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11:00 pm - Sun, April 29, 2018
Slashdot
Great Barrier Reef Gets $379 Million Boost After Coral Dies Off
The Great Barrier Reef is being given a $379 million boost by Australia in the battle to save the world's largest living structure as it faces mounting challenges such as climate change, agricultural ...
10:05 pm - Sun, April 29, 2018
Slashdot
Man Sues Nation For Allegedly Seizing France.com, a Domain He Has Owned For Over 20 Years
A French-born American has now sued his home country because, he claims, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has illegally seized a domain that he's owned since 1994: France.com. From a report: In the mid...
09:05 pm - Sun, April 29, 2018
Slashdot
GPU Prices Are Falling
An anonymous reader shares a report: If you were looking for a new graphics card for your PC over the last year, your search probably ended with you giving up and slinging some cusses at cryptocurrenc...
08:05 pm - Sun, April 29, 2018
Slashdot
Google Cofounder Sergey Brin Warns of AI's Dark Side
Google co-founder Sergey Brin has warned that the current boom in artificial intelligence has created a "technology renaissance" that contains many potential threats. In the company's annual Founders'...
07:10 pm - Sun, April 29, 2018
Slashdot
Movements of Pedestrians and Vehicles in Inner-city Liverpool To Be Captured by Cameras and Smartphones To Help Local Council Map Potential Tweaks To Streets
Jacob Saulwick, reporting for The Sydney Morning Herald: The movement of pedestrians and vehicles in inner-city Liverpool will be captured by upgraded CCTV cameras and smartphones. The project, part-f...
06:10 pm - Sun, April 29, 2018
Slashdot
Blue Origin Launches Its First Test Flight of 2018
After several delays on Sunday morning, a Blue Origin New Shepard rocket blasted off from the west Texas desert just after noon Central Daylight Time, sending a crew capsule carrying a dummy named "Ma...
05:21 pm - Sun, April 29, 2018
Slashdot
Sprint, T-Mobile Agree To Combine in a $26.5 Billion Merger
T-Mobile and Sprint said on Sunday that they have agreed to combine in a $26.5 billion merger, creating a wireless giant to compete against industry leaders AT&T and Verizon. From a report: Deutsc...
05:05 pm - Sun, April 29, 2018
Slashdot
North Korea's Leader Kim Jong-un Says He'll Give Up Weapons if US Promises Not to Invade
Several readers have shared a report: North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, told President Moon Jae-in of South Korea when they met that he would abandon his nuclear weapons if the United States would ag...
04:05 pm - Sun, April 29, 2018
Slashdot
A Mass of Copyrighted Works Will Soon Enter the Public Domain
For the first time in two decades, a huge number of books, films, and other works will escape U.S. copyright law. From a report: The Great American Novel enters the public domain on January 1, 2019 --...
03:10 pm - Sun, April 29, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Attempts To Spin Its Role in Counterfeiting Case
Eric Lundgren, who has spent his life working on e-waste recycling programs, was arrested and charged with "counterfeiting" Microsoft restore discs earlier this week, part of a controversial, years-lo...
02:00 pm - Sun, April 29, 2018
Slashdot
Foxconn Will Drain 7 Million Gallons of Water Per Day From Lake Michigan to Make LCD Screens
Earlier this week, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources granted permission to Taiwanese tech manufacturer Foxconn, best known for assembling Apple's iPhones, to siphon off seven million gallo...
11:34 am - Sun, April 29, 2018
Slashdot
Can A New HIV Drug Kill The Virus That Causes AIDS?
"A team led by scientists from the University of Hong Kong has developed a new antibody drug that will not only protect people from contracting HIV but also serve as a long-acting treatment for the vi...
07:34 am - Sun, April 29, 2018
Slashdot
The Pentagon's Ray Gun Can Stall Cars
john of sparta quotes Defense One: The Defense Department's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program, or JNLWD, is pushing ahead with a new direct energy weapon that uses high-powered microwaves to stop cars ...
03:34 am - Sun, April 29, 2018
Slashdot
New Book Describes 'Bluffing' Programmers in Silicon Valley
Long-time Slashdot reader Martin S. pointed us to this an excerpt from the new book Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley by Portland-based investigator reporter C...
01:34 am - Sun, April 29, 2018
Slashdot
Can We Fight Climate Change With Carbon-Absorbing Rocks?
The New York Times reports on rocks in the country of Oman that react naturally with carbon dioxide, turning it into stone.Scientists say that if this natural process, called carbon mineralization, co...
11:34 pm - Sat, April 28, 2018
Slashdot
Oracle Sets End Date for Business Java 8 Updates
An anonymous reader quotes InfoWorld:Further clarifying its ongoing support plans for Java SE 8, Oracle will require businesses to have a commercial license to get updates after January 2019. In an un...
10:34 pm - Sat, April 28, 2018
Slashdot
Scientists Confirmed a New DNA Structure Inside Human Cells
Trax3001BBS quotes Science Alert:For the first time, scientists have identified the existence of a new DNA structure never before seen in living cells. The discovery of what's described as a "twisted ...
09:34 pm - Sat, April 28, 2018
Slashdot
Code Published for Triggering a BSOD on Windows Computers -- Even If They're Locked
"A Romanian hardware expert has published proof-of-concept code on GitHub that will crash most Windows computers within seconds, even if the computer is in a locked state," writes BleepingComputer. An...
08:34 pm - Sat, April 28, 2018
Slashdot
While More People Switch To Streaming TV, Cable Stocks are Plummetting
An anonymous reader quotes Investor's Business Daily:Shares in Charter Communications plunged after the cable TV firm reported first quarter earnings and lost more video subscribers than expected, als...
07:34 pm - Sat, April 28, 2018
Slashdot
Tesla Driver Banned From Driving For 18 Months For Sitting in Passenger Seat
A 39-year-old motorist pointed his Tesla S60 down a highway at 40 mph -- while sitting in its passenger seat, leaning back with his hands behind his head. Another motorist spotted the empty driver's s...
06:34 pm - Sat, April 28, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Warns Investors They Expect To Find 'Additional Incidents' of User Data Abuse
Facebook earned $4.99 billion in the first three months of 2018 (on sales of $11.97 billion). But their quarterly report included some new warnings, according to the Bay Area Newsgroup:In its 141-page...
05:34 pm - Sat, April 28, 2018
Slashdot
Bill Gates: U.S. Education Harder to Improve Than Infant Mortality Rates
gthuang88 writes:In a Q&A with Harvard students, Bill Gates said his foundation's work on K-12 education in the U.S. has had little impact, at least compared to its success in reducing infant mort...
04:34 pm - Sat, April 28, 2018
Slashdot
Will GDPR Kill WHOIS?
Slashdot reader monkeyzoo shares the Register's report on a disturbing letter sent to ICANN:Europe's data protection authorities have effectively killed off the current service, noting that it breaks ...
03:34 pm - Sat, April 28, 2018
Slashdot
Go Programming Language Gets A New Logo and Branding
After an "extensive design process," the Go programming language has a "new look and logo," according to Google's lead for Go developer relations, product, and strategy. (Promising that this won't aff...
02:34 pm - Sat, April 28, 2018
Slashdot
Bookmark Syncing Service Xmarks Closes For Good On May 1
Remember that popular browser extension that let you sync your bookmarks on multiple devices?Launched in 2006 by Foxmarks (a company created by EFF co-founder Mitch Kapor), it was saved from death in ...
01:00 pm - Sat, April 28, 2018
Slashdot
100 US Mayors Sign Pledge To Defend Net Neutrality Against Crooked ISPs
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: More than 100 U.S. mayors have signed a pledge to hold internet service providers accountable for net neutrality violations, despite the FCC's vote to...
10:00 am - Sat, April 28, 2018
Slashdot
Russia Is Attacking US Forces With Electronic Weapons In Syria, General Says
john of sparta shares a report from Yahoo: American forces in Syria are increasingly facing attacks from Russian and Syrian electronic warfare weapons, as Moscow uses the conflict to test its future a...
07:00 am - Sat, April 28, 2018
Slashdot
You Could Be Flirting On Dating Apps With Paid Impersonators
Chloe Rose Stuart-Ulin sheds some light on the world of paid impersonators on dating apps like Tinder. Here's an excerpt from the report: Every morning I wake up to the same routine. I log into the Ti...
03:30 am - Sat, April 28, 2018
Slashdot
EU Votes To Ban Bee-Harming Pesticides
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The European Union will ban the world's most widely used insecticides from all fields due to the serious danger they pose to bees. The ban on neo...
01:10 am - Sat, April 28, 2018
Slashdot
Trump Administration Plans To Freeze Obama-Era Fuel Standards
The Trump administration plans to freeze Obama-era fuel-efficiency standards starting in 2021, according to a report from The Washington Post. The report says the Trump administration "would go even f...
12:30 am - Sat, April 28, 2018
Slashdot
Blue Light Like That From Smartphones Linked To Some Cancers, Study Finds
A new study, published Monday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, found that exposure to the kind of blue light emitted by outdoor LEDs, smartphones and tablets may increase your risk of...
11:50 pm - Fri, April 27, 2018
Slashdot
Rick Dickinson, Designer of Sinclair Spectrum Home Computers, Dies
New submitter Badger Nadgers quotes a report from the BBC: Rick Dickinson, the designer of Sinclair computers, has died in the U.S. while receiving treatment for cancer. The British designer, thought ...
11:10 pm - Fri, April 27, 2018
Slashdot
Two Koreas Agree To End War This Year, Pursue Denuclearization
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in agreed Friday to finally end a seven-decade war this year, and pursue the "co...
10:30 pm - Fri, April 27, 2018
Slashdot
MoviePass Changes TOS To Prevent You From Seeing the Same Movie More Than Once
MoviePass has changed its terms of service to prevent subscribers from seeing the same movie more than once. First spotted by iMore, the new limitation will apply to all subscribers, new and existing....
09:50 pm - Fri, April 27, 2018
Slashdot
Uber Tightens Bug Bounty Extortion Policies Following 2016 Data Breach
lod123 shares a report from Threatpost: Uber is tightening policies around its bug-bounty program after a 2016 data breach exposed deep flaws in its policies around handling extortion. With the update...
09:10 pm - Fri, April 27, 2018
Slashdot
Google Assistant Is Smarter Than Alexa, Study Finds
For the second year in a row, a study found that Google's digital assistant is smarter than Amazon's assistant, Alexa. The study does note that Alexa is catching up and was far and away the most impro...
08:30 pm - Fri, April 27, 2018
Slashdot
In First, Doctors Treat Rare Genetic Disorder With an Injection In Utero
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Three babies with a rare genetic disorder have been spared the worst effects of their condition thanks to an experimental injection they received...
07:00 pm - Fri, April 27, 2018
Slashdot
Apple's Working on a Powerful, Wireless Headset for Both AR, VR
Apple CEO Tim Cook has nothing but praise for augmented reality, saying it's a technology that's potentially as important as the iPhone. It turns out he may have big plans for virtual reality too. Fro...
06:16 pm - Fri, April 27, 2018
Slashdot
The Auto Plants of the Future May Have a Surprisingly Human Touch
Carmakers have big plans for their next generation of factories: smarter designs, artificial intelligence and collaborative robots building a wide range of vehicles on the same line. From a report: Th...
04:51 pm - Fri, April 27, 2018
Slashdot
US Keeps China, Puts Canada on IP Priority Watch List
The Trump administration on Friday labeled 36 countries as inadequately protecting U.S. intellectual property rights, keeping China on a priority watch list and adding Canada over concerns about its b...
04:05 pm - Fri, April 27, 2018
Slashdot
NASA To Cancel Lunar Resource Prospector Mission
New submitter XXongo writes: NASA has told the Lunar Resource Prospector Mission team to cease work on developing the mission by the end of May. The proposed mission was in development to send a rover...
03:26 pm - Fri, April 27, 2018
Slashdot
Intel's 10nm Cannon Lake CPUs Won't Arrive in Mass Quantities Until 2019, Company Says
Intel said this week that it is once again delaying the mass production of its 10-nanometer "Cannon Lake" chips. The company insists that it is already building the chips in low volumes, but said it "...
02:47 pm - Fri, April 27, 2018
Slashdot
Windows 10 April 2018 Update is Coming On April 30
The next major update to Windows 10 -- called Windows 10 April 2018 Update -- finally has a release date. From a report: Microsoft today announced that the free Windows 10 April 2018 Update (previousl...
02:07 pm - Fri, April 27, 2018
Slashdot
Design Commentary on Google's New To-Do Tasks App
On the sidelines of Gmail's big refresh push, Google also released a new app called Google Tasks. It's a simple app that aims to help users manage their work and home tasks. But it's being talked abou...
01:00 pm - Fri, April 27, 2018
Slashdot
Sprint, T-Mobile Aiming To Reach Merger Deal Next Week
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: U.S. wireless carriers T-Mobile and Sprint have made progress in negotiating merger terms and are aiming to successfully complete deal talks as early ...
11:30 am - Fri, April 27, 2018
Slashdot
PSA: Amazon Will Increase Price of Prime To $119
EzInKy writes: Effective on May 11, Jeff Bezos says the price of Prime membership will increase to $119 from $99. Now, as much as I have enjoyed the free shipping over these many years, I just don't b...
10:00 am - Fri, April 27, 2018
Slashdot
Old AM Broadcast Towers Get a New Life
Esther Schindler shares an article from Hewlett Packard Enterprise: Video may have killed the radio star, but other media certainly make old AM radio towers superfluous... maybe. "As once-loyal listen...
07:00 am - Fri, April 27, 2018
Slashdot
NASA To Pay More For Less Cargo Delivery To the Space Station
A new report from NASA's inspector general, Paul Martin, finds that NASA will pay significantly more for commercial cargo delivery to the ISS in the 2020s rather than enjoying cost savings from maturi...
03:30 am - Fri, April 27, 2018
Slashdot
Genealogy Websites Were Key To Big Break In Golden State Killer Case
An anonymous reader shares a report from The New York Times: The Golden State Killer raped and murdered victims all across the state of California in an era before Google searches and social media, a ...
02:20 am - Fri, April 27, 2018
Slashdot
Einstein's 'Spooky Action' Has Been Demonstrated On a Massive Scale For the First Time
schwit1 shares a report from ScienceAlert: For the first time, scientists have managed to show quantum entanglement -- which Einstein famously described as "spooky action at a distance" -- happening b...
01:40 am - Fri, April 27, 2018
Slashdot
Parents Can Now Limit YouTube Kids To Human-Reviewed Channels and Recommendations
Google is announcing an expanded series of parental controls for its YouTube Kids application. "The new features will allow parents to lock down the YouTube Kids app so it only displays those channels...
01:00 am - Fri, April 27, 2018
Slashdot
Cord Cutting Caused By 74 Percent TV Price Hikes Since 2000, Says Report
A new study by Kagan, S&P Global Market Intelligence finds that cord cutting is being caused primarily by a 74% increase in customer cable bills since 2000. From a report: That increase is even ad...
12:20 am - Fri, April 27, 2018
Slashdot
Tesla Autopilot Crisis Deepens With Loss of Third Autopilot Boss In 18 Months
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: It is no secret that Tesla's Autopilot project is struggling. Last summer, we covered a report that Tesla was bleeding talent from its Autopilot ...
11:40 pm - Thu, April 26, 2018
Slashdot
Apple Discontinues Its AirPort Router Line
9to5Mac reports that Apple is officially exiting the wireless router business and selling off its remaining inventory of AirPort products. This includes the AirPort Express, AirPort Extreme, and both ...
11:00 pm - Thu, April 26, 2018
Slashdot
iTunes Now Available From the Microsoft Store For Windows 10
iTunes is now available in the Microsoft Store, almost a year after Microsoft first revealed it was working with Apple to get iTunes listed in the Store. Windows Central reports: For a portion of Wind...
10:42 pm - Thu, April 26, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Inches Toward More Transparency and Accountability
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: Facebook took a step toward greater accountability this week, expanding the text of its community standards and announcing ...
10:05 pm - Thu, April 26, 2018
Slashdot
CEO Doesn't Know if MoviePass Will Offer a Movie Per Day Plan Again
The subscription service famous for supplying a movie ticket per day for just $9.95 a month hasn't been offering that wildly popular package since April 13. From a report: The company's too-good-to-be...
09:25 pm - Thu, April 26, 2018
Slashdot
Ski Lift In Austria Left Control Panel Open On the Internet
An anonymous reader writes: Officials from the city of Innsbruck in Austria have shut down a local ski lift after two security researchers found its control panel open wide on the Internet, and allowi...
08:45 pm - Thu, April 26, 2018
Slashdot
Jeff Bezos Says He Liquidates a $1 Billion of Amazon Stock Every Year To Pay For His Rocket Company Blue Origin
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos spends a tiny fraction of his net worth to fund Blue Origin, the aerospace company he started in 2000. From a report: For a man worth $127 billion, that tiny fraction amounts to ...
08:05 pm - Thu, April 26, 2018
Slashdot
New C# Ransomware Compiles Itself at Runtime
From a report: A new in-development ransomware was discovered that has an interesting characteristic. Instead of the distributed executable performing the ransomware functionality, the executables com...
07:25 pm - Thu, April 26, 2018
Slashdot
The Smartphone Sales Slowdown is Real
Earnings reports from Samsung and Qualcomm on Wednesday suggest a serious industrywide slowdown in smartphone sales. Samsung's report is especially telling, since it also makes displays and other comp...
06:45 pm - Thu, April 26, 2018
Slashdot
Fake Mark Zuckerbergs Scam Facebook Users Out of Their Cash
Hundreds of Facebook and Instagram accounts have been parading as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, tricking vulnerable individuals into sending large amounts of money in order to ...
06:05 pm - Thu, April 26, 2018
Slashdot
Robot-Launched Weather Balloons in Alaska Hasten Demise of Remote Stations
The National Weather Service is choosing automated launchers over human employees to deploy weather balloons in Alaska. From a report: Last Thursday, just before 3 p.m., things began stirring inside t...
05:25 pm - Thu, April 26, 2018
Slashdot
High-Paying Trade Jobs Sit Empty, While High School Grads Line Up For University
An anonymous reader shares an NPR report: While a shortage of workers is pushing wages higher in the skilled trades, the financial return from a bachelor's degree is softening, even as the price -- an...
04:45 pm - Thu, April 26, 2018
Slashdot
Ubuntu 18.04 Focuses On Security and AI Improvements
Canonical has announced the release of its open-source Linux operating system, Ubuntu 18.04, which features security, multi-cloud, containers, and AI improvements. From a report: "Multi-cloud operatio...
04:05 pm - Thu, April 26, 2018
Slashdot
As More Users Complain About Poor Keyboard in Current MacBook Pro Lineup, Critics Say Apple Should Consider Recalling the Device
Last year, a report outlining what it described as a major flaw in Apple's current MacBook Pro lineup became a talking point in the industry. The issue was that a piece of dust could render keys on th...
03:36 pm - Thu, April 26, 2018
Slashdot
Researchers Are Keeping Pig Brains Alive Outside the Body
In a step that could change the definition of death, researchers have restored circulation to the brains of decapitated pigs and kept the reanimated organs alive for as long as 36 hours. From a report...
02:54 pm - Thu, April 26, 2018
Slashdot
Google Joins Apple in Condemning the Repeal of the Clean Power Plan
An anonymous reader shares a report: Google filed a public comment today criticizing the Environmental Protection Agency's proposal to roll back the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era policy that aims to ...
02:00 pm - Thu, April 26, 2018
Slashdot
Snapchat Takes a Second Try at Spectacles
Snapchat is launching an updated version of Spectacles, its glasses with an embedded camera, and says its first version of the smart glasses sold over 220,000 units. From a report: That first version ...
01:00 pm - Thu, April 26, 2018
Slashdot
A Well-Known Expert On Student Loans Is Not Real
mi shares a report from The Chronicle of Higher Education: Drew Cloud is everywhere. The self-described journalist who specializes in student-loan debt has been quoted in major news outlets, including...
10:00 am - Thu, April 26, 2018
Slashdot
Chinese Journalist Banned From Flying, Buying Property Due To 'Social Credit Score'
schwit1 shares a report from CBS Local: China is rolling out a high-tech plan to give all of its 1.4 billion citizens a personal score, based on how they behave. But there are consequences if a score ...
07:00 am - Thu, April 26, 2018
Slashdot
ESA Releases Largest Star Map Ever Online
S810 writes: The European Space Agency (ESA) has released a treasure trove of data from its Gaia Spacecraft; totaling around 1.7 billion stars. This star map is the largest of its kind to date. In add...
03:30 am - Thu, April 26, 2018
Slashdot
Kazakhstan Is Changing Its Alphabet From Cyrillic To Latin-Based Style Favored By the West
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic script to the Latin-based style favored by the West. The change, announc...
02:05 am - Thu, April 26, 2018
Slashdot
Belgium Declares Video Game Loot Boxes Gambling and Therefore Illegal
The Belgian Gaming Commission has reviewed several big video games and found that randomized loot boxes in at least three of the titles count as "games of chance," and publishers could therefore be su...
01:25 am - Thu, April 26, 2018
Slashdot
iOS 11.3.1 Fixes Bug Where Third-Party Screen Repairs Made iPhone 8 Touchscreens Stop Working
The latest version of iOS 11.3.1 includes a fix for an issue where people who use third-party repair services to replace their displays had their devices become unresponsive. According to release note...
12:45 am - Thu, April 26, 2018
Slashdot
Amazon Will Now Deliver Packages To the Trunk of Your Car
Last year, Amazon unveiled a service called Amazon Key that lets delivery people into your home to drop off packages. Now, the tech giant wants to do the same thing with your car. Amazon announced a n...
12:03 am - Thu, April 26, 2018
Slashdot
Ford To Stop Selling Every Car In North America But the Mustang, Focus Active
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Ford today announced it will phase out most cars it sells in North America. According to its latest financial release, the auto giant "will transit...
11:20 pm - Wed, April 25, 2018
Slashdot
Slashdot Asks: How Do You Like the New Gmail UI?
