Microsoft Engineer Installs Google Chrome During Presentation After Edge Freezes
A reader shares a report: We've seen lots of blunders on stage, and still happen occasionally, but this must be the best of all. A Microsoft engineer downloaded, installed, and started using Google Chrome during a live presentation after Microsoft Edge, the default Windows 10 browser, stopped responding in the middle of a demo. In just a few words, Microsoft Edge froze while the engineer was working with virtual machines in the browser, and judging from how fast he proceeded to downloading Google Chrome, this wasn't the first time it happened. Because, you know, sometimes reloading the page or restarting the browser does help, but you can't risk hitting the same error twice, right? "I love it when demos break," he said. "So while we're talking here, I'm gonna go install Chrome," he continued before he started laughing, with many people in the audience cheering. "And we're going to not make Google better," he added when unchecking the box to send usage statistics and crash reports to Google, as if this made things less worse. "We're going to do this again, I'm sorry about this. The age of these machines are [sic] wacked down a little bit, there are some things that just don't work."
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/LN0k0ERCVz0/microsoft-engineer-installs-google-chrome-during-presentation-after-edge-freezes
'Daylight Savings' Is Grammatically Incorrect
A reader shares a report: We talk about time like it's money, and that may explain why we say "Daylight Savings Time," capitalizing the concept to emphasize its awesomeness. After all, who wouldn't want to be able to save hours like cash? The phrase "Daylight Savings Time," though commonly used in Australia, Canada, and the US, is technically incorrect. Time and Date, a website devoted to all things chronological, posits that the plural "savings" became popular because it's used in everyday contexts, like "savings account." The grammatically correct usage is "daylight saving time." The expression is singular and not capitalized, according to the US Government Publishing Office style guide. The GPO provides the guidance, "d.s.t., daylight saving (no 's') time."
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/ApgYRJtdca0/daylight-savings-is-grammatically-incorrect
HTTP 103 - An HTTP Status Code for Indicating Hints
The Internet Task Engineering Group (IETF) has approved the new HTTP status code 103. The new status code is intended to "minimize perceived latency." From the circular: It is common for HTTP responses to contain links to external resources that need to be fetched prior to their use; for example, rendering HTML by a Web browser. Having such links available to the client as early as possible helps to minimize perceived latency. The "preload" ([Preload]) link relation can be used to convey such links in the Link header field of an HTTP response. However, it is not always possible for an origin server to generate the header block of a final response immediately after receiving a request. For example, the origin server might delegate a request to an upstream HTTP server running at a distant location, or the status code might depend on the result of a database query. The dilemma here is that even though it is preferable for an origin server to send some header fields as soon as it receives a request, it cannot do so until the status code and the full header fields of the final HTTP response are determined. [...] The 103 (Early Hints) informational status code indicates to the client that the server is likely to send a final response with the header fields included in the informational response. Typically, a server will include the header fields sent in a 103 (Early Hints) response in the final response as well. However, there might be cases when this is not desirable, such as when the server learns that they are not correct before the final response is sent. A client can speculatively evaluate the header fields included in a 103 (Early Hints) response while waiting for the final response. For example, a client might recognize a Link header field value containing the relation type "preload" and start fetching the target resource. However, these header fields only provide hints to the client; they do not replace the header fields on the final response. Aside from performance optimizations, such evaluation of the 103 (Early Hints) response's header fields MUST NOT affect how the final response is processed. A client MUST NOT interpret the 103 (Early Hints) response header fields as if they applied to the informational response itself (e.g., as metadata about the 103 (Early Hints) response).
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/yLm3EevD-gw/http-103---an-http-status-code-for-indicating-hints
Apple Is Designing iPhones, iPads That Would Drop Qualcomm Components
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): Apple, locked in an intensifying legal fight with Qualcomm, is designing iPhones and iPads for next year that would jettison the chipmaker's components, according to people familiar with the matter. Apple is considering building the devices only with modem chips from Intel and possibly MediaTek because San Diego, Calif.-based Qualcomm has withheld software critical to testing its chips in iPhone and iPad prototypes, according to one of the people. Apple's planned move for next year involve the modem chips that handle communications between wireless devices and cellular networks. Qualcomm is by far the biggest supplier of such chips for the current wireless standard. The Apple plans indicate the battle with Qualcomm could spill beyond the courtroom feud over patents into another important Qualcomm business where it has the potential to send ripples through the smartphone supply chain.
