Slashdot Mirror

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is accusing Russian state-sponsored hackers of hacking its database of athletes involved in this year's Olympic Games in Rio. Whether it's in response to the WADA banning 119 Russian athletes from participating in the games due to a doping scandal, it has yet to be determined. The Verge reports: The agency claims the state-sponsored group Fancy Bear is behind the attack, although it doesn't clarify how that attribution was made. The accessed data included medical information, like Therapeutic Use Exemptions issued by International Sports Federations and National Anti-Doping Organizations. The group has reportedly released some of this data and threatened to release more. The attackers reportedly relied on spear phishing emails to gain access to the database and eventually used credentials specifically made for the Rio Olympic games. Fancy Bear was the same group responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee earlier this year.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Beginning September 19th, [Twitter] will cut down on exactly which types of content count toward the platform's 140-character limit. Media attachments (images, GIFs, videos, polls, etc.) and quoted tweets will no longer reduce the count. The extra room for text will give users more flexibility in composing their messages. Twitter first announced plans to stop counting extras like photos, videos, and user polls toward the limit back in May, but gave no firm date on when the shift would occur. A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by The Verge. The date comes from two sources familiar with the company's business, but plans for the rollout could change. Another new adjustment to the character limit is that usernames will no longer count when they're at the beginning of replies, giving users additional room for discussion. It's unclear whether all of these changes will occur simultaneously; certain content types may gradually stop counting against the character limit in stages. But the company will at least kick off the move next Monday.

Earlier this year, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Blue Origin said he would unveil details about his company's orbital rocket sometime "later this year." He is now delivering on the promise. Bezos has released some preliminary details about the "New Glenn" rocket which employs seven of the company's new generation BE-4 rocket engines. The rocket, named after the first American to reach orbit, is bigger than Elon Musk's Falcon Heavy rocket. Bezos said he intends to launch the New Glenn in less than a decade from now. The Verge reports: The New Glenn will incorporate reusability, according to an email update from Bezos. The first stage of the rocket will be able to land post-launch, similar to how Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle lands after a flight. However, the New Shepard is only capable of going to sub-orbital space, so it's not traveling as fast or as high as a rocket going to orbit. Landing an orbital rocket post-launch will put Blue Origin in a whole new ball game. And it looks like there will be a lot of rocket to land. The New Glenn will be 23 feet in diameter and range between 270 and 313 feet high. That height depends on if there is one upper stage or two on top of the rocket. With just one upper stage, the rocket will be able to send satellites and people into lower Earth orbit (LEO). But with two upper stages, the New Glenn is capable of taking payloads beyond LEO. The main portion of the rocket will be powered by seven BE-4s, an engine that Blue Origin is currently developing. It's the same engine that the company hopes to sell to the United Launch Alliance to power the future Vulcan rocket. Combined, the BE-4s should provide 3.85 million pounds of thrust, according to Bezos. That's more thrust than the 2 million pounds the Delta IV Heavy is capable of, and slightly less than the 5 million pounds SpaceX's Falcon Heavy can pull off.Bezos said: Our vision is millions of people living and working in space, and New Glenn is a very important step. It won't be the last of course. Up next on our drawing board: New Armstrong. But that's a story for the future.

Apple's new iPhones -- the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus -- don't have the headphone jack. The company's SVP Phil Schiller said the move signifies "courage" from the company to put a 100-year-old audio standard to bed. But there could be one more reason for this transition to a Bluetooth/Wireless headphones future: it owns the largest Bluetooth headphones company -- Beats. The Verge reports: More likely is that the lack of a headphone jack on the iPhone -- and increasingly, on Android phones as well -- will lead to an uptick in sales of Bluetooth headphones. And it just so happens that Apple owns the number one Bluetooth headphone company, Beats. Beats brings in more revenue from Bluetooth headphones than LG, Bose, or Jaybird, according to NPD figures released in July. In terms of unit sales, it controls over a quarter of the Bluetooth headphone market. Bluetooth headphones are also disproportionately profitable among headphones. NPD has them accounting for 54 percent of all dollars spent in the market, despite representing only 17 percent of units sold in the U.S.. These headphones sell at high prices with high margins, and Apple's company is making the best of it so far. Sales of Bluetooth headphones are already growing, with units up 64 percent year over year according to NPD's US figures. And Apple's removal of the headphone jack is likely to give them another boost.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Google parent company Alphabet is teaming up with fast casual chain Chipotle to test drone delivery for Virginia Tech students, according to a report from Bloomberg. The pilot program marks a turning point for Alphabet's Project Wing division, giving the team ample room to experiment with airborne burrito deliveries in one of the first commercial programs of its kind to be green-lit by the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority. The drones, which will be hybrid aircraft that can both fly and hover in place, will make deliveries coordinated by a Chipotle food truck on campus. Project Wing drones will be guided predominantly by software, but human pilots will be on hand to assume control if necessary. The aircraft are also prohibited from flying directly over human beings. So active participants will be shielded appropriately, according to Alphabet. Project Wing chose to partner with Chipotle because it presented unique challenges: could a drone adequately deliver food using a winch system, and can the food remain hot throughout flight with special packaging? The program will be accessible to select Virginia Tech employees and students.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The Cuban government is blocking text messages that contain words such as "democracy," "human rights," and "hunger strike," according to an investigation from local dissidents. In a Spanish-language report published last week, prominent blogger Yoani Sanchez and journalist Reinaldo Escobar found that the government is filtering 30 keywords and blocking the transmission of any texts that contain them. Reuters later confirmed that messages containing the Spanish words for "democracy" and "human rights" did not reach their destination, nor did those containing Sanchez's name or "Somos Mas": an opposition group that worked on the investigation. Texts that included the word "protest" were transmitted, the agency reported on Tuesday, and those that were blocked were marked as "sent" on the sender's phone. It's not clear how long the communist government has been filtering keywords and blocking texts, and activists suspect that there may be more terms that it is targeting. Cuba has long been accused of committing human rights abuses, including arbitrary detentions and restrictions on freedom of speech. "We discovered not just us but the entire country is being censored," Eliecer Avila, the head of Somos Mas, tells Reuters. "It just shows how insecure and paranoid the government is."