Earlier today, Google pushed out the biggest revamp of Gmail in years. In addition to a new material design look, there are quick links to other Google services, such as Calendar, Tasks, and Keep, as ...
11:00 pm - Wed, April 25, 2018
Slashdot
Trump Meets With Apple's Tim Cook To Talk Trade
New submitter genfail shares a report from Reuters: President Donald Trump met with Apple CEO Tim Cook on Wednesday to discuss trade issues as the technology industry grapples with a U.S. spat over im...
10:40 pm - Wed, April 25, 2018
Slashdot
Bezop Cryptocurrency Server Exposes Personal Info of 25,000 Investors
lod123 shares a report from Threatpost: A leaky Mongo database exposed personal information, including scanned passports and driver's licenses, of 25,000 investors and potential investors tied to the ...
10:00 pm - Wed, April 25, 2018
Slashdot
Medicare To Require Hospitals To Post Prices Online
An anonymous reader quotes a report from PBS: Medicare will require hospitals to post their standard prices online and make electronic medical records more readily available to patients, officials sai...
09:20 pm - Wed, April 25, 2018
Slashdot
Appliance Companies Are Lobbying To Protect Their DRM-Fueled Repair Monopolies
Electronics companies Dyson, LG, and Wahl are fighting right-to-repair legislation, Motherboard reported Wednesday, citing letters it has obtained. From a report: The manufacturers of your appliances ...
08:40 pm - Wed, April 25, 2018
Slashdot
More FISA Orders Were Denied During President Trump's First Year in Office Than in the Court's 40-Year History
In its first year, the Trump administration kept one little-known courtroom in the capital busy. From a report: A secretive Washington DC-based court that oversees the US government's foreign spy prog...
08:00 pm - Wed, April 25, 2018
Slashdot
Drupal Warns of New Remote-Code Bug, the Second in Four Weeks
For the second time in a month, websites that use the Drupal content management system are confronted with a stark choice: install a critical update or risk having your servers infected with ransomwar...
07:20 pm - Wed, April 25, 2018
Slashdot
North Korea Linked To Global Hacking Operation Against Critical Infrastructure, Telecoms
A suspected North Korean hacking campaign has expanded to targets in 17 different countries, including the U.S., pilfering information on critical infrastructure, telecommunications and entertainment ...
06:40 pm - Wed, April 25, 2018
Slashdot
Researchers Hacked Amazon's Alexa To Spy On Users, Again
New submitter lod123 writes: A malicious proof-of-concept Amazon Echo Skill shows how attackers can abuse the Alexa virtual assistant to eavesdrop on consumers with smart devices -- and automatically ...
06:00 pm - Wed, April 25, 2018
Slashdot
8K TVs Are Coming, But Don't Buy the Hype
If the 8,294,400 pixels of resolution on an Ultra High Definition television just don't seem to convey enough detail, fear not: The electronics industry has heard your cry. From a report: Even as UHD ...
05:15 pm - Wed, April 25, 2018
Slashdot
Nasdaq 'Would Consider' Creating a Crypto Exchange, Says CEO
The CEO of Nasdaq suggested Wednesday that the company could open a cryptocurrency exchange in the future. From a report: The subject came up in an interview with CNBC, during which CEO Adena Friedman...
04:45 pm - Wed, April 25, 2018
Slashdot
Apple's Podcasts Just Topped 50 Billion All-time Downloads and Streams
Apple launched podcasts on iTunes way back in 2005, the same year that the Oxford Dictionary named "podcast" its word of the year. A lot has changed since the early days when iTunes was mostly populat...
04:05 pm - Wed, April 25, 2018
Slashdot
Europol Shuts Down World's Largest DDoS-for-Hire Service
In what is being seen as a major hit against cybercriminals, Europol, an international police operation, has taken down the world's biggest provider of potentially crippling Distributed Denial of Serv...
03:32 pm - Wed, April 25, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Plans Version of Windows 10 For Devices With Limited Storage
An anonymous reader shares a report: A smaller, more pared down version of Windows 10 was spotted in the latest Redstone 5 preview build. Microsoft is calling it Windows 10 Lean and it's 2GB smaller i...
02:52 pm - Wed, April 25, 2018
Slashdot
Hackers Built a 'Master Key' For Millions of Hotel Rooms
An anonymous reader writes: Security researchers have built a master key that exploits a design flaw in a popular and widely used hotel electronic lock system, allowing unfettered access to every room...
02:10 pm - Wed, April 25, 2018
Slashdot
Gmail's Big Upgrade Featuring New Web App, Confidential Mode, Nudges, and Snooze Goes Live
Google on Wednesday pushed out the biggest revamp of Gmail in years. The company is bringing to the flagship Gmail service many (but not all) of the features it trialed in Inbox for Gmail, and adding ...
01:00 pm - Wed, April 25, 2018
Slashdot
E-Waste Innovator Will Go To Jail For Making Windows Restore Disks That Only Worked With Valid Licenses
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Washington Post: California man Eric Lundgren, an electronic waste entrepreneur who produced tens of thousands of Windows restore disks intended to extend ...
10:00 am - Wed, April 25, 2018
Slashdot
Scientists Discover That Uranus Smells Like Rotten Eggs
An anonymous reader writes: According to a study published in Nature Astronomy, scientists have determined that the atmosphere of Uranus smells like rotten eggs. The smell of Uranus was determined by ...
07:00 am - Wed, April 25, 2018
Slashdot
Incredible New Gif Shows Cosmic 'Snow' On the Surface of a Comet
Press2ToContinue shares a report from Gizmodo: What you're looking at is the surface of the comet 67p/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which is orbited by the European Space Agency's Rosetta probe. The photo co...
03:30 am - Wed, April 25, 2018
Slashdot
EPA Proposes Limits To Science Used In Rulemaking
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed a rule on Tuesday that would limit the kinds of scientific research it can use in crafting regulatio...
01:40 am - Wed, April 25, 2018
Slashdot
A Study Finds Half of Jobs Are Vulnerable To Automation
The Economist reports of a new working paper by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that assesses the automatability of each task within a given job, based on a survey of...
01:00 am - Wed, April 25, 2018
Slashdot
Xbox One April Update Rolling Out With Low-Latency Mode, FreeSync, and 1440p Support; 120Hz Support Coming In May Update
Microsoft is rolling out a new Xbox One update that brings 1440p support for the Xbox One S and X, as well as support for AMD's FreeSync technology to allow compatible displays to sync refresh rates w...
12:20 am - Wed, April 25, 2018
Slashdot
WhatsApp Raises Minimum Age In Europe To 16 Ahead of Data Law Change
WhatsApp is raising its minimum age from 13 to 16 in Europe to help it comply with new data privacy rules coming into force next month. The app will ask European users to confirm they are at least 16 ...
11:20 pm - Tue, April 24, 2018
Slashdot
Electric Buses Are Hurting the Oil Industry
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Electric buses were seen as a joke at an industry conference in Belgium seven years ago when the Chinese manufacturer BYD showed an early model. Sud...
10:40 pm - Tue, April 24, 2018
Slashdot
SEC Issues $35 Million Fine Over Yahoo Failing To Disclose Data Breach
Altaba, the company formerly known as Yahoo, will have to pay a $35 million fine for failing to disclose a 2014 data breach in which hackers stole info on over 500 million accounts. "The U.S. Securiti...
10:20 pm - Tue, April 24, 2018
Slashdot
Samsung Announces 970 PRO and 970 EVO NVMe SSDs
hyperclocker shares a report from AnandTech: Samsung has announced the third generation of their high-end consumer NVMe SSDs. The new 970 PRO and 970 EVO M.2 NVMe SSDs use a newer controller and Samsu...
10:00 pm - Tue, April 24, 2018
Slashdot
Instagram Launches 'Data Download' Tool To Let You Leave
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Two weeks ago TechCrunch called on Instagram to build an equivalent to Facebook's "Download Your Information feature so if you wanted to leave for ...
09:20 pm - Tue, April 24, 2018
Slashdot
CIA Plans To Replace Spies With AI
Human spies could soon be relics of the past. Dawn Meyerriecks, CIA's deputy director for technology development, recently told an audience at an intelligence conference in Florida that CIA was adapti...
08:40 pm - Tue, April 24, 2018
Slashdot
More Than 1 Million Kids Had Their Identities Stolen in 2017
More than 1 million children were victims of identity fraud in 2017, a new study from Javelin Strategy & Research found, costing a total of $2.6 billion. From a report: With limited financial hist...
08:00 pm - Tue, April 24, 2018
Slashdot
Suspicious Event Hijacks Amazon Traffic For 2 hours, Steals Cryptocurrency
Amazon lost control of some of its widely used cloud services for two hours on Tuesday morning when hackers exploited a known Internet-protocol weakness that allowed them to redirect traffic to rogue ...
07:20 pm - Tue, April 24, 2018
Slashdot
Patent 'Death Squad' System Upheld by US Supreme Court
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld an administrative review system that has helped Google, Apple and other companies invalidate hundreds of issued patents. From a report: The justices, voting 7-2, said Tue...
06:40 pm - Tue, April 24, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Has Hosted Stolen Identities and Social Security Numbers for Years
Cybercriminals have posted sensitive personal information, such as credit card and social security numbers, of dozens of people on Facebook and have advertised entire databases of private information ...
06:00 pm - Tue, April 24, 2018
Slashdot
Senate Confirms Trump's Pick for NSA, Cyber Command
An anonymous reader shares a report: The Senate Tuesday quietly confirmed President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command. U.S. Army Cyber Command chief Lt...
05:10 pm - Tue, April 24, 2018
Slashdot
Ask Slashdot: Do We Need a New Word For Hacking?
goombah99 writes: Hacking and Hackers get a bum rap. Headline scream "Every Nitendo switch can be hacked." But that's good right? Just like farmers hacking their tractors or someone re-purposing a tal...
04:30 pm - Tue, April 24, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Has Considered Profiling Its Users' Personalities and Using the Information To Target Ads
An anonymous reader shares a report: A patent filed by the social network describes how personality characteristics, including emotional stability, could be determined from people's messages and statu...
04:00 pm - Tue, April 24, 2018
Slashdot
Far From Being a Utilitarian Afterthought, an Astonishing Number of Design Choices Go Into Pagination
An anonymous reader shares a report: In his landmark 1931 book An Essay on Typography, the British typographer Eric Gill discusses everything from the proper place for the tail of an 'R' to terminate ...
03:25 pm - Tue, April 24, 2018
Slashdot
Atlanta Projected To Spend At Least $2.6 Million on Ransomware Recovery
Atlanta is setting aside more than $2.6 million on recovery efforts stemming from a ransomware attack, which crippled a sizable part of the city's online services. ZDNet reports: The city was hit by t...
02:45 pm - Tue, April 24, 2018
Slashdot
Spotify Wants More Paid Subscribers, So It Has Launched a New App To Give Away More Music For Free
Spotify on Tuesday announced a new redesigned app for free customers, its first major change to the free tier in four years, as it attempts to lure more customers into buying its subscription service....
02:10 pm - Tue, April 24, 2018
Slashdot
Scientists Plan Huge European AI Hub To Compete With US
Leading scientists have drawn up plans for a vast multinational European institute devoted to world-class artificial intelligence (AI) research in a desperate bid to nurture and retain top talent in E...
01:00 pm - Tue, April 24, 2018
Slashdot
Chinese Tech Companies Post Men-Only Job Listings, Report Finds
Major Chinese tech companies like Huawei, Alibaba, and Tencent discriminate against women in their online job listings, a new report from Human Rights Watch found today. Some job postings directly sta...
10:00 am - Tue, April 24, 2018
Slashdot
Netflix, Amazon, and Major Studios Try To Shut Down $20-Per-Month TV Service
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Netflix, Amazon, and the major film studios have once again joined forces to sue the maker of a TV service and hardware device, alleging that the...
07:00 am - Tue, April 24, 2018
Slashdot
Mosaic, the First HTML Browser That Could Display Images Alongside Text, Turns 25
NCSA Mosaic 1.0, the first web browser to achieve popularity among the general public, was released on April 22, 1993. It was developed by a team of students at the University of Illinois' National Ce...
03:30 am - Tue, April 24, 2018
Slashdot
Cow Could Soon Be Largest Land Mammal Left Due To Human Activity, Says Study
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The cow could be left as the biggest land mammal on Earth in a few centuries, according to a new study that examines the extinction of large mamm...
02:20 am - Tue, April 24, 2018
Slashdot
YouTube Says Computers Helped It Pull Down Millions of Objectionable Videos Last Quarter
YouTube says it has successfully trained computers to flag objectionable videos. In the last quarter of 2017, the company reportedly pulled down more than six million of these videos before any users ...
01:40 am - Tue, April 24, 2018
Slashdot
Algorithm Automatically Spots 'Face Swaps' In Videos
yagoda shares a report from MIT Technology Review: Andreas Rossler at the Technical University of Munich in Germany and colleagues have developed a deep-learning system that can automatically spot fac...
01:00 am - Tue, April 24, 2018
Slashdot
Surface Phone Speculation Spurred By New Phone APIs In Windows
Microsoft has been rumored to be working on a "Surface Phone" for years now, with little concrete evidence that such a device actually exists. "But the latest Windows 10 Insider Preview has given new ...
12:20 am - Tue, April 24, 2018
Slashdot
US Government Weighing Sanctions Against Kaspersky Lab
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CyberScoop: The U.S. government is considering sanctions against Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab as part of a wider round of action carried out aga...
11:40 pm - Mon, April 23, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Sued Over Fake Ads
shilly writes: British finance expert Martin Lewis is suing Facebook for defamation, after a year of trying to persuade the company to stop accepting scam ads featuring his name and image. Facebook in...
11:00 pm - Mon, April 23, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Readies Windows 10 April Update With New Features and Enhancements
MojoKid writes: Microsoft has been preparing a Spring Creators Update for Windows 10 for a while now, which was recently pushed out as an RTM (Release To Manufacturing) build to all rings of the Windo...
10:20 pm - Mon, April 23, 2018
Slashdot
The 'Unpatchable' Exploit That Makes Every Current Nintendo Switch Hackable
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A newly published "exploit chain" for Nvidia Tegra X1-based systems seems to describe an apparently unpatchable method for running arbitrary code...
09:40 pm - Mon, April 23, 2018
Slashdot
Google Accused of Showing 'Total Contempt' for Android Users' Privacy
On the heels of a terse privacy debate, Google may have found another thing to worry about: its attempt to rethink the traditional texting system. From a report: Joe Westby is Amnesty International's ...
09:00 pm - Mon, April 23, 2018
Slashdot
AI Trained on Images from Cosmological Simulations Surprisingly Successful at Classifying Real Galaxies in Hubble Images
A machine learning method which has been widely used in face recognition and other image- and speech-recognition applications, has shown promise in helping astronomers analyze images of galaxies and u...
08:20 pm - Mon, April 23, 2018
Slashdot
New Attack Group Orangeworm Targets Healthcare Sector in US, Asia, and Europe: Symantec
Security researchers at Symantec say a group of hackers has been targeting firms related to health care in order to steal intellectual property. The security firm observed a hacking team, called Orang...
07:40 pm - Mon, April 23, 2018
Slashdot
Google Is Testing a New Chrome UI
Catalin Cimpanu, writing for BleepingComputer: Google engineers have rolled out a new Chrome user interface (UI). Work on the new Refresh UI has been underway since last year, Bleeping Computer has le...
07:00 pm - Mon, April 23, 2018
Slashdot
Was There a Civilization On Earth Before Humans?
Adam Frank, writing for The Atlantic: We're used to imagining extinct civilizations in terms of the sunken statues and subterranean ruins. These kinds of artifacts of previous societies are fine if yo...
06:30 pm - Mon, April 23, 2018
Slashdot
EU Opens Competition Probe Into Apple's Bid For Music App Shazam
EU antitrust regulators opened an investigation on Monday into Apple's bid for British music discovery app Shazam, concerned the deal might give the iPhone maker an unfair advantage in poaching users ...
05:50 pm - Mon, April 23, 2018
Slashdot
Hacking a Satellite is Surprisingly Easy
Caroline Haskins, writing for The Outline: Hundreds of multi-ton liabilities -- soaring faster than the speed of sound, miles above the surface of the earth -- are operating on Windows-95. They're sat...
05:00 pm - Mon, April 23, 2018
Slashdot
MIT Researchers Developed a 'System For Dream Control'
dmoberhaus writes: Researchers at MIT Media Lab have adapted a centuries' old technique for inducing hypnagogia for the 21st century. Known as Dormio, this system is able to extend and manipulate the ...
04:15 pm - Mon, April 23, 2018
Slashdot
Amazon Has a Top-Secret Plan to Build Home Robots
After making smart speakers a household product (at least to some), Amazon seems to have found its next big consumer product: robots. Amazon is building smart robots that are equipped with cameras tha...
03:35 pm - Mon, April 23, 2018
Slashdot
The Last Known Person Born in the 19th Century Dies in Japan at 117
Jason Kottke: As of 2015, only two women born in the 1800s and two others born in 1900 (the last year of the 19th century) were still alive. In the next two years, three of those women passed away, in...
03:04 pm - Mon, April 23, 2018
Slashdot
The Music Industry Had a Fantastic 2017, Driven by Streaming Revenues
An anonymous reader shares a report: Global recorded music revenues soared by $1.4 billion in 2017 largely due to the increased adoption of music streaming services among consumers, reports the Music ...
02:54 pm - Mon, April 23, 2018
Slashdot
The Music Industry Had a Fantastic 2017, Driven by Streaming Revenues
An anonymous reader shares a report: Global recorded music revenues soared by $1.4 billion in 2017 largely due to the increased adoption of music streaming services among consumers, reports the Music ...
02:10 pm - Mon, April 23, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Developers Hid a Secret Puzzle in Windows Backgrounds as They Knew Images Would Leak
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft developers working on Windows 8 created a puzzle and embedded it in the wallpapers used for internal builds of the operating system. The team knew that t...
12:12 pm - Mon, April 23, 2018
Slashdot
Are Widescreen Laptops Dumb?
"After years of phones, laptops, tablets, and TV screens converging on 16:9 as the 'right' display shape -- allowing video playback without distracting black bars -- smartphones have disturbed the uni...
07:07 am - Mon, April 23, 2018
Slashdot
Net Neutrality Is Over Monday, But Experts Say ISPs Will Wait To Screw Us
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Inverse: Parts of the Federal Communication Commission's repeal of net neutrality is slated to take effect on April 23, causing worry among internet users who ...
03:33 am - Mon, April 23, 2018
Slashdot
Who Has More of Your Personal Data Than Facebook? Try Google
Facebook may be in the hot seat right now for its collection of personal data without our knowledge or explicit consent, but as The Wall Street Journal points out, "Google is a far bigger threat by ma...
01:11 am - Mon, April 23, 2018
Slashdot
'Drupalgeddon2' Touches Off Arms Race To Mass-Exploit Powerful Web Servers
Researchers with Netlab 360 warn that attackers are mass-exploiting "Drupalgeddon2," the name of an extremely critical vulnerability Drupal maintainers patched in late March. The exploit allows them t...
11:13 pm - Sun, April 22, 2018
Slashdot
UK Teen Who Hacked CIA Director Sentenced To 2 Years In Prison
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: A British teenager who gained notoriety for hacking a number of high profile United States government employees including former CIA director John Bre...
10:12 pm - Sun, April 22, 2018
Slashdot
Tesla Batteries Retain Over 90 Percent Charging Power After 160,000 Miles, Survey Finds
According to a survey of over 350 Tesla owners, Tesla batteries retain over 90 percent of their charging power after 160,000 miles. The EVs dropped only 5 percent of their capacity after 50,000 miles,...
09:11 pm - Sun, April 22, 2018
Slashdot
Pornhub Hasn't Been Actively Enforcing Its Deepfake Ban
Pornhub said in February that it was banning AI-generated deepfake videos, but BuzzFeed News found that it's not doing a very good job at enforcing that policy. The media company found more than 70 de...
08:10 pm - Sun, April 22, 2018
Slashdot
Google's AR Microscope Quickly Highlights Cancer Cells
An anonymous reader quotes a report from UploadVR: Google Research this week revealed an AR microscope (ARM) capable of detecting cancerous cells in real-time with the help of machine learning. Locati...
07:09 pm - Sun, April 22, 2018
Slashdot
Dutch Study Finds Some Video Game Loot Boxes Broke the Law
The Netherlands Gaming Authority has published a study it conducted of 10 video games that reward players with loot boxes, packages players can sometimes buy with real money that contain random-in gam...
06:08 pm - Sun, April 22, 2018
Slashdot
Apple Open Sources FoundationDB
Apple's FoundationDB company announced on Thursday that the FoundationDB core has been open sourced with the goal of building an open community with all major development done in the open. The databas...
05:07 pm - Sun, April 22, 2018
Slashdot
White House Reportedly Exploring Wartime Rule To Help Coal, Nuclear
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: According to reports from Bloomberg and E&E News, the Trump Administration has been exploring another way to help coal and nuclear generators...
04:06 pm - Sun, April 22, 2018
Slashdot
SmugMug Buys Flickr, Vows To Revitalize the Photo Service
On Friday, Silicon Valley photo-sharing and storage company SmugMug announced it had acquired Flickr, the photo-sharing site created in 2004 by Ludicorp and acquired in 2005 by Yahoo. SmugMug CEO Don ...
03:05 pm - Sun, April 22, 2018
Slashdot
Intel Is Giving Up On Its Smart Glasses
Intel is planning to shut down the New Devices Group (NDG), and cease development on the Vaunt smart glasses project that was revealed earlier this year. The glasses are unique in that they use retina...
02:04 pm - Sun, April 22, 2018
Slashdot
Your Next Job Interview Could Be With a Racist Bot
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Daily Beast: Companies across the nation are now using some rudimentary artificial intelligence, or AI, systems to screen out applicants before interviews ...
