 How Pranksters Tricked Twitter-Scraping Sites Into Copyright Infringement
An anonymous reader shares a remarkable story from Fortune's Data Sheet newsletter:
The story begins on Dec. 3, when an artist going by @Hannahdouken on Twitter posted an image of hand-drawn text reading, "This site sells STOLEN Artwork, do NOT buy from them!" And asked followers to reply that they wanted the image on a shirt.
They were testing a theory. For years, artists posting their work online have found the art turned into t-shirts and other merch without permission or compensation.
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Free Software Foundation Offers Benefits and Merchandise In Its Annual Fundraiser
An anonymous reader writes:
The Free Software Foundation is holding its annual fundraiser, with a goal of attracting 600 new members by the end of December. (New members so far: 112.) "We are still fighting the oppressive nature of proprietary software," explains the campaign's web page. "We have made solid inroads, and the community is as passionate as ever."
As a 501(c)(3) charity the group's membership dues are all tax deductible, and associate memberships are just $10 a month ($5 for st
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Former Oracle Product Manager Claims He Was Forced Out For Refusing to Sell Vaporware
A former Oracle employee filed a lawsuit against the database giant on Tuesday claiming that he was forced out for refusing to lie about the functionality of the company's software.
The civil complaint, filed on behalf of plaintiff Tayo Daramola in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, contends that Oracle violated whistleblower protections under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Dodd-Frank Act, the RICO Act, and the California Labor Code.
According to the court filing, Daramola, a resident
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Disney Warns 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' Effects Could Cause Seizures
"The Walt Disney Co. is asking exhibitors worldwide to warn moviegoers that Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker may pose a seizure risk to audience members with photosensitive epilepsy," reports Deadline:
In an unusual move, Disney has sent a letter to theater owners and operators worldwide with a recommendation that special steps should be taken to alert moviegoers about the visual effects and flashing lights in the J.J. Abrams-directed interstellar adventure. "Out of an abundance of caution,"
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Ohio Neighborhood Temporarily Evacuated Over Misplaced Fears of a Homemade Nuclear Reactor
"A 911 call Thursday led to a precautionary evacuation of an entire street in a Northwest Side neighborhood in Columbus over concerns about a possible small nuclear reactor and alpha waves reported by a resident who said he sustained burns in his garage on the device," acocrding to the Columbus Dispatch.
Slashdot reader k6mfw shared their report:
In the end, authorities found no hazard. The man will undergo a mental-health examination and may face charges of inducing a panic. The man, who
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 Max Q: SpaceX and Rocket Lab launch rockets and X-Wings take flight
Sign up here to receive Max Q weekly in your inbox, starting December 15. This week saw a ton of activity in the space industry, with multiple launches, key preparations for commercial crew missions, robots and much more. Besides all the real space news, there’s also some extreme fan service for Star Wars lovers, courtesy […]
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Astronomers Find the Biggest Black Hole Ever Measured
"Astronomers have found the biggest black hole ever measured -- it's 40 billion times the sun's mass, or roughly two-thirds the mass of all stars in the Milky Way," writes Astronomy.com.
Iwastheone shares their report:
The gargantuan black hole lurks in a galaxy that's supermassive itself and probably formed from the collisions of at least eight smaller galaxies.
Holm 15A is a huge elliptical galaxy at the center of a cluster of galaxies called Abell 85... When two spiral galaxies --
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Chinese Newspaper Touts Videogame Where Players 'Hunt Down Traitors' in Hong Kong
The Global Times is a daily tabloid newspaper published "under the auspices" of the Chinese Communist Party's People's Daily, according to Wikipedia.
And this week Slashdot reader Tulsa_Time noticed that this official state-run newspaper "promoted a video game where users are tasked with hunting down the 'traitors' leading Hong Kong's ongoing pro-democracy demonstrations."
Here's an excerpt from the article by China's state-run newspaper:
An online game calling on players to hunt down
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Debian Begins Vote On Supporting Non-Systemd Init Options
"It's been five years already since the vote to transition to systemd in Debian over Upstart," reports Phoronix, noting that the Debian developer community has now begun a 20-day ranked-choice vote on eight different proposals for "'init system diversity' and just how much Debian developers care (or not) in supporting alternatives to systemd."
