Slashdot Mirror

Can Watson cure cancer? That's what IBM asked soon after its AI system beat humans at the quiz show "Jeopardy!" in 2011. Watson could read documents quickly and find patterns in data. Could it match patient information with the latest in medical studies to deliver personalized treatment recommendations? "Watson represents a technology breakthrough that can help physicians improve patient outcomes," said Herbert Chase, a professor of biomedical informatics at Columbia University, in a 2012 IBM press release. Six years and billions of dollars later, the diagnosis for Watson is gloomy [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. WSJ: More than a dozen IBM partners and clients have halted or shrunk Watson's oncology-related projects. Watson cancer applications have had limited impact on patients, according to dozens of interviews with medical centers, companies and doctors who have used it, as well as documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. In many cases, the tools didn't add much value. In some cases, Watson wasn't accurate. Watson can be tripped up by a lack of data in rare or recurring cancers, and treatments are evolving faster than Watson's human trainers can update the system. Dr. Chase of Columbia said he withdrew as an adviser after he grew disappointed in IBM's direction for marketing the technology. No published research shows Watson improving patient outcomes. IBM said Watson has important cancer-care benefits, like helping doctors keep up with medical knowledge.

Uber could resume its testing of self-driving vehicles this summer after a long pause on the program following a fatal crash in March. From a report: The possible restart of Uber's self-driving testing comes after the company conducted an internal safety review that led to 16 recommended improvements, according to a source familiar with the matter. Those changes would all be implemented before Uber returns its vehicles to the road. The recommendations "include developing emergency braking features to help minimize collisions if the main self-driving system fails," as first reported in The Information.

Many of Amazon's warehouse workers have to buy their groceries with food stamps through America's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, reports the Intercept. In Arizona, new data suggests that one in three of the company's own employees depend on SNAP to put food on the table. In Pennsylvania and Ohio, the figure appears to be around one in 10. Overall, of five states that responded to a public records request for a list of their top employers of SNAP recipients, Amazon cracked the top 20 in four.

Though the company now employs 200,000 people in the United States, many of its workers are not making enough money to put food on the table... "The average warehouse worker at Walmart makes just under $40,000 annually, while at Amazon would take home about $24,300 a year," CNN reported in 2013. "That's less than $1,000 above the official federal poverty line for a family of four."
In addition Amazon uses temp workers who may also be on food stamps, notes the article, adding that in 2017 Amazon received $1.2 billion in state and local subsidies, while effectively paying no federal income tax.

"The American people are financing Amazon's pursuit of an e-commerce monopoly every step of the way: first, with tax breaks, subsidies, and infrastructure improvements meant to lure fulfillment centers into town, and later with federal transfers to pay for warehouse workers' food."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: San Francisco's Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) has been ordered by the city to stop using a robot to patrol the sidewalks outside its office, the San Francisco Business Times reported Dec. 8. The robot, produced by Silicon Valley startup Knightscope, was used to ensure that homeless people didn't set up camps outside of the nonprofit's office. It autonomously patrols a set area using a combination of Lidar and other sensors, and can alert security services of potentially criminal activity.

In a particularly dystopian move, it seems that the San Francisco SPCA adorned the robot it was renting with stickers of cute kittens and puppies, according to Business Insider, as it was used to shoo away the homeless from near its office. San Francisco recently voted to cut down on the number of robots that roam the streets of the city, which has seen an influx of small delivery robots in recent years. The city said it would issue the SPCA a fine of $1,000 per day for illegally operating on a public right-of-way if it continued to use the security robot outside its premises, the San Francisco Business Times said.

According to Ars Technica, AT&T is reportedly abandoning its attempt to stop a Louisville ordinance that helped draw Google Fiber into the city. The telecommunications giant sued Louisville and Jefferson County, Kentucky to stop an ordinance that gives Google Fiber and other ISPs faster access to utility poles. AT&T's lawsuit was dismissed in August by a district court, who determined that AT&T's claims that the ordinance is invalid are false. WDRB News and Louisville Business First are both reporting that AT&T has decided not to appeal the ruling.

Slashdot turned 20 this month, which is ancient in internet years. How far have we come?

Also, we've set up a page to coordinate user meet-ups around the world to celebrate. Read on for the full 20-year history of Slashdot.

Site Development

Slashdot started in 1997 as Chips and Dips by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. He posted links to news articles that interested him, mostly on open-source software and tech news. Between working as an ad programmer and going to college, he ran it off of a single server. In October of 1997, he registered it (with financial backing from Jeff "Hemos" Bates) as Slashdot.org.

It exploded in 1998. After adding new servers, Slashdot added Web forms for story submissions, as opposed to sending them directly to Malda's email. In March of that year, Malda rewrote the old website, introducing the "New Slashdot" on the 28th.

Slashdot introduced user accounts in the summer of 1998. "Ask Slashdot" debuted on May 13 of that year, with a question on potential ways to convince hardware manufacturers to be more compatible with Linux.

In 1999, moderation broadened from 25 editors to a rotating pool of more than 400 users. It was followed by metamoderation in September, which let the older user accounts on the site rate moderations as fair or unfair.

Slashdot introduced subscriptions in March of 2002. For every 1,000 pages, $5 bought users a no-ad experience. In 2003, subscribers were allowed to view articles 10-20 minutes before they were published.

For April Fool's Day 2006, Malda announced that Slashdot didn't have enough female readers. Accompanying this announcement was a hot pink layout that replaced the familiar "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters" with "OMG!!! Ponies!!!" It lasted for only a day, but the comments ranged from "This. Is. Sooo awesome! You guys are totally invited to my sleepover" to "April Fools. Haha. Now PUT IT BACK. My eyes are bleeding already." For another April Fool's Day in 2009, Slashdot introduced User Achievements. There were a few joke ones, but the feature does actually exist.

In June of 2006, Alex Bendiken won the Slashdot CSS Redesign Contest, prompting Slashdot's first permanent layout change since 1998. The second site redesign happened in January of 2011.

On August 25, 2011, Malda dropped a bomb on the community by announcing his resignation from Slashdot. He had posted more than 15,000 stories to Slashdot in his 14-year tenure. "For me," he wrote in his final post, "Slashdot of today is fused to the Slashdot of the past. This makes it really hard to objectively consider the future of the site." He did not list any plans for the future, but in March of 2012, he found a new home as Chief Strategist and Editor-at-Large for WaPo Labs at the Washington Post.

Slashdot launched Slashdot TV on March 28, 2012. In 2016, Slashdot TV was shut down by popular demand.

Corporate
To support its growing readership (and time-consuming nature), Slashdot went into business. In 1998, the editors formed Blockstackers to become the "corporate shell" for Slashdot, said Malda. The site began selling advertisements. The first few, with Herman Miller and Penguin Mints, were barter ads that resulted in furniture and caffeinated mints for the, according to Slashdot editor Rob "samzenpus" Rozeboom.

