Slashdot Mirror

Mike Murphy, reporting for Quartz: The first step in Facebook's grand vision to connect the entire world to the internet -- or Facebook -- has gone up in flames. Earlier today, a SpaceX rocket carrying a satellite that Facebook planned to use in its internet.org initiative exploded during a pre-launch test at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The rocket was due to send the satellite up into orbit Sept. 3, but during the set-up and testing process, an "anomaly" occurred on the launch pad, according to SpaceX, and the rocket exploded. Facebook had planned to lease some of the bandwidth on the satellite, Amos 6, from its operator, the Israeli company SpaceCom, to beam internet to sub-Saharan Africa. The satellite was intended to fill in until Facebook's more ambitious plans for internet access are ready, including developing and launching massive solar-powered drones that use lasers to beam internet to the ground. This the first time Facebook had planned to use a satellite.Facebook wanted to use the $200 million AMOS-6 satellite to beam free internet to developing parts of the world such as Africa. The satellite was supposed to ride SpaceX's Falcon 9 into orbit. After hearing the news, Mark Zuckerberg said he is "deeply disappointed" to hear that SpaceX's launch failure destroyed his satellite. But this setback won't stop him from his goal to connect every person he can find on the face of the earth to get online. He said, "Fortunately, we have developed other technologies like Aquila that will connect people as well. We remain committed to our mission of connecting everyone, and we will keep working until everyone has the opportunities this satellite would have provided."

Earlier this week, Apple was ordered to pay a record sum of 13 billion euros plus interest after the EU said Ireland illegally slashed the iPhone make's tax bill. At the time, Tim Cook found the accusations "baseless." In a new interview, he had more things to say:A war of words has erupted between Europe's competition chief and Apple CEO Tim Cook after Ireland was ordered to reclaim $14.5 billion in back taxes from the company. Cook, in an interview with the Irish Independent, labelled Brussels' competition chief Margrethe Vestager's decision as "total political crap." He claimed Ireland was being "picked on" and that he hoped to see the Irish government launch an appeal against the ruling. Vestager refuted that claim when quizzed by reporters on Thursday. "This is a decision based on the facts of the case. The figures that we used in our decision are the figures that we got from Apple themselves," she said. "There are very, very few figures in the public domain. More transparency would be a good thing, for example, a country by country reporting. If it was up to me, the non-confidential version of the decision would have been published yesterday, because that is another way of enabling everyone to see what we have decided and on what basis we have made this decision. Right now the ball is in the hands of Apple and Ireland."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Stack: Google's DeepMind team has partnered with British hospital doctors on an oral cancer program hoping to cut planning times for radiotherapy treatments. After recently announcing a partnership with London's Moorfields Eye Hospital to use its machine learning technologies to speed up the diagnoses of eye conditions, DeepMind has confirmed a new initiative at the University College London Hospitals (UCLH) NHS Foundation Trust. According to Google's artificial intelligence unit, cancer treatments including radiotherapy involve complicated design and planning, especially when they involve the head and neck. Treatments need to obliterate cancerous cells while avoiding any healthy surrounding cells, nerves, and organs. UCLH plans to work with DeepMind to explore whether machine learning can reduce planning time for these treatments, particularly for the image segmentation process which involves clinicians taking CT and MRI scans to build a detailed map of the areas to be treated. The report adds: "DeepMind algorithms will be set to work on an anonymized collection of 700 radiology scans from former oral cancer patients, learning from the historical data in order to draw its own conclusions without human support."

Yesterday, it was reported that Russia has detected a strong signal around 11 GHz coming from HD164595, a star nearly identical in mass to the Sun and located about 95 light years away from Earth. Well, long story short the signal came Earth. Ars Technica reports: "First, astronomers with the search for extraterrestrial intelligence downplayed the possibility of an alien civilization. 'There are many other plausible explanations for this claimed transmission, including terrestrial interference,' Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer with SETI, wrote. Now the Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences has concurred, releasing a statement on the detection of a radio signal at the RATAN-600 radio astronomy observatory in southern Russia. 'Subsequent processing and analysis of the signal revealed its most probable terrestrial origin,' the Russian scientists said."

And now, Spotify is asking its users to reset their passwords. The popular music streaming service is "actively resetting a number of users' passwords," Motherboard reports, adding that the company is doing this because of the data breaches at other services and websites. In an email to customers, the company said, "Don't worry! This is purely a preventative security measure. Nobody has accessed your Spotify account, and your data is secure." The move comes less than a week after Dropbox began resetting its users' passwords. Earlier today we learned that the cloud storage had been hacked, and as many as 68 million accounts are affected.

And now, Spotify is asking its users to reset their passwords. The popular music streaming service is "actively resetting a number of users' passwords," Motherboard reports, adding that the company is doing this because of the data breaches at other services and websites. In an email to customers, the company said, "Don't worry! This is purely a preventative security measure. Nobody has accessed your Spotify account, and your data is secure." The move comes less than a week after Dropbox began resetting its users' passwords. Earlier today we learned that the cloud storage had been hacked, and as many as 68 million accounts are affected.

Samsung unveiled its latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy Note 7 earlier this month. But the company is now delaying its shipments as it conducts additional quality control testing delaying its shipments as it conducts additional quality control testing. The Guardian adds: There have been several unconfirmed local reports of users claiming that the battery of the Galaxy Note 7 battery exploded during charging. Samsung did not elaborate on what further testing was required and to where shipments of the high-priced phablet were being delayed. Quality-control problems delaying the release of the latest Samsung flagship phablet could be a major blow for the worldâ(TM)s largest smartphone manufacturer. Its recent sales saw it capture more market share and return to solid profits, but high sales of the Note 7 along with the Galaxy S7 line are required to maintain momentum in the second half of the year.

Jim Finkle, reporting for Reuters:SWIFT, the global financial messaging system, on Tuesday disclosed new hacking attacks on its member banks as it pressured them to comply with security procedures instituted after February's high-profile $81 million heist at Bangladesh Bank. In a private letter to clients, SWIFT said that new cyber-theft attempts -- some of them successful -- have surfaced since June, when it last updated customers on a string of attacks discovered after the attack on the Bangladesh central bank. "Customers' environments have been compromised, and subsequent attempts (were) made to send fraudulent payment instructions," according to a copy of the letter reviewed by Reuters. "The threat is persistent, adaptive and sophisticated - and it is here to stay." The disclosure suggests that cyber thieves may have ramped up their efforts following the Bangladesh Bank heist, and that they specifically targeted banks with lax security procedures for SWIFT-enabled transfers. The Brussels-based firm, a member-owned cooperative, indicated in Tuesday's letter that some victims in the new attacks lost money, but did not say how much was taken or how many of the attempted hacks succeeded.

The Dropbox hack is more severe than we expected. Motherboard has the details: Hackers have stolen over 60 million account details for online cloud storage platform Dropbox. Although the accounts were stolen during a previously disclosed breach, and Dropbox says it has already forced password resets, it was not known how many users had been affected, and only now is the true extent of the hack coming to light. Motherboard obtained a selection of files containing email addresses and hashed passwords for the Dropbox users through sources in the database trading community. In all, the four files total in at around 5GB, and contain details on 68,680,741 accounts. The data is legitimate, according to a senior Dropbox employee. Security expert Troy Hunt has corroborated on Motherboard's claims, and has updated Have I Been Pwned website where you can go and see if you're among one of the victims.

You asked, he answered!

Ruby on Rails Creator and founder/CTO of Basecamp, David Heinemeier Hansson has responded to questions submitted by Slashdot readers. Read on for his answers. What's your computer set-up look like
by LichtSpektren

Can you give us a glimpse into what your main work computer looks like? What's the hardware and OS, your preferred editor and browser, and any crucial software you want to give a shout-out to?

DHH: I've been all Mac since about 2002, I believe. I use a 5K iMac on my desk and a Macbook for travel. For editor, I'm on TextMate 2. I only just switched from TextMate 1.5 a few months ago when an OS X update broke something in it. That editor was just perfect for me. Perhaps in part because I helped Allan Odgaard project manage and promote the very first version. I use both Chrome and Safari for browsing. I prefer Chrome for development due to the better inspector, but I prefer Safari for general browsing and native feel.

Besides that, I'd say that my most useful development tool on OS X is probably Dictionary.app. I constantly look up words and meanings in search of the perfect variable, method, and class names. (See here for a trip down that lane).

Naming
by sunderland56

"Ruby on Rails" ? Is there a good reason for the name, or were you watching too many old western train movies?

DHH: When I first came up with Rails, it was inspired by an old Java framework called Struts. I liked how it was short and had a builder's taste to it. But when I went to register rails.org, it was taken, but RubyOnRails.org wasn't. I ended up liking the longer name even better as it highlighted the true magic of Rails: How it uses Ruby.

Influences
by Parker Lewis

What were the influences (I mean, other frameworks, even in other languages) you used while building the first Rails version?

DHH:I looked at everything I could get my hands on in PHP, Python, Perl, Smalltalk, but, most importantly, Java. Java had the most well-developed framework scene back in the early 2000s. There were a ton of great ideas just waiting to be liberated from the shackles of that awful language. So I went on a great intellectual pillage tour. As much of the inspiration was things "I absolutely abhor and wouldn't want people subjected to" (like the practice of 1000s of lines of XML configuration situps that were common at the time).