The eight options they're voting on:
Choice 1: F: Focus on systemd Choice 2: B: Systemd but we support exploring alternatives Choice 3: A: Support
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Linux Users Can Now Use Disney+ After DRM Fix
"Linux users can now stream shows and movies from the Disney+ streaming service after Disney lowered the level of their DRM requirements," reports Bleeping Computer:
When Disney+ was first launched, Linux users who attempted to watch shows and movies were shown an error stating "Something went wrong. Please try again. If the problem persists, visit the Disney+ Help Center (Error Code 83)."
As explained by Hans de Goede, this error was being caused by the Disney+ service using the highest
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20 Low-End VPS Providers Suddenly Shutting Down In a 'Deadpooling' Scam
"At least 20 web hosting providers have hastily notified customers today, Saturday, December 7, that they plan to shut down on Monday, giving their clients two days to download data from their accounts before servers are shut down and wiped clean," reports ZDNet.
And no refunds are being provided:
All the services offer cheap low-end virtual private servers [and] all the websites feature a similar page structure, share large chunks of text, use the same CAPTCHA technology, and have notified
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Open-Source Security Nonprofit Tries Raising Money With 'Hacker-Themed' T-Shirts
The nonprofit Open Source Technology Improvement Fund connects open-source security projects with funding and logistical support. (Launched in 2015, the Illinois-based group includes on its advisory council representatives from DuckDuckGo and the OpenVPN Project.)
To raise more money, they're now planning to offer "hacker-themed swag" and apparel created with a state-of-the art direct-to-garment printer -- and they're using Kickstarter to help pay for that printer:
With the equipment full
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Will Robots Wipe Out Wall Street's Highest-Paying Jobs?
An anonymous reader quotes Bloomberg:
Robots have replaced thousands of routine jobs on Wall Street. Now, they're coming for higher-ups.
That's the contention of Marcos Lopez de Prado, a Cornell University professor and the former head of machine learning at AQR Capital Management LLC, who testified in Washington on Friday about the impact of artificial intelligence on capital markets and jobs. The use of algorithms in electronic markets has automated the jobs of tens of thousands of exec
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Snapchat Cameo edits your face into videos
Snapchat is preparing to launch a big new feature that uses your selfies to replace the faces of people in videos you can then share. It's essentially a simplified way to Deepfake you into GIFs. Cameos are an alternative to Bitmoji for quickly conveying an emotion, reaction, or silly situation in Snapchat messages. Some French […]
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81-Year-Old Donald Knuth Releases New TAOCP Book, Ready to Write Hexadecimal Reward Checks
In 1962, 24-year-old Donald Knuth began writing The Art of Computer Programming -- and 57 years later, he's still working on it.
But he's finally released The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 4, Fascicle 5: Mathematical Preliminaries Redux; Introduction to Backtracking; Dancing Links.
An anonymous reader writes:
On his personal site at Stanford, 81-year-old Donald Knuth promised this newly-released section "will feature more than 650 exercises and their answers, designed for self-st
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Tesla Wants To Clean Windshields With Laser Beams
Tesla "may be keen on replacing the humble windshield wiper with lasers," reports CNET.
In a patent application filed this past May and published with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on Nov. 21, Tesla describes a "pulsed laser cleaning" for "debris accumulated" on glass, specifically for automotive application.
It also mentions this could be used for "photo-voltaic" applications. That's fancy-speak for solar panels...
According to the patent, Tesla imagines the system wo
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Uber Loses $1.4 Billion in Value After Acknowledging Thousands of Sexual Assaults
"Uber's stock market value fell by $1.4 billion Friday, on the heels of the company's release of a safety report revealing that 3,000 incidents of sexual assaults took place during its U.S. rides in 2018," reports the Bay Area News Group:
On Thursday evening, Uber released its long-awaited safety study, which revealed that the company received 3,045 reports of sexual assaults in its rides in 2018, and 2,936 such incidents in 2017. Those figures included 235 reports of rape in 2018, up from 22
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The new Mac Pro goes up for order December 10
After more than a year of teasing, Apple finally unveiled the new Mac Pro at WWDC in June. The long wait was finally over — though Apple left out one key detail: when, precisely the high end desktop would arrive, beyond a purposefully vague fall timeframe Earlier this, however, the company began sending out pre-pre-order […]
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Can We Kill Fake News With Blockchain?