On June 29, 1999, Slashdot was sold to Andover.net, with the stipulation that creative control remained with the Slashdot editors. Malda reported it was the best way they could think of to support operating costs. And Andover.net was happy to let them keep on doing what they were doing.

Andover.net embarked on a path riddled with name changes. In February of 2000, it merged with VA Linux. Slashdot became a part of their subgroup, Open Source Development Network (OSDN), said Timothy "timothy" Lord. VA Linux became VA Software in December 2001. In 2004, OSDN renamed itself the Open Source Technology Group (OSTG), which changed in 2007 to SourceForge, Inc. The organization changed names yet again in 2009 adopting the brand Geeknet Inc.

In January of 2016, Slashdot was acquired by BIZX, and new editors included msmash, BeauHD, and EditorDavid, along with whipslash overseeing operations.

Slashdot and the News

Slashdot is well-known for its users. They might not be the first to break the news, but they are the first to go at it--fact checking, discussing, and debating. Sometimes, though, they make the news.

On October 4, 1999, Johan Ingles, the deputy editor of Jane's Intelligence Review, reached out to Slashdot concerning an article on cyber terrorism he had received. He wanted readers to go over the piece and answer some questions. After compiling the comments, Ingles decided he could not run the original article. Instead, he wrote a new one based on interviews with the Slashdot community.

In early March of 2001, an anonymous user posted a comment that contained the whole text of OT III, which was copyright material of the Church of Scientology. The church contacted the editors, threatening legal action if the content was not removed. Slashdot conceded, at the advice of their lawyers, but posted links to the copyrighted material that was located in other places on the web.

Milestones
The oldest article in Slashdot's archives, "Become 007 on The Internet" from 1997, is not its first one. Rob Rozeboom estimated about 1,000 earlier articles were lost in a database migration.

In April 2001, Slashdot Japan launched, publishing its first article on the 5th of that month.

Slashdot's 10,000th article was published on February 24, 2000 and the 100,000th story was published on December 11, 2009.

On November 3, 2004, Slashdot published the article "Kerry Concedes Election to Bush." The piece generated more than 5,600 comments, making it the most discussed submission in Slashdot history. That August, Slashdot's most visited submission, "ISP Owner Who Fought FBI Spying Freed From Gag Order" was posted, which has generated more than 1.2 million hits.

2008 saw a new president elected in the United States, and "Barack Obama Wins US Presidency" became the third most discussed story in Slashdot history. In the last 12 months, the election of Donald Trump gave rise to the most discussed story of the past year. Google firing James Damore was also one of the most discussed and visited stories of 2017.

Featured Interviews

In July 1999, a flipside of "Ask Slashdot" was introduced where users could pose questions for a guest, and the highest-rated questions were answered. Bruce Perens, a big name in the Linux/Open Source Movement, was their first interview.

Slashdot Interviews are conducted regularly. Some star interviewees include: Bruce Sterling, the sci-fi author who helped shape the cyberpunk genre, William Shatner, Neil Gaiman, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, and author Neal Stephenson.

Onward!
So where does Slashdot go from 20? Well in a world where the internet is always changing, Slashdot stands almost alone in that it boasts a site and community that have remained quite consistent over two decades. Slashdot is News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters because of the people who have contributed their knowledge, humor, opinions, expertise, and experiences day in and day out in discussions spanning so many different topics including science, open source software, hardware, politics, hate of Beta, and so many more over the past two decades. Thank you all.

Slashdot turned 20 this month, which is ancient in internet years. How far have we come?

Also, we've set up a page to coordinate user meet-ups around the world to celebrate. Read on for the full 20-year history of Slashdot.

Site Development

Slashdot started in 1997 as Chips and Dips by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. He posted links to news articles that interested him, mostly on open-source software and tech news. Between working as an ad programmer and going to college, he ran it off of a single server. In October of 1997, he registered it (with financial backing from Jeff "Hemos" Bates) as Slashdot.org.

It exploded in 1998. After adding new servers, Slashdot added Web forms for story submissions, as opposed to sending them directly to Malda's email. In March of that year, Malda rewrote the old website, introducing the "New Slashdot" on the 28th.

Slashdot introduced user accounts in the summer of 1998. "Ask Slashdot" debuted on May 13 of that year, with a question on potential ways to convince hardware manufacturers to be more compatible with Linux.

In 1999, moderation broadened from 25 editors to a rotating pool of more than 400 users. It was followed by metamoderation in September, which let the older user accounts on the site rate moderations as fair or unfair.

Slashdot introduced subscriptions in March of 2002. For every 1,000 pages, $5 bought users a no-ad experience. In 2003, subscribers were allowed to view articles 10-20 minutes before they were published.

For April Fool's Day 2006, Malda announced that Slashdot didn't have enough female readers. Accompanying this announcement was a hot pink layout that replaced the familiar "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters" with "OMG!!! Ponies!!!" It lasted for only a day, but the comments ranged from "This. Is. Sooo awesome! You guys are totally invited to my sleepover" to "April Fools. Haha. Now PUT IT BACK. My eyes are bleeding already." For another April Fool's Day in 2009, Slashdot introduced User Achievements. There were a few joke ones, but the feature does actually exist.

In June of 2006, Alex Bendiken won the Slashdot CSS Redesign Contest, prompting Slashdot's first permanent layout change since 1998. The second site redesign happened in January of 2011.

On August 25, 2011, Malda dropped a bomb on the community by announcing his resignation from Slashdot. He had posted more than 15,000 stories to Slashdot in his 14-year tenure. "For me," he wrote in his final post, "Slashdot of today is fused to the Slashdot of the past. This makes it really hard to objectively consider the future of the site." He did not list any plans for the future, but in March of 2012, he found a new home as Chief Strategist and Editor-at-Large for WaPo Labs at the Washington Post.

Slashdot launched Slashdot TV on March 28, 2012. In 2016, Slashdot TV was shut down by popular demand.

Corporate
To support its growing readership (and time-consuming nature), Slashdot went into business. In 1998, the editors formed Blockstackers to become the "corporate shell" for Slashdot, said Malda. The site began selling advertisements. The first few, with Herman Miller and Penguin Mints, were barter ads that resulted in furniture and caffeinated mints for the, according to Slashdot editor Rob "samzenpus" Rozeboom.

On June 29, 1999, Slashdot was sold to Andover.net, with the stipulation that creative control remained with the Slashdot editors. Malda reported it was the best way they could think of to support operating costs. And Andover.net was happy to let them keep on doing what they were doing.