In addition to two shiny new iPhones, Apple has announced its second generation Apple Watch today, calling it the Apple Watch Series 2. The appearance is nearly identical to the original Apple Watch, with the exception of the new (optional) ceramic build material. The biggest changes can be found under the hood. The Verge reports: "The built-in GPS allows the device to perform mapping on its own, no phone required. The company also upgraded the processor in the device, now called the S2, and the display. The Series 2 has a dual-core processor Apple says is 50 percent faster than its predecessor, with double the graphics performance thanks to a new GPU. The display is now 50 percent brighter as well. The company also renewed its longstanding partnership with Nike with a special Nike+ version of the Apple Watch. It resembles a fusion of an Apple product with Nike's discontinued FuelBand fitness tracker, and it's designed for runners and workout junkies. The aluminum sport version of the Apple Watch Series 2 will start at $369, as will the Nike+ edition. The original Apple Watch is being rebranded as Series 1 and will start at $269, though it will come with the upgraded S2 dual-core processor. Preorders start on September 9th, while the watchOS 3 update will go live on September 13th."

Sony isn't done with the PlayStation 4. The company today revealed the PS4 Slim, a thinner version of its latest console that's been lurking around the rumor mill for months now. The Slim lands on September 15th for $300. The PS4 Slim features all the guts of a standard PS4 plus a few cosmetic and convenience upgrades, including a lightbar at the top, more space between the front-facing USB ports and the removal of the optical port, Engadget reports. From the report:The console is about 30 percent smaller than the standard PS4, which came out in 2013, and it plays all existing PS4 games.
The company also launched a more powerful version of the PlayStation 4: the PS4 Pro, which offers support for 4K. It is priced at $399, and goes on sale November 10. The Verge reports: The PS4 Pro can output 4K and HDR video, which is powered by an upgraded GPU. Sony also boosted the clock rate for the new PS4 Pro. It will also come with a 1TB hard drive. "PS4 Pro is not intended to blur the line between console generations," Mark Cerny, the chief architect for the PS4, said on stage. "Instead, the vision is to take the PS4 experience to extraordinary new levels."

Apple on Wednesday unveiled its new flagship smartphones: the iPhone 7, and the iPhone 7 Plus. Both the iPhones look similar to the last year's iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, but offer a range of new features. Chief among those features are water and dust resistance, stereo speakers, improved cameras (the iPhone 7 Plus has a pair of 12MP cameras that are able to take SLR-quality images. It offers bokeh capability). And yes, the new iPhones indeed lack the headphone jack. "it's the best iPhone we have ever created," Apple CEO Tim Cook said. The home button is getting taptic feedback, similar to that of the MacBook.

So why is Apple removing the headphone jack? Apple's SVP Phil Schiller said, "courage."The company also announced AirPods wireless earphones. A pair of these will be priced at $169. The iPhones will go on sales starting September 16 in several regions including the United States In places like India, however, it will be available starting October 7.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Windows Central: Google has posted a new video showing how much it has improved battery life while using Chrome on Windows. It demonstrated those changes in a video that featured the web browser on Microsoft's Surface Book notebooks. The video test was based on running a Vimeo video on Chrome 46, which was released in 2015, and the same video running on Chrome 53, which was released last week. The Surface Book with Chrome 46 ran out of battery power after 8 hours and 27 minutes, while the same notebook running Chrome 53 shut down in 10 hours and 39 minutes, or over 2 hours later. Chrome 53 also features Material Design, a user interface that "makes more liberal use of grid-based layouts, responsive animations and transitions, padding, and depth effects such as lighting and shadows." You can force the update to Chrome 53 by navigating to the about section of Chrome.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Newly published documents from Edward Snowden have shed more light on American surveillance operations in the UK. The Intercept details how the NSA and GCHQ used information gathered by Menwith Hill Station, a massive but tightly sealed facility that intercepts satellite data transmissions worldwide. Among other things, the files appear to include evidence that links UK-based surveillance to American anti-terrorism campaigns outside official combat zones. While many surveillance efforts focus on the internet's connective "backbone" cables, Menwith Hill intercepts wireless signals, using an array of antennae and U.S. government satellites to capture up to 335 million pieces of metadata in a 12-hour period. Previous reports -- including an earlier Snowden leak -- have already revealed some of its capabilities. But The Intercept includes more details, particularly about the UK's involvement in "capture-kill" operations against suspected terrorists. It describes how the GHOSTHUNTER program traced the location of targets "when they log onto the internet," often in internet cafes. A different program called GHOSTWOLF, which let the NSA and GCHQ monitor traffic from Yemeni internet cafes, is part of a plan to "capture or eliminate key nodes in terrorist networks" by tracking their locations. This leak fuels existing suspicions that the UK's role in American covert drone strikes is greater than it admits -- potentially implicating it in the civilian deaths that have resulted. GCHQ told The Intercept that all its work "is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework," and "is entirely compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights."

Roughly two months later, SoftBank announced today that it has completed its $31 billion acquisition of British chip designer ARM Holdings. The Verge reports: "SoftBank's purchase of ARM is the latest in a line of acquisitions in recent years for the Japanese company, including the $20 billion Sprint acquisition, and a $15 billion investment in Vodafone's Japanese division. ARM is well known for designing chips and licensing them to companies like Apple and Samsung, and ARM-designed chips dominate mobile computing in phones and tablets. 15 billion ARM-designed chips shipped last year alone, and around half of those were in mobile devices. SoftBank is expected to use the ARM deal to bolster its Internet of Things plans."