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/BkKdIbtsR5c/apple-is-designing-iphones-ipads-that-would-drop-qualcomm-components
Google Has a New Plan for China (and It's Not About Search)
An anonymous reader shares a report: More than seven years after exiting China, Google is taking the boldest steps yet to come back. And it's not with a search engine. Instead, Google's ingress is centered around artificial intelligence. The internet giant is actively promoting TensorFlow, software that makes it easier to build AI systems, as a way to forge business ties in the world's largest online market, according to people familiar with the company's plans. It's a wide pitch targeting China's academics and tech titans. At the same time, Google parent Alphabet Inc. is adding more personnel to scour Chinese companies for potential AI investments, these people said. "China is a tremendous opportunity for any company because it is by far the single largest homogeneous market," said Kai Fu Lee, who headed Google's China operations before the company left in 2010. The market dwarfs any other, given how many Chinese people are online, and data from that "can be used to advance products, especially those relating to artificial intelligence," he added.
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/nrmBkH2HUJM/google-has-a-new-plan-for-china-and-its-not-about-search
Is the Optical Cable Dying?
Geoffrey Morrison from CNET explains how the optical cable is "dying a very slow death": The official term for optical audio cable is "Toslink," short for Toshiba Link. Developed in the early '80s to connect their CD players to their receivers, it was a red laser optical version of the Sony/Phillips "Digital Interconnect Format" aka S/PDIF standard. You've seen standard S/PDIF connections a bunch too; they're often called "coax digital." Optical had certain benefits over copper cables, but they were also more fragile, and for a long time, more expensive. Though glass cables were available, for even more money, most optical cables were made from cheap plastic. This limited their range to in-room use, primarily. Through the '90s and 2000's, the optical cable was near-ubiquitous: The easiest way to get Dolby Digital and DTS from your cable/satellite box, TiVo, or DVD player to your receiver. Even in the early days of HDMI, right next to it would be the lowly optical cable, ready in case someone's receiver didn't accept HDMI. But now more and more gear are dropping optical. It's gone completely on the latest Roku and Apple TV 4K, for example. It's also disappeared from many smaller TVs, though it lingers on in larger ones, a potentially redundant backup to HDMI with ARC. The reason for this? Soundbars...
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/MB_8xTNp-60/is-the-optical-cable-dying
Algorithm Can Identify Suicidal People Using Brain Scans
An anonymous reader quotes a report from WIRED: In a study published today in Nature Human Behavior, researchers at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh analyzed how suicidal individuals think and feel differently about life and death, by looking at patterns of how their brains light up in an fMRI machine. Then they trained a machine learning algorithm to isolate those signals -- a frontal lobe flare at the mention of the word "death," for example. The computational classifier was able to pick out the suicidal ideators with more than 90 percent accuracy (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). Furthermore, it was able to distinguish people who had actually attempted self-harm from those who had only thought about it. In today's study, the researchers started with 17 young adults between the ages of 18 and 30 who had recently reported suicidal ideation to their therapists. Then they recruited 17 neurotypical control participants and put them each inside an fMRI scanner. While inside the tube, subjects saw a random series of 30 words. Ten were generally positive, 10 were generally negative, and 10 were specifically associated with death and suicide. Then researchers asked the subjects to think about each word for three seconds as it showed up on a screen in front of them. "What does 'trouble' mean for you?" "What about 'carefree,' what's the key concept there?" For each word, the researchers recorded the subjects' cerebral blood flow to find out which parts of their brains seemed to be at work.
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/_Am1IT03npQ/algorithm-can-identify-suicidal-people-using-brain-scans
Facebook Says 126 Million Americans May Have Seen Russia-Linked Political Posts
Facebook said on Monday that Russia-based operatives published about 80,000 posts on the social network over a two-year period in an effort to sway U.S. politics and that about 126 million Americans may have seen the posts during that time. Reuters reports: Facebook's latest data on the Russia-linked posts - possibly reaching around half of the U.S. population of voting age - far exceeds the company's previous disclosures. It was included in written testimony provided to U.S. lawmakers, and seen by Reuters, ahead of key hearings with social media and technology companies about Russian meddling in elections on Capitol Hill this week. Twitter separately has found 2,752 accounts linked to Russian operatives, a source familiar with the company's written testimony said. That estimate is up from a tally of 201 accounts that Twitter reported in September. Google, owned by Alphabet, said in a statement on Monday it had found $4,700 in Russia-linked ad spending during the 2016 U.S. election cycle, and that it would build a database of election ads. Facebook's general counsel, Colin Stretch, said in the written testimony that the 80,000 posts from Russia's Internet Research Agency were a tiny fraction of content on Facebook, equal to one out of 23,000 posts.