Andover.net embarked on a path riddled with name changes. In February of 2000, it merged with VA Linux. Slashdot became a part of their subgroup, Open Source Development Network (OSDN), said Timothy "timothy" Lord. VA Linux became VA Software in December 2001. In 2004, OSDN renamed itself the Open Source Technology Group (OSTG), which changed in 2007 to SourceForge, Inc. The organization changed names yet again in 2009 adopting the brand Geeknet Inc.

In January of 2016, Slashdot was acquired by BIZX, and new editors included msmash, BeauHD, and EditorDavid, along with whipslash overseeing operations.

Slashdot and the News

Slashdot is well-known for its users. They might not be the first to break the news, but they are the first to go at it--fact checking, discussing, and debating. Sometimes, though, they make the news.

On October 4, 1999, Johan Ingles, the deputy editor of Jane's Intelligence Review, reached out to Slashdot concerning an article on cyber terrorism he had received. He wanted readers to go over the piece and answer some questions. After compiling the comments, Ingles decided he could not run the original article. Instead, he wrote a new one based on interviews with the Slashdot community.

In early March of 2001, an anonymous user posted a comment that contained the whole text of OT III, which was copyright material of the Church of Scientology. The church contacted the editors, threatening legal action if the content was not removed. Slashdot conceded, at the advice of their lawyers, but posted links to the copyrighted material that was located in other places on the web.

Milestones
The oldest article in Slashdot's archives, "Become 007 on The Internet" from 1997, is not its first one. Rob Rozeboom estimated about 1,000 earlier articles were lost in a database migration.

In April 2001, Slashdot Japan launched, publishing its first article on the 5th of that month.

Slashdot's 10,000th article was published on February 24, 2000 and the 100,000th story was published on December 11, 2009.

On November 3, 2004, Slashdot published the article "Kerry Concedes Election to Bush." The piece generated more than 5,600 comments, making it the most discussed submission in Slashdot history. That August, Slashdot's most visited submission, "ISP Owner Who Fought FBI Spying Freed From Gag Order" was posted, which has generated more than 1.2 million hits.

2008 saw a new president elected in the United States, and "Barack Obama Wins US Presidency" became the third most discussed story in Slashdot history. In the last 12 months, the election of Donald Trump gave rise to the most discussed story of the past year. Google firing James Damore was also one of the most discussed and visited stories of 2017.

Featured Interviews

In July 1999, a flipside of "Ask Slashdot" was introduced where users could pose questions for a guest, and the highest-rated questions were answered. Bruce Perens, a big name in the Linux/Open Source Movement, was their first interview.

Slashdot Interviews are conducted regularly. Some star interviewees include: Bruce Sterling, the sci-fi author who helped shape the cyberpunk genre, William Shatner, Neil Gaiman, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, and author Neal Stephenson.

Onward!
So where does Slashdot go from 20? Well in a world where the internet is always changing, Slashdot stands almost alone in that it boasts a site and community that have remained quite consistent over two decades. Slashdot is News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters because of the people who have contributed their knowledge, humor, opinions, expertise, and experiences day in and day out in discussions spanning so many different topics including science, open source software, hardware, politics, hate of Beta, and so many more over the past two decades. Thank you all.

A Palo Alto startup that stopped trying to be an "Android killer" last year after raising $185 million has apparently pivoted to developing autonomous vehicle technology. From a report: The company now known as Cyngn has changed its name from Cyanogen and recently got a permit to test its self-driving tech on California roads, according to a report Wednesday on Axios. It's being led by Lior Tal, the former chief operating officer who took over as CEO last fall when Kirt McMaster left. The rest of the startup's current team of about 30 people appear to have joined since the strategy shift, Axios reported, citing LinkedIn records. Some of them are former Facebook people, like Tal, and alumni of automakers who include Mercedes-Benz. No new funding has been disclosed for the reinvented company. It lists on its website investors who backed it before it pivoted, including Andreessen Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Index Ventures, Qualcomm and Chinese social networking company Tencent. The company was the center of acquisition talk in 2014, when companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Samsung and Yahoo expressed interest in the company.

cdreimer writes: According to a report in The Wall Street Journal (Warning: source may be paywalled, alternative source), Uber is under investigation by federal law-enforcement authorities for using a program called "Hell" to illegally interfere with the competition by creating fake Lyft accounts, initiating phony ride requests for Lyft drivers, and offering cash bonuses for drivers who drive for both services to leave Lyft. This is creating a new headache for incoming CEO Dara Khosrowshahi to deal with. From the report: "Federal law-enforcement authorities in New York are investigating whether Uber Technologies Inc. used software to interfere illegally with its competitors, according to people familiar with the investigation, adding to legal pressures facing the embattled ride-hailing company and its new chief executive. The investigation, led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation's New York office and the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office, is focused on a defunct Uber program, known internally as 'Hell,' that could track drivers working for rival service Lyft Inc., the people said. 'We are cooperating with the SDNY investigation,' said an Uber spokesman, referring to New York's Southern District. He declined to offer additional details. Uber has never publicly discussed the details of the program. But people familiar with the matter said 'Hell' worked like this: Uber created fake Lyft customer accounts, tricking Lyft's system into believing prospective customers were seeking rides in various locations around a city. That allowed Uber to see which Lyft drivers were nearby and what prices they were offering for various routes, similar to how such information appears when an authentic Lyft app is opened on a user's smartphone, these people said. The program was also used to glean data on drivers who worked for both companies, and whom Uber could target with cash incentives to get them to leave Lyft, said these people, who added that the program was discontinued last year."

Slashdot reader #9,119 BrookHarty writes: "269 people have joined a class-action lawsuit against Google claiming they were discriminated against in the workplace based on their age..." reports BizJournals. "The lawsuit originated in 2015 with plaintiff Robert Heath and was certified as a class-action in 2016." Google has stated it has implemented policies to stop age discrimination but still has an average employee age of 29.

In 2004 Larry Page fired Brian Reid nine days before IPO costing Reid 45 million in unvested stock options. Reid was fired for lack of "cultural fit". Reid has settled for an undisclosed amount.

schwit1 shares a report from The Washington Post (Warning: may be paywalled; alternative source): The Walt Disney Co. secretly collects personal information on some of their youngest customers and shares that data illegally with advertisers without parental consent, according to a federal lawsuit filed late last week in California. The class-action suit targets Disney and three other software companies -- Upsight, Unity and Kochava -- alleging that the mobile apps they built together violate the law by gathering insights about app users across the Internet, including those under the age of 13, in ways that facilitate "commercial exploitation."

