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An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Google and Blizzard are opening up StarCraft II to anyone who wants to teach artificial intelligence systems how to conduct warfare. Researchers can now use Google's DeepMind A.I. to test various theories for ways that machines can learn to make sense of complicated systems, in this case Blizzard's beloved real-time strategy game. In StarCraft II, players fight against one another by gathering resources to pay for defensive and offensive units. It has a healthy competitive community that is known for having a ludicrously high skill level. But considering that DeepMind A.I. has previously conquered complicated turn-based games like chess and go, a real-time strategy game makes sense as the next frontier. The companies announced the collaboration today at the BlizzCon fan event in Anaheim, California, and Google's DeepMind A.I. division posted a blog about the partnership and why StarCraft II is so ideal for machine-learning research. If you're wondering how much humans will have to teach A.I. about how to play and win at StarCraft, the answer is very little. DeepMind learned to beat the best go players in the world by teaching itself through trial and error. All the researchers had to do was explain how to determine success, and the A.I. can then begin playing games against itself on a loop while always reinforcing any strategies that lead to more success. For StarCraft, that will likely mean asking the A.I. to prioritize how long it survives and/or how much damage it does to the enemy's primary base. Or, maybe, researchers will find that defining success in a more abstract way will lead to better results, discovering the answers to all of this is the entire point of Google and Blizzard teaming up.

Elon Musk has had roofs on his mind lately. Last week, Musk unveiled the residential "solar roof," consisting of glass roof tiles with integrated solar panels. Today, he announced that customers will be able to add a glass roof to the Model S sedan for an extra $1,500. Tesla said that the glass roof can give passengers the feeling of "an open expansive cabin" that makes the Model S interior "feel amazing." Fortune reports: The move is another example of how Tesla continues to add new features and technology to its four-year-old vehicle, the second to debut in its growing lineup. In particular, Tesla has routinely updated the Model S with technology that has also been available in more recent car models. For example, the company's upcoming fourth car, the Model 3, will come with a glass roof. The new glass roof option also shows off Tesl'a new investment in automotive glass technology. Earlier this week Musk revealed that the company had created an automotive glass division. In the tweet on Friday, Musk said that the Model S glass roof was "very hard to develop."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: In what's a significant escalation in its censorship efforts, the Turkish government now wants to block the very same tools that tech-savvy citizens use to get around the government-imposed social media blocks. On Friday, the Turkish information technologies and communications authority, or BTK, ordered internet providers in the country to block Tor and several other censorship-circumvention Virtual Private Networks or VPNs, such as VPN Master, Hotspot Shield, Psiphon, Zenmate, TunnelBear, Zero, Vypr, Express, according to multiple local reports. Earlier in the day, the government had already blocked Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, and restrictions on messaging apps like WhatsApp and Skype were also reported. The independent monitoring organization TurkeyBlocks also reported throttling and other forms of censorship on Friday, linking the disruptions and blocks to the arrests of pro-Kurdish party leaders.

One of the biggest complaints with the new MacBook Pros is the lack of ports. There are between two and four USB-C (Thunderbolt 3) ports depending on the model you select -- that's it. If you need a SD card slot, HDMI, USB, or VGA port, you will need an adapter. In response to the criticism, Apple says they will be cutting prices for all of its USB-C (Thunderbolt 3) adapters: "We recognize that many users, especially pros, rely on legacy connectors to get work done today and they face a transition. We want to help them move to the latest technology and peripherals, as well as accelerate the growth of this new ecosystem. Through the end of the year, we are reducing prices on all USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 peripherals we sell, as well as the prices on Apple's USB-C adapters and cables." The Verge reports: It's a sign that Apple recognizes these dongles are a hassle, and it seems to hope that reducing the prices on them will lessen the pain of this transition. Starting immediately, all of Apple's USB-C adapters and some of its USB-C cables will have their prices cut by $6 to $20: USB-C to traditional USB adapter from $19 to $9; Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter from $49 to $29; USB-C to Lightning cable (1 meter) from $25 to $19; USB-C to Lightning cable (2 meters) from $35 to $29; Multiport adapter with HDMI, USB, and USB-C from $69 to $49; Multiport adapter with VGA, USB, and USB-C from $69 to $49; Only USB-C charging cables aren't being discounted. Apple is also cutting prices by around 25 percent on all third-party USB-C peripherals that it sells. SanDisk's USB-C SD card reader is getting a slightly steeper discount, from $49 to $29. The discounted adapters will be available at Apple's physical and online stores through the end of the year. It still has no plans to ship adapters in the box with the new MacBook Pro.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: No one can claim there hasn't been ample warning. The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 saga dragged out over multiple months, encompassing two recalls, several travel bans and then, ultimately, the untimely end for the troubled handset. Even still, some people just have trouble letting go. Starting November 18, Note 7 owners will not be able to connect to mobile networks in New Zealand, courtesy of a joint effort by Samsung and the The New Zealand Telecommunications Forum (TCF) to "blacklist" the device. No calls, no texts, no mobile data. Users will still be able to access WiFi, but the device will essentially be turned into a big Samsung iPod Touch. Samsung New Zealand added that it will work to contact all remaining Note 7 owners twice prior to the shut down, "to ensure they have received adequate notice." It remains to be seen whether the company will take similar action in other markets. "Numerous attempts by all providers have been made to contact owners and ask them to bring the phones in for replacement or refund, this action should further aid the return of the remaining handsets," TCF's CEO said in a statement issued today.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: No one can claim there hasn't been ample warning. The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 saga dragged out over multiple months, encompassing two recalls, several travel bans and then, ultimately, the untimely end for the troubled handset. Even still, some people just have trouble letting go. Starting November 18, Note 7 owners will not be able to connect to mobile networks in New Zealand, courtesy of a joint effort by Samsung and the The New Zealand Telecommunications Forum (TCF) to "blacklist" the device. No calls, no texts, no mobile data. Users will still be able to access WiFi, but the device will essentially be turned into a big Samsung iPod Touch. Samsung New Zealand added that it will work to contact all remaining Note 7 owners twice prior to the shut down, "to ensure they have received adequate notice." It remains to be seen whether the company will take similar action in other markets. "Numerous attempts by all providers have been made to contact owners and ask them to bring the phones in for replacement or refund, this action should further aid the return of the remaining handsets," TCF's CEO said in a statement issued today.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: No one can claim there hasn't been ample warning. The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 saga dragged out over multiple months, encompassing two recalls, several travel bans and then, ultimately, the untimely end for the troubled handset. Even still, some people just have trouble letting go. Starting November 18, Note 7 owners will not be able to connect to mobile networks in New Zealand, courtesy of a joint effort by Samsung and the The New Zealand Telecommunications Forum (TCF) to "blacklist" the device. No calls, no texts, no mobile data. Users will still be able to access WiFi, but the device will essentially be turned into a big Samsung iPod Touch. Samsung New Zealand added that it will work to contact all remaining Note 7 owners twice prior to the shut down, "to ensure they have received adequate notice." It remains to be seen whether the company will take similar action in other markets. "Numerous attempts by all providers have been made to contact owners and ask them to bring the phones in for replacement or refund, this action should further aid the return of the remaining handsets," TCF's CEO said in a statement issued today.