10:34 am - Sun, April 22, 2018
Slashdot
Silicon Valley Investors Wants to Fund a 'Good For Society' Facebook Replacement
Silicon Valley angel investor Jason Calacanis just announced the "Openbook Challenge," a competition to create a replacement for Facebook. "Over the next three months, 20 finalists will compete for se...
07:34 am - Sun, April 22, 2018
Slashdot
Could We Fund a Universal Basic Income with Universal Basic Assets?
Universal Basic Incomes aren't really the issue, argues Fast Company staff writer Ben Schiller. "It's how you find $2 trillion to pay for it." One answer may come in the form of "universal basic asset...
03:37 am - Sun, April 22, 2018
Slashdot
NYT: Lynchings Around the World are Linked To Facebook Posts
An anonymous reader quotes the New York Times:Riots and lynchings around the world have been linked to misinformation and hate speech on Facebook, which pushes whatever content keeps users on the site...
01:34 am - Sun, April 22, 2018
Slashdot
Many Amazon Warehouse Workers are on Food Stamps
Many of Amazon's warehouse workers have to buy their groceries with food stamps through America's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, reports the Intercept.In Arizona, new data suggests that on...
11:34 pm - Sat, April 21, 2018
Slashdot
What Happens When Restaurants Go Cashless
There's a new trend starting: restaurants that won't accept cash. USA Today reports:Restaurant owners say ordering is faster from customers who slap down plastic instead of dollars, cutting a few seco...
10:34 pm - Sat, April 21, 2018
Slashdot
Former Reddit Executive Sees 'No Hope' For Reddit
An anonymous reader quotes former Reddit product head Dan McComas:I think, ultimately, the problem that Reddit has is the same as Twitter and Discord. By focusing on growth and growth only and ignorin...
09:18 pm - Sat, April 21, 2018
Slashdot
Eventbrite Claims The Right To Film Your Events -- And Keep the Copyright
Eventbrite lets you sell tickets online for your events. An anonymous reader reports on Eventbrite's newly-updated merchant agreement.The merchant agreement specifies that you "grant permission to Eve...
08:34 pm - Sat, April 21, 2018
Slashdot
GitHub Launches Bot-Powered Learning Lab for New Developers
An anonymous reader quotes VentureBeat:GitHub is launching a new bot-powered learning lab to help budding developers get up to speed on all things GitHub... The GitHub Learning Lab, which officially l...
07:34 pm - Sat, April 21, 2018
Slashdot
Lycos Finally Discontinues Its Free Email Service
Long-time Slashdot reader williamyf writes:You may think of it as the end of an era, or as the final nail in the coffin. Today Lycos, one of the pioneering web portals of the '90s, notified all it's u...
06:34 pm - Sat, April 21, 2018
Slashdot
Doctors Tried To Lower $148K Cancer Drug Cost; Makers Tripled Its Price
Slashdot reader Applehu Akbar writes: Imbruvica, a compound that treats white blood cell cancers, has until now been a bargain at $148,000 per year. Until now, doctors have been able to optimize dosag...
05:34 pm - Sat, April 21, 2018
Slashdot
Lyft Announces It Will Make All Rides Carbon Neutral
Lyft announced it will spend millions of dollars to make all its rides carbon neutral. An anonymous reader quotes CNN Money:The San Francisco-based ride-hailing company announced Thursday that it will...
04:34 pm - Sat, April 21, 2018
Slashdot
Can Tesla's Batteries Power Puerto Rico?
An anonymous reader quotes Electrek:Almost 1 million ratepayers of the Puerto Rican Electric Power Authority on the island of Puerto Rico were reportedly without power Wednesday during an island-wide ...
03:34 pm - Sat, April 21, 2018
Slashdot
Wells Fargo Agrees to $1 Billion Fine Over Home and Auto Loan Abuses
Wells Fargo got hit with a $1 billion fine Friday -- the largest ever issued by America's consumer protection agency. An anonymous reader quotes Reuters:Taken together, the mortgage and auto programs ...
02:34 pm - Sat, April 21, 2018
Slashdot
Kurzweil Predicts Universal Basic Incomes Worldwide Within 20 Years
Google's director of engineering Ray Kurzweil made a startling prediction at the 2018 TED conference. Hacker Noon reports:"In the early 2030s, we'll have universal basic income in the developed world,...
01:00 pm - Sat, April 21, 2018
Slashdot
Senate Confirms Climate Denier With No Scientific Credentials To Head NASA
On Thursday, the Senate confirmed Trump's NASA nominee Jim Bridenstine, seven and a half months after being nominated to lead the agency. "The Senate confirmed Mr. Bridenstine, an Oklahoma congressman...
10:00 am - Sat, April 21, 2018
Slashdot
New iPhone SE Could Launch In May With Touch ID and A10 Fusion, Without 3.5mm Headphone Jack
Mac Rumors reports, citing Japanese website Mac Otakara, that Apple will release an updated iPhone SE next month with a similar form factor as the previous model. It is expected to retain Touch ID, bu...
07:00 am - Sat, April 21, 2018
Slashdot
Government Accidentally Releases Documents On 'Psycho-Electric' Weapons
schwit1 shares a report from Popular Mechanics: The government has all kinds of secrets, but only a true conspiracy theorist might suspect that "psycho-electric weapons" are one of them. So it's odd t...
03:30 am - Sat, April 21, 2018
Slashdot
AMD Wants To Hear From GPU Resellers and Partners Bullied By Nvidia
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Forbes: Nvidia may not be talking about its GeForce Partner Program, but AMD has gone from silent to proactive in less than 24 hours. Hours ago Scott Herkelman...
02:05 am - Sat, April 21, 2018
Slashdot
'Sea Nomads' Are First Known Humans Genetically Adapted To Diving
schwit1 shares a report from National Geographic: Most people can hold their breath underwater for a few seconds, some for a few minutes. But a group of people called the Bajau takes free diving to th...
01:25 am - Sat, April 21, 2018
Slashdot
AI Will Wipe Out Half the Banking Jobs In a Decade, Experts Say
Experts in the industry say that current advances in artificial intelligence and automation could replace as many as half the nation's financial services workers over the next decade, though it will t...
12:45 am - Sat, April 21, 2018
Slashdot
Qualcomm Cutting 1,500 Jobs At Its California Offices
As part of its promise to investors to cut annual costs by $1 billion, Qualcomm is cutting 1,500 jobs across multiple divisions at its offices in California. Reuters reports: The company, which has ab...
12:03 am - Sat, April 21, 2018
Slashdot
Engineers Are Leaving America For Canada
An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report via Bloomberg: The H-1B was created in 1990, part of an immigration overhaul signed into law by President George H.W. Bush that also created the EB-...
11:20 pm - Fri, April 20, 2018
Slashdot
North Korean Leader Says He Will Suspend Arms Tests, Shut Nuclear Test Site
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un announced early Saturday morning that the regime no longer needs nuclear tests or intercontinental ballistic missile tests. Kim said Saturday that "under the proven con...
10:40 pm - Fri, April 20, 2018
Slashdot
AT&T, Verizon Under US Investigation For Collusion To Lock In Customers
bongey writes: AT&T and Verizon are currently under investigation for colluding with the GSMA standards group to thwart eSIM technology and hinder consumers from easily switching wireless carriers...
10:00 pm - Fri, April 20, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Starts Its Facial Recognition Push To Europeans
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Jimmy Nsubuga, a journalist at Metro, is among several European Facebook users who have reported getting notifications asking if they want to turn ...
09:20 pm - Fri, April 20, 2018
Slashdot
Users Complain About Installation Issues With macOS 10.13.4
An anonymous reader shares a report: The 10.13.4 update for macOS High Sierra is recommended for all users, and was emitted at the end of March promising to "improve stability, performance, and securi...
08:40 pm - Fri, April 20, 2018
Slashdot
Palantir Knows Everything About You
Palantir, a data-mining company created by Peter Thiel, is aiding government agencies by tracking American citizens using the War on Terror, Bloomberg reports. From the report: The company's engineers...
08:00 pm - Fri, April 20, 2018
Slashdot
No One Knows How Long the US Coastline Is
How long is the U.S. coastline? It's a straightforward question, and one that's important for scientists and government agencies alike. From a report: The U.S. Geological Survey could give you an answ...
07:20 pm - Fri, April 20, 2018
Slashdot
Users Don't Want iOS To Merge With MacOS, Apple Chief Tim Cook Says
Rebutting a widespread speculation, Apple chief executive Tim Cook said the company is not working toward building an operating system that both Macs and iPhones could share. From his interview on Syd...
06:40 pm - Fri, April 20, 2018
Slashdot
The 'Terms and Conditions' Reckoning Is Coming
Everyone from Uber to PayPal is facing a backlash against their impenetrable legalese. From a report: Personal finance forums online are brimming with complaints from hundreds of PayPal customers who ...
06:00 pm - Fri, April 20, 2018
Slashdot
Kaspersky Lab Banned From Advertising on Twitter Because of Its Alleged Ties With Russian Intelligence Agencies
An anonymous reader shares a report: Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab has been banned from advertising on Twitter due to its allegedly close and active ties between the company and Russian ...
05:05 pm - Fri, April 20, 2018
Slashdot
Democratic Party Files Suit Alleging Russia, the Trump Campaign, and WikiLeaks Conspired To Disrupt the 2016 Election
The Democratic Party is suing Russia, the Trump campaign and the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks for conspiring to disrupt the 2016 presidential election. From a report: The multi-million-dollar law...
04:40 pm - Fri, April 20, 2018
Slashdot
End of the Landline: BT Aims To Move All UK Customers To VoIP by 2025
BT aims to move its UK customers to IP telephony by 2025. From a report: BT is shutting its traditional telephone network in the UK, according to an email seen by The Register. The public switched tel...
04:05 pm - Fri, April 20, 2018
Slashdot
AI Can Scour Code To Find Accidentally Public Passwords
An anonymous reader shares a report: Researchers at software infrastructure firm Pivotal have taught AI to locate this accidentally public sensitive information in a surprising way: By looking at the ...
03:22 pm - Fri, April 20, 2018
Slashdot
AI Helps Grow 6 Billion Roaches at China's Largest Breeding Site
With the help of AI, folks at a Chinese pharmaceutical company are breeding cockroaches by the billions every year, South China Morning Post reports. From a report: Their purpose: To make a "healing p...
02:43 pm - Fri, April 20, 2018
Slashdot
Loud Sound From Fire Alarm System Shuts Down Nasdaq's Scandinavian Data Center
Catalin Cimpanu, writing for BleepingComputer: A loud sound emitted by a fire alarm system has destroyed the hard drives of a Swedish data center, downing Nasdaq operations across Northern Europe. The...
02:00 pm - Fri, April 20, 2018
Slashdot
AI Researchers Are Making More Than $1 Million, Even at a Nonprofit
One of the poorest-kept secrets in Silicon Valley has been the huge salaries and bonuses that experts in artificial intelligence can command. Now, a little-noticed tax filing by a research lab called ...
01:00 pm - Fri, April 20, 2018
Slashdot
Google Is 'Pausing' Work On Allo In Favor 'Chat,' An RCS-Based Messaging Standard
An anonymous reader shares an exclusive report from The Verge about Google's next big fix for Android's messaging mess: Instead of bringing a better app to the table, it's trying to change the rules o...
10:00 am - Fri, April 20, 2018
Slashdot
ZTE Exports Ban May Mean No Google Apps, a Death Sentence For Its Smartphones
New submitter krazy1 shares a report from Ars Technica: The U.S. government is going after another Chinese Android device maker. After shutting down Huawei's carrier deals and retail partners, the gov...
07:00 am - Fri, April 20, 2018
Slashdot
Audit Approved of Facebook Policies, Even After Cambridge Analytica Leak
Nicholas Confessore reports via The New York Times: An auditing firm responsible for monitoring Facebook for federal regulators told them last year that the company had sufficient privacy protections ...
03:30 am - Fri, April 20, 2018
Slashdot
Since 2016, Half of All Coral In the Great Barrier Reef Has Died
A new paper, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, reports that the Great Barrier Reef has lost more than half of its corals since 2016. The authors inspected every one of its reefs, surveying th...
02:05 am - Fri, April 20, 2018
Slashdot
Cloudflare: FOSTA Was a 'Very Bad Bill' That's Left the Internet's Infrastructure Hanging
Last week, President Donald Trump signed the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) into law. It's a bill that penalizes any platform found "facilitating prostitution," and has caused many advocacy ...
01:25 am - Fri, April 20, 2018
Slashdot
AMD 2nd Gen Ryzen Processors Launched and Benchmarked
MojoKid writes: AMD launched its 2nd Generation Ryzen processors today, based on a refined update to the company's Zen architecture, dubbed Zen+. The chips offer higher clocks, lower latencies, and a ...
12:45 am - Fri, April 20, 2018
Slashdot
LA Councilman Asks City Attorney To 'Review Possible Legal Action' Against Waze
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Yet another Los Angeles city councilman has taken Waze to task for creating "dangerous conditions" in his district, and the politician is now "as...
12:03 am - Fri, April 20, 2018
Slashdot
Apple Has a New iPhone Recycling Robot Named 'Daisy'
Apple has unveiled a new robot called Daisy that's designed to recycle nine different versions of the iPhone. The new robot is an update to Liam, the recycling robot the company announced back in 2016...
11:20 pm - Thu, April 19, 2018
Slashdot
Hackers Keep Robbing Cryptocurrency YouTubers
Hackers are going after YouTubers who make videos about cryptocurrencies. Adrianne Jeffries, reporting for The Verge: Cryptocurrency vlogging has exploded on YouTube over the last two years. In the la...
10:40 pm - Thu, April 19, 2018
Slashdot
German Supreme Court Rules Ad Blockers Legal
New submitter paai writes: The publishing company Axel Springer tried to ban the use of ad blockers in Germany because they endanger the digital publishing of news stories. The Oberlandesgericht Koln ...
10:00 pm - Thu, April 19, 2018
Slashdot
New Alexa Blueprints Let Users Make Custom Skills Without Knowing Any Code
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Amazon just released a new way for Alexa users to customize their experience with the virtual assistant. New Alexa Skill Blueprints allow you to ...
09:20 pm - Thu, April 19, 2018
Slashdot
LinkedIn's AutoFill Plugin Could Leak user Data, Secret Fix Failed
TechCrunch reports of a flaw in LinkedIn's AutoFill plugin that could have allowed hackers to steal your full name, phone number, email address, location (ZIP code), company, and job title. "Malicious...
08:40 pm - Thu, April 19, 2018
Slashdot
Millions of Chrome Users Have Installed Malware Posing as Ad Blockers
Kaleigh Rogers, writing for Motherboard: Andrey Meshkov, the cofounder of ad-blocker AdGuard, recently got curious about the number of knock-off ad blocking extensions available for Google's popular b...
08:00 pm - Thu, April 19, 2018
Slashdot
FDA Wants Medical Devices To Have Mandatory Built-In Update Mechanisms
Catalin Cimpanu, writing for BleepingComputer: The US Food & Drug Administration plans to ask Congress for more funding and regulatory powers to improve its approach towards medical device safety,...
07:20 pm - Thu, April 19, 2018
Slashdot
Netflix Could Start Buying Movie Theaters to Help Films Gain a Boost in Oscar Race, Report Says
Netflix has made a strong effort to land Oscar nominations since debuting its first original feature, "Beasts of No Nation," in 2015. The next step in the streaming giant's plan to secure film awards ...
06:40 pm - Thu, April 19, 2018
Slashdot
The Higher Your Salary, the More Time Your Employer Will Pay You Not To Work
The best-paid workers in the US not only make more money than many of their colleagues, they also tend to get more paid vacation days. An anonymous reader shares a report: An annual survey of of emplo...
06:00 pm - Thu, April 19, 2018
Slashdot
Pasta Is Good For You, Say Scientists Funded By Big Pasta
Earlier this month, numerous news outlets reported on a study which concludes that eating pasta is good for health. In fact, the reports claimed, eating pasta could help you lose weight. Except, there...
05:47 pm - Thu, April 19, 2018
Slashdot
Pasta Is Good For You, Say Scientists Funded By Big Pasta
Earlier this month, numerous news outlets reported on a study which concludes that eating pasta is good for health. In fact, the reports claimed, eating pasta could help you lose weight. Except, there...
05:20 pm - Thu, April 19, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Has Run Out of Windows Phone Stock
Even if you really wanted to buy a Windows phone, Microsoft has run out of Windows Phone devices to sell to you. From a report: I've been watching the number of Windows Phone options on the Microsoft ...
04:40 pm - Thu, April 19, 2018
Slashdot
Turn Right at the Burger King: Google Maps Begins Using Landmarks To Help With Guidance
Most navigation apps give you instructions based on streets or distance. But it's arguably in contrast to how people usually provide directions -- some usually point to landmarks that are easier to sp...
04:03 pm - Thu, April 19, 2018
Slashdot
Marissa Mayer is Back
Former Yahoo Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer is starting a technology business incubator, Lumi Labs, with longtime colleague Enrique Munoz Torres, she revealed in an interview with The New York ...
03:21 pm - Thu, April 19, 2018
Slashdot
4.9% of Websites Use Flash, Down From 28.5% in 2011
Web makers continue to ditch the infamous Flash for other safer, improved technologies. In 2011, more than 28.5 percent of websites used Flash in their code, a figure technology survey site W3Techs es...
02:40 pm - Thu, April 19, 2018
Slashdot
Finland Is Killing Its Basic Income Experiment
tomhath shares a report: Since the beginning of last year, 2000 Finns are getting money from the government each month -- and they are not expected to do anything in return. The participants, aged 25-...
02:00 pm - Thu, April 19, 2018
Slashdot
'Increasingly, People in Silicon Valley Are Losing Touch With Reality'
Longtime commentator MG Siegler writes: You can see it in the tweets. You can hear it at tech conferences. Hell, you can hear it at most cafes in San Francisco on any given day. People -- really smart...
01:00 pm - Thu, April 19, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook To Put 1.5 Billion Users Out of Reach of New EU Privacy Law
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Facebook: If a new European law restricting what companies can do with people's online data went into effect tomorrow, almost 1.9 billion Facebook users around...
10:00 am - Thu, April 19, 2018
Slashdot
Jeff Bezos Reveals That Amazon Has Over 100 Million Prime Subscribers
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos revealed today that the company has over 100 million Prime members, "marking the first time in the 13-year history of Amazon offering its Prime membership that the company has ev...
07:00 am - Thu, April 19, 2018
Slashdot
Scientists Create Robots That Can Assemble IKEA Furniture For You
sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: Although artificial intelligence systems may be able to beat humans at board games, we still have the upper hand when it comes to complicated manual...
03:30 am - Thu, April 19, 2018
Slashdot
Autonomous Boats Will Be On the Market Sooner Than Self-Driving Cars
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: In the autonomous revolution that is underway, nearly every transportation machine will eventually be self-driving. For cars, it's likely going to...
02:05 am - Thu, April 19, 2018
Slashdot
MIT Discovers Way To Mass-Produce Graphene In Large Sheets
New submitter Paige.Bennett writes: Up till now, graphene has been produced in small batches in labs. But MIT just found a way to mass-produce graphene in large sheets using a process that rolls out f...
01:25 am - Thu, April 19, 2018
Slashdot
German ICO Savedroid Pulls Exit Scam After Raising $50 Million
German company Savedroid has pulled a classic exit scam after raising $50 million in ICO and direct funding. The site is currently displaying a South Park meme with the caption "Aannnd it's gone." The...
12:45 am - Thu, April 19, 2018
Slashdot
Google Is Shuttering Domain Fronting, Creating a Big Problem For Anti-Censorship Tools
"The Google App Engine is discontinuing a practice called domain fronting, which lets services use Google's network to get around state-level internet blocks," reports The Verge. While the move makes ...
12:03 am - Thu, April 19, 2018
Slashdot
'Login With Facebook' Data Hijacked By JavaScript Trackers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Facebook confirms to TechCrunch that it's investigating a security research report that shows Facebook user data can be grabbed by third-party Java...
11:20 pm - Wed, April 18, 2018
Slashdot
SpaceX Launches NASA's Planet-Hunting Satellite, Successfully Lands Its Falcon 9 Rocket
SpaceX launched NASA's TESS spacecraft Wednesday evening from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and successfully landed its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship following takeoff. This marks 24 successful landings ...
10:40 pm - Wed, April 18, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook To Design Its Own Processors For Hardware Devices, AI Software, and Servers
Facebook is the latest technology company to design its own semiconductors, reports Bloomberg. "The social media company is seeking to hire a manager to build an 'end-to-end SoC/ASIC, firmware and dri...
10:03 pm - Wed, April 18, 2018
Slashdot
Amazon Employee Explains the Poor Working Conditions of An Amazon Warehouse
Earlier this week, James Bloodworth, a former UK Amazon employee that worked undercover in the "fulfillment center" for six-months, released a book detailing the mistreatment of warehouse employees at...
09:25 pm - Wed, April 18, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Ports Edge Anti-Phishing Technology To Google Chrome
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft has released a Chrome extension named "Windows Defender Browser Protection" that ports Windows Defender's -- and inherently Edge's -- anti-phishing technology to ...
08:45 pm - Wed, April 18, 2018
Slashdot
Robots Ride To the Rescue Where Workers Can't Be Found
Fast-growing economies in Eastern Europe have led to severe labor shortages, so companies are calling in the machines [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled]. From a report: In many major economies...
08:05 pm - Wed, April 18, 2018
Slashdot
100 Top Colleges Vow To Enroll More Low-Income Students
Research shows that just 3 percent of high-achieving, low-income students attend America's most selective colleges. And, it's not that these students just aren't there -- every year tens of thousands ...
07:25 pm - Wed, April 18, 2018
Slashdot
A Florida Man Has been Accused of Making 97 Million Robocalls
A Florida man accused of flooding consumers with 97 million phone calls touting fake travel deals appeared Wednesday before lawmakers to explain how robocalls work and to say, "I am not the kingpin of...
06:42 pm - Wed, April 18, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Drops OneNote From Office, Pushes Users To Windows 10 Version
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft is making big changes to OneNote for Windows: The desktop app will no longer be included in Microsoft Office. Instead, OneNote for Windows 10, the UWP app, will b...