The plaintiffs argue that Disney and its partners violated COPPA, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, a federal law designed to protect the privacy of children on the Web. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Northern California, seeks an injunction barring the companies from collecting and disclosing the data without parental consent, as well as punitive damages and legal fees. The lawsuit alleges that Disney allowed the software companies to embed trackers in apps such as "Disney Princess Palace Pets" and "Where's My Water? 2." Once installed, tracking software can then "exfiltrate that information off the smart device for advertising and other commercial purposes," according to the suit. Disney should not be using those software development companies, said Jeffrey Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. "These are heavy-duty technologies, industrial-strength data and analytic companies whose role is to track and monetize individuals," Chester said. "These should not be in little children's apps." Disney responded to the lawsuit, saying: "Disney has a robust COPPA compliance program, and we maintain strict data collection and use policies for Disney apps created for children and families. The complaint is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of COPPA principles, and we look forward to defending this action in court."

Chipmaker Broadcom on Monday won approval from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to purchase San Jose-based Brocade Communications Systems for $5.9 billion. From a report: To land U.S. approval, Broadcom had to promise federal regulators not to use information from the acquisition to hurt Cisco Systems. At issue with U.S. regulators was possible impacts on Cisco, since Cisco buys chips from Broadcom, but competes with Brocade. On the flip side, regulators worried Broadcom might use its position as supplier and competitor to raise the prices on fiber channel switches, a niche networking segment that's owned completely by Brocade and Cisco. To assuage those concerns, Broadcom agreed to set up an operations "firewall" internally, so that competitive information that might hurt Cisco won't be shared internally. It also agreed to submit to regulatory oversight for five years after the deal is completed.

Tesla said last night Chris Lattner, the vice president of Autopilot software, has left the company about six months after the electric car-maker hired him away from Apple. From a report: Lattner had led the software development team in charge of Autopilot. Tesla executive Jim Keller is now in charge of Autopilot hardware and software. The company announced it had also hired OpenAI research scientist Andrej Karpathy, who will serve as Tesla's new director of artificial intelligence and Tesla Vision. "Chris just wasn't the right fit for Tesla, and we've decided to make a change," the company told reporters in a statement. "We wish him the best." Lattner tweeted last night, "Turns out that Tesla isn't a good fit for me after all. I'm interested to hear about interesting roles for a seasoned engineering leader!" Lattner is a widely respected figure in the industry. He is the main author of LLVM as well as Apple's Swift programming language. We interviewed him earlier this year.

An anonymous reader writes: Sprint and another wireless company have filed a lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission for the agency's recent decision on business data services. Overland Park-based Sprint and Arkansas-based Windstream Services filed the petition for review earlier this week, seeking relief "on the grounds that the Report and Order is arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion," according to a filing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The lawsuit is based on an April 20 vote by the FCC to deregulate its business data services, among them wireless backhaul services, which are crucial for transmitting large amounts of data quickly. Sprint had supported the price caps proposed under former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, as the carrier pays companies like AT&T, Verizon and CenturyLink to use their bandwidth to bridge gaps in the Sprint network during backhaul services. Although Sprint did not report the breakdown of these costs in its annual filing, the carrier noted that they are "a significant cost for our wireless and wireline segments."

An anonymous reader writes: A "spaceshot" company that emerged from Y Combinator three summers ago and is targeting a revolutionary change in the way computers work has landed $64 million to help it in the race against much bigger tech giants. Rigetti Computing, which operates out of Berkeley and Fremont, is tackling quantum computing and going up against research being done by the likes of IBM, Intel, Microsoft and others... Rigetti is building a cloud quantum computing platform for artificial intelligence and computational chemistry. It recently opened up private beta testing of 'Forest', its API for quantum computing in the cloud. It integrates directly with existing cloud infrastructure and treats the quantum computer as an accelerator.
"The potential to make a positive impact on humanity is enormous," said Chad Rigetti, the startup's founder and CEO -- who declined to say whether the company is actually earning any revenue yet.

It's been successfully tested on trucks, as well as UAVs and small rockets, according to a video from Lockheed Martin, which is now shipping the first 60kW-class "beam combined" fiber laser for use by the U.S. Army. An anonymous reader quotes the Puget Sound Business Journal: Lockheed successfully developed and tested the 58 kW laser beam earlier this year, setting a world record for this type of laser. The company is now preparing to ship the laser system to the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command in Huntsville, Alabama [according to Robert Afzal, senior fellow for Lockheed's Laser and Sensor Systems in Bothell]. "We have shown that a powerful directed energy laser is now sufficiently light-weight, low volume and reliable enough to be deployed on tactical vehicles for defensive applications on land, at sea and in the air..." Laser weapons, which complement traditional kinetic weapons in the battlefield, will one day protect against threats such as "swarms of drones" or a flurry of rockets and mortars, Lockheed said.

Intel has announced a drone called the "Shooting Star" that has the potential to augment or replace fireworks. The drone weighs about as much as a volleyball and can light up in 4 billion color combinations for commercial entertainment light shows. MarketWatch reports: Whether drone-focused light shows will prove to be more cost-efficient is a bigger question. The devices would only have to be purchased once, but would likely cost much more than a standard small-scale fireworks show. Small-town holiday fireworks displays typically cost about $2,000 to $7,000 for a basic show, according to Premier Pyrotechnics, while the city of Houston spent an estimated $100,000 on its 2016 Fourth of July fireworks show, according to Houston Business Journal. On a grander scale, estimates suggest Macy's Inc. may spend $6 million on its annual Fourth of July fireworks show. Intel's drones are not publicly for sale, and the chip maker would not disclose how much they would cost. For now, the drones are proof of the ability to automate multiple drone flights at once, using software that could be adapted to commercial applications like mapping or inspections.

Magic Leap is an incredibly secretive company based in Florida that develops "mixed reality" technology. While the company was valued at $4.5 billion in its latest round of financing, Magic Leap has never released a product. "It has never given a public demonstration of a product, never announced a product, and never explained the proprietary 'lightfield' technology that powers its products," writes David M. Ewalt for Forbes. That may be about to change, however, as the CEO Rony Abovitz said in a rare interview that the company has spent a billion dollars perfecting a prototype and has begun constructing manufacturing lines in Florida (Editor's note: may be paywalled, alternate source), gearing up for a release of a consumer version of its technology. "We are building a new kind of contextual computer," Abovitz says. "We're doing something really, really different." The final product of theirs is expected to fit into a pair of glasses when everything is said and done. "When you're wearing the device, it doesn't block your view of the world; the hardware projects an image directly onto your retina through an optics system built into a piece of semitransparent glass (the product won't fry your eyeballs; it's replicating the way we naturally observe the world instead of forcing you to stare at a screen)." Forbes adds: The hardware also constantly gathers information, scanning the room for obstacles, listening for voices, tracking eye movements and watching hands. As a result, mixed-reality objects are aware of their environment and have the ability to interact with the real world. On Magic Leap's hardware a Pokemon might escape capture by ducking behind your couch or, assuming you live in a "smart" home, turning off your lights and hiding in the dark. In one of its demos the Magic Leap team shows off a computer-generated "virtual interactive human," life-size and surprisingly realistic. Abovitz and his team imagine virtual people (or animals or anything else) as digital assistants -- think Siri on steroids, except with a physical presence that makes her easier to work with and harder to ignore. Ask your virtual assistant to deliver a message to a coworker and it might walk out of your office, reappear beside your colleague's desk via his or her own MR headset and deliver the message in person. Ewalt goes on to write about Abovitz's life growing up and the past companies he has founded, which have ultimately helped lead him to Magic Leap.

