
Slashdot
macOS 10.13.4 Enables Support for External GPU
With the latest release of macOS High Sierra, Apple has officially delivered on a couple of items in the works since WWDC 2017 last June. macOS 10.13.4 brings the external GPU (eGPU) support that lets...
02:43 pm - Fri, March 30, 2018
Slashdot
Poor Grades Tied To Class Times That Don't Match Our Biological Clocks
An anonymous reader shares a report: It may be time to tailor students' class schedules to their natural biological rhythms, according to a new study from UC Berkeley and Northeastern Illinois Univers...
02:03 pm - Fri, March 30, 2018
Slashdot
Coffee Requires Cancer Warning, California Judge Rules
Scientists haven't rendered a verdict on whether coffee is good or bad for you but a California judge has. He says coffee sellers in the state should have to post cancer warnings. From a report: The c...
01:00 pm - Fri, March 30, 2018
Slashdot
An Up-Close Look At the Parker Solar Probe -- the Spacecraft That Will Skim the Sun's Surface
schwit1 shares a report from Ars Technica, offering an up-close look at the Parker Solar Probe: This summer, NASA will launch the Parker Solar Probe, an impressively heat-resistant spacecraft destined...
10:00 am - Fri, March 30, 2018
Slashdot
Scientists Explain the Sound of Knuckle Cracking
"The BBC reports on something sure to impress your next date -- and possibly your last -- when you explain it," writes Slashdot reader dryriver. From the report: Scientists have turned their attention...
07:00 am - Fri, March 30, 2018
Slashdot
FCC Authorizes SpaceX's Ambitious Satellite Internet Plans
The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday approved an application by Elon Musk's SpaceX, allowing the aerospace company to provide broadband services using satellites in the U.S. and worldwide...
03:30 am - Fri, March 30, 2018
Slashdot
Top Facebook Executive Defended Data Collection In 2016 Memo, Warned That Facebook Could Get People Killed
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed: On June 18, 2016, one of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's most trusted lieutenants circulated an extraordinary memo weighing the costs of the company's...
02:10 am - Fri, March 30, 2018
Slashdot
Tesla Issues Its Largest Recall Ever Voluntarily Over Faulty Model S Steering
Tesla announced today that it is recalling 123,000 Model S vehicles around the world over a power steering issue. The company said via an email that it was a proactive move and none of the company's o...
01:30 am - Fri, March 30, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Begins 'Fact-Checking' Photos, Videos
Facebook said today that it had begun "fact-checking" photos and videos to reduce the hoaxes and false news stories that have plagued the world's largest social media network. Reuters reports: The fac...
12:50 am - Fri, March 30, 2018
Slashdot
Instagram Reenables GIF Sharing After GIPHY Promises No More Racism
Earlier this month, Instagram and Snapchat dropped their GIPHY integrations when a racial slur slipped into the company's online database. Now Instagram is bringing GIPHY Integration back after GIPHY ...
12:10 am - Fri, March 30, 2018
Slashdot
Google Removes 'Kodi' From Search Autocomplete In Anti-Piracy Effort
Google has banned the term "Kodi" from the autocomplete feature of its search engine because it's "closely associated with copyright infringement." This means that the popular software and related sug...
11:30 pm - Thu, March 29, 2018
Slashdot
Comcast Supports Ban On Paid Prioritization, Except For 'Specialized Services'
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comcast would support a ban on paid prioritization as long as there is an exception for "specialized services" that benefit consumers, a company ...
10:50 pm - Thu, March 29, 2018
Slashdot
Under Armour Says 150 Million MyFitnessPal Accounts Were Hacked
Under Armour said about 150 million user accounts for its MyFitnessPal nutrition tracker were breached earlier this year. From a report: An unauthorized party stole data from the accounts in late Febr...
10:10 pm - Thu, March 29, 2018
Slashdot
US To Seek Social Media Details From All Visa Applicants
According to Bloomberg, the State Department wants to require all U.S. visa applicants to submit their social media usernames, previous email addresses and phone numbers. From the report: In documents...
09:30 pm - Thu, March 29, 2018
Slashdot
European Commission Says It Will Cancel All 300,000 UK-Owned .EU Domains
Brexit has hit the internet, and not in a good way. From a report: In an official statement Thursday, the European Commission announced it will cancel all 300,000 domains under the .eu top-level domai...
08:50 pm - Thu, March 29, 2018
Slashdot
Uber Settles With Family of Woman Killed By Self-Driving Car, Avoids Lawsuit
It appears that Uber won't go to court to settle a lawsuit after one of its self-driving cars killed a woman in Tempe, Arizona earlier this month. An anonymous Slashdot reader shares a report from Ars...
08:10 pm - Thu, March 29, 2018
Slashdot
X-ray 'Ghost Images' Could Cut Radiation Doses
Sophia Chen, writing for Science magazine: On its own, a single-pixel camera captures pictures that are pretty dull: squares that are completely black, completely white, or some shade of gray in betwe...
07:30 pm - Thu, March 29, 2018
Slashdot
Reddit No Longer Accepts Bitcoin
Reddit, one of the most active hubs of Bitcoin enthusiasts, has dropped its support for the cryptocurrency. From a report: The widely read social media site will no longer accept Bitcoin as payment fo...
06:58 pm - Thu, March 29, 2018
Slashdot
81% of Recent ICOs Were Scams, Research Finds
Four out of five initial coin offerings (ICOs) that have taken place in the last year have been classified as scams, according to a recent study by Satis Group, an ICO advisory firm. From a report: IC...
06:07 pm - Thu, March 29, 2018
Slashdot
Apple Launches iOS 11.3 With Raft of Privacy Features
Apple is launching a major privacy push, with software updates across all its devices to introduce new data privacy information immediately, with an updated website offering new privacy management too...
05:20 pm - Thu, March 29, 2018
Slashdot
ACLU Urges Cities To Build Public Broadband To Protect Net Neutrality
The ACLU is calling on cities across the country to build their own public municipal broadband networks to help preserve net neutrality after the Federal Communications Commission repealed the open in...
04:40 pm - Thu, March 29, 2018
Slashdot
Amazon is Burying Sexy Books, Sending Erotic Novel Authors to the 'No-Rank Dungeon'
Samantha Cole, reporting for Motherboard: In the last few days, word has spread among independent erotica authors on social media that Amazon was quietly changing its policies for erotic novels. Five ...
04:00 pm - Thu, March 29, 2018
Slashdot
President Trump Slams Amazon For 'Causing Tremendous Loss To the United States'
President Trump escalated his attack on Amazon on Thursday, saying that the e-commerce giant does not pay enough taxes, and strongly suggested that he may try to rein in the e-commerce business. From ...
03:20 pm - Thu, March 29, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft's Longtime Windows Boss Terry Myerson To Leave the Company Amid a Huge Executive Reorganization
Terry Myerson, Microsoft's executive vice president of Windows and a long-time leader at Microsoft, is leaving the company, the company said today. The news comes as part of a big reshuffling of the c...
02:40 pm - Thu, March 29, 2018
Slashdot
Update Drupal ASAP: Over a Million Sites Can Be Easily Hacked by Any Visitor
Developers of popular open-source CMS Drupal are warning admins to immediately patch a flaw that an attacker can exploit just by visiting a vulnerable site. From a report: The bug affects all sites ru...
02:03 pm - Thu, March 29, 2018
Slashdot
China, in Search of Water, is Building a Rain-Making Network Three Times the Size of Spain
China is testing cutting-edge defence technology to develop a powerful yet relatively low-cost weather modification system to bring substantially more rain to the Tibetan plateau, Asia's biggest fresh...
01:00 pm - Thu, March 29, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Will No Longer Allow Third-Party Data For Targeting Ads
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: In a surprise change, Facebook will give up one major data source that the company uses to help advertisers target relevant users on the platform. ...
10:00 am - Thu, March 29, 2018
Slashdot
Consumer Genetic Tests May Have a Lot of False Positives
A new study, published in the journal Genetics in Medicine, found that consumer genetic tests bring up a lot of false positives. "In this case, 40 percent of the results from the consumer tests were f...
07:00 am - Thu, March 29, 2018
Slashdot
Galaxy Without Any Dark Matter Baffles Astronomers
A distant galaxy that appears completely devoid of dark matter has baffled astronomers and deepened the mystery of the universe's most elusive substance. The Guardian reports: The absence of dark matt...
03:30 am - Thu, March 29, 2018
Slashdot
VR Researchers Manipulate Human Visual System To Create An Infinite Corridor In a Fixed Space
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Road to VR: This video showcases a new redirected walking implementation project that creates an "unlimited" virtual corridor in a space just 5 x 7 meters in s...
02:20 am - Thu, March 29, 2018
Slashdot
New Deep-Learning Software Knows How To Make Desired Organic Molecules
dryriver shares a report from Nature about a neural network-based, deep-learning software that is as good as trained chemists in figuring out what reagents and reactions may lead to the successful cre...
01:40 am - Thu, March 29, 2018
Slashdot
Verizon Plans To Launch a Palm Smartphone Later This Year
Verizon is planning on launch a Palm-branded smartphone later this year, an anonymous source told Android Police. The rumor backs up what a TCL executive said last August, when they confirmed that the...
01:00 am - Thu, March 29, 2018
Slashdot
Amazon Takes Fresh Stab At $16 Billion Housekeeping Industry
PolygamousRanchKid shares a report from Bloomberg: Amazon is quietly hiring house cleaners in Seattle as direct employees. The online retailer is swapping the low cost of contract workers for the grea...
12:20 am - Thu, March 29, 2018
Slashdot
Boeing Hit By WannaCry Virus, Fears It Could Cripple Some Jet Production
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Seattle Times: Boeing was hit Wednesday by the WannaCry computer virus, raising fears within the company that it could cripple some vital airplane producti...
11:40 pm - Wed, March 28, 2018
Slashdot
Apple Trains Chicago Teachers To Put Coding In More Classrooms
Apple has unveiled a partnership with Northwestern University and public schools to help teachers bring programming and other forms of computer science into Chicago-area classrooms. "The trio will set...
11:00 pm - Wed, March 28, 2018
Slashdot
Google Home Can Now Control Your Bluetooth Speakers
Google Home speakers can now play music and other audio on the Bluetooth speakers you might have around the house. "We brought this feature to life after hearing how much you wanted to amp up the soun...
10:20 pm - Wed, March 28, 2018
Slashdot
Tim Cook Says Apple's Customers Are Not Its Product, Unlike Facebook
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Apple CEO Tim Cook said in an interview with MSNBC and Recode on Wednesday that Silicon Valley, and notably Facebook, should be far more careful ...
09:42 pm - Wed, March 28, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft's Windows 7 Meltdown Fixes From January and February Made PCs More Insecure
Microsoft's January and February security fixes for Intel's Meltdown processor vulnerability opened up an even worse security hole on Windows 7 PCs and Server 2008 R2 boxes. From a report: This is acc...
09:00 pm - Wed, March 28, 2018
Slashdot
Most Tech Workers Would Ignore a Call From Their Boss Outside Work Hours
In this age of instant communication, there is pressure on employees to be "switched on" all hours of the day. But do we really have the mental attitude to totally disconnect from work? From a report:...
08:22 pm - Wed, March 28, 2018
Slashdot
AI is Rapidly Changing the Types and Location of the Best-Paying Jobs
Artificial intelligence and automation are not likely to cause vast unemployment, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned about the impact on jobs. From a report: "I'm not worried about techno...
07:42 pm - Wed, March 28, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Tweaks Privacy Tools To Ease Discontent Over Data Leak
Facebook has adjusted privacy settings to give users more control over their information in a few taps, it said on Wednesday, after an outcry over a whistleblower's allegations that members' data was ...
06:14 pm - Wed, March 28, 2018
Slashdot
Many VPN Providers Leak Customer's IP Address via WebRTC Bug
An anonymous reader shares a report: Around 20% of today's top VPN solutions are leaking the customer's IP address via a WebRTC bug known since January 2015, and which apparently some VPN providers ha...
05:30 pm - Wed, March 28, 2018
Slashdot
Ecuador Cutting Off WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange's Communications Outside London Embassy
The government of Ecuador said on Wednesday it has cut off internet access in its embassy in London to Julian Assange, the founder of the whistleblowing site WikiLeaks, saying that he was putting the ...
04:50 pm - Wed, March 28, 2018
Slashdot
Cities Worldwide Spent Over $3 Billion Last Year To Peep On You
The world market for security equipment in city surveillance surged past $3 billion last year and won't be slowing down anytime soon, a research report by IHS Markit said Wednesday. From a report: Sta...
04:11 pm - Wed, March 28, 2018
Slashdot
An Open Source, Royalty-Free AV1 Codec Has Been Released
Artem Tashkinov writes: After three years in development the Alliance for Open Media is releasing the royalty-free AOMedia Video Codec 1.0 (AV1) specification. The AV1 codec promises an average of 30 ...
03:35 pm - Wed, March 28, 2018
Slashdot
90 Percent of Affiliate Ads on YouTube and Pinterest Aren't Disclosed, Says Study
A new research paper [PDF] from Princeton University has found that 90 percent of affiliate posts on YouTube and Pinterest aren't disclosed to users. From a report: Affiliate links are customized URLs...
02:56 pm - Wed, March 28, 2018
Slashdot
Ask Slashdot: Why Are There No True Dual-System Laptops Or Tablet Computers?
dryriver writes: This is not a question about dual-booting OSs -- having 2 or more different OSs installed on the same machine. Rather, imagine that I'm a business person or product engineer or manage...
02:15 pm - Wed, March 28, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Delays Home-Speaker Unveil Amid Data Crisis
Bloomberg reports: Facebook has decided not to unveil new home products at its major developer conference in May, in part because the public is currently so outraged about the social network's data-pr...
01:33 pm - Wed, March 28, 2018
Slashdot
Uber Will Not Re-Apply For Self-Driving Car Permit In California
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Uber, after suspending its self-driving car operations in all markets following a fatal crash, has decided not to re-apply for its self-driving car...
12:30 pm - Wed, March 28, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Releases New Tool To Get More Distros on Windows
Microsoft has released a tool to help Linux distribution maintainers bring their distros to the Windows Store to run on Windows 10's Windows Subsystem for Linux. From a report: Microsoft describes the...
10:00 am - Wed, March 28, 2018
Slashdot
Atlanta, Hit by Ransomware Attack, Also Fell Victim To Leaked NSA Exploits
Zack Whittaker, reporting for ZDNet: It's been almost a week since the City of Atlanta was hit by a ransomware attack, which encrypted city data and led to the shutdown of some services. Mayor Keisha ...
07:00 am - Wed, March 28, 2018
Slashdot
It's Possible that the Facebook App is Listening To You, Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower Says
Jon Christian, writing for The Outline: During an appearance before a committee of U.K. lawmakers today, Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie breathed new life into longstanding rumors ...
05:30 am - Wed, March 28, 2018
Slashdot
Baidu Shows Off Its Instant Pocket Translator
MIT Technology Review: Baidu showed off the speed of its pocket translator for the first time in the United States during an afternoon presentation at MIT Technology Review's EmTech Digital conference...
03:30 am - Wed, March 28, 2018
Slashdot
Meet the Interstitium, the Largest Organ We Never Knew We Had
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Daily Beast: A study published in Scientific Reports on Tuesday suggests that a previously unknown organ has been found in the human body. More astonishing...
01:25 am - Wed, March 28, 2018
Slashdot
Google Launches More Realistic Text-To-Speech Service Powered By DeepMind's AI
Google is launching a new AI voice synthesizer, named Cloud Text-to-Speech, that will be available for any developer or business that needs voice synthesis on tap, whether that's for an app, website, ...
12:45 am - Wed, March 28, 2018
Slashdot
Nearly a Third of Tech Workers Are Ready To #DeleteFacebook
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BetaNews: A survey conducted in the wake of the #DeleteFacebook campaign that followed revelations about the data breach and the logging of Android users' call...
12:03 am - Wed, March 28, 2018
Slashdot
NVIDIA Unveils 2 Petaflop DGX-2 AI Supercomputer With 32GB Tesla V100, NVSwitch Tech
bigwophh writes from a report via HotHardware: NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang took to the stage at GTC today to unveil a number of GPU-powered innovations for machine learning, including a new AI supercomput...
11:25 pm - Tue, March 27, 2018
Slashdot
Forget Millennials, the Internet's Most Wanted Users Are Older -- and Poorer
An anonymous reader writes: China's relatively young internet industry is facing a mature-market problem: User growth for popular online services such as instant messaging, search, online news and vid...
10:45 pm - Tue, March 27, 2018
Slashdot
Researchers Discover Flaws in Digital Currency Monero That Could Reveal Identity of Users
Researchers have discovered flaws in Monero, a digital currency that boasts a high degree of anonymity, that could lead to the identification of users. From a report: Monero is designed to mix up any ...
10:05 pm - Tue, March 27, 2018
Slashdot
Intel CPUs Vulnerable To New 'BranchScope' Attack
wiredmikey writes: Researchers have discovered a new side-channel attack method dubbed "BranchScope" that can be launched against devices with Intel processors. The attack has been identified and demo...
09:25 pm - Tue, March 27, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft To Ban 'Offensive Language' From Skype, Xbox, Office and Other Services
According to Microsoft's new Terms of Services agreement, you could get banned for "offensive language," resulting in the termination of your Gold Membership and/or any Microsoft account balances. The...
09:00 pm - Tue, March 27, 2018
Slashdot
macOS High Sierra Logs Encryption Passwords in Plaintext for APFS External Drives
Catalin Cimpanu, writing for BleepingComputer: macOS High Sierra users are once again impacted by a major APFS bug after two other major vulnerabilities affected Apple's new filesystem format in the l...
08:45 pm - Tue, March 27, 2018
Slashdot
An Apple Facility That Repairs iPhones in California Won't Stop Calling 9-1-1 -- and Nobody Knows How To Stop It
The small city of Elk Grove, California received more than 2,000 erroneous 911 calls from Apple devices at an Apple repair facility. The months-long issue is yet to be resolved. From a report: Between...
08:03 pm - Tue, March 27, 2018
Slashdot
AT&T/Verizon Lobbyists To 'Aggressively' Sue States That Enact Net Neutrality
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A lobby group that represents AT&T, Verizon, and other telcos plans to sue states and cities that try to enforce net neutrality rules. USTele...
07:25 pm - Tue, March 27, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook is Being Sued Over Housing Discrimination
The National Fair Housing Alliance, along with three other nonprofit housing advocacy organizations around the country, has filed a lawsuit against Facebook over its alleged discriminatory advertiseme...
06:45 pm - Tue, March 27, 2018
Slashdot
Zuckerberg Refuses UK Parliament Summons Over Facebook Data Misuse, Agrees To Testify Before Congress
PolygamousRanchKid shares a report from TechCrunch: So much for "We are accountable"; Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has declined a summons from a UK parliamentary committee that's investiga...
06:03 pm - Tue, March 27, 2018
Slashdot
Apple Announces New $299 iPad With Pencil Support For Schools
At its education event in Chicago today, Apple introduced a refreshed 9.7-inch iPad with Apple Pencil support. "The updated iPad will be available in Apple stores today, in silver, space gray, and a n...
05:25 pm - Tue, March 27, 2018
Slashdot
Nvidia Suspends Self-Driving Car Tests in Wake of Uber Crash
Nvidia said on Tuesday it will suspend its autonomous vehicle testing on public roads in the aftermath of Uber's fatal crash in Arizona. Uber is a customer of Nvidia's, using the chipmaker's computing...
04:45 pm - Tue, March 27, 2018
Slashdot
FBI Had No Way To Access Locked iPhone After Terror Attack, Watchdog Finds
The FBI did not have the technical capability to access an iPhone used by one of the terrorists behind the San Bernardino shooting, a Justice Department watchdog has found. ZDNet: A report by the depa...
04:05 pm - Tue, March 27, 2018
Slashdot
James Webb Space Telescope, NASA's Next Hubble, Delayed Again
NASA has been planning to launch a powerful new telescope that can see across the universe and perhaps to the beginning of time for many years now. But the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JW...
03:25 pm - Tue, March 27, 2018
Slashdot
Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google
Google could owe Oracle billions of dollars after an appeals court said it didn't have the right to use the Oracle-owned Java programming code in its Android operating system on mobile devices. From a...
02:54 pm - Tue, March 27, 2018
Slashdot
Mozilla Launches Facebook Container Add-on To Isolate Your Web Browsing Activity From Facebook
Paul Sawers, writing for VentureBeat: On Tuesday, Mozilla announced a new tool it said will help keep Facebook from tracking your browsing across the web. The Facebook Container add-on for Firefox pro...
02:11 pm - Tue, March 27, 2018
Slashdot
Software Glitch Robs Formula 1 World Champ of Season's First Win
Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton was left fuming after a software glitch denied him an easy win in the first race of the 2018 season on Sunday. From a report: Hamilton held a comfortable lead...
