ICT news

• Flat Earther's Homemade Rocket Launcher Breaks Down in His Driveway

  25-11-2017 23:34 via rss.slashdot.org
  The Desert Sun has an update on the progress of 61-year-old self-taught rocket scientist 'Mad' Mike Hughes:
  A man who believes Earth is flat, and was ready to launch himself from a rocket in California on Saturday afternoon to prove it, has canceled his plans. At least for now. Not having the required federal permits plus mechanical problems with his "motorhome/rocket launcher" forced self-taught rocket scientist "Mad" Mike Hughes to put his experiment on hold. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management
  
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• Should Brokers Use 'Voice Prints' For Stock Transactions?

  25-11-2017 22:34 via rss.slashdot.org
  Fidelity and Charles Schwab now allow traders to use "voice prints" to authorize stock transactions. But there's more to the story, argues long-time Slashdot reader maiden_taiwan:
  Fidelity Investments is touting its new security feature, MyVoice, which allows a customer to access his/her financial accounts by telephone without a password. "When you call Fidelity, you'll no longer have to enter PINs or passwords because Fidelity MyVoice helps you interact with us securely and more conveniently. T
  
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• Google Flagged Its Own Chromebook Ad As Spam On YouTube

  25-11-2017 21:34 via rss.slashdot.org
  AmiMoJo quotes The Verge: It's no secret that YouTube's algorithm for automatically flagging videos can be troublesome -- recent issues have seen content creators getting their videos demonetized for seemingly no reason -- but Google's latest faux pas might hit the company a little closer to home. Google posted an ad for its new Chromebook Pixel that is getting flagged as spam... It's particularly telling about whatever is happening with YouTube's algorithm that even official Google content is g
  
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• Why Do Employers Require College Degrees That Aren't Necessary?

  25-11-2017 20:34 via rss.slashdot.org
  Slashdot reader pefisher writes:
  A lot of us on Slashdot have noticed that potential employers advertise for things they don't need. To the point that sometimes they even ask for things that don't exist. Like asking for ten years of experience in a technology that has only just been introduced. It's frustrating because it makes you wonder "what's this employers real game?"
  Do they just want to say they advertised for the position, or are they really so immensely stupid, so disconnected from thei
  
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• Bloomberg Op-Ed: The Internet 'Already Lost Its Neutrality'

  25-11-2017 19:34 via rss.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a new Bloomberg opinion piece on net neutrality:
  The internet will be filled today with denunciations of this move, threats of a dark future in which our access to content will be controlled by a few powerful companies. And sure, that may happen. But in fact, it may already have happened, led not by ISPs, but by the very companies that were fighting so hard for net neutrality... Our experience of the internet is increasingly controlled by a handful of firms, most espec
  
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• Is Sharp's Robot Vacuum Cleaner Vulnerable To Remote Take-over?

  25-11-2017 18:34 via rss.slashdot.org
  Slashdot reader AmiMoJo reports: Sharp's COCOROBO (heart-bot) vacuum cleaners can not just clean your house. They have cameras that can be viewed from a smart phone, and automatically take pictures of things they find under your sofa. They have microphones and voice recognition, and are able to ask how your day was when you get home from work. You can even activate their speakers and talk to your pets from the office. Unfortunately, so can anyone else if you don't install critical firmware updat
  
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• DC Fans Angry Over Rotten Tomatoes 'Justice League' Ratings

  25-11-2017 17:34 via rss.slashdot.org
  Rotten Tomatoes launched a new movie-review series called See It/Skip It last week -- but it just made some people hate the site even more. An anonymous reader quotes Wired:Rotten Tomatoes, the review-aggregator-slash-Hollywood-agitator, had irked DC fans by withholding its Justice League score until Thursday night's See It/Skip It premiere -- even though a wave of reviews for the film had already been posted online. The move was ostensibly a ploy to get viewers to tune in for the show, yet othe
  
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• Bipartisan US Election Group Issues Security Tips

  25-11-2017 16:34 via rss.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes Reuters:A bipartisan Harvard University project aimed at protecting elections from hacking and propaganda will release its first set of recommendations today on how U.S. elections can be defended from hacking attacks. The 27-page guidebook calls for campaign leaders to emphasize security from the start and insist on practices such as two-factor authentication for access to email and documents and fully encrypted messaging via services including Signal and Wickr. The gu
  
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• Toughest Bosses

  25-11-2017 15:00
  
  These are the characters that will put your abilities to the test. Did you favorite boss make it on the list?
  
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• Imgur Confirms Email Addresses, Passwords Stolen In 2014 Hack

  25-11-2017 14:00 via rss.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Imgur, one of the world's most visited websites, has confirmed a hack dating back to 2014. The company confirmed to ZDNet that hackers stole 1.7 million email addresses and passwords, scrambled with the SHA-256 algorithm, which has been passed over in recent years in favor of stronger password scramblers. Imgur said the breach didn't include personal information because the site has "never asked" for real names, addresses, or phone numbers. The sto
  
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• About The Nemesis System In 'Middle-earth: Shadow of War'

  25-11-2017 14:00
  We spoke to some Monolith developers about the science behind the game's most unique feature.
  