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/tyShdZC-vcw/facebook-says-126-million-americans-may-have-seen-russia-linked-political-posts
Calgary Police Cellphone Surveillance Device Must Remain Top Secret, Judge Rules
Freshly Exhumed writes from a report via CBC.ca: To protect police investigative techniques that may or may not have been used in a Calgary Police Service investigation, their controversial cellphone surveillance device will remain so secretive not even the make and model can be released to the public, according to a court ruling released Monday. The MDI (Mobile Device Identifier) technology -- colloquially called a StingRay after Harris Corporation's IMSI device, which mimics cell towers and intercepts data from nearby phones -- is controversial in part because in at least one Canadian case, prosecutors have taken watered down plea deals rather than disclose information related to the device.
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/IRQvf9IwBG4/calgary-police-cellphone-surveillance-device-must-remain-top-secret-judge-rules
A Surge of Sites and Apps Are Exhausting Your CPU To Mine Cryptocurrency
Dan Goodin, writing for ArsTechnica: The Internet is awash with covert crypto currency miners that bog down computers and even smartphones with computationally intensive math problems called by hacked or ethically questionable sites. The latest examples came on Monday with the revelation from antivirus provider Trend Micro that at least two Android apps with as many as 50,000 downloads from Google Play were recently caught putting crypto miners inside a hidden browser window. The miners caused phones running the apps to run JavaScript hosted on Coinhive.com, a site that harnesses the CPUs of millions of PCs to mine the Monero crypto currency. In turn, Coinhive gives participating sites a tiny cut of the relatively small proceeds. Google has since removed the apps, which were known as Recitiamo Santo Rosario Free and SafetyNet Wireless App. Last week, researchers from security firm Sucuri warned that at least 500 websites running the WordPress content management system alone had been hacked to run the Coinhive mining scripts. Sucuri said other Web platforms -- including Magento, Joomla, and Drupal -- are also being hacked in large numbers to run the Coinhive programming interface.
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/VMzpKJmfCTE/a-surge-of-sites-and-apps-are-exhausting-your-cpu-to-mine-cryptocurrency
Seagate's New 'SkyHawk AI' Disk Drive Is Just a Slightly Higher Speced Version of Its Predecessor
ourlovecanlastforeve shares a report from The Register, where Chris Mellor takes a look at Seagate's recently launched "SkyHawk" and "SkyHawk AI" HDDs. After closer inspection, Mellor concludes that the "AI" variant has a more buzz-worthy name and "slightly higher numbers on the specs" than its "SkyHawk" brethren. From the report: Seagate has bolted "AI" to its SkyHawk disk drive brand, saying it's better suited for next-generation deep learning and video analytics. The marketing department breathlessly describes it as "the first drive created specifically for artificial intelligence (AI) enabled video surveillance solutions." Sai Varanasi, VP product line management, burbled in the same fashion: "We are excited to introduce smart, purpose-built SkyHawk AI solutions that expand the design space for our customers and partners, allowing them to implement next-generation deep learning and video analytics applications." How so? Seagate says the new drive's "high throughput and enhanced caching deliver low latency and excellent random read performance to quickly locate and deliver video images and footage analysis." Both SkyHawk and SkyHawk AI have a 256MB cache buffer and 4.16ms average latency. Where it does differ from SkyHawk is having a higher 550TB/year workload and 2 million hours mean-time-before-failure rating, compared to 180TB/year and a million hours. It's been given a five-year limited warranty and a two-year Seagate Rescue Services contract is included with the drive. In other words the SkyHawk AI is more robust than the standard SkyHawk and transfers data 1.9 per cent faster. Otherwise it seems identical.
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/m3SzzuPNVr8/seagates-new-skyhawk-ai-disk-drive-is-just-a-slightly-higher-speced-version-of-its-predecessor
BlackBerry CEO Promises To Try To Break Customers' Encryption If the US Government Asks Him To
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Techdirt that claims the company has "chosen to proclaim its willingness to hack into its own customers' devices if the government asks." From the report: From a Forbes article: "[CEO John] Chen, speaking at a press Q&A during the BlackBerry Security Summit in London on Tuesday, claimed that it wasn't so simple for BlackBerry to crack its own protections. 'Only when the government gives us a court order we will start tracking it. Then the question is: how good is the encryption? 'Today's encryption has got to the point where it's rather difficult, even for ourselves, to break it, to break our own encryption... it's not an easily breakable thing. We will only attempt to do that if we have the right court order. The fact that we will honor the court order doesn't imply we could actually get it done.'"