"One of the more unique future uses for blockhain may be thwarting fake news," writes Computerworld's senior reporter, citing a recent report from Gartner:
By 2023, up to 30% of world news and video content will be authenticated as real by blockchain ledgers, countering "Deep Fake technology," according to Avivah Litan, a Gartner vice president of research and co-author of the "Predicts 2020: Blockchain Technology" report... "Tracking assets and proving provenance are two key successful use c
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RaySecur, a mailroom security startup, raises $3M in seed funding
Raysecur says at least ten times a day someone sends a suspicious package containing powder, liquid, or some other kind of hazard. The Boston, Mass.-based startup says its desktop-sized 3D real-time scanning technology, dubbed MailSecur, can intercept and detect threats in the mailroom before they ever make it onto the office floor. Mailroom security may […]
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Reddit Bans 61 Accounts, Citing 'Coordinated' Russian Campaign To Interfere In UK Vote
"The prospect of Russian interference in Britain's election flared anew Saturday after the social media platform Reddit concluded that people from Russia leaked confidential British government documents on Brexit trade talks just days before the general U.K. vote," reports the Associated Press:
Reddit said in a statement that it has banned 61 accounts suspected of violating policies against vote manipulation. It said the suspect accounts shared the same pattern of activity as a Russian interf
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Are You Ready for the End of Python 2?
"Users of an old version of the popular Python language face a reckoning at the end of the year," reports Wired, calling it a programmer's "own version of update hell."
The developers who maintain Python, who work for a variety of organizations or simply volunteer their time, say they will stop supporting Python 2 on January 1, 2020 -- more than a decade after the introduction of Python 3 in December 2008. That means no more security fixes or other updates, at least for the official version o
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Researchers Call Chronic Inflammation 'A Substantial Public Health Crisis'
UPI reports:
Roughly half of all deaths worldwide are caused by inflammation-related diseases. Now, a team of international researchers is calling on physicians to focus greater attention on the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of severe, chronic inflammation so that people can live longer, healthier lives.
In a commentary published Friday in the journal Nature Medicine, researchers at 22 institutions describe how persistent and severe inflammation in the body is often a precursor for
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Will Plunging Battery Prices Start a Boom In Electric Power?
An anonymous reader quotes Utility Dive:
Average market prices for battery packs have plunged from $1,100 per kilowatt hour in 2010 to $156 per kilowatt hour in 2019, an 87% fall in real terms, according to a report released Tuesday by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). Prices are projected to fall to around $100 per kilowatt hour by 2023, driving electrification across the global economy, according to BNEF's forecast. BNEF's latest forecast, from its 2019 Battery Price Survey, is an exampl
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'Why Are Cops Around the World Using This Outlandish Mind-Reading Tool?'
ProPublica has determined that dozens of state and local agencies have purchased "SCAN" training from a company called LSI for reviewing a suspect's written statements -- even though there's no scientific evidence that it works.
Local, state and federal agencies from the Louisville Metro Police Department to the Michigan State Police to the U.S. State Department have paid for SCAN training. The LSI website lists 417 agencies nationwide, from small-town police departments to the military, th
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Volkswagen Headquarters Raided Again After They Disclosed New Diesel Filtering 'Issue'
"Reuters is reporting that German public prosecutors have again raided the Wolfsburg headquarters of Volkswagen in the latest investigation into the carmaker's diesel emissions," writes Slashdot reader McGruber.