An anonymous reader writes:During an address to reporters at the G-20 international summit in China, President Obama stated that he'd like to prevent an "arms race" among countries that have various cyber weapons at their disposal. The remarks come after Russian president Vladimir Putin denied having any involvement with the hack of the Democratic National Committee's emails earlier this summer. Obama said that the world is "moving into a new era where a number of countries have significant capacities", before noting that the United States has "more capacity than anybody, both offensively and defensively" when it comes to cyber weapons.

Vlad Savov, writing for The Verge: Like a grand old dinosaur that's being left behind by the evolution of the tech industry, Sony is in desperate recovery mode here at IFA. The company has new phones, a rather nice pair of noise-canceling headphones, the imminent PS VR, and... a truly outlandish combo of music player and headphones that costs a mighty $5,499.98. I guess there had to be some outlet for Sony's classic wild-eyed grandeur. Sony's new Signature audio series consists of the gold-plated NW-WM1Z Walkman, which weighs in at 455g (1lb) and $3,200, the $2,300 MDR-Z1R closed-back headphones, and a desktop headphone amp whose price I haven't even dared to look up. First impressions? The portable media player barely qualifies to be called portable. This new 256GB Walkman glints beautifully under IFA's bright lights, and its hefty case is machined to a perfect finish, but its weight is overwhelming. I simultaneously love it for its looks and hate it for its impracticality. Typical Sony, then!

Europe's biggest tech show IFA is underway in Berlin currently. Companies from around the world are showcasing their new smartphones at the event, chearleading the advancements they have made on the hardware side. Pretty much all these devices are running Android, but the way they are presented, you wouldn't be able to tell if that really is the case. The Verge's Vlad Savov writes: Sony would have us believe that buying an Xperia phone grants us a pass into the exclusive Xperia experience. The stuff actually differentiating the Xperia brand is junk and bloatware: the Xperia assistance software is a mobile version of Microsoft's Clippy. Huawei is even worse in its Android omerta, deathly afraid to utter the green giant's name. I understand that hardware companies want to spend more time talking about their hardware, but all these launches feel lobotomized without a proper discussion of the software driving their devices. Tell me about your implementation of Android. Tell me why you think it's okay to launch a phone without the latest software. Reassure me that I won't be left behind the way that many 2014 Android flagships already have been, and explain to your users why they don't need smarter multitasking, improved notifications, and baked-in VR support. Yes, those are harder issues to discuss, but dodging them is what makes customers untrusting of Android manufacturers.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Google has "suspended" work on Project Ara, the initiative to build a phone with interchangeable modules for various components like cameras and batteries, according to Reuters and Recode. The company reportedly may license the technology to other partners, but will not release a phone itself. The decision is said to be part of an effort to unify Google's hardware development under former Motorola president Rick Osterloh. Although Project Ara has always seemed a dubious commercial prospect, the news is surprising if only because Google made a renewed effort to push the modular concept at its I/O conference earlier this year, promising a developer version for fall and a consumer release for 2017. Google's Project Ara was originally spearheaded by Motorola to reinvent the smartphone in a form made up of hot-swappable modules that consumers can configure as they choose, then upgrade later as new technologies emerge. RIP Project Ara.

Reader Mysticalfruit writes: NPR is reporting that a Falcon9 carrying the AMOS-6 satellite that was supposed to launch on Sat exploded during it's scheduled static fire. No injuries are reported. They're reporting that this was going to be the first reflown first stage.
The Verge adds:SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, meant to launch a satellite this weekend, exploded on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida this morning. The explosion occurred during the preparation for the static fire test of the rocket's engines, NASA told the Associated Press. The blast reportedly shook buildings "several miles away." The company confirmed to The Verge the loss of the Falcon 9 an hour later: "SpaceX can confirm that in preparation for today's static fire, there was an anomaly on the pad resulting in the loss of the vehicle and its payload. Per standard procedure, the pad was clear and there were no injuries."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Amazon have all done it -- and now Baidu's doing it, too. The Chinese tech giant has open sourced one of its key machine learning tools, PaddlePaddle, offering the software up to the global community of AI researchers. Baidu's big claim for PaddlePaddle is that it's easier to use than rival programs. Like Amazon's DSSTNE and Microsoft's CNTK, PaddlePaddle offers a toolkit for deep learning, but Baidu says comparable software is designed to work in too many different situations, making it less approachable to newcomers. Xu Wei, the leader of Baidu's PaddlePaddle development, tells The Verge that a machine translation program written with Baidu's software needs only a quarter of the amount of code demanded by other deep learning tools. Baidu is hoping this ease of use will make PaddlePaddle more attractive to computer scientists, and draw attention away from machine learning tools released by Google and Facebook. Baidu says PaddlePaddle is already being used by more than 30 of its offline and online products and services, covering sectors from search to finance to health. Xu said that if one of its machine learning tools became too monopolistic, it would be like "trying to use one programming language to code all applications." Xu doesn't believe that any one company will dominate this area. "Different tools have different strengths," he said. "The deep learning ecosystem will end up having different tools optimized for different uses. Just like no programming language truly dominates software development."

tripleevenfall quotes a report from The Verge: Google's newest smartphones won't be Nexus devices after all. According to Android Central, Google is dropping the Nexus branding with its two upcoming, HTC-made smartphones. Instead, the company is expected to market the devices under a different name and to lean heavily on the Google brand in the process. This shift is more than just symbolic. The report states Google will load the devices with a special version of Android Nougat, as opposed to the standard "vanilla" version of the operating system that's shipped on past and current Nexus devices. Android Police reported earlier this month that Google may remove the Nexus branding from its upcoming smartphones and replace it with a "G" logo. It's too early to tell which direction Google is taking with its upcoming Android Nougat smartphones. Google has spent years marketing the Nexus brand as a hardware entity, while Google has reserved its own name for software services.

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."