A lot of the inspiration also just came through the pattern movement, particularly Martin Fowler's Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture. That book used Java to describe the concepts, but that was just a minor annoyance. The strength of ideas still shone clearly through. So I kinda went shopping in that book for ideas that gelled with my sensibilities for speed and cleanliness of code in Ruby.

A few times that did lead me astray. There are concepts like dependency injection that are critical for testing in languages like Java, which just don't carry their own weight in a language like Ruby. So a few times I ported an idea only to realize it just didn't fit and wasn't needed in Ruby. There was a lot of A/B testing of the code: Is it better when I apply this pattern or not? Oh, not. Gotta go then!

How do you have so much time for development?
by CySurflex

Hi DHH. How much of the code for Basecamp 3 did you personally write? and is it a challenge to clear out long stretches of time for concentrating on development (vs meetings, etc) due to your seniority at the company? From your blog posts it seems that you're definitely still significantly involved in day to day development.

DHH: I wrote the lion's share of the first release of Basecamp 3 myself. In terms of the code needed for majestic monolith at its core. We had teams working on native apps for iOS and Android and we had teams doing a new WYSIWYG editor + other supporting frameworks like Turbolinks 5. But I really did spend a ton of time programming for Basecamp 3 over the course of the 18 months we spent making it and enjoyed it tremendously.

That did come with some sacrifices to other aspects of the business at times. We did put some initiatives on the backburner and I checked in somewhat less frequently with other teams during that time. But it was greatly helped by the fact that we have such a light organization already. We don't do a lot of meetings as is. Even now, I can easily go a whole week with maybe only 1-2 meetings. And by meetings, I just mean jumping on a Google Hangout or Skype video chat with someone for less than 1 hour anyway.
This is what I enjoy most: Building software. So I'll be damned if I stop doing that just because we've had enough success that I perhaps technically don't need to. Jason perhaps doesn't need to design much of our software, but he still does that too. It's just what we love to do. Building things! And then we design a lightweight organization around that which enables us to spend most of our time doing just that.

I think that's really the key. We could easily have designed an organization where just sitting in meetings all day was how the weeks went for Jason and I. But that would be a special kind of hell for us both. And we get to call the shots on the direction of the company and its design, so why on earth would we subject ourselves to that?

cross-pollination with racing?
by izzo nizzo

Have you ever had a eureka or solved a bug while you were racing, or at least driving? More generally, do the abstractions that help you learn to race assist you in understanding parts of your web & technology systems?

DHH: Driving a race car fast is surprisingly similar to programming software. And managing and influencing a race team is incredibly similar to managing a software team. It's all systems theory. What are your positive feedback loops? What are the constraints you have to exploit? Same with developing a feel for grip. It's like developing an eye for good software. You get a sense of quality that's embedded in your gut feeling when you get good enough that you can just make the right calls most of the time without too much deliberation. It's a great feeling.

So is the feeling of flow. Outside of programming, racing is the one activity that has given me access to the most flow states. Learning something new just beyond the grasp of my current abilities. That's happiness.

What would you do differently?
by gabbleratchet

You are quite famous for being loudly dismissive of Rails critics. But do you ever get the urge to learn from your experience (and mistakes) and build a new framework that's different from Rails? In other words, if you could burn Rails to the ground and start over without the need to maintain any sort of backwards compatibility, what would you do differently?

DHH: Generally speaking, Rails today is my ideal version of a web development framework. Whenever I stumble across something I don't like, I change it. It's still a malleable thing. We've made enormous strides between the major versions. Every time I use Rails I think "is this the very best it could be?", if the answer is no, I either try to fix the problem myself or at least record it so others can take a stab.

So basically, I wouldn't really change anything. I don't spend a lot of time looking back at the past with regrets. I got to where I am by going where I went. Trying to retrace those past steps to fantasize about a more optimal path seems like a complete waste of time to me. It's sunk cost. A path already traveled. What interests me is looking forward and figuring out how to improve from where things stand now.

Ruby vs Python
by Anonymous Coward

Python has gained what could be called a critical mass of popularity and works at a similar level of abstraction to Ruby. If you were creating Rails today, would you still choose Ruby? What are its advantages?

DHH: Tons of languages have reached critical mass. That makes it a poor filter for selection. Ruby did so a decade ago. But I specifically picked Ruby BEFORE it had reached critical mass because I didn't give much of a damn what everyone else was using. Rails is a love letter to Ruby. Written by and for myself. Even if nobody else ever had shown interest in reading it, it would still have been worth it. I first and foremost created Rails such that I could use Ruby to build software every day.

I've yet to find another programming language that speaks to me like Ruby does. There are other languages with great ideas or some specific constructs that I find appealing, but nothing brings it together for me like Ruby does. I unashamedly love Ruby. I love writing it. I love reading it.

Python just doesn't do anything for me. I very much respect it. There's lots of shared cultural heritage between the two languages. But why would I spend my time writing software in a language below the grade of love, if I can use one that makes my brain sing?

Ramp-Up Time
by Tablizer

I tried to "get" the philosophy of RoR, but ultimate failed. It seems RoR has a steep learning curve; but once mastered, one is allegedly more productive. Some use the analogy of becoming a medical doctor: a long slog through medical school, but big benefits (such as money) await you in the end. Do you agree with this alleged trade-off profile of RoR? And, how can this approach work for decentralized departmental groups with lots of coder turn-over, especially if the bureaucracy makes it difficult to hire such that coders from other platforms are to be retrained? The ramp-up time for re-training seems hard to justify under such an environment without a RoR-only edict from on high. Would you agree RoR may not fit certain organizational environments? Thank You.

DHH: I don't agree that Rails is any harder to learn that any of the environments I know of, if your target is to build modern, full-fledged web applications. There are certainly environments, like PHP, that'll get you started more easily. And I respect PHP very much for that focus. But as soon as you go beyond the very basics, I think the learning curve there is steeper. Rails simply has so many answers to so many questions, and it introduces those answers in a pretty progressive way. You don't even have to learn what SQL injection is if you're using the preferred query methods. You SHOULD learn what that is, but you don't have to to get started. If you don't know what SQL injection is and you use the MySQL db query functions with a string-interpolated query in PHP, well, you're going to be in trouble.

Secondly, I don't care at all about solving the problem of revolving-door shops where the purpose is to churn through low-skilled labor as quickly as possible. That's a dystopian world of development. What's funny, though, is that Rails actually DOES work pretty well in that environment given all the strong conventions. Most people can jump from one Rails app to another an quickly have a very good idea of what's going on. Try that in an environment that either emphasizes home-grown frameworks or stitching a thousand tiny packages together. Good luck!

I think the fact is that development software with a revolving-door team is always going to be a clusterfuck.

Elixir and Phoenix
by olafura

What do you think of Elixir and Phoenix? I haven't used Ruby on Rails but I really like Phoenix and looking at Rails I can see a lot of influences. But it's hard to beat the foundation that Erlang brings. Maybe I should have taken a better look at Rails while I was still using Python.

DHH: I love seeing entirely new paradigms being popularized and explored. Erlang is fascinating and I can totally see where some of its trade-offs make perfect sense. You'd be crazy to write the message bus of WhatsApp in Rails, for example. But likewise, I think you'd be wasting your time trying to make Basecamp happen in Elixir. And as it so happens, I write Basecamp and not WhatsApp, so naturally I gravitate towards technology that works best for that.

But it's also great to see many of the ideas, conventions, and even vocabulary we developed for Rails is spreading to other environments. Rails itself borrowed so much from earlier frameworks and languages that its wonderful to see it pass that forward.

Personally, my brain works better with object-oriented programming than it does functional. And so too does my sense of aesthetic.

In a Javascript world
by gabbleratchet

With the rise of Javascript front-end frameworks (Ember, Angular, etc.), is there really a serious place for large opinionated server-side frameworks any more? Is Rails destined to be a framework for writing APIs to feed front-end frameworks? And if so, is that enough?

DHH: Whether you hand-roll your JavaScript or use a framework, you're going to need a backend (well, in most cases anyway). Very little of Rails is concerned with generating HTML views. The vast majority of the framework is focused on building domain models with Active Record or controllers with Action Pack or sending email with Action Mailer or queueing jobs with Action Job. I'd reckon that spending time programming the HTML views is probably 15% of the effort for me. The other 85% would be the same whether Rails was doing the HTML or a JavaScript framework did it clientside.

But it seems like that's one of the lessons people have to learn by themselves. Just try to string things together on your own a few times and you'll quickly get an appreciation for what Rails provides as a backend framework. We've had tons of programmers try just that and come back for refuge.

Activerecord shortcomings
by sg_oneill

As far as I can tell, by default ActiveRecord does not enforce referential integrity at the database level. Is there a reason for this omission? Also is there any plan to introduce parameterized queries for raw SQL queries. I still keep seeing people on stack-overflow recommending interpolation as an alternative, and this seems rather dangerous.

DHH: Active Record defaults to using foreign keys for dependent tables and has done so for a while. It's supported doing so for even longer. It also supports parameterized queries for custom WHERE statements and you can you the escape helpers if you're writing the whole SQL statement from scratch.