01:00 pm - Tue, March 27, 2018
Slashdot
Jaywalkers Under Surveillance In China Will Soon Be Punished Via Text Messages
An anonymous reader quotes a report from South China Morning Post: Traffic police in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen have always had a reputation for strict enforcement of those flouting road ru...
10:00 am - Tue, March 27, 2018
Slashdot
Foxconn Announces Purchase of Belkin, Wemo, and Linksys
Foxconn, the Taiwan-based company best-known for manufacturing Apple products announced that one of its subsidiaries (Foxconn Interconnect Technology) is purchasing U.S.-based Belkin for $866 million ...
07:00 am - Tue, March 27, 2018
Slashdot
Uber Ordered To Take Its Self-Driving Cars Off Arizona Roads
After failing to meet an expectation that it would prioritize public safety as it tested its self-driving technology, Uber has been ordered to take its self-driving cars off Arizona roads (Warning: so...
03:30 am - Tue, March 27, 2018
Slashdot
Wind and Solar Can Power Most of the United States, Says Study
An anonymous reader writes: The Guardian reports of a recent paper, published in the journal Energy and Environmental Science, that helps explain how wind and solar energy can power most of the United...
01:40 am - Tue, March 27, 2018
Slashdot
Few Countries Will Benefit From the AI Revolution
hackingbear writes from a report via Quartz: According to Chinese venture capitalist and former Google China president Kai-Fu Lee, the list of countries well-positioned to embrace a future powered by ...
01:00 am - Tue, March 27, 2018
Slashdot
Elon Musk Says Boring Company Will Sell 'Lego-Like' Kits of Excavated Rock
Elon Musk says his Boring Company will sell "interlocking bricks" made from the rock that its tunnel-creating machines excavate from the ground. In other words, think Lego, he says, except giant, heav...
12:25 am - Tue, March 27, 2018
Slashdot
Ask Slashdot: How Did Real-Time Ray Tracing Become Possible With Today's Technology?
dryriver writes: There are occasions where multiple big tech manufacturers all announce the exact same innovation at the same time -- e.g. 4K UHD TVs. Everybody in broadcasting and audiovisual content...
11:50 pm - Mon, March 26, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Acknowledges It Has Been Keeping Records of Android Users' Calls, Texts
Last week, a user found that Facebook had a record of the date, time, duration, and recipient of calls he had made from the past few years. A couple days later, Ars Technica published an account of se...
11:00 pm - Mon, March 26, 2018
Slashdot
Google Starts Blocking 'Uncertified' Android Devices From Logging In
Google logins on unlicensed devices will now fail at setup, and a warning message will pop up stating "Device is not certified by Google," reports Ars Technica. "This warning screen has appeared on an...
10:20 pm - Mon, March 26, 2018
Slashdot
Netflix Banned From Competing At Cannes Film Festival Due To Lack of Theatrical Releases
Netflix has been banned from competing in the Cannes Film Festival, according to a report from The Hollywood Reporter. "Theirry Fremaux, the head of Cannes, told THR last week the ban is because Netfl...
09:40 pm - Mon, March 26, 2018
Slashdot
ICE Uses Facebook Data To Find and Track Immigrants, Internal Emails Show
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: ICE, the federal agency tasked with Trump's program of mass deportation, uses backend Facebook data to locate and track immigrants that it is wo...
09:00 pm - Mon, March 26, 2018
Slashdot
More Than 75 Percent of Earth's Land Areas Are 'Broken,' Major Report Finds
Like a broken cell phone that can only text or take pictures, but not make a single call, more than 75 percent of the Earth's land areas have lost some or most of their functions, undermining the well...
08:20 pm - Mon, March 26, 2018
Slashdot
Confirmation of a US Government Probe Pushes Facebook's Market Loss To $90 Billion
The US Federal Trade Commission has confirmed that it is investigating Facebook over its privacy practices, following recent revelations that data firm Cambridge Analytica harvested and exploited tens...
07:30 pm - Mon, March 26, 2018
Slashdot
Students Are Using Their Loan Money To Buy Cryptocurrency, Study Says
Student loans aren't just for buying textbooks, No. 2 pencils, and apples for bribing teachers anymore. According to a recent survey, as many as one in five college kids may be using their student loa...
06:54 pm - Mon, March 26, 2018
Slashdot
IETF Approves TLS 1.3 As Internet Standard
An anonymous reader writes: The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the organization that approves proposed Internet standards and protocols, has formally approved TLS 1.3 as the next major versio...
06:10 pm - Mon, March 26, 2018
Slashdot
Google Unveils Acer's Chromebook Tab 10 Ahead of Apple's Education-Focused Event Tomorrow
An anonymous reader shares a report: Maybe Acer knows what Apple is up to tomorrow, maybe not. Regardless the information and communication tech company announced today the world's first Chrome OS tab...
05:25 pm - Mon, March 26, 2018
Slashdot
Cops Are Now Opening iPhones With Dead People's Fingerprints
An anonymous reader shares a report: In November 2016, around seven hours after Abdul Razak Ali Artan had mowed down a group of people in his car, gone on a stabbing spree with a butcher's knife and b...
04:45 pm - Mon, March 26, 2018
Slashdot
Twitter Moves To Ban Crypto Ads
An anonymous reader shares a report: Twitter is the latest social service to boot out cryptocurrency advertisers. The company told Reuters it will be launching a new policy this week to prohibit the a...
04:06 pm - Mon, March 26, 2018
Slashdot
AnandTech Reviews Samsung's Exynos 9810 SoC (and Galaxy S9)
The Galaxy S9 and S9+, the flagship smartphones from the South Korean electronics manufacturer Samsung are powered by company's homegrown Exynos 9810 SoC (in most markets) or Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845...
03:31 pm - Mon, March 26, 2018
Slashdot
Megaupload Founder Kim Dotcom Wins Battle in Ongoing Fight Against US Extradition
Eccentric Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has won a major court battle today in his ongoing fight against his extradition from New Zealand to the U.S. From a report: German-born Dotcom faces extradition...
02:50 pm - Mon, March 26, 2018
Slashdot
Americans Less Likely To Trust Facebook than Rivals on Personal Data
Opinion polls published on Sunday in the United States and Germany cast doubt over the level of trust people have in Facebook over privacy, as the firm ran advertisements in British and U.S. newspaper...
02:10 pm - Mon, March 26, 2018
Slashdot
One Percent of Reddit Users Cause 75 Percent of the Drama
Just 1 percent of all Reddit communities set off 74 percent of all conflicts on the site, a new research has found. The Outline: In the self-published research from Srijan Kumar, Jure Leskoec, William...
01:00 pm - Mon, March 26, 2018
Slashdot
State Department Seemingly Buys $15,000 iPhone Cracking Tech GrayKey
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Grayshift, a company that offers to unlock modern iPhones for as little as $50 each, has caused a buzz across law enforcement agencies, with local...
07:34 am - Mon, March 26, 2018
Slashdot
Amazon Plans Blockbuster TV Series Based On Chinese Sci-Fi Trilogy 'The Three-Body Problem'
hackingbear writes from a report: Amazon is reportedly likely to earmark $1 billion for a television series (Warning: source paywalled, alternative source) based on the ultra-popular Chinese science f...
03:30 am - Mon, March 26, 2018
Slashdot
Flat-Earther's Steam-Powered Rocket Lofts Him 1,875 Feet Up Into Mojave Desert
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Los Angeles Times: "Mad" Mike Hughes, the rocket man who believes the Earth is flat, propelled himself about 1,875 feet into the air Saturday before a hard lan...
01:34 am - Mon, March 26, 2018
Slashdot
Breakthrough Study Reveals How LSD Dissolves a Person's Sense of Self
New submitter future guy shares a report from New Atlas: A fascinating study led by scientists at the University of Zurich has uncovered key insights into the mechanisms behind how our brain generates...
11:34 pm - Sun, March 25, 2018
Slashdot
Ask Slashdot: Can FOSS Help In the Fight Against Climate Change?
dryriver writes: Before I ask my question, there already is free and open-source software (FOSS) for wind turbine design and simulation called QBlade. It lets you calculate turbine blade performance u...
10:34 pm - Sun, March 25, 2018
Slashdot
Tumblr Takes Down 84 Russia-Linked Accounts
On Friday, Tumblr said it has taken down 84 accounts used by Russia to spread disinformation ahead of the 2016 presidential election. The accounts were reportedly linked to the Russian troll farm know...
09:34 pm - Sun, March 25, 2018
Slashdot
'How I Went Dark In Australia's Surveillance State For 2 Years'
schwit1 shares a report from CNET, written by Claire Reilly: In 2015, during the transition from paper to Opal [contactless public transit cards], Australia passed sweeping new data retention laws. Th...
08:34 pm - Sun, March 25, 2018
Slashdot
Steve Jobs Tried To Warn Mark Zuckerberg About Privacy In 2010
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: Zuckerberg should have heeded what he heard from the late Steve Jobs eight years ago. Then, when the social network had a measly half-billion users, Jo...
07:34 pm - Sun, March 25, 2018
Slashdot
Face ID Deemed Too Costly To Copy, Android Makers Target In-Display Fingerprint Sensors Instead
"Android phone makers are 'rushing' to implement fingerprint sensors under the display for upcoming handsets," reports 9to5Mac, citing a new report from Digitimes. "Android manufacturers have decided ...
06:34 pm - Sun, March 25, 2018
Slashdot
Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Benchmarks Show Significantly Improved Performance
fstack writes: Pi Day was marked this year by the launch of the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ as the next evolution to this $35 ARM single-board computer. Phoronix has now put out Raspberry Pi 3 B+ benchmar...
05:34 pm - Sun, March 25, 2018
Slashdot
Sex Workers Say Porn On Google Drive Is Suddenly Disappearing
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Porn performer Avey Moon was trying to send the lucky winner of her Chaturbate contest his prize -- one of her videos, titled "POV Blowjob" -- thr...
04:34 pm - Sun, March 25, 2018
Slashdot
Justice Department Revives Push To Mandate a Way To Unlock Phones
"FBI and Justice Department officials have been quietly meeting with security researchers who have been working on approaches to provide such 'extraordinary access' to encrypted devices," reports The ...
03:34 pm - Sun, March 25, 2018
Slashdot
Waymo CEO Expresses Confidence Its Cars Wouldn't Have Killed Elaine Herzberg
theodp writes: Nearly a week after an autonomous Uber SUV claimed the first life in testing of self-driving vehicles, The Washington Post reports that Waymo CEO John Krafcik says he is confident its c...
02:34 pm - Sun, March 25, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Scraped Call, Text Message Data For Years From Android Phones
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: This past week, a New Zealand man was looking through the data Facebook had collected from him in an archive he had pulled down from the social n...
11:34 am - Sun, March 25, 2018
Slashdot
UK High Court 'Perma-Bans' Efforts to Extradite Lauri Love to the US
The U.K.'s High Court will not send Lauri Love to face trial in the U.S. for hacking government computer systems. Instead they've issued a final refusal to overturn Love's successful appeal of his ext...
07:34 am - Sun, March 25, 2018
Slashdot
Hilarious (and Terrifying?) Ways Algorithms Have Outsmarted Their Creators
"Robot brains will challenge the fundamental assumptions of how we humans do things," argues Popular Mechanics, noting that age-old truism "that computers will always do literally, exactly what you te...
03:34 am - Sun, March 25, 2018
Slashdot
Ask Slashdot: Is There a Good Alternative to Facebook?
Long-time Slashdot reader Lauren Weinstein argues that fixing Facebook may be impossible because "Facebook's entire ecosystem is predicated on encouraging the manipulation of its users by third partie...
01:34 am - Sun, March 25, 2018
Slashdot
Shodan Search Exposes Thousands of Servers Hosting Passwords and Keys
Thousands of etcd servers "are spitting sensitive passwords and encrypted keys," reports Fossbytes:Security researcher Giovanni Collazo was able to harvest 8781 passwords, 650 AWS access keys, 23 secr...
11:34 pm - Sat, March 24, 2018
Slashdot
World Cities Go Dark For 'Earth Hour' Climate Campaign
An anonymous reader quotes the AFP:Earth Hour, which started in Australia in 2007, is being observed by millions of supporters in 187 countries, who are turning off their lights at 8.30pm local time i...
10:34 pm - Sat, March 24, 2018
Slashdot
Elon Musk Slows Tesla Deliveries On 'Dangerous' Trucks
An anonymous reader quotes Electrek:Tesla is always very busy in Norway, its biggest market per capita, but it has recently been difficult for the automaker to deliver its vehicles as its shipments ke...
09:34 pm - Sat, March 24, 2018
Slashdot
Pirate Music Site's Owner Sentenced to Five Years in Prison
An anonymous reader shares an update on Artur Sargsyan, who owned the music-pirating site Sharebeast as well as Newjams and Albumjams. TorrentFreak reports:Thursday a U.S. District Judge sentenced the...
08:34 pm - Sat, March 24, 2018
Slashdot
Researchers Test Tooth-Mounted Sensor-Enabled Chips
Researchers at Tufts University are testing tooth-mounted RFID chips which sense and transmit data on what goes in your mouth. ABC News reports:The sensors looks like custom microchips stuck to the to...
07:34 pm - Sat, March 24, 2018
Slashdot
How Technology Caught the Austin Serial Bomber
Wednesday police in Austin, Texas finally located the "serial bomber" believed to be responsible for six package bombs which killed two people over the last three weeks. "The operation was aided by di...
07:04 pm - Sat, March 24, 2018
Slashdot
A New Era For Linux's Low-level Graphics
Slashdot reader mfilion writes: Over the past couple of years, Linux's low-level graphics infrastructure has undergone a quiet revolution. Since experimental core support for the atomic modesetting fr...
06:34 pm - Sat, March 24, 2018
Slashdot
Oracle Releases Java 10, Promises Much Faster Release Schedule
An anonymous reader quotes Application Development Trends:Oracle announced the general availability of Java SE 10 (JDK 10) this week. This release, which comes barely six months after the release of J...
05:34 pm - Sat, March 24, 2018
Slashdot
Tim Berners-Lee Urges Web Users: 'Care About Your Data'
"As the web celebrated its 29th birthday last week, Berners-Lee expressed disappointment with how his invention has turned out," reports MarketWatch. "He criticized Facebook and other tech heavyweight...
04:34 pm - Sat, March 24, 2018
Slashdot
Can We Fight Drug-Resistant Bacteria With Non-Antibiotic Drugs?
Slashdot reader Bruce66423 shares what researchers learned by studying the effect of drugs on bacteria in the gut:The research reveals that it's not just antibiotics that have the effect of causing re...
03:34 pm - Sat, March 24, 2018
Slashdot
William Shatner Criticizes Facebook Hoax Ad Announcing His Death
"William Shatner is alive and well -- in fact, he turned 87 on Thursday, so the actor was not pleased when he saw an ad on Facebook sharing a story about his alleged death," writes the Hollywood Repor...
02:34 pm - Sat, March 24, 2018
Slashdot
Dropbox IPOs. Its Founders Are Now Billionaires
Yesterday Dropbox finally launched its stock on NASDAQ. Reuters reports:Dropbox Inc's shares closed at $28.42, up more than 35 percent in their first day of trading on Friday, as investors rushed to b...
01:00 pm - Sat, March 24, 2018
Slashdot
Uber's Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Uber's robotic vehicle project was not living up to expectations months before a self-driving car operated by the company struck and killed...
10:00 am - Sat, March 24, 2018
Slashdot
British Scientists Develop Wearable MRI Scanner
British scientists have invented a new type of brain scanner that patients can wear on their head allowing them to move while being tested. "Neuroscientists will be able to envisage a whole new world ...
08:00 am - Sat, March 24, 2018
Slashdot
One Startup is Using Phone Calls and Other Inexpensive Means To Save TB Patients
Tuberculosis (TB) is one of most common causes of death globally. In 2016 alone, more than 10.4 million people fell sick to TB and 1.7 million TB-related deaths were reported. The WHO says India, in p...
07:00 am - Sat, March 24, 2018
Slashdot
Britain's Plan To Build a 2,000 Foot Aircraft Carrier Almost Entirely From Ice
dryriver writes from a report via the BBC: In World War 2, Britain was losing the Battle of the Atlantic, with German U-boats sinking ship after ship. Enter Project Habakkuk, the incredible plan to bu...
03:30 am - Sat, March 24, 2018
Slashdot
New York Councilman Proposes Bill That Would Grant NYC Workers 'Right To Disconnect'
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: New York City councilman Rafael Espinal released a "Right to Disconnect" bill on Thursday, advocating for the rights of employees to stop answerin...
01:50 am - Sat, March 24, 2018
Slashdot
Spotify Says 2 Million Users Hacked Apps To Suppress Ads On Its Free Service
Earlier this month, Spotify revealed that it had begun cracking down on people using hacked versions of apps. These apps allowed users with free accounts to suppress advertising and take advantage of ...
01:20 am - Sat, March 24, 2018
Slashdot
Apple To Unveil a Cheaper iPad Next Week At Its Educational Event
Apple is holding an education-focused event on Tuesday where it's expected to launch a "low-cost iPad" alongside new education software. The goal is to win back students and teachers who have adopted ...
12:50 am - Sat, March 24, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Gets Hit With Four Lawsuits Over Cambridge Analytica Scandal
Facebook has had a terrible week. Since it was revealed that political data firm Cambridge Analytica obtained information about 50 million Facebook users, the social media company has been in damage c...
12:10 am - Sat, March 24, 2018
Slashdot
School Pays To Get an Algorithm Scan Students' Social Media For Threats and Suicide Risks Posts
When someone visits the buildings of Shawsheen Valley Technical High School in Billerica, as they walk through the secure foyer, they have to get their driver's license or another state-issued ID scan...
12:10 am - Sat, March 24, 2018
Slashdot
School Pays To Get an Algorithm To Scan Students' Social Media For Threats and Suicide Risks Posts
When someone visits the buildings of Shawsheen Valley Technical High School in Billerica, as they walk through the secure foyer, they have to get their driver's license or another state-issued ID scan...
11:30 pm - Fri, March 23, 2018
Slashdot
Firefox In 2018: We'll Tackle Bad Ads, Breach Alerts, Autoplay Video, Says Mozilla
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Firefox maker Mozilla has outlined its 2018 roadmap to make the web less intrusive and safer for users. First up, Mozilla says it will proceed and imple...
10:50 pm - Fri, March 23, 2018
Slashdot
EA Created An AI That Taught Itself To Play Battlefield
Electronic Arts' Search for Extraordinary Experiences (SEED) Division has created a "self-learning AI-agent" that has managed to teach itself how to play Battlefield 1 multiplayer. From a report: In t...
10:10 pm - Fri, March 23, 2018
Slashdot
Ask Slashdot: Is Beaming Down In Star Trek a Death Sentence?
Artem Tashkinov writes: Some time ago, Ars Technica ran a monumental article on beaming of consciousness in Star Trek and its implications, and more importantly, whether it's plausible to achieve that...
09:30 pm - Fri, March 23, 2018
Slashdot
Some Galaxy S9/S9 Units Have Large Dead Zones On the Touchscreen
hyperclocker shares a report from Android Police: The touchscreen on your phone is the primary way you interact with it, so it absolutely needs to work. That makes problems like so-called "dead zones"...
08:50 pm - Fri, March 23, 2018
Slashdot
FCC Chief Cites Concerns on Spy Threats From Chinese Telecoms Firms
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, in a letter sent to lawmakers earlier this week (but released just now), said he shares the concerns of U.S. lawmakers about espionage threats from...
08:10 pm - Fri, March 23, 2018
Slashdot
Craigslist Personals, Some Subreddits Disappear After FOSTA Passage
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In the wake of this week's passage of the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) bill in both houses of Congress on...
07:25 pm - Fri, March 23, 2018
Slashdot
MoviePass' Low Subscription Price Just Got Lower
In a move to lure new subscribers, MoviePass has dropped the price of its monthly subscription service from about $10 per month to just under $7. From a report: The company said for $6.95 per month, n...
06:48 pm - Fri, March 23, 2018
Slashdot
Linux Mint Ditches AMD For Intel With New Mintbox Mini 2
An anonymous reader writes: Makers of Mint Box, a diminutive desktop which runs Linux Mint -- an Ubuntu-based OS, on Friday announced the Mintbox Mini 2. While the new model has several new aspects, t...
06:12 pm - Fri, March 23, 2018
Slashdot
My Cow Game Extracted Your Facebook Data
Ian Bogost, writing for The Atlantic: Already in 2010, it felt like a malicious attention market where people treated friends as latent resources to be optimized. Compulsion rather than choice devoure...
05:14 pm - Fri, March 23, 2018
Slashdot
'What's Facebook?', Elon Musk Asks, As He Deletes SpaceX and Tesla Facebook Pages
It is unlikely that Facebook will see a significant drop in its mammoth userbase following the Cambridge Analytica scandal. But on Friday, the #DeleteFacebook campaign, which is seeing an increasingly...