New submitter TroII writes: After Microsoft ended its year-long "free" Windows 10 offer, new installations have slowed predictably. But in an unexpected turn, October saw more new installs of both Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 than of Windows 10. Compared to September's numbers, market share increased only 0.06% for Windows 10, while new installations of Windows 7 and 8.1 were an order of magnitude higher at 0.68%. According to tracking firm NetMarketShare, Windows 7 is still by far the most popular version of the OS, installed on more than twice as many computers as Microsoft's latest offering.

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.

Last week, we wrote about a federal lawsuit that is challenging a New York state law that makes it a misdemeanor to show a marked election ballot to others. Today, we learn that a federal judge has refused to block enforcement of the law. Reuters reports: U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel in Manhattan said it would "wreak havoc on election-day logistics" to issue a preliminary injunction against the law, which prohibits the display of "ballot selfies." Three voters sued on Oct. 26 to block enforcement of the law, saying that sharing ballot selfies was a form of speech protected by the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment. But the judge said that because of the imminence of next Tuesday's election, the voters needed to show a "clear or substantial likelihood" that their lawsuit would succeed before he could issue an injunction, and that they had not done so. "The public's interest in orderly elections outweighs the plaintiffs' interest in taking and posting ballot selfies," though they remained free to express their political message through "other powerful means," Castel wrote. Leo Glickman, a lawyer for the voters, said in an interview his clients were disappointed by the ruling and do not plan to appeal it, but will keep pressing their case ahead of the 2017 election cycle. "People should be able to express themselves freely by photographing their marked ballots and putting them on social media feeds," he said, adding that state legislators have expressed interest in having the law repealed.

An anonymous reader writes: A new report from the UK's Ministry of Justice promises to work with drone manufacturers to get prison locations geoblocked as a native feature of the drone, in the face of rising incidents of drone incursion into prison space. The report, which outlines many proposed reforms to the UK's prison system, says that the MoJ will "trial, together with industry, the inclusion of prison coordinates in no-fly zones which have the potential to be programmed into the majority of drones on the market (although we must think carefully about how much information we are willing to put into the public domain and therefore make available to the criminal community)." The last few years have seen increased pressure on government to enforce geoblock zones on drone manufacturers, who have responded to controversial drone incursion incidents with permanent or temporary geoblock software updates.

An anonymous reader writes: A new report from the UK's Ministry of Justice promises to work with drone manufacturers to get prison locations geoblocked as a native feature of the drone, in the face of rising incidents of drone incursion into prison space. The report, which outlines many proposed reforms to the UK's prison system, says that the MoJ will "trial, together with industry, the inclusion of prison coordinates in no-fly zones which have the potential to be programmed into the majority of drones on the market (although we must think carefully about how much information we are willing to put into the public domain and therefore make available to the criminal community)." The last few years have seen increased pressure on government to enforce geoblock zones on drone manufacturers, who have responded to controversial drone incursion incidents with permanent or temporary geoblock software updates.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Department of Justice today sued DirecTV and its owner, ATT, saying the satellite TV company colluded with competitors during contentious negotiations to broadcast Los Angeles Dodgers games. Dodgers games have been blacked out in much of Los Angeles because pay-TV providers have been unwilling to pay the price demanded by SportsNet LA, the Dodgers channel operated by the baseball franchise and Time Warner Cable. But the DOJ's antitrust division placed the blame for this situation on ATT and DirecTV. In a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in California, it alleges that DirecTV was a "ringleader" in a coordinated scheme with cable companies Cox and Charter, according to a DOJ announcement. ATT completed its purchase of DirecTV in July 2015, but the complaint covers a dispute that began before the merger and continues to this day. The Dodgers channel owners offered carriage licenses to the pay-TV companies in January 2014, but the channel is still not available on DirecTV, Cox, or ATT's wireline TV service. (Games are now available on Charter, which purchased Time Warner Cable this year.) The lawsuit "alleges that DirecTV unlawfully exchanged competitively-sensitive information with Cox, Charter, and ATT during the companies' negotiations for the right to telecast the Dodgers Channel," the DOJ announcement said. "Specifically, the complaint alleges that DirecTV and each of these competitors agreed to and did exchange non-public information about their companies' ongoing negotiations to telecast the Dodgers Channel, as well as their companies' future plans to carry -- or not carry -- the channel." The companies used this strategy "to obtain bargaining leverage and to reduce the risk that they would lose subscribers if they decided not to carry the channel but a competitor chose to do so." The information these companies learned from each other "through these unlawful agreements" was a major factor in their decision not to carry the Dodgers channel, the complaint said. ATT said it will fight the lawsuit and blamed Time Warner Cable for charging unreasonably high prices. The asking price was reportedly about $5 a month per subscriber regardless of how many people watch the games.

MojoKid writes: There aren't many phones on the market currently that can boast an edge-to-edge display with minimal or no bezel on top and bottom, save for perhaps Xiaomi's recently unveiled Mi MIX. However, word on the web is that the field will expand by at least one more next year, and specifically with Samsung's Galaxy S8. This runs contrary to a previous rumor that the Galaxy S8 might only come with a curved edge display. That would be surprising since Samsung needs to sell as many Galaxy S8 phones as possible after the Galaxy Note 7 debacle. Only offering a curved edge model could be counterproductive to that goal, though offering an edge-to-edge display could be the spark Samsung needs. Park Won-sang, a principal engineer at Samsung Display noted the division would roll out a full-screen smartphone display with a "display area ratio [that] reaches more than 90 percent next year," during the iMiD 2016 display exhibition in Seoul last week. The engineer added that Samsung may even extend the display area ratio to 99 percent in the years ahead, which would mean virtually the entire front of the phone would be the screen. In case you're wondering, most of today's smartphones utilize a display area to bezel ratio of around 80 percent.

Gawker Media, which filed for bankruptcy after losing a lawsuit brought by the former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, has settled the case. The settlement, which court documents indicate is for $31 million, comes less than eight months after a jury awarded Mr. Hogan $140 million in damages in an invasion of privacy case lawsuit over Gawker's publication of a video that showed Hogan having sex with a friend's wife. From a report on ABC: Settlement documents filed at a New York federal bankruptcy court stipulate that Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, will get $31 million plus share with other creditors 45 percent of any additional funds that come into the bankruptcy court by virtue of third-party claims brought by Gawker. Hogan's camp said in a statement: "After almost five years of litigation all parties agreed it was time to resolve this matter. This will allow people to go about their lives and concentrate on things more important than continued court proceedings. As in any case involving negotiation all parties give-and-take. We would like to thank everyone involved in the process." In a blog post on the settlement, Nick Denton, the founder of Gawker Media, wrote: "After four years of litigation funded by a billionaire with a grudge going back even further, a settlement has been reached. The saga is over."

