Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:It's the media's fault (Score 1) 22

by pudge (#53662321) Attached to: "Don't be rude. YOU ARE FAKE NEWS"

The media has 'trained' us?

Yes.

Is it really so hard to turn your back?

Not for me, no. I am one of the very few who actively dismisses any unsourced report.

Where is all this *personal responsibility* that you speak of?

Of course, it is our responsibility to ignore unsourced reports. But that doesn't mean the media isn't responsible for incessantly giving those unsourced reports to us ... obviously.

Comment Re:It's the media's fault (Score 1) 22

by pudge (#53661745) Attached to: "Don't be rude. YOU ARE FAKE NEWS"

'Fake news' and the official narrative are frequently synonymous. Why is it the media's fault if people decide to believe them?

Did you not read my comment? I already answered this question: because it's the media that has trained us to believe assertions without evidence.

Comment It's the media's fault (Score 1) 22

by pudge (#53654223) Attached to: "Don't be rude. YOU ARE FAKE NEWS"

The media regularly gives us stories without evidence, without substantiation, and asks us to believe those stories. Then -- I'm shocked! -- people end up believing stories without evidence or substantiation.

Only when we stop paying attention to source-less claims will we solve the problem of "fake news."
Cellphones

Samsung's Latest Patent Is a Foldable Phone (theverge.com) 31

Posted by BeauHD from the twist-and-bend dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: A recent patent application (PDF) shows that Samsung has ambitious ideas for future phone-design experimentation, although the South Korean manufacturer may have second thoughts about bendy phones after recent battery explosions and recalls. In April, Samsung was reported to have filed a patent with the Korean Intellectual Property Office for a foldable smartphone. The application was picked up by Dutch website Galaxy Club. The document shows a narrow Samsung device with a screen that bends and folds like an old-school flip phone handset. The device is described as something that can be "folded or unfolded semi automatically." The patent also referred to a "secondary" display, which is supposed to activate when you fold the device, according to International Business Times UK.
Open Source

Dropbox Open Sources New Lossless Middle-Out Image Compression Algorithm (dropbox.com) 135

Posted by msmash from the affinity-for-open-source dept.
Dropbox announced on Thursday that it is releasing its image compression algorithm dubbed Lepton under an Apache open-source license on GitHub. Lepton, the company writes, can both compress and decompress files, and for the latter, it can work while streaming. Lepton offers a 22% savings reductions for existing JPEG images, and preserves the original file bit-for-bit perfectly. It compresses JPEG files at a rate of 5MB/s and decodes them back to the original bit at 15MB/s. The company says it has used Lepton to encode 16 billion images saved to Dropbox, and continues to utilize the technology to recode its older images. You can find more technical details here.

Congress Gives Federal Agencies Two Weeks To Tally Backdoored Juniper Kit (csoonline.com) 77

Posted by samzenpus from the get-it-fixed dept.
itwbennett writes: In an effort to gauge the impact of the recent Juniper ScreenOS backdoors on government organizations, the House of Representatives is questioning around two dozen U.S. government departments and federal agencies. The U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Oversight and Government Reform sent letters to the agencies on Jan. 21, asking them to identify whether they used devices running the affected ScreenOS versions, to explain how they learned about the issues and whether they took any corrective actions before Juniper released patches and to specify when they applied the company's patches. The questioned organizations have until Feb. 4 to respond and deliver the appropriate documents, a very tight time frame giving that 'the time period covered by this request is from January 1, 2009 to the present.'

University of Helsinki To Lay Off a Thousand People (yle.fi) 308

Posted by samzenpus from the getting-small dept.
jones_supa writes: University of Helsinki, the place where Linus Torvalds got his degree as well, will reduce staff by 980 people, with 570 being laid off by the end of 2017. In addition, the university will reorganize and incorporate certain divisions including continuing education. Professors, teachers and researchers are criticizing the cuts, which coincide with the university's administrative and educational overhaul. The staff cuts reflect the government's drastic funding cuts to education, which plays one part in the effort of trying to help the difficult economic situation of today's Finland. The university estimates that of the 980 positions, terminations during this coming spring will account for 570 positions. Of the employees to be made redundant, 75 are teaching and research staff and 495 other staff. The rest of the cuts will be spread over the coming years.
Classic Games (Games)

