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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Donald Trump's presidential election victory could have dire consequences for U.S. internet freedom and openness, according to several tech policy experts and public interest advocates surveyed by Motherboard on Wednesday. The Republican billionaire will likely seek to roll back hard-won consumer protections safeguarding net neutrality, the principle that all internet content should be equally accessible, as well as a host of other policies designed to protect consumers, ensure internet freedom, and promote broadband access, these experts and advocates said. In the wake of Trump's election victory, FCC Chairman Wheeler is likely to step down before the billionaire reality TV star is inaugurated in January. Incoming presidents traditionally have the prerogative to select the leader of FCC, which has broad regulatory power over the nation's cable, phone and satellite companies. It's unclear whom Trump might nominate to lead the FCC, but Ajit Pai, the Kansas-born Republican FCC commissioner and former Verizon lawyer, is likely to be a contender. Trump has tapped Jeffrey Eisenach, a conservative scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, to lead his telecom policy transition team, according to Politico. Eisenach is a well-known figure in right-wing telecommunications policy circles, with a reputation as a "crusader against regulation." One immediate consequence of Trump's election is a dimmer outlook for ATT's proposed $85 billion buyout of entertainment giant Time Warner. Last month, Trump vowed to block the deal, warning that it would result in "too much concentration of power in the hands of too few." Trump's ignorance about tech and telecom policy was on full display throughout the election season. For example, Trump blithely compared net neutrality to the FCC's old Fairness Doctrine, a bizarre and ignorant assertion for which he was roundly mocked. The Fairness Doctrine, which was eliminated decades ago, required media outlets to afford a "reasonable opportunity" for the airing of opposing views on major issues. Net neutrality has nothing to do with the Fairness Doctrine, but rather ensures that consumers have open, unfettered access to the internet. Net neutrality can't be torpedoed overnight. The FCC rules prohibiting online fast lanes and discriminatory broadband practices are now U.S. policy, and they can't be dismantled at the whim of an authoritarian president. But a Trump-backed, Republican-led FCC could simply stop enforcing the net neutrality policy, rendering it essentially toothless. That could unleash the nation's largest cable and phone companies, including Comcast, AT&T and Verizon, to expand controversial practices like "zero-rating" that are designed to circumvent net neutrality.

It's official: Donald Trump has won the 2016 presidential election. Slashdot reader Xenographic writes: Google's map of results is now calling the race for Donald J. Trump. This is something that Nate Silver jokingly predicted back on May 10th when he wrote "Reminder: Cubs will win the World Series and, in exchange, President Trump will be elected 8 days later." The House and Senate are also under Republican control. In other news, the Canadian immigration site has crashed under heavy load.This is how The New York Times, America's top newspaper reported the news:The surprise outcome, defying late polls that showed Hillary Clinton with a modest but persistent edge, threatened convulsions throughout the country and the world, where skeptics had watched with alarm as Mr. Trump's unvarnished overtures to disillusioned voters took hold. The triumph for Mr. Trump, 70, a real estate developer-turned-reality television star with no government experience, was a powerful rejection of the establishment forces that had assembled against him, from the world of business to government, and the consensus they had forged on everything from trade to immigration. The results amounted to a repudiation, not only of Mrs. Clinton, but of President Obama, whose legacy is suddenly imperiled. And it was a decisive demonstration of power by a largely overlooked coalition of mostly blue-collar white and working-class voters who felt that the promise of the United States had slipped their grasp amid decades of globalization and multiculturalism. Update: The New Yorker's Editor-in-Chief David Remnick, described the Election outcome as "an American tragedy." The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said, "Trump will bring global recession." BBC has an article on how the media worldwide has described Trump's victory. The Guardian captured the thoughts of world leaders on the matter. Hillary Clinton addressed the nation this morning and told her supporters that they all should keep an open mind and give Trump the chance to lead.

Editor's note: this story has been updated with more details, and also moved to the top of the front page because of its importance.