Jason H. Harper, writing for The Verge: Et tu, Hyundai? Until recently, the Korean brand offered two upmarket cars, the Genesis and the Equus. The first name had biblical shades and the latter shared a title with a play where an adolescent likes to get naked and straddle horses. So while the connotations were a bit muddled, at least they were memorable. Now Hyundai has spun Genesis into its own luxury brand, akin to what Toyota did with Lexus decades ago. And in so doing, it has cast off those memorable names in favor of an alphanumeric naming strategy. The Hyundai Genesis is reborn as the Genesis G80 and the Equus sheds its horsey homage to become the G90, which guarantees that I won't remember the new names. I'll just call the G90 the Model-Formerly-Known-as-Equus. And while the two models seemed well differentiated before, now the distinctions are hazy. The G90 apparently has 10 more units of something over the G80. Perhaps it is 10 percent better. Ten percent bigger? Ten grand more expensive? Welcome to Alphanumeric Hell.The rest of the article is worth a read as well.

When T-Mobile announced "One" plan, little did the company know that people wouldn't like seeing their "unlimited" data plan offer video streaming max out at 480p resolution. The company is making some tweaks to that plan, only to make things more confusing to people. It will now begin selling "HD day passes" for $3 per day, allowing customers to stream in 1080p for 24 hours. The Verge reports: That's simple enough, but here's where it gets really weird: T-Mobile is also offering a plan called T-Mobile One Plus, which, among other benefits, offers unlimited HD day passes. So by subscribing to the plan, you can stream 1080p video all you want every single day -- but only if you go and activate the HD day pass again every single day. Presumably, T-Mobile is hoping you'll forget to activate those passes, or else it would have just lifted the 480p quality limit without this bizarre constraint. Making this even more confusing, T-Mobile originally announced plans to offer an "HD add-on" for the One plan that offered unlimited HD streaming without constraints. That's no longer going to be an option, however, so if you want HD video streaming, you're stuck re-enabling it every day. A T-Mobile rep framed the change as "giving customers more" for the same price, which is true (both cost $25 extra per month), but the new plan also involves the strange new reactivation hurdle.

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"

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Satellite operator DigitalGlobe is teaming up with Amazon, the venture arm of the CIA, and NVIDIA to make computers watch the Earth from above and automatically map our roads, buildings, and piles of trash. MIT Technology Review reports: "In a joint project, DigitalGlobe today released satellite imagery depicting the whole of Rio de Janeiro to a resolution of 50 centimeters. The outlines of 200,000 buildings inside the city's roughly 1,900 square kilometers have been manually marked on the photos. The SpaceNet data set, as it is called, is intended to spark efforts to train machine-learning algorithms to interpret high-resolution satellite photos by themselves. DigitalGlobe says the SpaceNet data set should eventually include high-resolution images of half a million square kilometers of Earth, and that it will add annotations beyond just buildings. DigitalGlobe's data is much more detailed than publicly available satellite data such as NASA's, which typically has a resolution of tens of meters. Amazon will make the SpaceNet data available via its cloud computing service. Nvidia will provide tools to help machine-learning researchers train and test algorithms on the data, and CosmiQ Works, a division of the CIA's venture arm In-Q-Tel focused on space, is also supporting the project." "We need to develop new algorithms for this data," says senior vice president at DigitalGlobe, Tony Frazier. He goes on to say that health and aid programs are to benefit from software that is able to map roads, bridges and various other infrastructure. The CEO of Descartes Labs, Mark Johnson, a "startup that predicts crop yields from public satellite images," says the data that is collected "should be welcome to startups and researchers," according to MIT Technology Review. "Potential applications could include estimated economic output from activity in urban areas, or guiding city governments on how to improve services such as trash collections, he says."

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.

Uber is debuting its self-driving cars in Pittsburgh this month, a move that has many taxi drivers upset. The Verge's Nilay Patel argues that this move should change the way we think about maps and addresses. He adds that Uber is currently unable to pinpoint his home, and often ends up at the door of a "widely different address." Citing the CEO of a "large ridesharing company", Patel writes that this issue is known as the "egress problem" -- "the way we locate buildings on a map doesn't really describe how people move in and out of those buildings." Though there are workarounds and inventive ways to pinpoint your exact address, Patel argues that when we grow reliant on self-driving cars, things will get far more complicated and futile if we don't make our maps and navigation services better. He writes: Driverless cars are one of the ultimate signifiers of the future -- the real Jetsons stuff. And we're so close to making them happen: tons of cars have sophisticated adaptive cruise control that can basically keep you going on the highway, prototypes of true self-driving cars from Google and others are already on the road, and the momentum is only increasing. But maybe we shouldn't hand control of how we get somewhere to the machines until we're entirely sure the robots know where we're going.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Instapaper, a pioneering app for saving articles to read later, has been acquired -- again. The app, which was created by developer Marco Arment and sold to Betaworks in 2013, has found a new home at Pinterest. The goal is "to accelerate discovering and saving articles on Pinterest," the company said in a statement. It will continue to operate as a standalone app, and the Instapaper team will work on both that app and on Pinterest generally. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. As a visual search engine, Pinterest isn't often thought of as a place to bookmark written content. But in 2013 the company introduced article pins, a format that creates rich bookmarks complete with a photo and a preview of the text. The acquisition of Instapaper suggests the company believes there is more to be done there -- although it's not certain how valuable that will be for Pinterest. Instapaper can be used for free or in a $30-a-year premium version; the company has never said how many subscribers it has.

The U.S. will phase out private prisons, a move made possible by fewer and shorter sentences for drug offenses, reports the BBC. But when it comes to reducing arrests for violent crimes, police officers in Chicago found themselves resorting ineffectively to a $2 million algorithm which ultimately had them visiting people before any crime had been committed. schwit1 quotes Ars Technica: Struggling to reduce its high murder rate, the city of Chicago has become an incubator for experimental policing techniques. Community policing, stop and frisk, "interruption" tactics --- the city has tried many strategies. Perhaps most controversial and promising has been the city's futuristic "heat list" -- an algorithm-generated list identifying people most likely to be involved in a shooting.