We don't have a single full SQL statement in Basecamp 3. The number of cases where that's needed is simply vanishingly small these days. But yeah, sure, you can still take off all the safety gear we provide by default and jump head first into murky water.

Abstractions
by almeida

I worked on a project around 2007 that used Ruby on Rails. That was my first experience with Ruby and my first experience with a real web product. I liked Ruby and Rails, but it was easy to get bitten by some of the abstractions. I remember the site bogged down really bad whenever we searched for a record in a large database table. The problem was that the database was hidden behind ActiveRecord, so it was easy to forget we were using a database at all. Writing a for loop to search for a record that matched some criteria felt natural, because our interface was with objects, not the underlying tables. However, behind the scenes, each iteration was a separate query. The result was thousands and thousands of queries, instead of just a single query with a simple WHERE clause. We were essentially doing in Ruby what we could have done much more efficiently in SQL. Once we realized the problem, we rewrote that kind of code so it used more or less raw SQL. The result was much faster, but we lost the readability of the abstraction. Everyone on the team was new to Ruby and Rails (grad students who shuffled in and out each semester), so it's possible that we were just doing things completely wrong. Still, it feels like it shouldn't have been that easy to shoot ourselves in the foot. Have things improved since then? How do you balance nice abstractions like ActiveRecord with performance? How do you make it clear to novices what's going on internally, so they can avoid the mistakes that we made?

DHH: Rails makes it really easy to get going, it tries to guide you to an enlightened path, but ultimately, you still have to learn a lot to be a successful developer. I don't know why people keep expecting that it doesn't require careful, prolonged study to become proficient with a development platform like Rails. All we promise is that it's easy to get started, which means you'll hopefully gather the motivation to keep going. Because making your way through "My First Rails App" isn't the destination, it's the start of the journey.

Developing web applications is complicated. As in there are a lot of moving parts and learning about all of them is key to mastering the domain. Yes, you can get started with very little base knowledge, and that's wonderful. It helps more people start the journey rather than having a 4-day tall wall of byzantine XML configurations to complete before your app server will say HELLO WORLD. But it's not the matrix. You can't just load a cartridge and proclaim I KNOW RAILS NOW. It doesn't work like that.

In terms of the specifics, you should look into preloading. We don't use any raw SQL any where in Basecamp 3 and we don't need to. You can easily avoid N+1 queries and other performance bottlenecks and still keep the abstractions in place. But yes, it takes some time to learn that. And if all you know is SQL plus a little bit of Ruby and Rails, I can definitely see how you end up with "fuck it, let's just write raw SQL, rather than learn the abstractions". That's the tradeoff with frameworks. I think that's the natural evolution of learning. Beginners make mistakes. Those mistakes motivate learning how you can avoid them in the future. After a few runs through that cycle, you're no longer a beginner, but a novice. Keep going and you'll get proficient. Go further still and you just might one day become an expert. Expect to be an expert on day one? You'll likely never become one.

What are your thoughts on the MEAN stack?
by itsmash

What are your thoughts on the MEAN stack ( MongoDB, Express.js, Angular, and Node.js)?

DHH: It takes all kinds of people to make the world go around :)

what still makes you excited about Rails?
by Anonymous Coward

First of all, thank you for Rails, it helped me to convince my former employer to look beyond Java for web application development and now about half of the projects I do is helping teams of smart people who've painted themselves into a corner using the platform. What a beautiful statefull mess we living in! I personally feel your contribution to web application development in general is not Rails but the explosion of batteries included web frameworks we are seeing around us now. Things got shaken up 10+ years ago and they are still stirring. Yes, the github is full of failed frameworks withering away but also some really cool stuff spawned in the ripples Rails caused. My question: now that things have cooled down a bit regarding Ruby on Rails (merb and arel have been assimilated, framework upgrades are almost doable, most have settled on minitest, etc) what still makes you excited about this project or are you secretly migrating basecamp to phoenix and assimilate that into Rails too?

DHH: I love writing software for the web in Ruby. The web changes, our applications change. Both those vectors of change cast new light on what the perfect framework should look like. So I keep chasing those rays as they deflect. It's a lot of fun. The work is never done. We've just released Rails 5.0 which was a major step forward. It adopted WebSockets as a first-class target for Rails applications and did it in a way that builds on everything else we already have in Rails. I got to use that feature to build some awesome real-time stuff in Basecamp 3. That's such an addictive and rewarding cycle. One that I doubt I'll ever tire from.

Talking about Danish devs
by hcs_$reboot

Why is Denmark so keen to develop languages?

DHH: Danes simply have to learn other languages to communicate with the world at large. Danish is spoken by some six million people. It's almost impossible for foreigners to learn. So I guess a bunch of us combine those two factors to come up with ways to communicate with computers and communities.

Just stopping by to say: Thanks!
by Pirulo

I am impressed by all the sour bitching about RoR in /. If you tried, and cannot learn it, then programming just might not be for you. Granted, it might not be the perfect fit for everybody, but RoR has an impressive merit on the growth of the web. 10 years ago I discovered it, and the framework taught me how to structure complex business applications and back them with proper unit and integration testing. Today we run a company on the 6 digit revenue that is backed mostly by RoR. Thanks David!

DHH: Thanks! Always great to hear people who bootstrap new businesses with Rails.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: A long-standing lawsuit holding Twitter responsible for the rise of ISIS got new life today, as plaintiffs filed a revised version of the complaint (PDF) that was struck down earlier this month. In the new complaint, the plaintiffs argue Twitter's Direct Message service is akin to providing ISIS with physical communications equipment like a radio or a satellite phone. The latest complaint is largely the same as the one filed in January, but a few crucial differences will be at the center of the court's response. The plaintiffs also offer new arguments for why Twitter might be held responsible for the attack. In the dismissal earlier this month (PDF), District Judge William Orrick faulted the plaintiffs for not articulating a case for why providing access to Twitter's services constituted material aid to ISIS. "Apart from the private nature of Direct Messaging, plaintiffs identify no other way in which their Direct Messaging theory seeks to treat Twitter as anything other than a publisher of information provided by another information content provider," the ruling reads. At the same time, the judge found that the privacy of those direct messages "does not remove the transmission of such messages from the scope of publishing activity." The new complaint includes some language that might address that concern, explicitly comparing Twitter to other material communication tools. "Giving ISIS the capability to send and receive Direct Messages in this manner is no different than handing it a satellite phone, walkie-talkies or the use of a mail drop," the new complaint reads, "all of which terrorists use for private communications in order to further their extremist agendas." The Safe Harbor clause has been used in the past to protect service providers from liability for hosting data on their network. However, "Brookings Institute scholar Benjamin Witters argued against protecting Twitter under the Safe Harbor clause, claiming that the current reasoning would also protect companies that actively offer services in support of terrorists."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: A long-standing lawsuit holding Twitter responsible for the rise of ISIS got new life today, as plaintiffs filed a revised version of the complaint (PDF) that was struck down earlier this month. In the new complaint, the plaintiffs argue Twitter's Direct Message service is akin to providing ISIS with physical communications equipment like a radio or a satellite phone. The latest complaint is largely the same as the one filed in January, but a few crucial differences will be at the center of the court's response. The plaintiffs also offer new arguments for why Twitter might be held responsible for the attack. In the dismissal earlier this month (PDF), District Judge William Orrick faulted the plaintiffs for not articulating a case for why providing access to Twitter's services constituted material aid to ISIS. "Apart from the private nature of Direct Messaging, plaintiffs identify no other way in which their Direct Messaging theory seeks to treat Twitter as anything other than a publisher of information provided by another information content provider," the ruling reads. At the same time, the judge found that the privacy of those direct messages "does not remove the transmission of such messages from the scope of publishing activity." The new complaint includes some language that might address that concern, explicitly comparing Twitter to other material communication tools. "Giving ISIS the capability to send and receive Direct Messages in this manner is no different than handing it a satellite phone, walkie-talkies or the use of a mail drop," the new complaint reads, "all of which terrorists use for private communications in order to further their extremist agendas." The Safe Harbor clause has been used in the past to protect service providers from liability for hosting data on their network. However, "Brookings Institute scholar Benjamin Witters argued against protecting Twitter under the Safe Harbor clause, claiming that the current reasoning would also protect companies that actively offer services in support of terrorists."

Earlier this month, Sony announced PlayStation 3 games would be coming to Windows. Specifically, the company would be bringing its PlayStation Now game-streaming program to Windows PCs. Today, the service has officially launched and is available on Windows PCs. TechCrunch reports: "A 12-month subscription to PlayStation Now will run you $99.99 as part of a limited-time promotion to celebrate the PC launch. Normally, a PS Now subscription will run you more than double that. What does PlayStation Now actually provide? Access to a library of over 50 'Greatest Hits' games, which include popular titles like Mafia II, Tom Raider: GOTY edition, Borderlands and Heavy Rain. There's also over 100 console exclusives available to PC users for the first time, and a total library north of 400 games." If you're interested, you can download the app here. A USB adapter is set to go on sale September 6 that will allow you to use a DualShock 4 wireless controller with your PC.

