Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes about "a little-known problem plaguing many newer vehicles from the likes of Honda, Toyota, and Kia." The car makers used soy-insulated wiring to cut costs and "Go Green", but owners in rural areas are finding the local wildlife finds the wiring irresistible; thousands of dollars in damage has been done by rats and other critters eating wiring harnesses. Hackaday is asking their community to brainstorm solutions to this unique problem, as owners of affected vehicles have had to resort to sprinkling their driveway with coyote urine and putting rat traps on the wheels.
Hackaday reports that "It isn't just one or two cases either, it's enough of a problem that some car manufacturers are getting hit with class-action lawsuits." Back in 2010 Slashdot reported that rabbits had already discovered the joys of eating soy-insulated wires, and were turning the parking lot at the Denver International Airport into their own personal buffet.

There's even a web site called HowToPreventRatsFromEatingCarWires.com, which reports that Honda has already manufactured a special wire-wrapping tape that's infused with the active ingredient from chili peppers.

An anonymous reader writes: In November "Cards Against Humanity" announced "a complicated holiday promotion" where people paid $15 for six surprises in December. (For the first surprise in the Cards Against Humanity Saves America promotion, "we purchased a plot of vacant land on the border and retained a law firm specializing in eminent domain to make it as time-consuming and expensive as possible for Trump to build his wall.") The second surprise was the launch of a new podcast filled with positive news, and for the third surprise, they're redistributing the money people paid to join the event. "Most of our subscribers (about 140,000 people) got nothing today — they could have it worse. The next 10,000 subscribers received a full $15 refund of their Cards Against Humanity Saves America purchase. Finally, the poorest 100 people received a check for $1,000, paid for by everyone else."

A new web page shares stories from the grateful participants, and explains the site's careful methodology for determining who needed the $1,000 checks the most. ("We excluded all Canadians. They already have universal healthcare. They'll be fine.") It argues that wealth inequality is the biggest issue in the world, but "Our lawyers advised against our first choice — a campaign to eat all the rich people and live in their houses — so we settled for something more achievable."

For two and a half hours -- no take-offs. An anonymous reader quotes NBC News: All of United Airlines' domestic flights were grounded Sunday night because of a computer outage, the Federal Aviation Administration said as scores of angry travelers sounded off on social media... U.S. officials told NBC News that the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, or ACARS, had issues with low bandwidth. No further explanation was immediately available for what United described only as "an IT issue."
An hour ago United tweeted that they'd finally lifted the stop and were "working to get flights on their way." 66 flights were cancelled just at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, the Chicago Department of Aviation told the Associated Press, and though the article doesn't identify the total number of flights affected, "Chicago-based United Airlines and United Express operate more than 4,500 flights a day to 339 airports across five continents."

American Airlines said Friday Sabre had faced a brief technical issue that impacted multiple carriers. The issue has, however, been resolved. From a report on NBC Chicago: A technical issue at with a computer IT firm briefly caused technical problems for airlines in the United States early Friday afternoon, according to American Airlines. It was one of several air carriers affected by the outage at Sabre, which tweeted about 12:45 p.m. ET that it was working on recovering from unspecified issues customers were facing. American didn't provide more details about what systems and airlines were affected. Reports on Twitter indicated outages at American, Alaska Airlines and JetBlue; all three responded to several tweets about saying computers, kiosks or the website not working.

McGruber writes: Earlier this year Mattel unveiled "Hello Barbie," a $74.99 wi-fi equipped interactive doll. Users press a button on Barbie's belt to start a conversation and the recorded audio is processed over the internet so that the doll can respond appropriately. The doll also remembers the user's likes and dislikes.

Now Security Researcher Matt Jakubowski claims that he has managed to hack the Hello Barbie system to extract wi-fi network names, account IDs and MP3 files, which could be used to track down someone's home. "You can take that information and find out a person's house or business. It's just a matter of time until we are able to replace their servers with ours and have her say anything we want," Jakubowski warned. Mattel partnered with ToyTalk to develop "Hello Barbie." ToyTalk CEO Oren Jacob said: "An enthusiastic researcher has reported finding some device data and called that a hack. While the path that the researcher used to find that data is not obvious and not user-friendly, it is important to note that all that information was already directly available to Hello Barbie customers through the Hello Barbie Companion App. No user data, no Barbie content, and no major security or privacy protections have been compromised to our knowledge." A petition by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood asking Mattel to drop the doll has already been signed by over 6,000 people.

NOTE: The original reporting of this hack appears to have been this NBC-Chicago newscast.

From reader Peter McDermott comes word of a computer outage with effects to dwarf those of the one that stranded thousands of US Airways passengers last week. This time, it's United Airlines' systems that are out of commission and unable to handle passenger reservations, leaving passengers stranded all over the U.S. According to Peter, experiencing the resultant delays first-hand at Dulles Airport near Washington, D.C., United planes are being sent on — along with their passengers' luggage — to the cities from which they're to leave tomorrow morning, in anticipation of the computer system being fixed in the interim.

theodp writes "At the risk of pulling-a-Groupon, I have a dream that one day my children will not be judged by their e-readers, but by the content of their character. The NY Times' Virginia Heffernan complains that many indie New York City cafes now heavily restrict, or ban outright, the use of Kindles, Nooks and iPads. Evidently, she says, too many coffee shops have had their ambience wrecked when itinerant word processors with laptops turn the tables into office space. Full-dress computers are one thing, says Heffernan, but banning devices the size of books is going too far, and it's anathema to the character and history of cafes. By contrast, Starbucks offers free, one-click, unlimited wireless service to their patrons, making it in Heffernan's eyes 'a flawed franchise that is squarely in the public good.'"

When residents at the Bethesda Retirement Center asked the Life Enrichment Director if they could all take a trip to the Evil Olive, a local biker bar, she did what any responsible person would. She got hairstylists, make-up artists, a professional costumer and a tattoo artist to help make the residents look tougher, and drove them to the bar. “These women were serious, man,” said Evil Olive General Manager Eric Bollard. “They showed up with pink hair and skull caps. It was for real. One woman walked straight up to the bar and ordered a Dirty Martini. It was great.”

Wh15per writes "The Chicago FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested an individual for misusing Chicago Transit Authority radio systems. Marcel Carter, 20, is charged with violating a US code that forbids interference with transportation operators. A federal complaint alleges he began using a radio to transmit on CTA frequencies in June 2008, often interjecting comments during communications between the agency's control center and train operators. The CTA claims Carter's radio communications were never followed, and passengers were never in danger."