Computer Beats Go Champion 149

Posted by samzenpus from the man-versus-machine dept.
Koreantoast writes: Go (weiqi), the ancient Chinese board game, has long been held up as one of the more difficult, unconquered challenges facing AI scientists... until now. Google DeepMind researchers, led by David Silver and Demis Hassabis, developed a new algorithm called AlphaGo, enabling the computer to soundly defeat European Go champion Fan Hui in back-to-back games, five to zero. Played on a 19x19 board, Go players have more than 300 possible moves per turn to consider, creating a huge number of potential scenarios and a tremendous computational challenge. All is not lost for humanity yet: DeepMind is scheduled to face off in March with Lee Sedol, considered one of the best Go players in recent history, in a match compared to the Kasparov-Deep Blue duels of previous decades.
Technology

Creator of Minecraft Develops Experimental VR Project (roadtovr.com) 63

Posted by samzenpus from the more-real-than-real dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Despite his on-again off-again relationship with VR headset maker Oculus, the creator of Minecraft, Markus "Notch" Persson, has developed an experimental virtual reality project that leverages WebVR technology to run directly within a browser using a Rift DK2 headset. Notch contributed $10,000 to Oculus' 2012 Kickstarter, and even traveled from Europe to visit the company in its early days. After Facebook's $2 billion acquisition of Oculus in 2014, his enthusiasm dwindled, saying "I definitely want to be a part of VR, but I will not work with Facebook." One month before selling his own company to Microsoft for a similar sum, he said he was "officially over being upset about Facebook buying Oculus."

DeLoreans To Go Back To Production (cnn.com) 276

Posted by samzenpus from the mr.-fusion-not-included dept.
An anonymous reader writes: The last time a DeLorean was built was about 35 years ago, but that is all about to change. Next year, you'll be able to buy a new 2017 DeLorean to satisfy all your deepest Back to the Future dreams. CNN reports: "The new production plan is itself something of a time warp. The cars will be built from an inventory of a million spare parts that have been in storage ever since the Belfast plant closed. Only the engine will be a creature of the 21st century."

The Tragedy Of Apollo 1 And The Lessons That Brought Us To The Moon (forbes.com) 118

Posted by samzenpus from the lessons-learned dept.
An anonymous reader writes: On January 27, 1967, the Apollo 1 crew was performing a "plugs-out" test of the Command/Service Module, an essential simulation of how the three-person capsule would perform under in-space conditions under its own power. At 6:30 PM, a voltage spike occurred, leading to a disaster. In 26 seconds, everything changed. The Apollo 1 fire and the tragic death of all three astronauts wasn't due to just a single point-of-failure, but rather due to five independent confounding factors that if any one of them had been different, the astronauts Grissom, White and Chaffee might have survived. As it stands, all the crewed Apollo missions were scrapped for 20 months while NASA changed how they did business. The changes worked remarkably well, and 2.5 years later, humans walked on the Moon.

Submission + - DeLoreans to go back to production (cnn.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The last time a DeLorean was built was about 35 years ago, but that is all about to change. Next year, you'll be able to buy a new 2017 DeLorean to satisfy all your deepest Back to the Future dreams. CNN reports: "The new production plan is itself something of a time warp. The cars will be built from an inventory of a million spare parts that have been in storage ever since the Belfast plant closed. Only the engine will be a creature of the 21st century."
Facebook

Top Telcos Join Facebook Open Source Hardware Project (thestack.com) 18

Posted by samzenpus from the joining-the-club dept.
An anonymous reader sends word about the latest telcos to join Facebook's Open Compute Project. The Stack reports: "A new wave of communications companies has joined Facebook's non-profit Open Compute Project (OCP), including AT&T, Verizon, Deutsche Telekom and South Korea's SK Telecom, as the movement seeks to share innovative hardware designs and drive down costs in the telecom arena. An OCP sub-section focused entirely on telecom requirements has been set up to look into servers and networking efficiency in the field. As one of the largest hardware buyers, telcos will provide a significant new market for the project, alongside its successful data center efforts.

Slashdot Top Deals

Two wrights don't make a rong, they make an airplane. Or bicycles.

Close