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Woman Who Sleeps In $500 EMF-Blocking Sack Wants Area-Wide Wi-Fi Limits Published on October 01, 2019 at 09:00AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: So there's a British woman who's been in the news recently for diagnosing herself with a sensitivity to electromagnetic radiation. She sleeps in a $500 EMF-blocking sack and has reportedly stayed in the sack, from time to time, for 30-hour stretches. The woman -- 70-year-old Rosi Gladwell of Totnes, Devon -- helps lead a small advocacy group on the issue of EMF-related health issues, and she even got the mayor of the Spanish village where she now lives to look into ways to limit Wi-Fi access for residents. She fears that the introduction of 5G mobile networks will kill her. Now seems like a good time to remind readers that there is no evidence to support the idea of "electromagnetic hypersensitivity." The World Health Organization calls it "idiopathic environmental intolerance with attribution to...

Thousands of Ships Fitted With 'Cheat Devices' To Divert Poisonous Pollution Into Sea Published on October 01, 2019 at 07:50AM Volkswagen, BMW, and Daimler aren't the only companies using "cheat devices" to get around environmental legislation. According to The Independent, "global shipping companies have spent billions rigging vessels with 'cheat devices' that circumvent new environmental legislation by dumping pollution into the sea instead of the air." From the report: More than $12 billion has been spent on the devices, known as open-loop scrubbers, which extract sulphur from the exhaust fumes of ships that run on heavy fuel oil. This means the vessels meet standards demanded by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) that kick in on January 1st. However, the sulphur emitted by the ships is simply re-routed from the exhaust and expelled into the water around the ships, which not only greatly increases the volume of pollutants being pu...

US Dept of Education Has Big Payday For K-12 CS, Including Tech-Backed Code.org Published on October 01, 2019 at 07:30AM theodp writes: On Friday, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced $123 million in new Education Innovation and Research (EIR) grant awards to 41 school districts, nonprofits and state educational agencies. Over $78 million of that went to 29 grantees focused on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education, and more than 85% of the funded STEM projects include a specific focus on computer science. The announcement was scant on details, but the awardees listed include tech-bankrolled Code.org, whose Board of Directors include Microsoft President Brad Smith, Amazon CEO of Worldwide Consumer Jeff Wilke, and Google VP of Education & University Programs Maggie Johnson. In his new book, Tools and Weapons, Smith interestingly reveals how Microsoft, Amazon, and Google each pledged to commit $50 million to K-12 computer science education to get F...

Ask Slashdot: Will P2P Video Sites Someday Replace YouTube? Published on October 01, 2019 at 07:10AM dryriver writes: BitChute is a video-hosting website like YouTube, except that it states its mission as being "anti-censorship" and is Peer-To-Peer, WebTorrent based. "It is based on the peer-to-peer WebTorrent system, a JavaScript torrenting program that can run in a web browser," according to Wikipedia. "Users who watch a video also seed it. BitChute does not rely on advertising, and users can send payments to video creators directly. In November 2018 BitChute was banned from PayPal." So it seems that you don't need huge datacenters to build something like YouTube -- Bitchute effectively relies on its users to act as a distributed P2P datacenter. Is this the future of internet video? Will more and more people flock to P2P video-hosting sites as/when more mainstream services like YouTube fall prey to various forms of censorship? Read more of this ...

Legit-Looking iPhone Lightning Cables That Hack You Will Be Mass Produced and Sold Published on October 01, 2019 at 06:30AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Soon it may be easier to get your hands on a cable that looks just like a legitimate Apple lightning cable, but which actually lets you remotely take over a computer. The security researcher behind the recently developed tool announced over the weekend that the cable has been successfully made in a factory. MG is the creator of the O.MG Cable. It charges phones and transfers data in the same way an Apple cable does, but it also contains a wireless hotspot that a hacker can connect to. Once they've done that, a hacker can run commands on the computer, potentially rummaging through a victim's files, for instance. After demoing the cable for Motherboard at the Def Con hacking conference this summer, MG said "It's like being able to sit at the keyboard and mouse of the victim but without actually...

Fox News Breaking News Alert PROGRAMMING ALERT: Rudy Giuliani reacts to subpoena on 'Hannity,' 9 pm ET 09/30/19 5:36 PM

Apple's New iPhones Will Warn You If They Can't Verify a Replaced Screen Published on October 01, 2019 at 05:50AM According to a newly published support document, Apple says the new iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max will present customers with a warning if the devices are unable to verify a genuine display after a screen repair job. "If you need to replace your iPhone display, it's important for certified technicians who use genuine Apple display parts to repair it," the page reads. "Replacements not performed by Apple, authorized service providers, or certified technicians might not follow proper safety and repair procedures and could result in improper function or issues with display quality or safety." The Verge reports: Apple goes over a laundry list of problems that could arise if your display is swapped the wrong way or with a non-genuine part, such as multi-touch problems, issues with screen color accuracy and brightness, or True Tone failing to...