The hope was that the list would allow police to provide social services to people in danger, while also preventing likely shooters from picking up a gun. But a new report from the RAND Corporation shows nothing of the sort has happened. Instead, it indicates that the list is, at best, not even as effective as a most wanted list. At worst, it unnecessarily targets people for police attention, creating a new form of profiling.
The police argue they've updated the algorithm and improved their techniques for using it. But the article notes that the researchers began following the "heat list" when it launched in 2013, and "found that the program has saved no lives at all."

An anonymous reader writes: Twitter has suspended 235,000 accounts since February for promoting terrorism, the company said in a blog post today. "Daily suspensions are up over 80 percent since last year, with spikes in suspensions immediately following terrorist attacks," the company wrote. "Our response time for suspending reported accounts, the amount of time these accounts are on Twitter, and the number of followers they accumulate have all decreased dramatically." The company said it's also expanded the team that works on flagging such content, and claims to have made progress on stopping accounts from starting again under a new handle. In a previous post from February, Twitter said it had suspended 125,000 accounts since mid-2015.

Tech giants are betting on augmented reality and virtual reality as the "next big thing." However, both of these nascent technologies are seeing a slow adoption rate because a user needs high-end computing power at her disposal to experience most of them. Microsoft believes it has made enough software advancements to offset the hardware requirements. At Intel's annual developers conference, Microsoft's Windows chief Terry Myerson announced a partnership with the chip maker that will make all future Windows 10 PCs able to support mixed reality applications. From a report on The Verge:"All Windows 10 PCs next year will include a holographic shell," Myerson said, the same operating system that runs on the company's HoloLens headset. PCs will work with a head-mounted display, and run all Windows Holographic applications, Myerson said, allowing wearers to interact not just with 3D applications but also 2D apps. Microsoft will enable these apps through a future Windows update and the company's universal Windows app platform.TechCrunch has more details.

hackingbear quotes a report from The Verge: China's quantum network could soon span two continents, thanks to a satellite launched earlier today. Launched at 1:40pm ET, the Quantum Science Satellite is designed to distribute quantum-encrypted keys between relay stations in China and Europe. When working as planned, the result could enable unprecedented levels of security between parties on different continents. China's new satellite would put that same fiber-based quantum communication system to work over the air, utilizing high-speed coherent lasers to connect with base stations on two different continents. The experimental satellite's payload also includes controllers and emitters related to quantum entanglement. The satellite will be the first device of its kind if the quantum equipment works as planned. According to the Wall Street Journal, the project was first proposed to the European Space Agency in 2001 but was unable to gain funding.

An anonymous reader writes: Tesla will soon offer a 100 kWh battery for the Model S and Model X that will allow for increased range -- perhaps as much as 380 miles for the Model S. Currently, the 90 kWh batteries are the company's largest capacity. Kenteken.TV is reporting that the Dutch regulator that certifies Tesla's vehicles for use in the European Union, RDW, has recently published a number of new Tesla variants. RDW's public database now includes entries for a Tesla "100D" and "100X," which are titles that follow Tesla's current naming system based on battery capacity. The listing for the 100D claims the vehicle has a range of 381 miles or 613 kilometers. The motor output is reported as 90 kilowatts (121 horsepower), which is the maximum output the Tesla motors can sustain without overheating. Autoblog notes that EU range estimates tend to be more optimistic than those issued by the U.S. EPA. A more realistic range might be 310 to 320 miles.

Saturday a SpaceX rocket completed the company's fourth successful landing at sea (watched by over 100,000 viewers on YouTube and Flickr). Saturday's landing means Elon Musk's company has now recovered more than half the rockets they've launched. An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes Saturday's report from The Verge: Tonight's landing was particularly challenging for SpaceX... The Falcon 9 had to carry its onboard satellite -- called JCSAT-16 -- into...a highly elliptical orbit that takes the satellite 20,000 miles out beyond Earth's surface. Getting to GTO requires a lot of speed and uses up a lot of fuel during take off, more so than getting to lower Earth orbit. That makes things difficult for the rocket landing afterward...there's less fuel leftover for the vehicle to reignite its engines and perform the necessary landing maneuvers.

CEO Elon Musk said the company is aiming to launch its first landed rocket sometime this fall...SpaceX's president, Gwynne Shotwell, estimates that reusing these landed Falcon 9 vehicles will lead to a 30 percent reduction in launch costs.
SpaceX named their drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You."

An anonymous reader quotes The Verge: GoldenEye: Source received its first update in more than three years this week. It's free to download and it features 25 recreated maps, 10 different multiplayer modes, and redesigned versions of the original game's 28 weapons. It was created using Valve's Source engine, the same set of tools used to create Counter Strike and Half-Life games. So it's a massive step up in both visuals and performance for one of the more drastically dated gaming masterpieces of the last 20 years...

GoldenEye 007, the beloved N64 first-person shooter, has been recreated in high-definition glory by a team of dedicated fans over the course of 10 years...the attention to detail and the amount of effort that went into GoldenEye: Source make it one of the most polished HD remakes of a N64 classic.
With 8 million copies sold, Wikipedia calls it the third best-selling Nintendo 64 game of all-time (although this version doesn't recreate its single-player campaigns). Anyone have fond memories of playing Goldeneye 007?