Speaking at the "All Things Open" conference, Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst remembered when Linux "was just a 'bunch of geeks' getting together figuring it all out on an 8286 chip" 25 years ago. An anonymous reader quotes BizJournals: "It went from being kind of a hacker movement to truly what I'll say [is] a viable alternative to traditional software," Whitehurst says, adding that Red Hat was a part of that push. Over the years, it came out from under the radar, being what Whitehurst calls "the default choice for a next-generation of infrastructure," particularly when it comes to cloud architectures... He points to Google, Microsoft and Facebook, all having open sourced their machine learning systems. "They recognize the company that builds the community around that piece of technology, that technology is going to win."

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Gizmodo: "Two Harvard undergraduates have created a service called Legalist that uses what they call 'data-backed litigation financing,' analyzing civil lawsuits with an algorithm to predict case outcomes and determine which civil lawsuits are worth investing in," reports Gizmodo. The process is very similar to what billionaire Peter Thiel did when he secretly funded a lawsuit from Hulk Hogan against Gawker Media. "Legalist says it uses an algorithm of 58 different variables including, as [Legalist cofounder] Eva Shang told the Silicon Valley Business Journal, who the presiding judge is and the number of cases the judge is currently working on. The algorithm has been fed cases dating back to 1989 and helps people figure out how long a case will last and the risks associated with it. In a presentation at Y Combinator's Demo Day on Tuesday [Legalist was developed as part of Y Combinator's Summer 2016 class], the founders claimed that the startup funded one lawsuit for $75,000 and expects a return of more than $1 million. Shang says the $1.40 is earned for every $1 spent in litigation financing, which can prove to be a profitable enterprise when you're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars." Shang told Business Insider in reference to the Gawker lawsuit, "That's the kind of thing we're staying away from here." The company will supposedly be focusing on commercial and small-business lawsuits, and will not be backing lawsuits by individuals.

New submitter supernova87a writes: Last week, Southwest Airlines had an epic crash of IT systems across their entire business when "a router failure caused the airlines' systems to crash [...] and all backups failed, causing flight delays and cancellations nationwide and costing the company probably $10 million in lost bookings alone." Huge numbers of passengers, crew, and airplanes were stranded as not only reservations systems, but scheduling, dispatch, and other critical operational systems had to be rebooted over the course of 12 hours. Passenger delays, which directly attributable to this incident, continued to trickle down all the way from Wednesday to Sunday as the airline recovered. Aside from the technical issues of what happened, what should a public-facing company's obligation be to discuss what happened in full detail? Would publicly talking about the sequence of events before and after failure help restore faith in their operations? Perhaps not aiming for Google's level of admirable disclosure (as in this 18-minute cloud computing outage where a full post-mortem was given), should companies aim to discuss more openly what happened and how they recovered from system failures?

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Ars Technica: Silicon Valley Business Journal reports that Google and LinkedIn have worked out a deal that will allow the two neighbors to swap a few million square feet of real estate. The deal will help give Google enough room to build its futuristic "canopy" campus. Ars Technica reports: "Google will receive all of LinkedIn's existing Mountain View territory, which consists of LinkedIn's 370,000-square-feet headquarters and almost eight acres of land LinkedIn had planned on turning into office space. LinkedIn will move a few miles across town into four office buildings currently owned by Google that come out to about 750,000 square feet of office space. LinkedIn instantly gets to double its office space while avoiding a costly 'five- to six-year' construction project, and Google gets the space and building rights it needs to build its crazy indoor/outdoor spiderweb canopy utopia. Google owns a huge chunk of land in Mountain View with many office buildings, but the buildings have all been hand-me-downs. In February 2015, Google announced plans to renovate its campus with an ambitious design featuring a large membrane covering configurable activity space. To expand, both LinkedIn and Google needed to compete for Mountain View's 2.2 million square feet of available commercial square footage. The city, fearing it would become an all-Google town, awarded the majority of the construction rights -- 1.4 million square feet -- to LinkedIn, leaving Google with nowhere to build its new headquarters. With the real estate swap, those construction rights go to Google, so the company now has all the space it asked for." Last month, Microsoft announced plans to acquired LinkedIn for $26.2 billion.

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: Uber "has developed a new technology that it plans on using to track driver behavior, specifically if drivers are traveling too fast or braking too harshly..." according to the San Francisco Chronicle, which writes that "Information about how a driver is performing will be shared with Uber, but will also be shared with the driver, along with safety tips on how they can improve their performance." Uber will roll this out as an update to their app, using existing smartphone functionality, and "in some cities Uber will also monitor whether or not Uber drivers are picking up their phones (either to text or even just to look at maps) during a ride using the phone's gyroscope."
Ride-sharing companies seem to be growing more and more powerful. One Florida county actually received a grant to offer free Uber rides to low-income workers, and to allow the county transit authority to arrange rides for those residents without a smartphone. Uber recently even became the "official designated driving app" for Mother's Against Drunk Driving, and published a graph suggesting Uber pickups correlate to a drop in drunk-driving arrests. And in other news, Uber rides have apparently even been used by a group of human traffickers to smuggle migrants from Central America into the United States.

An anonymous reader writes: Google has announced in a blog post Friday their support for the controversial Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership (TPP). Recode reports: "The trade agreement includes key provisions about the global passage of digital data, intellectual property and copyright -- measures that have drawn criticism from both the political right and left, including several outspoken tech groups. Google's endorsement isn't exactly full-throated, but its stake clearly demonstrates another key area of support with the Obama administration, to which Google is close." Google's SVP and general counsel Kent Walker wrote: "The TPP is not perfect, and the trade negotiation process would certainly benefit from greater transparency. We will continue to advocate for process reforms, including the opportunity for all stakeholders to have a meaningful opportunity for input into trade negotiations." The company has already shown support of the TPP behind the Internet Association, which endorsed the trade agreement in March. Google joins a list of other tech titans, like Apple and Microsoft, who have shown their support as well. The Electronic Frontier Foundation calls the TPP a "secretive, multinational trade agreement" that will restrict IP laws and enforce digital policies that "benefit big corporations at the expense of the public." The TPP is still awaiting congressional approval after being signed in February.