06:03 pm - Wed, April 18, 2018
Slashdot
Richard Stallman On Facebook's Privacy Scandal: We Need a Law. There's No Reason We Should Let Them Exist if the Price is Knowing Everything About Us
From a wide-ranging interview of Richard Stallman by New York Magazine: New York Magazine: Why do you think these companies feel justified in collecting that data? Richard Stallman: Oh, well, I think ...
05:20 pm - Wed, April 18, 2018
Slashdot
Data Firm Leaks 48 Million User Profiles it Scraped From Facebook, LinkedIn, Others
Zack Whittaker, reporting for ZDNet: A little-known data firm was able to build 48 million personal profiles, combining data from sites and social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Zillow...
04:40 pm - Wed, April 18, 2018
Slashdot
Puerto Rico is Experiencing an Island-Wide Blackout
An anonymous reader shares a report: Seven months after Hurricane Maria devastated the island of Puerto Rico, the power grid is still unstable. But progress was being made; according to CBS, less than...
04:00 pm - Wed, April 18, 2018
Slashdot
Elon Musk's Alleged Email To Employees on Tesla's Big Picture
An email allegedly sent by Elon Musk to Tesla staff has announced that the Model 3, which has faced a number of production issues, will go into "24/7" production by June, resulting in 6,000 Model 3 un...
03:20 pm - Wed, April 18, 2018
Slashdot
Russia Admits To Blocking Millions of IP Addresses
It turns out, the Russian government, in its quest to block Telegram, accidentally shut down several other services as well. From a report: The chief of the Russian communications watchdog acknowledge...
02:40 pm - Wed, April 18, 2018
Slashdot
Iran Bans State Bodies From Using Telegram App, Khamenei Shuts Account
Iran banned government bodies on Wednesday from using the popular Telegram instant messaging app as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's office said his account would shut down to protect national ...
02:00 pm - Wed, April 18, 2018
Slashdot
Amazon and Best Buy Team Up To Sell Smart TVs
Amazon and Best Buy want to sell you your next smart TV. From a report: The companies, which are two of the biggest electronics retailers in the US, on Wednesday revealed a new multiyear partnership t...
01:00 pm - Wed, April 18, 2018
Slashdot
Chrome 66 Arrives With Autoplaying Content Blocked By Default
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Google today launched Chrome 66 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The desktop release includes autoplaying content muted by default, security ...
10:00 am - Wed, April 18, 2018
Slashdot
Huawei To Back Off US Market Amid Rising Tensions
Huawei is reportedly going to give up on selling its products and services in the United States (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source) due to Washington's accusations that the company ...
07:00 am - Wed, April 18, 2018
Slashdot
Southwest Airlines Engine Failure Results In First Fatality On US Airline In 9 Years
schwit1 shares a report from Heavy: Tammie Jo Shults is the pilot who bravely flew Southwest Flight 1380 to safety after part of its left engine ripped off, damaging a window and nearly sucking a woma...
03:30 am - Wed, April 18, 2018
Slashdot
Cambridge Analytica Planned To Launch Its Own Cryptocurrency
Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics firm that harvested millions of Facebook profiles of U.S. voters, attempted to develop its own cryptocurrency this past year and intended to raise funds through...
02:03 am - Wed, April 18, 2018
Slashdot
FDA Approves First Contact Lenses That Turn Dark In Bright Sunlight
The first photochromic contact lenses have been approved by the FDA. "A unique additive will automatically darken the lenses when they're exposed to bright light," reports Interesting Engineering, cit...
01:25 am - Wed, April 18, 2018
Slashdot
Former FCC Broadband Panel Chair Arrested For Fraud
An anonymous reader quotes a report from DSLReports: The former chair of a panel built by FCC boss Ajit Pai to advise the agency on broadband matters has been arrested for fraud. Elizabeth Ann Pierce,...
12:45 am - Wed, April 18, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Admits To Tracking Users, Non-Users Off-Site
Facebook said in a blog post yesterday that they tracked users and non-users across websites and apps for three main reasons: providing services directly, securing the company's own site, and "improvi...
12:03 am - Wed, April 18, 2018
Slashdot
More Than 95% of World's Population Breathing Unhealthy Air, Says New Report
More than 95% of the world's population is breathing unhealthy air and the poorest nations are the hardest hit, a new report has found. From the report: According to the annual State of Global Air Rep...
11:25 pm - Tue, April 17, 2018
Slashdot
Amazon Shelves Plan To Sell Prescription Drugs
Major Blud writes: CNBC is reporting that Amazon Business, which considered selling pharmaceutical products last year, has put its plans to do so on hiatus. "The change in plan comes partly because Am...
10:45 pm - Tue, April 17, 2018
Slashdot
New York's Attorney General Is Investigating Bitcoin Exchanges
The office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced today that it has launched an investigation into bitcoin exchanges. He's reportedly looking into thirteen major exchanges, including...
10:03 pm - Tue, April 17, 2018
Slashdot
Selling Full Autonomy Before It's Ready Could Backfire For Tesla
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Tesla has an Autopilot problem, and it goes far beyond the fallout from last month's deadly crash in Mountain View, California. Tesla charges $5,...
09:25 pm - Tue, April 17, 2018
Slashdot
Online Tax Filers Will Get Extension After IRS Payment Website Outage
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: The IRS will give last-minute filers additional time to file their tax returns after the page for paying their tax bills using their bank accounts crashe...
08:45 pm - Tue, April 17, 2018
Slashdot
Windows 10 Update Will Support More Password-Free Logins
An anonymous reader writes: It's not just web browsers that are moving beyond passwords. Microsoft has revealed that Windows 10's next update will support the new FIDO 2.0 standard, promising password...
08:05 pm - Tue, April 17, 2018
Slashdot
NASA Planet-Hunter Set For Launch
The US space agency is about to launch a telescope that should find thousands of planets beyond our Solar System. From a report: The Tess mission will go up on a SpaceX's Falcon rocket from Cape Canav...
07:25 pm - Tue, April 17, 2018
Slashdot
NASA's Got a Plan For a 'Galactic Positioning System' To Save Astronauts Lost in Space
From a report: Outer space glows with a bright fog of X-ray light, coming from everywhere at once. But peer carefully into that fog, and faint, regular blips become visible. These are millisecond puls...
06:45 pm - Tue, April 17, 2018
Slashdot
Employees Who Worked at YouTube Say Violent Threats From Volatile 'Creators' Have Been Going on For Years
Anonymous readers share a report: YouTube managers had no way to predict Nasim Aghdam would go on a bloody rampage, but they had plenty of reasons to fear that someone like her might one day show up, ...
06:05 pm - Tue, April 17, 2018
Slashdot
Diamonds in Sudan Meteorite 'Are Remnants of Lost Planet'
Diamonds found in a meteorite that exploded over the Nubian desert in Sudan a decade ago were formed deep inside a "lost planet" that once circled the sun in the early solar system, scientists say. Fr...
05:25 pm - Tue, April 17, 2018
Slashdot
Former Cambridge Analytica Employee Says Facebook Users Affected Could Be 'Much Greater Than 87 million'
Cambridge Analytica and its partners used data from previously unknown "Facebook-connected questionnaires" to obtain user data from the social media service, according to testimony from a former Cambr...
04:46 pm - Tue, April 17, 2018
Slashdot
One Laptop Per Child's $100 Laptop Was Going To Change the World -- Then it All Went Wrong
Adi Robertson, reporting for The Verge: In late 2005, tech visionary and MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte pulled the cloth cover off a small green computer with a bright yellow crank. The dev...
04:06 pm - Tue, April 17, 2018
Slashdot
What It's Like To Live in America Without Broadband Internet
Motherboard has an interesting piece which serves as a reminder that even today in every single state, a portion of the population doesn't have access to broadband, and some have no access to the inte...
03:48 pm - Tue, April 17, 2018
Slashdot
IRS 'Direct Pay' Option Not Working on Tax Day
An anonymous reader shares a report: Online payments on IRS.gov are partially down. But the government still expects its money. A page on the IRS website that allows taxpayers to make a payment is not...
03:20 pm - Tue, April 17, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Delays Windows 10 Spring Creators Update Because of 'Higher Percentage of BSODs'
Microsoft has admitted that it had to postpone the release of Spring Creators Update, the upcoming major update to its Windows 10 desktop operating system due to technical issues. BleepingComputer not...
02:40 pm - Tue, April 17, 2018
Slashdot
Cybersecurity Tech Accord: More Than 30 Tech Firms Pledge Not to Assist Governments in Cyberattacks
Over 30 major technology companies, led by Microsoft and Facebook, on Tuesday announced what they are calling the Cybersecurity Tech Accord, a set of principles that include a declaration that they wi...
02:00 pm - Tue, April 17, 2018
Slashdot
Apple Is Planning To Launch a News Subscription Service
An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple plans to integrate recently acquired magazine app Texture into Apple News and debut its own premium subscription offering, according to people familiar with ...
01:00 pm - Tue, April 17, 2018
Slashdot
Tesla Temporarily Stops Model 3 Production Line
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Tesla is temporarily stopping production of its Model 3 electric car, amid a long waiting list and several missed targets. The company, however, say...
10:00 am - Tue, April 17, 2018
Slashdot
MPAA Silently Shut Down Its Legal Movies Search Engine
Back in 2015, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) released its own search engine to combat the argument that people pirate films because there are too few legal alternatives. According to...
07:00 am - Tue, April 17, 2018
Slashdot
19-Year-Old Archivist Charged For Downloading Freedom-of-Information Releases
Ichijo writes: According to CBC News, a Canadian teen "has been charged with 'unauthorized use of a computer,' which carries a possible 10-year prison sentence, for downloading approximately 7,000 fre...
03:30 am - Tue, April 17, 2018
Slashdot
Supreme Court Set To Hear Landmark Online Sales Tax Case
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that could at least somewhat clarify Donald Trump's complaints about Amazon "not payi...
01:50 am - Tue, April 17, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Must Face Class-Action Lawsuit Over Facial Recognition, Says Judge
U.S. District Judge James Donato ruled on Monday that Facebook must face a class-action lawsuit alleging that the social network unlawfully used a facial recognition process on photos without user per...
12:50 am - Tue, April 17, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Built Its Own Custom Linux Kernel For Its New IoT Service
At a small press event in San Francisco, Microsoft today announced the launch of a secure end-to-end IoT product that focuses on microcontroller-based devices -- the kind of devices that use tiny and ...
12:10 am - Tue, April 17, 2018
Slashdot
New Child Protection Nonprofit Strikes Back At Sex-Negative Approach of FOSTA-SESTA
qirtaiba writes: When the FOSTA-SESTA online sex trafficking bill passed last month, it sailed through Congress because there were no child protection organizations that stood against it, and because ...
11:30 pm - Mon, April 16, 2018
Slashdot
Planet Fitness Evacuated After WiFi Network Named 'Remote Detonator' Causes Scare
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Windsor Star: A Michigan gym patron looking for a Wi-Fi connection found one named "remote detonator," prompting an evacuation and precautionary search of the ...
10:50 pm - Mon, April 16, 2018
Slashdot
ReactOS 0.4.8 Released
jeditobe shares a report from OSNews: With software specifically leaving NT5 behind, ReactOS is expanding its target to support NT6+ (Vista, Windows 8, Windows 10) software. Colin, Giannis and Mark ar...
10:10 pm - Mon, April 16, 2018
Slashdot
Coinbase Buys Earn.com For Reported $100 Million, Adds Key Executive
Digital currency exchange Coinbase announced today that it has acquired Earn.com, a portal that allows people to make money by answering emails or completing other tasks. Coinbase did not disclose the...
09:30 pm - Mon, April 16, 2018
Slashdot
California Bill Would Restore, Strengthen Net Neutrality Protections
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Mercury News: With the FCC order to repeal net neutrality rules set to take effect next week, a bill that would restore those regulations in California wil...
08:50 pm - Mon, April 16, 2018
Slashdot
Scientists Accidentally Create Mutant Enzyme That Eats Plastic Bottles
Scientists have created a mutant enzyme that breaks down plastic drinks bottles -- by accident. The breakthrough could help solve the global plastic pollution crisis by enabling for the first time the...
08:10 pm - Mon, April 16, 2018
Slashdot
T-Mobile To Pay $40 Million Over False Ring Tones on Rural US Calls
David Shepardson, writing for Reuters: T-Mobile USA agreed on Monday to pay $40 million to resolve a government investigation that found it failed to correct problems with delivering calls in rural ar...
07:30 pm - Mon, April 16, 2018
Slashdot
Why New York City Stopped Building Subways
New York City, which once saw an unprecedented infrastructure boom -- putting together iconic bridges, opulent railway terminals to build the then world's largest underground and rapid transit network...
06:50 pm - Mon, April 16, 2018
Slashdot
Demand For Batteries Is Shrinking, Yet Prices Keep On Going and Going ... Up
schwit1 shares a report: Batteries on average cost 8.2% more than a year ago, while prices in the overall household-care segment rose only 1.8%, according to Nielsen. At a time when prices are stagnat...
06:10 pm - Mon, April 16, 2018
Slashdot
France is Building Its Own Encrypted Messaging Service To Ease Fears That Foreign Entities Could Spy on Private Conversations
The French government is building its own encrypted messenger service to ease fears that foreign entities could spy on private conversations between top officials, the digital ministry said on Monday....
05:30 pm - Mon, April 16, 2018
Slashdot
State-Sponsored Russian Hackers Actively Seeking To Hijack Essential Internet Hardware, US and UK Intelligence Agencies Say
State-sponsored Russian hackers are actively seeking to hijack essential internet hardware, US and UK intelligence agencies say. BBC reports: The UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the FBI an...
04:55 pm - Mon, April 16, 2018
Slashdot
Former Senior VP of Apple Tony Fadell Says Company Needs To Tackle Smartphone Addiction
In an op-ed published on Wired, former SVP at Apple Tony Fadell argues that smartphone manufacturers -- Apple in particular -- need to do a better job of educating users about how often they use their...
04:13 pm - Mon, April 16, 2018
Slashdot
Carbon Dioxide From Ships at Sea To Be Regulated For First Time
Carbon dioxide from ships at sea will be regulated for the first time following a historic agreement reached after two weeks of detailed talks in London. From a report: Shipping companies will halve t...
03:30 pm - Mon, April 16, 2018
Slashdot
US Bans American Companies From Selling To Chinese Electronics Maker ZTE
An anonymous reader shares a report: The U.S. Department of Commerce is banning American companies from selling components to leading Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE Corp for seven years for viola...
02:50 pm - Mon, April 16, 2018
Slashdot
Russia Begins Blocking Telegram Messenger
Russia's state telecommunications regulator said on Monday it had begun blocking access to Telegram messenger after the company refused to comply with an order to give Russian state security access to...
02:12 pm - Mon, April 16, 2018
Slashdot
Linus Torvalds Says Linux Kernel v5.0 'Should Be Meaningless'
An anonymous reader shares a report: Following the release of Linux kernel 4.16, Linus Torvalds has said that the next kernel will be version 5.0. Or maybe it won't, because version numbers are meanin...
01:05 pm - Mon, April 16, 2018
Slashdot
Hackers Stole a Casino's High-Roller Database Through a Thermometer in the Lobby Fish Tank
From a report: Nicole Eagan, the CEO of cybersecurity company Darktrace, told the WSJ CEO Council in London on Thursday: "There's a lot of internet of things devices, everything from thermostats, refr...
10:00 am - Mon, April 16, 2018
Slashdot
Netflix Licensed Content Generates 80% of US Viewing, Study Finds
Netflix is spending a pretty penny on original entertainment -- but while that stuff grabs most of the headlines, it's actually licensed titles like TV show reruns that still form the core of the comp...
06:30 am - Mon, April 16, 2018
Slashdot
Ola Wants a Million Electric Rides on India's Roads by 2021
Ride-hailing company Ola, Uber's fiercest Indian competitor, wants to roll out 10,000 electric three-wheeled rickshaws within a year and a million battery-powered vehicles by 2021. From a report: The ...
05:09 am - Mon, April 16, 2018
Slashdot
Linux 4.17 Kernel Offers Better Intel Power-Savings While Dropping Old CPUs
An anonymous reader writes: Linus Torvalds has released Linux 4.17-rc1. This kernel comes with a significant amount of new capabilities as outlined by the Linux 4.17 feature overview. Among the new fe...
01:00 am - Mon, April 16, 2018
Slashdot
Europe Divided Over Robot 'Personhood'
Politico Europe has an interesting piece which looks at the high-stakes debate between European lawmakers, legal experts and manufacturers over who should bear the ultimate responsibility for the acti...
11:30 pm - Sun, April 15, 2018
Slashdot
Netflix CEO: Why Even $8 Billion Investment in Content Isn't Enough
Netflix expects to spend about $8 billion on content this year. For Hollywood studios, that's a reasonable figure. But for Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, it's not enough. From a report: The company is com...
10:00 pm - Sun, April 15, 2018
Slashdot
The Scientific Paper Is Obsolete
James Somers, writing for The Atlantic: The scientific paper -- the actual form of it -- was one of the enabling inventions of modernity. Before it was developed in the 1600s, results were communicate...
09:00 pm - Sun, April 15, 2018
Slashdot
The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Innovation
Abstract of a paper [PDF] which was originally published last month: Artificial intelligence may greatly increase the efficiency of the existing economy. But it may have an even larger impact by servi...
08:00 pm - Sun, April 15, 2018
Slashdot
Intel SPI Flash Flaw Lets Attackers Alter or Delete BIOS/UEFI Firmware
Catalin Cimpanu, writing for BleepingComputer: Intel has addressed a vulnerability in the configuration of several CPU series that allow an attacker to alter the behavior of the chip's SPI Flash memor...
07:00 pm - Sun, April 15, 2018
Slashdot
How the Quakers Became Unlikely Economic Innovators by Inventing the Price Tag
Belying its simplicity and ubiquity, the price tag is a surprisingly recent economic development, Aeon magazine writes. For centuries, haggling was the norm, ultimately developing into a system that r...
06:00 pm - Sun, April 15, 2018
Slashdot
Former FBI Director James Comey Reveals How Apple and Google's Encryption Efforts Drove Him 'Crazy'
An anonymous reader shares a report: In his explosive new book, A Higher Loyalty, fired FBI director James Comey denounces President Trump as "untethered to the truth" and likens him to a "mob boss," ...
05:00 pm - Sun, April 15, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Windows 10 Gains Linux/WSL Console Copy and Paste Functionality
BrianFagioli writes: For better or worse, the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) initiative seems to be moving full steam ahead. There are some very respectable distributions available in the Microsoft...
04:00 pm - Sun, April 15, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Engineer Charged In Reveton Ransomware Case
An anonymous reader writes: A Microsoft network engineer is facing federal charges in Florida for allegedly helping launder money obtained from victims of the Reventon ransomware. Florida investigator...
03:00 pm - Sun, April 15, 2018
Slashdot
Pentagon Reports 2000% Increase in Russia Trolls Since Friday
An anonymous reader shares a report: Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said in Saturday's briefing that there has been a "2,000% increase in Russian trolls in the last 24 hours," following the coordinat...
02:00 pm - Sun, April 15, 2018
Slashdot
Lawmakers Call FBI's 'Going Dark' Narrative 'Highly Questionable' After Motherboard Shows Cops Can Easily Hack iPhones
Joseph Cox, reporting for Motherboard: This week, Motherboard showed that law enforcement agencies across the country, including a part of the State Department, have bought GrayKey, a relatively cheap...
11:34 am - Sun, April 15, 2018
Slashdot
Researchers Find Genetic Cause For Alzheimer's, Possible Method To Reverse It
schwit1 quotes UPI: Scientists at an independent biomedical research institution have reported a monumental breakthrough: The cause of the primary genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, and a po...
07:34 am - Sun, April 15, 2018
Slashdot
Is It Time To Stop Using Social Media?
Slashdot reader Nicola Hahn writes: Bulk data collection isn't the work of a couple of bad apples. Corporate social media is largely predicated on stockpiling and mining user information. As Zuckerber...
03:34 am - Sun, April 15, 2018
Slashdot
Survey Finds 'Agile' Competency Is Rare In Organizations
An anonymous reader writes:The 12th annual "State of Agile" report has just been released by CollabNet VersionOne, which calls it "the largest and longest-running Agile survey in the world." After sur...
01:34 am - Sun, April 15, 2018
Slashdot
PUBG Ransomware Decrypts Your Files If You Play PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds
An anonymous reader quotes Bleeping Computer:In what could only be a joke, a new ransomware has been discovered called "PUBG Ransomware" that will decrypt your files if you play the game called Player...
11:34 pm - Sat, April 14, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Competitor Orkut Relaunches as 'Hello'
An anonymous reader quotes Bloomberg:In 2004, one of the world's most popular social networks, Orkut, was founded by a former Google employee named Orkut Buyukkokten... Orkut was shut down by Google i...
10:34 pm - Sat, April 14, 2018
Slashdot
ULA Is Livestreaming An Atlas V Rocket Launch
United Launch Alliance -- a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Space Systems and Boeing -- is livestreaming tonight's launch of an Atlas V rocket. UPI reports:The rocket is set to blast-off at 7:13 p.m....
09:34 pm - Sat, April 14, 2018
Slashdot
Ask Slashdot: How Can I Make My Own Vaporware Real?
Long-time Slashdot reader renuk007 is a retired Unix/Linux systems programmer with the ultimate question:After retiring I started a second career as a teacher -- and I'm loving it. My problem: I desig...
08:34 pm - Sat, April 14, 2018
Slashdot
'An Apology for the Internet -- from the People Who Built It'
"Those who designed our digital world are aghast at what they created," argues a new article in New York Magazine titled "The Internet Apologizes".Today, the most dire warnings are coming from the hea...
07:34 pm - Sat, April 14, 2018
Slashdot
Can We Build Indoor 'Vertical Farms' Near The World's Major Cities?