A week after releasing Windows 10 Anniversary Update, Microsoft is already ready to unveil new features for its next major update dubbed Redstone 2. The Verge reports: The new update doesn't have any big new features for public testers yet, as Microsoft is in the early stages of making structural improvements to its OneCore shared code of Windows across PCs, tablets, phones, HoloLens, Xbox, and IoT. The first few builds available for testing "may include more bugs and other issues that could be slightly more painful for some people to live" according to Windows software engineer Dona Sarkar. Microsoft has released Windows 10 build 14901, and the company is testing out new notifications within File Explorer to provide tips on what's new in Windows 10. You can opt out of the notifications, and they're just a test for now.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: A lawsuit accusing Twitter of providing material support to ISIS has been dismissed by a California District Court. First filed in January, the lawsuit argued ISIS's persistent presence on Twitter constituted material support for the terror group, and sought to hold Twitter responsible for an ISIS-linked attack on that basis. Filed by the family of an American contractor named Lloyd Fields, the lawsuit sought damages from an ISIS-linked attack in Jordan that claimed Fields' life. The plaintiff's initial complaint alleged widespread fundraising and recruitment through the platform, attributing 30,000 foreign actors recruited through ISIS Twitter accounts in 2015 alone. The judge assigned to the case was ultimately not swayed by that reasoning, finding that the plaintiffs had not offered a convincing argument for holding Twitter liable. The plaintiff will have the chance to submit a modified version of the complaint within 20 days of the order, the second such modification ordered by the judge. The report adds: "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, even the private nature of Twitter's Direct Messaging feature "does not remove the transmission of such messages from the scope of publishing activity under section 230(c)(1)."

jmcbain writes: The Verge reports that a security researcher at DefCon outlined a number of attacks targeting Samsung Pay, Samsung's digital payment system that runs on their smartphones. According to the article, the attack "[focuses] on intercepting or fabricating payment tokens -- codes generated by the user's smartphone that stand in for their credit card information. These tokens are sent from the mobile device to the payment terminal during wireless purchases. [They expire 24 hours after being generated and are single-use only.]" In a response, Samsung said that "in certain scenarios an attacker could skim a user's payment token and make a fraudulent purchase with their card," but that "the attacker must be physically close to the target while they are making a legitimate purchase."

An anonymous reader writes: While Samsung has the world's largest commercially available SSD coming in at 15.36TB, Seagate officially has the world's largest SSD for the enterprise. ZDNet reports: "[While Samsung's PM1633a has a 2.5-inch form factor,] Seagate's 60TB Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) SSD on the other hand opts for the familiar HDD 3.5-inch form factor. The company says that its drive has "twice the density and four times the capacity" of Samsung's PM1633a, and is capable of holding up to 400 million photos or 12,000 movies. Seagate thinks the 3.5-inch form factor will be useful for managing changing storage requirements in data centers since it removes the need to support separate form factors for hot and cold data. The company says it could also scale up capacity to 100TB in the same form factor. Seagate says the 60TB SSD is currently only a 'demonstration technology' though it could release the product commercially as early as next year. It hasn't revealed the price of the unit but says it will offer 'the lowest cost per gigabyte for flash available today.'"

Jacob Kastrenakes, writing for The Verge: The Federal Communications Commission's plan to let cities build their own broadband networks hit a major roadblock today, as a federal appellate court ruled that the commission was overstepping its authority. The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said today that the FCC is not able to, essentially, remove state laws that prevent the construction of municipal broadband networks, as it attempted to do in Wilson, North Carolina and Chattanooga, Tennessee last year. Both Wilson and Chattanooga had petitioned the FCC for permission to build out their own broadband networks -- a measure some cities are turning to in order to increase competition among internet providers, who often hold regional monopolies and more or less refuse to compete. State laws, however, prevented them from doing so; that's the case in 19 states in total, all of which could have been affected by future FCC orders had the court ruled in its favor.Ars Technica has more details.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: NASA has created a camera that can film slow motion footage of booming rocket engines with higher dynamic range than ever before. It's called the High Dynamic Range Stereo X camera, or HiDyRS-X (PDF), and late last week the agency released some of its footage to the public for the first time. The three-minute clip shows the most recent test of one of the boosters for NASA's upcoming Space Launch System rocket in unprecedented detail. SLS will use two of these 17-story tall solid rocket boosters, each of which is capable of burning 5.5 tons of propellant per second to create 3.6 million pounds of thrust. The problem when it comes to filming tests like these (and eventually, launches) is that the plumes of fire they produce are extremely bright. This usually leaves camera operators with two choices. They can either expose the footage for the bright plume, which will leave everything else in the shot looking dark and underexposed. Or they can expose for everything else in the shot, which leaves the plume looking bright white and void of detail. The HiDyRS-X camera solves this problem because the camera can capture all of this detail in one shot, and it does this in a fairly clever way. Where regular high-speed cameras usually only captures video one exposure at a time, HiDyRS-X can capture multiple exposures at a time. NASA did however report some failures with the test: the camera's automatic timer failed to go off, thus failing to record the igniting of the rocket, and the pressure being generated from the booster knocked the camera's power source loose.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: If you're a wealthy techie looking for a way to establish your legacy, the City of Sarasota has a 117,000-square-foot children's science museum that's vacant and could use a little TLC. Housed on prime Bayfront property, the building that once housed the Gulf Coast Wonder and Imagination Zone might make a fine children's computer museum.

So in case any of those CEOs who stress the importance of getting children interested in CS are reading and want to put their money where their mouth is, any suggestions about what a kids' version of the Computer History Museum should look like? Something like an Apple Store? Microsoft Store? Something else?
There's often criticism about the ways computer science gets taught in schools -- so leave your suggestions in the comments. What would a good children's computer museum look like?

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: If you're a wealthy techie looking for a way to establish your legacy, the City of Sarasota has a 117,000-square-foot children's science museum that's vacant and could use a little TLC. Housed on prime Bayfront property, the building that once housed the Gulf Coast Wonder and Imagination Zone might make a fine children's computer museum.

So in case any of those CEOs who stress the importance of getting children interested in CS are reading and want to put their money where their mouth is, any suggestions about what a kids' version of the Computer History Museum should look like? Something like an Apple Store? Microsoft Store? Something else?
There's often criticism about the ways computer science gets taught in schools -- so leave your suggestions in the comments. What would a good children's computer museum look like?