Fugitive On Run For 17 Years Found Living In Cave By a Drone Published on October 01, 2019 at 05:10AM Chinese police have arrested a fugitive who'd been on the run for 17 years, after they used drones to spot his cave hideout. The BBC reports: The 63-year old, named Song Jiang by the police, had been jailed for trafficking women and children but escaped from a prison camp in 2002. He had been living in a tiny cave cut off from human interaction for years. Yongshan police received clues about Song's whereabouts in early September, they said on their WeChat account. Those clues led them to the mountains behind his hometown in Yunnan province in south-west China. After regular searches failed to find anything, authorities sent additional drones to help the officers. The drones eventually spotted a blue-colored steel tile on a steep cliff as well as traces of household rubbish nearby. According to the police, the man had been living in seclusion for so long that it was difficult ...

US Online Privacy Rules Unlikely This Year, Hurting Big Tech Published on October 01, 2019 at 01:50AM A U.S. online privacy bill is not likely to come before Congress this year, Reuters reported Monday, citing three sources, as lawmakers disagree over issues like whether the bill should preempt state rules, forcing companies to deal with much stricter legislation in California that goes into effect on Jan. 1. From a report: Without a federal law, technology companies, retailers, advertising firms and others dependent on collecting consumer data to track users and increase sales must adapt to the California law, potentially harming corporate profits over the long term. The delay is a setback for companies ranging from Amazon and Facebook to Alphabet's Google and retailers like Walmart, who either directly collect shopper information to run their websites, or provide free services and derive revenues from advertising that relies on online data collection. "This will be tremend...

NASA astronaut and Expedition 60 Flight Engineer Nick Hague, and two crewmates on the International Space Station are scheduled to conclude their stay on the orbiting laboratory Thursday, Oct. 3. September 30, 2019 from NASA https://ift.tt/2nbqtQR

Fox News Breaking News Alert House Dems subpoena Giuliani for Ukraine docs in impeachment inquiry 09/30/19 1:00 PM

China Grew Two Cotton Leaves on the Moon Published on October 01, 2019 at 01:10AM The team behind a pioneering biological experiment sent to the lunar far side has released an image showing two green leaves grown on the moon. From a report: The experiment began shortly after China's Chang'e-4 spacecraft made the first ever landing on the far side of the moon, on 3 January this year. Cotton, arabidopsis and potato seeds, and fruit-fly eggs and yeast were all aboard the 2.6-kilogram mini biosphere, but only the cotton produced positive results. Image processing has now shown that two cotton leaves had grown -- rather than just one as initially thought -- in what was the first biological growth experiment on the moon. All the species died with the onset of the first lunar night, with no power to protect the canister from temperatures that reached as low as minus 190 degrees Celsius. The cotton leaves were dead within one lunar daytime, or around 14 and a half Earth days. The exp...

Top Oracle Lawyer Attempting To Gaslight Entire Software Community: Insists APIs Are Executable Published on October 01, 2019 at 12:30AM Mike Masnick, reporting for TechDirt: Last week, the Solicitor General of the White House weighed in on Google's request for the Supreme Court to overturn the Federal Circuit's ridiculously confused ruling in the Oracle/Google case concerning the copyrightability of APIs (and whether or not repurposing them is fair use). Not surprisingly, as the Solicitor General has been siding with Oracle all along, it suggests that the Supreme Court not hear the case. Of course, it does so by completely misrepresenting what's at stake in the case -- pretending that this is about whether or not software source code is copyright-eligible:"This case concerns the copyrightability of computer code. To induce a computer to perform a function, a person must give the computer written instructions. Typically, those instructions are written in 'source ...

SpaceX Has Starry-Eyed Ambitions for Its Starship Published on September 30, 2019 at 11:50PM Elon Musk has laid out an ambitious future for his spaceship project, the effort to deliver people to the moon and Mars. Marina Koren, writing for The Atlantic: The whole thing felt like an Apple event. The weeks of anticipation and breathless guesses from fans and critics. Onstage, the greatest-hits reel highlighting the company's beloved products over the years. A grand walk-through of the next product's features: the sleek design, the impressive specs, simulations of how it's going to work. A man with a mic, both salesman and visionary, looking out at the crowd. It is strange to compare the unveiling of a spaceship to the annual release of a smartphone, but this is the reality Elon Musk has conjured with SpaceX, and in a relatively short amount of time. Musk gave a talk about SpaceX's prototype spaceship, Starship, on Saturday night in Boca Chica, Texas, a small coastal tow...

Fox News Breaking News Alert Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., announced he is resigning one day before he is expected to plead guilty to insider trading 09/30/19 11:06 AM

Windows 10 Users Fume: Microsoft, Where's Our 'Local Account' Option Gone? Published on September 30, 2019 at 11:10PM New submitter xack shares a report: Microsoft has annoyed some of its 900 million Windows 10 device users after apparently removing the 'Use offline account' as part of its effort to herd users towards its cloud-based Microsoft Account. The offline local account is specific to one device, while the Microsoft Account can be used to log in to multiple devices and comes with the benefit of Microsoft's recent work on passwordless authentication with Windows Hello. The local account doesn't require an internet connection or an email address -- just a username and password that are stored on the PC. But Windows 10 users are annoyed that Microsoft has hidden the local account option when setting up a new PC or reinstalling Windows 10. A user on a popular Reddit thread notes that the local account option is now invisible if the device is connected ...