Vox reports on the hot new "vertical farming" startup Plenty:The company's goal is to build an indoor farm outside of every city in the world of more than 1 million residents -- around 500 in all. It ...
06:34 pm - Sat, April 14, 2018
Slashdot
'Open Source Initiative' President Interviewed by Linux Journal
The newly-relaunched Linux Journal just interviewed the Open Source Initiative's president, Simon Phipps. An anonymous reader summarizes the highlights:Phipps collects no salary -- unlike the executiv...
05:34 pm - Sat, April 14, 2018
Slashdot
Investor Tim Draper Pushes Ballot Measure Splitting California Into 3 States
"One of several proposals aiming to split California into multiple smaller states has reportedly reached an important new goal thanks in large part to the efforts of its billionaire champion," writes ...
04:34 pm - Sat, April 14, 2018
Slashdot
Robots Replace Soldiers In First of Its Kind Obstacle-Breaching Exercise
Long-time Slashdot reader cold fjord writes: U.S. and British troops have completed a first-of-its-kind exercise using robots for breaching a complex anti-tank/anti-personnel obstacle as part of what ...
03:34 pm - Sat, April 14, 2018
Slashdot
Yahoo's New Privacy Policy Allows Data-Sharing With Verizon
"Yahoo is now part of Oath and there is a new Privacy and Terms contract..." warns long-time Slashdot reader DigitalLogic. CNET reports:Oath notes that it has the right to read your emails, instant me...
02:34 pm - Sat, April 14, 2018
Slashdot
Jailed Kansas 'Swat' Perpetrator Sneaks Online, Threatens More 'Swats'
An anonymous reader quotes the Wichita Eagle:Tyler Barriss -- the man charged in a swatting hoax that led to the death of an innocent Wichita man -- apparently got access to the internet from jail for...
01:45 pm - Sat, April 14, 2018
Slashdot
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Version 7.5 Released
On Tuesday Red Hat announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 7.5.An anonymous reader writes: Serving as a consistent foundation for hybrid cloud environments, Red Hat Ente...
01:00 pm - Sat, April 14, 2018
Slashdot
Apple's Stumbling HomePod Isn't the Hot Seller It Wanted
The recently-released Apple HomePod smart speaker is not selling very well. According to Bloomberg, "By late March, Apple had lowered sales forecasts and cut some orders with Inventec, one of the manu...
10:00 am - Sat, April 14, 2018
Slashdot
NASA May Fly Humans On the Less Powerful Version of Its Deep-Space Rocket
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: NASA may make some big changes to the first couple flights of its future deep-space rocket, the Space Launch System, after getting a recent funding ...
07:00 am - Sat, April 14, 2018
Slashdot
Firms Relabelling Low-Skilled Jobs As Apprenticeships, Says Report
Fast food giants, coffee shops and retailers are relabelling low-skilled jobs as apprenticeships and gaining subsidies for training, a report says. BBC: The study by centre-right think tank Reform say...
05:00 am - Sat, April 14, 2018
Slashdot
'Is Curing Patients a Sustainable Business Model?' Goldman Sachs Analysts Ask
In an April 10 report for biotech clients, Goldman Sachs analysts noted that one-shot cures for diseases are not great for business as they're bad for longterm profits. The investment banks' report, t...
03:30 am - Sat, April 14, 2018
Slashdot
YouTube Is Littered With Mass-Produced Videos Made By Automated Bots
A report via Hacker Noon sheds some light on the practice of using bots to mass-produce videos for YouTube. The YouTube channel Breaking News Today, for example, constantly generates new videos from r...
02:44 am - Sat, April 14, 2018
Slashdot
Google's New Book Search Deals in Ideas, Not Keywords
A new Google project called called "Talk to Books" provides answers to questions by drawing on a library of more than 100,000 books. From a report: Tech pioneer Ray Kurzweil debuted the project at the...
01:50 am - Sat, April 14, 2018
Slashdot
AI Can Generate a 3D Model of a Person After Watching a Few Seconds of Video
An anonymous reader shares a report: A new algorithm creates 3D models using standard video footage from one angle. The system has three stages. First, it analyzes a video a few seconds long of someon...
01:10 am - Sat, April 14, 2018
Slashdot
Ocean Current That Keeps Europe Warm Is Weakening Because of Climate Change
The Washington Post: The Atlantic Ocean circulation that carries warmth into the Northern Hemisphere's high latitudes is slowing down because of climate change, a team of scientists asserted Wednesday...
12:30 am - Sat, April 14, 2018
Slashdot
AMD Makes 2nd Gen Ryzen Processors Official With Availability Starting Next Week
MojoKid writes: Today AMD announced official details regarding its new mainstream second-generation Ryzen family of processors. Pricing and detailed specs show some compelling new alternatives from AM...
11:50 pm - Fri, April 13, 2018
Slashdot
The Long, Slow Demise of Credit Card Signatures Starts Today
Last year, all four major U.S. payment providers -- Mastercard, Visa, American Express and Discover -- announced plans to remove the requirement that merchants collect signatures for card transactions...
11:10 pm - Fri, April 13, 2018
Slashdot
Comcast Is Bundling Netflix Into Cable Packages
The latest option in Comcast's Xfinity cable bundle is Netflix. The two companies announced an expansion of their partnership today, which was first established in 2016 when Comcast added Netflix to i...
10:30 pm - Fri, April 13, 2018
Slashdot
Google Works Out a Fascinating, Slightly Scary Way For AI To Isolate Voices In a Crowd
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google researchers have developed a deep-learning system designed to help computers better identify and isolate individual voices within a noisy ...
09:50 pm - Fri, April 13, 2018
Slashdot
Google Appears To Be Testing iPhone X-Style Gesture Navigation In Android P
A new screenshot that Google recently shared (and since deleted) is stirring up theories about a possible iPhone X-like gesture navigation interface for Android P. Android Police reports: What we see ...
09:10 pm - Fri, April 13, 2018
Slashdot
Guinness Strips Billy 'King of Kong' Mitchell's World Records
In February, legendary arcade gamer Billy Mitchell was accused of cheating his way into the record books for high scores in Donkey Kong. As a result, he was stripped of his 1.062 million score on the ...
08:30 pm - Fri, April 13, 2018
Slashdot
Tesla Relied On Too Many Robots To Build the Model 3, Elon Musk Says
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Elon Musk says Tesla relied on too many robots to build the Model 3, which is partly to blame for the delays in manufacturing the crucial mass-marke...
07:45 pm - Fri, April 13, 2018
Slashdot
Trade War Or Not, China is Closing the Gap on US in Technology IP Race
China's rising investment in research and expansion of its higher education system mean that it is fast closing the gap with the United States in intellectual property and the struggle to be the No.1 ...
06:50 pm - Fri, April 13, 2018
Slashdot
Trade War Or Not, China is Closing the Gap on US in Technology IP Race
China's rising investment in research and expansion of its higher education system mean that it is fast closing the gap with the United States in intellectual property and the struggle to be the No.1 ...
06:50 pm - Fri, April 13, 2018
Slashdot
In a Leaked Memo, Apple Warns Employees to Stop Leaking Information
Apple warned employees to stop leaking internal information on future plans and raised the specter of potential legal action and criminal charges, one of the most-aggressive moves by the world's large...
05:56 pm - Fri, April 13, 2018
Slashdot
In a Leaked Memo, Apple Warns Employees to Stop Leaking Information
Apple warned employees to stop leaking internal information on future plans and raised the specter of potential legal action and criminal charges, one of the most-aggressive moves by the world's large...
05:11 pm - Fri, April 13, 2018
Slashdot
A Coal Power Plant is Being Reopened For Blockchain Mining
An anonymous reader shares a report: Sure, you could mine bitcoin on that old PC in your garage, or you could use a whole power station to do it. That's the idea behind the Blockchain Application Cent...
04:30 pm - Fri, April 13, 2018
Slashdot
Apple Sued an Independent iPhone Repair Shop Owner and Lost
Jason Koebler, reporting for Motherboard: Last year, Apple's lawyers sent Henrik Huseby, the owner of a small electronics repair shop in Norway, a letter demanding that he immediately stop using after...
04:00 pm - Fri, April 13, 2018
Slashdot
Telegram is Riddled With Tens of Thousands of Piracy Channels; Apple and Google Have Ignored Requests From Creators To Take Action
joshtops writes: Instant messaging platform Telegram, which is used by more than 200 million users, has had an open secret since its inception: The platform has served as a haven for online pirates. T...
03:10 pm - Fri, April 13, 2018
Slashdot
Google is Testing Self-Destructing Emails in New Gmail
The upcoming update to Gmail might include a feature which would allow users to send emails that expire after a user-defined period of time. From a report: Working on an email service is hard as you h...
02:43 pm - Fri, April 13, 2018
Slashdot
Google Chrome To Boost User Privacy by Improving Cookies Handling Procedure
Catalin Cimpanu, writing for BleepingComputer: Google engineers plan to improve user privacy and security by putting a short lifespan on cookies delivered via HTTP connections. Google hopes that the m...
02:00 pm - Fri, April 13, 2018
Slashdot
Google Loses 'Right To Be Forgotten' Case
A businessman fighting for the "right to be forgotten" has won a High Court action against Google. BBC reports: The man, who has not been named due to reporting restrictions surrounding the case, want...
01:00 pm - Fri, April 13, 2018
Slashdot
Trump Orders Audit of Postal Service After Suggesting Amazon Is To Blame For Their Troubles
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. Postal Service to undergo an audit Thursday evening, a move that comes after president's repeated claims that...
10:00 am - Fri, April 13, 2018
Slashdot
438 Bitcoins Worth Nearly $3.5 Million Stolen From Exchange In India, CSO Accused
William Robinson shares a report from The Economic Times: Nearly 438 bitcoins, worth nearly $3.5 million, were stolen from a top exchange firm in India in what is being billed as the biggest cryptocur...
07:00 am - Fri, April 13, 2018
Slashdot
Hubble Telescope Discovers a Light-Bending 'Einstein Ring' In Space
Space.com reports of the Hubble Space Telescope's discovery of a light-bending "Einstein Ring" in space: The perfect circle surrounding a galaxy cluster in a new Hubble Space Telescope image is a visu...
03:30 am - Fri, April 13, 2018
Slashdot
Nearly 1 In 10 Americans Have Deleted Their Facebook Account Over Privacy Concerns, Survey Claims
An anonymous reader shares a report from BGR, summarizing a survey from TechPinions: With the outrage surrounding Facebook's privacy policies reaching a fever pitch over the past few weeks, there has ...
02:03 am - Fri, April 13, 2018
Slashdot
World's First Electrified Road For Charging Vehicles Opens In Sweden
A 1.2-mile stretch of road with electric rails has been installed in Stockholm, Sweden, allowing electric vehicles to charge up their batteries as they drive across it. "The technology behind the elec...
01:30 am - Fri, April 13, 2018
Slashdot
'High Definition Vinyl' Is Coming As Early As Next Year
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Pitchfork: In 2016, a European patent filing described a way of manufacturing records that the inventors claimed would have higher audio fidelity, louder volum...
12:50 am - Fri, April 13, 2018
Slashdot
Uber Drivers Are Independent Contractors, Not Employees, Judge Rules
Uber drivers are independent contractors, not full-time employees of the ride-hailing company, a federal judge in Philadelphia ruled in what is said to be the first classification of Uber drivers unde...
12:10 am - Fri, April 13, 2018
Slashdot
Firefox 11.0 For iOS Arrives With Tracking Protection On By Default
The new version of Firefox 11.0 for iOS turns on tracking protection by default, lets you reorder your tabs, and adds a handful of iPad-specific features. The latest version is currently available via...
11:30 pm - Thu, April 12, 2018
Slashdot
NTSB Boots Tesla From Investigation Into Fatal Autopilot Crash
The National Transportation Safety Board has removed Tesla from the investigation into a fatal Autopilot accident that occurred in March. The NTSB says it took the action because Tesla had released "i...
10:50 pm - Thu, April 12, 2018
Slashdot
Cops Around the Country Can Now Unlock iPhones, Records Show
Law enforcement agencies across the country have purchased GrayKey, a relatively cheap tool for bypassing the encryption on iPhones, while the FBI pushes again for encryption backdoors, Motherboard re...
10:10 pm - Thu, April 12, 2018
Slashdot
Trump Proposes Rejoining Trans-Pacific Partnership
According to The New York Times, "President Trump told a gathering of farm state lawmakers and governors on Thursday morning that he was directing his advisers to look into rejoining the multicountry ...
09:30 pm - Thu, April 12, 2018
Slashdot
It's Surprisingly Easy To Make Government Records Public on Google Books
From a report on FastCompany: While working on a recent story about hate speech spread by telephone in the '60s and '70s, I came across an interesting book that had been digitized by Google Books. Unf...
08:50 pm - Thu, April 12, 2018
Slashdot
Uber's 2016 Breach Affected More Than 20 Million US Users
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: A data breach in 2016 exposed the names, phone numbers and email addresses of more than 20 million people who use Uber's service in the U.S., author...
08:12 pm - Thu, April 12, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Discovers Blocking Bug and Delays the Release of Windows 10 Spring Creators Update
The next big update for Windows 10 has been delayed while Microsoft rushes to fix a newly-discovered bug. From a report: Known variously as Windows 10 version 1803, Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Ve...
07:33 pm - Thu, April 12, 2018
Slashdot
Cyber-Espionage Groups Are Increasingly Leveraging Routers in Their Attacks
Catalin Cimpanu, reporting for BleepingComputer: Cyber-espionage groups -- also referred to as advanced persistent threats (APTs) -- are using hacked routers more and more during their attacks, accord...
06:52 pm - Thu, April 12, 2018
Slashdot
Some Android Device Makers Are Lying About Security Patch Updates
An anonymous reader shares a report: Security patches for smartphones are extremely important because many people store personal data on their devices. Lots of Android phones out there get regularly s...
06:10 pm - Thu, April 12, 2018
Slashdot
XPRIZE Projects Aim To Convert CO2 Emissions, But Skepticism Remains
The XPRIZE foundation exists to encourage particular innovations that might be useful but from which conventional financial backers are likely to shy away. Previous X Prizes have been awarded for feat...
05:30 pm - Thu, April 12, 2018
Slashdot
Researchers Devise a Way To Generate Provably Random Numbers Using Quantum Mechanics
No random number generator you've ever used is truly, provably random. Until now, that is. Researchers have used an experiment developed to test quantum mechanics to generate demonstrably random numbe...
04:50 pm - Thu, April 12, 2018
Slashdot
You Think Discovering a Computer Virus Is Hard? Try Naming One
Like astronomers who discover new stars, security experts who first identify computer bugs, viruses, worms, ransomware and other coding catastrophes often get to name their finds. Such discoveries now...
04:05 pm - Thu, April 12, 2018
Slashdot
A Wanted Man in China Has Been Caught Because of Facial Recognition Software
An anonymous reader writes: The man was reportedly caught after facial recognition software running on cameras at a concert identified him, reports AbacusNews. That's despite there being over 50,000 p...
03:25 pm - Thu, April 12, 2018
Slashdot
Data Exfiltrators Send Info Over PCs' Power Supply Cables
From a report on The Register: If you want your computer to be really secure, disconnect its power cable. So says Mordechai Guri and his team of side-channel sleuths at the Ben-Gurion University of th...
02:40 pm - Thu, April 12, 2018
Slashdot
Late To Bed, Early To Die? Night Owls May Die Sooner
An anonymous reader shares a report: Bad news for "night owls": Those who tend to stay up late and sleep in well past sunrise are at increased risk of early death, a new study from the United Kingdom ...
02:00 pm - Thu, April 12, 2018
Slashdot
'A Fresh, Clean Look.' Gmail Is About To Get a Makeover
Google says it is working on a big refresh for Gmail on the web. From a report: The upgrade was revealed in a message from Google to administrators of G Suite accounts -- G Suite being the suite of Go...
01:00 pm - Thu, April 12, 2018
Slashdot
Reddit Continues To Protect Racist Language In Favor of Free Speech
In a thread about Reddit's 2017 transparency report, a user asked CEO Steve Huffman whether posts containing racism or racial slurs violate Reddit's terms. Huffman revealed that said speech are permis...
10:00 am - Thu, April 12, 2018
Slashdot
Apple Starts Alerting Users That It Will End 32-Bit App Support On the Mac
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Tomorrow at midnight PT, Apple will begin issuing an alert box when you open a 32-bit app in MacOS 10.13.4. It's a one-time (per app) alert, design...
07:00 am - Thu, April 12, 2018
Slashdot
FDA Approves AI-Powered Software To Detect Diabetic Retinopathy
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has just approved an AI-powered device that can be used by non-specialists to detect diabetic retinopathy in adults with diabetes. Engadget reports: Diabet...
03:30 am - Thu, April 12, 2018
Slashdot
New Navigation App 'Live Roads' Promises 1.5m-Accuracy With Standard Cellphone Hardware
Jonathan M. Gitlin from Ars Technica reviews a new navigation app called Live Roads, which promises 1.5m-accuracy via your current smartphone without the need of any extra hardware. In a nutshell, the...
01:25 am - Thu, April 12, 2018
Slashdot
Netflix Pulls Out of Cannes Following Rule Change
Netflix and Cannes are breaking up, at least for now. On Wednesday, Netflix chief Ted Sarandos said that the streaming platform won't be sending any films to the prestigious French festival, formally ...
12:45 am - Thu, April 12, 2018
Slashdot
Google's Phone App Is Getting the Power To Send Spam Calls Straight To Voicemail
According to 9to5Google, Google's dialer app for Pixel, Nexus, and Android One devices is being upgraded with the ability to send spam calls straight to voicemail. "In 2016, the app began alerting use...
12:03 am - Thu, April 12, 2018
Slashdot
Tesla Issues Strongest Statement Yet Blaming Driver For Deadly Autopilot Crash
Tesla has released its strongest statement yet blaming the driver of a Tesla Model X that crashed on Autopilot almost three weeks ago. The driver, Walter Huang, died March 23rd in Mountain View when h...
11:20 pm - Wed, April 11, 2018
Slashdot
The Personality Traits That Put You At Risk For Smartphone Addiction
Zorro shares a report from The Washington Post: When the Trump-affiliated firm Cambridge Analytica obtained data on tens of millions of Facebook users, it used the "Big 5" or "Five Factor Model" perso...
10:40 pm - Wed, April 11, 2018
Slashdot
'Fuchsia Is Not Linux': Google Publishes Documentation Explaining Their New OS
An anonymous reader quotes a report from XDA Developers: You've probably seen mentions of the Fuchsia operating system here and there since it has been in development for almost 2 years. It's Google's...
10:00 pm - Wed, April 11, 2018
Slashdot
Instagram Will Soon Let You Download a Copy of Your Data
An Instagram spokesperson has confirmed to TechCrunch that the site will soon let users download a copy of what they've shared on Instagram, including their photos, videos and messages. The new data p...
09:20 pm - Wed, April 11, 2018
Slashdot
Japan Team Maps 'Semi-Infinite' Trove of Rare Earth Elements
schwit1 quotes a report from The Japan Times: Japanese researchers have mapped vast reserves of rare earth elements in deep-sea mud, enough to feed global demand on a "semi-infinite basis," according ...
08:40 pm - Wed, April 11, 2018
Slashdot
Apple Is Developing a TV Show Based On Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Deadline: In a competitive situation, Apple has nabbed a TV series adaptation of Foundation, the seminal Isaac Asimov science fiction novel trilogy. The projec...
08:00 pm - Wed, April 11, 2018
Slashdot
How Will Automation Affect Different US Cities?
Casino dealers and fishermen are both likely to be replaced by machines in coming years. So which city will lose more of its human workforce -- Las Vegas, the country's gambling capital, or Boston, a ...
07:20 pm - Wed, April 11, 2018
Slashdot
The US Military Desperately Wants To Weaponize AI
Artificial intelligence is a transformative technology, and US generals already see it as the next big weapon in their arsenal. From a report: War-machine learning: Michael Griffin, Undersecretary of ...
06:40 pm - Wed, April 11, 2018
Slashdot
AMD Releases Spectre v2 Microcode Updates for CPUs Going Back To 2011
Catalin Cimpanu, writing for BleepingComputer: AMD has released CPU microcode updates for processors affected by the Spectre variant 2 (CVE-2017-5715) vulnerability. The company has forwarded these mi...
06:00 pm - Wed, April 11, 2018
Slashdot
Mark Zuckerberg Denies Knowledge of Non-Consensual Shadow Profiles Facebook Has Been Building of Non-Users For Years
It has been widely reported that Facebook builds profile of people even if they have never signed up for its services. However, in a hearing with the House Energy & Commerce Committee on Wednesday...
05:23 pm - Wed, April 11, 2018
Slashdot
Trump Signs Law Weakening Shield For Online Services
President Donald Trump has signed a new law aimed at curbing sex trafficking. From a report: The bill -- a mashup of the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers ...
04:43 pm - Wed, April 11, 2018
Slashdot
Dubai To Launch Digital Vehicle Number Plates
Drivers in Dubai may soon be using digital number plates under new plans. In a trial starting next month, vehicles will be fitted with smart plates with digital screens, GPS and transmitters. From a r...
04:00 pm - Wed, April 11, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Removes Antivirus Registry Key Check for All Windows Versions
Microsoft has decided to remove a mandatory "registry key requirement" it introduced in the aftermath of the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerability disclosure. BleepingComputer: Microsoft used this regist...
03:20 pm - Wed, April 11, 2018
Slashdot
Spotify Is Planning a New Version of Its Free Music Service
An anonymous reader shares a report: Spotify Technology is developing a new version of its free music service, the first big product change since the streaming company went public last week, according...
02:40 pm - Wed, April 11, 2018
Slashdot
AV1 Beats x264 and Libvpx-Vp9 in Practical Use Case
An anonymous reader shares a blog post by Facebook engineer: We tested AV1 (a new open-source, royalty-free media codec) under conditions that closely match the most common real-world use cases for Fa...