An anonymous reader writes shares a report on BizJournals: Despite increased spending on cybersecurity, most executives are unprepared, even willfully ignorant, of the threats that could damage their businesses. A survey of 1,530 C-level executives across of range of industries found a widespread feeling that cybersecurity is an "IT problem," even as CEOs personally shoulder the consequences for breaches. "The Target breach was one of the more significant ones: Executives can be held accountable," says David Damato, chief security officer at Tanium. "But there's still that disconnect. Executives still struggle with: 'What should I be looking for?'"

HughPickens.com writes: Nick Wingfield has an interesting article in the NYT about how Seattle, Austin, Boulder, Portland, and other tech hubs around the country are seeking not to emulate San Francisco where wealth has created a widely envied economy, but housing costs have skyrocketed, and the region's economic divisions have deepened with rent for a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco at more than $3,500 a month, the highest in the country. "Seattle has wanted to be San Francisco for so long," says Knute Berger. "Now it's figuring out maybe that it isn't what we want to be." The core of the debate is over affordable housing and the worry that San Francisco is losing artists, teachers and its once-vibrant counterculture. "It's not that we don't want to be a thriving tech center — we do," says Alan Durning. "It's that the San Francisco and Silicon Valley communities have gotten themselves into a trap where preservationists and local politics have basically guaranteed buying a house will cost at least $1 million. Already in Seattle, it costs half-a-million, so we're well on our way."

Seattle mayor Ed Murray says he wants to keep the working-class roots of Seattle, a city with a major port, fishing fleet and even a steel mill. After taking office last year, Murray made the minimum-wage increase a priority, reassured representatives of the city's manufacturing and maritime industries that Seattle needed them., and has set a goal of creating 50,000 homes — 40 percent of them affordable for low-income residents — over the next decade. "We can hopefully create enough affordable housing so we don't find ourselves as skewed by who lives in the city as San Francisco is," says Murray. "We're at a crossroads," says Roger Valdez. "One path leads to San Francisco, where you have an incredibly regulated and stagnant housing economy that can't keep up with demand. The other path is something different, the Seattle way."

Taco Cowboy writes: According to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Bitcoin and other all virtual currencies have been officially categorized as commodities, just like crude oil or wheat. The CFTC on Thursday announced it had filed and settled charges against a Bitcoin exchange for facilitating the trading of option contracts on its platform.

By this action, the CFTC asserts its authority to provide oversight of the trading of cryptocurrency futures and options, which will now be subject to the agency's regulations. In the event of wrongdoing, such as futures manipulation, the CFTC will be able to bring charges against bad actors. If a company wants to operate a trading platform for Bitcoin derivatives or futures, it will need to register as a swap execution facility or designated contract market, just like the CME Group. And Coinflip—the target of the CFTC action—is hardly the only company that provides a platform to trade Bitcoin derivatives or futures In other Bitcoin news, reader McGruber notes that the CFO of BitPay, a Bitcoin payment service, was successfully phished, costing the company $1.8 million worth of Bitcoins. The company is attempting to recover the money from its insurer.

New submitter ahbond writes: The meme of the chubby nerd alone in the basement may be a thing of the past. Well, at least the chubby part, if recent work at MIT pans out and we're able to use a biological "master switch" to "dial-in" a persons metabolic rate. “Obesity has traditionally been seen as the result of an imbalance between the amount of food we eat and how much we exercise, but this view ignores the contribution of genetics to each individual’s metabolism,” said senior author Manolis Kellis, a professor of computer science and a member of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and of the Broad Institute.

1sockchuck writes: Internet titans are concentrating massive amounts of computing power in regional cloud campuses housing multiple data centers. These huge data hubs, often in rural communities, enable companies to rapidly add server capacity and electric power amid rapid growth of cloud hosting and social sharing. As this growth continues, we'll see more of these cloud campuses, and they'll be bigger than the ones we see today. Some examples from this month: Google filed plans for a mammoth 800,000 square foot data center near Atlanta, Equinix announced 1 million square feet of new data centers on its campus in Silicon Valley, and Facebook began work on a $1 billion server farm in Texas that will span 750,000 square feet.

1sockchuck writes: Internet titans are concentrating massive amounts of computing power in regional cloud campuses housing multiple data centers. These huge data hubs, often in rural communities, enable companies to rapidly add server capacity and electric power amid rapid growth of cloud hosting and social sharing. As this growth continues, we'll see more of these cloud campuses, and they'll be bigger than the ones we see today. Some examples from this month: Google filed plans for a mammoth 800,000 square foot data center near Atlanta, Equinix announced 1 million square feet of new data centers on its campus in Silicon Valley, and Facebook began work on a $1 billion server farm in Texas that will span 750,000 square feet.

New submitter Adekyn writes that, according to David A. Arnott of The Business Journals, the Google Photos app will sync your photos — even after you have deleted the application from your device. From the article: All I had to do to turn my phone into a stealth Google Photos uploader was to turn on the backup sync, then uninstall the app. Whereas one might reasonably believe uninstalling the app from the phone would stop photos from uploading automatically to Google Photos, the device still does it even in the app’s absence. Since making this discovery, I have re-created the issue multiple times in multiple settings on my Galaxy S5. I reached out to Google, and after reaching someone on the phone and describing the issue, was told to wait for a comment. Several hours later, I received a terse email that said, “The backup was as intended.” If I want to stop it from happening, I was told I'd have to change settings in Google Play Services. A video of the process accompanies the article.

theodp writes: During public hearings on WA State's House Bill 1813, which took aim at boys' historical over-representation in K-12 computer classes, the Office of the WA State Superintendent of Public Instruction voiced concerns that by relying on the generosity of corporations, wealthy individuals, and nonprofits to fund STEM, computer science, and technology programs, learning opportunities would be limited to a small group of students, creating disparity of opportunity. "If this is a real priority," pleaded Chris Vance, "fund it fully" (HB 1813, like the White House K-12 CS plan, counts on philanthropy to make up for tax shortfalls). But legislators in the WA House and Senate — apparently more swayed by the pro-HB 1813 testimony of representatives from Microsoft and Microsoft-backed TEALS and Code.org — overwhelmingly passed the bill, sending it to Governor Jay Inslee for his signature. Not to worry. On Wednesday, the bill was signed into law by Gov. Inslee, who was perhaps influenced by the we-need-to-pass-HB-1813 blogging of Microsoft General Counsel and Code.org Board member Brad Smith, who coincidentally is not only responsible for Microsoft's philanthropic work, but was also co-chair of Gov.-elect Inslee's transition team. The WA state legislative victory comes less than 24 hours after the San Francisco School Board voted to require CS instruction beginning with preschool.