04:51 pm - Fri, March 23, 2018
Slashdot
CDs, Vinyl Are Outselling Digital Downloads For the First Time Since 2011
Digital downloads had a short run as the top-selling format in the music industry. It took until 2011, a decade after the original iPod came out, for their sales surpass those of CDs and vinyl records...
04:10 pm - Fri, March 23, 2018
Slashdot
China Regulator Bans TV Parodies Amid Content Crackdown
China's media regulator is cracking down on video spoofs, the official Xinhua new agency reported, amid an intensified crackdown on any content that is deemed to be in violation of socialist core valu...
03:30 pm - Fri, March 23, 2018
Slashdot
US Charges Iranians For Global Cyber Attacks on Behalf of Tehran
The United States on Friday charged nine Iranians and an Iranian company with attempting to hack into hundreds of U.S. and international universities, dozens of companies and parts of the U.S. governm...
02:51 pm - Fri, March 23, 2018
Slashdot
Pablo Escobar's Brother Says He Met an FBI Agent Posing As Satoshi Nakamoto
Jordan Pearson, writing for Motherboard: Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar's brother, Roberto Escobar, is launching a new cryptocurrency called "Dietbitcoin." It's a clone of Bitcoin of the kind that ...
02:10 pm - Fri, March 23, 2018
Slashdot
More Evidence Ties Alleged DNC Hacker Guccifer 2.0 To Russian Intelligence
An anonymous reader shares a report: It may be a while since you've heard the handle "Guccifer 2.0," the hacker who took responsibility for the infamous DNC hack of 2016. Reports from the intelligence...
01:00 pm - Fri, March 23, 2018
Slashdot
Man Starts 'Gunbook' Social Media Site After His Gun-Loving Friends Were Kicked Off Facebook
CaptainDork shares a report from BuzzFeed: A British gun enthusiast whose friends were banned from Facebook for posting pictures of firearms has started his own version of the site for gun lovers. Cal...
10:00 am - Fri, March 23, 2018
Slashdot
A Star Grazed Our Solar System 70,000 Years Ago, Early Humans Likely Saw It
schwit1 shares a report from Space.com: Some distant objects in our solar system bear the gravitational imprint of a small star's close flyby 70,000 years ago, when modern humans were already walking ...
07:00 am - Fri, March 23, 2018
Slashdot
SpaceX Launch Last Year Punched Huge, Temporary Hole In the Ionosphere
The Falcon 9 rocket that launched last August reportedly ripped a temporary hole in the ionosphere due to its vertical launch, which Ars Technica notes as being rather unusual: Contrary to popular bel...
03:30 am - Fri, March 23, 2018
Slashdot
World's Largest Animal Study On Cell Tower Radiation Confirms Cancer Link
capedgirardeau shares a report from Digital Journal: Researchers with the renowned Ramazzini Institute (RI) in Italy announce that a large-scale, lifetime study (PDF) of lab animals exposed to environ...
02:10 am - Fri, March 23, 2018
Slashdot
FCC's New 5G Rules Favor Fast Setup Over Federal Reviews
In a 3-2, party-line vote Thursday, FCC commissioners passed a measure that exempts small cell radio deployments from federal environmental and historical preservation reviews originally meant for lar...
01:30 am - Fri, March 23, 2018
Slashdot
South Korea To Shut Off Computers Past 19:00 Hours To Stop People Working Late
dryriver shares a report from the BBC: The government in South Korea's capital is introducing a new initiative to force its employees to leave work on time -- by powering down all their computers at 2...
12:50 am - Fri, March 23, 2018
Slashdot
Experts Say Video of Uber's Self-Driving Car Killing a Pedestrian Suggests Its Technology May Have Failed
Ever since the Tempe police released a video of Uber's self-driving car hitting and killing a pedestrian, experts have been racing to analyze the footage and determine what exactly went wrong. (If you...
12:10 am - Fri, March 23, 2018
Slashdot
KeepVid Site No Longer Allows Users To 'Keep' Videos
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: For many years, KeepVid has been a prime destination for people who wanted to download videos from YouTube, Dailymotion, Facebook, Vimeo, and doz...
11:30 pm - Thu, March 22, 2018
Slashdot
Instagram Will Show More Recent Posts Due To Algorithm Backlash
Instagram announced today that it will show more new posts and stop suddenly bumping you to the top of the feed while you're scrolling. "With these changes, your feed will feel more fresh, and you won...
10:50 pm - Thu, March 22, 2018
Slashdot
Reddit Bans Subreddits Related To Selling Guns, Drugs, Sex, and More
New submitter cornholed writes: Yesterday, Reddit updated their Content Policy forbidding transactions for certain goods and services. From the formal announcement on Reddit: "As of today, users may n...
10:10 pm - Thu, March 22, 2018
Slashdot
New R2D2 Technique Protects Files Against Wiper Malware, Secure Delete Apps
An anonymous reader writes: Purdue University scientists have developed a data protection technique called Reactive Redundancy for Data Destruction (R2D2) that can safeguard data sitting inside a virt...
09:30 pm - Thu, March 22, 2018
Slashdot
Human Driver Could Have Avoided Fatal Uber Crash, Experts Say
An anonymous reader shares a report: The pedestrian killed Sunday by a self-driving Uber SUV had crossed at least one open lane of road before being hit, according to a video of the crash that raises ...
08:53 pm - Thu, March 22, 2018
Slashdot
Atlanta City Government Systems Down Due To Ransomware Attack
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The city of Atlanta government has apparently become the victim of a ransomware attack. The city's official Twitter account announced that the ci...
08:15 pm - Thu, March 22, 2018
Slashdot
Researchers Finally Solve Mystery of 'Alien' Skeleton
When the mummified remains of a six-inch humanoid were found in an abandoned mining town in Chile's Atacama desert 15 years ago, speculation on its origins ran wild. The skeleton, it is being reported...
07:35 pm - Thu, March 22, 2018
Slashdot
Trump Announces $60 Billion Tariff on Chinese High-Tech and Other Goods
Following months of investigations by the U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, the Trump administration announced on Thursday at a White House briefing that the administration intends to place...
07:00 pm - Thu, March 22, 2018
Slashdot
Online Piracy Is More Popular Than Ever, Research Suggests
An anonymous user writes: A broad and detailed report from piracy tracking outfit MUSO shows that visits to pirate sites went up last year. The company recorded more than 300 billion visits in 2017, w...
06:11 pm - Thu, March 22, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Gave Data About 57 Billion Friendships To Academic
Before Facebook suspended Aleksandr Kogan from its platform for the data harvesting "scam" at the centre of the unfolding Cambridge Analytica scandal, the social media company enjoyed a close enough r...
05:30 pm - Thu, March 22, 2018
Slashdot
BMW Says Electric Car Mass Production Not Viable Until 2020
BMW will not mass produce electric cars until 2020 because its current technology is not profitable enough to scale up for volume production, the chief executive said on Thursday. From a report: Munic...
04:48 pm - Thu, March 22, 2018
Slashdot
Windows Server 2019 Will Feature Linux and Kubernetes Support
Microsoft announced this week that it will launch the next major release of Windows Server later this year with better support for hybrid workloads, Linux workloads, and hyper-converged infrastructure...
04:08 pm - Thu, March 22, 2018
Slashdot
Mozilla Pulls Advertising from Facebook
An anonymous reader shares a report: Mozilla is not happy with Facebook. Not happy at all. Having already started a petition to try to force the social network to do more about user privacy, the compa...
03:22 pm - Thu, March 22, 2018
Slashdot
UK Launches Task Force To Scrutinize Cryptocurrency Risks and Benefits
U.K. Finance Minister Philip Hammond unveiled a task force that examines the risks and benefits of cryptocurrencies on Thursday. From a report: Hammond announced Thursday that the task force includes ...
02:45 pm - Thu, March 22, 2018
Slashdot
YouTube To Follow Amazon By Screening Its Movies Inside Theaters
An anonymous reader shares a report: Following YouTube's announcement last month that it intends to spend "hundreds of millions" on original content for Red, it's just unveiled plans for a YouTube-mad...
02:00 pm - Thu, March 22, 2018
Slashdot
Cutting 'Old Heads' at IBM
An anonymous reader shares a report: As the world's dominant technology firm, payrolls at International Business Machines swelled to nearly a quarter-million U.S. white-collar workers in the 1980s. It...
01:00 pm - Thu, March 22, 2018
Slashdot
Mark Zuckerberg Apologizes For the Cambridge Analytica Scandal, Says He Isn't Opposed To Regulation
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Mark Zuckerberg apologized on Wednesday evening for his company's handling of the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal. "This was a major breach of t...
10:00 am - Thu, March 22, 2018
Slashdot
US Spending Bill Contains CLOUD Act, a Win For Tech and Law Enforcement
The 2,232 page spending bill released Wednesday by House and Senate leaders includes the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data [CLOUD] Act, which provides a legal framework for law enforcement to req...
07:00 am - Thu, March 22, 2018
Slashdot
Best Buy Stops Selling Huawei Smartphones
Best Buy, the nation's largest electronics big box retailer, has ceased ordering new smartphones from Huawei and will stop selling its products over the next few weeks. Best Buy didn't provide any det...
03:30 am - Thu, March 22, 2018
Slashdot
A 15-Year-Old Hacked the Secure Ledger Crypto Wallet
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A 15-year-old programmer named Saleem Rashid discovered a flaw in the popular Ledger hardware wallet that allowed hackers to grab secret PINs befor...
02:05 am - Thu, March 22, 2018
Slashdot
Twitter CEO Says Bitcoin Will Be the World's 'Single Currency' In 10 Years
In a recent interview with The Times, Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey said he believes that bitcoin will become the world's single currency within 10 years. "The world ultimately will have a single...
01:25 am - Thu, March 22, 2018
Slashdot
Google Is Buying Innovative Camera Startup Lytro For $40 Million
According to TechCrunch, Google is acquiring Lytro, the imaging startup that began as a ground-breaking camera company for consumers before pivoting to use its depth-data, light-field technology in VR...
12:45 am - Thu, March 22, 2018
Slashdot
Russia Secretly Helped Venezuela Launch a Cryptocurrency To Evade US Sanctions
According to an exclusive report by Time, Russia helped Venezuelan officials create the world's first state-backed cryptocurrency to skirt U.S. sanctions. The cryptocurrency was launched in late Febru...
12:03 am - Thu, March 22, 2018
Slashdot
Police Release First Video From Inside the Uber Self-Driving Car That Killed a Pedestrian
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Recode: Three days after an Uber self-driving vehicle fatally crashed into a pedestrian in Tempe, Ariz., police have released video footage of what the vehicle...
11:20 pm - Wed, March 21, 2018
Slashdot
Ask Slashdot: Were Developments In Technology More Exciting 30 Years Ago?
dryriver writes: We live in a time where mainstream media, websites, blogs, social media accounts, your barely computer literate next door neighbor and so forth frequently rave about the "innovation" ...
10:40 pm - Wed, March 21, 2018
Slashdot
YouTube Bans Firearms Demo Videos, Entering the Gun Control Debate
YouTube has quietly introduced tighter restrictions on videos involving weapons, becoming the latest battleground in the U.S. gun-control debate. "YouTube will ban videos that promote or link to websi...
10:03 pm - Wed, March 21, 2018
Slashdot
AT&T Suffers Another Blow In Court Over Throttling of 'Unlimited' Data
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A federal judge has revived a lawsuit that angry customers filed against AT&T over the company's throttling of unlimited mobile data plans. T...
09:25 pm - Wed, March 21, 2018
Slashdot
Water Shortages Could Affect 5 Billion People By 2050, UNESCO Warns
About 3.6 billion people are estimated to be living in areas with a potential for water scarcity for at least one month per year, and this number could rise to as many as 5.7 billion people by 2050, a...
08:45 pm - Wed, March 21, 2018
Slashdot
Senate Passes Controversial Online Sex Trafficking Bill
The Senate today gave final approval to a bill aimed at cracking down on online sex trafficking, sending the measure to the White House where President Trump is expected to sign it into law. From a re...
08:00 pm - Wed, March 21, 2018
Slashdot
Mark Zuckerberg Addresses the Cambridge Analytica Scandal, Says Facebook 'Made Mistakes' in Protecting Data
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday commented on the massive, deepening data harvesting scandal his company has been embroiled in since last Friday. From a report: "We have a responsibility to p...
07:25 pm - Wed, March 21, 2018
Slashdot
People Were Asked To Name Women Tech Leaders. They Said 'Alexa' and 'Siri'
An anonymous reader shares a report: The tech industry has a persistent problem with gender inequality, particularly in its leadership ranks, and a new study from LivePerson underscores just how depre...
06:51 pm - Wed, March 21, 2018
Slashdot
Robots Are Trying To Pick Strawberries. So Far, They're Not Very Good At It
Robots have taken over many of America's factories. They can explore the depths of the ocean, and other planets. They can play ping-pong. But can they pick a strawberry? From a report: "You kind of le...
06:03 pm - Wed, March 21, 2018
Slashdot
Mozilla Launches a Petition Asking Facebook To Do More For User Privacy
An anonymous reader shares a report: After it was revealed that the personal data of 50 million Facebook users was shared without consent, Mozilla is calling on the social network to ensure that user ...
05:22 pm - Wed, March 21, 2018
Slashdot
Ask Slashdot: I Want To Get Into Comic Books, But Where Do I Start?
An anonymous reader writes: Hi fellow readers. I don't recall reading many comic books as a kid (mostly because I could not afford them), but of late, I have been considering giving that a shot. I wan...
04:44 pm - Wed, March 21, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook is Building a Real Community in California To Test Whether People Love Tech Companies Enough To Live in Them
In Menlo Park, Calif., Facebook is building a real community and testing the proposition: Do people love tech companies so much they will live inside them? From a report: Willow Village will be wedged...
04:05 pm - Wed, March 21, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Says Windows 10 Spring Creators Update Will Install in 30 Minutes
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft has announced that the upcoming Windows 10 major feature upgrade -- dubbed the Spring Creators Update -- will take around 30 minutes to install, unlike p...
03:25 pm - Wed, March 21, 2018
Slashdot
YouTube Will 'Frustrate' Some Users With Ads So They Pay for Music
YouTube will increase the number of ads that some users see between music videos, part of a strategy to convince more of its billion-plus viewers to pay for a forthcoming subscription music service fr...
02:48 pm - Wed, March 21, 2018
Slashdot
Kaspersky Lab Plans Swiss Data Center To Combat Spying Allegations, Report Says
An anonymous reader shares a report: Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab plans to open a data center in Switzerland to address Western government concerns that Russia exploits its anti-virus software to spy on...
02:00 pm - Wed, March 21, 2018
Slashdot
AMD Says Patches Coming Soon For Chip Vulnerabilities
wiredmikey writes: After investigating recent claims from a security firm that its processors are affected by more than a dozen serious vulnerabilities, chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) says pat...
01:00 pm - Wed, March 21, 2018
Slashdot
WhatsApp Co-Founder Tells Everyone To Delete Facebook, Further Fueling the #DeleteFacebook Movement
"In 2014, Facebook bought WhatsApp for $16 billion, making its co-founders -- Jan Koum and Brian Acton -- very wealthy men," reports The Verge. "Koum continues to lead the company, but Acton quit earl...
10:00 am - Wed, March 21, 2018
Slashdot
Chinese Companies Are Buying Up Cash-Strapped US Colleges
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Chinese companies are taking advantage of America's financially strapped higher-education system to buy schools, and the latest deal for a classical...
07:00 am - Wed, March 21, 2018
Slashdot
SpaceX Indicates It Will Manufacture the BFR Rocket In Los Angeles
A new document from the Port of Los Angeles indicates that the company is moving ahead with plans to build a "state-of-the-art" industrial manufacturing facility near Long Beach, about 20 miles south ...
03:30 am - Wed, March 21, 2018
Slashdot
Did Stephen Hawking Owe a Nobel Physicist a Subscription To a Softcore Porn Magazine?
dmoberhaus writes: In 1974, Stephen Hawking made a bet with Nobel Prize-winning cosmologist Kip Thorne about a black hole. The wager was a subscription to the softcore porn magazine Penthouse for Thor...
12:50 am - Wed, March 21, 2018
Slashdot
Telegram Loses Supreme Court Appeal In Russia, Must Hand Over Encryption Keys
Telegram has lost a bid before Russia's Supreme Court to block security services from getting access to users' data, giving President Vladimir Putin a victory in his effort to keep tabs on electronic ...
12:10 am - Wed, March 21, 2018
Slashdot
Orbitz Says Legacy Travel Site Likely Hacked, Affecting 880,000 Credit Cards
hyperclocker shares a report from U.S. News & World Report: Orbitz says a legacy travel booking platform may have been hacked, possibly exposing the personal information of people that made certai...
11:30 pm - Tue, March 20, 2018
Slashdot
Patients Regain Sight After Groundbreaking Trial
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Doctors have taken a major step towards curing the most common form of blindness in the UK -- age-related macular degeneration. Douglas Waters, 86, co...
10:50 pm - Tue, March 20, 2018
Slashdot
Machine Learning Spots Treasure Trove of Elusive Viruses
Artificial intelligence could speed up metagenomic studies that look for species unknown to science. From a report: Researchers have used artificial intelligence (AI) to discover nearly 6,000 previous...
10:10 pm - Tue, March 20, 2018
Slashdot
There Are Still 100,000 Pay Phones In the US
According to the FCC, there are only about 100,000 phone booths left in the United States, and about a fifth of those are in New York. The number has decreased rapidly over the last couple decades as ...
09:30 pm - Tue, March 20, 2018
Slashdot
Amazon Considers Buying Some Toys R Us Stores
According to Bloomberg, Amazon has looked at the possibility of expanding its retail footprint by acquiring some locations from bankrupt Toys R Us. "The online giant isn't interested in maintaining th...
09:10 pm - Tue, March 20, 2018
Slashdot
Amazon Passes Alphabet To Become the World's Second Most Valuable Company
Amazon has passed Alphabet to become the second most valuable company in the world. Apple remains the only other company more valuable than Amazon. CNBC reports: The e-commerce giant rose 2.7 percent ...
08:50 pm - Tue, March 20, 2018
Slashdot
Police Chief: Uber Self-Driving Car 'Likely' Not At Fault In Fatal Crash
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The chief of the Tempe Police has told the San Francisco Chronicle that Uber is likely not responsible for the Sunday evening crash that killed 4...
08:12 pm - Tue, March 20, 2018
Slashdot
How a Virus Spreads Through an Airplane Cabin
An anonymous reader shares a report: Traveling by plane greatly increases our chances of getting sick, or so many of us are wont to believe. To be fair, it's not uncommon to come down with a nasty ill...
07:30 pm - Tue, March 20, 2018
Slashdot
Mark Zuckerberg AWOL From Facebook's Data Leak Damage Control Session
An anonymous reader writes: It's not just that he's silent in public. Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg declined to face his employees on Tuesday to explain the company's role in a widening ...
06:48 pm - Tue, March 20, 2018
Slashdot
African Manufacturing Jobs Could be Threatened by US Based Robots, Report Says
Within less than two decades it will be cheaper to operate robots in US factories than hire workers in Africa, a new report warns. From the report: Falling automation costs are predicted to cause job ...
06:04 pm - Tue, March 20, 2018
Slashdot
Hackathons Are Dystopian Events That Dupe People Into Working For Free, Say Sociologists
An anonymous reader writes: That's the conclusion that two sociologists came to after observing seven hackathons over the period of one year, reports Wired. In "Hackathons As Co-optation Ritual: Socia...
05:24 pm - Tue, March 20, 2018
Slashdot
The NSA Worked To 'Track Down' Bitcoin Users, Snowden Documents Reveal
An anonymous reader shares a report: Classified documents provided by the whistleblower Edward Snowden show the National Security Agency worked urgently to target Bitcoin users around the world -- and...
04:44 pm - Tue, March 20, 2018
Slashdot
Child Abuse Imagery Found Within Bitcoin's Blockchain
German researchers have discovered unknown persons are using bitcoin's blockchain to store and link to child abuse imagery, potentially putting the cryptocurrency in jeopardy. From a report: The block...
04:00 pm - Tue, March 20, 2018
Slashdot
Google Launches a News Initiative To Fight False News and Help Publishers Make Money
Google is launching the Google News Initiative, a journalism-focused program that will help publishers earn revenue and combat fake news. From a report: The initiative, announced Tuesday, will offer p...
03:20 pm - Tue, March 20, 2018
Slashdot
FTC Probing Facebook For Use of Personal Data: Bloomberg
An anonymous reader shares a report: Facebook is under investigation by a U.S. privacy watchdog over the use of personal data of 50 million users by a data analytics firm to help elect President Donal...