Earlier this year Mitsubishi admitted to using some less-than-correct tactics when calculating the fuel economy of four of its Japanese market vehicles. But that wasn't the end of the scandal. The Japanese transport ministry has announced that its investigation into Mitsubishi's practices has revealed eight additional vehicles with misreported fuel economy numbers. Reuters reports: Earlier in the day, Japan's transport ministry said its investigation had shown the automaker had overstated the fuel economy for eight vehicles including the RVR, Pajero and Outlander SUV models, in addition to four minivehicles initially confirmed in April. The latest announcement deals another reputational blow to Japan's sixth-largest automaker, which has been struggling to recover from the mileage scandal, which affected two minivehicle models produced for Nissan Motor Co Ltd. The company's market value has tumbled since the scandal broke, and the ordeal prompted the company to seek financial assistance from Nissan, which agreed to buy a controlling one-third stake for $2.2 billion.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The European Commission will rule against Ireland's tax dealings with Apple on Tuesday, two source familiar with the decision told Reuters, one of whom said Dublin would be told to recoup over 1 billion euros in back taxes. The European Commission accused Ireland in 2014 of dodging international tax rules by letting Apple shelter profits worth tens of billions of dollars from tax collectors in return for maintaining jobs. Apple and Ireland rejected the accusation; both have said they will appeal any adverse ruling. The source said the Commission will recommend a figure in back taxes that it expects to be collected, but it will be up to Irish authorities to calculate exactly what is owed. A bill in excess of 1 billion euros ($1.12 billion) would be far more than the 30 million euros each the European Commission previously ordered Dutch authorities to recover from U.S. coffee chain Starbucks and Luxembourg from Fiat Chrysler for their tax deals. When it opened the Apple investigation in 2014, the Commission told the Irish government that tax rulings it agreed in 1991 and 2007 with the iPhone maker amounted to state aid and might have broken EU laws. The Commission said the rulings were "reverse engineered" to ensure that Apple had a minimal Irish bill and that minutes of meetings between Apple representatives and Irish tax officials showed the company's tax treatment had been "motivated by employment considerations."

Kim Dotcom has been granted the right to livestream his extradition appeal on YouTube. The appeal hearing began Monday, but will be livestreamed tomorrow because "the cameraman needs to set this up professionally and implement the judge's live streaming rules." tweets Kim Dotcom. Mashable reports: "The United States, which wants Dotcom extradited from New Zealand, is against the request. Dotcom says a livestream is the only way to ensure a fair hearing. The U.S. is seeking the extradition of Dotcom and other Megaupload co-founders in hopes of taking them to court in America on charges of money-laundering, racketeering and copyright infringement. The charges stem from the operation of file-sharing website Megaupload, founded by Dotcom in 2005 and once the 13th most popular website on the internet. Users could upload movies, music and other content to the site and share with others, a practice the U.S. considers copyright infringement. The website reportedly made around $175 million before the FBI took it down in 2012. The U.S. says Megaupload cost copyright holders around $500 million, though Dotcom says it's not his fault users chose to upload the shared copyrighted material. Dotcom was arrested in 2012 after police raided his home, but was released on bail. A judge ruled in favor of his extradition to the U.S. in 2015, though Dotcom said at the time the judge was not interested in a fair hearing." Dotcom plans to revive Megaupload on January 20, 2017, urging people to "buy bitcoin while cheap," since he claims the launch will send the bitcoin price soaring way above its current $575 value. Every file transfer taking place over Megaupload "will be linked to a tiny Bitcoin micro transaction," Dotcom posted on Twitter.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A federal appeals court in California on Monday dismissed a U.S. government lawsuit that accused ATT Inc of deception for reducing internet speeds for customers with unlimited mobile data plans once their use exceeded certain levels. The company, however, could still face a fine from the Federal Communications Commission regarding the slowdowns, also called "data throttling." The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said it ordered a lower court to dismiss the data-throttling lawsuit, which was filed in 2014 by the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC sued ATT on the grounds that the No. 2 U.S. wireless carrier failed to inform consumers it would slow the speeds of heavy data users on unlimited plans. In some cases, data speeds were slowed by nearly 90 percent, the lawsuit said. The FTC said the practice was deceptive and, as a result, barred under the Federal Trade Commission Act. ATT argued that there was an exception for common carriers, and the appeals court agreed.

Let's get some facts straight. The vast majority of people now get their news from social media. Facebook has become one of the largest platforms for media companies. Not only does it send people to publications, it also offers outlets Instant Articles platform, essentially acting as a publisher. But when CEO Mark Zuckerberg was asked on Monday if Facebook is a media company, he took some time thinking about it, and said "no." From a Business Insider article: Zuckerberg went on to explain how Facebook is a technology company that gives media companies tools and a platform, not a media company itself. This isn't the first time we've heard him spout a similar rhetoric recently, because it has been a particularly thorny year for Facebook and the news business. Zuckerberg maintains that it isn't a media company because it doesn't create content. Sure, Facebook isn't making journalism (what many people think of when they hear "media company") but it is hosting, distributing, and monetizing content just like a media company. And even what Zuckerberg said -- "When you think about a media company, you know, people are producing content, people are editing content, and that's not us" -- has been more or less true this year depending on how you define producing and editing.

New iPhones are coming, Apple hinted today. The Cupertino-based giant announced on Monday that it will host an event on September 7. The rumor mill suggests that the company would announce as many as three iPhones -- the iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, and the iPhone 6 SE. Recent reports suggest that Apple may also announce the second-generation of Apple Watch. No new iPads are expected. The company is widely rumored to refresh its Mac lineup -- though they are likely to be launched at a later point. The biggest talk point around the iPhone 7 has been the headphone jack -- or its lack thereof.

Less than a week after Facebook announced that it is changing the way it handles the Trending Topics section on the social networking website, a fake article about Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly was found trending on Facebook. The article, headlined "Breaking: Fox News Exposes Traitor Megyn Kelly, Kicks Her Out for Backing Hillary" comes from a conspiracy theory website, which has more than 200,000 likes on Facebook. Its Megyn Kelly story was the topic of discussion for many across the world. The article is obviously fake. The other cited source for this trending topic was an outlet called "Conservating101"

Today the San Jose Mercury News asked several prominent security experts which security products they were actually using for their own data. An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: The EFF's chief technologist revealed that he doesn't run an anti-virus program, partly because he's using Linux, and partly because he feels anti-virus software creates a false sense of security. ("I don't like to get complacent and rely on it in any way...") He does regularly encrypt his e-mail, "but he doesn't recommend that average users scramble their email, because he thinks the encryption software is just too difficult to use."

The newspaper also interviewed security expert Eugene Spafford, who rarely updates the operating system on one of his computers -- because it's not connected to the internet -- and sometimes even accesses his files with a virtual machine, which he then deletes when he's done. His home router is equipped with a firewall device, and "he's developed some tools in his research center that he uses to try to detect security problems," according to the article. "There are some additional things I do," Spafford added, telling the reporter that "I'm not going to give details of all of them, because that doesn't help me."
Bruce Schneier had a similar answer. When the reporter asked how he protected his data, Schneier wouldn't tell them, adding "I'm kind of a target..."

Slashdot reader theodp writes: Aside from it being hosted in a town without a movie theater, the 2016 Bentonville Film Festival was also unusual in that it required all entrants to submit "film scripts and downloadable versions of the film" for judgment by "the team at Google and USC", apparently part of a larger Google-funded research project with USC Engineering "to develop a computer science tool that could quickly and efficiently assess how women are represented in films"...

Fest reports noted that representatives of Google and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy appeared in a "Reel vs. Real Diversity" panel presentation at the fest, where the importance of diversity and science to President Obama were discussed, and the lack of qualified people to fill 500,000 U.S. tech jobs was blamed in part on how STEM careers have been presented in film and television... In a 2015 report on a Google-sponsored USC Viterbi School of Engineering MacGyver-themed event to promote women in engineering, USC reported that President Obama was kept briefed on efforts to challenge media's stereotypical portrayals of women. As for its own track record, Google recently updated its Diversity page, boasting that "21% of new hires in 2015 were women in tech, compared to 19% of our current population"....

Slashdot reader theodp writes: Aside from it being hosted in a town without a movie theater, the 2016 Bentonville Film Festival was also unusual in that it required all entrants to submit "film scripts and downloadable versions of the film" for judgment by "the team at Google and USC", apparently part of a larger Google-funded research project with USC Engineering "to develop a computer science tool that could quickly and efficiently assess how women are represented in films"...

Fest reports noted that representatives of Google and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy appeared in a "Reel vs. Real Diversity" panel presentation at the fest, where the importance of diversity and science to President Obama were discussed, and the lack of qualified people to fill 500,000 U.S. tech jobs was blamed in part on how STEM careers have been presented in film and television... In a 2015 report on a Google-sponsored USC Viterbi School of Engineering MacGyver-themed event to promote women in engineering, USC reported that President Obama was kept briefed on efforts to challenge media's stereotypical portrayals of women. As for its own track record, Google recently updated its Diversity page, boasting that "21% of new hires in 2015 were women in tech, compared to 19% of our current population"....