On October 28th, Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk unveiled the residential "solar roof," consisting of glass roof tiles with integrated solar panels. Not only are they more durable than traditional roof panels, but they offer efficiency that is 98 percent as good as traditional, photovoltaic panels. The company also announced the Powerwall 2, a home battery that can store 14 kWh of energy, with a 5 kW continuous power draw, and 7 kW peak. It's designed to store the energy from the solar roof during day to power your home at night. Darrell Etherington via TechCrunch explains why these solar roof tiles are such a big deal: It's easy to dismiss the aesthetic import of how Tesla's tiles look, but it's actually important, and a real consideration for homeowners looking to build new homes or revamp their existing ones. The appearance of the tiles, which come in four distinct flavors (Textured Glass, Slate Glass, Tuscan Glass and Smooth Glass) is going to be a core consideration for prospective buyers, especially those at the top end of the addressable market with the disposable income available to do everything they can to ensure their home looks as good as it possibly can. As with other kinds of technologies that are looking to make the leap from outlier oddity to mainstream mainstay, solar has a hurdle to leap in terms of customer perception. Existing solar designs, and even so-called attempts to make them more consistent with traditional offerings like the above-mentioned Dow Chemical project, leave a lot to be desired in terms of creating something that can be broadly described as good-looking. Tesla has been referred to as the Apple of the automotive world by more than a few analysts and members of the media, and if there's one thing Apple does well, it's capitalize on the so-called -- halo effect. This is the phenomenon whereby customers of one of its lines of business are likely to become customers of some of the others; iPhone buyers tend to often go on to own a Mac, for instance. For Tesla, this represents an opportunity to jump-start its home solar business (which it'll take on in earnest provided its planned acquisition of SolarCity goes through) through the knock-on effects of its brisk Tesla EV sales, including the tremendous pre-order interest for the Model 3. Tesla's solar tiles claim to be able to power a standard home, and provide spare power via the new Powerwall 2 battery in case of inclement weather or other outages. Musk says that the overall cost will still be less than installing a regular old roof and paying the electric company for power from conventional sources. But Musk's claims about the new benefits of the new solutions don't end there. Tesla's tiles will actually be more resilient than traditional roofing materials, including terra-cotta, clay and slate tiles. Solar roofing, Powerwall and Tesla cars taken together represent a new kind of ecosystem in consumer tech, one that carries a promise of self-sufficiency in addition to ecological benefits. Tesla has already tipped its hand with respect to how it intends to make vehicle ownership a revenue generator for its drivers, rather than a cost center.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: There's a new, more powerful Internet-of-things botnet in town, and it has managed to infect almost 3,500 devices in just five days, according to a recently published report. Linux/IRCTelnet, as the underlying malware has been named, borrows code from several existing malicious IoT applications. Most notably, it lifts entire sections of source code from Aidra, one of the earliest known IoT bot packages. Aidra was discovered infecting more than 30,000 embedded Linux devices in an audacious and ethically questionable research project that infected more than 420,000 Internet-connected devices in an attempt to measure the security of the global network. As reported by the anonymous researcher, Aidra forced infected devices to carry out a variety of distributed denial-of-service attacks but worked on a limited number of devices. Linux/IRCTelnet also borrows telnet-scanning logic from a newer IoT bot known as Bashlight. It further lifts a list of some 60 widely used username-password combinations built into Mirai, a different IoT bot app whose source code was recently published on the Internet. It goes on to add code for attacking sites that run the next-generation Internet protocol known as IPv6. The best-of-breed approach "is driving a high infection speed of Linux/IRCTelnet (new Aidra) so it can [infect] almost 3,500 bot clients within only five days from the moment its loader was first detected," a researcher who goes by the handle Unixfreakjp wrote in a blog post reporting on the new malware. "To incarnate a legendary botnet code into a new version that can [target] the recent vulnerable threat landscape is really inviting more bad news."

itwbennett quotes a report from CSO Online: Following similar decisions by Mozilla and Apple, Google plans to reject new digital certificates issued by certificate authorities WoSign and StartCom because they violated industry rules and best practices. The ban will go into effect in Chrome version 56, which is currently in the dev release channel, and will apply to all certificates issued by the two authorities after October 21. Browsers rely on digital certificates to verify the identity of websites and to establish encrypted connections with them. Certificates issued before October 21 will continue to be trusted as long as they're published to the public Certificate Transparency logs or have been issued to a limited set of domains owned by known WoSign and StartCom customers. "Due to a number of technical limitations and concerns, Google Chrome is unable to trust all pre-existing certificates while ensuring our users are sufficiently protected from further misissuance," said Chrome security team member Andrew Whalley in a blog post Monday. "As a result of these changes, customers of WoSign and StartCom may find their certificates no longer work in Chrome 56. Sites that find themselves on the whitelist will be able to request early removal once they've transitioned to new certificates," Whalley said. "Any attempt by WoSign or StartCom to circumvent these controls will result in immediate and complete removal of trust."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Microsoft Corp said on Tuesday that a hacking group previously linked to the Russian government and U.S. political hacks is behind recent cyber attacks that exploit a newly discovered flaw in its Windows operating system. Microsoft said that a patch to defend Windows users against this sort of attack will be released on Nov. 8. The software maker said in an advisory on its website there had been a small number of attacks using "spear phishing" emails from a hacking group known Strontium, which is more widely known as "Fancy Bear" or APT 28. A U.S. intelligence expert on Russian cyber activity said that Fancy Bear primarily works for or on behalf of the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency, which U.S. intelligence officials have concluded were responsible for hacks of Democratic Party databases and emails. Microsoft said the attacks exploited a vulnerability in Adobe Systems Inc's Flash software and one in the Windows operating system. Adobe released a patch for that vulnerability on Monday as security researchers with Google went public with details on the attack.

Earlier this year, we ran a story about how even possessions as personal as one's car or tractor, or insulin pump could not be legally hacked by the owner, but those constraints are things of the past now. From a report on Wired: Last Friday, a new exemption to the decades-old law known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act quietly kicked in, carving out protections for Americans to hack their own devices without fear that the DMCA's ban on circumventing protections on copyrighted systems would allow manufacturers to sue themt (Editor's note: the website may block users who use adblocking tools. Here's an alternate source). One exemption, crucially, will allow new forms of security research on those consumer devices. Another allows for the digital repair of vehicles. Together, the security community and DIYers are hoping those protections, which were enacted by the Library of Congress's Copyright Office in October of 2015 but delayed a full year, will spark a new era of benevolent hacking for both research and repair. "This is a tremendously important improvement for consumer protection," says Andrea Matwyshyn, a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University. "The Copyright Office has demonstrated that it understands our changed technological reality, that in every aspect of consumers' lives, we rely on code," says Matwyshyn, who argued for the exemptions last year. For now, the exemptions are limited to a two-year trial period. And the security research exemption in particular only applies to what the Copyright Office calls "good-faith" testing, "in a controlled environment designed to avoid any harm to individuals or to the public." As Matwyshyn puts it, "We're not talking about testing your neighbor's pacemaker while it's implanted. We're talking about a controlled lab and a device owned by the researcher."