02:40 pm - Tue, March 20, 2018
Slashdot
LG Releases Open-Sourced Version of webOS in Hopes To Push It Beyond TVs and Smart Refrigerators
LG has released an open-sourced version of webOS that's freely available to anyone that wants to download and poke around the code. From a report: The release of webOS Open Source Edition is meant to ...
02:00 pm - Tue, March 20, 2018
Slashdot
China Approves Giant Propaganda Machine To Improve Global Image
China has approved the creation of one of the world's largest propaganda machines as it looks to improve its global image, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing a person familiar with the matter. From...
01:00 pm - Tue, March 20, 2018
Slashdot
NVIDIA RTX Technology To Usher In Real-Time Ray Tracing Holy Grail of Gaming Graphics
HotHardware writes: NVIDIA has been dabbling in real-time ray tracing for over a decade. However, the company just introduced NVIDIA RTX, which is its latest effort to deliver real-time ray tracing to...
10:00 am - Tue, March 20, 2018
Slashdot
Lead Exposure Kills Hundreds of Thousands of Adults Every Year in the US, Study Finds
Bruce66423 shares a report from The Guardian: Last week, a massive new study concluded that lead is 10 times more dangerous than thought, and that past exposure now hastens one in every five U.S. deat...
07:00 am - Tue, March 20, 2018
Slashdot
New York Power Companies Can Now Charge Bitcoin Miners More
Last Wednesday, the New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) ruled that municipal power companies could charge higher electricity rates to cryptocurrency miners who try to benefit from the state...
03:30 am - Tue, March 20, 2018
Slashdot
AI Can Diagnose Prostate Cancer As Well As a Pathologist
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Business: Chinese researchers have developed an artificial intelligence system which can diagnose cancerous prostate samples as accurately as any patho...
01:25 am - Tue, March 20, 2018
Slashdot
Google Makes Push To Turn Product Searches Into Cash
Reuters reports of how Google is working to turn product searches into cash by partnering with some of the largest retailers in the United States: Under a new program, retailers can list their product...
12:45 am - Tue, March 20, 2018
Slashdot
Sierra Leone Government Denies the Role of Blockchain In Its Recent Election
The National Electoral Commission Sierra Leone is denying the news that theirs was one of the first elections recorded to the blockchain. "While the blockchain voting company Agora claimed to have run...
12:03 am - Tue, March 20, 2018
Slashdot
Magic Leap Lifts the Curtains (A Little)
Magic Leap just announced a preview of its software development kit and "creator portal," which will offer resources for people who want to build for its yet-unreleased Magic Leap One headset. You can...
11:40 pm - Mon, March 19, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Security Chief Said To Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation
Facebook's chief information security officer, Alex Stamos, will leave the company after internal disagreements over how the social network should deal with its role in spreading disinformation. The N...
11:20 pm - Mon, March 19, 2018
Slashdot
Ajit Pai Celebrates After Court Strikes Down Obama-Era Robocall Rule
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Federal judges have struck down an anti-robocall rule, saying that the Federal Communications Commission improperly treated every American who ow...
10:40 pm - Mon, March 19, 2018
Slashdot
IBM Unveils the 'World's Smallest Computer'
On the first day of IBM Think 2018, the company's flagship conference, IBM has unveiled what it claims is the world's smallest computer. It's smaller than a grain of salt and features the computer pow...
10:00 pm - Mon, March 19, 2018
Slashdot
Ask Slashdot: Should You Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Make?
An anonymous reader writes: Asking someone how much money they make is often -- if not always? -- considered impolite. But over the years, there has been a movement in toward more salary transparency....
09:20 pm - Mon, March 19, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Hires Firm To Conduct Forensic Audit of Cambridge Analytica Data
After it was revealed that political data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, harvested personal data from more than 50 million Facebook users, the social media company has been scrutinized for not b...
08:43 pm - Mon, March 19, 2018
Slashdot
Trump Bans Venezuela's New National Cryptocurrency
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: President Donald Trump issued an executive order Monday banning any transactions within the United States involving any digital currency issued by, for, ...
08:05 pm - Mon, March 19, 2018
Slashdot
Entrepreneur Andrew Yang, a Big Supporter Of Universal Basic Income, is Running For President
In a recently published podcast, Andrew Yang, tech entrepreneur and founder of Venture for America, said he is vying for the Democratic party nomination to run for President of the United States. From...
07:28 pm - Mon, March 19, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Under Pressure as EU, US Urge Probes of Data Practices
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg faced calls on Monday from U.S. and European lawmakers to explain how a consultancy that worked on President Donald Trump's election campaign gained access to data on 50 m...
06:40 pm - Mon, March 19, 2018
Slashdot
Twitter Will Ban Most Cryptocurrency-Related Ads
An anonymous reader writes: Twitter plans to ban most cryptocurrency-related ads in the next few weeks, as Sky News first reported and a source confirms to Axios. Why it matters: The recent boom in cr...
06:00 pm - Mon, March 19, 2018
Slashdot
Self-Driving Uber Car Kills Arizona Woman in First Fatal Crash Involving Pedestrian
Joe_Dragon writes: Last night a woman was struck by an autonomous Uber vehicle in Tempe, Arizona. She later died of her injuries in the hospital. The deadly collision -- reported by ABC15 and later co...
05:40 pm - Mon, March 19, 2018
Slashdot
Self-Driving Uber Car Kills Arizona Woman in First Fatal Crash Involving Pedestrian
Joe_Dragon writes: Last night a woman was struck by an autonomous Uber vehicle in Tempe, Arizona. She later died of her injuries in the hospital. The deadly collision -- reported by ABC15 and later co...
05:21 pm - Mon, March 19, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Joins Group Working To 'Cure' Open-Source Licensing Issues
Microsoft is joining Red Hat, Facebook, Google and IBM in committing to extending right to "cure" open source licensing noncompliance before taking legal measures. From a report: On March 19, official...
04:49 pm - Mon, March 19, 2018
Slashdot
Linux Mint 19 'Tara' Cinnamon Will Be Faster
Mint developers say they feel the app-launching time on the Linux distro seemed slow when using the Cinnamon desktop environment. So, they are working on fixing it. BetaNews reports: Windows build tim...
04:12 pm - Mon, March 19, 2018
Slashdot
FedEx Embraces More Robots Without Firing Humans
An anonymous reader shares a report: As soon as the first robot arrived at a FedEx shipping hub in the heart of North Carolina tobacco country early last year, talk of pink slips was in the air. Worke...
03:30 pm - Mon, March 19, 2018
Slashdot
The Struggle to Build a Massive 'Biobank' of Patient Data
An anonymous reader shares a report: This spring, the National Institutes of Health will start recruiting participants for one of the most ambitious medical projects ever envisioned. The goal is to fi...
02:55 pm - Mon, March 19, 2018
Slashdot
Hackers Are So Fed Up With Twitter Bots They're Hunting Them Down Themselves
An anonymous reader writes: Even if Twitter hasn't invested much in anti-bot software, some of its most technically proficient users have. They're writing and refining code that can use Twitter's publ...
02:10 pm - Mon, March 19, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Brings Native HEIF Support to Windows 10
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft is bringing support for the new HEIF image format to Windows 10. First popularized by Apple with iOS 11, HEIF is a new image format that uses less storag...
12:00 pm - Mon, March 19, 2018
Slashdot
How Einstein Lost His Bearings, and With Them, General Relativity
Kevin Hartnett, writing for Quanta magazine: Albert Einstein released his general theory of relativity at the end of 1915. He should have finished it two years earlier. When scholars look at his noteb...
07:30 am - Mon, March 19, 2018
Slashdot
Mapping Apps Like Waze, Google Maps, and Apple Maps May Make Traffic Conditions Worse in Some Areas, New Research Suggests
From an Atlantic story, originally titled "The Perfect Selfishness of Mapping Apps": In the pre-mobile-app days, drivers' selfishness was limited by their knowledge of the road network. In those condi...
03:30 am - Mon, March 19, 2018
Slashdot
Are Research Papers Less Accurate and Truthful Than in the Past?
An anonymous reader shares an Economist report: An essential of science is that experiments should yield similar results if repeated. In recent years, however, some people have raised concerns that to...
01:30 am - Mon, March 19, 2018
Slashdot
About a Quarter of US Adults Say They Are 'Almost Constantly' Online
As smartphones and other mobile devices have become more widespread, 26 percent of American adults now report that they go online "almost constantly," up from 21 percent in 2015, according to a Pew Re...
11:00 pm - Sun, March 18, 2018
Slashdot
New Study Which Made 90 Adults Play 'GTA' or 'The Sims 3' For At least 30 Mins Every Day For 2 Months Finds 'No Significant Changes' in Their Behavior
A new, longer-term study of video game play from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Germany's University Clinic Hamburg-Eppendorf recently published in Molecular Psychiatry found that ...
10:00 pm - Sun, March 18, 2018
Slashdot
Once Written Off for Dead, the Aral Sea Is Now Full of Life
Years ago, the Aral Sea was the world's fourth-largest freshwater lake with an area of some 26,000 square miles. But in the 1950s, it became the victim of the Soviet Union's agricultural policies. Wat...
09:00 pm - Sun, March 18, 2018
Slashdot
When China Hoards Its Hackers Everyone Loses
An anonymous reader shares a report: For over a decade Pwn2Own -- happening this week -- has brought together security talent from across the globe in a friendly hacking competition that is a cornerst...
08:00 pm - Sun, March 18, 2018
Slashdot
Firefox Master Password System Has Been Poorly Secured for the Past 9 Years, Researcher Says
Catalin Cimpanu, writing for BleepingComputer: For at past nine years, Mozilla has been using an insufficiently strong encryption mechanism for the "master password" feature. Both Firefox and Thunderb...
07:00 pm - Sun, March 18, 2018
Slashdot
YouTube Kids Has Videos on How Reptilians Rule the World, Moon Landing Was Fake
An anonymous reader shares a report: YouTube Kids, the supposedly child-friendly version of YouTube that's been shown to often play host to troves of slop content and disturbing videos, apparently was...
06:00 pm - Sun, March 18, 2018
Slashdot
The Road to Deep Decarbonization
Michael Liebreich, writing for Bloomberg New Energy Finance: In the past fifteen years we have witnessed several pivotal points along the route towards clean energy and transport. In 2004, renewables ...
05:00 pm - Sun, March 18, 2018
Slashdot
Say Goodbye To the Information Age: It's All About Reputation Now
An anonymous reader shares an essay on Aeon magazine by Gloria Origgi, an Italian philosopher and a tenured senior researcher at CNRS : We are experiencing a fundamental paradigm shift in our relation...
04:00 pm - Sun, March 18, 2018
Slashdot
Ghana's Windows Blackboard Teacher And His Students Have a Rewarding Outcome
Quartz: A lot has changed in the life of Richard Appiah Akoto in the fortnight since he posted photos of himself on Facebook drawing a Microsoft Word processing window on a blackboard with multi-color...
03:00 pm - Sun, March 18, 2018
Slashdot
Why Do People Go To Wikipedia? A Survey Suggests It's Their Desire To Go Down that Random Rabbit Hole
What's motivated people to visit the Wikipedia pages they're reading? Wikipedia recently tried to answer that question at scale by asking a sample of Wikipedia readers last June, "Why are you reading ...
02:00 pm - Sun, March 18, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook and Its Executives Are Getting Destroyed After Botching the Handling of a Massive Data Breach
The way Facebook has disclosed the abuse of its system by Cambridge Analytica, which has been reported this week, speaks volumes of Facebook's core beliefs. Sample this except from Business Insider: F...
10:34 am - Sun, March 18, 2018
Slashdot
Are Google and Facebook Surveilling Their Own Employees?
The Guardian just ran an article titled " 'They'll squash you like a bug': how Silicon Valley keeps a lid on leakers," which begins with the story of an employee confronted by Facebook's secretive "ra...
07:34 am - Sun, March 18, 2018
Slashdot
Ask Slashdot: How Can I Prove My ISP Slows Certain Traffic?
Long-time Slashdot reader GerryGilmore is "a basically pretty knowledgeable Linux guy totally comfortable with the command line." But unfortunately, he lives in north Georgia, "where we have a monopol...
03:34 am - Sun, March 18, 2018
Slashdot
Can Problems From Climate Change Be Addressed With Science?
Slashdot reader bricko shares an article from Scientific American about two "ecomodernists" who argue that the problems of climate change can be addressed through science and technology.In his Breakth...
01:34 am - Sun, March 18, 2018
Slashdot
Google Open Sources Its Exoplanet-Hunting AI
dmoberhaus writes: Last December, NASA announced that two new exoplanets had been hiding in plain sight among data from the Kepler space telescope. These two new planets weren't discovered by a human,...
11:34 pm - Sat, March 17, 2018
Slashdot
1 in 3 Michigan Workers Tested Opened A Password-Phishing Email
An anonymous reader quotes the AP:Michigan auditors who conducted a fake "phishing" attack on 5,000 randomly selected state employees said Friday that nearly one-third opened the email, a quarter clic...
10:34 pm - Sat, March 17, 2018
Slashdot
Did Cambridge Analytica Harvest 50 Million Facebook Profiles?
Slashdot reader umafuckit shared this article from The Guardian:The data analytics firm that worked with Donald Trump's election team and the winning Brexit campaign harvested millions of Facebook pro...
09:34 pm - Sat, March 17, 2018
Slashdot
How An Open Source Plugin Tamed a Chaotic Comments Section With A Simple Quiz
Long-time Slashdot reader jebrick quotes an article from Ars Technica about how Norway's government-owned public broadcasting company "employs open source tactics to fight trolling":The five-person te...
08:34 pm - Sat, March 17, 2018
Slashdot
How Hardware Artisans Are Keeping Classic Video Gaming Alive
Slashdot reader harrymcc writes, "If you want to play classic Nintendo games, you could buy a vintage Super NES. Or you could use an emulator. Or -- if you're really serious -- you could use floating ...
07:34 pm - Sat, March 17, 2018
Slashdot
DIY Explosives Experimenter Blows Self Up, Contaminates Building
Long-time Slashdot reader hey! writes:Benjamin D. Morrison of Beaver Dam Wisconsin was killed on March 5 while synthesizing explosives in his apartment... The accident has left the apartment building ...
06:34 pm - Sat, March 17, 2018
Slashdot
Vim Beats Emacs in 'Linux Journal' Reader Survey
The newly-relaunched Linux Journal is conducting its annual "Reader's Choice Awards," and this month announced the winners for Best Text Editor, Best Laptop, and Best Domain Registrar. Vim was chosen ...
05:34 pm - Sat, March 17, 2018
Slashdot
'Why YouTube's New Plan to Debunk Conspiracy Videos Won't Work'
Slashdot reader Lauren Weinstein believes YouTube's plan to combat conspiracy videos with "information cues" is "likely doomed to be almost entirely ineffective."The kind of viewers who are going to b...
04:34 pm - Sat, March 17, 2018
Slashdot
Ubuntu Community Considers a Crowd-Sourced Promo Video
Slashdot reader Beacon11 writes that "Alan Pope, a community advocate for Ubuntu, has requested comments and ideas regarding the creation of a crowd-sourced promo video that, in 30 seconds, conveys th...
03:34 pm - Sat, March 17, 2018
Slashdot
Researchers Claim They Can Predict Where Lightning Is Likely To Strike
Long-time Slashdot reader conner_bw shared an article from the CBC:A study by researchers at the University of Calgary's Schulich School of Engineering suggests it's possible to predict where lightnin...
02:34 pm - Sat, March 17, 2018
Slashdot
North Carolina Police Obtained Warrants Demanding All Google Users Near Four Crime Scenes
An anonymous reader quotes the public records reporter from North Carolina TV station WRAL:In at least four investigations last year -- cases of murder, sexual battery and even possible arson at the m...
01:00 pm - Sat, March 17, 2018
Slashdot
The Ordinary Engineering Behind the Horrifying Florida Bridge Collapse
An anonymous reader quotes a report from WIRED: The people of Sweetwater, Florida were supposed to wait until early 2019 for the Florida International University-Sweetwater University City Bridge to o...
10:00 am - Sat, March 17, 2018
Slashdot
Ford's Badly Needed Plan To Catch Up On Hybrid, Electric Cars
Ford supposedly has a plan to adapt to the changing world of transportation. The company recently announced that it's "going all-in on hybrids," readying six new battery electric vehicles by 2022, wit...
08:00 am - Sat, March 17, 2018
Slashdot
Apple's Newest iPhone X Ad Captures an Embarrassing iOS 11 Bug
Tom Warren, writing for The Verge: If you blink during Apple's latest iPhone ad, you might miss a weird little animation bug. It's right at the end of a slickly produced commercial, where the text fro...
07:00 am - Sat, March 17, 2018
Slashdot
Amazon Alexa's 'Brief Mode' Makes the Digital Assistant Way Less Chatty
A new update is rolling out to Amazon Echo devices that gives users the option to make Alexa respond with a short, beeping sound rather than her customary "OK." Reddit users reported seeing the new fe...
03:30 am - Sat, March 17, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Suspends Donald Trump's Data Operations Team For Misusing People's Personal Information
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Facebook said late Friday that it had suspended Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL), along with its political data analytics firm, Cambridge ...
01:25 am - Sat, March 17, 2018
Slashdot
Entire Broadband Industry Will Help FCC Defend Net Neutrality Repeal
The biggest lobby groups representing broadband providers will help the FCC defend the repeal of net neutrality rules in court. Ars Technica reports: Yesterday, three trade groups that collectively re...
12:45 am - Sat, March 17, 2018
Slashdot
Facial Scanning Now Arriving At US Airports
According to a report via NPR, a Geneva-based company called SITA that develops information technology for the world's airlines has installed facial scanning cameras at Orlando International Airport. ...
12:05 am - Sat, March 17, 2018
Slashdot
Sierra Leone Records World's First Blockchain-Powered Election
The citizens of Sierra Leone went to the polls on March 7 but this time something was different: the country recorded votes at 70% of the polling to the blockchain using a technology that is the first...
11:20 pm - Fri, March 16, 2018
Slashdot
Amazon Is Hiring More Developers For Alexa Than Google Is Hiring For Everything
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gadgets Now: Amazon is hiring 1,147 people just for its Alexa business. To put this number in perspective, it has to be mentioned that this number is higher th...
10:40 pm - Fri, March 16, 2018
Slashdot
Man Fined For Implanting NFC Train Ticket In Hand
Unhappy Windows User writes: An Australian man, when checked by a ticket inspector, claimed his smart travel card was implanted in his hand. He took the case to court and lost; the fine and legal fees...
10:00 pm - Fri, March 16, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Wants To Force Windows 10 Mail Users To Use Edge For Email Links
Microsoft has revealed today that "we will begin testing a change where links clicked on within the Windows Mail app will open in Microsoft Edge." What this means is that if you have Chrome or Firefox...
09:20 pm - Fri, March 16, 2018
Slashdot
Power Outage At Samsung's Fab Destroys 3.5 Percent of Global NAND Flash Output
An anonymous reader quotes a report from AnandTech: A half-hour power outage at Samsung's fab near Pyeongtaek, South Korea, disrupted production and damaged tens of thousands of processed wafers. Medi...
08:20 pm - Fri, March 16, 2018
Slashdot
Hacker Adrian Lamo Dies At 37
Adrian Lamo, a well-known hacker known for his involvement in passing information on whistleblower Chelsea Manning and hacking into systems at The New York Times, Microsoft, and Yahoo in the early-200...
08:00 pm - Fri, March 16, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Says It is Sorry For Suggesting Child Sex Videos in Search
Facebook issued an apology on Friday after offensive terms appeared in the social network's search predictions late Thursday. From a report: When users typed "videos of" into the search bar, Facebook ...
07:20 pm - Fri, March 16, 2018
Slashdot
'They'll Squash You Like a Bug': How Silicon Valley Keeps a Lid on Leakers
The public image of Silicon Valley's tech giants is all colourful bicycles, ping-pong tables, beanbags and free food, but behind the cartoonish facade is a ruthless code of secrecy. From a report: The...
06:40 pm - Fri, March 16, 2018
Slashdot
China To Bar People With Bad 'Social Credit' From Planes, Trains
China says it will begin applying its so-called social credit system to flights and trains and stop people who have committed misdeeds from taking such transport for up to a year. From a report: Peopl...
06:00 pm - Fri, March 16, 2018
Slashdot
For the First Time, a US City Has Banned Cryptocurrency Mining
CaptainDork writes: The city of Plattsburgh, New York is imposing an 18-month moratorium on commercial cryptocurrency mining. The official reasoning for the moratorium is to "protect and enhance the C...
05:20 pm - Fri, March 16, 2018
Slashdot
Tumblr Has a Massive Creepshots Problem
After Reddit famously banned the creepshots sub-reddit, which shared non-consensual, revealing photos of women, Tumblr now has a slew of users pushing out similar photos across at least dozens of dedi...