Sunday the Indian Space Research Organization successfully test-launched a scramjet rocket, propelled by "an air-breathing propulsion system which uses hydrogen as fuel and oxygen from the atmosphere air as the oxidizer" rather than carrying a tank of liquid oxygen. "if the need for liquid oxygen is taken away, the space craft can be much lighter, hence cheaper to launch," notes one newspaper, adding that India is only the fourth country to flight-test a scramjet engine after the U.S., Russia and the European Space Agency.

But in addition, 15 former ISRO scientists are now helping Team Indus, one of the 16 teams remaining in Google's $30 million Lunar XPRIZE competition, who will use ISRO's polar satellite launch vehicle to send their spacecraft to the moon. GillBates0 writes: An official designated as "Skywalker", said that such space missions used to be limited to extremely elite people and PhDs in the past. That stereotype is now breaking. "I was just a college student a couple of years ago and now I am working on an actual space mission, how cool is that," said Karan Vaish, 23, who is helping the team to design the lunar rover. Eighty per cent of the team is reported to be less than five years out of college.

An anonymous Slashdot reader has "approximately two terabytes of photos, currently sitting on two 4-terabyte 'Intel Rapid Storage' RAID 1 disks." But now they're considering three alternatives after moving to a new PC: a) Keep these exactly as they are... The current configuration is OK, but it's a pain if a RAID re-sync is needed as it takes a long time to check four terabytes.

b) Move to "Storage Spaces". I've not used Storage Spaces before, but reports seem to show it's good... It's a Good Thing that the disks are 100% identical and removable and readable separately. Downside? Unknown territory.

c) Break the RAID, and set up the second disk as a file-copied backup... [This] would lose a (small) amount of resilience, but wouldn't suffer from the RAID-sync issues, ideally a Mac-like "TimeMachine" backup would handle file histories.

Any recommendations?
This is also a good time to share your experiences with Storage Spaces, so leave your answers in the comments. What's the best way to backup large amounts of personal data?

thegarbz writes: As was covered previously on Slashdot the very hyped up game No Man's Sky was released to a lot of negative reviews about game-crashing bugs and poor interface choices. Now that players have had more time to play the game it has become clear that many of the features hyped by developers are not present in the game, and users quickly started describing the game as "boring".

Now, likely due to misleading advertising, Steam has begun allowing refunds for No Man's Sky regardless of playtime, and there are reports of players getting refunds on the Play Station Network as well despite Sony's strict no refund policy. Besides Sony, Amazon is also issuing refunds, according to game sites. In response, Sony's former Strategic Content Director, Shahid Kamal Ahmad, wrote on Twitter, "If you're getting a refund after playing a game for 50 hours you're a thief." He later added "Here's the good news: Most players are not thieves. Most players are decent, honest people without whose support there could be no industry."

In a follow-up he acknowledged it was fair to consider a few hours lost to game-breaking crashes, adding "Each case should be considered on its own merits and perhaps I shouldn't be so unequivocal."

John Ellenby managed the development of the Alto II before starting the company that built the world's first successful "clamshell" laptop. Slashdot reader fragMasterFlash quotes the New York Times: Ellenby, a British-born computer engineer who played a critical role in paving the way for the laptop computer, died on August 17 in San Francisco. He was 75... Mr. Ellenby's pioneering work came to fruition in the early 1980s, after he founded Grid Systems, a company in Mountain View, California. As chief executive, he assembled an engineering and design team that included the noted British-born industrial designer William Moggridge.

The team produced a clamshell computer with an orange electroluminescent flat-panel display that was introduced as the Compass. It went to market in 1982. The Compass is now widely acknowledged to have been far ahead of its time.
Back in the 1980s, NASA used them as backup navigational devices on the space shuttle -- one was recovered from the wreckage of the Space Shuttle Challenger -- and John Poindexter, America's national security advisor during the Reagan administration, described them as "built like an armored tank". Data storage cost $8,150 -- equivalent to $20,325 today.

The U.S. government announced plans to require some foreign travelers to provide their social media account names when entering the country -- and in June requested comments. Now the plan is being called "ludicrous," an "all-around bad idea," "blatant overreach," "desperate, paranoid heavy-handedness," "preposterous," "appalling," and "un-American," reports Slashdot reader dcblogs: That's just a sampling of the outrage. Some 800 responded to the U.S. request for comments about a proposed rule affecting people traveling from "visa waiver" countries to the U.S., where a visa is not required. This includes most of Europe, Singapore, Chile, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand... In a little twist of irony, some critics said U.S. President Obama's proposal for foreign travelers is so bad, it must have been hatched by Donald Trump.
"Travelers will be asked to provide their Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, and whatever other social ID you can imagine to U.S. authorities," reports Computer World. "It's technically an 'optional' request, but since it's the government asking, critics believe travelers will fear consequences if they ignore it..."

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: HAARP -- the former Air Force/Navy/DARPA research program in Alaska -- will host an open house Saturday where "We hope to show people that it is not capable of mind control and not capable of weather control and all the other things it's been accused of..." said Sue Mitchell, spokesperson for the geophysical institute at the University of Alaska. "We hope that people will be able to see the actual science of it." HAARP, which was turned over to The University of Alaska last August, has been blamed for poor crop yields in Russia, with conspiracy theorists also warning of "a super weapon capable of mind control or weather control, with enough juice to trigger hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes."

The facility's 180 high-frequency antennas -- spread across 33 acres -- will be made available for public tours, and there will also be interactive displays and an unmanned aircraft 'petting zoo'. The Alaska Dispatch News describes it as "one of the world's few centers for high-power and high-frequency study of the ionosphere... important because radio waves used for communication and navigation reflect back to Earth, allowing long-distance, short-wave broadcasting."

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: HAARP -- the former Air Force/Navy/DARPA research program in Alaska -- will host an open house Saturday where "We hope to show people that it is not capable of mind control and not capable of weather control and all the other things it's been accused of..." said Sue Mitchell, spokesperson for the geophysical institute at the University of Alaska. "We hope that people will be able to see the actual science of it." HAARP, which was turned over to The University of Alaska last August, has been blamed for poor crop yields in Russia, with conspiracy theorists also warning of "a super weapon capable of mind control or weather control, with enough juice to trigger hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes."

The facility's 180 high-frequency antennas -- spread across 33 acres -- will be made available for public tours, and there will also be interactive displays and an unmanned aircraft 'petting zoo'. The Alaska Dispatch News describes it as "one of the world's few centers for high-power and high-frequency study of the ionosphere... important because radio waves used for communication and navigation reflect back to Earth, allowing long-distance, short-wave broadcasting."

NASA's Juno spacecraft will get its first up-close view at Jupiter this Saturday. Space.com reports: "At 8:51 a.m. EDT (1251 GMT) on Saturday (Aug. 27), Juno will zoom within 2,600 miles (4,000 kilometers) of Jupiter's cloud tops -- closer than the probe is scheduled to come during its entire mission, NASA officials said. And Juno will have all of its science instruments during Saturday's flyby. This was not the case during the spacecraft's only previous close approach to Jupiter, which occurred July 4 when Juno arrived in orbit around the giant planet. During Saturday's close pass, all eight of Juno's science instruments will be collecting data, and the probe's visible-light imager, known as JunoCam, will take close-up photos." You can also look forward to Venus-Jupiter Conjunction 2016, an event happening on August 27 where Venus and Jupiter's respective orbits will bring the two planets the closest that they'll be to each other until 2065. The two planets will be positioned roughly five degrees above the Western horizon on August 27.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has made it a top priority for company to limit hateful conduct. In late December 2015, for example, the company changed its rules to explicitly ban "hateful conduct" for the first time. A new report says Twitter is working to further curb the rise of hateful conduct as it is "working on a keyword-based tool that will let people filter the posts they see, giving users a more effective way to block out harassing and offensive tweets." Bloomberg reports: "The San Francisco-based company has been discussing how to implement the tool for about a year as it seeks to stem abuse on the site, said the people [familiar with the matter], who asked not to be identified because the initiative isn't public. By using keywords, users could block swear words or racial slurs, for example, to screen out offenders. The filtering tool could eventually become a moderator for any kind of content, the people said. For example, users could block a hashtag about an event they don't care to read about."

Following a former Facebook journalist's report that the company's workers routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network's Trending Topics section, the company has been in damage control mode. First, the company announced it would tweak its Trending Topics section and revamp how editors find trending stories. Specifically, they will train the human editors who work on Facebook's trending section and abandon several automated tools it used to find and categorize trending news in the past. Most recently, Facebook added political scenarios to its orientation training following the concerns. Now, it appears that Facebook will "end its practice of writing editorial descriptions for topics, replacing them with snippets of text pulled from news stories." Kurt Wagner, writing for Recode: It's been more than three months since Gizmodo first published a story claiming Facebook's human editors were suppressing conservative news content on the site's Trending Topics section. Facebook vehemently denied the report, but has been dealing with the story's aftermath ever since. On Friday, Facebook announced another small but notable change to Trending Topics: Human editors will no longer write the short story descriptions that accompany a trending topic on the site. Instead, Facebook is going to use algorithms to "pull excerpts directly from stories." It is not, however, cutting out humans entirely. In fact, Facebook employees will still select which stories ultimately make it into the trending section. An algorithm will surface popular stories, but Facebook editors will weed out the inappropriate or fake ones. "There are still people involved in this process to ensure that the topics that appear in Trending remain high-quality," the company's blog reads.