02:00 pm - Wed, April 11, 2018
Slashdot
Tech Giants Like Amazon and Facebook Should Be Regulated, Disrupted, or Broken Up: Mozilla Foundation
The Mozilla Foundation has called for the regulation of tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Facebook. From a report: Though tech giants in the U.S. and companies like Alibaba and Tencent in China hav...
01:00 pm - Wed, April 11, 2018
Slashdot
Intel Reportedly Designing Arctic Sound Discrete GPU For Gaming, Pro Graphics
MojoKid shares a report from HotHardware: When AMD's former graphics boss Raja Koduri landed at Intel after taking a much-earned hiatus from the company, it was seen as a major coup for the Santa Clar...
10:00 am - Wed, April 11, 2018
Slashdot
Steam Spy Announces It's Shutting Down, Blames Valve's New Privacy Settings
Steam Spy, the world's most comprehensive game ownership and play estimator available to the public, announced that it "won't be able to operate anymore" thanks to recent changes to Valve's privacy po...
07:00 am - Wed, April 11, 2018
Slashdot
Zuckerberg: Facebook Doesn't Use Your Mic For Ad Targeting
During today's joint hearing before the Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees, CEO Mark Zuckerberg fully denied the idea that Facebook listens in on your conversations via microphones to display re...
03:30 am - Wed, April 11, 2018
Slashdot
Eating World's Hottest Pepper Sparks Brain Disorder, Thunderclap Headaches
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Extremely hot peppers don't just blister your mouth and bum -- they can also spark fiery havoc in your brain, according to a report published Mon...
01:40 am - Wed, April 11, 2018
Slashdot
Japan Could Have More Than 3 Million Cryptocurrency Traders
According to Japan's Financial Services Agency (FSA), the country has at least 3.5 million individuals that are trading with cryptocurrencies as actual assets. "Among them, crypto investors in their 2...
01:00 am - Wed, April 11, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Data Collected By Quiz App Included Private Messages
In addition to the public profile data of up to 87 million Facebook users, political data firm Cambridge Analytica also reportedly harvested people's private messages, too (Warning: source may be payw...
12:20 am - Wed, April 11, 2018
Slashdot
Apple Must Pay Patent Troll More Than $500 Million In iMessage Case
A federal court in Texas today has ordered Apple to pay $502.6 million to a patent troll called VirnetX, the latest twist in a dispute now in its eighth year. "VirnetX claimed that Apple's FaceTime, V...
11:40 pm - Tue, April 10, 2018
Slashdot
Zuckerberg Testimony: Facebook AI Will Curb Hate Speech In 5 To 10 Years
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Inverse: After a question from Senator John Thune (R-SD) about why the public should believe that Facebook was earnestly working towards improving privacy, Zuc...
11:00 pm - Tue, April 10, 2018
Slashdot
LG's Upcoming 'G7 ThinQ' Smartphone To Feature Almost-Bezel-Less Display With Notch, Launch On May 2nd
Earlier this morning, LG announced in a blog post that it will be hosting an event on May 2nd in New York City, where it would unveil its upcoming "LG G7 ThinQ" Android smartphone, with a public event...
10:20 pm - Tue, April 10, 2018
Slashdot
Theranos Lays Off Almost All of Its Remaining Workers
A few months ago, Theranos laid off almost half of its workforce as it struggled to recover from the backlash generated when the company failed to provide accurate results to patients using its propri...
10:00 pm - Tue, April 10, 2018
Slashdot
Democratic Senators Propose 'Privacy Bill of Rights' To Prevent Websites From Sharing Or Selling Sensitive Info Without Opt-In Consent
Democratic Senators Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) today proposed a "privacy bill of rights" that would prevent Facebook and other websites from sharing or selling sensiti...
09:40 pm - Tue, April 10, 2018
Slashdot
Google Is in Talks to Buy Nokia's Airborne Broadband System: Bloomberg
Google is in advanced talks to buy Nokia's airborne broadband system, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. Google would use Nokia's system, the report claimed, to tap into new services and reach more users ...
09:20 pm - Tue, April 10, 2018
Slashdot
Twitter Says It Will Comply With Honest Ads Act To Combat Russia Social Media Meddling
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Twitter today pledged to support a proposed Senate bill that would require technology platforms that sell advertising space to disclose the source o...
08:40 pm - Tue, April 10, 2018
Slashdot
FTC Warns Manufacturers That 'Warranty Void If Removed' Stickers Break the Law
schwit1 writes: The Federal Trade Commission put six companies on notice today, telling them in a warning letter that their warranty practices violate federal law. If you buy a car with a warranty, ta...
08:10 pm - Tue, April 10, 2018
Slashdot
Sony PlayStation 5 Unlikely To Arrive Until 2020: Gizmodo
A recent online rumor got people buzzing about a possible 2018 release of PlayStation 5, but that's probably not going to happen, Gizmodo reports. Citing a source, the outlet says it believes the next...
07:30 pm - Tue, April 10, 2018
Slashdot
Emergency Alert Systems Used Across the US Can Be Easily Hijacked
A vulnerability affecting emergency alert systems supplied by ATI Systems, one of the leading suppliers of warning sirens in the USA, could be exploited remotely via radio frequencies to activate all ...
06:50 pm - Tue, April 10, 2018
Slashdot
3D-Printed Public Housing Unveiled in France
Researchers have unveiled what they billed as the world's first 3D-printed house to serve as a home in the French city of Nantes, with the first tenants due to move in by June. From a report: Academic...
06:10 pm - Tue, April 10, 2018
Slashdot
Firefox Follows Chrome and Blocks the Loading of Most FTP Resources
Mozilla says it will follow in the steps of Google Chrome and start blocking the loading of FTP subresources inside HTTP and HTTPS pages. From a report: By FTP subresources, we refer to files loaded v...
05:30 pm - Tue, April 10, 2018
Slashdot
Some Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Asking To Switch Departments Over Ethical Concerns
Some dissatisfied Facebook engineers are reportedly attempting to switch divisions to work on Instagram or WhatsApp, rather than continue work on the platform responsible for the Cambridge Analytica s...
04:40 pm - Tue, April 10, 2018
Slashdot
Linux Computer Maker System76 To Move Manufacturing To the US
An anonymous reader shares a report: Linux computer manufacturer System76 made its mark in part because of its commitment to open source principles and doing what it believes is right. Last year it re...
04:00 pm - Tue, April 10, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Launches Bug Bounty Program To Report Data Thieves
Facebook on Tuesday launched a data abuse bug bounty program, just hours ahead of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's testimony to the Senate judiciary and commerce committees in Washington, DC. The bug bounty prog...
03:20 pm - Tue, April 10, 2018
Slashdot
Linux: Beep Command Can Be Used to Probe for the Presence of Sensitive Files
Catalin Cimpanu, writing for BleepingComputer: A vulnerability in the "beep" package that comes pre-installed with Debian and Ubuntu distros allows an attacker to probe for the presence of files on a ...
02:40 pm - Tue, April 10, 2018
Slashdot
Biometric and App Logins Will Soon Be Pushed Across the Web
Soon, it will be much easier to log into more websites using a hardware key plugged into your laptop, a dedicated app, or even the fingerprint scanner on your phone. Motherboard: On Tuesday, a spread ...
02:00 pm - Tue, April 10, 2018
Slashdot
YouTube Hack: Several High-Profile Videos Mysteriously Disappear From Platform, Some Defaced
Several high-profile music videos on YouTube were mysteriously deleted early Tuesday, in what appears like the result of a security compromise. Some of the videos that have been pulled from Google's v...
01:00 pm - Tue, April 10, 2018
Slashdot
Oregon Becomes Second State To Pass a Net Neutrality Law
An anonymous reader quotes a report from KATU: Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed a bill Monday withholding state business from internet providers who throttle traffic, making the state the second to final...
12:04 pm - Tue, April 10, 2018
Slashdot
YouTube Hack: Several High-Profile Videos Mysteriously Disappear From Platform, Some Defaced
Several high-profile music videos on YouTube were mysteriously deleted early Tuesday, in what appears like the result of a security compromise. Some of the videos that have been pulled from Google's v...
10:00 am - Tue, April 10, 2018
Slashdot
Your Future Home Might Be Powered By Car Batteries
Increasingly utilities and automakers are wondering if they could use the batteries inside electric cars as storage for the entire public power grid. An anonymous reader shares a report: The idea, kno...
07:00 am - Tue, April 10, 2018
Slashdot
China Removes Four News Apps From Smartphone Stores To Tighten Control
The mobile apps for four popular news apps in China, including the most popular aggregator, Jinri Toutiao, were removed from a number of Chinese smartphone app stores following reports of a crackdown ...
05:00 am - Tue, April 10, 2018
Slashdot
How Much VR User Data Is Oculus Giving To Facebook?
Facebook owns many other apps and services, including the Oculus virtual-reality platform, which collects incredibly detailed information about where users are looking and how they're moving. Since mo...
02:30 am - Tue, April 10, 2018
Slashdot
Backpage Founders Charged With Money Laundering, Aiding Prostitution
Federal authorities have charged the two founders of classified site Backpage.com, along with five other employees, with laundering money and facilitating prostitution. According to The Washington Pos...
01:25 am - Tue, April 10, 2018
Slashdot
Recent iOS Update Kills Functionality On iPhone 8s Repaired With Aftermarket Screens
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Apple released iOS 11.3 at the end of March, and the update is killing touch functionality in iPhone 8s repaired with some aftermarket screens tha...
12:45 am - Tue, April 10, 2018
Slashdot
Northrop Grumman, Not SpaceX, Reported To Be at Fault For Loss of Top-Secret Zuma Satellite
Northrop Grumman built and operated the components that failed during the controversial January launch of the U.S. spy satellite known as Zuma, WSJ reported over the weekend. From a report: Two indepe...
12:03 am - Tue, April 10, 2018
Slashdot
Dual-Motor Tesla Model 3 Possibly Coming In July
According to Elon Musk, the dual-motor Tesla Model 3 is expected to be released in July. "Musk linked the release of the new Model 3 powertrain with the automaker achieving a production rate of 5,000 ...
11:20 pm - Mon, April 9, 2018
Slashdot
All Apple Operations Now Run Off 100 Percent Renewable Energy
According to a recently-shared press release, Apple has finally hit its goal of running its own operations off 100% renewable energy. "All Apple facilities, from Apple Park to its data centers to worl...
10:40 pm - Mon, April 9, 2018
Slashdot
Don't Give Away Historic Details About Yourself
Brian Krebs: Social media sites are littered with seemingly innocuous little quizzes, games and surveys urging people to reminisce about specific topics, such as "What was your first job," or "What wa...
10:00 pm - Mon, April 9, 2018
Slashdot
'Erotic Review' Blocks US Internet Users To Prepare For Government Crackdown
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A website that hosts customer reviews of sex workers has started blocking Internet users in the United States because of forthcoming changes in U...
09:20 pm - Mon, April 9, 2018
Slashdot
The Uber-For-Bikes Startup Is Now Officially Part of Uber
Uber's first acquisition under CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is of Jump Bikes, a startup that rents out shared electric dockless bikes in San Francisco and Washington DC. "The deal comes two months after Uber...
08:38 pm - Mon, April 9, 2018
Slashdot
Steve Wozniak Drops Facebook: 'The Profits Are All Based On the User's Info'
Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak has formally deactivated his Facebook account. In an email interview with USA Today, Wozniak wrote that he was no longer satisfied with Facebook, knowing that it makes mo...
07:55 pm - Mon, April 9, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Open-Sources Original File Manager From the 1990s So It Can Run On Windows 10
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Microsoft is releasing the source code for its original Windows File Manager from nearly 28 years ago. Originally released for Windows 3.0, the File...
07:01 pm - Mon, April 9, 2018
Slashdot
YouTube Is Illegally Collecting Data From Children, Say Advocacy Groups
Nearly two-dozen privacy and children's advocacy groups have filed a Federal Trade Commission complaint against YouTube, alleging the platform of illegally collecting data from children. From a report...
06:20 pm - Mon, April 9, 2018
Slashdot
Amazon Spent Close To $23B on R&D in 2017, Outpacing Fellow Tech Giants
Amazon powered its prolific 2017, which saw the release of a cavalcade of new products and services, with $22.6 billion in spending on research and development, tops among U.S. companies. From a repor...
05:50 pm - Mon, April 9, 2018
Slashdot
Tech Group Urges US To Recruit Allies To Take on China, Not Tariffs
A trade group representing top technology companies on Monday told U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin that it opposes the Trump administration's focus on tariffs to try to change China's unfair tr...
04:50 pm - Mon, April 9, 2018
Slashdot
A Broken Undersea Cable Knocked Mauritania Offline For Two Days, Affected Another Five Nations
The West African nation of Mauritania lost all internet access for 48 hours due to an undersea cable break, according to infrastructure analysts. From a report: The break, which took place a couple we...
04:17 pm - Mon, April 9, 2018
Slashdot
Two-Thirds of Tweeted Links Come From Bots, Report Says
We already know bots have a significant presence on Twitter. But a report published Monday by the Pew Research Center suggests automated accounts are more prevalent than we may previously have thought...
03:25 pm - Mon, April 9, 2018
Slashdot
Zuckerberg Gets a Crash Course in Charm. Will Congress Care?
An anonymous reader writes: It goes without saying that no tech CEO ever wants to make the trek down to Washington D.C. and appear before congress. And Zuckerberg -- at a surface level -- seems partic...
02:45 pm - Mon, April 9, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Suspends Another Data Analytics Firm After CNBC Discovers It Was Using Tactics like Cambridge Analytica
Facebook suspended a company from its site over the weekend while it investigates claims it harvested user information under the guise of academic research, in a case with echoes of the Cambridge Anal...
02:05 pm - Mon, April 9, 2018
Slashdot
FDA Worried Drug Was Risky; Now Reports of Deaths Spark Concern
Blake Ellis and Melanie Hicken, writing for CNN: Two years ago, Brendan Tyne pleaded with the Food and Drug Administration to approve a drug that he was hopeful could finally bring his mother some pea...
01:00 pm - Mon, April 9, 2018
Slashdot
Ask Slashdot: How Do You Stream/Capture Video?
datavirtue writes: I am starting to look at capturing and streaming video, specifically video games in 4K at 60 frames per second. I have a Windows 10 box with a 6GB GTX 1060 GPU and a modern AMD octa...
10:00 am - Mon, April 9, 2018
Slashdot
George Soros, Rockefeller Take Their Marks Before Diving Into the Cryptocurrency Pool
john of sparta shares a report from Business Insider (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): Reports of a crackdown on cryptocurrency advertisements by tech giants such as Google and F...
07:00 am - Mon, April 9, 2018
Slashdot
Electronics Surplus Shop 'WeirdStuff Warehouse' Is Closing
Fast Company's harrymcc writes: When technological goods are no longer of use to anyone in Silicon Valley, they end up in the WeirdStuff Warehouse -- where, it turns out, there often is someone willin...
03:30 am - Mon, April 9, 2018
Slashdot
Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower Says Data From 87 Million Users Could Be Stored In Russia
PolygamousRanchKid shares a report from CNN: Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie says the data the firm gathered from Facebook could have come from more than 87 million users and could...
12:30 am - Mon, April 9, 2018
Slashdot
Engineer Develops Sonar Alarm System To Monitor Kids In the Pool
British electrical engineer John Barstead created a sonar alarm system that will warn parents or nearby sunbathers if a small child has accidentally fallen into a pool. The Dolphin Alarm, as it is cal...
10:22 pm - Sun, April 8, 2018
Slashdot
Tim Cook Says Ads That Follow You Online Are 'Creepy'
In a wide-ranging interview with MSNBC and Recode, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that everyone should know how much data they're sharing and what can be inferred about us from that information. He added tha...
08:20 pm - Sun, April 8, 2018
Slashdot
One-Degree Rise In Temperature Causes Ripple Effect In World's Largest High Arctic Lake
An anonymous reader quotes a report from FOLIO Magazine: A 1 C increase in temperature has set off a chain of events disrupting the entire ecology of the world's largest High Arctic lake. "The amount ...
07:19 pm - Sun, April 8, 2018
Slashdot
Is Microsoft Trying To Make Windows 10 Mail Worse?
Emil Protalinski via VentureBeat argues that "Windows Mail is unusable, and instead of improving it, Microsoft is looking to drive users away": Microsoft started forcing Mail to use Edge for email lin...
06:18 pm - Sun, April 8, 2018
Slashdot
Berkeley Offers Its Data Science Course Online For Free
In a news bulletin, University of California, Berkeley announces that its "Foundations of Data Science" course is "being offered free online this spring for the first time through the campus's online ...
05:17 pm - Sun, April 8, 2018
Slashdot
'Big Brother' In India Requires Fingerprint Scans For Food, Phones, Finances
The New York Times reports of the Indian government's intent to build an identification system of unprecedented scope. The country is reportedly "scanning the fingerprints, eyes and faces of its 1.3 b...
04:16 pm - Sun, April 8, 2018
Slashdot
Ask Slashdot: Do You Miss Windows Phone?
An anonymous reader writes: After recently switching on an old Windows Phone to create a silly April Fools' joke, The Verge's Tom Warren discovered just how much he missed Microsoft's mobile OS. Two o...
03:15 pm - Sun, April 8, 2018
Slashdot
Scientists Discover That Puffin Beaks Are Fluorescent
A scientist in England discovered that the bills of Atlantic puffins glow like freshly cracked glow sticks when under a UV light. CBC.ca reports of how ornithologist Jamie Dunning stumbled upon the di...
02:14 pm - Sun, April 8, 2018
Slashdot
California May Soon Allow Passengers In Driverless Cars
According to Reuters, California's public utility regulator on Friday signaled it would allow passengers to ride in self-driving cars without a backup driver in the vehicle. It is a big step forward f...
01:13 pm - Sun, April 8, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Donated To 46 of 55 Members On Committee That Will Question Zuckerberg
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be questioned about user privacy protections next week by members of the House and Senate committees, but as USA Today notes, many of these members were also "some of...
11:34 am - Sun, April 8, 2018
Slashdot
Ask Slashdot: Are Companies Under-Investing in IT?
Long-time Slashdot reader johnpagenola writes:In the middle 1970's I had to choose between focusing on programming or accounting. I chose accounting because organizations were willing to pay for good ...
07:34 am - Sun, April 8, 2018
Slashdot
Elon Musk Is Paying For Free Streaming of a New Documentary about AI Dangers
An anonymous reader quotes Syfy.com:There's a new documentary warning about the perils of artificial intelligence out there, and Elon Musk wants you to see it. So much so that he's making it available...
03:34 am - Sun, April 8, 2018
Slashdot
Can Ruby Survive Another 25 Years?
TechRadar marked the 25th anniversary of the Ruby programming language by writing "there are still questions over whether it can survive another 25 years."The popularity of the Ruby language has been ...
01:34 am - Sun, April 8, 2018
Slashdot
Original 'System Shock' Code Open Sourced, More Updates Promised
"The folks at Nightdive Studios this week released the source code for a Mac version of Looking Glass Studios' 1994 classic System Shock," reports Gamasutra. Friday the game's new owners unveiled on G...
11:34 pm - Sat, April 7, 2018
Slashdot
'Vigilante Hackers' Strike Routers In Russia and Iran, Reports Motherboard
An anonymous reader quotes Motherboard:On Friday, a group of hackers targeted computer infrastructure in Russia and Iran, impacting internet service providers, data centres, and in turn some websites....
10:34 pm - Sat, April 7, 2018
Slashdot
Did Harvard Scientists Predict The End of the Universe?
The universe will end with a bang -- and not a whimper -- reports The New York Post, citing a new study by Harvard Researchers predicting exactly when (and how) the universe will end. But Gizmodo's sc...
10:04 pm - Sat, April 7, 2018
Slashdot
Torvalds Opposes Tying UEFI Secure Boot to Kernel Lockdown Mode
An anonymous reader quotes Phoronix:The kernel lockdown feature further restricts access to the kernel by user-space with what can be accessed or modified... Pairing that with UEFI SecureBoot uncondit...
09:34 pm - Sat, April 7, 2018
Slashdot
GPU Prices Soar as Bitcoin Miners Buy Up Hardware To Build Rigs
"Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency miners have created a dearth of mid-range and high-end GPU cards that are selling for twice as much as suggested retail," reports Computerworld. "The reason: miners a...
08:34 pm - Sat, April 7, 2018
Slashdot
New Theory Suggests Dinosaurs Were Already Dying When Asteroid Hit
The new "biotic revenge hypothesis" suggests that dinosaurs were killed off by toxic plants. (And an inability to recognize the taste of a toxic plant.) the gmr summarizes a new paper reported at Phys...
07:34 pm - Sat, April 7, 2018
Slashdot
Anticipating the Dangers of Space Radiation
aarondubrow writes: Astronauts and future space tourists face risks from radiation, which can cause illness and injure organs. Researchers from Texas A&M, NASA, and the University of Texas Medical...
06:34 pm - Sat, April 7, 2018
Slashdot
California Police Ticket A Self-Driving Car
Long-time Slashdot reader Ichijo writes: A self-driving car was slapped with a ticket after police said it got too close to a pedestrian on a San Francisco street. The self-driving car owned by San Fr...
05:34 pm - Sat, April 7, 2018
Slashdot
Scientists Modify A 3D Printer To Print All-Liquid Structures
Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab have successfully printed three-dimensional structures composed entirely of liquids. A special nanoparticle-derived coating can lock water in place for se...
04:34 pm - Sat, April 7, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Open Source Tool Lets You 'Bring Your Own Linux' To Windows
Long-time Slashdot reader Billly Gates writes: Debian is now available in the Windows app store. It joins Ubuntu, Suse Leap, SuSe enterprise, and Kali Linux for those who cannot or do not want to both...
03:34 pm - Sat, April 7, 2018
Slashdot
Programmer Unveils OpenGL Bindings for Bash
Slashdot reader silverdirk writes: Compiled languages have long provided access to the OpenGL API, and even most scripting languages have had OpenGL bindings for a decade or more. But, one significant...
02:34 pm - Sat, April 7, 2018
Slashdot
Ask Slashdot: Should Coding Exams Be Given on Paper?