Dami Lee, writing for The Verge: Even if you didn't grow up in Asia, chances are you've had this ubiquitous Japanese snack before. Walk into most grocery stores in America and you'll find a box of Pocky, and in multiple flavors like strawberry and green tea if your supermarket is fancy. With over dozens of flavors and variations, there's a Pocky for all occasions! There's a Pocky for Men. Now, there's Pocky for kids, with an educational aspect. Pocky's maker, Glico, has made a game called Glicode (Like if Wilco made a coding game called Wilcode) that gets kids coding by having them arrange actual cookies and snacks, then snapping a photo to translate them into digital commands. Glico's other products like Almond Peak chocolates and Biscuit Cream Sands are also featured in the game, representing "if" and "sequence" commands, respectively. It's a lot like Apple's Swift Playgrounds, with simple programming tasks commanding a funny-looking blob to walk around on platform blocks. The app is only available on Android for now.

Dami Lee, writing for The Verge: Even if you didn't grow up in Asia, chances are you've had this ubiquitous Japanese snack before. Walk into most grocery stores in America and you'll find a box of Pocky, and in multiple flavors like strawberry and green tea if your supermarket is fancy. With over dozens of flavors and variations, there's a Pocky for all occasions! There's a Pocky for Men. Now, there's Pocky for kids, with an educational aspect. Pocky's maker, Glico, has made a game called Glicode (Like if Wilco made a coding game called Wilcode) that gets kids coding by having them arrange actual cookies and snacks, then snapping a photo to translate them into digital commands. Glico's other products like Almond Peak chocolates and Biscuit Cream Sands are also featured in the game, representing "if" and "sequence" commands, respectively. It's a lot like Apple's Swift Playgrounds, with simple programming tasks commanding a funny-looking blob to walk around on platform blocks. The app is only available on Android for now.

An anonymous reader writes: A Japanese Olympics star has blamed Pokemon Go after being hit with a 500,000 yen (about $5,000) bill in roaming charges from his carrier. Artistic gymnast Kohei Uchimura, who won gold at the 2012 Games in London and is the reigning world champion, said he only downloaded the game after arriving in Sao Paulo to train for Rio, but quickly got hooked despite not having arranged a flat rate for data roaming. Uchimura "couldn't believe his eyes" when he saw the bill, according to the Kyodo news agency, with teammate Kenzo Shirai saying "He looked dead at the team meal that day." Even though Pokemon Go isn't particularly heavy on data and there were likely other culprits -- the game only officially came out in Brazil today, though Uchimura may have been playing the Japanese version -- roaming charges can rack up extremely quickly when you use your phone abroad for pretty much anything online.

It's been a while since Apple upgraded its MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac Pro models. Four years, one month, and twenty-four days, to be exact, in case of the MacBook Pro. Apple is inexplicably still selling the exact same models for its Mac line that it introduced in 2012. Pretty much every Windows OEM has had an Intel Skylake-powered processor in its laptops for more than a year now, but Apple's computing lineup is still shipping with the three-to-four years old processor, and graphics card. Things have gotten so bad, that MacRumors' Buying Guide, which is considered to be an "online institution" among Apple nerds, has flagged all of Apple laptops as "Don't Buy" In a column, The Verge's Sam Byford says that Apple should stop selling the old laptops. He writes: Apple iterates quickly and consistently in mobile because the rate of technological progress is so much more dramatic in that arena. The company does amazing work to keep its iPhones and iPads ahead of competitors, performance-wise. Simple Intel processor upgrades are less important to laptops these days, however, and I'm finding this 2012 MacBook Pro fine to work from right now -- faster than my 2015 MacBook, at least, which is enough for my needs. But that doesn't mean it isn't unconscionable for Apple to continue to sell outdated products to people who may not know any better. Is the company really saving that much money by using 2012 processors and 4GB of RAM as standard? Even an update to Intel's Haswell chips from 2013 would have brought huge battery life improvements. Apple is bound by the whims of its suppliers to a certain extent, and it may not always make sense for the company to upgrade its products with every single new chip or GPU that comes out. But there's a certain point at which it just starts to look like absent-mindedness, and many Mac computers are well past that point now. [...] If Apple doesn't want to keep its products reasonably current, that's its prerogative. But if that truly is the case, maybe it shouldn't sell them at all.It's also ironic, coming from a company whose executive not long ago made fun of people who had five years old computer. Folks at Accidental Tech Podcast also discussed the same recently.

In his latest column for The Verge, renowned journalist Walt Mossberg argues that TVs -- their UI, execution, underlying technologies, and remote -- are still too complicated. In the latest weekly, he has shared the experience of buying a new TV, setting it up, and the first few days of getting through it. The modern set, Smart TV for most, comes with a plethora of proprietary and standard features. But only a handful of people actually know what these features are -- and how they differ in the models offered by the same company. Mossberg says folks at Best Buy were of little use when explaining these features, but did a good job making false claims such as "you have to buy a sound bar because the TV doesn't have good speakers" even when that wasn't necessarily the case. Now Mossberg, having pioneered tech journalism as it is known today, knows a thing or two about TVs, but for a general consumer, it is an unnecessary thing that could spoil the experience, and make a bigger dent in their TV budget than it should have. But buying the TV wasn't the worst part. Following are excerpts from his column: But learning to use the TV is a whole other story. The Bean Bird (assistive cartoon feature) setup process was pretty straightforward, but it gets you going just enough to start watching something. Tweaking all of the TV's many features, including common ones like picture tones and uncommon ones like zooming in on a part of the picture or using a built-in web browser, takes hours. You must wade through menus containing scores of choices. And some controversial features common to modern TVs are buried deep in these menus. For instance, while I like motion smoothing others strongly dislike it -- it's sometimes known as the "soap opera effect." If you don't like it, the LG's interface doesn't make it at all easy to understand what's happening to your picture or what setting to adjust to turn it off. It's not even called motion smoothing in the menus -- LG calls it "TruMotion." The user interface is also somewhat confusing. There are at least three ways, for instance, to change inputs and at least two to bring up quick settings. The menu for launching apps like Netflix, inputs, and more appears to have a million icons in it and marches for what seems like miles across the bottom of the screen. So you have to edit it, which takes a bunch of time.Mossberg also found issues with the way the remote was designed to execute. "For instance, it's supposed to become a "universal" remote, controlling all your connected set-top boxes, but I can only get it to control some, but not all, of the basic features of my cable box, a TiVo Bolt. And its voice search is pathetic -- far worse than the one on the latest Apple TV."