I awoke on a foreign shore after a terrible storm. My sword and shield — constant companions through countless adventures — were gone, and I was in a strange house with a man who looked oddly like Mario. His red-haired daughter told me I was on Koholint Island, and that I’d find my weapons on the beach where I washed ashore. Koholint Island was dreamlike and weird, but I soon fell into the familiar rhythm of exploring dungeons and collecting strange artifacts to help along my journey. This is The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, out now for Nintendo Switch . It’s a remake of a game by the same name that Nintendo released on the original Game Boy in 1993, and a spiritual sequel to 1991’s The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for the Super Nintendo . Nintendo originally planned to port the SNES classic to the Game Boy, but Link’s Awakening changed into something stranger during development. Link’s Awakening is both a throwback to the best Zelda games of the ’90s...

The goose is loose in Nintendo’s new Untitled Goose Game and it’s causing quite the stir on the internet. After the video game company released Untitled Goose for Nintendo Switch , Mac, and PC on Sept. 20, the game’s titular bird protagonist quickly became a viral star. In the days since Untitled Goose’s debut, Twitter users, including celebrities like Chrissy Teigen , have taken to the social media platform to express their admiration for the game’s delightfully bizarre premise, which asks players to assume the role of a mischievous goose wreaking havoc on a quaint English village. welp as a contrarian, I wanted to hate goose game but I LOVE IT — christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) September 29, 2019 “You are a goose let loose on an unsuspecting village,” the game’s description on Nintendo’s website reads. “Make your way around town, from peoples’ back gardens to the high street shops to the village green, setting up pranks, stealing hats, honking a lot, and gene...

US Treasury Goes After the Planes and Yacht of Russia's Troll Farm Founder Published on September 30, 2019 at 10:24PM The US Treasury Department announced today the third set of sanctions against the Internet Research Agency (IRA), also known as Russia's troll farm. From a report: The Treasury previously sanctioned the IRA in March and December 2018. This time, the sanctions are being imposed because of the Russian company's involvement in the 2018 US midterm elections, when it used social media campaigns in an attempt to influence the election's outcome. But this time, Treasury officials are taking a new route. Besides imposing new sanctions on the IRA and the private property of six of its employees, Treasury officials today also went after the private possessions of Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the IRA's founder and primary financier. More specifically, US officials imposed sanctions on three companies that Prigozhin uses to manage three planes and a yacht. The first is...

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station plan to conduct what may become a record pace of 10 complex spacewalks during the next three months, a cadence that has not been experienced since assembly of the space station was completed in 2011. September 30, 2019 from NASA https://ift.tt/2nUYDIz

Microsoft's Windows Virtual Desktop Hits General Availability Published on September 30, 2019 at 09:40PM Microsoft today announced that Windows Virtual Desktop has hit worldwide general availability. As a result, you can deploy and scale your Windows desktops and apps on Azure "in minutes," the company said today. From a report: Think of Windows Virtual Desktop as a tool for deploying and scaling Windows desktops and apps on Azure with built-in security and compliance. The Azure-based service provides a virtualized multi-session Windows 10 experience and Office 365 ProPlus virtual desktop on any device. The Windows Virtual Desktop client is available on Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and HTML 5. Windows Virtual Desktop also supports Windows Server Remote Desktop Services (RDS) desktops and apps in a shared public cloud. Microsoft announced Windows Virtual Desktop in September 2018, but only in private preview. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Looking Back at the Snowden Revelations Published on September 30, 2019 at 08:51PM Matthew Green, a cryptographer and professor at Johns Hopkins University, writes: So what did Snowden's leaks really tell us? The brilliant thing about the Snowden leaks was that he didn't tell us much of anything. He showed us. Most of the revelations came in the form of a Powerpoint slide deck, the misery of which somehow made it all more real. And despite all the revelation fatigue, the things he showed us were remarkable. I'm going to hit a few of the highlights from my perspective. Many are cryptography-related, just because that's what this blog is about. Others tell a more basic story about how vulnerable our networks are. "Collect it all" Prior to Snowden, even surveillance-skeptics would probably concede that, yes, the NSA collects data on specific targets. But even the most paranoid observers were shocked by the sheer scale of what the NSA was actually doing out ther...

ExpressVPN To Be Pre-installed on HP Consumer PCs Published on September 30, 2019 at 08:11PM Consumer VPN specialist ExpressVPN has announced a tie up with HP to have its software pre-installed on the company's consumer PCs. From a report: As part of the deal selected machines will come with ExpressVPN's Windows app pre-installed to help protect customers' privacy and security on public Wi-Fi networks. HP consumer customers will also receive an exclusive free 30-day trial of the VPN service. The Spectre x360 13 will be the first of HP's consumer PCs to have ExpressVPN pre-installed, so customers can encrypt network data and secure their internet browsing experience with a single click. Read more of this story at Slashdot.