An anonymous reader writes: A New York judge has ruled that CDN provider Cloudflare can be compelled to disclose customer details for the domains libgen.io and bookfi.org, both of which are alleged to provide pirated access to scientific and technical papers, infringing the rights of controversial academic publisher Elsevier. Judge Robert Sweet ruled 'The evidence set forth...demonstrates that Elsevier (publisher who filed the lawsuit) is unable to identify the operators of libgen.org or bookfi.org, or the true location of the computer servers upon which those websites are hosted, absent the ability to take discovery from Cloudflare.' Sweet's ruling refers to 'absent identifying information' necessitating an injunction for Cloudflare to surrender details intended to begin an investigative financial trail to the domain registrants. This information could have been provided by British company TLD Registrar Solutions, who registered libgen.org in 2012 -- and hardly seems likely to retrench under pressure, given the oft-criticised transparency of legal process between the U.S. and the United Kingdom. ICANN and WHOIS also seem like obvious first points of enquiry (however ICANN's secession from control by the United States government at the end of September may have complicated using it as a legal resource), but apparently, neither can help.

Opera has long advertised its free VPN service Opera Max to customers. But it looks like, the company isn't pleased with users keeping its servers at work at all times. Over the last few days, according to a report on AndroidPolice, Opera Max has introduced ads on its apps, as well as links to sponsored apps. But the company is not done yet. It now requires a user to go back to the app and "add time" to the free VPN service every 12 hours if they wish to continue the service. Adding time doesn't cost anything, but it will subject users to an ad on each occasion.

In light of the Democratic National Committee hack by the Russians earlier this year, a "tightly knit community of computer scientists" working in a variety of fields came up with the hypothesis, "which they set out to rigorously test: If the Russians were worming their way into the DNC, they might very well be attacking other entities central to the presidential campaign, including Donald Trump's many servers." In late July, one of the scientists who asked to be referred to as Tea Leaves discovered possible malware emanating from Russia, with the destination domain having Trump in its name. What the researcher saw "was a bank in Moscow that kept irregularly pinging a server registered to the Trump Organization on Fifth Avenue": Slate Magazine reports: More data was needed, so he began carefully keeping logs of the Trump server's DNS activity. As he collected the logs, he would circulate them in periodic batches to colleagues in the cybersecurity world. Six of them began scrutinizing them for clues. The researchers quickly dismissed their initial fear that the logs represented a malware attack. The communication wasn't the work of bots. The irregular pattern of server lookups actually resembled the pattern of human conversation -- conversations that began during office hours in New York and continued during office hours in Moscow. It dawned on the researchers that this wasn't an attack, but a sustained relationship between a server registered to the Trump Organization and two servers registered to an entity called Alfa Bank. The server was first registered to Trump's business in 2009 and was set up to run consumer marketing campaigns. It had a history of sending mass emails on behalf of Trump-branded properties and products. Researchers were ultimately convinced that the server indeed belonged to Trump. But now this capacious server handled a strangely small load of traffic, such a small load that it would be hard for a company to justify the expense and trouble it would take to maintain it. That wasn't the only oddity. When the researchers pinged the server, they received error messages. They concluded that the server was set to accept only incoming communication from a very small handful of IP addresses. A small portion of the logs showed communication with a server belonging to Michigan-based Spectrum Health.

Similar to the smartwatch market, the tablet market is in rough shape. According to estimates provided by IDC, the tablet market has been in decline for eight quarters in a row, and no company managed to ship more than 10 million units. VentureBeat reports: Q3 2016 saw a 14.7 percent year-over-year decline: 43 million units shipped worldwide, compared to 50.5 million units in the same quarter last year. Both Apple and Samsung saw their shipment numbers fall once again, though Apple gained share, up 1.9 points to 21.5 percent market share. Samsung slipped 0.9 points to 15.1 percent, but still shipped more than double the units than those behind it. This is the third time that Amazon has placed in the top five in a non-Q4 quarter -- typically, the company only shows up due to the holiday season. The company's low-cost Fire tablet has propelled the company to the top, though the growth shown is skewed by the fact that IDC did not include the 6-inch tablets offered by Amazon in Q3 2015. Lenovo shipped fewer units but grew 0.3 percent to 6.3 percent share, while Huawei shipped more units and gained 1.9 points to 5.6 percent. Both companies have maintained their positions for many quarters now and don't look like they will be displaced.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission has given a helping hand to Louisville, Kentucky, in the city's attempt to enforce local rules that would make it easier for Google Fiber to compete against ATT. ATT sued the local government in Louisville and Jefferson County in February to stop a One Touch Make Ready (OTMR) ordinance designed to give Google Fiber or other new competitors faster access to utility poles. Today, the US government submitted a statement of interest (full text) on behalf of the FCC, which says that one of ATT's primary legal arguments is incorrect. ATT -- also known as BellSouth Telecommunications in Kentucky -- argued that the Louisville ordinance is preempted by the FCC's pole-attachment rules. The local ordinance "conflicts with the procedures created by the FCC, and upsets the careful balances struck by the FCC in crafting its pole attachment regulations," ATT's lawsuit said. But that is false, the FCC says. The FCC does have rules ensuring reasonable access to utility poles, but states are allowed to opt out of the federal pole-attachment rules if they certify to the commission that they regulate the rates, terms, and conditions of pole attachments. Kentucky is one of 20 states that has opted out of the federal regime and imposed its own rules, the FCC noted. Accordingly, the federal pole-attachment regulations enacted under Section 224 [of the Communications Act] simply do not apply here," the FCC wrote. More generally, One Touch Make Ready rules are consistent with federal communications policies and regulations that seek expanded broadband deployment, the FCC also wrote.

Earlier this year, we learned about China's first "intelligent security robot," which was said to include "electrically charged riot control tool." We now know what this robot is up to, and what its developed unit looks like. Reader dcblogs writes: China recently deployed what it calls a "security robot" in a Shenzhen airport. It's named AnBot and patrols around the clock. It is a cone-shaped robot that includes a cattle prod. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which look at autonomous system deployments in a report last week, said AnBot, which has facial recognition capability, is designed to be linked with China's latest supercomputers. AnBot may seem like a 'Saturday Night Live' prop, but it's far from it. The back end of this "intelligent security robot" is linked to China's Tianhe-2 supercomputer, where it has access to cloud services. AnBot conducts patrols, recognizes threats and has multiple cameras that use facial recognition. These cloud services give the robots petascale processing power, well beyond onboard processing capabilities in the robot. The supercomputer connection is there "to enhance the intelligent learning capabilities and human-machine interface of these devices," said the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review.