04:40 pm - Fri, March 16, 2018
Slashdot
Yet Again, Google Tricked Into Serving Scam Amazon Ads
Zack Whittaker, reporting for ZDNet: For hours on Thursday, the top Google search result for "Amazon" was pointed to a scam site. The bad ad appeared at the very top of the search result for anyone se...
04:00 pm - Fri, March 16, 2018
Slashdot
Android Is Now as Safe as the Competition, Google Says
In an interview with CNET, David Kleidermacher, Google's head of security for Android, Google Play and Chrome OS, said Android is now as safe as the competition. From the interview: That's a big claim...
03:20 pm - Fri, March 16, 2018
Slashdot
Ask Slashdot: Are There Any USB-C Wireless Video Solutions?
jez9999 writes: Sometimes it feels like we're on the cusp of a technology but not quite there yet, and that's the way it feels for me after searching around for USB-C wireless video solutions. There a...
02:41 pm - Fri, March 16, 2018
Slashdot
Chinese Hackers Hit US Firms Linked To South China Sea Dispute
Chinese hackers have launched a wave of attacks on mainly U.S. engineering and defense companies linked to the disputed South China Sea, the cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc. said. From a report: The su...
02:00 pm - Fri, March 16, 2018
Slashdot
US Utilities Have Finally Realized Electric Cars May Save Them
Pity the utility company. For decades, electricity demand just went up and up, as surely as the sun rose in the east. Power companies could plan ahead with confidence. No longer. From a report: This y...
01:00 pm - Fri, March 16, 2018
Slashdot
Microplastics Found In 93 Percent of Bottled Water Tested In Global Study
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC.ca: The bottled water industry is estimated to be worth nearly $200 billion a year, surpassing sugary sodas as the most popular beverage in many countries....
11:30 am - Fri, March 16, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Launches Bounty Program For Speculative Execution Side Channel Vulnerabilities
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft has launched a bug bounty program that will reward anyone who finds the next Meltdown or Spectre vulnerability. Known as speculative execution side chann...
10:00 am - Fri, March 16, 2018
Slashdot
No, Space Did Not Permanently Alter 7 Percent of Scott Kelly's DNA
Several stories this week have proclaimed that the DNA of former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly changed during his year living on the International Space Station. The stories say that 7 percent of his gen...
08:30 am - Fri, March 16, 2018
Slashdot
The 600 Companies PayPal Shares Your Data With
AmiMoJo shares a report from Schneier on Security: One of the effects of GDPR -- the new EU General Data Protection Regulation -- is that we're all going to be learning a lot more about who collects o...
07:00 am - Fri, March 16, 2018
Slashdot
NASA's Planet-Hunting Kepler Space Telescope Is Running Out of Fuel
Charlie Sobeck, the system engineer for the Kepler space telescope mission, said in a NASA statement that Kepler is running low on gas. According to Sobekc, it only has "several months" before it reac...
03:30 am - Fri, March 16, 2018
Slashdot
Planting GMOs Kills So Many Bugs That It Helps Non-GMO Crops
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: One of the great purported boons of GMOs is that they allow farmers to use fewer pesticides, some of which are known to be harmful to humans or o...
01:30 am - Fri, March 16, 2018
Slashdot
Bali Plans To Switch Off Internet Services For 24 Hours For New Year 'Quiet Reflection'
Internet service providers in Bali will be switching off mobile services this weekend for 24 hours to mark the Indonesian island's annual day of silence. "Nyepi, or New Year according to the ancient B...
12:50 am - Fri, March 16, 2018
Slashdot
Verizon Will Fix Broadband Networks, Landlines To Resolve Investigation
Joel Hruska reports via ExtremeTech: Verizon has reached an agreement with the Communications Workers of America and the New York State Public Service Commission to begin repairing infrastructure and ...
12:10 am - Fri, March 16, 2018
Slashdot
Android Wear Needs More Than a New Name To Fight Apple Watch
Less than two months before Google I/O, Google has rebranded its Android Wear watch platform to "Wear OS." The recent name change is part of a move to have its watches stand apart from Android, but it...
11:30 pm - Thu, March 15, 2018
Slashdot
Daily Dose of Violent Video Games Causes 'No Significant Changes' In Behavior, Study Finds
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A new, longer-term study of video game play from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Germany's University Clinic Hamburg-Eppendorf...
10:50 pm - Thu, March 15, 2018
Slashdot
EU Wants To Require Platforms To Filter Uploaded Content (Including Code)
A new copyright proposal in the EU would require code-sharing platforms like GitHub and SourceForge to monitor all content that users upload for potential copyright infringement. "The proposal is aime...
10:10 pm - Thu, March 15, 2018
Slashdot
Apple Bans Iran from the App Store
Iranian users have not been able to access Apple's App Store all day today, in what appears to be a ban put in place by the US company. From a report: According to reports and sources who spoke with B...
09:30 pm - Thu, March 15, 2018
Slashdot
Linus Torvalds Slams CTS Labs Over AMD Vulnerability Report
Earlier this week, CTS Labs, a Tel Aviv-based cybersecurity startup claimed it has discovered critical security flaws in AMD chips that could allow attackers to access sensitive data from highly guard...
08:48 pm - Thu, March 15, 2018
Slashdot
Walmart Whistleblower Claims Cheating In Race With Amazon
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: In its race to catch Amazon.com in online retailing, Walmart issued misleading e-commerce results and fired an executive who complained the company ...
07:00 pm - Thu, March 15, 2018
Slashdot
US Says Russia Hacked Energy Grid, Punishes 19 for Meddling
Associated Press: Pushing back harder on Russia, the Trump administration accused Moscow on Thursday of a concerted hacking operation targeting the U.S. energy grid, aviation systems and other infrast...
06:30 pm - Thu, March 15, 2018
Slashdot
Bitcoin's Highly Anticipated 'Lightning Network' Goes Live
Lightning Labs on Thursday announced the beta release of its highly-anticipated Lightning Network Daemon (LND), a developer-friendly software client used to access Bitcoin's Lightning Network, anonymo...
05:50 pm - Thu, March 15, 2018
Slashdot
Encrypted Email Service ProtonMail is Being Blocked in Turkey
ProtonMail: We have confirmed that Internet service providers in Turkey have been blocking ProtonMail this week. Our support team first became aware of connectivity problems for Turkish ProtonMail use...
05:10 pm - Thu, March 15, 2018
Slashdot
Intel Says 'Partitions' in New Chips Will Correct the Design Flaw that Created Spectre and Meltdown
Intel said on Thursday it is introducing hardware protections against the Spectre CPU flaw that was discovered last year. From a report: Starting with the Cascade Lake version of its Xeon server proce...
04:41 pm - Thu, March 15, 2018
Slashdot
Largest US Radio Company iHeartMedia Files For Bankruptcy
The largest U.S. radio station owner, iHeartMedia, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy as it "struggles with $20 billion in debt and falling revenue at its 858 radio stations," reports Reuters. The co...
04:05 pm - Thu, March 15, 2018
Slashdot
Digg Reader To Shut Down This Month -- Latest RSS Service To Bite the Dust
Digg announced this week that it's shutting down Digg Reader, an app which allows users to follow RSS feeds from sites. From a report: Following the closure of Google Reader, RSS fans flocked to the l...
03:29 pm - Thu, March 15, 2018
Slashdot
Can AMD Vulnerabilities Be Used To Game the Stock Market?
Earlier this week, a little-known security firm called CTS Labs reported, what it claimed to be, severe vulnerabilities and backdoors in some AMD processors. While AMD looks into the matter, the story...
02:00 pm - Thu, March 15, 2018
Slashdot
Largest US Radio Company iHeartMedia Files For Bankruptcy
The largest U.S. radio station owner, iHeartMedia, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy as it "struggles with $20 billion in debt and falling revenue at its 858 radio stations," reports Reuters. The co...
01:00 pm - Thu, March 15, 2018
Slashdot
Scientists Create a Way For People With Amputations To Feel Their Prosthetics
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Prosthetic hands have gotten increasingly sophisticated. Many can recreate the complex shape and detail of joints and fingers, while powered prosthese...
11:30 am - Thu, March 15, 2018
Slashdot
Samsung Will Begin Offering Same-Day Repairs On Galaxy Phones This Week
hyperclocker shares a report from BGR: Samsung announced on Wednesday that it is partnering with uBreakiFix to bring same-day, in-person phone repairs to Galaxy device owners across the United States....
10:00 am - Thu, March 15, 2018
Slashdot
Scientists Create a Way For People With Amputations To Feel Their Prosthetics
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Prosthetic hands have gotten increasingly sophisticated. Many can recreate the complex shape and detail of joints and fingers, while powered prosthese...
10:00 am - Thu, March 15, 2018
Slashdot
All Disk Galaxies Rotate Once Every Billion Years
According to a new study published in The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, astronomers discovered that all disk galaxies rotate about once every billion years, no matter their size o...
07:00 am - Thu, March 15, 2018
Slashdot
How Amazon Became Corporate America's Nightmare
Zorro shares a report from Bloomberg that details Amazon's rapid growth in the last three years: Amazon makes no sense. It's the most befuddling, illogically sprawling, and -- to a growing sea of comp...
03:30 am - Thu, March 15, 2018
Slashdot
New Bill In Congress Would Bypass the Fourth Amendment, Hand Your Data To Police
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Medium: Lawmakers behind a new anti-privacy bill are trying to sneak it through Congress by attaching it to the must-pass government spending bill. The CLOUD A...
02:10 am - Thu, March 15, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Removes Antivirus Registry Key Check for Windows 10 Users
Microsoft has backtracked on a decision it took back in January when it conditioned that computers without a special registry key would not receive any more security updates. From a report: That parti...
01:30 am - Thu, March 15, 2018
Slashdot
Jewelry Site Leaks Personal Details, Plaintext Passwords of 1.3 Million Users
Chicago-based MBM Company's jewelry brand Limoges Jewelry has accidentally leaked the personal information for over 1.3 million people. This includes addresses, zip-codes, e-mail addresses, and IP add...
12:50 am - Thu, March 15, 2018
Slashdot
Air Pollution is Bad For Productivity, Even in Office Jobs
It seems reasonable that breathing in pollution would affect worker productivity, but only recently has the damage been documented. From a report: In a series of studies that match readings from air m...
12:10 am - Thu, March 15, 2018
Slashdot
Tesla Employees Say Automaker Is Churning Out a High Volume of Flawed Parts
Several current and former employees of Tesla said that the automaker is manufacturing a surprisingly high ratio of lawed parts and vehicles, leading to more rework and repairs than can be contained a...
11:20 pm - Wed, March 14, 2018
Slashdot
Toys R Us To Close All 800 of Its US Stores
Toy store chain Toys R Us is reportedly planning to sell or close all 800 of its U.S. stores (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), affecting as many as 33,000 jobs as the company win...
10:40 pm - Wed, March 14, 2018
Slashdot
Reddit Is Bringing Promoted Posts To Its Mobile Apps
Reddit is reportedly launching native promoted posts for its mobile apps. "The company said in an email to advertisers that its apps are the most popular way its 330 million monthly active users acces...
10:00 pm - Wed, March 14, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Announces Breakthrough In Chinese-To-English Machine Translation
A team of Microsoft researchers announced on Wednesday they've created the first machine translation system that's capable of translating news articles from Chinese to English with the same accuracy a...
09:20 pm - Wed, March 14, 2018
Slashdot
Wikipedia Had No Idea YouTube Was Going To Use It To Fact-Check Conspiracy Theories
Yesterday, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki announced that the company would drop a Wikipedia link beneath videos on highly contested topics. We have now learned that Wikipedia did not know about this move ...
08:40 pm - Wed, March 14, 2018
Slashdot
Sri Lanka Accuses Facebook of Failing To Control Hate Speech That Contributed To Deadly Riots
The Sri Lankan government is accusing Facebook of failing to control rampant hate speech that it says contributed to anti-Muslim riots last week that left three people dead and the country under a sta...
08:00 pm - Wed, March 14, 2018
Slashdot
Former Equifax CIO Charged With Insider Trading
OffTheLip writes: Jun Ying, a former CIO with Equifax has been charged with insider trading by the US Department of Justice. From the linked article: Wednesday's announcement marks the first criminal ...
07:35 pm - Wed, March 14, 2018
Slashdot
A Brief History of Stephen Hawking
New Scientist: The most recognisable scientist of our age, Hawking holds an iconic status. [...] He was routinely consulted for oracular pronouncements on everything from time travel and alien life to...
07:20 pm - Wed, March 14, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Quietly Hid Webpages Bragging of Ability to Influence Elections
Sam Biddle, reporting for The Intercept: When Mark Zuckerberg was asked if Facebook had influenced the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, the founder and CEO dismissed the notion that the site...
06:40 pm - Wed, March 14, 2018
Slashdot
Google Opens Maps To Bring the Real World Into Games
Video games may soon look a lot more like the real world. If you've enjoyed the thrill of driving through GTA V and spying out Los Angeles landmarks, then that's a sentiment you're probably going to s...
06:00 pm - Wed, March 14, 2018
Slashdot
Siri Team Didn't Learn About HomePod Until 2015, After Amazon Echo Debuted
The Information (paywalled) has published a lengthy report today covering the development of Siri. The article documents Siri's tumultuous changes in leadership and management over the last few years,...
05:20 pm - Wed, March 14, 2018
Slashdot
SEC Charges Theranos, CEO Elizabeth Holmes With 'Massive Fraud'
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The SEC has charged Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes and Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani with fraud relating to the startup's fundraising activities. The company, a...
04:40 pm - Wed, March 14, 2018
Slashdot
GNOME 3.28 'Chongqing' Linux Is Here
BrianFagioli writes: GNOME 3.28 is the latest version of GNOME 3, and is the result of 6 months' hard work by the GNOME community. It contains several major new features, as well as many smaller impro...
04:06 pm - Wed, March 14, 2018
Slashdot
Google Will Prioritize Stories for Paying News Subscribers
Google users who subscribe to newspapers will find articles from those publications appearing higher in their search results, part of the tech giant's efforts to help media companies find and retain p...
03:27 pm - Wed, March 14, 2018
Slashdot
Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Launched
New submitter stikves writes: The Raspberry foundation has launched an incremental update to the Raspberry Pi 3 model B: Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ . In addition to slight increase (200MHz) in CPU speed,...
02:45 pm - Wed, March 14, 2018
Slashdot
Demand For Programmers Hits Full Boil as US Job Market Simmers
When the American job market heats up, demand for technology talent boils, an anonymous reader writes citing a Bloomberg report. From the story: Nationally, the unemployment rate was 4.1 percent in Ja...
02:08 pm - Wed, March 14, 2018
Slashdot
Google Will Ban All Cryptocurrency-related Advertising
Google is cracking down on cryptocurrency-related advertising. From a report: The company is updating its financial services-related ad policies to ban any advertising about cryptocurrency-related con...
01:00 pm - Wed, March 14, 2018
Slashdot
Extreme Winter Weather In the US Linked To a Warming Arctic
A new study shows how global climate change can have ripple effects at the local level. According to the research, extreme winter weather is two to four times more likely in the eastern U.S. when the ...
10:00 am - Wed, March 14, 2018
Slashdot
Google's New 'Plus Codes' Are An Open Source, Global Alternative To Street Addresses
Google has developed a "simple and consistent addressing system that works across India and globally." Called "Plus Codes," the location-based digital addressing system is designed for people with add...
07:00 am - Wed, March 14, 2018
Slashdot
UFO Disclosure Group Releases Newest Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet UFO Encounter Video
alaskana98 writes: CNN and other media outlets are reporting that the "To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science" group has released the third in a series of videos purportedly showing an encounter bet...
04:15 am - Wed, March 14, 2018
Slashdot
Stephen Hawking, Who Examined the Universe and Explained Black Holes, Dies at 76
Stephen W. Hawking, the Cambridge University physicist and best-selling author who roamed the cosmos from a wheelchair, pondering the nature of gravity and the origin of the universe and becoming an e...
03:30 am - Wed, March 14, 2018
Slashdot
New York's Subway Is Slow Because They Slowed Down the Trains After A 1995 Accident
According to the Village Voice, New York City's subway trains are running slower because the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is deliberately running the trains slower. The Village Voice ob...
01:30 am - Wed, March 14, 2018
Slashdot
China's Anti-Pollution Initiative Produces Stellar Results
hackingbear writes: China has declared war on its pollution -- one of the worst on the planet -- and now appears to be winning. Popular Mechanics reports: "Over the past four years, pollution in China...
12:53 am - Wed, March 14, 2018
Slashdot
YouTube Will Add Information From Wikipedia To Videos About Conspiracies
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: YouTube will add information from Wikipedia to videos about popular conspiracy theories to provide alternative viewpoints on controversial subjects,...
12:30 am - Wed, March 14, 2018
Slashdot
Mozilla Working On In-Page Popup Blocker For Firefox
Firefox is working on a blocker for annoying in-page alerts that often ask you to input your email address to receive a newsletter from the site. "The feature is still in the planning stages, but Mozi...
12:03 am - Wed, March 14, 2018
Slashdot
How Your Returns Are Used Against You At Best Buy, Other Retailers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): At Best Buy, returning too many items within a short time can hurt a person's s...
11:20 pm - Tue, March 13, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Has Turned Into a Beast in Myanmar, UN Says
UN investigators have accused Facebook of playing a "determining role" in stirring up hatred against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. From a report: One of the team probing possible acts of genocide said ...
10:40 pm - Tue, March 13, 2018
Slashdot
Amazon Recalls 260,000 Portable Power Banks For Fire Hazard
Amazon is recalling 260,000 AmazonBasics portable power banks that can "overheat and ignite," according to a release by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The company has received more than 50 re...
10:00 pm - Tue, March 13, 2018
Slashdot
A Chatbot Can Now Offer You Protection Against Volatile Airline Prices
The same bot, DoNotPay, that helped users overturn parking tickets and sue Equifax for small sums of money is now offering you protection against volatile airline prices. The Verge reports: Joshua Bro...
09:20 pm - Tue, March 13, 2018
Slashdot
'Women At Microsoft Are Sexualized By Their Male Managers,' Lawsuit Alleges
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: According to a newly unsealed court filing, women at Microsoft who work in technical jobs filed 238 internal complaints pertaining to gender disc...
08:40 pm - Tue, March 13, 2018
Slashdot
Developers Love Trendy New Languages, But Earn More With Functional Programming: Stack Overflow's Annual Survey
Stack Overflow has released the results of its annual survey of 100,000 developers, revealing the most-popular, top-earning, and preferred programming languages. ArsTechnica: JavaScript remains the mo...
08:00 pm - Tue, March 13, 2018
Slashdot
Google and Ubisoft Are Teaming Up To Improve Online Multi-Player Video Games
Google and Ubisoft announced on Tuesday they have a new project intended to improve the performance of fast-paced, online multi-player video games. From a report: The search giant said it teamed with ...
07:20 pm - Tue, March 13, 2018
Slashdot
Media Reports About a Massive Geomagnetic Storm Hitting Earth on March 18 Are Inaccurate, NOAA Says
Several news outlets this week are reporting that Earth is expecting a "massive magnetic storm" on March 18. Yeah, so that's not happening, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) t...
06:40 pm - Tue, March 13, 2018
Slashdot
Privacy-Busting Bugs Found in Popular VPN Services Hotspot Shield, Zenmate and PureVPN
A report by VpnMentor, a website which ranks VPN services, reveals several vulnerabilities in Hotspot Shield, Zenmate, and PureVPN -- all of which promise to provide privacy for their users. VpnMentor...
06:00 pm - Tue, March 13, 2018
Slashdot
A Startup is Pitching a Mind-Uploading Service That is '100 Percent Fatal'
The startup accelerator Y Combinator is known for supporting audacious companies in its popular three-month boot camp. There's never been anything quite like Nectome, though. From a report: Next week,...
05:20 pm - Tue, March 13, 2018
Slashdot
Reddit and the Struggle To Detoxify the Internet
In an article published on The New Yorker this week, Andrew Marantz discusses the state of free speech on the Web and takes a look at Reddit, the internet's fourth-most-popular site, after Google, You...
04:40 pm - Tue, March 13, 2018
Slashdot
Firefox 59, 'By Far the Biggest Update Since Firefox 1.0', Arrives With Faster Page Loads and Improved Private Browsing
An anonymous reader shares a VentureBeat report: Mozilla today launched Firefox 59 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The release builds on Firefox Quantum, which the company calls "by far the bigg...
04:00 pm - Tue, March 13, 2018
Slashdot
Researchers Find Critical Vulnerabilities in AMD's Ryzen and EPYC Processors, But They Gave the Chipmaker Only 24 Hours Before Making the Findings Public
Alfred Ng, reporting for CNET: Researchers have discovered critical security flaws in AMD chips that could allow attackers to access sensitive data from highly guarded processors across millions of de...