The purpose of the raid was to "confiscate documents," the article reports:
Volkswagen, which admitted in 2015 to cheating U.S. emissions tests on diesel engines, said it was fully cooperating with the authorities, but viewed the investigation as unfounded.... The carmaker said it h
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The U.S. Considers Ban on Exporting Surveillance Technology To China
The South China Morning Post reports that the U.S. may be taking a stand against China. This week the U.S. House of Representatives passed a new bill that would "tighten export controls on China-bound U.S. technology that could be used to 'suppress individual privacy, freedom of movement and other basic human rights' [and] ordering the U.S. president, within four months of the legislation's enactment, to submit to Congress a list of Chinese officials deemed responsible for, or complicit in, huma
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Remembering Star Trek Writer DC Fontana, 1939-2019
Long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger brings the news that D. C. Fontana, an influential story editor and writer on the original 1960s TV series Star Trek, has died this week. People reports:
The writer is credited with developing the Spock character's backstory and "expanding Vulcan culture," SyFy reported of her massive contribution to the beloved sci-fi series. Fontana was the one who came up with Spock's childhood history revealed in "Yesteryear," an episode in Star Trek: The Animated Seri
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Jury Sides With Elon Musk, Rejects $190M Defamation Claim Over Tweet
Aighearach (Slashdot reader #97,333) shared this story from Reuters:
Tesla Inc boss Elon Musk emerged victorious on Friday from a closely watched defamation trial as a federal court jury swiftly rejected the $190 million claim brought against him by a British cave explorer who Musk had branded a "pedo guy" on Twitter. The unanimous verdict by a panel of five women and three men was returned after roughly 45 minutes of deliberation on the fourth day of Musk's trial.
Legal experts believe i
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Why Is Russia's Suspected Internet Cable Spy Ship In the Mid-Atlantic?
"Russia's controversial intelligence ship Yantar has been operating in the Caribbean, or mid-Atlantic, since October," writes defense analyst H I Sutton this week in Forbes.
He adds that the ship "is suspected by Western navies of being involved in operations on undersea communications cables."
Significantly, she appears to be avoiding broadcasting her position via AIS (Automated Identification System). I suspect that going dark on AIS is a deliberate measure to frustrate efforts to analy
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Apple Fails To Stop Class Action Lawsuit Over MacBook Butterfly Keyboards
Mark Wilson quotes BetaNews: Apple has failed in an attempt to block a class action lawsuit being brought against it by a customer who claimed the company concealed the problematic nature of the butterfly keyboard design used in MacBooks.
The proposed lawsuit not only alleges that Apple concealed the fact that MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air keyboards were prone to failure, but also that design defects left customers out of pocket because of Apple's failure to provide an effective fix.
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Original Content podcast: 'The Crown' embraces middle age
“The Crown” has returned to Netflix with a new cast — Olivia Colman as a middle-aged Queen Elizabeth, Tobias Menzies as her husband Prince Philip and Helena Bonham Carter as her sister Princess Margaret. Loyal listeners of the Original Content podcast may recall that we reviewed the show’s first two seasons last year. We didn’t […]
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Hospitals' New Issue: A 'Glut' of Machines Making Alarm Sounds
"Tens of thousands of alarms shriek, beep and buzz every day in every U.S. hospital," reports Fierce Healthcare -- even though most of them aren't urgent, disturb the patients, and won't get immediate attention anyways:
The glut of noise means that the medical staff is less likely to respond. Alarms have ranked as one of the top 10 health technological hazards every year since 2007, according to the research firm ECRI Institute. That could mean staffs were too swamped with alarms to notice a
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How Fake News Is Still Fooling Facebook's Fact-Checking Systems
Slashdot reader peterthegreat321 shared an article from Medium's technology blog OneZero revealing the "cracks, loopholes, and limitations in Facebook's systems that bad actors are busily exploiting."
Facebook says it's proud of the progress it has made, though it acknowledges there's more to be done. "Multiple independent studies have found that we've cut the amount of fake news on Facebook by more than half since the 2016 election," the company said in a statement to OneZero. "That still me
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This Week in Apps: Black Friday's boost, security news and the year's biggest apps
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all. What are developers talking about? What do app publishers and marketers need to know? How are politics impacting the App Store and app businesses? And which apps […]
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Scientists Propose Using Mountains To Build a New Type of Battery For Long-Term Energy Storage
An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: One of the big challenges of making 100 percent renewable energy a reality is long-term storage," says Julian Hunt, an engineering scientist at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria. Hunt and his collaborators have devised a novel system to complement lithium-ion battery use for energy storage over the long run: Mountain Gravity Energy Storage, or MGES for short. Similar to hydroelectric power, MGES involves st
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