Domain: katu.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to katu.com.
Stories · 12
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Oregon Becomes Second State To Pass a Net Neutrality Law (katu.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from KATU: Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed a bill Monday withholding state business from internet providers who throttle traffic, making the state the second to finalize a proposal aimed at thwarting moves by federal regulators to relax net neutrality requirements. The bill stops short of actually putting new requirements on internet service providers in the state, but blocks the state from doing business with providers that offer preferential treatment to some internet content or apps, starting in 2019. The move follows a December vote by the Federal Communications Commission repealing Obama-era rules that prohibited such preferential treatment, referred to generally as throttling, by providers like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon. Brown's signature makes the state the second to enact such legislation, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. It also stakes out the state's claim to a moderate approach, compared to others: Five weeks to the day before Brown, Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill in his state to directly regulate providers there. The prohibition, which restricts with whom the state may contract for internet services, applies to cities and counties, but exempts areas with only a single provider. -
Are Tesla Crashes Balanced Out By The Lives That They Save? (eetimes.com)
Friday EE Times shared the story of a Tesla crash that occurred during a test drive. "The salesperson suggested that my friend not brake, letting the system do the work. It didn't..." One Oregon news site even argues autopiloted Tesla's may actually have a higher crash rate.
But there's also been stories about Teslas that have saved lives -- like the grateful driver whose Model S slammed on the brakes to prevent a collision with a pedestrian, and another man whose Tesla drove him 20 miles to a hospital after he'd suddenly experienced a pulmonary embolism. (Slate wrote a story about the incident titled "Code is My Co-Pilot".) Now an anonymous Slashdot reader asks: How many successes has the autopilot had in saving life and reducing damage to property? What is the ratio of these successes to the very public failures?
I'd be curious to hear what Slashdot readers think. If you add it all up, are self-driving cars keeping us safer -- or just making us drive more recklessly? -
Woman Admits Sending $400K To Nigerian Scammer
svnt writes "Janella Spears wiped out her husband's retirement account, remortgaged their paid-for house, and took out a lien against the family car in an attempt to cash in on the deal. A undercover officer involved with the investigation called it the worst example of the scam he's ever seen. Thoughtfully, Spears has gone public with her story as a warning to others not to fall victim." -
7th-Grader Designs Three Dimensional Solar Cell
Hugh Pickens writes "12-year-old William Yuan's invention of a highly-efficient, three-dimensional nanotube solar cell for visible and ultraviolet light has won him an award and a $25,000 scholarship from the Davidson Institute for Talent Development. 'Current solar cells are flat and can only absorb visible light'" Yuan said. 'I came up with an innovative solar cell that absorbs both visible and UV light. My project focused on finding the optimum solar cell to further increase the light absorption and efficiency and design a nanotube for light-electricity conversion efficiency.' Solar panels with his 3D cells would provide 500 times more light absorption than commercially-available solar cells and nine times more than cutting-edge 3D solar cells. 'My next step is to talk to manufacturers to see if they will build a working prototype,' Yuan said. "If the design works in a real test stage, I want to find a company to manufacture and market it."" -
Man Arrested for Wireless Piggybacking
Sommelier writes "As reported by KATU in Portland, Oregon, a man was arrested for parking outside a coffee shop in nearby Vancouver, Washington, and using their open wireless AP — for three straight months. '"He doesn't buy anything," Manager Emily Pranger says about the man she ended up calling 911 about. "It's not right for him to come and use it."' Turns out the guy was a registered sex-offender as well." A different computer expert might have pointed out some ways to see if anyone is piggybacking on a wireless signal (many APs have a Web-interface client list), or even suggested something like NoCatAuth. -
Trojan Compromises Oregon Taxpayers
Blair writes "An employee at the Oregon Department of Revenue downloaded a trojan file from a porn site, possibly compromising up to 2,200 taxpayers. An information technology security officer with the state said, 'the released data likely involved names, addresses or Social Security numbers, or possibly in some cases all three.' I guess some of our public workers are having too much fun after all." -
Oregon's Governor Backs Open Source Development
Colonel Panic writes "Oregon's Governor Ted Kulongoski is backing a plan to establish an Open Technology Center in Beaverton (also home to the OSDL). The purpose of the center will be to boost the adoption of open technology among developers and industries. Given that the Portland area hosts OSCON and is the home to the OSDL and now Linus, is Portland becoming the center for Open Source development in the US?" -
Mount St. Helens Lets Off Some Steam
jdray writes "The cube farm is all a twitter right now, as Mt. St. Helens is spewing out a steam plume, and you can see if from our building. The cam for the volcano seems to be down, but we just saw a news helicopter from KATU, one of our local news stations, headed that direction. They should have some content up shortly." Other readers suggest: KOIN, KOIN webcams, Kiro TV, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, or CNN. -
Database Glitch Grounds American/US Airways
An anonymous reader writes "According to numerous news sources, all American Airlines and US Airways flights were grounded for two or three hours this morning. Both problems were caused by a computer glitch in the systems hosted by EDS. Quote: The operating system that drives the airline's flight plans went down." -
Linus Torvalds Moving to the Silicon Forest
Evilive writes "According to KATU News, Linus Torvalds and family will be moving to Portland, Oregon so he can oversee the Open Source Development Labs. Torvalds says he and his family will make the move after his children finish school next week. Sayeth Linus: 'The plan was to try to acclimatize and have time to grow webbed feet (although I'm told there are implants available) by moving during the summer.'" -
US Busts Military Network Hacker
yorgasor writes " KATU has an article announcing the case of a mysterious hacker who has broken into roughly 100 military networks has been solved. The hacker is a British citizen and authorities were considering extradition for the case. Although no networks containing classified information were compromised, they do consider the hacker to be a professional rather than recreational due to the large number of networks he hacked." -
US Busts Military Network Hacker
yorgasor writes " KATU has an article announcing the case of a mysterious hacker who has broken into roughly 100 military networks has been solved. The hacker is a British citizen and authorities were considering extradition for the case. Although no networks containing classified information were compromised, they do consider the hacker to be a professional rather than recreational due to the large number of networks he hacked."