03:28 pm - Tue, March 13, 2018
Slashdot
Researchers Find Critical Vulnerabilities in AMD's Ryzen and EPYC Processors, But They Gave the Chipmaker Only 24 Hours Before Making the Findings Public
Alfred Ng, reporting for CNET: Researchers have discovered critical security flaws in AMD chips that could allow attackers to access sensitive data from highly guarded processors across millions of de...
03:20 pm - Tue, March 13, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Admits It Updated Some Windows 10 Computers To Newest Build Despite Users Telling It Not To Do That
Catalin Cimpanu, writing for BleepingComputer: The admission came in a knowledge base article updated last week. Not all users of older Windows versions were forcibly updated, but only those whose mac...
02:40 pm - Tue, March 13, 2018
Slashdot
Larry Page's Flying Taxis, Now Exiting Stealth Mode
Google co-founder and Alphabet CEO Larry Page's autonomous flying taxi company Kitty Hawk on Tuesday unveiled its "fully electric, self-piloting flying taxi" called Cora. Since October, Cora has been ...
01:45 pm - Tue, March 13, 2018
Slashdot
Trump's Pick for New CIA Director Is Career Spymaster
An anonymous reader shares a AP report: President Donald Trump's choice to be the first female director of the CIA is a career spymaster who once ran an agency prison in Thailand where terror suspects...
01:00 pm - Tue, March 13, 2018
Slashdot
US Navy Under Fire In Mass Software Piracy Lawsuit
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: In 2011 and 2012, the U.S. Navy began using BS Contact Geo, a 3D virtual reality application developed by German company Bitmanagement. The Navy ...
10:00 am - Tue, March 13, 2018
Slashdot
Apple Is Letting Companies Make 3.5mm To Lightning Cables Now
Apple has updated the specs for its Made-For-iPhone accessories program, letting accessory makers put USB-C ports on licensed devices, as well as create 3.5mm to Lightning cables for the first time. 9...
07:00 am - Tue, March 13, 2018
Slashdot
Lyft Says Its Revenue Is Growing Nearly 3x Faster Than Uber's
U.S. ride-sharing company Lyft says it passed $1 billion in revenue last year and that its revenue grew 168 percent year over year in the fourth quarter of 2017, almost three times faster than Uber's ...
03:30 am - Tue, March 13, 2018
Slashdot
Sleeping In Rooms With Even a Little Light Can Increase Risk of Depression, Study Finds
Japanese researchers have found that even the slightest slither of light when trying to sleep could be linked to a heightened risk of depression, according to a new study published in The American Jou...
01:30 am - Tue, March 13, 2018
Slashdot
Google To Reveal 'World's Highest Resolution OLED-On-Glass Display' For VR Headsets
An anonymous reader writes: Last year at SID Display Week 2017, Google's VP of VR/AR teased a "secret project" that the company was working on -- a VR-optimized OLED panel capable of 20 megapixels per...
12:50 am - Tue, March 13, 2018
Slashdot
ACLU Sues TSA Over Electronic Device Searches
The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Transportation Security Administration over its alleged practices of searching the ...
12:10 am - Tue, March 13, 2018
Slashdot
'Slingshot' Malware That Hid For Six Years Spread Through Routers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: Security researchers at Kaspersky Lab have discovered what's likely to be another state-sponsored malware strain, and this one is more advanced than ...
11:30 pm - Mon, March 12, 2018
Slashdot
Trump Issues Order To Block Broadcom's Takeover of Qualcomm
Bloomberg reports that President Donald Trump issued an executive order today blocking Broadcom from acquiring Qualcomm, "scuttling a $117 billion deal that had been subject to U.S. government scrutin...
10:50 pm - Mon, March 12, 2018
Slashdot
Apple Seems OK With Currency Miners In the Mac App Store
Apple has yet to block a popular title in the Mac App Store that has openly embraced coin mining, prompting one to ask the question: does Apple allow apps in the Mac App Store if they clearly disclose...
10:10 pm - Mon, March 12, 2018
Slashdot
Tesla Raises Prices At Its Supercharger Stations
Tesla is increasing the cost of the paid Supercharger access, but a spokesperson for the company says that it "will never be a profit center." Electrek reports: When introducing the program, Tesla sai...
09:30 pm - Mon, March 12, 2018
Slashdot
Comcast 'Blocks' an Encrypted Email Service: Yet Another Reminder Why Net Neutrality Matters
Zack Whittaker, writing for ZDNet: For about twelve hours earlier this month, encrypted email service Tutanota seemed to fall off the face of the internet for Comcast customers. Starting in the aftern...
08:50 pm - Mon, March 12, 2018
Slashdot
University of Arizona Tracks Student ID Card Swipes To Detect Who Might Drop Out
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The University of Arizona is tracking freshman students' ID card swipes to anticipate which students are more likely to drop out. University researc...
08:10 pm - Mon, March 12, 2018
Slashdot
Apple Must Explain Why It Doesn't Want You To Fix Your Own iPhone, California Lawmaker Says
A California state lawmaker says she hopes to make Apple explain specifically why it has opposed and lobbied against legislation that would make it easier for you to repair your iPhone and other elect...
07:30 pm - Mon, March 12, 2018
Slashdot
JavaScript Rules But Microsoft Programming Languages Are On the Rise
Microsoft languages seem to be hitting the right note with coders across ops, data science, and app development. From a report: JavaScript remains the most popular programming language, but two offeri...
06:55 pm - Mon, March 12, 2018
Slashdot
Data Breach Victims Can Sue Yahoo in the United States, Federal Judge Rules
Yahoo has been ordered by a federal judge to face much of a lawsuit in the United States claiming that the personal information of all 3 billion users was compromised in a series of data breaches. Fro...
06:20 pm - Mon, March 12, 2018
Slashdot
Coming Soon to a Front Porch Near You: Package Delivery Via Drone
After lagging behind other countries for years, commercial drones in the U.S. are expected to begin limited package deliveries within months, according to federal regulators and industry officials. [E...
05:30 pm - Mon, March 12, 2018
Slashdot
Siri Co-founder is Surprised By How Much Siri Still Can't Do
In an interview with Quartz, Norman Winarsky, a founder of Siri, suggests that Apple may have given Siri an overly ambitious collection of responsibilities and hasn't made the feature reliable enough....
04:41 pm - Mon, March 12, 2018
Slashdot
Firefox Gets Privacy Boost By Disabling Proximity and Ambient Light Sensor APIs
Stating with Firefox 60 -- expected to be released in May 2018 -- websites won't be able to use Firefox to access data from sensors that provide proximity distances and ambient light information. From...
04:00 pm - Mon, March 12, 2018
Slashdot
Apple Buys Texture, a 'Netflix For Magazines' App
Apple said on Monday it will acquire Texture, a digital magazine app, as the iPhone maker looks to fill the gap left by Facebook's pullback from news distribution. From a report: The deal is Apple's l...
03:25 pm - Mon, March 12, 2018
Slashdot
Dial P for Privacy: The Phone Booth Is Back
As mobile phone use exploded and the pay phone was increasingly linked to crime, the booth began to disappear. But things are appear to be changing. From a report: Now, the phone booth -- or at least ...
02:40 pm - Mon, March 12, 2018
Slashdot
Amazon's Alexa Is Coming To an Office Near You
Amazon announced today that it's bringing its voice assistant into a range of business settings, big and small, like hotels and co-working spaces. From a report: While people always think of Amazon as...
02:00 pm - Mon, March 12, 2018
Slashdot
Intel Fights For Its Future
An anonymous reader shares a post: The Smartphone 2.0 era has destroyed many companies: Nokia, Blackberry, Palm... Will Intel be another victim, either as a result of the proposed Broadcom-Qualcomm co...
12:15 pm - Mon, March 12, 2018
Slashdot
Inside the Booming Black Market For Spotify Playlists
The black market for Spotify playlists is booming. It's cheaper than you might expect to hack the system -- and if it's done right, it more than pays for itself, the Daily Dot reports. From the articl...
10:00 am - Mon, March 12, 2018
Slashdot
What Image Should Represent All of Humanity On Wikipedia?
An anonymous reader writes: If aliens ever do come across the Pioneer spacecraft and make assumptions about the entire human species based on the man and woman etched onto the plaque it carries, this ...
06:31 am - Mon, March 12, 2018
Slashdot
YouTube, the Great Radicalizer
Zeynep Tufekci, writing for the New York Times: Before long, I was being directed to videos of a leftish conspiratorial cast, including arguments about the existence of secret government agencies and ...
03:30 am - Mon, March 12, 2018
Slashdot
New Traces of Hacking Team in the Wild
Previously unreported samples of Hacking Team's infamous surveillance tool -- the Remote Control System (RCS) -- are in the wild, and have been detected by ESET systems in fourteen countries. From a r...
02:05 am - Mon, March 12, 2018
Slashdot
SXSW: No 'Hot Apps' Anymore But Still a Launchpad For Some Startups
South by Southwest is no longer the preferred launchpad for social apps, but it may be for others like Blue Duck, a San Antonio-based transportation company debuting its scooter service this weekend. ...
12:08 am - Mon, March 12, 2018
Slashdot
Netflix's Secrets to Success: Six Cell Towers, Dubbing and More
Variety gets access to the people at Netflix who take care of the tech: Netflix has its own cell towers. Netflix wants to test its app running on mobile devices under a variety of conditions available...
09:00 pm - Sun, March 11, 2018
Slashdot
MoviePass Wants To Gather a Whole Lot of Data About Its Users
An anonymous reader writes: MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe thinks his service's rapid growth will continue, projecting earlier this month that MoviePass will have 5 million subscribers by the end of 2018, a...
07:03 pm - Sun, March 11, 2018
Slashdot
Elon Musk: SpaceX's Mars Rocket Could Fly Short Flights By Next Year
On stage at SXSW, Elon Musk issued yet another incredibly ambitious timeline. During a Q&A session on Sunday, Musk said SpaceX will be ready to fly its Mars rocket in 2019. He said: We are buildin...
06:35 pm - Sun, March 11, 2018
Slashdot
Elon Musk: The Danger of AI is Much Greater Than Nuclear Warheads. We Need Regulatory Oversight Of AI Development.
Elon Musk has been vocal about the need for regulation for AI in the past. At SXSW on Sunday, Musk, 46, elaborated his thoughts. We're very close to seeing cutting edge technologies in AI, Musk said. ...
06:00 pm - Sun, March 11, 2018
Slashdot
EPA's Science Advisory Board Has Not Met in 6 Months
The U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board has not met in at least six months, and some of its members say it's being sidelined to avoid getting in the way of agency Administrator Scott Pruitt's anti-regulat...
05:00 pm - Sun, March 11, 2018
Slashdot
Report Says Radioactive Monitors Failed at Nuclear Plant
A new report says mistakes and mismanagement are to blame for the exposure of workers to radioactive particles at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state. From the report: Contractor CH2M ...
04:00 pm - Sun, March 11, 2018
Slashdot
Feds Bust CEO Allegedly Selling Custom BlackBerry Phones To Sinaloa Drug Cartel
An anonymous reader shares a Motherboard report: For years, a slew of shadowy companies have sold so-called encrypted phones, custom BlackBerry or Android devices that sometimes have the camera and mi...
03:00 pm - Sun, March 11, 2018
Slashdot
Twitter Suspends Numerous Popular Accounts That Are Known For Stealing Tweets
An anonymous reader shares a report: Continuing its battle against the "tweetdeckers," Twitter suspended on Friday several popular accounts known for stealing tweets or mass-retweeting tweets into man...
02:00 pm - Sun, March 11, 2018
Slashdot
Ubuntu Linux 18.04 'Bionic Beaver' Beta 1 Now Available For Download
From a report: This week, Ubuntu Linux 18.04 'Bionic Beaver' Beta 1 became available for download. Ubuntu 18.04 is significant, as it will be an LTS (Long Term Support) version. As was the case when U...
12:34 pm - Sun, March 11, 2018
Slashdot
Could This Bold New Technique Boost Gravitational-Wave Detection?
Slashdot reader astroengine writes: One of the most expensive, complex and problematic components in gravitational wave detectors like the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) &m...
08:34 am - Sun, March 11, 2018
Slashdot
Are The Alternatives Even Worse Than Daylight Saving Time?
The New York Times notes an important caveat to Florida's recently-approved law observing daylight savings time year-round: it specifies that their change will only go into effect if "the United State...
04:34 am - Sun, March 11, 2018
Slashdot
ESR's Newest Project: An Open Hardware/Open Source UPS
An anonymous reader writes:Last month Eric S. Raymond complained about his choices for a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply), adding that "This whole category begs to be disrupted by an open-hardware [...
02:34 am - Sun, March 11, 2018
Slashdot
Chinese Police Begin Tracking Citizens With Face-Recognizing Smart Glasses
An anonymous reader quotes Reuters:At a highway check point on the outskirts of Beijing, local police are this week testing out a new security tool: smart glasses that can pick up facial features and ...
12:34 am - Sun, March 11, 2018
Slashdot
Linux Developer McHardy Drops GPLv2 'Shake Down' Case
Former Linux developer Patrick McHardy dropped his Gnu General Public License version 2 (GPLv2) violation case against Geniatech in a German court this week. ZDNet explains why some consider this a bi...
11:34 pm - Sat, March 10, 2018
Slashdot
Can Electricity Travel Through Space on Astrophysical Jets?
Slashdot reader Chris Reeve writes: An October 2017 paper titled Electric Currents along Astrophysical Jets reports that "Several researchers have reported direct evidence for large scale electric cur...
10:34 pm - Sat, March 10, 2018
Slashdot
Kansas 'Swat' Perpetrator Is Now Also Wanted in Florida
An anonymous reader writes:Florida police recount how close they were to aresting 25-year-old Tyler Barriss before his fake call to Kansas police led to a fatal shooting. "Panama City Beach police Lt....
09:34 pm - Sat, March 10, 2018
Slashdot
Debian 9.4 Released
An anonymous reader quotes Debian.org:The Debian project is pleased to announce the fourth update of its stable distribution Debian 9 (codename "stretch"). This point release mainly adds corrections f...
08:34 pm - Sat, March 10, 2018
Slashdot
Lawmakers Continue Fighting For Net Neutrality in the US Senate, Courts, and States
Here's the latest developments in the ongoing fight over net neutrality rules: CNET reports that Democrats in the Senate "have been pushing to use the Congressional Review Act to roll back the FCC's r...
07:34 pm - Sat, March 10, 2018
Slashdot
Google Maps Apps Add 'Mario Kart' Feature
An anonymous reader quotes WLWT News:Starting Saturday, "Mario Time" will be available on the Google Maps app for iOS and Android, letting you drive around town with Mario as your guide, cruising the ...
06:34 pm - Sat, March 10, 2018
Slashdot
Massive DDOS Attacks Are Now Targeting Google, Amazon, and the NRA
PC Magazine reports:A new way to amplify DDoS attacks has been spotted harassing Google, Amazon, Pornhub and even the National Rifle Association's main website after striking Github last week. The att...
05:34 pm - Sat, March 10, 2018
Slashdot
SgxSpectre Attack Can Extract Data From Intel SGX Enclaves
An anonymous reader quotes BleepingComputer: A new variation of the Spectre attack has been revealed this week by six scientists from the Ohio State University. Named SgxSpectre, researchers say this ...
04:34 pm - Sat, March 10, 2018
Slashdot
Project Gutenberg Blocks German Users After Outrageous Court Ruling
Slashdot reader David Rothman writes: The oldest public domain publisher in the world, Project Gutenberg, has blocked German users after an outrageous legal ruling saying this American nonprofit must ...
03:34 pm - Sat, March 10, 2018
Slashdot
Elon Musk Changes 'Boring Company' Vision To Reward Cyclists and Pedestrians
"Remember Elon Musk's plan to dig a massive web of traffic-beating tunnels underneath Los Angeles...?" asks CNN. "Now, that plan appears to be getting a huge makeover." An anonymous reader quotes Tech...
01:00 pm - Sat, March 10, 2018
Slashdot
Reddit Admits Russian Trolls Got Into Website During 2016 Election
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VICE News: Reddit says it has identified and removed hundreds of Russian propaganda accounts, a few days after reports revealed that Russian trolls were active...
10:00 am - Sat, March 10, 2018
Slashdot
Scientists Unsure Where Chinese Space Station Will Crash To Earth
In 2016, the Chinese space agency lost control of its Tiangong-1, or Heavenly Palace, spacecraft, five years after it blasted into orbit. Scientists have determined that it will come crashing down to ...
07:00 am - Sat, March 10, 2018
Slashdot
FCC Accuses Stealthy Startup of Launching Rogue Satellites
Back in January, the FCC pulled permission from Silicon Valley startup Swarm Technologies to launch four satellites into space after what it says was an "apparent unauthorized launch." IEEE Spectrum r...
03:30 am - Sat, March 10, 2018
Slashdot
Researchers Discover Colistin-Heteroresistant Germs In the US
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For the first time, researchers have discovered strains of a deadly, multidrug-resistant bacterium that uses a cryptic method to also evade colis...
02:10 am - Sat, March 10, 2018
Slashdot
MIT Plans To Build Nuclear Fusion Plant By 2033
Mallory Locklear reports via Engadget: MIT announced yesterday that it and Commonwealth Fusion Systems -- an MIT spinoff -- are working on a project that aims to make harvesting energy from nuclear fu...
01:30 am - Sat, March 10, 2018
Slashdot
Lenovo Lays Off a Chunk of Its Motorola Smartphone Team
On Friday, Lenovo confirmed layoffs for the Motorola group in Chicago, where the company designs its modular Moto Z smartphones. "In a statement to 9to5Google, Lenovo denied that it was axing 50% of t...
12:50 am - Sat, March 10, 2018
Slashdot
California Bullet Train Costs Soar To $77.3 Billion, Will Take 5 Years Longer To Complete
The California High-Speed Rail Authority announced today that the cost of connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco would total $77.3 billion, an increase of $13 billion from estimates two years ago, an...
12:10 am - Sat, March 10, 2018
Slashdot
Cable Industry Finally Fights Cord Cutting With Fewer Ads
The cable industry is slowly realizing that more advertisements and higher prices aren't the solution to cord cutting. Karl Bode writes via DSLReports: AT&T and Dish have explored offering cheaper...
11:30 pm - Fri, March 9, 2018
Slashdot
'Flippy,' the Fast Food Robot, Turned Off For Being Too Slow
He was supposed to revolutionize a California fast food kitchen, churning out 150 burgers per hour without requiring a paycheck or benefits. But after a single day of working as a cook at a Caliburger...
10:50 pm - Fri, March 9, 2018
Slashdot
Apple Files Patent For a Crumb-Resistant MacBook Keyboard
According to a patent application made public on Thursday, March 8, Apple could be developing a new MacBook keyboard designed to prevent crumbs and dust from getting those super-shallow MacBook keys s...
10:10 pm - Fri, March 9, 2018
Slashdot
Android Beats iOS In Smartphone Loyalty, Study Finds
Android users don't appear to be switching to the iPhone like they used to. According to a new study from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP), Android users have higher loyalty than iOS use...
09:30 pm - Fri, March 9, 2018
Slashdot
YouTube Is Full of Easy-To-Find Neo-Nazi Propaganda
An anonymous reader quotes an exclusive report from Motherboard: Through a software-aided investigation, Motherboard has found that while YouTube has managed to clamp down on Islamic extremists upload...
08:51 pm - Fri, March 9, 2018
Slashdot
FCC's Ajit Pai is Surrounded By a 'Set of People With a Very Traditional Mindset', Says Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Next Monday the web celebrates its 29th birthday. Ahead of it, Sir Tim Berners-Lee spoke with BBC on a wide-range of topics. An excerpt: In Barcelona last week at the Mobile World Congress I heard FCC...
08:10 pm - Fri, March 9, 2018
Slashdot
China's Alibaba is Investing Huge Sums in AI Research and Resources -- and It Is Building Tools To Challenge Google and Amazon
Alibaba is already using AI and machine learning to optimize its supply chain, personalize recommendations, and build products like Tmall Genie, a home device similar to the Amazon Echo. China's two o...
07:37 pm - Fri, March 9, 2018
Slashdot
In a Remarkable Turn of Events, Hackers -- Not Users -- Lost Money in Attempted Cryptocurrency Exchange Heist
The hackers who attempted to hack Binance, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges on the Internet, have ended up losing money in a remarkable turn of events. It all began on Thursday, when thousa...
06:48 pm - Fri, March 9, 2018
Slashdot
Pockets of Water May Lay Deep Below Earth's Surface
sciencehabit writes: Small pockets of water exist deep beneath Earth's surface, according to an analysis of diamonds belched from hundreds of kilometers within our planet. The work, which also identif...
06:08 pm - Fri, March 9, 2018
Slashdot
Documents Prove Local Cops Have Bought Cheap iPhone Cracking Tech
GrayShift is a new company that promises to unlock even iPhones running the latest version of iOS for a relatively cheap price. From a report: In a sign of how hacking technology often trickles down f...