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• Lightning Can Trigger Nuclear Reactions, Creating Rare Atomic Isotopes

  25-11-2017 11:00 via rss.slashdot.org
  sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: Rare forms of atoms, like carbon-13, carbon-14, and nitrogen-15, have long been used to figure out the ages of ancient artifacts and probe the nuances of prehistoric food chains. The source of these rare isotopes? Complicated cascades of subatomic reactions in the atmosphere triggered by high-energy cosmic rays from outer space. Now, a team of scientists is adding one more isotope initiator to its list: lightning. Strong bolts of lightning can
  
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• First AMD Ryzen Mobile Laptop Tested Shows Strong Zen-Vega Performance

  25-11-2017 08:00 via rss.slashdot.org
  MojoKid writes: AMD Ryzen Mobile processors are arriving now in retail laptops from the likes of HP, Lenovo and Acer. With the first CPUs to hit the market, AMD took quad-core Ryzen and coupled it with 8 or 10-core Vega GPUs on a single piece of silicon in an effort to deliver a combination of strong Ryzen CPU performance along with significantly better integrated graphics performance over Intel's current 8th Gen Kaby Lake laptop chips. AMD Ryzen 7 2700U and Ryzen 5 2500U chips have 4MB of share
  
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• Living In Nuclear Disaster Fallout Zone Would Be No Worse Than Living In London, Research Suggests

  25-11-2017 04:30 via rss.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from University of Bristol, England: New research suggests that few people, if any, should be asked to leave their homes after a big nuclear accident, which is what happened in March 2011 following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Professor Thomas's team used the Judgement or J-value to balance the cost of a safety measure against the increase in life expectancy it achieves. The J-value is a new method pioneered by Professor Thomas that assesses how muc
  
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• More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

  25-11-2017 03:20 via rss.slashdot.org
  Jeff Kao from Hacker Noon used natural language processing techniques to analyze net neutrality comments submitted to the FCC from April-October 2017 and found that at least 1.3 million pro-repeal net neutrality comments were faked. From the report: NY Attorney General Schneiderman estimated that hundreds of thousands of Americans' identities were stolen and used in spam campaigns that support repealing net neutrality. My research found at least 1.3 million fake pro-repeal comments, with suspici
  
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• Tesla's Electric Semi Trucks Are Priced To Compete At $150,000

  25-11-2017 02:40 via rss.slashdot.org
  Last week, Tesla unveiled its new four-motor electric Semi but left out one key detail -- the price. "Now that's changed: the regular versions of the 300-mile and the 500-mile trucks will cost $150,000 and $180,000 each," reports The Verge. "There is also a 'Founders Series' which will cost $200,000 per truck." Tesla does note that the prices are "expected" leaving the company some wiggle room on the final pricing. From the report: If those prices and specs stick then Tesla has a potentially dis
  
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• AT&T, Comcast Lawsuit Has Nullified a City's Broadband Competition Law

  25-11-2017 02:00 via rss.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T and Comcast have convinced a federal judge to nullify an ordinance that was designed to bring more broadband competition to Nashville, Tennessee. The Nashville Metro Council last year passed a "One Touch Make Ready" rule that gives Google Fiber or other new ISPs faster access to utility poles. The ordinance lets a single company make all of the necessary wire adjustments on utility poles itself, instead of having to wait for incumbe
  
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• Tesla Completes World's Largest Battery Project In Half the Time Promised

  25-11-2017 01:20 via rss.slashdot.org
  Rei writes: Tesla announced the completion of the world's largest battery -- a 100 MW/129 MWh wind-power backup system for 30,000 homes in South Australia. Three times more powerful than any other battery on Earth, the $50 million project had garnered press due to Elon Musk's Twitter boast that it would be completed within 100 days of the contract signing or it would be free. In the end, Tesla took it up a notch: the battery was finished 55 days from the date of contract signing and 99 days from
  
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• Amazon's Jeff Bezos Surpasses $100 Billion Net Worth

  25-11-2017 01:02 via rss.slashdot.org
  Amid optimism for Amazon's Black Friday sales, Jeff Bezos' net worth jumped above $100 billion on Friday. The Amazon CEO's fortune reportedly surged $2.4 billion to $100.3 billion, after the retailer's shares grew more than 2 percent on Black Friday. Bloomberg reports: Online purchases for the day are up 18.4 percent over last year, according to data from Adobe Analytics, and investors are betting the company will take an outsized share of online spending over the gifting season. The $100 billio
  
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• Legislators Take Aim At Star Wars Battlefront II, EA Over 'Gambling In Games'

  25-11-2017 00:40 via rss.slashdot.org
  dryriver writes: A number of pay-to-win microtransaction FPS games, including Dirty Bomb and the $60 Star Wars Battlefront II, have drawn the ire of legislators in countries like Belgium and the United States. Not only are advanced characters like Luke Skywalker and Dart Vader and various weapons and abilities in these games "locked" -- you pay for them in hard cash, or play for them for dozens and dozens of tedious hours -- the games also feature so called "Loot Boxes," which are boxes that con
  
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• Pornhub Owner May Become the UK's Gatekeeper of Online Porn

  25-11-2017 00:00 via rss.slashdot.org
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Yahoo News: Mindgeek may be the most powerful company that you've never heard of, or at least, a company you'll claim never to have heard about in polite company. It's the conglomerate that owns some of the world's most visited porn sites, including Pornhub, RedTube and YouPorn. Far from simply being a popular and free way for people to consume adult content, it may soon have a powerful political role in the UK that will ensure its dominance for decades t
  
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