Elon Musk of SpaceX wants to settle humans on Mars. Some talk about taking the Moon Village route. But Jeff Bezos has a different kind of off-Earth home in mind when he talks about having millions of people living and working in space. His long-range vision focuses on a decades-old concept for huge artificial habitats that are best known today as O'Neill cylinders. From a report on GeekWire (edited and condensed): The concept was laid out in 1976 in a classic book by physicist Gerard O'Neill, titled "The High Frontier." The idea is to create cylinder-shaped structures in outer space, and give them enough of a spin that residents on the inner surface of the cylinder could live their lives in Earth-style gravity. The habitat's interior would be illuminated either by reflected sunlight or sunlike artificial light. Bezos referred to his long-term goal of having millions of people living and working in space, as well as his enabling goal of creating the 'heavy lifting infrastructure' to make that happen. In Bezos' view, dramatically reducing the cost of access to space is a key step toward those goals. "Then we get to see Gerard O'Neill's ideas start to come to life, and many of the other ideas from science fiction," Bezos said. "The dreamers come first. It's always the science-fiction guys: They think of everything first, and then the builders come along and they make it happen. But it takes time." For Musk, the prime driver behind settling people on Mars is to provide a backup plan for humanity in the event of a planetwide catastrophe -- an asteroid strike, for example, or environmental ruin, or a species-killing pandemic. Bezos sees a different imperative at work: humanity's growing need for energy. "We need to go into space if we want to continue growing civilization," he explained. "If you take baseline energy usage on Earth and compound it at just 3 percent per year for less than 500 years, you have to cover the entire surface of the Earth in solar cells. That's just not going to happen. [...] I predict that in the next few hundred years, all heavy industry will move off planet. It will be just way more convenient to do it in space, where you have better access to resources, better access to 24/7 solar power," he said last weekend. "Solar power on Earth is not that great, because the planet shades us half the time. In space, you get solar power all the time. So there'll be a lot of advantages to doing heavy manufacturing there, and Earth will end up zoned residential and light industry. [...] We want to go to space to save the Earth. I don't like the 'Plan B' idea that we want to go to space so we have a backup planet. ... We have sent probes to every planet in this solar system, and believe me, this is the best planet. There is no doubt. This is the one that you want to protect."

Elon Musk of SpaceX wants to settle humans on Mars. Some talk about taking the Moon Village route. But Jeff Bezos has a different kind of off-Earth home in mind when he talks about having millions of people living and working in space. His long-range vision focuses on a decades-old concept for huge artificial habitats that are best known today as O'Neill cylinders. From a report on GeekWire (edited and condensed): The concept was laid out in 1976 in a classic book by physicist Gerard O'Neill, titled "The High Frontier." The idea is to create cylinder-shaped structures in outer space, and give them enough of a spin that residents on the inner surface of the cylinder could live their lives in Earth-style gravity. The habitat's interior would be illuminated either by reflected sunlight or sunlike artificial light. Bezos referred to his long-term goal of having millions of people living and working in space, as well as his enabling goal of creating the 'heavy lifting infrastructure' to make that happen. In Bezos' view, dramatically reducing the cost of access to space is a key step toward those goals. "Then we get to see Gerard O'Neill's ideas start to come to life, and many of the other ideas from science fiction," Bezos said. "The dreamers come first. It's always the science-fiction guys: They think of everything first, and then the builders come along and they make it happen. But it takes time." For Musk, the prime driver behind settling people on Mars is to provide a backup plan for humanity in the event of a planetwide catastrophe -- an asteroid strike, for example, or environmental ruin, or a species-killing pandemic. Bezos sees a different imperative at work: humanity's growing need for energy. "We need to go into space if we want to continue growing civilization," he explained. "If you take baseline energy usage on Earth and compound it at just 3 percent per year for less than 500 years, you have to cover the entire surface of the Earth in solar cells. That's just not going to happen. [...] I predict that in the next few hundred years, all heavy industry will move off planet. It will be just way more convenient to do it in space, where you have better access to resources, better access to 24/7 solar power," he said last weekend. "Solar power on Earth is not that great, because the planet shades us half the time. In space, you get solar power all the time. So there'll be a lot of advantages to doing heavy manufacturing there, and Earth will end up zoned residential and light industry. [...] We want to go to space to save the Earth. I don't like the 'Plan B' idea that we want to go to space so we have a backup planet. ... We have sent probes to every planet in this solar system, and believe me, this is the best planet. There is no doubt. This is the one that you want to protect."

Linux distributions have emerged as one of the beneficiaries in the aftermath of the MacBook Pros launch. Many people aren't pleased with the offering and prices of Apple's three new laptops and some of them are resorting to Linux-powered laptops. From a report on BetaNews: Immediately after the Apple Keynote, famed Ubuntu laptop and desktop seller, System76, saw a huge jump in traffic from people looking to buy its machines. The traffic was so intense, that it needed to upgrade servers to keep up, it said. "We experienced much more traffic than we had prepared for, the website didn't go hard down but experienced slowness. We had to scale up to return to normal. It was a pretty big surge, I don't have the details in front of me at the moment but I've not really heard of anything like this before. People being so underwhelmed by a product that immediately following a new product release they actively seek out competitor's products," says Ryan Sipes, Community Manager, System76. I decided to compare specifications and pricing on my own, so I headed to both Apple.com and System76.com to compare. Apple's new 15-inch MacBook Pro starts at $2,400. This machine has a Quad-core Sklyake i7, maxes out at 16GB of RAM, has an NVMe 256GB SSD, and a Radeon Pro 450 with a paltry 2GB memory. Alternatively, I headed to System76 and configured its 15-inch Oryx Pro. I closely matched the MacBook Pro specs, with a Quad-core Sklyake i7 and NVMe 256GB SSD. Instead of 16GB of RAM as found on the Apple, I configured with 32GB (you can go up to 64GB if needed). By default, it comes with a 6GB Nvidia GTX 1060. The price? Less than $2,000! In other words, the System76 machine with much better specs is less expensive than Apple's.

An anonymous reader writes: EFF's list of costume ideas for digital rights activists include a Stingray costume, dressing up like a Privacy Badger (or a patent troll), and using facepaint to simulate the eerie digitization algorithms that are currently capturing images of your face for government databases. "Just this week we learned that facial recognition is far more prevalent among local and federal law enforcement than we thought, with at least 26 states using this biometric technology... To draw attention to this emerging threat to privacy, you can use your face painting skills to recreate the digitization algorithms on your own mug based on public records we and others have obtained from law enforcement agencies."
Sixteen states already grant the FBI access to their DMV databases, reports EFF, noting that it's "almost completely unregulated," with one study reporting that 50% of American faces are already in a government database.

An anonymous reader writes: EFF's list of costume ideas for digital rights activists include a Stingray costume, dressing up like a Privacy Badger (or a patent troll), and using facepaint to simulate the eerie digitization algorithms that are currently capturing images of your face for government databases. "Just this week we learned that facial recognition is far more prevalent among local and federal law enforcement than we thought, with at least 26 states using this biometric technology... To draw attention to this emerging threat to privacy, you can use your face painting skills to recreate the digitization algorithms on your own mug based on public records we and others have obtained from law enforcement agencies."
Sixteen states already grant the FBI access to their DMV databases, reports EFF, noting that it's "almost completely unregulated," with one study reporting that 50% of American faces are already in a government database.