Following a former Facebook journalist's report that the company's workers routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network's Trending Topics section, the company has been in damage control mode. First, the company announced it would tweak its Trending Topics section and revamp how editors find trending stories. Specifically, they will train the human editors who work on Facebook's trending section and abandon several automated tools it used to find and categorize trending news in the past. Most recently, Facebook added political scenarios to its orientation training following the concerns. Now, it appears that Facebook will "end its practice of writing editorial descriptions for topics, replacing them with snippets of text pulled from news stories." Kurt Wagner, writing for Recode: It's been more than three months since Gizmodo first published a story claiming Facebook's human editors were suppressing conservative news content on the site's Trending Topics section. Facebook vehemently denied the report, but has been dealing with the story's aftermath ever since. On Friday, Facebook announced another small but notable change to Trending Topics: Human editors will no longer write the short story descriptions that accompany a trending topic on the site. Instead, Facebook is going to use algorithms to "pull excerpts directly from stories." It is not, however, cutting out humans entirely. In fact, Facebook employees will still select which stories ultimately make it into the trending section. An algorithm will surface popular stories, but Facebook editors will weed out the inappropriate or fake ones. "There are still people involved in this process to ensure that the topics that appear in Trending remain high-quality," the company's blog reads.

Following a former Facebook journalist's report that the company's workers routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network's Trending Topics section, the company has been in damage control mode. First, the company announced it would tweak its Trending Topics section and revamp how editors find trending stories. Specifically, they will train the human editors who work on Facebook's trending section and abandon several automated tools it used to find and categorize trending news in the past. Most recently, Facebook added political scenarios to its orientation training following the concerns. Now, it appears that Facebook will "end its practice of writing editorial descriptions for topics, replacing them with snippets of text pulled from news stories." Kurt Wagner, writing for Recode: It's been more than three months since Gizmodo first published a story claiming Facebook's human editors were suppressing conservative news content on the site's Trending Topics section. Facebook vehemently denied the report, but has been dealing with the story's aftermath ever since. On Friday, Facebook announced another small but notable change to Trending Topics: Human editors will no longer write the short story descriptions that accompany a trending topic on the site. Instead, Facebook is going to use algorithms to "pull excerpts directly from stories." It is not, however, cutting out humans entirely. In fact, Facebook employees will still select which stories ultimately make it into the trending section. An algorithm will surface popular stories, but Facebook editors will weed out the inappropriate or fake ones. "There are still people involved in this process to ensure that the topics that appear in Trending remain high-quality," the company's blog reads.

Following a former Facebook journalist's report that the company's workers routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network's Trending Topics section, the company has been in damage control mode. First, the company announced it would tweak its Trending Topics section and revamp how editors find trending stories. Specifically, they will train the human editors who work on Facebook's trending section and abandon several automated tools it used to find and categorize trending news in the past. Most recently, Facebook added political scenarios to its orientation training following the concerns. Now, it appears that Facebook will "end its practice of writing editorial descriptions for topics, replacing them with snippets of text pulled from news stories." Kurt Wagner, writing for Recode: It's been more than three months since Gizmodo first published a story claiming Facebook's human editors were suppressing conservative news content on the site's Trending Topics section. Facebook vehemently denied the report, but has been dealing with the story's aftermath ever since. On Friday, Facebook announced another small but notable change to Trending Topics: Human editors will no longer write the short story descriptions that accompany a trending topic on the site. Instead, Facebook is going to use algorithms to "pull excerpts directly from stories." It is not, however, cutting out humans entirely. In fact, Facebook employees will still select which stories ultimately make it into the trending section. An algorithm will surface popular stories, but Facebook editors will weed out the inappropriate or fake ones. "There are still people involved in this process to ensure that the topics that appear in Trending remain high-quality," the company's blog reads.

The music-streaming market is very competitive these days, especially since Apple released Apple Music last year. In retaliation for musicians giving Apple exclusive access to their new music, Spotify has reportedly been making their songs harder to find on its service. Bloomberg reports: "Artists who have given Apple exclusive access to new music have been told they won't be able to get their tracks on featuring playlists once the songs become available on Spotify, said the people [familiar with the strategy], who declined to be identified discussing the steps. Those artists have also found their songs buried in the search rankings of Spotify, the world's largest music-streaming service, the people said. Spotify said it doesn't alter search rankings. Spotify has been using such practices for about a year, one of the people said, though others said the efforts have escalated over the past few months. Artists who have given exclusives to Tidal, the streaming service run by Jay Z, have also retaliated against, the person said, declining to identify specific musicians."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Since early 2015, over a dozen UK companies have been granted licenses to export powerful telecommunications interception technology to countries around the world, Motherboard has learned. Many of these exports include IMSI-catchers, devices which can monitor large numbers of mobile phones over broad areas. Some of the UK companies were given permission to export their products to authoritarian states such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Egypt; countries with poor human rights records that have been well-documented to abuse surveillance technology. In 2015, the UK's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) started publishing basic data about the exportation of telecommunications interception devices. Through the Freedom of Information Act, Motherboard obtained the names of companies that have applied for exportation licenses, as well as details on the technologies being shipped, including, in some cases, individual product names. The companies include a subsidiary of defense giant BAE Systems, as well as Pro-Solve International, ComsTrac, CellXion, Cobham, and Domo Tactical Communications (DTC). Many of these companies sell IMSI-catchers. IMSI-catchers, sometimes known as "Stingrays" after a particularly popular brand, are fake cell phone towers which force devices in their proximity to connect. In the data obtained by Motherboard, 33 licenses are explicitly marked as being for IMSI-catchers, including for export to Turkey and Indonesia. Other listings heavily suggest the export of IMSI-catchers too: one granted application to export to Iraq is for a "Wideband Passive GSM Monitoring System," which is a more technical description of what many IMSI-catchers do. In all, Motherboard received entries for 148 export license applications, from February 2015 to April 2016. A small number of the named companies do not provide interception capabilities, but defensive measures, for example to monitor the radio spectrum.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Florida Today: A SpaceX Dragon capsule that helped prepare the International Space Station for future commercial astronaut flights has returned to Earth after a stay of more than month-long mission. A robotic arm released the unmanned capsule packed with 3,000 pounds of cargo at 6:11 a.m. EDT, then fired thrusters several times to move a safe distance away from the station orbiting about 250 miles up. The departure began a less than six-hour journey that culminated in a Pacific Ocean splashdown at 11:47 a.m. EDT, about 300 miles southwest of Baja, California. The Dragon launched from Cape Canaveral early July 18 on a Falcon 9 rocket and berthed at the station two days later. Among the cargo brought back from space Friday were a dozen mice from a Japanese science experiment -- the first brought home alive in a Dragon. Samples from mice euthanized as part of an experiment by pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly also were on board. Results were returned from an experiment that studied the behavior of heart cells in microgravity, and from research into the composition of microbes in the human digestive system, NASA said. Findings from both could help keep astronauts healthy during deep space exploration missions. SpaceX plans to launch a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station next Saturday, Sept. 3.

You asked, he answered!

VideoLan President and Lead Developer of VLC Jean-Baptiste Kempf has responded to questions submitted by Slashdot readers. Read on to find out about the upcoming VideoLAN projects; how they keep VLC sustainable; what are some mistakes they wish they hadn't made; and what security challenges they face, among others! Special Days
by GTRacer

Besides Christmas/winter holiday time, are there other special VLC Cone icons I've not seen yet?

JBK: Nope! There is only the Winter icon for the last 14 days of the year. 2 things about that icon: it was a mistake and it shouldn't have been in the release, but we had so many insults against it that we decided to keep it :) The second thing is that you should try the konami code when this icon is shown.
However, we have a VLC calendar with very special icons, but that's not in the program...

How do you keep VLC sustainable?
by manishs

I would want to know how do you keep VLC media player sustainable. As far as I know, there are no ads in the program, and they certainly don't bundle stupid programs with VLC.

JBK: Well, it's important to remind people that we don't make money out of VLC and that there is no business model around it, we're not Mozilla or Facebook. VideoLAN only receives donations and that's not enough to hire someone. VLC developers are either volunteers (the majority since VLC started) or have their consulting business around open source multimedia.
We hate bundling and offers, and we will always reject those.

Technical mistakes in VLC's past
If VLC were being redesigned from scratch today, what would you do differently? Are there any technical decisions or design choices in VLC's past that you now feel were mistakes?

JBK: Well, VLC is redesigned quite often, and evolves quite a bit, even if it's not that visible... We're in the middle of an important change for mobile decoding and to support higher resolutions, for example. However, I can say that some part of VLC are very bad and I would design them differently, notably the media library and playlist.

Microsoft Office Plugin / DirectX support
by pecosdave

I hate to ask this because overall I'm anti-Microsoft, but I'm a systems administrator at a company and I can't seem to teach my users much of anything. It would be great if there were some way to make VLC the player that worked with PowerPoint. For some gawd-awful reason Microsoft thinks you need an Apple product for h.264 video playback in a PowerPoint presentation and we don't allow that anymore since it's pwned. I just want to thank you for an awesome product. I use it as a baby monitor with an IP cam at home (no MS products there). I use it on my phone to play podcasts in my car, I love the ability to increase playback speed (that's a little "non-sticky" of a setting).