Slashdot reader Qbertino is pursuing a comp sci degree -- and got a surprise during the last exam: being asked to write code on paper.Not that I'd expect an IDE -- it's an exam after all -- but being ...
01:00 pm - Sat, April 7, 2018
Slashdot
Apple Tells the EPA Why Cutting the Clean Power Plan Is a Bad Move
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Apple is pushing back against the Environmental Protection Agency's proposal to repeal the Clean Power Plan. The company filed a public comment with...
10:00 am - Sat, April 7, 2018
Slashdot
Number of Apps In App Store Declined For the First Time Last Year
According to new data from the analytics company Appfigures, the total number of apps in the App Store declined for the first time last year. "Appfigures notes that just 755,000 apps were released for...
07:00 am - Sat, April 7, 2018
Slashdot
Center of the Milky Way Has Thousands of Black Holes, Study Shows
New submitter xonen shares a report from NPR: For decades, scientists have thought that black holes should sink to the center of galaxies and accumulate there. But scientists had no proof that these e...
03:30 am - Sat, April 7, 2018
Slashdot
Hot-Air Dryers Suck In Nasty Bathroom Bacteria, Shoot Them At Your Hands
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Hot-air dryers suck in bacteria and hardy bacterial spores loitering in the bathroom -- perhaps launched into the air by whooshing toilet flushes...
01:25 am - Sat, April 7, 2018
Slashdot
Google Seeks To Limit 'Right To Be Forgotten' By Claiming It's Journalistic
"In the first 'right to be forgotten' case to reach England's High Court, two men are fighting to keep their past crimes out of Google's search results, and the tech giant is fighting back by claiming...
12:45 am - Sat, April 7, 2018
Slashdot
Twitter Bans 270,000 Accounts For 'Promoting Terrorism'
According to Twitter's latest transparency report, the social media company removed more than 270,000 accounts around the world for promoting terrorism in the second half of 2017. The number of accoun...
12:03 am - Sat, April 7, 2018
Slashdot
T-Mobile Stores Part of Customers' Passwords In Plaintext, Says It Has 'Amazingly Good' Security
T-Mobile Austria admitted on Twitter that it stores at least part of their customer's passwords in plaintext. What this means is that "if anyone breaches T-Mobile (it's only a matter of time), they co...
11:20 pm - Fri, April 6, 2018
Slashdot
Comcast, AT&T, Verizon Pose a Greater Surveillance Risk Than Facebook
An anonymous reader writes: "Comcast, AT&T and Verizon pose a greater surveillance risk than Facebook -- but their surveillance is much harder to avoid," writes Salome Viljoen in an opinion piece ...
10:40 pm - Fri, April 6, 2018
Slashdot
Three Execs Get Prison Time For Pirating Oracle Firmware & Solaris OS Update
An anonymous reader writes: Three of four TERiX executives were sentenced to prison yesterday for a scheme through which they created three fake companies to pirate Oracle firmware patches and Solaris...
10:20 pm - Fri, April 6, 2018
Slashdot
Best Buy Warns of Data Breach
Best Buy, along with Delta Air Lines and Sears, says that [24]7.ai, a company that provides the technology backing its chat services, was hacked between September 27 and October 12, potentially jeopar...
10:00 pm - Fri, April 6, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Demands ID Verifications For Big Pages, 'Issue' Ad Buyers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Facebook is looking to self-police by implementing parts of the proposed Honest Ads Act before the government tries to regulate it. To fight fake n...
09:20 pm - Fri, April 6, 2018
Slashdot
FBI Seizes Backpage.com, a Site Criticized For Sex-Related Ads
The FBI has reportedly seized the sex marketplace website Backpage.com, according to a posting on its website on Friday. "The posting said the U.S. Justice Department would provide more information at...
08:42 pm - Fri, April 6, 2018
Slashdot
Researchers Develop Device That Can 'Hear' Your Internal Voice
Researchers have created a wearable device that can read people's minds when they use an internal voice, allowing them to control devices and ask queries without speaking. From a report: The device, c...
08:01 pm - Fri, April 6, 2018
Slashdot
Your Strategic Plans Probably Aren't Strategic, or Even Plans
An anonymous reader shares a report: Unfortunately, while C-suite executives talk "strategy," they're often confused about what it means. Why this confusion? The problem starts with the word itself --...
07:21 pm - Fri, April 6, 2018
Slashdot
Twitter Will Break Third-Party Clients in June
Come this June, Twitter says it will disable "streaming services", a feature third-party Twitter clients such as Talon, Tweetbot, Twitterrific use to stream the timeline and send push notifications. A...
06:42 pm - Fri, April 6, 2018
Slashdot
Sheryl Sandberg: Users Would Have To Pay To Opt Out of Facebook Ads
An anonymous reader shares a report: In an interview with Today airing Friday morning, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg insisted that Facebook does not sell or give away user information, but made clear t...
06:00 pm - Fri, April 6, 2018
Slashdot
SpaceX Can't Broadcast Earth Images Because of a Murky License
Last Friday, SpaceX wasn't able to give its fans a view of the 10 new Iridium satellites it released into orbit from its Falcon 9 upper stage. Here's why. From a report: Weirdly, company engineers sta...
05:22 pm - Fri, April 6, 2018
Slashdot
Wage Growth Slows Across the Country
An anonymous reader writes: Wages in the United States are going up, but their growth is shrinking, says Glassdoor chief economist Andrew Chamberlain. Wages should be rising an average of 3%-4% given ...
04:40 pm - Fri, April 6, 2018
Slashdot
Symantec May Violate Linux GPL in Norton Core Router
An anonymous reader writes: For years, embedded device manufacturers have been illegally using Linux. Typically, they use Linux without publishing their device's source code, which Linux's GNU General...
04:00 pm - Fri, April 6, 2018
Slashdot
Ubuntu Linux 18.04 LTS 'Bionic Beaver' Beta 2 Now Available
An anonymous reader writes: Ubuntu Linux 18.04 "Bionic Beaver" is almost here -- it is due on April 26. In the interim, today, the second -- and final -- beta becomes available. Bionic Beaver is very ...
03:20 pm - Fri, April 6, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Retracted Zuckerberg's Messages From Recipients' Inboxes
An anonymous reader shares a report: You can't remove Facebook messages from the inboxes of people you sent them to, but Facebook did that for Mark Zuckerberg and other executives. Three sources confi...
02:40 pm - Fri, April 6, 2018
Slashdot
Russia Files Lawsuit To Block Telegram Messaging App
Russia's state communications watchdog, Roskomnadzor, has filed a lawsuit to block Telegram in the country because the instant messaging company has refused to hand over the encryption keys that would...
02:00 pm - Fri, April 6, 2018
Slashdot
Animation Legend Isao Takahata, Co-founder of Studio Ghibli, Dies at 82
Isao Takahata, co-founder of the prestigious Japanese animator Studio Ghibli, which stuck to a hand-drawn "manga" look in the face of digital filmmaking, has died. He was 82. From a report: Takahata s...
01:00 pm - Fri, April 6, 2018
Slashdot
The Supreme Court Fight Over Microsoft's Foreign Servers Is Over
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The much-anticipated Supreme Court case U.S. v. Microsoft -- which could have decided the extent of American jurisdiction over foreign servers -- is...
10:00 am - Fri, April 6, 2018
Slashdot
Stan Lee's Stolen Blood Was Used To Sign Marvel Comic Books
ISoldat53 writes: Someone stole a sample of Stan Lee's blood and stamped comic books with it to increase their value. TMZ reports: "We've learned several 'Black Panther' comic books are currently avai...
07:00 am - Fri, April 6, 2018
Slashdot
Canada Has Pulled Off a Brain Heist
An anonymous reader writes: Seoul-born Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, a professor at Brown University known for her work on fake news, is moving to Canada. So is Alan Aspuru-Guzik, a Harvard chemistry professo...
03:30 am - Fri, April 6, 2018
Slashdot
EFF: Google Should Not Help the US Military Build Unaccountable AI Systems
The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Peter Eckersley writes: Yesterday, The New York Times reported that there is widespread unrest amongst Google's employees about the company's work on a U.S. milita...
02:45 am - Fri, April 6, 2018
Slashdot
The FCC Is Refusing To Release Emails About Ajit Pai's 'Harlem Shake' Video
bumblebaetuna writes from a report via Motherboard: On the eve of the net neutrality repeal, just as tensions and public debate over the issue were reaching a fever pitch, someone in the FCC decided i...
02:05 am - Fri, April 6, 2018
Slashdot
Motorola's Modular Smartphone Dream Is Too Young To Die
harrymcc writes: Lots of people have fantasized about modular smartphones, but Motorola introduced one -- the Moto Z -- and actually created an ecosystem of useful add-ons. Now its parent company, Len...
01:25 am - Fri, April 6, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Modifies Open-Source Code, Blows Hole In Windows Defender
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: A remote-code execution vulnerability in Windows Defender -- a flaw that can be exploited by malicious .rar files to run malware on PCs -- has be...
12:45 am - Fri, April 6, 2018
Slashdot
Secret Service Warns of Chip Card Scheme
Brian Krebs reports of a new scheme where new debit cards are intercepted in the mail and the chips on the cards are replaced with chips from old cards. Thieves can then start draining funds from the ...
12:25 am - Fri, April 6, 2018
Slashdot
Coinbase Launches Early-Stage Venture Fund
Coinbase announced today that it is launching a new incubator fund for early-stage startups. "We're going to invest off our balance sheet into crypto companies," Coinbase President and COO Asiff Hirji...
12:03 am - Fri, April 6, 2018
Slashdot
UK, Australia Investigating Facebook Amid Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal
Both the United Kingdom and Australia said Thursday that they have opened formal investigations into Facebook amid allegations that their citizens' data was improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica....
11:20 pm - Thu, April 5, 2018
Slashdot
There's Growing Evidence Tesla's Autopilot Handles Lane Dividers Poorly
An anonymous reader writes: Within the past week, two Tesla crashes have been reported while Autopilot was engaged, and both involved a Tesla vehicle slamming into a highway divider. One of the crashe...
10:40 pm - Thu, April 5, 2018
Slashdot
Intel Tells Users to Uninstall Remote Keyboard App Over Unpatched Security Bugs
Intel has decided that instead of fixing three security bugs affecting the Intel Remote Keyboard Android app, it would be easier to discontinue the application altogether. BleepingComputer: The compan...
10:00 pm - Thu, April 5, 2018
Slashdot
Hacker Uses Exploit To Generate Verge Cryptocurrency Out of Thin Air
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bleeping Computer: An unknown attacker has exploited a bug in the Verge cryptocurrency network code to mine Verge coins at a very rapid pace and generate funds...
09:20 pm - Thu, April 5, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Will Bring 64-Bit App Support To ARM-Based PCs In May
Microsoft's general manager for Windows, Erin Chappie, told Engadget today that an SDK for ARM64 apps will be announced at the upcoming Build developer's conference in May. From the report: With the n...
08:40 pm - Thu, April 5, 2018
Slashdot
Google Turns To Users To Improve Its AI Chops Outside the US
Google is betting that algorithms that understand images and text will draw business to its cloud services, make augmented reality popular, and prompt us to search using our smartphone cameras. From a...
08:00 pm - Thu, April 5, 2018
Slashdot
Humans Produce New Brain Cells Throughout Their Lives, Say Researchers
An anonymous reader shares a report: Humans continue to produce new neurons in a part of their brain involved in learning, memory and emotion throughout adulthood, scientists have revealed, countering...
07:20 pm - Thu, April 5, 2018
Slashdot
Online Gaming Could Be Stalled by Net Neutrality Repeal, ESA Tells Court
A video game industry lobby group is joining the lawsuit that seeks to reinstate net neutrality rules in the US, saying that the net neutrality repeal could harm multiplayer online games that require ...
06:40 pm - Thu, April 5, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Was in Talks With Top Hospitals Until Last Month To Share Data of Most Vulnerable Patients
Facebook was in talks with top hospitals and other medical groups as recently as last month about a proposal to share data about the social networks of their most vulnerable patients, CNBC reported on...
06:00 pm - Thu, April 5, 2018
Slashdot
Malware Attack on Vendor To Blame for Delta and Sears Data Breach Affecting 'Hundreds of Thousands' of Customers
Delta Air Lines and Sears Holding on Thursday disclosed a data breach that may have exposed the payment card details of hundreds of thousands of online customers. From a report: The breach originated ...
05:40 pm - Thu, April 5, 2018
Slashdot
Malware Attack on Vendor To Blame for Delta and Sears Data Breach Affecting 'Hundreds of Thousands' of Customers
Delta Air Lines and Sears Holding on Thursday disclosed a data breach that may have exposed the payment card details of hundreds of thousands of online customers. From a report: The breach originated ...
05:20 pm - Thu, April 5, 2018
Slashdot
Computer Searches Telescope Data For Evidence of Distant Planets
As part of an effort to identify distant planets hospitable to life, NASA has established a crowdsourcing project in which volunteers search telescopic images for evidence of debris disks around stars...
04:42 pm - Thu, April 5, 2018
Slashdot
Apple's Redesigned Mac Pro is Coming in 2019
Apple's long-awaited update to the 2013 Mac Pro won't be released until sometime next year, the company told TechCrunch. From a report: We've known since a press roundtable in April 2017 that Apple wa...
04:00 pm - Thu, April 5, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft: We'll Help Customers Create Patents But We Get a License To Use Them
Microsoft outlined a new intellectual-property policy on Thursday for co-developed technology that embraces open source and seeks to assure customers it won't run off with their innovations. From a re...
03:20 pm - Thu, April 5, 2018
Slashdot
Despite Having Unprecedented Access To Technology, Generation Z Is Already Bored
Taylor Lorenz, writing for The Daily Beast: There is a notion among older people that teens, with their smartphones and unlimited internet access, never experience boredom. CNN and other media outlets...
02:40 pm - Thu, April 5, 2018
Slashdot
Scientists Harvest First Vegetables in Antarctic Greenhouse
Scientists in Antarctica have harvested their first crop of vegetables grown without earth, daylight or pesticides as part of a project designed to help astronauts cultivate fresh food on other planet...
02:00 pm - Thu, April 5, 2018
Slashdot
AI Experts Boycott South Korean University Over 'Killer Robots'
An anonymous reader shares a report: Leading AI experts have boycotted a South Korean university over a partnership with weapons manufacturer Hanwha Systems. More than 50 AI researchers from 30 countr...
01:00 pm - Thu, April 5, 2018
Slashdot
Slashdot Asks: Should Android OEMs Adopt the iPhone's Notch?
Earlier this year, Bloomberg reported that Google was currently working on a "dramatic redesign" of its Android OS -- one that embraces the "notch" made popular by the iPhone X. A couple weeks after t...
10:00 am - Thu, April 5, 2018
Slashdot
1.1.1.1: Cloudflare's New DNS Attracting 'Gigabits Per Second' of Rubbish
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Cloudflare's new speed and privacy enhancing domain name system (DNS) servers, launched on Sunday, are also part of an experiment being conducted in par...
07:00 am - Thu, April 5, 2018
Slashdot
YouTube Will Increase Security At All Offices Worldwide Following Shooting
Following the shooting at YouTube's headquarters in San Bruno, California, yesterday, the company has announced plans to increase security at all of its offices worldwide. YouTube says this is intende...
03:30 am - Thu, April 5, 2018
Slashdot
One of Estonia's First 'e-Residents' Explains What It Means To Have Digital Citizenship
An anonymous reader shares a report from Quartz, written by Estonian e-Resident April Rinne: In 2014, Estonia, a country previously known as much for its national singing revolution as anything else, ...
12:10 am - Thu, April 5, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Touts Breakthrough In Making Chatbots More Conversational
In a blog post today, Microsoft said that it has created what it believes is the "first technological breakthrough" toward making conversations with chatbots more like speaking to another person. Wind...
11:30 pm - Wed, April 4, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Is Changing the Way It Stores Call, Text History
Facebook issued a blog post today detailing the changes it has made to how it manages users' data. Among the new changes is a tweak to how Facebook collects and stores call and text history. Engadget ...
10:50 pm - Wed, April 4, 2018
Slashdot
Google Now Purchases More Renewable Energy Than It Consumes As a Company
In a blog post today, Google announced that it now purchases more renewable energy than it consumers as a company. "Google began these efforts in 2017, with the goal of purchasing as much renewable en...
10:10 pm - Wed, April 4, 2018
Slashdot
Virgin Hyperloop One Shows Off New Futuristic Travel Pod
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: It's an interesting time for Virgin Hyperloop One, which saw one of its board members arrested on fraud and embezzlement charges in Russia last week and ...
09:30 pm - Wed, April 4, 2018
Slashdot
Ask Slashdot: What Does Your Data Mean To Google?
shanen writes: Due to the recent kerfuffles, I decided to try again to see what Google had on me. This time I succeeded and failed, in contrast to the previous pure failures. Yes, I did find Google's ...
08:50 pm - Wed, April 4, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook's Privacy Fixes Have Broken Tinder
Since the recent Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, Facebook has been rolling out more security and data privacy updates. "Today, however, the company announced sweeping changes to many of its ...
08:10 pm - Wed, April 4, 2018
Slashdot
CenturyLink Fights Billing-Fraud Lawsuit By Claiming That It Has No Customers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: CenturyLink is trying to force customers into arbitration in order to avoid a class-action lawsuit from subscribers who say they've been charged ...
07:22 pm - Wed, April 4, 2018
Slashdot
McAfee Finds That Gamers Are Strong Candidates for Cybersecurity Jobs
To beat cybercriminals, McAfee suggests in a new report that gamers may be the key candidates for cybersecurity jobs. From a report: The Santa Clara, California-based cybersecurity company said it did...
06:42 pm - Wed, April 4, 2018
Slashdot
Cambridge Analytica May Have Had Facebook Data From 87 Million People
Cambridge Analytica may have had data from more unwitting Facebook usersthan originally thought. From a report: Facebook now says that the data firm, which collected data about users without their per...
06:00 pm - Wed, April 4, 2018
Slashdot
Drug-Resistant 'Nightmare Bacteria' Pose Growing Threat
"Nightmare bacteria" with unusual resistance to antibiotics of last resort were found more than 200 times in the United States last year in a first-of-a-kind hunt to see how much of a threat these rar...
05:20 pm - Wed, April 4, 2018
Slashdot
Google Workers Urge CEO To Pull Out of Pentagon AI Project
Thousands of Google employees, including dozens of senior engineers, have signed a letter protesting the company's involvement in a Pentagon program that uses artificial intelligence to interpret vide...
04:40 pm - Wed, April 4, 2018
Slashdot
Valve Re-affirms Commitment To SteamOS and Linux After Hiding Steam Machines from Store
An anonymous reader writes: Valve recently removed Steam Machines from the Steam Store navigation menus which naturally led people to believe that Valve was giving up on that initiative, also leading ...
04:00 pm - Wed, April 4, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Scans What You Send Other People on Messenger App
Sarah Frier, reporting for Bloomberg: Facebook scans the text and images that people send each other on Facebook Messenger, making sure it all abides by the company's rules governing content. If it do...
03:20 pm - Wed, April 4, 2018
Slashdot
Outgoing White House Emails Not Protected by Verification System
The security advocacy group Global Cyber Alliance tested the 26 email domains managed by the Executive Office of the President (EOP) and found that only one fully implements a security protocol that v...
02:40 pm - Wed, April 4, 2018
Slashdot
Apple Working on Touchless Control and Curved iPhone Screen
Apple might be working on touchless gesture control and curved screens for future iPhones, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. From a report: The control feature would let iPhone users perform some tasks...
02:00 pm - Wed, April 4, 2018
Slashdot
Intel Says Some CPU Models Will Never Receive Microcode Updates
An anonymous reader writes: Intel released an update to the Meltdown and Spectre mitigation guide, revealing that it stopped working on mitigations for some processor series. The Meltdown and Spectre ...
01:00 pm - Wed, April 4, 2018
Slashdot
US' Proposed China Tariffs Would Target Robotics, Satellites
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The U.S. Trade Representative has published the list of Chinese products that would be subject to its proposed tech tariffs, and there are a few clea...
11:00 am - Wed, April 4, 2018
Slashdot
Latest macOS Update Disables DisplayLink, Rendering Thousands of Monitors Dead
rh2600 writes: Four days ago, Apple's latest macOS 10.13.4 update broke DisplayLink protocol support (perhaps permanently), turning what may be hundreds of thousands of external monitors connected to ...
09:00 am - Wed, April 4, 2018
Slashdot
NASA Hires Lockheed Martin To Build Quiet Supersonic X-Plane
New submitter john of sparta shares a report from Space.com: NASA has taken a huge leap forward in its quest to create an aircraft that can travel faster than the speed of sound without causing the ea...
05:00 am - Wed, April 4, 2018
Slashdot
Swedes Turn Against Cashlessness
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: It is hard to argue that you cannot trust the government when the government isn't really all that bad. This is the problem facing the small but ...
03:30 am - Wed, April 4, 2018
Slashdot
YouTube Shooter 'Nasim Aghdam' Reportedly Had Website With Manifesto That Targeted YouTube For Censorship, Demonetization
The woman who entered the YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California, this morning and started shooting has been identified as Nasim Aghdam. According to ABC7 News, "the YouTube shooter was a user ...
02:10 am - Wed, April 4, 2018
Slashdot
Schools Won't Like How Difficult the New iPad Is To Repair
Last week, Apple introduced a refreshed 9.7-inch iPad with Apple Pencil support. iFixit has published its teardown of the device this morning, and as The Verge points out, schools won't like how diffi...
01:30 am - Wed, April 4, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook CEO Says Not Planning To Extend European Privacy Law Globally
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Tuesday that the social network had no immediate plans to apply a strict new European Union law on data privacy in its entirety to the rest of the world. The news ...
12:50 am - Wed, April 4, 2018
Slashdot
MIT Severs Ties To Company Promoting Fatal Brain Uploading
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: The MIT Media Lab will sever ties with a brain-embalming company that promoted euthanasia to people hoping for digital immortality throu...