05:28 pm - Fri, March 9, 2018
Slashdot
Downloads of Popular Apps Were Silently Swapped For Spyware in Turkey: Citizen Lab
Matthew Braga, reporting for CBC: Since last fall, Turkish internet users attempting to download one of a handful of popular apps may have been the unwitting targets of a wide-reaching computer survei...
04:45 pm - Fri, March 9, 2018
Slashdot
Sea Level Rise in the SF Bay Area Just Got a Lot More Dire
An anonymous reader writes: San Francisco Bay Area residents have long been aware of the threat that sea level rise poses to their coastal existence -- but things suddenly look a lot more serious. A n...
04:09 pm - Fri, March 9, 2018
Slashdot
Windows 10's Next Update Will Be Called 'Spring Creators Update'
The Verge reports: Microsoft is planning to reuse its "Creators Update" naming for a third Windows 10 update. The software giant has strangely not yet officially named its next Windows 10 update, due ...
03:28 pm - Fri, March 9, 2018
Slashdot
Slashdot Asks: What Are Some Apps and Online Services You Use To Discover, Track and Evaluate Movies, TV Shows, Music and Books?
Earlier this week, news blog Engadget had a post in which the author outlined some of the apps that could help people keep track of TV shows, books, and music habits. A reader, who submitted the story...
02:47 pm - Fri, March 9, 2018
Slashdot
Half of Ransomware Victims Didn't Recover Their Data After Paying the Ransom
An anonymous reader shares a report: A massive survey of nearly 1,200 IT security practitioners and decision makers across 17 countries reveals that half the people who fell victim to ransomware infec...
02:07 pm - Fri, March 9, 2018
Slashdot
Twitter Exploring Letting Everyone Get a Blue Tick For Verification, CEO Jack Dorsey Says
An anonymous reader shares a report: Twitter could one day allow everyone to be verified by one of the company's signature blue ticks, according to CEO Jack Dorsey. In a livestream on Periscope, Dorse...
01:00 pm - Fri, March 9, 2018
Slashdot
Researchers Provide Likely Explanation For the 'Sonic Weapon' Used At the US Embassy In Cuba
An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: Last August, reports emerged that U.S. and Canadian diplomats in Cuba had suffered a host of mysterious ailments. Speculation soon arose that a ...
10:00 am - Fri, March 9, 2018
Slashdot
The Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy Returns With the Original Cast
Jonathan M. Gitlin reports via Ars Technica: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy deserves a special place in the geek pantheon. It's the story of hapless BBC radio editor Arthur Dent, his best friend...
07:00 am - Fri, March 9, 2018
Slashdot
Fake News Spreads Faster Than True News On Twitter -- Thanks To People, Not Bots
A new study shows that people are the prime culprits when it comes to the propagation of misinformation through social networks. Tweets containing falsehoods reach 1,500 people on Twitter six times fa...
03:30 am - Fri, March 9, 2018
Slashdot
132-Year-Old Science Experiment Washes Ashore In Australia
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): A message in a bottle was tossed off the side of a German ship on June 12, 1886, as ...
01:50 am - Fri, March 9, 2018
Slashdot
Florida Lawmakers Approve Year-Round Daylight Saving Time
JustAnotherOldGuy writes: It seems like we're seeing a sudden outbreak of common sense from one of the most unlikely places. Florida might become the third state -- after Hawaii and Arizona -- to be d...
01:10 am - Fri, March 9, 2018
Slashdot
Intel Launches Mainstream Optane SSD 800P Series Based On 3D Xpoint Memory
MojoKid writes: Intel just launched a new family of consumer-targeted Optane solid state drives today, dubbed the Intel Optane SSD 800P. Unlike Intel Optane Memory sticks, which accelerate hybrid stor...
12:30 am - Fri, March 9, 2018
Slashdot
Trump Promises Copyright Crackdown As DoJ Takes Aim At Streaming Pirates
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Yesterday, a panel discussion on the challenges associated with piracy from streaming media boxes took place on Capitol Hill. Hosted by the Infor...
11:50 pm - Thu, March 8, 2018
Slashdot
Windows 10 Is Finally Adding Tabs To File Explorer
Microsoft has released insider preview build 17618 that includes tabs in File Explorer as part of its Sets feature. Bleeping Computer reports: Windows 10 Sets is an upcoming feature where you can grou...
11:10 pm - Thu, March 8, 2018
Slashdot
Qarnot Unveils a Cryptocurrency Heater For Your Home
Qarnot, the French startup known for using Ryzen Pro processors to heat homes and offices for free, is unveiling a new computing heater specifically made for cryptocurrency mining. "The QC1 is a heate...
10:30 pm - Thu, March 8, 2018
Slashdot
Elon Musk Sides With Trump On Trade With China, Citing 25 Percent Import Duty On American Cars
Elon Musk believes China isn't playing fair in the car trade with the U.S. since it puts a 25 percent import duty on American cars, while the U.S. only does 2.5 percent for Chinese cars. "I am against...
10:10 pm - Thu, March 8, 2018
Slashdot
'Personal Drone' Crash Causes 335-Acre Wildfire In Coconino National Forest
McGruber writes: A "personal drone" that crashed and burst into flames was the cause of the Kendrick Fire, a 335-acre fire in the Coconino National Forest in northern Arizona. Coconino National Forest...
09:50 pm - Thu, March 8, 2018
Slashdot
Bay Area Cities Consider Rideshare Tax On Uber, Lyft
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A local city council member is beginning to float the idea of taxing ridehailing companies like Uber and Lyft as a possible way to raise millions...
09:31 pm - Thu, March 8, 2018
Slashdot
Firefox Quantum Leader Takes Over All Mozilla Products
CNET reports: Mozilla launched the faster Quantum version of its Firefox browser last fall in a bid to restore the nonprofit's reach and influence. Now, the leader of that effort has been promoted to ...
09:00 pm - Thu, March 8, 2018
Slashdot
Slack Is Shutting Down Its IRC Gateway
Slack, a team collaboration communication service, has updated its IRC support page to note that it is ending support for IRC on its platform: Unfortunately, support for gateways is ending. Starting o...
08:40 pm - Thu, March 8, 2018
Slashdot
Comcast's Protected Browsing Is Blocking PayPal, Steam and TorrentFreak, Customers Say
Comcast's Xfinity internet customers have been reporting multiple websites, including PayPal, Steam, and TorrentFreak have been getting blocked by the ISP's "protected browsing" setting. From a report...
08:00 pm - Thu, March 8, 2018
Slashdot
Scientists Prove That Truth is No Match For Fiction on Twitter
Researchers find fake news reaches users up to 20 times faster than factual content -- and real users are more likely to spread it than bots. From a report: "Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limpi...
07:20 pm - Thu, March 8, 2018
Slashdot
Can the Most Contentious Piece of the Web Form the Basis of a New Standard? Inside Google's Plan To Make the Whole Web as Fast as AMP
Dieter Bohn, writing for The Verge: In a blog post today, Google is announcing that it's formally embarking on a project to convince the group in charge of web standards to adopt technology inspired b...
06:30 pm - Thu, March 8, 2018
Slashdot
'Iron Man' Director Jon Favreau Will Write And Produce a Live-Action 'Star Wars' TV Series For Disney's New Streaming Service
From a report: Jon Favreau is going from "Avengers" blockbusters to a galaxy far, far away. The director, actor, producer and writer will take on a Star Wars starring role by helming a series destined...
06:00 pm - Thu, March 8, 2018
Slashdot
Businesses Under Pressure To 'Consumerize' Logins
Almost two-thirds (64 percent) of IT leaders say their security teams are considering implementing consumer-grade access to cloud services for employees. From a report: According to the 2018 Identity ...
05:20 pm - Thu, March 8, 2018
Slashdot
Why Humans Learn Faster Than AI
What is it about human learning that allows us to perform so well with relatively little experience? MIT Technology Review: Today we get an answer of sorts thanks to the work of Rachit Dubey and colle...
04:40 pm - Thu, March 8, 2018
Slashdot
Vatican Invites Hackers To Fix Problems, Not Breach Security
From a report: Computer hackers with a heart are descending on the Vatican to help tackle pressing problems particularly dear to Pope Francis, including how to better provide resources for migrants an...
04:00 pm - Thu, March 8, 2018
Slashdot
What Airbnb Did To New York City
An anonymous reader shares a report: There are two kinds of horror stories about Airbnb. When the home-sharing platform first appeared, the initial cautionary tales tended to emphasize extreme guest (...
03:26 pm - Thu, March 8, 2018
Slashdot
Trump's Meeting With The Video Game Industry To Talk Gun Violence Could Get Ugly
Anonymous readers share a report: President Trump is set to pit the video game industry against some of its harshest critics at a White House meeting on Thursday that's designed to explore the link be...
02:40 pm - Thu, March 8, 2018
Slashdot
McAfee Acquires VPN Provider TunnelBear
McAfee announced that it has acquired Canada-based virtual private network (VPN) company TunnelBear. From a report: Founded in 2011, Toronto-based TunnelBear has gained a solid reputation for its fun,...
02:05 pm - Thu, March 8, 2018
Slashdot
Hardcoded Password Found in Cisco Software
Cisco released 22 security advisories yesterday, including two alerts for critical fixes, one of them for a hardcoded password that can give attackers full control over a vulnerable system. From a rep...
01:00 pm - Thu, March 8, 2018
Slashdot
Amazon Launches a Low-Cost Version of Prime For Medicaid Recipients
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Amazon announced this morning it will offer a low-cost version of its Prime membership program to qualifying recipients of Medicaid. The program wi...
10:00 am - Thu, March 8, 2018
Slashdot
Adult Human Brains Do Not Produce New Neurons, Study Suggests
Rich Haridy reports via New Atlas: New research from scientists at UC San Francisco is challenging half a century of conventional wisdom by suggesting the human brain may cease producing new neurons b...
07:00 am - Thu, March 8, 2018
Slashdot
NASA Spacecraft Reveals Jupiter's Interior In Unprecedented Detail
NASA's Juno spacecraft has revealed that Jupiter's iconic striped bands, caused by immensely powerful winds, extend to a depth of about 3,000km below the surface. The findings also provide a partial a...
03:30 am - Thu, March 8, 2018
Slashdot
Most Americans Think AI Will Destroy Other People's Jobs, Not Theirs
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of U.S. adults believe artificial intelligence will "eliminate more jobs than it creates," according to a Gallup ...
01:30 am - Thu, March 8, 2018
Slashdot
Samsung's New TVs Are Almost Invisible
Mike Murphy reports via Quartz of Samsung's new top-of-the-line televisions announced at an event in New York today: Samsung's new QLED line of 4K TVs features a technology the company is calling "Amb...
12:50 am - Thu, March 8, 2018
Slashdot
California Becomes 18th State To Consider Right To Repair Legislation
Jason Koebler shares a report from Motherboard: The right to repair battle has come to Silicon Valley's home state: Wednesday, a state assembly member announced that California would become the 18th s...
12:10 am - Thu, March 8, 2018
Slashdot
Oculus Rift Headsets Are Offline Following a Software Error
Polygon reports that Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets around the world are experiencing an outage. The outage appears to be a result of an expired security certificate. "That certificate has expir...
11:30 pm - Wed, March 7, 2018
Slashdot
Snap Is Laying Off Around 100 Engineers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Snap is laying off about 100 engineers -- nearly 10 percent of the team -- CNBC has learned. The company has seen smaller rounds of layoffs in recent mon...
10:50 pm - Wed, March 7, 2018
Slashdot
Self-Driving Cars Are Being Attacked By Angry Californians
According to incident reports collected by the California department of motor vehicles, some Californians are purposely colliding with self-driving cars. The Guardian reports: On January 10, a pedestr...
10:10 pm - Wed, March 7, 2018
Slashdot
Android P Drops Support For Nexus Phones, Pixel Tablet
Google has launched the first developer preview of Android P, the company's new mobile operating system that brings new features and improvements over Android Oreo. Unfortunately, developers will only...
09:30 pm - Wed, March 7, 2018
Slashdot
FBI Again Calls For Magical Solution To Break Into Encrypted Phones
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: FBI Director Christopher Wray again has called for a solution to what the bureau calls the "Going Dark" problem, the idea that the prevalence of ...
08:50 pm - Wed, March 7, 2018
Slashdot
The Future of 'Fab Lab' Fabrication
An anonymous reader shares a report: In 1965, tech pioneer Gordon Moore noticed a trend: The number of components on an integrated circuit was doubling every year. Long story short: The world of bits ...
08:10 pm - Wed, March 7, 2018
Slashdot
Next Big Windows Update Will Bring Hardware-Accelerated AI
Mary Jo Foley, writing for ZDNet: Every tech vendor these days is quick to slap the AI label on products and services. Up until today, I thought Microsoft had done an admirable job in refraining from ...
07:23 pm - Wed, March 7, 2018
Slashdot
Amazon Admits Its AI Alexa is Creepily Laughing at People
Over the past few days, users with Alexa-enabled devices have reported hearing strange, unprompted laughter. The Verge: Amazon responded to the creepiness in a statement to The Verge, saying, "We're a...
06:52 pm - Wed, March 7, 2018
Slashdot
Bitcoin Dives After SEC Says Crypto Platforms Must Be Registered
Bitcoin slumped after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reiterated that many online trading platforms for digital assets should register with the agency as exchanges. From a report: The larg...
06:10 pm - Wed, March 7, 2018
Slashdot
Google Launches First Android P Developer Preview
Google today launched the first Android P developer preview, available for download now at developer.android.com. From a report: The preview includes an updated SDK with system images for the Pixel, P...
05:27 pm - Wed, March 7, 2018
Slashdot
Time To Bring Back the Software User Conference
Holger Mueller, writing for ZDNet (condensed for space): Every tech company has a user conference these days. And is it just me, or are they all starting to feel the exact same? Same announcements, sa...
04:45 pm - Wed, March 7, 2018
Slashdot
Leaked Files Show How the NSA Tracks Other Countries' Hackers
An analysis of leaked tools believed to have been developed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) gives us a glimpse into the methods used by the organization to detect the presence of other stat...
04:05 pm - Wed, March 7, 2018
Slashdot
Researchers Bypassed Windows Password Locks With Cortana Voice Commands
Two independent Israeli researchers found a way for an attacker to bypass the lock protection on Windows machines and install malware by using voice commands directed at Cortana, the multi-language, v...
03:25 pm - Wed, March 7, 2018
Slashdot
Ask Slashdot: Should We Worry Microsoft Will 'Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish' Linux?
BrianFagioli writes: While there is no proof that anything nefarious is afoot, it does feel like maybe the Windows-maker is hijacking the Linux movement a bit by serving distros in its store. I hope t...
02:51 pm - Wed, March 7, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Confirms Windows 10 'S Mode'
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft head honcho Joe Belfiore confirmed today that Windows 10 S won't be a separate Windows version anymore and that Microsoft will ship an "S Mode" with Wind...
02:05 pm - Wed, March 7, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook's VPN Service Onavo Protect Collects Personal Data -- Even When It's Switched Off
Security researcher Will Strafach took a look at Onavo Protect, a newly released VPN service from Facebook: I found that Onavo Protect uses a Packet Tunnel Provider app extension, which should consist...
01:00 pm - Wed, March 7, 2018
Slashdot
Chrome 65 Arrives With Material Design Extensions Page, New Developer Features
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Google today launched Chrome 65 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Additions in this release include Material Design changes and new developer ...
12:00 pm - Wed, March 7, 2018
Slashdot
Mercedes' Futuristic Headlights Shine Warning Symbols On the Road
In its new high-end vehicles, Daimler says it will introduce programmable, "million-pixel" headlights that project warning symbols and driving tips on the road. "The technology, which Daimler calls Di...
09:47 am - Wed, March 7, 2018
Slashdot
Sri Lanka Blocks Facebook, Instagram To Prevent Spread of Hate Speech
Sri Lanka has blocked social media websites Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp to avoid the spread of hate speech in the country, local media reported on Wednesday. From the report: Even though there is...
07:00 am - Wed, March 7, 2018
Slashdot
A Short Documentary About 81-Year-Old Commodore Amiga Artist, Programmer Samia Halaby
erickhill shares a short documentary about Samia Halaby, an 81-year-old Commodore Amiga artist and programmer: Samia Halaby is a world renowned painter who purchased a Commodore Amiga 1000 in 1985 at ...
03:30 am - Wed, March 7, 2018
Slashdot
US Calls Broadcom's Bid For Qualcomm a National Security Risk
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): The United States government said Broadcom's proposed acquisition of rival chipmaker...
01:40 am - Wed, March 7, 2018
Slashdot
Modders Get Intel's Coffee Lake CPUs To Run On Incompatible Motherboards
Paul Lilly reports via PC Gamer: It took some time and a whole lot of tweaking, but modders have finally figured out a way to get Intel's Coffee Lake processors running on older motherboards based on ...
01:00 am - Wed, March 7, 2018
Slashdot
Uber Self-Driving Trucks Are Now Moving Cargo For Uber Freight Customers
Uber's autonomous trucks are now being put to work via Uber Freight, Uber's commercial cargo shipping on-demand app. "The first runs are being done in Arizona, with regular hauls operating with both h...
12:20 am - Wed, March 7, 2018
Slashdot
FBI Paid Geek Squad Repair Staff As Informants
According to newly released documents by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, federal agents would pay Geek Squad employees to flag illegal materials on devices sent in by customers for repairs. "The r...
11:40 pm - Tue, March 6, 2018
Slashdot
Google Lens Is Coming To All Android Phones Running Google Photos
Google announced that Google Lens, a machine learning-powered image analyzer, will be rolling out to more Android devices and make an appearance on iOS. "This means users will be able to scan things t...
10:53 pm - Tue, March 6, 2018
Slashdot
Coinbase Announces Cryptocurrency-Focused Index Fund
In an interview with CNBC on its "Fast Money" segment, Coinbase's President and COO Asiff Hirji said the digital-currency platform would launch a cryptocurrency-focused index fund. Details are scarce ...
10:20 pm - Tue, March 6, 2018
Slashdot
Researcher Admits Study That Claimed Uber Drivers Earn $3.37 An Hour Was Not Correct
Last week, an MIT study using data from more than 1,100 Uber and Lyft drivers concluded they're earning a median pretax profit of just $3.37 per hour. Uber was less than pleased by their findings and ...
09:40 pm - Tue, March 6, 2018
Slashdot
Google Is Selling Off Zagat
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Seven years after picking up Zagat for $151 million, Google is selling off the perennial restaurant recommendation service. The New York Times is r...
08:40 pm - Tue, March 6, 2018
Slashdot
Spyware Seller Shuts Down After Hack
An anonymous reader writes: Retina-X, a company that sells spyware or 'stalkerware' for everyday users has ceased operations after yet another hack. Retina-X sells a handful of apps that monitor compu...
08:20 pm - Tue, March 6, 2018
Slashdot
Uber Spent $10.7 Billion in Nine Years. Does It Have Enough to Show for It?
An anonymous reader shares a report: What makes Uber Technologies the most valuable venture-backed technology company in the world? Investors say size and growth. The business is transforming global t...
07:40 pm - Tue, March 6, 2018
Slashdot
Leaked Apple Email Hints at the Possible End of iTunes: Report
An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple could kill off iTunes in the near future, a new report suggests. It cites an email that Apple reportedly wrote to people in the music industry recently, anno...
07:00 pm - Tue, March 6, 2018
Slashdot
One Single Malicious Vehicle Can Block 'Smart' Street Intersections In the US
An anonymous reader shares a BleepingComputer report: Academics from the University of Michigan have shown that one single malicious car could trick US-based smart traffic control systems into believi...
06:20 pm - Tue, March 6, 2018
Slashdot
BlackBerry Files Patent Infringement Lawsuit Against Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram
BlackBerry on Tuesday filed patent infringement lawsuit against Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram in Los Angeles Federal court. In a statement, BlackBerry said: We have a lot of respect for Facebook an...
05:45 pm - Tue, March 6, 2018
Slashdot
Uber Booked Half the Theater For the Opening Night of a Play Inspired By the Scandals that Took Down Former CEO Travis Kalanick
Uber booked more than half of the seats available for the London premiere of "Brilliant Jerks," a satirical play inspired by the car-ride startup's numerous scandals, and featuring a character similar...
05:20 pm - Tue, March 6, 2018
Slashdot
'Repeatable Sanitization' is a Feature of PCs Now
HP has announced a trio of slightly-odd products intended for use in hospitals. From a report: The new HP EliteOne 800 G4 23.8 Healthcare Edition All-in-One PC and HP EliteBook 840 G5 Healthcare Editi...
04:41 pm - Tue, March 6, 2018
Slashdot
Silicon Valley Is Over, Says Silicon Valley
An anonymous reader shares a New York Times report: In recent months, a growing number of tech leaders have been flirting with the idea of leaving Silicon Valley. Some cite the exorbitant cost of livi...
