CmdrTaco - Slashdot User

Power and Free Broadband To the People 262

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday October 29, 2014 @04:48PM from the get-you-some-internet dept.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes Slashdot member and open source developer Ben Kallos @KallosEsq — who is now a NYC Councilman — is pushing to make it a precondition to Comcast's merging with Time Warner that it agree to provide free broadband to all public housing residents in the City (and by free I mean free as in beer). Kallos, along with NY's Public Advocate, Letitia James, is leading a group of state and local politicians calling on Comcast to help bridge the digital divide in NY.

Is the Outrage Over the FBI's Seattle Times Tactics a Knee-Jerk Reaction? 206

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday October 29, 2014 @03:23PM from the wait-a-second dept.

reifman writes The Internet's been abuzz the past 48 hours about reports the FBI distributed malware via a fake Seattle Times news website. What the agency actually did is more of an example of smart, precise law enforcement tactics. Is the outrage online an indictment of Twitter's tendency towards uninformed, knee-jerk reactions? In this age of unwarranted, unconstitutional blanket data collection by the NSA, the FBI's tactics from 2007 seem refreshing for their precision.

YouTube Considering an Ad-Free, Subscription-Based Version 225

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday October 29, 2014 @02:39PM from the premium-pay dept.

Walking The Walk writes YouTube is looking at creating a paid-subscription model that would allow users to skip the ads on their videos. (A more condensed summary from CBC.) No firm date has been announced, and it sounds like tentative steps right now, but YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki did mention that ad-enabled music videos would still be offered.

Apple Pay Competitor CurrentC Breached 265

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday October 29, 2014 @01:51PM from the raise-shields dept.

tranquilidad writes "As previously discussed on Slashdot, CurrentC is a consortium of merchants attempting to create a "more secure" payment system. Some controversy surrounds CurrentC's requirements regarding the personal information required, their purchase-tracking intentions and retail stores blocking NFC in apparent support of CurrentC. Now news breaks that CurrentC has already been breached. CurrentC has issued the standard response, "We take the security of our users' information extremely seriously."

OneDrive Delivers Unlimited Cloud Storage To Office 365 Subscribers 145

Posted by samzenpus on Monday October 27, 2014 @06:15PM from the bigger-cloud dept.

First time accepted submitter FlyHelicopters writes "Dropbox, Google, Microsoft, and others have been competing to become your favorite place to store stuff in the cloud. Just this past June, Microsoft upgraded Office 365 users from 25GB to 1TB, now they are upping the ante with unlimited OneDrive storage. There remains a single file size limit of 10GB per file, it is not clear if that limit will be removed with this upgrade.

20 More Cities Want To Join the Fight Against Big Telecom's Broadband Monopolies 97

Posted by samzenpus on Monday October 27, 2014 @05:28PM from the internet-of-the-people dept.

Jason Koebler writes At least 20 additional American cities have expressed a formal interest in joining a coalition that's dedicated to bringing gigabit internet speeds to their residents by any means necessary—even if it means building the infrastructure themselves. The Next Centuries Cities coalition launched last week with an impressive list of 32 cities in 19 states who recognize that fast internet speeds unencumbered by fast lanes or other tiered systems are necessary to keep residents and businesses happy. That launch was so successful that 20 other cities have expressed formal interest in joining, according to the group's executive director.

Ex-CBS Reporter Claims Government Agency Bugged Her Computer 235

Posted by samzenpus on Monday October 27, 2014 @04:44PM from the watching-you dept.

RoccamOccam writes A former CBS News reporter who quit the network over claims it kills stories that put President Obama in a bad light says she was spied on by a "government-related entity" that planted classified documents on her computer. In her new memoir, Sharyl Attkisson says a source who arranged to have her laptop checked for spyware in 2013 was "shocked" and "flabbergasted" at what the analysis revealed. "This is outrageous. Worse than anything Nixon ever did. I wouldn't have believed something like this could happen in the United States of America," Attkisson quotes the source saying.

Microsoft Is Bringing WebRTC To Explorer, Eyes Plugin-Free Skype Calls 66

Posted by samzenpus on Monday October 27, 2014 @04:01PM from the call-window dept.

An anonymous reader writes Microsoft today announced it is backing the Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) technology and will be supporting the ORTC API in Internet Explorer. Put another way, the company is finally throwing its weight behind the broader industry trend of bringing voice and video calling to the browser without the need for plugins. Both Google and Mozilla are way ahead of Microsoft in this area, both in terms of adding WebRTC features to their respective browsers and in terms of building plugin-free calling services that rely on the technology. In short, Skype is under threat, and Microsoft has finally decided to opt for an "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" strategy.

Black Swan Author: Genetically Modified Organisms Risk Global Ruin 432

Posted by samzenpus on Monday October 27, 2014 @03:19PM from the won't-somebody-please-think-of-the-world? dept.