Microsoft announced the availability of Windows 10 build 14965 to Windows Insiders. Among other noticeable inclusions, the new build comes with a virtual trackpad for users with a touch-capable Windows 10 machine. The Verge adds: Microsoft describes the feature as a way to control external monitors with a tablet and no mouse. It's designed to sit in the taskbar, if selected, and provide a virtual trackpad on the screen that can be used to control the mouse and right-click or left-click options. You can now enable a touchpad icon in the notification area, and you can tweak the trackpad gestures in the main Windows 10 settings panel. It's an interesting addition that will be welcomed by Windows 10 tablets users that aren't using a keyboard or trackpad, or those who connect tablets up to second displays regularly.Microsoft reporter Tom Warren has made a short video to demonstrate the feature.

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

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

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ABC News: A State Department official appeared to coordinate with Hillary Clinton's nascent presidential campaign hours before the former secretary of state's exclusive use of private emails was first detailed in a news account last year, newly released hacked emails show. Emails from the files of Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta show that the department official provided Clinton aides with the agency's official response to a New York Times reporter in advance of the newspaper's March 2015 report that Clinton had used a private email account to conduct all of her work-related business as secretary. The stolen emails were released Wednesday by WikiLeaks, part of a massive trove of emails released by the document-leaking group on a daily basis since last month. WikiLeaks has indicated it intends to leak emails stolen from Podesta's account every day through the election. In a March 1, 2015 email, State Department press aide Lauren Hickey told Clinton's spokesman Nick Merrill and two other advisers that then-State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki had "just cleared" a reply to the Times. Hickey provided the agency's response to the Clinton aides and also appeared to agree to a change requested by the campaign, saying: "Yes on your point re records -- done below." It is not clear what specific change was requested and made. State Department spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday that the department would not comment on alleged leaked documents. But he said the department's effort to "provide accurate information to the media" about Clinton's tenure at the agency has "at times required communicating with her representatives to ensure accuracy."

Microsoft today launched its team collaboration app called Microsoft Teams. The app, which competes with Slack, is available in beta starting today. Microsoft describes the app as a "chat-based workspace in Office 365." The Verge adds:Microsoft is, of course, integrating Teams deeply into Office and Skype. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote are all built-into Microsoft Teams, alongside meetings with Skype for Business. For businesses truly living in a Microsoft world, there's also integration with SharePoint, Power BI, and Planner. Just like Slack, you can search across people, files, and chats, and Microsoft is using its Exchange integration to provide notifications. You can create tabs that integrate with other cloud services, alongside tailored channels and even custom memes throughout chats. Microsoft is also making Teams extensible with open APIs and its own bot framework. Microsoft demonstrated Twitter integrations at its event, where you can push messages from particular Twitter accounts into chat rooms, alongside the ability to create quick polls, or share custom meme images. One of the more interesting features is Microsoft's Skype integration, and the ability for chat room members to drop in and out of persistent video calls to gather for projects or a quick chat. Microsoft is allowing Office 365 customers preview the Microsoft Teams service today, in 181 countries. Microsoft plans to include Microsoft Teams in all Office 365 Business and Enterprise suites, with general availability slated for early 2017. Microsoft is also opening its developer preview program today, with 150 integrations expected at launch early next year, alongside 70 connectors and 85 bots.Slack, naturally isn't pleased with the existence of Microsoft Teams. In a full-page ad on the New York Times today, the company attempted to mock Microsoft. Update: 11/02 18:10 GMT: Microsoft says it doesn't have any plans for a free or consumer offering of Teams,

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

WhatsApp appears to be rolling out its video calling feature for beta users of the Android app. The arrival of the feature was first spotted by Android Police, which found that an updated app interface caused some users of the beta builds of the application to be able to access video calling. TechCrunch reports: For those on a version of WhatsApp which includes video calling support, you're able to tap the call button or tap on a contact card to kick off a video call. In this case, a new dialog box will appear, offering the choice between a standard voice call and a video call. In addition, the call log will show which calls were made via video by annotating them with the camera icon, instead of the telephone icon. However, there isn't yet a way to call other WhatsApp users who don't also have video calling support. If you try to, WhatsApp defaults to a voice call. Android isn't the only platform where video calling has been switched on. Last week, some users on the WhatsApp beta for Windows Phone were also surprised to find that the feature was now functional. And in this case, it didn't require an app update -- indicating a server-side change could enable it. Some users have also reported seeing the feature on iOS.