The BBC reports that Iceland's Pirate Party "has tripled its seats in the 63-seat parliament, election results show. It is in joint second place with the Left-Greens -- with 10 seats each." An anonymous reader quotes USA Today: Iceland's hacker-led, upstart Pirate Party failed to make the nation's powerful Independence Party walk the plank after all. The Pirate Party -- led by a former WikiLeaks collaborator -- rode the populist movement sweeping Europe to make big gains in Saturday's election, but returns on Sunday gave the largest bloc of seats to the center-right Independence Party...

Pirate Party co-founder Birgitta Jonsdottir, who became involved with WikiLeaks in 2010 after its leader Julian Assange visited Iceland, said she was satisfied with the Pirate plunder at the polls. "Our internal predictions showed 10 to 15%, so this is at the top of the range."
Iceland's prime minister was forced to resign in April after the Panama Papers suggested his family had sheltered its personal wealth outside the country.

This summer the FCC convened a "Robocall Task Force" to help consumers fight unwanted automated telemarketers, and Wednesday the coalition finally delivered a report recommending a "Do Not Originate" list so carriers could spot spoofed numbers which should be blocked. A trial of the "DNO" list that's been running for the last few weeks on some IRS numbers has resulted in a 90 percent drop in the volume of IRS scam calls, officials from AT&T, which leads the strike force, said during the FCC meeting Wednesday. The carriers on the strike force, which include Sprint, Verizon, and many others, plan to continue testing the DNO list in the coming months, with the intent to fully implement it some time next year...

The strike force members also are working on a system to classify calls into categories, such as political or charity, as a way to give consumers more information before they answer calls from unknown numbers. And, the group said it has developed a working solution for authentication between VoIP applications and traditional landline networks as another way to defeat spoofing from callers in foreign countries.
Early next year they're planning larger tests -- and the strike force has also created a new site describing how to block and report robocalls.

Seems like a good time to revisit this question -- assuming anyone's still using a netbook. Long-time Slashdot reader Qbertino writes: I'm looking for a cheap lightweight netbook that is Linux-friendly, i.e. lets me install Linux without any shoddy modern BIOS getting in my way... The Lenovo 100S-11 looks really neat, but I just read about installation problems... Are there any alternatives?

And if there aren't, what experience do you guys have running Linux on a Chromebook using Crouton -- the Linux-parallel-to-Chrome-OS hack? Is it a feasible alternative to dumping ChromeOS and installing a 100% lightweight Linux?
His budget is around $200, and he ends his submission with "Many thanks from a fellow Slashdotter." So leave your suggestions in the comments. What's the best cheap Linux-friendly netbook?

20 years ago this week, Archive.org started with just 500,000 sites. An anonymous reader quotes the San Francisco Chronicle: Now, the nonprofit San Francisco organization -- which celebrated the milestone with a party Wednesday night -- curates a vast digital archive that includes more than 370 million websites and 273 billion pages, many captured before they disappeared forever. It's more than an archive of Internet sites. The organization, founded by computer scientist and entrepreneur Brewster Kahle, now has a virtual storehouse ranging from digitally converted books and historic film to funny memes and audio recordings of Grateful Dead concerts...

The Internet Archive has survived through community donations and by working with about 1,000 libraries around the world that pay the group to help digitize books and other material. But the site itself remains free.
We've written about Archive.org over the years, and its collection of 2,400 DOS games, over 10,000 Amiga games (and other software) and a massive collection of arcade machine emulators. And here's what Slashdot looked like back in 1998. But what's your favorite page on Archive.org?

20 years ago this week, Archive.org started with just 500,000 sites. An anonymous reader quotes the San Francisco Chronicle: Now, the nonprofit San Francisco organization -- which celebrated the milestone with a party Wednesday night -- curates a vast digital archive that includes more than 370 million websites and 273 billion pages, many captured before they disappeared forever. It's more than an archive of Internet sites. The organization, founded by computer scientist and entrepreneur Brewster Kahle, now has a virtual storehouse ranging from digitally converted books and historic film to funny memes and audio recordings of Grateful Dead concerts...

The Internet Archive has survived through community donations and by working with about 1,000 libraries around the world that pay the group to help digitize books and other material. But the site itself remains free.
We've written about Archive.org over the years, and its collection of 2,400 DOS games, over 10,000 Amiga games (and other software) and a massive collection of arcade machine emulators. And here's what Slashdot looked like back in 1998. But what's your favorite page on Archive.org?

20 years ago this week, Archive.org started with just 500,000 sites. An anonymous reader quotes the San Francisco Chronicle: Now, the nonprofit San Francisco organization -- which celebrated the milestone with a party Wednesday night -- curates a vast digital archive that includes more than 370 million websites and 273 billion pages, many captured before they disappeared forever. It's more than an archive of Internet sites. The organization, founded by computer scientist and entrepreneur Brewster Kahle, now has a virtual storehouse ranging from digitally converted books and historic film to funny memes and audio recordings of Grateful Dead concerts...

The Internet Archive has survived through community donations and by working with about 1,000 libraries around the world that pay the group to help digitize books and other material. But the site itself remains free.
We've written about Archive.org over the years, and its collection of 2,400 DOS games, over 10,000 Amiga games (and other software) and a massive collection of arcade machine emulators. And here's what Slashdot looked like back in 1998. But what's your favorite page on Archive.org?

A Phoenix teenager mistakenly tweeted a link to JavaScript exploit which forced iOS devices to automatically dial and re-dial 911. An anonymous reader quotes Softpedia: The teenager created several weaponized versions of this bug which would constantly dial a phone number, or show annoying popups. The teenager says he wanted to prank his friends, thinking it would be "funny," but when he shared the weaponized link online, he shared a version that instead of showing annoying popups, redialed a phone number, which in this case was 911.
In September researchers calculated just 6,000 smartphones can take down an entire state's 911 system, while more than 1,849 people clicked on this link, according to the article. Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office searched the teenager's home -- "several items were seized" -- and they've charged him with three felony counts for computer tampering.

After Wednesday's announcement of their new Surface Studio tablet, Microsoft launched a campaign to entice MacBook users to try Surface tablets. An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes TechCrunch: Essentially, the company is offering MacBook owners $650 toward a Surface Pro or Surface Book, if they trade in their Apple laptop. Sure, it's all promotion, but it's the sort of gag that affords the company opportunity to showcase its perceived advantages over Cupertino as the company looks to appeal more and more toward creatives -- a category long dominated by Apple.
The offer is only valid through November 7th, according to Microsoft's official rules, and the deal does not extend to iPads.

Ukrainian activists have compromised 2,337 messages in the Microsoft Outlook accounts of two assistants to a top aide of Vladimir Putin. An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes NBC News: A Ukrainian group calling itself Cyber Hunta has released more than a gigabyte of emails and other material from the office of one of Vladimir Putin's top aides, Vladislav Surkov, that show Russia's fingerprints all over the separatist movement in Ukraine. While the Kremlin has denied the relationship between Moscow and the separatists, the emails show in great detail how Russia controlled virtually every detail of the separatist effort in the Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine, which has torn the country apart and led to a Russian takeover of Crimea...