theodp writes Just weeks after an L.A. Times op-ed called on public schools to emulate high-tech companies by paying high salaries to driven, talented employees whose productivity more than compensates for their high pay, the New York Times reported on the dramatic conclusion to perhaps the largest cheating scandal in the nation's history, which saw a Judge order handcuffed Atlanta educators led off to jail immediately for their roles in a standardized test cheating scandal that raised broader questions about the role of high-stakes testing in American schools. Jurors convicted 11 of the 12 defendants — a mix of Atlanta public school teachers, testing coordinators and administrators — of racketeering, a felony that carries up to 20 years in prison. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution sowed suspicion about the veracity of the test scores in 2009, and while investigators found that cheating was particularly ingrained in individual schools, they also said that the district's top officials, including Superintendent Beverly L. Hall, bore some responsibility for creating "a culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation" that had permitted "cheating — at all levels — to go unchecked for years." (More below.) Officials said the cheating allowed employees to collect bonuses and helped improve the reputations of both Dr. Hall and the perpetually troubled school district. Dr. Hall, who died on March 2, insisted that she had done nothing wrong and that her approach to education, which emphasized data, was not to blame. But a Fulton County grand jury later accused her and 34 other district employees of being complicit in the cheating. Twenty-one reached plea agreements, and two defendants died before they could stand trial. Interestingly, in early 2010, the Atlanta Business Chronicle reported on how Hall and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation were bringing a "fair and transparent evaluation and support mechanism" to the Atlanta Public Schools. "We are excited to continue our [$23.6 million] partnership with APS and Dr. Hall," said Gates Foundation director of education Vicki L. Phillips. Five years earlier, in a 2005 Gates Foundation press release, Hall said, "We look forward to partnering with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to take our reform efforts to the next level."

theodp (442580) writes "Google's "flash-funding" of teachers' projects via DonorsChoose continues to draw kudos from grateful mayors of the nation's largest cities. The latest comes from Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto (fresh from a Google-paid stay at the Google Zeitgeist resort), who joined Google officials at Taylor Allderdice HS, where Google announced it was 'flash funding' all Pittsburgh area teachers' crowd-funding campaigns on DonorsChoose.org. DonorsChoose reports that Google spent $64,657 to fund projects for 10,924 Pittsburgh kids. While the not-quite-$6-a-student is nice, it does pale by comparison to the $56,742 Google is ponying up to send one L.A. teacher's 34 students to London and Paris and the $35,858 it's spending to take another L.A. teacher's 52 kids to NYC, Gettysburg, and DC. So, is Google's non-tax based public school funding — which includes gender-based funding as well as "begfunding" — cause for celebration?"

stephendavion writes Checking to see if your drink has been tampered with is about to get a whole lot more discreet. Thanks to the work of four North Carolina State University undergrads, you'll soon be able to find out without reaching for a testing tool. That's because you'll already have five of them on each hand. The team — Ankesh Madan, Stephen Gray, Tasso Von Windheim, and Tyler Confrey-Maloney — has come up with a creative and unobtrusive way to package chemicals that react when exposed to Rohypnol and GHB. They put it in nail polish that they're calling Undercover Colors.

cartechboy writes Remember four years ago when Tesla's new headquarters in Palo Alto, California seemed like a big risk? Yeah, time flies and now the Silicon Valley startup is already running out of room. Apparently the electric-car maker is already looking for 200,000-300,000 square feet of office space in the lower Peninsula market. Part of the motivation is that the company would like to have employees closer to its Fremont factory, which is 20 miles from its current headquarters. With heavy traffic that journey can take up to an hour or more. While not looking to relocate its headquarters, Tesla's simply looking to expand its space. Meanwhile, we all eagerly await to hear if the Gigafactory will indeed end up being built in Nevada.

Rambo Tribble (1273454) writes Portland, Oregon has taken another step toward finalizing a franchise agreement with Google Fiber. In a unanimous vote, the city council has approved the prospective contract. While existing Internet Service Providers fume, Mary Beth Henry, manager of Portland's Office for Community Technology, pointed out that Google is prepared to make a major investment in the city's infrastructure, while the other firms are not. Ms. Henry also indicated that Google was not receiving any special treatment. Google spokesperson, Jenna Wandres, responded to events in an email, saying, "There's still a lot of work to do beyond this one agreement, but we hope to provide an update about whether we can bring Fiber here later this year."

This is a conversation with Jeff Whitehead and Lou Montulli, respectively Vice President of Technical Operations/CTO and Chief Scientist for Zetta.net, a company that specializes in online backup and disaster recovery service. Also, while this interview was arranged without his help, in the interest of full disclosure we'd like to tell you that Zetta's CEO is Ali Jenab, who used to be CEO of Slashdot's parent company. But this discussion isn't about Ali or Zetta.net, but about data backup, and what methods are best and most cost-effective for companies ranging from home-based businesses up to enterprise operations with thousands of employees. Among other things, we discussed the importance of multiple-site storage for important data, a factor that was drilled in to us yesterday by an article titled Another Iron Mountain Fire Points Up Shortcomings of Physical Storage by long-time tech journalist Sharon Fisher. And never forget: You don't know how effective your backup and data storage arrangements are until you try to retrieve your data -- and if you don't try to retrieve data until you need it, and things don't work, you are in big trouble. (Don't see the video? Here's a link.)

theodp writes "Back in 2010, Bill Gates Sr. made the case for I-1098, an initiative for a WA state income tax that Gates argued was needed to address K-12 funding inequity, which he claimed was forcing businesses "to import technically-trained employees, while our own people are shut out of highly paid careers." Opposed by the deep-pocketed, high-tech studded Defeat 1098, the initiative was defeated. Four years later, some of the same high-tech leaders who records show funded Defeat 1098 — including Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer ($425K), Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith ($10K), Code.org founder Hadi Partovi ($10K), Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos ($100K), Microsoft Corporation ($75K) — have gotten behind groups like Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us and Code.org, which are singing a similar Chicken Little tune, telling lawmakers that U.S. students will continue to be shut out of highly paid computer science careers without additional K-12 funding, and the U.S. will lose its competitive edge unless tech is permitted to import even more technically-trained employees. In a departure from Gates' income-tax based solution, Microsoft and Code.org argue that the-problem-is-the-solution, proposing that tech visa fees be used to fund K-12 CS programs. To 'accept that computer science classes are only available to the privileged few,' writes Code.org, 'seems un-American'. So, as some of the nation's biggest K-12 school systems turn to Code.org for CS education programs, should they expect the funding to come from taxes, H-1B tech visa fees, or the-kindness-of-wealthy-strangers philanthropy?"