12:10 am - Wed, April 4, 2018
Slashdot
Facebook Blames a 'Bug' For Not Deleting Your Seemingly Deleted Videos
Last week, The New York Magazine found that Facebook was archiving videos users thought were deleted. The social media company is now apologizing for failing to delete the videos, blaming it on a "bug...
11:30 pm - Tue, April 3, 2018
Slashdot
Russia Debuts Postal Drone, Which Immediately Crashes Into Wall
On Monday, Russia's postal service tested a delivery drone in the city of Ulan-Ude, Siberia, -- and it went horribly wrong. According to Futurism, soon after launch it crashed violently into the wall ...
11:10 pm - Tue, April 3, 2018
Slashdot
Apple Hires Google's AI Chief
"Apple has hired Google's chief of search and artificial intelligence (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), John Giannandrea, a major coup in its bid to catch up to the artificial in...
10:50 pm - Tue, April 3, 2018
Slashdot
Fedora 28 Beta Linux Distro is Finally Here
An anonymous reader writes: Today, version 28 of the Fedora finally achieves beta status. After a short delay -- it was scheduled to be available a week earlier -- the distro is back on track, and loo...
10:10 pm - Tue, April 3, 2018
Slashdot
WhatsApp Public Groups Can Leave User Data Vulnerable To Scraping
An anonymous reader writes: WhatsApp differentiates itself from parent company Facebook by touting its end-to-end encryption. "Some of your most personal moments are shared with WhatsApp," the company...
09:45 pm - Tue, April 3, 2018
Slashdot
Update: Possible Active Shooter Reported at YouTube HQ
Police have responded to multiple 911 calls at YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California. From a report: Vadim Lavrusik, a product manager at the company, tweeted that there is an active shooter o...
09:30 pm - Tue, April 3, 2018
Slashdot
Half of European Flights Delayed Due To System Failure
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The organization responsible for co-ordinating European air traffic says it has fixed an earlier fault which led to widespread flight delays. Eurocont...
08:10 pm - Tue, April 3, 2018
Slashdot
Ethereum Founder Confronts Self-Proclaimed Bitcoin Creator Craig Wright, Calls Him a Fraud
The dispute between Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and self-proclaimed "Bitcoin creator" Craig Wright is far from over. At the 2018 Deconomy conference, Buterin asked, "Given that he makes so many n...
07:02 pm - Tue, April 3, 2018
Slashdot
US Suspects Listening Devices in Washington
For the first time, the U.S. government has publicly acknowledged the existence in Washington of what appear to be rogue devices that foreign spies and criminal could be using to track individual cell...
06:50 pm - Tue, April 3, 2018
Slashdot
Ask Slashdot: What Would Happen If Everything On the Internet Was DRM Protected?
dryriver writes: The whole Digital Rights Management (DRM) train started with music and films, spread horribly to computer and console games (Steam, Origin), turned a lot of computer software you coul...
06:10 pm - Tue, April 3, 2018
Slashdot
Schools Are Giving Up on Smartphone Bans
Bans on phones in schools are increasingly becoming a thing of the past, new research shows. From a report: A survey from the National Center for Education Statistics exploring crime and safety at sch...
05:30 pm - Tue, April 3, 2018
Slashdot
The World's Fastest Delivery Drone Takes Off
A couple of years ago, Zipline, a California-based startup, created a national drone delivery system to ship blood and drugs to remote medical centers in Rwanda. Now it has developed what it claims is...
04:50 pm - Tue, April 3, 2018
Slashdot
Suit To Let Researchers Break Website Rules Wins a Round
An anonymous reader writes: Anyone following Facebook's recent woes with Cambridge Analytica might be surprised to hear that there's a civil liberties argument for swiping data from websites, even whi...
04:10 pm - Tue, April 3, 2018
Slashdot
Intel Unveils New Coffee Lake 8th Gen Core Line-Up With First Core i9 Mobile CPU
MojoKid writes: Intel is announcing a big update to its processor families today, with new 8th Gen Coffee Lake-based Core chips for both mobile and desktop platforms. On the mobile side of the equatio...
03:30 pm - Tue, April 3, 2018
Slashdot
When it Comes To Privacy, Consent is Immaterial. Corporate and Gov't Surveillance Systems Must Be Stopped Before They Ask For Consent: Richard Stallman
In a rare op-ed, Richard Stallman, the president of the Free Software Foundation, says that the surveillance imposed on us today is worse than in the Soviet Union. He argues that we need laws to stop ...
02:40 pm - Tue, April 3, 2018
Slashdot
The 50th Anniversary of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey"
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the original release of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," a seminal film in motion picture history and one that has awed millions over the years. Kubrick's...
02:00 pm - Tue, April 3, 2018
Slashdot
China Lays Claim To Four Great New Inventions That Have Existed Elsewhere Before
dryriver writes: The BBC has an interesting story about Chinese state media increasingly touting "4 Great New Inventions" in modern China that were not invented by Chinese inventors or in China at all...
01:00 pm - Tue, April 3, 2018
Slashdot
Instagram Suddenly Chokes Off Developers As Facebook Chases Privacy
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Without warning, Instagram has broken many of the unofficial apps built on its platform. This weekend it surprised developers with a massive reduct...
10:00 am - Tue, April 3, 2018
Slashdot
Valve Removes Steam Machines From Its Home Page
Steam Machines were supposed to take PC gaming mainstream by simplifying setup and moving the games in your living room, but they never took off. Today, ExtremeTech reports that Valve has removed Stea...
07:00 am - Tue, April 3, 2018
Slashdot
Hubble Space Telescope Spots the Farthest Known Star
Researchers using Hubble space telescope data have spotted Icarus (aka MACS J1149+2223 Lensed Star 1), a blue supergiant whose light was emitted when it was 9 billion light years away from Earth -- ov...
03:30 am - Tue, April 3, 2018
Slashdot
Military Documents Reveal How the US Army Plans To Deploy AI In Future Wars
In a just-released white paper, the Army describes how it's working to make a battlefield network of machines and humans a reality. The Next Web reports: "Most of such intelligent things will not be t...
01:25 am - Tue, April 3, 2018
Slashdot
Panerabread.com Leaks Millions of Customers Records
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Krebs on Security: Panerabread.com, the website for the American chain of bakery-cafe fast casual restaurants by the same name, leaked millions of customer rec...
12:45 am - Tue, April 3, 2018
Slashdot
Tesla Is Making Over 2,000 Model 3s a Week, Falling Just Short of Its Goal
According to an email from Elon Musk, Tesla has increased its production of its mass-market electric Model 3 to over 2,000 units per week. "It's an impressive ramp up of production, but it still falls...
12:03 am - Tue, April 3, 2018
Slashdot
Gay Dating App Grindr Is Letting Other Companies See User HIV Status, Location Data
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed: The gay hookup app Grindr, which has more than 3.6 million daily active users across the world, has been providing its users' HIV status to two other...
11:20 pm - Mon, April 2, 2018
Slashdot
Google Is Considering Launching a Mid-Range Pixel Phone This Summer, Claims Report
According to a report from The Economic Times, Google is developing a new mid-range Pixel smartphone. "The paper claims that 'Google's top brass shared details of its consumer products expansion plans...
10:40 pm - Mon, April 2, 2018
Slashdot
Ask Slashdot: Should CPU, GPU Name-Numbering Indicate Real World Performance?
dryriver writes: Anyone who has built a PC in recent years knows how confusing the letters and numbers that trail modern CPU and GPU names can be because they do not necessarily tell you how fast one ...
10:20 pm - Mon, April 2, 2018
Slashdot
SpaceX Completes Its Seventh Successful Mission of 2018 With Launch of CRS-14
Longtime Slashdot reader lalleglad writes: SpaceX today launched a Falcon 9 with its 14th Resupply Services mission. I saw it went well, and I hope it will also attach to the International Space Stati...
10:00 pm - Mon, April 2, 2018
Slashdot
Zuckerberg On Facebook's Role In Ethnic Cleansing In Myanmar: 'It's a Real Issue'
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Vox: Facebook's fake news problems extend far beyond Russian trolls interfering in U.S. elections. Overseas, false stories have turned into tools of political ...
09:23 pm - Mon, April 2, 2018
Slashdot
Tor Winds Down Its Encrypted Messenger App 3 Years After Launch
The Tor Project has announced that it's winding down its privacy-focused Tor Messenger chat program, nearly three years after its beta debut. From a report: Tor, an acronym of "The Onion Router," is b...
08:42 pm - Mon, April 2, 2018
Slashdot
Chrome Is Scanning Files on Your Computer, and People Are Freaking Out
Some cybersecurity experts and regular users were surprised to learn about a Chrome tool that scans Windows computers for malware. But there's no reason to freak out about it. From a report: Last year...
08:00 pm - Mon, April 2, 2018
Slashdot
OpenBSD 6.3 Released
OpenBSD announced on Monday that v6.3 update, which was slated to be released on April 15, is ready for download. From the announcement post: This is our 44th release. We remain proud of OpenBSD's rec...
07:20 pm - Mon, April 2, 2018
Slashdot
Google Bans Chrome Extensions That Mine Cryptocurrencies From the Web Store
An anonymous reader writes: Google announced that effective today, the Chrome Web Store review staff would stop accepting new extensions on the Web Store that perform cryptocurrency mining. Existing C...
06:40 pm - Mon, April 2, 2018
Slashdot
No More Intel Inside, Apple Plans To Use Its Own Custom-Built Chips in Mac
Apple is planning to use homegrown custom-built processors in its Mac line of computers, ditching Intel, the processors by which powers Apple's current line of computers, Bloomberg reported on Monday....
06:10 pm - Mon, April 2, 2018
Slashdot
Move Over Moore's Law, Make Way For Huang's Law
Tekla Perry writes: Are graphics processors a law unto themselves? Nvidia's Jensen Huang says a 25-times speedup over five years is evidence that they are. He calls this the 'supercharged law,' and sa...
05:30 pm - Mon, April 2, 2018
Slashdot
Large Crack in East African Rift is Evidence of Continent Splitting in Two
A large crack, stretching several miles, made a sudden appearance recently in south-western Kenya. The tear emerged after heavy rains caused havoc in the nation last month, which also saw neighborhood...
04:52 pm - Mon, April 2, 2018
Slashdot
Google is Equipping More Rural School Buses With Wi-Fi and Chromebooks
Google on Monday said it was formally expanding its Rolling Study Halls program, or school buses equipped with WiFi, computers and on-bus educators to help rural students with work beyond school hours...
04:21 pm - Mon, April 2, 2018
Slashdot
Verizon Has Been the Fastest US Mobile Carrier in Last Six Months: Wirefly
Verizon was the fastest mobile carrier in the United States during Q4 2017 and Q1 2018, according to 2018 Internet Speed Rankings Report published by Wirefly. According to the report, Verizon Wireless...
03:44 pm - Mon, April 2, 2018
Slashdot
EU's Long-Promised Digital Media Portability Rules Go Into Effect
The EU's long-promised digital media portability rules have taken effect as of April 1st, letting residents access Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and other paid digital media services in other member cou...
02:51 pm - Mon, April 2, 2018
Slashdot
Red Hat CEO Talks About State Of Open Source
To mark Red Hat's 25th anniversary, TechCrunch spoke with the company's CEO Jim Whitehurst to talk about the past, present and future of the company, and open-source software in general. An excerpt: "...
02:05 pm - Mon, April 2, 2018
Slashdot
Mark Zuckerberg: Tim Cook is 'Extremely Glib'
A week after Apple CEO Cook said "some well-crafted regulation is necessary " in light of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal and that Apple was better off than Facebook because it doesn't sell u...
10:34 am - Mon, April 2, 2018
Slashdot
Interviews: Ask a Question To Christine Peterson, the Nanotech Expert Who Coined the Term 'Open Source'
Christine Peterson is a long-time futurist who co-founded the nanotech advocacy group the Foresight Institute in 1986. One of her favorite tasks has been contacting the winners of the institute's annu...
08:30 am - Mon, April 2, 2018
Slashdot
CRISPR-Altered Plants Are Not Going To Be Regulated (For Now)
Good news for people who like genetically altered tomatoes and other plants. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it will no longer regulate them. From a report: The USDA not only rolled back ...
05:30 am - Mon, April 2, 2018
Slashdot
Chinese Space Station Burns Up On Re-entry in South Pacific
cold fjord writes: Chinese space authorities say the defunct Tiangong 1 space station mostly burned up on re-entry into the atmosphere over the central South Pacific. The China Manned Space Engineerin...
04:30 am - Mon, April 2, 2018
Slashdot
Duolingo To Silicon Valley Workers: Move To Pittsburgh, Where You Can Actually Afford a Home
As the cost of living continues to rise in Silicon Valley, tech companies in other parts of the country are getting more aggressive in pitching workers to move to their cities for a better quality of ...
01:30 am - Mon, April 2, 2018
Slashdot
Software Bug Behind Biggest Telephony Outage In US History
An anonymous reader writes: A software bug in a telecom provider's phone number blacklisting system caused the largest telephony outage in US history, according to a report released by the US Federal ...
11:00 pm - Sun, April 1, 2018
Slashdot
Linux 4.16 Released
An anonymous reader writes: Linus Torvalds has released Linux 4.16. Linux 4.16 integrates more of the VirtualBox guest drivers into the kernel, provides AMDGPU DC multi-display synchronization, contin...
10:00 pm - Sun, April 1, 2018
Slashdot
Teenage Subway Aficionados Help With the Upkeep of Every One of New York City's 472 Subway Stations -- At Least on Wikipedia
The New York Times has a feature story about two incredible teenagers who work behind the scenes to improve all of the Wikipedia articles about the New York Subway system. An excerpt: Ryan Ng is a 19-...
09:00 pm - Sun, April 1, 2018
Slashdot
Trump Says He Wants Skilled Migrants But Creates New Hurdles
An anonymous reader shares an Associated Press report: It may be a while before President Donald Trump gets another chance at creating a new, "merit-based" immigration system, a keystone of his four-p...
07:55 pm - Sun, April 1, 2018
Slashdot
Card Data Stolen From 5 Million Saks and Lord & Taylor Customers
Hudson's Bay said on Sunday that data from card payments in some of its Saks and Lord & Taylor stores in North America had been compromised. From a report: A well-known ring of cybercriminals has ...
07:00 pm - Sun, April 1, 2018
Slashdot
To Protect AI From Attacks, Show It Fake Data
AI systems can sometimes be tricked into seeing something that's not actually there -- remember when Google's software "saw" a 3-D-printed turtle as a rifle. At an event earlier this week, Google Brai...
06:02 pm - Sun, April 1, 2018
Slashdot
Non-Tech Businesses Are Beginning To Use AI at Scale
Artificial intelligence is spreading beyond the technology sector, with big consequences for companies, workers and consumers. An anonymous reader shares a report: Bosses of non-tech companies in a br...
05:00 pm - Sun, April 1, 2018
Slashdot
Cloudflare Launches 1.1.1.1 Consumer DNS Service With a Focus On Privacy
BrianFagioli writes: Today, Cloudflare announces a new consumer DNS service with a focus on privacy. Called '1.1.1.1.' it quite literally uses that easy-to-remeber IP address as the primary DNS server...
04:02 pm - Sun, April 1, 2018
Slashdot
Our Devices May Listen More Attentively, Patents Filed By Google and Amazon Suggest
Amazon and Google, the leading sellers of smart speakers, say their AI-powered assistants record and process audio only after users trigger them by pushing a button or uttering a phrase like "Hey, Ale...
03:10 pm - Sun, April 1, 2018
Slashdot
April Fool's Day Roundup
It might be a holiday for most of us today, but for tech companies, April Fool's is the day when they work overtime to send weird press releases. So far we have seen Google Maps help users find Waldo,...
02:00 pm - Sun, April 1, 2018
Slashdot
President of France Emmanuel Macron Talks About Nation's New AI Strategy
Earlier this week, Emmanuel Macron, President of France, pledged to spend $1.9 billion over the next five years and allow expanded data-sharing to help make France a leader in artificial intelligence....
12:00 pm - Sun, April 1, 2018
Slashdot
Apple Goes on Hiring Spree To Improve Siri's Smarts
Thinknum has noticed that Apple has been on a Siri-related hiring spree in recent months, with 161 positions listed as of the end of March. There's been an uptick ever since summer 2016, but there was...
07:34 am - Sun, April 1, 2018
Slashdot
Atlanta Still Struggles To Recover From Ransomware Attack
An anonymous reader quotes Reuters:Atlanta's top officials holed up in their offices on Saturday as they worked to restore critical systems knocked out by a nine-day-old cyber attack that plunged the ...
04:34 am - Sun, April 1, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Email Privacy Case No Longer Needed, Says The US
An anonymous reader quotes CNN:The U.S. Department of Justice is asking the Supreme Court to abandon its case against Microsoft over international data privacy. A new law signed by President Donald Tr...
01:34 am - Sun, April 1, 2018
Slashdot
Ask Slashdot: Are 'Full Stack' Developers a Thing?
"It seems that nearly every job posting for a software developer these days requires someone who can do it all," complains Slashdot reader datavirtue, noting a main focus on finding someone to do "fro...
11:34 pm - Sat, March 31, 2018
Slashdot
'Thousands of Companies Are Spying On You'
Security guru Bruce Schneier warns that "thousands of companies" are spying on us and manipulating us for profit. An anonymous reader quotes his article on CNN:Harvard Business School professor Shosha...
10:34 pm - Sat, March 31, 2018
Slashdot
Should We Revive Extinct Species?
An anonymous reader writes:The last male northern white rhinoceros died just last week, and a total of just 29,000 rhinoceroses now remain on earth. But National Geographic reports that "the genetic m...
09:34 pm - Sat, March 31, 2018
Slashdot
MailChimp Bans Emails Promoting Cryptocurrency
"MailChimp to Cryptocurrency Promoters: Your Fake Money's No Good Here," jokes the headline at Gizmodo. The mass emailing service -- which sends over a billion emails a day -- just updated its Accepta...
09:04 pm - Sat, March 31, 2018
Slashdot
The EFF Hosts a 'John Perry Barlow Symposium' Next Saturday
An anonymous reader writes:The EFF is announcing "a celebration of the life and leadership of the recently departed founder of EFF, John Perry Barlow," to be held next Saturday at the Internet Archive...
08:34 pm - Sat, March 31, 2018
Slashdot
'Nature' Explores Why So Many Postgrads Have Bad Mental Health
An anonymous reader writes:This week Nature tweeted that the rates of depression and anxiety reported by postgraduate students were six times higher than in the general population -- and received more...
07:34 pm - Sat, March 31, 2018
Slashdot
Is It Illegal to Trick a Robot?
An anonymous reader writes:Can you get into trouble under anti-hacking laws for tricking machine learning...? A new paper by security researchers and legal experts asks whether fooling a driverless ca...
06:34 pm - Sat, March 31, 2018
Slashdot
Open Source RISC V Processor Gets Support From Google, Samsung, Qualcomm, and Tesla
An anonymous reader writes:Google, Qualcomm, and Samsung "are among 80 tech companies joining forces to develop a new open-source chip design for new technologies like self-driving vehicles," writes S...
05:34 pm - Sat, March 31, 2018
Slashdot
Was The Florida Pedestrian Bridge Collapse Triggered By Post-Tensioning?
A new lawsuit claims post-tensioning triggered the collapse of the pedestrian bridge at Florida International University, killing five motorists and one worker. Engineering News Record reportsAccordin...
04:34 pm - Sat, March 31, 2018
Slashdot
Security Experts See Chromebooks as a Closed Ecosystem That Improves Security
The founder of Rendition Security believes his daughter "is more safe on a Chromebook than a Windows laptop," and he's not the only one. CNET's staff reporter argues that Google's push for simplicity,...
03:34 pm - Sat, March 31, 2018
Slashdot
The Prestigious Free Software Award Goes to Karen Sandler
Each year the Fee Software award goes to someone making "a great contribution to the progress and development of free software, through activities that accord with the spirit of free software." This y...
02:34 pm - Sat, March 31, 2018
Slashdot
Microsoft Is 'Demoting' Windows for the Cloud, Says CNN
An anonymous reader quotes CNN:Microsoft is giving Windows a demotion, and leaning into the cloud. CEO Satya Nadella told employees on Thursday that Terry Myerson, leader of the Windows and Devices Gr...
01:00 pm - Sat, March 31, 2018
Slashdot
Tesla Says Autopilot Was Engaged During Fatal Model X Crash
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Tesla says Autopilot was engaged at the time of a deadly Model X crash that occurred March 23rd in Mountain View, California. The company posted a s...
07:00 am - Sat, March 31, 2018
Slashdot
Google Is Shutting Down Its Goo.gl URL Shortening Service
Google is replacing its URL shortener service, goo.gl, with Firebase Dynamic Links (FDL) as of April 13th. These new smart URLs will let you send people to any location within iOS, Android or web apps...
03:30 am - Sat, March 31, 2018
Slashdot
Two Studies Find 'Clear Evidence' That Cellphone Radiation Causes Cancer In Rats
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: [A] pair of studies by the U.S. National Toxicology Program found "clear evidence" that exposure to radiation caused heart tumors in male rats, and fou...
01:40 am - Sat, March 31, 2018
Slashdot
AI Predicts Your Lifespan Using Activity Tracking Apps
Russian scientists have crafted an AI-based algorithm that uses the activity tracking from smartphones and smartwatches to estimate your lifespan with far greater precision than past models. Engadget ...
01:00 am - Sat, March 31, 2018
Slashdot
Adobe Is Helping Some 60 Companies Track People Across Devices
Neowin reports of Adobe's recent announcement of its new Marketing Cloud Device Co-op initiative: The announcement of the new solution for tracking customers across devices was made at the Adobe Summi...
12:05 am - Sat, March 31, 2018
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Facebook Employees In An Uproar Over Executive's Leaked Memo
According to The New York Times, "Facebook employees were in an uproar on Friday over a leaked 2016 memo from a top executive defending the social network's growth at any cost -- even if it caused dea...