"This is a serious hack," said Maks Czuperski, head of the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council, which has searched through the email dump and placed selected emails online. "We have seen so much happen to the United States, other countries at the hands of Russia," said Czuperski. "Not so much to Russia. It was only a question of time that some of the anonymous guys like Cyber Hunta would come to strike them back."
A senior U.S. intelligence official told NBC News that the U.S. "had no role" in the breach -- but when asked if the material was authentic, replied there was "nothing to indicate otherwise."

Apple released new MacBook Pros yesterday that feature Intel's year-old Skylake microarchitcure, as opposed to the newer Kaby Lake architecture. Two days earlier, Microsoft did the same thing when it released the Surface Studio. Given the improvements Kaby Lake processors have over Skylake processors, one would think they would be included in the latest and greatest products from Microsoft and Apple. Gizmodo explains why that's not the case: In the case of the new 15-inch MacBook the answer is simple. "The Kaby Lake chip doesn't exist yet," an Apple rep told Gizmodo. Kaby Lake is being rolled out relatively slowly, and it's only available in a few forms and wattages. The 15-inch MacBook Pro uses a quad-core processor that has no Kaby Lake equivalent currently. That particular laptop really does have the fastest processor available. The same goes for the Microsoft Surface Studio and updated Surface Book -- both also use a quad-core Skylake processor with no Kaby Lake counterpart. But the Studio and Surface Book are also using much older video cards from the Nvidia 900 series. Nvidia has much faster and less power-hungry chips (the 1000 series) available based on the Pascal architecture. Microsoft's reasoning for going with older video cards is nearly identical to Apple's for going with a slower processor in its 13-inch MacBook Pro: the Nvidia 1000 series came out too late. The major intimation was that Kaby Lake and Pascal came so late in the design process that it would have delayed the final products if they'd chosen to use them. New technology, no matter how amazing an upgrade it might be, still requires considerable testing before it can be shipped to consumers. One minor bug, particularly in a system as engineered as the Surface Studio or MacBook Pro, can turn catastrophic if engineers aren't careful. In the case of Microsoft, it's frustrating, because that old GPU is significantly slower than the Pascal GPUs available. It's a little less frustrating in Apple's case, largely because of the old processor microarchitecture that Apple elected to shove into its new 13-inch MacBook Pro. Apple went with a new Skylake dual core processor that draws a lot of power -- more so than any Kaby Lake processor available. It then uses all that extra power to ramp up the speeds of the processor. Which means it is capable of pulling off speeds that can actually match those of the fastest Kaby Lake processor out there. The only downside to this decision is battery life.

Apple released new MacBook Pros yesterday that feature Intel's year-old Skylake microarchitcure, as opposed to the newer Kaby Lake architecture. Two days earlier, Microsoft did the same thing when it released the Surface Studio. Given the improvements Kaby Lake processors have over Skylake processors, one would think they would be included in the latest and greatest products from Microsoft and Apple. Gizmodo explains why that's not the case: In the case of the new 15-inch MacBook the answer is simple. "The Kaby Lake chip doesn't exist yet," an Apple rep told Gizmodo. Kaby Lake is being rolled out relatively slowly, and it's only available in a few forms and wattages. The 15-inch MacBook Pro uses a quad-core processor that has no Kaby Lake equivalent currently. That particular laptop really does have the fastest processor available. The same goes for the Microsoft Surface Studio and updated Surface Book -- both also use a quad-core Skylake processor with no Kaby Lake counterpart. But the Studio and Surface Book are also using much older video cards from the Nvidia 900 series. Nvidia has much faster and less power-hungry chips (the 1000 series) available based on the Pascal architecture. Microsoft's reasoning for going with older video cards is nearly identical to Apple's for going with a slower processor in its 13-inch MacBook Pro: the Nvidia 1000 series came out too late. The major intimation was that Kaby Lake and Pascal came so late in the design process that it would have delayed the final products if they'd chosen to use them. New technology, no matter how amazing an upgrade it might be, still requires considerable testing before it can be shipped to consumers. One minor bug, particularly in a system as engineered as the Surface Studio or MacBook Pro, can turn catastrophic if engineers aren't careful. In the case of Microsoft, it's frustrating, because that old GPU is significantly slower than the Pascal GPUs available. It's a little less frustrating in Apple's case, largely because of the old processor microarchitecture that Apple elected to shove into its new 13-inch MacBook Pro. Apple went with a new Skylake dual core processor that draws a lot of power -- more so than any Kaby Lake processor available. It then uses all that extra power to ramp up the speeds of the processor. Which means it is capable of pulling off speeds that can actually match those of the fastest Kaby Lake processor out there. The only downside to this decision is battery life.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Nearly two months after a September 1 accident on the launch pad, SpaceX says it is nearing the conclusion of its investigation. Although the company has yet to identify the "exact root cause" of the accident that occurred during a static fire test just prior to a planned launch of a communications satellite, the investigation has reached an "advanced state." Shortly after the fiery incident, the company focused on a breach in the cryogenic helium system of the rocket's upper stage liquid oxygen tank. "Attention has continued to narrow to one of the three composite over-wrapped pressure vessels (COPVs) inside the LOX tank," the company stated in an update released Friday afternoon. "Through extensive testing in Texas, SpaceX has shown that it can re-create a COPV failure entirely through helium loading conditions. These conditions are mainly affected by the temperature and pressure of the helium being loaded." SpaceX intends to continue work to identify the precise cause of the accident and to improve its method of loading helium onto the rocket to prevent a repeat failure. The company also plans to resume testing Falcon 9 rocket stages at its facility in McGregor, Texas, soon. By taking this step in early November, SpaceX maintains that it is on track to resume flight operations of its Falcon 9 rocket before the end of 2016.

The launch and marketing push of the 27-inch 5K UltraFine Display made in partnership with LG all but confirms that Apple is out of the standalone display business. Previously, it was rumored Apple was working on its own branded Thunderbolt Display powered by an integrated GPU, but with the launch of LG's display it appears to indicate Apple gave up those plans. The Verge's Nilay Patel also confirms the news, tweeting: "Good notes by @jsnell. I can add that Apple told me it's out of standalone display biz." 9to5Mac reports: The two new LG displays, which will be available later this year, feature Thunderbolt 3 connectivity for an easy one-cable-solution for new MacBook owners. Apple will sell both displays, a 4K model for $699.95 and a 5K model for $1299.95, on its online store. Back in June, Apple officially discontinued its lone company-branded monitor, the Thunderbolt Display, after it had languished for a period of time without a substantial update. Apple's statement on the discontinuation made it appear as if it may be the last of the Apple-branded display, and this has been seemingly confirmed: "We're discontinuing the Apple Thunderbolt Display. It will be available through Apple.com, Apple's retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers while supplies last. There are a number of great third-party options available for Mac users," said an Apple spokesperson.