Falc0n writes "Many of us don't have to look too far back to recall the impact of a natural disaster: Sandy, Chelyabinsk, Lushan, and now Oklahoma. When they occur there is typically no shortage of assistance available, but coordination is always a major challenge. In a very open source way, about 60 open source developers, designers, and sys admins came together to build a scalable tool to help those affected by the tornado. If you're interested in helping the effort, join us in irc.freenode.net #drupal4ok"

miller60 writes "Servers may soon fill the aisles where shoppers once roamed. Sears Holdings is seeking to convert former Sears and Kmart stores into Internet data hubs. Some stand-alone stores and distribution centers may be repurposed as data centers, while mall-based stores can be converted into disaster recovery sites, the company says, offering access to stores and eateries for displaced workers who may be on site for weeks. Then there's the wireless tower opportunity. Seventy percent of the U.S. population lives within 10 miles of a Sears or Kmart store, and these rooftops can be leased to fill gaps in cell coverage. It's not the first effort to convert stores into IT infrastructure, as Rackspace is headquartered in an old mall, and companies have built data centers in malls in Indiana and Maryland. But Sears, which operates 25 million square feet of real estate, hopes to make this strategy work at scale." Also at Slash DataCenter.

An anonymous reader writes "Two hundred hackers from around the world gathered at a Miami Beach hotel Thursday and Friday for the Infiltrate Security conference, which focuses on systems hacking from the 'offensive' perspective (with slides). In a keynote address, Stephen Watt, who served two years in prison for writing the software used by his friend Alberto Gonzalez to steal millions of credit card numbers from TJX, Hannaford and other retailers, acknowledges he was a 'black hat' but denies that he was directly involved in TJX or any other specific job. Watt says his TCP sniffer logged critical data from a specified range of ports, which was then encrypted and uploaded to a remote server. Brad 'RenderMan' Haines gave a presentation on vulnerabilities of the Air Traffic Control system, including the FAA's 'NextGen' system which apparently carries forward the same weakness of unencrypted, unauthenticated location data passed between airplanes and control towers. Regarding the recent potential exploits publicized by Spanish researcher Hugo Teso, Haines says he pointed out similar to the FAA and its Canadian counterpart a year ago, but received only perfunctory response."

New submitter paulbsch writes "With its technology-centric culture, the Silicon Hills of Austin, TX could have been the perfect city for the first iteration of Google Fiber. Austinites will just have to settle with being only the second city to get the ultra high speed service." Right now, this is well-founded supposition, rather than confirmed fact, based on an invitation from Google to a joint event this Tuesday which promises an announcement which will "have a positive impact on Austinites and the future of the city." Another possibility, as PC Magazine points out, is that Google will announce a new Austin office.

suraj.sun writes, quoting the Denver Post: "A federal court has thrown out a 2010 Colorado law, which had already been temporarily blocked in federal court last year, meant to spur online retailers like Amazon to collect state sales tax. 'I conclude that the veil provided by the words of the act and the regulations is too thin to support the conclusion that the act and the regulations regulate in-state and out-of-state retailers even-handedly,' U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn wrote in his opinion. The law and the rules to carry it out 'impose an undue burden on interstate commerce' and are unconstitutional, the judge wrote. The tax mainly affected online sales of out-of-state companies that have in-state affiliates, usually generating sales through links on their websites." I wonder what this means for the plethora of similar bills in other states. Will Amazon continue to call for a national Internet sales tax if they are all struck down?

Hugh Pickens writes writes "Many of today's toys contain rare-earth magnets which are much more powerful than the magnets of yesteryear and the magnets pose a serious threat to children when more than one is ingested because as the magnets attract one another they can cause a range of serious injuries, including holes through internal organs, blood poisoning and death (PDF). Braden Eberle, 4, swallowed two tiny magnets from his older brother's construction kit on two successive days last spring and his mother's first reaction was that the magnet would pass through her son's system without a problem. "People swallow pennies of the same size every day," said Jill Eberle. "They're smaller than an eraser." But next morning, with Braden still in pain, the family's doctor told them to go straight to the emergency room where an X-ray revealed two magnets were stuck together. "They were attracted to each other with the wall of each segment they were in stuck together," said Dr. Sanjeev Dutta, the pediatric surgeon at Good Samaritan Hospital who would operate on Braden later that day. "Because they were so powerful, the wall of the intestine was getting squeezed, squeezed, squeezed, and then it just necrosed, or kind of rotted away, and created a hole between the two." The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) says at least 33 children have been injured from ingesting magnets (PDF) with a 20 month-old dying, and at least 19 other children requiring surgery."

jfruhlinger writes "A year ago, Google sued the U.S. government because the government's request for proposals for a cloud project mandated Microsoft Office; Google felt, for obvious reasons, that this was discriminatory. Google has now withdrawn the suit, claiming that the Feds promised to update their policies (PDF) to allow Google to compete. The only problem is that the government claims it did no such thing."

theodp writes "Thanks to the inventors at Amazon.com, you needn't fear Aunt Martha any longer. On Tuesday, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos received a patent for a bad gift defense system that intercepts gifts you don't want and instead sends you something that you actually do want. For example, Amazon explains that its 'System and Method for Converting Gifts' would allow you to set up a rule like 'Convert all gifts from Aunt Mildred,' which would automatically convert any online gift orders from your well-meaning-but-tasteless Auntie into a gift certificate. Other examples of how the system might be used: You could convert bad gifts to something off your wish list; block specific products ('Not another XYZ comic strip calendar'); or ensure that any clothing gifts match your exact size ('Check clothes sizes first')."

Readers today have been sending tons of stories about the iPhone 4, so here are a few of the highlights: Following the Consumers Reports announcement that the iPhone has antenna problems, Andy Patrizio asks if Apple can withstand the pressure to recall, while CNet estimates that a recall would cost them $1.5B. But that's just the latest on the iPhone 4 — the long running carrier exclusivity lawsuit rumors have been upgraded to Class Action status.

truthsearch writes "An analyst reports that not only will CEO Steve Jobs return to Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference stage — he missed last year for medical reasons — but he will be joined there by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdrey said that Microsoft has been given seven minutes during Jobs' keynote to talk about Visual Studio 2010. Chowdrey said that a new version of the development tools software will support native applications for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac OS." Update: 05/27 19:17 GMT by T : As reader theappwhisperer points out, Microsoft has responded to this rumor via the company's Twitter feed with an unequivocal No.

Fluffeh writes "IBM has applied for a patent on a network-enabled smart remote control that sends out a message to Twitter, Facebook or a blog when you start watching a TV show." Hopefully this launches an exciting patent landgrab of devices that are socially enabled. Your car can tweet when you leave your garage. Your dishwasher can tweet when the load is done. Your skillet can tweet when your eggs are burnt. And they say innovation is dead.