Curious minds on the internet have uncovered an image file on their Mac, which was added by Apple in the latest macOS update. The image reveals a new laptop that fully fits the description of rumored MacBook Pro, which Apple is expected to launch on October 27. The laptop in the picture has what seems like a "contextual" OLED display (some are calling it Magic Toolbar display) on the top. What's interesting from that picture is that there's no physical Escape key or Power key to be found anywhere.

Editor's note: We usually tend to avoid covering leaks and rumors, but several readers pitched the story to us, and media outlets are also covering it now, which adds some credibility to the matter.

MojoKid writes: As we quickly approach the November 8th elections, email leaks from the Clinton camp continue to loom over the presidential candidate. The latest data dump from WikiLeaks shines a light on emails between Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta and Facebook Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg. In one email exchange, dated June 6th, 2015, Sandberg expresses her desire for Clinton to become president, writing to Podesta, "And I still want HRC to win badly. I am still here to help as I can." While that was a private exchange, Sandberg also made her zest for seeing Clinton as the 45th President of the United States publicly known in a Facebook post on July 28th of this year. None of that is too shocking when you think about it. Sandberg has every right to endorse whichever candidate she wants for president. However, a later exchange between Sandberg and Podesta showed that Mark Zuckerberg was looking to get in on the action a bit, and perhaps curry favor with Podesta and the Clinton camp in shaping public policy. Donald Trump has long claimed that Clinton is too cozy with big businesses, and one cannot dismiss the fact that Facebook has a global user base of 1.7 billion users. When you toss in the fact that Facebook came under fire earlier this year for allegedly suppressing conservative news outlets in the Trending News bar, questions begin to arise about Facebook's impartiality in the political race. The report also notes that Sandberg is at the top of the list when it comes to picks for Treasury Secretary, if Clinton wins the election. In an interview with Politico, David Segal, executive director for Demand Progress, said "[Sandberg] is a proxy for this growing problem that is the hegemony of five to ten major Silicon Valley platforms." Lina Khan, a fellow with the Open Markets Program at the New American think tank adds: "If a senior Cabinet member is from Facebook, at worst it could directly interfere [in antitrust actions]. But even in the best of cases there's a real worry that it will have a chilling effect on good-faith antitrust efforts to scrutinize potential anti-competitive implications of dominant tech platforms."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Recode: The New York Times is buying The Wirecutter, a five-year-old online consumer guide. The Times will pay more than $30 million, including retention bonuses and other payouts, for the startup, according to people familiar with the transaction. Brian Lam, a former editor at Gawker Media's Gizmodo, founded The Wirecutter in 2011, and has self-funded the company's growth. The Wirecutter provides recommendations for electronics and other gadgets that are both obsessively researched and simply presented. The Wirecutter also owns The Sweethome, which takes the same approach for home appliances and other gear. "We're very excited about this acquisition on two fronts," said Mark Thompson, CEO of The New York Times Company, in the acquisition release. "It's an impressively run business with a very attractive revenue model and its success is built on the foundation of great, rigorously reported service journalism." The Wirecutter tweeted earlier today: "Hey, we're still us. But we're a part of The New York Times now."