The new MacBooks Pros have been improved in nearly every way -- except when it comes to RAM capacity. With faster, more energy efficient Skylake processors, faster SSDs, and better GPUs, one would think the amount of RAM wouldn't be capped off at 16GB. However, that is the case. The reason why the MacBook Pros continue to max out at 16GB RAM is due to battery life concerns, according to marketing chief Phil Schiller. MacRumors reader David emailed Apple to get an explanation: Question from David: "The lack of a 32GB BTO option for the new MBPs raised some eyebrows and caused some concerns (me included). Does ~3GBps bandwidth to the SSD make this a moot issue? I.e. memory paging on a 16GB system is so fast that 32GB is not a significant improvement?" Schiller's answer: "Thank you for the email. It is a good question. To put more than 16GB of fast RAM into a notebook design at this time would require a memory system that consumes much more power and wouldn't be efficient enough for a notebook. I hope you check out this new generation MacBook Pro, it really is an incredible system."

For the 2016 MacBook Pro, Apple was able to reach "all-day battery life," which equates to 10 hours of wireless web use or iTunes movie playback. That's an hour improvement over the previous generation in the 15-inch machine, and a small step back in the 13-inch machine. While none of Apple's portable machines offer more than 16GB RAM, 32GB of RAM is a high-end custom upgrade option in the 27-inch iMac.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Earlier on Thursday Twitter announced it was ending Vine's short run, and the adult site was quick to come to the rescue -- maybe. In a letter from Pornhub VP Corey Price to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey that was shared with CNET, Price lays out the rationale: "We figure since Twitter has dropped (Vine) and is having significant layoffs, that you and your stakeholders could benefit from a cash infusion from the sale of Vine. Not to mention we would be saving Vine gems like 'Damn Daniel,' 'Awkward Puppets' and many more." Pornhub also promises to "restore Vine to Its NSFW glory," saying that clips "of porn in six seconds is more than enough time for most people to enjoy themselves." Unless pointing out a company's recent hardships in a letter and sharing it with a reporter is the latest Silicon Valley negotiating tactic, it seems pretty clear that the offer is a tongue-in-cheek jab at Twitter and its decision to shutter the video looping platform that has caused so much joy and often humiliation. But who knows, maybe Twitter will be willing to deal with Pornhub.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Southern Spain will be reduced to desert by the end of the century if the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions continue unchecked, researchers have warned. Anything less than extremely ambitious and politically unlikely carbon emissions cuts will see ecosystems in the Mediterranean change to a state unprecedented in the past 10 millennia, they said. The study, published in the journal Science, modeled what would happen to vegetation in the Mediterranean basin under four different paths of future carbon emissions, from a business-as-usual scenario at the worst end to keeping temperature rises below the Paris climate deal target of 1.5C at the other. Temperatures would rise nearly 5C globally under the worst case scenario by 2100, causing deserts to expand northwards across southern Spain and Sicily, and Mediterranean vegetation to replace deciduous forests. Even if emissions are held to the level of pledges put forward ahead of the Paris deal, southern Europe would experience a "substantial" expansion of deserts. The level of change would be beyond anything the region's ecosystems had experienced during the holocene, the geological epoch that started more than 10,000 years ago. The real impact on Mediterranean ecosystems, which are considered a hotspot of biodiversity, could be worse because the study did not look at other human impacts, such as forests being turned over to grow food. The researchers fed a model with 10,000 years of pollen records to build a picture of vegetation in the region, and used that to infer previous temperatures in the Mediterranean. They then ran the model to see what would happen to the vegetation in the future, using four different scenarios of warming, three of them taken from the UN's climate science panel, the IPCC. Only the most stringent cut in emissions -- which is roughly equivalent to meeting the Paris aspiration of holding warming to 1.5C -- would see ecosystems remain within the limits they experienced in the Holocene.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Network World: As Phil Schiller explained during today's event, Apple's new MacBook Pros feature four Thunderbolt 3 USB Type-C ports, and conveniently, each of these can be used to charge the machine. Now, USB-C is incredibly versatile, and Apple will use the advanced port for power charging, HDMI and much more. However, with USB-C the only game in town, you might reasonably be wondering: How in the world do I connect my iPhone to my sleek new MacBook Pro? The frustrating answer is that you won't be able to do so out of the box. Instead, you'll have to buy a dongle. This is especially frustrating because many people use their notebooks for a) charging purposes when an outlet isn't necessarily handy and b) for transferring photos and other data. Now, you might reasonably state that you can just rely upon the cloud for items like data transfer, but there's no getting around the fact that Apple's efforts in the cloud still leave much to be desired. How much will it cost to connect your iPhone to your brand new MacBook Pro? Well, Apple sells a USB-C to Lightning cable on its website for $25. While this is undoubtedly frustrating, we can't say that it's entirely unexpected given Apple gave us a preview of its preference for USB-C when it released its 12-in. MacBook last year. Still, it's a funky design choice for a decidedly Pro-oriented device where the last thing a prospective consumer would want to do is spend some extra cash for a dongle after spending upwards of $2,399. Lastly, while we're on the topic of ports, it's worth noting that the new MacBook Pros also do away with the beloved MagSafe connector.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The massive Oracle v. Google litigation has entered a new phase, as Oracle filed papers (PDF) yesterday saying it will appeal its loss on "fair use" grounds to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. For a brief recap of the case: after Oracle purchased Sun Microsystems and acquired the rights to Java, it sued Google in 2010, saying that Google infringed copyrights and patents related to Java. The case went to trial in 2012. Oracle initially lost but had part of its case revived on appeal. The sole issue in the second trial was whether Google infringed the APIs in Java, which the appeals court held are copyrighted. In May, a jury found in Google's favor after a second trial, stating that Google's use of the APIs was protected by "fair use." Oracle's appeal is no surprise, but it will be a long shot. The four-factor "fair use" test is a fairly subjective one, and Oracle lawyers will have to argue that the jury's unanimous finding must be overturned. There are various ways a jury could arrive at the conclusion that Google was protected by fair use. The case will go back to the Federal Circuit, the same appeals court that decided APIs could be copyrighted in the first place. That decision overruled U.S. District Judge William Alsup, the lower court judge, and was extremely controversial in the developer community. However, the same decision that insisted APIs can be copyrighted clearly held the door open to the idea that "fair use" might apply. Unless Oracle pulls off a stunning move on appeal, its massive legal expenditures in this case will be for naught.

At a media event on Thursday, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the Touch ID on the new MacBook Pros will make it incredibly easy for people to do online money transactions. After the event, speaking to reporters Cook made a bold statement about how he sees Apple Pay. CNET reports: "We're going to kill cash," he said. "Nobody likes to carry around cash." He makes most of his purchases with Apple Pay (which is not surprising).Cook's comment comes days after Australia's top banks refused to support Apple Pay, saying that the company has been 'intransigent, closed and controlling'.