In his latest column for The Verge, renowned journalist Walt Mossberg argues that TVs -- their UI, execution, underlying technologies, and remote -- are still too complicated. In the latest weekly, he has shared the experience of buying a new TV, setting it up, and the first few days of getting through it. The modern set, Smart TV for most, comes with a plethora of proprietary and standard features. But only a handful of people actually know what these features are -- and how they differ in the models offered by the same company. Mossberg says folks at Best Buy were of little use when explaining these features, but did a good job making false claims such as "you have to buy a sound bar because the TV doesn't have good speakers" even when that wasn't necessarily the case. Now Mossberg, having pioneered tech journalism as it is known today, knows a thing or two about TVs, but for a general consumer, it is an unnecessary thing that could spoil the experience, and make a bigger dent in their TV budget than it should have. But buying the TV wasn't the worst part. Following are excerpts from his column: But learning to use the TV is a whole other story. The Bean Bird (assistive cartoon feature) setup process was pretty straightforward, but it gets you going just enough to start watching something. Tweaking all of the TV's many features, including common ones like picture tones and uncommon ones like zooming in on a part of the picture or using a built-in web browser, takes hours. You must wade through menus containing scores of choices. And some controversial features common to modern TVs are buried deep in these menus. For instance, while I like motion smoothing others strongly dislike it -- it's sometimes known as the "soap opera effect." If you don't like it, the LG's interface doesn't make it at all easy to understand what's happening to your picture or what setting to adjust to turn it off. It's not even called motion smoothing in the menus -- LG calls it "TruMotion." The user interface is also somewhat confusing. There are at least three ways, for instance, to change inputs and at least two to bring up quick settings. The menu for launching apps like Netflix, inputs, and more appears to have a million icons in it and marches for what seems like miles across the bottom of the screen. So you have to edit it, which takes a bunch of time.Mossberg also found issues with the way the remote was designed to execute. "For instance, it's supposed to become a "universal" remote, controlling all your connected set-top boxes, but I can only get it to control some, but not all, of the basic features of my cable box, a TiVo Bolt. And its voice search is pathetic -- far worse than the one on the latest Apple TV."

Another day, another new, shiny new smartphone. On Tuesday, Samsung announced the Galaxy Note 7 featuring a handful of new interesting hardware capabilities. The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 sports a 5.7-inch QHD (2560x1440 pixels) display, and is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 SOC, 4GB of RAM. It also supports quick charging and quick wireless charging. On the photography front, there's a 12-megapixel sensor on the back, 64GB of internal storage (with support for more via microSD card), and a 3,500mAh battery. The Verge adds: Since the specs are largely the same between the Note 7 and the S7 series, Samsung is differentiating its larger flagship with features. The Note 7 has a new iris scanner that joins the familiar fingerprint scanner and lets you unlock your phone with your eyes. Samsung says the iris scanner is more secure than a fingerprint scanner. It's similar to the Windows Hello login features seen on Microsoft's Lumia 950 and a number of Windows 10 laptops and relies on an infrared camera that works well in low light, but less so in direct sunlight. The iris scanner can also be used to lock apps, photos, notes, and other content in a secure folder, separate from the rest of the phone's data. And of course, the Note 7 wouldn't be a Note without Samsung's S Pen active stylus. The S Pen has been upgraded this year with water resistance, a finer point, and twice as fine pressure sensitivity (4,096 levels, as opposed to 2,048 on earlier models). There a handful of new software features for the S Pen, including a magnifying loupe, quick text translation tool, and a new tool that makes it easy to create GIFs from any video that's currently playing. Samsung has also updated its software interface for the Note 7, with a cleaner color palette, softer white menus, and an overall nicer-looking aesthetic. It seems that with each new phone, Samsung's software gets better looking, and the Note 7 is no exception. The company says that the new software interface will likely come to older models, such as the S7, but it did not provide a timeline for when that might happen. Out of the box, Samsung Galaxy Note 7 runs Android 6.0. No word on pricing yet, but Samsung says it will be higher than Galaxy S7 Edge's $770 retail tag.Update: 08/02 15:46 GMT by M : The unlocked Galaxy Note 7 will retail on AT&T at a price point of $880. Expect similar price on other networks, and for the standalone unit.

There's no other way to put it. Facebook has been getting "too inspired" from everything Snapchat does and it continues to quickly replicate the features on to its own services. The latest example of this can be seen on Instagram, the photo-sharing app Facebook owns, which on Tuesday introduced Instagram Stories. Instagram Stories aims to let people share photos and videos that have a life span of no more than 24 hours with friends and people who follow them. It bears a striking resemblance to Snapchat Stories, a photo-sharing format where stories disappear after no more than 24 hours. The Verge adds: It's not the first time that Instagram or its parent company has taken a page from Snapchat's product roadmap. In 2012 Facebook released Poke, an app for sending messages that disappeared after 10 seconds. It never gained much traction, and was shuttered in 2014. Later that year Facebook released Slingshot, which required you to send a friend a photo of your own before you could see the photo they had sent you. It fizzled, too. In 2014 Instagram released Bolt, its own ephemeral messenger, which tried to build intimacy by limiting your network to 20 friends. But users stayed away, and Instagram later pulled Bolt from the App Store.