03:38 pm - Tue, March 6, 2018
Slashdot
Google Is Helping the Pentagon Build AI for Drones
Google has partnered with the United States Department of Defense to help the agency develop artificial intelligence for analyzing drone footage, a move that set off a firestorm among employees of the...
03:20 pm - Tue, March 6, 2018
Slashdot
The Slow Death of the Internet Cookie
Sara Fischer, writing for Axios: Over 60% of marketers believe they will no longer need to rely on tracking cookies, a 20-year-old desktop-based technology, for the majority of their digital marketing...
02:41 pm - Tue, March 6, 2018
Slashdot
WordPress Now Powers 30% of Websites
WordPress now powers 30 percent of the web, according to data from web technology survey firm W3Techs. From a report: This represents a 5 percentage point increase in nearly two and a half years, afte...
02:00 pm - Tue, March 6, 2018
Slashdot
Kali Linux For WSL Now Available in the Windows Store
You can now download and install Kali Linux via the Windows Store. From a blog post on MSDN: Our community expressed great interest in bringing Kali Linux to WSL in response to a blog post on Kali Lin...
01:00 pm - Tue, March 6, 2018
Slashdot
Chrome On Windows Ditches Microsoft's Compiler, Now Uses Clang
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google's Chrome browser is now built using the Clang compiler on Windows. Previously built using the Microsoft C++ compiler, Google is now using ...
10:00 am - Tue, March 6, 2018
Slashdot
Flippy the Robot Takes Over Burger Duties At California Restaurant
Chain eatery CaliBurger announced today that its location in Pasadena is the first to employ Flippy, a burger-flipping robot developed by Miso Robotics. The robot is able to take over the cooking duti...
07:00 am - Tue, March 6, 2018
Slashdot
MoviePass CEO Proudly Says App Tracks Your Location Before, After Movies
MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe told an audience at a Hollywood event last Friday that the app tracks moviegoers' locations before and after each show they watch. "We get an enormous amount of information," ...
03:30 am - Tue, March 6, 2018
Slashdot
Europe Plans Special Tax For Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Bruno Le Maire, France's minister for the economy, has revealed that a plan to levy a special tax on Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon will soo...
01:30 am - Tue, March 6, 2018
Slashdot
Spotify Is Cracking Down On Users Pirating Premium-Like Service
People who access Spotify using hacked apps that remove some of the restrictions placed on free accounts are receiving warning emails from the company. Noting that "abnormal activity" has been observe...
12:50 am - Tue, March 6, 2018
Slashdot
Frequency Deviations In Continental Europe Are Causing Electric Clocks To Run Behind By 5 Minutes
elgatozorbas shares a short note from the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E): Apparently the Continental European Power System has been off since mid-January, ...
12:10 am - Tue, March 6, 2018
Slashdot
Apple Is Reportedly Making Its Own High-End Noise-Cancelling Headphones
Apple is planning to push into the high-end audio market with the launch of noise-cancelling, over-ear headphones. The cans are expected to launch at the end of this year and will rival headsets from ...
11:30 pm - Mon, March 5, 2018
Slashdot
Google Unveils 72-Qubit Quantum Computer With Low Error Rates
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: Google announced a 72-qubit universal quantum computer that promises the same low error rates the company saw in its first 9-qubit quantum comp...
10:50 pm - Mon, March 5, 2018
Slashdot
Oculus Rift Is Now the Most Popular VR Headset On Steam
The Oculus Rift has overtaken the HTC Vive on the monthly Steam hardware survey for the first time since the launch of both headsets in early 2016. VentureBeat reports: The survey is entirely optional...
10:10 pm - Mon, March 5, 2018
Slashdot
Rhode Island Bill Would Impose Fee For Accessing Online Porn
If a recently introduced bill passes the General Assembly this session, Rhode Island residents will have to pay a $20 fee to access sexually explicit content online. The bill, introduced by Sen. Frank...
09:33 pm - Mon, March 5, 2018
Slashdot
Six Tech Companies Filing Net Neutrality Lawsuit
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: Six technology companies, including Kickstarter, Foursquare and Etsy, have launched a lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in ...
08:30 pm - Mon, March 5, 2018
Slashdot
Ubisoft is Using AI To Catch Bugs in Games Before Devs Make Them
AI has a new task: helping to keep the bugs out of video games. From a report: At the recent Ubisoft Developer Conference in Montreal, the French gaming company unveiled a new AI assistant for its dev...
07:48 pm - Mon, March 5, 2018
Slashdot
Remote Work is Going To Keep Increasing, Study Says
Freelancing website Upwork has published its annual Future Workforce Report, which explores hiring behaviors of over 1,000 U.S. managers. It finds: As companies struggle to fill the skills gap, they'r...
07:12 pm - Mon, March 5, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft To Offer Governments Local Version of Azure Cloud Service
Microsoft on Monday said it will soon make it possible for government clients to run its cloud technology on their own servers as part of a concerted effort to make Azure more appealing to local and f...
06:35 pm - Mon, March 5, 2018
Slashdot
The Oscar-Winning Special Effects of Blade Runner 2049
On Sunday, 'Blade Runner 2049' won the Oscar for the movie with the best visual effects. BBC spoke to Richard Hoover, the visual effects supervisor at Framestore which was one of the companies respons...
05:50 pm - Mon, March 5, 2018
Slashdot
Mysterious $15,000 'GrayKey' Promises To Unlock iPhone X For The Feds
Thomas Fox-Brewster, reporting for Forbes: Just a week after Forbes reported on the claim of Israeli U.S. government manufacturer Cellebrite that it could unlock the latest Apple iPhone models, anothe...
05:20 pm - Mon, March 5, 2018
Slashdot
Do Neural Nets Dream of Electric Sheep?
An anonymous reader shares a post: If you've been on the internet today, you've probably interacted with a neural network. They're a type of machine learning algorithm that's used for everything from ...
04:32 pm - Mon, March 5, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Asks Users: Should We Allow Men To Ask Children For Sexual Images?
Alex Hern, writing for The Guardian: Facebook has admitted it was a "mistake" to ask users whether paedophiles requesting sexual pictures from children should be allowed on its website. On Sunday, the...
03:39 pm - Mon, March 5, 2018
Slashdot
China's Xiaomi Confirms It Will Enter US Smartphone Market By the End of This Year or Early Next Year
Sensing an opening, Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi says it plans to enter the U.S. smartphone market in late 2018 or 2019. From a report: The news comes just several weeks after rival Huawei, which a...
02:51 pm - Mon, March 5, 2018
Slashdot
Windows Phone 8.1 Users Are Having Trouble Downloading Apps From the Store
An anonymous reader shares a report: While Microsoft ended mainstream support for Windows Phone 8.1 more than six months ago, there are some users that still utilize the platform as their daily driver...
02:00 pm - Mon, March 5, 2018
Slashdot
Tencent's WeChat Hits 1 Billion Milestone as Lunar New Year Boosts Monthly Active Users
WeChat hit the milestone of one billion monthly active users during the Lunar New Year in February, a "remarkable number" according to Tencent Holdings chief executive Pony Ma Huateng who disclosed th...
01:13 pm - Mon, March 5, 2018
Slashdot
Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption We Were Promised
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Some eight years on and Google Fiber's ambitions are just a pale echo of the disruptive potential originally proclaimed by the company. While Goog...
10:10 am - Mon, March 5, 2018
Slashdot
Levi Strauss Replaces Human Sanding With Automated Lasers
_Sharp'r_ writes: Stressing jeans used to require 300 to 400 workers with sandpaper all day. Now Levi Strauss does a better job by shooting their new jeans with computer-guided lasers in intricate pat...
07:07 am - Mon, March 5, 2018
Slashdot
Thieves Steal 600 Powerful Bitcoin-Mining Computers In Iceland
The Associated Press reports of a Bitcoin heist in Iceland where thieves stole some 600 computers used to "mine" bitcoin and other virtual currencies. "Some 11 people were arrested, including a securi...
04:04 am - Mon, March 5, 2018
Slashdot
New LTE Attacks Can Snoop On Messages, Track Locations, and Spoof Emergency Alerts
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: A slew of newly discovered vulnerabilities can wreak havoc on 4G LTE network users by eavesdropping on phone calls and text messages, knocking devices o...
02:02 am - Mon, March 5, 2018
Slashdot
Ask Slashdot: Best To-Do/Task List Software?
Albanach writes: Despite searching, I have not identified a good solution for managing to-do lists, a problem that can't be unique or unusual. For a variety of reasons, I need something I host myself,...
11:23 pm - Sun, March 4, 2018
Slashdot
GitHub Survived the Biggest DDoS Attack Ever Recorded
A 1.35 terabit-per-second DDoS attack hit GitHub all at once last Wednesday. "It was the most powerful distributed denial of service attack recorded to date -- and it used an increasingly popular DDoS...
10:17 pm - Sun, March 4, 2018
Slashdot
Bad iPhone Notches Are Happening To Good Android Phones
The Verge's Vlad Savov argues that Android smartphone manufacturers are copying the iPhone's design (specifically, the iPhone X's notch) with more speed and cynicism than ever before: I've been coming...
09:11 pm - Sun, March 4, 2018
Slashdot
Google's Slack Competitor 'Hangouts Chat' Comes Out of Beta
Frederic Lardinois reports via TechCrunch: Hangouts Chat, Google's take on modern workplace communication, is now generally available and is becoming a core part of G Suite. Hangouts Chat was first an...
07:09 pm - Sun, March 4, 2018
Slashdot
Uber Challenges Study Suggesting Its Drivers Earn $3.37 Per Hour
An MIT study using data from more than 1,100 Uber and Lyft drivers concluded they're earning a median pretax profit of just $3.37 per hour. But now Reuters reports:Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowsha...
06:08 pm - Sun, March 4, 2018
Slashdot
Diabetes Is Actually Five Separate Diseases, Research Suggests
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Scientists say diabetes is five separate diseases, and treatment could be tailored to each form. Diabetes, or uncontrolled blood sugar levels, is norm...
05:07 pm - Sun, March 4, 2018
Slashdot
Apple To Release a Cheaper MacBook Air Later This Year
According to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities, Apple doesn't appear to be axing its MacBook Air line, despite it being on the market for ten years. Kuo says Apple is planning to release a ...
04:06 pm - Sun, March 4, 2018
Slashdot
YouTube Hiring For Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Men, Lawsuit Says
Kirsten Grind and Douglas MacMillan report via The Wall Street Journal (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): YouTube last year stopped hiring white and Asian males for technical posi...
03:05 pm - Sun, March 4, 2018
Slashdot
Australia Considers Making It Illegal For ISPs To Advertise Inflated Speeds
The Australian government is currently considering a bill that would make it illegal for internet service providers to exaggerate speeds, or else face a fine of up to $1 million. "One constituent says...
02:04 pm - Sun, March 4, 2018
Slashdot
Amazon's Jeff Bezos Called Out On Counterfeit Products Problem
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Here's the scenario. A small company designs and creates a product and puts it up on Amazon. Things go well. People really like it. They post hundreds of...
11:52 am - Sun, March 4, 2018
Slashdot
Videogame Lobbyists Join Scientists To Fight 'Gaming Disorder' Classification
Remember when the World Health Organization moved to define a new disease called "gaming disorder"? An anonymous reader quotes Motherboard:Multiple video game lobbying groups from around the world hav...
08:52 am - Sun, March 4, 2018
Slashdot
2M Americans Lost Power After 'Bomb Cyclone'
An anonymous reader quotes the Associated Press:Tens of thousands of utility workers in the Northeast raced to restore power to more than 1.5 million homes and businesses just days after a powerful no...
05:54 am - Sun, March 4, 2018
Slashdot
23,000 HTTPS Certs Axed After CEO Emails Private Keys
An anonymous reader quotes Ars Technica:A major dust-up on an Internet discussion forum is touching off troubling questions about the security of some browser-trusted HTTPS certificates when it reveal...
04:29 am - Sun, March 4, 2018
Slashdot
Slashdot Outage Update
Obviously Slashdot has had some issues the past couple days. For those wondering, we inherited an aging hardware setup in the acquisition that was located physically far away from us. We made a big in...
04:08 am - Sun, March 4, 2018
Slashdot
Amazon Will Soon Stop Selling Google's 'Nest' Smart Home Products
An anonymous reader quotes The Verge: Nest products won't be sold by Amazon.com any longer once current stock runs out, according to a report from Business Insider. Amazon last year declined to offer ...
03:08 am - Sun, March 4, 2018
Slashdot
'Java EE' Has Been Renamed 'Jakarta EE'
An anonymous reader quotes i-Programmer:The results are in for the vote on the new name for Java Enterprise Edition, and unsurprisingly the voters have chosen Jakarta EE. The renaming has to happen be...
01:14 am - Sun, March 4, 2018
Slashdot
Playboy Drops Its Copyright Case Against Boing Boing
An anonymous reader quotes the EFF:Playboy Entertainment has given up on its lawsuit against Happy Mutants, LLC, the company behind Boing Boing. Earlier this month, a federal court dismissed Playboy's...
08:45 pm - Thu, March 1, 2018
Slashdot
EU Warns Tech Giants To Remove Terror Content in 1 Hour -- or Else
The European Union issued internet giants an ultimatum to remove illegal online terrorist content within an hour, or risk facing new EU-wide laws. From a report: The European Commission on Thursday is...
08:05 pm - Thu, March 1, 2018
Slashdot
Twitter Asks For Help Fixing Its Toxicity Problem
Engadget: Twitter has come under a lot of fire in recent years for issues ranging from not doing enough to stop harassment on its platform to allowing foreign actors to sow political discord. In the p...
07:25 pm - Thu, March 1, 2018
Slashdot
Stars Billions Of Years Old Drop Big Clue To Early Universe
Astronomers have picked up a radio signal from the moment the lights went on in the universe billions of years ago, and they've discovered some surprises embedded in it. No, not aliens, but potential ...
06:45 pm - Thu, March 1, 2018
Slashdot
Snap Said To Skip Bonuses, Combat Morale Slump After Rough Year
An anonymous reader shares a report: On Wednesday, Snap (parent company of messaging service Snapchat) sent employees a survey asking a broad set of questions to understand what they're happy about, w...
06:25 pm - Thu, March 1, 2018
Slashdot
SEC Reportedly Subpoenas Companies and Advisers Over ICOs
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has issued subpoenas and information requests to "scores" of companies and advisors involved with initial coin offerings (ICOs) ...
05:45 pm - Thu, March 1, 2018
Slashdot
Equifax Identifies Additional 2.4 Million Customers Hit By Data Breach
Credit score giant Equifax said on Thursday it had identified another 2.4 million U.S. consumers whose names and driver's license information were stolen in a data breach last year that affected half ...
05:05 pm - Thu, March 1, 2018
Slashdot
Your Love of Your Old Smartphone Is a Problem for Apple and Samsung
The smartphone industry has a culprit to blame for slumping sales: Its old devices remain too popular. From a report: Flashy phones of yesteryear, particularly Apple's iPhones and Samsung's Galaxy S h...
02:40 pm - Thu, March 1, 2018
Slashdot
Desktop PC Shipments Dip Below 100m/Year
Desktop PC shipments dipped below 100 million in 2017 and there's worse to come across the personal computing device market according to analyst firm IDC. From a report: The company on Wednesday publi...
02:00 pm - Thu, March 1, 2018
Slashdot
Best Buy To Close All 250 of Its Smaller, Mobile Phone Stores
Best Buy is planning to close all of its roughly 250 smaller-format mobile phone stores, CEO Hubert Joly said to employees Wednesday in an internal memo, which was reviewed by CNBC. From a report: The...
12:00 pm - Thu, March 1, 2018
Slashdot
AI Cheats at Old Atari Games By Finding Unknown Bugs in the Code
An anonymous reader shares a report: AI research and video games are a match made in heaven. Researchers get a ready-made virtual environment with predefined goals they can control completely, and the...
08:50 am - Thu, March 1, 2018
Slashdot
Even With Double the Subscribers, Spotify Says Apple Will Always Have an Edge Owning the App Store
On Wednesday, Spotify filed for a direct listing in the U.S., sidestepping the traditional IPO process, and now we're starting to see some of the true financial guts of the company -- and some of the ...
01:40 am - Thu, March 1, 2018
Slashdot
YouTube's New Moderators Mistakenly Pull Right-Wing Channels
In December, said it would assign more than 10,000 people to moderate content in an attempt to curb its child exploitation problem. Today, Bloomberg reports that those new moderators mistakenly remove...
01:00 am - Thu, March 1, 2018
Slashdot
Germany Says Government Network Was Breached
An anonymous reader shares a report from The Wall Street Journal (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): German authorities said on Wednesday they were investigating a security breach ...
06:50 pm - Wed, February 28, 2018
Slashdot
AI Will Create New Jobs But Skills Must Shift, Say Tech Giants
AI will create more jobs than it destroys was the not-so-subtle rebuttal from tech giants to growing concern over the impact of automation technologies on employment. Execs from Google, IBM and Salesf...
06:08 pm - Wed, February 28, 2018
Slashdot
US Response 'Hasn't Changed The Calculus' Of Russian Interference, NSA Chief Says
An anonymous reader shares an NPR report: The admiral in charge of both the nation's top electronic spying agency and the Pentagon's cybersecurity operations would seem a logical point man for counter...
05:26 pm - Wed, February 28, 2018
Slashdot
End of Flash? Its Usage Among Chrome Users Has Declined From 80% in 2014 to Under 8% as of Early 2018
An anonymous reader writes: The percentage of daily Chrome users who've loaded at least one page containing Flash content per day has gone down from around 80% in 2014 to under 8% in early 2018. These...
04:45 pm - Wed, February 28, 2018
Slashdot
MPAA Wants Filmmakers To Pay Licenses, Not Rip Blu-rays
An anonymous reader writes: Late last year several filmmaker groups asked the US Copyright Office to lift some of the current DMCA circumvention restrictions, so they can rip and use clips from Blu-ra...
04:05 pm - Wed, February 28, 2018
Slashdot
China Bans Letter N From Internet as Xi Jinping Extends Grip on Power
Speaking of things the Chinese government has been censoring in the country, The Guardian reports: It is the 14th letter in the English alphabet and, in Scrabble, the springboard for more than 600 8-l...
03:25 pm - Wed, February 28, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Rolls Out Job Posts To Become the Blue-Collar LinkedIn
An anonymous reader shares a report: LinkedIn wasn't built for low-skilled job seekers, so Facebook is barging in. Today Facebook is rolling out job posts to 40 more countries to make itself more mean...
02:50 pm - Wed, February 28, 2018
Slashdot
Sega Cancels Yakuza 6 Song of Life Free Demo After Gamers Unlocked Full Game
Sega pulled the highly anticipated "Yakuza 6: The Song of Life" demo this week from the PlayStation Store after discovering some players had inadvertently gained access to the full game using the demo...
02:00 pm - Wed, February 28, 2018
Slashdot
Passengers Who Call Uber Instead Of An Ambulance Put Drivers At Risk
Sick people are increasingly using ride-hail to get to the emergency room, putting drivers in an uncomfortable position and a potentially tricky legal bind, BuzzFeed News reports. From the report: Mik...
01:00 pm - Wed, February 28, 2018
Slashdot
China Censors Social Media Responses To Proposal To Abolish Presidential Terms
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Negative social media reactions in China toward the government's interest in abolishing presidential term limits have sparked a crackdown on memes s...
10:00 am - Wed, February 28, 2018
Slashdot
IBM's Watson Is Going To Space
Yesterday, IBM announced it would be providing the AI brain for a robot being built by Airbus to accompany astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS). "The robot, which looks like a flyin...
07:00 am - Wed, February 28, 2018
Slashdot
Scientists Find Life In 'Mars-Like' Chilean Desert
An anonymous reader writes: In 1938, CBS radio aired Orson Welles' dramatization of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds ; the broadcast was livened up by periodic "news bulletins" reporting strange acti...
03:30 am - Wed, February 28, 2018
Slashdot
US House Passes Bill To Penalize Websites For Sex Trafficking
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Thomson Reuters Foundation News: The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed legislation to make it easier to penalize operators of webs...
01:40 am - Wed, February 28, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Silently Enables Facial Recognition Abilities For Users Outside EU, Canada
Facebook is now informing users around the world that it's rolling out facial recognition features. Users in the European Union and Canada will not be notified because laws restrict this type of activ...
01:00 am - Wed, February 28, 2018
Slashdot
Nokia, Vodafone To Bring 4G To the Moon
According to Reuters, the moon will get its first mobile phone network next year, enabling high-definition streaming from the landscape back to earth. "Vodafone Germany, network equipment maker Nokia ...
12:20 am - Wed, February 28, 2018
Slashdot
Amazon Buys Smart Doorbell Maker Ring For a Reported $1 Billion
hyperclocker shares a report from CNBC: Amazon is buying smart doorbell maker Ring, a deal that will allow the company to expand its home security and in-house delivery services. In an email statement...