KentuckyFC writes It's 20 years since the FDA approved the Flavr Savr tomato for human consumption, the first genetically engineered food to gain this status. Today, roughly 85 per cent of corn and 90 per cent of soybeans produced in the US are genetically modified. So it's easy to imagine that the scientific debate over the safety of genetically modified organisms has been largely settled. Not for Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan and several academic colleagues who say that the risks have been vastly underestimated. They say that genetically modified organisms threaten harm on a global scale, both to ecosystems and to human health. That's different from many conventional risks that threaten harm on a local scale, like nuclear energy for example. They argue that this global threat means that the precautionary principle ought to be applied to severely limit the way genetically modified organisms can be used.

Book Review: Measuring and Managing Information Risk: a FAIR Approach 46

Posted by samzenpus on Monday October 27, 2014 @02:35PM from the read-all-about-it dept.

benrothke writes It's hard to go a day without some sort of data about information security and risk. Research from firms like Gartner are accepted without question; even though they can get their results from untrusted and unvetted sources. The current panic around Ebola shows how people are ill-informed about risk. While stressing over Ebola, the media is oblivious to true public health threats like obesity, heart disease, drunk driving, diabetes, and the like. When it comes to information security, it's not that much better. With myriad statistics, surveys, data breach reports, and global analyses of the costs of data breaches, there is an overabundance of data, and an under abundance of meaningful data. In Measuring and Managing Information Risk: A FAIR Approach, authors Jack Freund and Jack Jones have written a magnificent book that will change the way (for the better) you think about and deal with IT risk. Keep reading for the rest of Ben's review.

Here's Why Apple Rejected Your iOS App 145

Posted by samzenpus on Monday October 27, 2014 @01:53PM from the you-can-keep-it dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes Everybody knows that Apple runs a tight ship when it comes to approving iOS apps for its App Store, rejecting software because it features porn, allows gambling, installs types of executable code, etc. But Apple also denies apps for some pretty esoteric reasons, many of which are only just coming to light. Want to have an App that uses GPS to automatically control a real-world aircraft or automobile? Sorry, that's not allowed, presumably because Apple doesn't want iOS to serve as a drone controller. (Imagine the liability issues.) Also, apps that report your location to emergency services are forbidden, as well as any that misspell Apple product names ("iTunz" will never make it through, no matter how much you beg). Even if Apple's not sharing the exact reason why it just rejected your app from its store (what the heck does "Not enough lasting value" mean?), you can check out Apple's own page on the top reasons for iOS app rejections."

Creationism Conference at Michigan State University Stirs Unease 1007

Posted by samzenpus on Monday October 27, 2014 @01:10PM from the riding-dinosaurs dept.

sciencehabit writes "A creationist conference set for a major research campus — Michigan State University (MSU) in East Lansing — is creating unease among some of the school's students and faculty, which includes several prominent evolutionary biologists. The event, called the Origins Summit, is sponsored by Creation Summit, an Oklahoma-based nonprofit Christian group that believes in a literal interpretation of the Bible and was founded to "challenge evolution and all such theories predicated on chance." The one-day conference will include eight workshops, according the event's website, including discussion of how evolutionary theory influenced Adolf Hitler's worldview, why "the Big Bang is fake," and why "natural selection is NOT evolution." News of the event caught MSU's scientific community largely by surprise. Creation Summit secured a room at the university's business school through a student religious group, but the student group did not learn about the details of the program—or the sometimes provocative talk titles — until later.

What Will It Take To Make Automated Vehicles Legal In the US? 320

Posted by samzenpus on Monday October 27, 2014 @12:27PM from the johnny-cab dept.

ashshy writes Tesla, Google, and many other companies are working on self-driving cars. When these autopilot systems become perfected and ubiquitous, the roads should be safer by orders of magnitude. So why doesn't Tesla CEO Elon Musk expect to reach that milestone until 2013 or so? Because the legal framework that supports American road rules is incredibly complex, and actually handled on a state-by-state basis. The Motley Fool explains which authorities Musk and his allies will have to convince before autopilot cars can hit the mainstream, and why the process will take another decade.

Lava Flow In Hawaii Gains Speed, Triggers Methane Explosions 64

Posted by samzenpus on Monday October 27, 2014 @11:45AM from the it's-getting-hot-in-here dept.

An anonymous reader writes Officials say molten lava from a Hawaii volcano has been flowing steadily in an area where residents have been warned they might have to evacuate their homes. Dozens of residents in the flow path have been told to complete all necessary preparations by Tuesday for a possible evacuation. From the article: "Janet Babb, a geologist and spokeswoman for the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, said methane explosions also have been going off. She said decomposing vegetation produces methane gas that can travel subsurface beyond the lava front in different directions, accumulating in pockets that can ignite. She said it was a bit unnerving to hear all the blasts on Saturday."

Lenovo Reveals Wearable Smartband To Track Exercise Stats 51

Posted by samzenpus on Monday October 27, 2014 @11:01AM from the it's-all-in-the-wrist dept.

An anonymous reader writes Lenovo is the latest tech company to enter the fitness tracker market with its Smartband SW-B100 device. "It can record calories burnt, steps taken and a user's heartrate, in addition to syncing with a smartphone through an app to provide more complete health data. Users can also customize notifications and reminders on the smartband, and even use it to unlock a Windows PC without typing in the password, according to the product page."

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