JBK: VLC ActiveX module should replace it without a problem. It's COM and should work inside Powerpoint. If it does not work, could you mail me, please, so we can fix it?

Other projects
Apart from VLC -- and I can't thank you enough for this media player, it has made lives of millions easy -- what other projects you guys at VideoLAN are working on currently?
JBK: There are a few libraries that are used by many other projects, like x264, libdvdcss and libbluray. We're working quite a bit on DVBlast to stream DVB and we've picked up the VLC-based video editor, named VLMC. I hope, that this time, we will finish it :)

Acquisition
Did anyone -- or any company -- ever approach you guys for buying VLC?
JBK: Yes, many times. But those people are clueless: what is there to buy?
VLC is fully open source and GPL, and we do no copyright assignments (because those are evil, like for the GNU project) so everyone keeps his own copyright.
You could buy the main domain I guess, but is it worth it?
What we had more often are offers to co-bundle crap at the time of the installation. And to be honest, the amounts they suggest are HUGE, and difficult to resist.
Any plans for a touch-friendly UI?
by swb

I use VLC on my laptop for playing movies on planes. It'd be kind of nice to have a touchscreen-friendly UI for those situations. It's kind of a nuisance to remember keybindings or use the touchpad.

JBK: So we have touch-friendly on the Windows Store version, the Android and iOS versions. The last desktop version has a few touch reactions (play/pause, seek and fullscreen IIRC) on Linux and Windows.

How long before VLC for Xbox One?
by manishs

I have an Xbox One, and its built-in media player just sucks. And there's no alternative! I know you guys have promised that VLC will be available later this year on Microsoft's gaming platform, but can you share exactly how long we have to wait. Also, will VLC support HEVC files?

JBK: I'd guess early September. Or compile it yourself :)
Else, yes, it will support HEVC in software and in hardware on the XBox One S.

Hmm
by EmeraldBot

Currently, we live in an era where media players have become quite sophisticated. For example, Windows Media Player or iTunes offer some pretty advanced features for managing large libraries, they integrate heavily within their ecosystems, and some even come with complete stores where you can buy songs with a single click. On the other end, there are players such as Audacious that focus on playing music, and only on that - and the result is that you get a very speedy and lightweight player, and the support of Winamp skins makes it possible to personalize things. What role do you think VLC plays in the ecosystem, and more specifically, where do you think you want to take the project in the future?

JBK: I think we need to do both: a very fast player when you open the file from the explorer/dolphin/finder and a possible media library if you prefer the long way. On mobile, the first does not make much sense, but the second does. But I doubt we'll go the full media center route, though :)
On the other part of your question, we need to break ecosystems and make them interoperable. There is no reason why you shouldn't Chromecast from a Windows Phone or AirPlay from Android. And I believe we are at the right position for that. :)

Chromecast Support
by Luthair

I heard a very long time ago there was development effort to support Chromecast, any idea on the time frame before it's released?

JBK: It will be in VLC 3.0. I often joke that every time someone asks, I delay of one week the release :)
The truth is that the Chromecast working model is not really compatible with the VLC streaming (push vs pull), so it's a bit hard to do. Moreover, there is no SDK on most platforms. But it's almost there.

Seamless Playing
by SemperOSS

Thank you for the my favourite player. Are there any plans for seamless playing in VLC. I have some playlists with continuous tracks and it would be nice to not have the break.

JBK: If you've looked closely, with every release we're getting closer to that. We now keep the audio output module between songs. We've changed the audio filters for 3.0 and the next thing will be almost pure gapless. No crossfade yet, though.

DLNA/UPnP?
by Mister Transistor

JBK: Hi, great program! Thank you - longtime user here. Any plans to support streaming to ("fling to") players using DLNA or UPnP? Many devices like WDTV, FireStick/Kodi, etc. support this protocol, and I can control them very easily from a media "player" PC. I prefer the PC's user interface over the crummy remote control UI's of the playing device(s).

JBK: So I guess you are speaking about UPnP renderers, right? We're having the ChromeCast first, and then we'll do UPnP renderers, so you can push to those player easily.

Security...
by EmeraldBot

JBK: With operating systems becoming more and more secure, hackers are increasingly focusing on end user programs, such as VLC. Do you think the project needs work in this regard? If so, may I ask what your plans and ideas for improving it would be? By the way, thank you for all of your hard work! VLC isn't my day to day player, but nonetheless it has come in handy many, many times, and my life is much easier because of it. I heavily appreciate your taking time out of your day to answer our questions! :)

JBK: Yes. I believe VLC has a lot of issues related to security, and it's not enough audited. Moreover, VLC is very tricky to sandbox, because you must avoid memcpy at all cost, and because you need direct access to the hardware (GPU, Audio Device). And doing so in a cross-platform way is difficult. I hope someone has the time to do a concept around that, though...

Stagefright

Bearing in mind how often we receive VLC updates, what is your opinion of Google's decision to "carve in stone" the StageFright media libraries into the /system read-only mount point on Android? Stagefright patch breakdowns were of surprising number and duration: "...over the course of the last year of Android updates, Google has issued patches for 115 media server-related CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) flaws. Of those, 49 were found directly in libstagefright, with 35 in libmedia and 31 in libraries on which libstagefright depends."
A related question: if Google had approached you with the intention of burning the VLC player into the equivalent of ROM, would you have asked them to choose another player? JBK: Don't start me on Stagefright and Mediaserver, I could rant for 2 or 3 hours non-stop! Seriously, the code over there is crap, and has insane concepts, like aborting the whole mediaserver (and all related media decoding of all other applications running at the same time), when it parses a file with attributes it does not know, instead of skipping the file. We discovered some issues in Stagefright (busy loops, device reboots, mediaserver crashes) quite early, but we never thought about submitting them.
As for your second question, a media player cannot be secure, you MUST keep it with the minimum privileges possible. But VLC is a good program to include in an Android device, since it reads a lot of formats.

Code development for such a thorny world
by thermopile

How do you manage your code development? With so many proliferating codecs to manage out there, and so many different hardware products to Just Work on, how do you keep everything straight? on a shoestring budget?

JBK: Well, VLC works because it's very very modular: a typical VLC installation has 350 modules. So it's relatively easy to add a new format or a new codec, without touching anything in the core or the other modules. Some modules have not been touched for years, but they still work fine. The APIs between core and modules are usually quite simple and in pure C, which helps.
Also, a lot of code is often pushed to 3rd party libraries, like libbluray or libdsm and we encourage people to add codecs to libavcodec.
As for most devices, it takes a lot of time to work on the module ports (Android/iOS/UWP), but we're now trying to mutualize code between those versions. Moreover, the core is the same on all platforms, with simple abstractions. We try to do the correct thing, but keeping it simple, on a code level.

[Similar question by reader btroy: How on earth did you find the specs and actually code for the huge variety of codecs VLC supports. Where did you start your research and figure out these things?]

JBK: Codecs are now mostly done by libavcodec, but for formats, it's mostly experience and years of try/fail ;)

H.265
by speedplane

I have heard that the newest video code, H.265 (or HEVC), is extremely complex, while only offering minor performance gains. What is your opinion on this? Do you think it will catch on or go the way of JPEG2000?

JBK: I believe H265 will achieve around 30% gain, in some cases, but I doubt it will bring that much more. And also, we have to remember that the x264 encoder was excellent.
H265 will make sense a lot in hardware, but software decoders are going to be less used, I believe. However, H265 will be a success because of 4K and HDR that are pushed heavily by the industry, even if we could achieve the same in H264...

UI
by DogDude

Why is the UI so poor and counter-intuitive? Are there any UI specialists working on the project?

JBK: Because we're geeks and that the UI is not the most important. But if you look at what we've done for iOS, Android and UWP, we're improving a lot! Desktop redesign is next!

Future
by JoshTops

Where do you see VideoLAN and VLC look like in five years?

JBK: I don't have any crystal ball, but I hope we'll still be around. I hope VideoLAN will host more open source projects related to multimedia. VLC will be probably ported to WebAssembly, whatever that will be. As for the rest, I have no idea :)

MSI: Why are you so hostile towards organisations?

JBK: We're not. It's just that, so far, that noone submitted the code to do so. Also, we have an MSI. I'm available for consulting if you want to modify VLC for features for big deployments. But I don't see why I would work on those features I don't care about on my free time. Tell me your requirements, and I will tell you what needs to be done :)

Short answers:

Short term memory
JBK: Technically, we already have timeshifting inside VLC. It's just not controllable from the user PoV. We need to change that. vlc and encoding obsolescence. We will try to never drop a codec or format, even if marginal.

Official way of playing Blu-Ray
JBK: I doubt it. The best ways are still to use AnyDVD-HD, MakeMKV or libaacs with one of the KEYDB.cfg Database MPEG-4 Part 25. So far, no.
Compatibility Media Center
JBK: Use the VLC for Windows Store version, it's what you want :)

DLNA/UPnP Improvements
JBK: Fixed in next major release with the new UPnP stack.
Dolby Atmos 7.1 support?
JBK: Should arrive soon, I promise.