Oddly, this came coupled with Chen's assertions its user protections were better than Apple's and its version of the Android operating system more secure than the one offered by competitors. This proactive hacking offer may be pointed to in the future by DOJ and FBI officials as evidence Apple, et al aren't doing nearly enough to cooperate with U.S. law enforcement. Of course, Chen's willingness to try doesn't guarantee the company will be able to decrypt communications of certain users. Blackberry may be opening up to law enforcement but it won't be sharing anything more with its remaining users. From the Forbes article: "Chen also said there were no plans for a transparency report that would reveal more about the company's work with government. 'No one has really asked us for it. We don't really have a policy on whether we will do it or not. Just like every major technology company that deals with telecoms, we obviously have quite a number of requests around the world.'"
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/CGMRBYbNMdY/blackberry-ceo-promises-to-try-to-break-customers-encryption-if-the-us-government-asks-him-to
GameStop Is Launching An Unlimited Used Game Rental Subscription, Says Report
According to a leaked advertisement, GameStop is rolling out a used game rental subscription service. Subscribers will be able to pick any used game, play it, return it and get another as often as they like. The service will reportedly cost $60 for six months, and players get to keep the last game they borrow. Polygon reports: The advertisement was first seen at ResetEra, the new gaming forum. It appears to be from the newest issue of Game Informer (which is published by GameStop). The "Power Pass" subscription lasts six months and costs $60, according to the advertisement. Sign ups will begin on Nov. 19. The fine print says the Power Pass must be activated by Jan. 31, 2018, possibly hinting at when this service will go live. The subscription requires that the user be a PowerUp Rewards member, and the offer will be available only to the used game catalog in a store (i.e. physical discs), not from GameStop's online library. The PowerUp Rewards requirement apparently is there to help GameStop track the game currently in a user's possession.
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/WOGqZbnCD1Y/gamestop-is-launching-an-unlimited-used-game-rental-subscription-says-report
SpaceX Lands the 13th Falcon 9 Rocket of the Year In Flames
SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida this afternoon and, while the rocket successfully delivered the Koreasat-5A to its designated orbit, it managed to catch fire after landing on one of SpaceX's autonomous barges. The Verge reports: That rocket's mission [was] to send a satellite known as Koreasat-5A into space, where it will hang above Earth for 15 years while providing communications bandwidth for Korea and Southern Asia. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket successfully delivered Koreasat-5A to its designated orbit, marking the the company's 16th successful mission of the year -- twice the number of successful missions in 2016. Shortly after liftoff, the first stage of the rocket returned to Earth and landed (flamboyantly) in the Atlantic Ocean on one of SpaceX's autonomous barges. (The fires eventually went out.) It was the 13th successful landing of a Falcon 9 rocket this year, the 15th in a row, and the 19th overall.
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/REO7h6r1myg/spacex-lands-the-13th-falcon-9-rocket-of-the-year-in-flames
Indiana Is Purging Voters Using Software That's 99 Percent Inaccurate, Lawsuit Alleges
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Daily Beast: More than 99 percent of voter fraud identified by a GOP-backed program is false, a study by Harvard, Yale, and Microsoft researchers found. Now Indiana is using the faulty program to de-register voters without warning. In July, Indiana rolled out a new law allowing county officials to purge voter registrations on the spot, based on information from a dubious database aimed at preventing voter fraud. That database, the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, identifies people in different states who share the same name and birthdate. Crosscheck has long been criticized as using vague criteria that disproportionately target people of color. Now Indiana voters who share a name and birthdate with another American can have their registrations removed without warning -- a system ripe for abuse, a new lawsuit claims. Crosscheck's premise is simple. The program aims to crack down on people "double voting" in multiple states, by listing people who share a first name, last name, and birthdate.
Indiana has used Crosscheck for years. But until July, the state had a series of checks on the program. If Crosscheck found that an Indiana resident's name and birthdate matched that of a person in another state, Indiana law used to require officials to ask that person to confirm their address, or wait until that person went two general election cycles without voting, before the person's name was purged from Indiana voter rolls. Under the state's new law, officials can scrub a voter from the rolls immediately. That's a problem for Indiana residents, particularly people of color, a Friday lawsuit from Common Cause and the American Civil Liberties Union argues.
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/ztLCW-RE7os/indiana-is-purging-voters-using-software-thats-99-percent-inaccurate-lawsuit-alleges
Source: https://slashdot.org/