Re:How do you keep VLC sustainable? On a related note, where is the closest VLC developer? How do I buy him/her a beer? Where do we send the pizza? JBK: Where are you? I can travel the world for a good beer and pizza :D

An anonymous reader writes: The Japan Times reports another death. This time a 20 year old woman has died after being hit by a car while riding her bicycle. The man driving the car claimed he was distracted changing the battery because it was nearly flat from playing Pokemon Go. Police have already charged him with negligence resulting in injury. The penalty for causing death is a maximum 7 years jail. The Japanese National Police agency said there have been 79 bicycle and car accidents linked to the game. Another death was reported yesterday

Sam Gustin, writing for Motherboard: Facebook's decision to begin harvesting data from its popular WhatsApp messaging service provoked a social media uproar on Thursday, and prompted leading privacy advocates to prepare a federal complaint accusing the tech titan of violating US law. On Thursday morning, WhatsApp, which for years has dined out on its reputation for privacy and security, announced that it would begin sharing user phone numbers with its Menlo Park-based parent company in an effort "to improve your Facebook ads and products experiences." Consumer privacy advocates denounced the move as a betrayal of WhatsApp's one billion users -- users who had been assured by the two companies that "nothing would change" about the messaging service's privacy practices after Facebook snapped up the startup for a whopping $19 billion in 2014. "WhatsApp users should be shocked and upset," Claire Gartland, Consumer Protection Counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a leading US consumer advocacy group, told Motherboard. "WhatsApp obtained one billion users by promising that it would protect user privacy. Both Facebook and WhatsApp made very public promises that the companies would maintain a separation. Those were the key selling points of the deal."

The creator of Linux, Linus Torvalds, posted his famous message announcing Linux on August 25, 1991, claiming that it was "just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu." ZDNet's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols caught up with Linus Torvalds and talked about Linux's origins in a series of interviews: "SJVN: What's Linux real birthday? You're the proud papa, when do you think it was? When you sent out the newsgroup post to the Minix newsgroup on August 25, 1991? When you sent out the 0.01 release to a few friends?

LT: I think both of them are valid birthdays. The first newsgroup post is more public (August 25), and you can find it with headers giving date and time and everything. In contrast, I don't think the 0.01 release was ever announced in any public setting (only in private to a few people who had shown interest, and I don't think any of those emails survived). These days the way to find the 0.01 date (September 17) is to go and look at the dates of the files in the tar-file that still remains. So, both of them work for me. Or either. And, by the way, some people will argue for yet other days. For example, the earliest public semi-mention of Linux was July 3: that was the first time I asked for some POSIX docs publicly on the minix newsgroup and mentioned I was working on a project (but didn't name it). And at the other end, October 5 was the first time I actually publicly announced a Linux version: 'version 0.02 (+1 (very small) patch already).' So you might have to buy four cakes if you want to cover all the eventualities." Vaughan-Nichols goes on to pick Linus' brain about what he was doing when he created Linux. In honor of Linux's 25th birthday today, let's all sing happy birthday... 1... 2... 3...

A total of three men are said to be operators of file-sharing site KickassTorrents (KAT), according to U.S. prosecutors. Last month, federal authorities arrested the 30-year-old Ukrainian mastermind of KAT, Artem Vaulin, and formally charged him with one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, and two counts of criminal copyright infringement. Two other Ukrainians were named in the new indictment (PDF): Levgen (Eugene) Kutsenko and Oleksander (Alex) Radostin. While only Vaulin has been arrested, bench warrants have been issue for the arrest of all three men. Ars Technica reports: "Prosecutors say the three men developed and maintained the site together and used it to 'generate millions of dollars from the unlawful distribution of copyright-protected media, including movies, [...] television shows, music, video games, computer software, and electronic books.' They gave out 'Reputation' and 'User Achievement' awards to users who uploaded the most popular files, including a special award for users who had uploaded more than 1,000 torrents. The indictment presents a selection of the evidence that the government intends to use to convict the men, and it isn't just simple downloads of the copyrighted movies. The government combed through Vaulin's e-mails and traced the bitcoins that were given to him via a 'donation' button."

Consider this a public service announcement: Sony has (finally) added two-factor authentication to PlayStation Network accounts. If you're a PlayStation user and are reading this right now, you really should go set it up so that someone doesn't try to take over your account and steal your password. Ars Technica details how you can set up the new security features: "Turn on your PS4 and go to Settings -> PlayStation Network Account Management -> Account Information -> Security -> 2-Step Verification. You can also set it up through the web by logging into your PSN account on the web and going through the Security tab under the Account header. From there, on-screen instructions will walk you through the process of using a text message to confirm your mobile device as a secondary layer of security for your PSN account. Two-factor support is not available when logging on to older PlayStation systems, so Sony recommends you generate a 'device setup password' to help protect the PS3, Vita, or PSP." Two-factor authentication comes five years after hackers breached PSN's security and stole 77 million accounts.

Days before ride-hailing service Uber debuts its self-driving car in Pittsburgh, a company in Singapore has beaten Uber to the race. The Guardian reports: The world's first "self-driving" taxi service has been launched in Singapore -- albeit with a human backup driver and co-pilot on board for the time being. Members of the public selected to take part in the trial would be able to hail a free ride through their smartphones, said nuTonomy, an autonomous vehicle software startup. The cars -- modified Renault Zoe and Mitsubishi i-MiEV electrics -- had a driver in the front prepared to take back the wheel and a researcher in the back watching the car's computers, the company said. Each was fitted with Lidar, a laser-based detection system like radar. An Associated Press reporter taking a ride on Wednesday observed that the safety driver had to step on the brakes once, when a car was obstructing the test car's lane and another vehicle, which appeared to be parked, suddenly began moving in the oncoming lane. The service would start with six cars, growing to a dozen by the end of the year, said nuTonomy, adding that it aimed to have a fully self-driving taxi fleet in Singapore by 2018.

It's been a little more than 4 year since Canon unveiled the EOS 5D Mark III. Today, Canon took the wraps off its successor -- the EOS 5D Mark IV. The Mark IV features a 34-megapixel, full-frame CMOS sensor and Digic 6+ processor with support for capturing 4K video at 23.98, 24, 25 and 30 fps. In addition, it features a 61-point autofocus system, built-in digital lens optimizer, NFC, Wi-Fi and an ISO range of 100-32,000. The continuous shooting mode is set at 7 fps, compared to 6 fps on the 5D Mark III. It will also take both CompactFlash and SD cards, and there is GPS included in the body for geotagging images. Canon is selling the Mark IV in early September for $3,499 for the body only. They're also selling two new L-series EF lenses -- the Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L III USM Ultra-Wide Zoom Lens and EF 24-105mm f/4L IS II USM Standard Zoom Lens. President and COO, Canon U.S.A., Inc, Yichi Ishizuka said in a statement: "Canon's EOS 5D series of DSLR cameras has a history of being at the forefront of still and video innovation. And today, we add to this family of cameras the EOS 5D Mark IV -- the first in our 5D series to offer 4K video and built-in Wi-Fi and NFC connectivity. In developing this new DSLR camera, we listened to the requests of current EOS users to create for them a modern, versatile camera designed to help them create and share beautiful still and video imagery." Here's a blast from the past: Canon's EOS 1Ds Mark II. Slashdot reader LoudMusic submitted this story back in 2004, highlighting the camera's "802.11a/g and wired networking capabilities."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: Space station commander Jeff Williams set a new U.S. space endurance record Wednesday, his 521st day in orbit over four missions, eclipsing the 520-day record set earlier this year by astronaut Scott Kelly at the end of his nearly one-year stay aboard the lab complex. Williams now moves up to 17th on the list of the world's most experienced astronauts and cosmonauts. The overall record is held by cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, who logged 878 days in orbit over five missions. Williams, Soyuz TMA-20M commander Alexey Ovchinin and flight engineer Oleg Skripochka were launched to the space station March 18. They plan to return to Earth Sept. 6 (U.S. time), landing in Kazakhstan to close out a 172-day mission. At landing, Williams will have logged 534 days aloft, moving him up to 14th on the space endurance list. Williams first flew in space in 2000 aboard the shuttle Atlantis, the third shuttle flight devoted to station assembly. He served as a flight engineer aboard the station in 2006 and completed a second long-duration stay in 2010, serving as a flight engineer and then commander of Expedition 22. "I wanted to congratulate you on passing me up here in total number of days in space," Kelly radioed Williams Wednesday. "It's great to see another record broken. [...] But I do have one question for you. And my question is, do you have another 190 days in you?" Kelly was referring to the time Williams' current mission would have to be extended to equal Kelly's U.S. single-flight record. Williams laughed, saying "190 days. That question's not for me, that's for my wife!"

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.

Not too long after it completed its first test flight, the Airlander 10 -- the world's largest aircraft -- has crashed its second test flight. Since the 300-foot long aircraft contains 38,000 cubic meters of helium inside its hull, the crash was all but sudden. You can see in a video posted to YouTube from witnesses on the ground that the aircraft slowly descended to the ground, nose first. The BBC has published some close-up photos of the cockpit, which sustained damages. There were no injuries in the crash, according to a tweet from Hybrid Air Vehicles. The company did also deny eyewitness reports of the aircraft being damaged in a collision with a telegraph pole.