Just last month Brian Krebs wrote "What appears to be missing is any sense of urgency to address the DDoS threat on a coordinated, global scale," warning that countless ISPs still weren't implementing the BCP38 security standard, which was released "more than a dozen years ago" to filter spoofed traffic. That's one possible solution, but Slashdot reader dgallard suggests the PEIP and Fair Service proposals by Don Cohen: PEIP (Path Enhanced IP) extends the IP protocol to enable determining the router path of packets sent to a target host. Currently, there is no information to indicate which routers a packet traversed on its way to a destination (DDOS target), enabling use of forged source IP addresses to attack the target via packet flooding... Rather than attempting to prevent attack packets, instead PEIP provides a way to rate-limit all packets based on their router path to a destination.
I've also heard people suggest "just unplug everything," but on Friday the Wall Street Journal's Christopher Mim suggested another point of leverage, tweeting "We need laws that allow civil and/or criminal penalties for companies that sell systems this insecure." Is the best solution technical or legislative -- and does it involve hardware or software? Leave your best thoughts in the comments. How can we prevent packet-flooding DDOS attacks?

An anonymous reader writes; "These tablets always malfunction," complained one NFL offensive lineman in January, foreshadowing a growing backlash to Microsoft's $400 million deal with the NFL to use Surface tablets. Friday the coach of the San Francisco 49ers and their controversial quarterback Colin Kaepernick both complained they've also experienced problems, with Kaepernick saying the screen freezes "every once in a while and they have to reboot it."

Friday Microsoft called their tablet "the center of the debate on the role of technology in the NFL," saying they deeply respect NFL teams "and the IT pro's who work tirelessly behind the scenes to help them succeed." It included quotes from NFL quarterbacks -- for example, "Every second counts and having Microsoft Surface technology on sidelines allows players and coaches to analyze what our opponents are trying to do in almost real time." But Yahoo Finance wrote that "The quotes read like they were written by the Microsoft public relations team," arguing that Microsoft's NFL deal "has been a disaster... The tablets failed to work during a crucial AFC Championship game last January -- again for the New England Patriots... sports media interpreted that the malfunction benefited the Broncos on the field, giving the team an unfair advantage -- the very last thing Microsoft's tablets, meant to aid coaches in their play calling, should be doing."
The NFL issued a statement calling Microsoft "an integral, strategic partner of the NFL," adding "Within our complex environment, many factors can affect the performance of a particular technology either related to or outside of our partner's solutions."

"Wondering which IoT device types are part of the Mirai botnet causing trouble today? Brian Krebs has the list," tweeted Trend Micro's Eric Skinner Friday, sharing an early October link which identifies Panasonic, Samsung and Xerox printers, and lesser known makers of routers and cameras. An anonymous reader quotes Fortune: Part of the responsibility should also lie with lawmakers and regulators, who have failed to create a safety system to account for the Internet-of-Things era we are now living in. Finally, it's time for consumers to acknowledge they have a role in the attack too. By failing to secure the internet-connected devices, they are endangering not just themselves but the rest of the Internet as well.
If you're worried, Motherboard is pointing people to an online scanning tool from BullGuard (a U.K. anti-virus firm) which checks whether devices on your home network are listed in the Shodan search engine for unsecured IoT devices. But earlier this month, Brian Krebs pointed out the situation is exacerbated by the failure of many ISPs to implement the BCP38 security standard to filter spoofed traffic, "allowing systems on their networks to be leveraged in large-scale DDoS attacks..."

An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes CNN Money: An American vigilante hacker -- who calls himself "The Jester" -- has defaced the website of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in retaliation for attacks on American targets... "Comrades! We interrupt regular scheduled Russian Foreign Affairs Website programming to bring you the following important message," he wrote. "Knock it off. You may be able to push around nations around you, but this is America. Nobody is impressed."
In early 2015, CNN Money profiled The Jester as "the vigilante who hacks jihadists," noting he's a former U.S. soldier who now "single-handedly taken down dozens of websites that, he deems, support jihadist propaganda and recruitment efforts. He stopped counting at 179." That article argues that "the fact that he hasn't yet been hunted down and arrested says a lot about federal prosecutors and the FBI. Several cybersecurity experts see it as tacit approval."

"In an exclusive interview with CNNMoney this weekend, Jester said he chose to attack Russia out of frustration for the massive DNS cyberattack that knocked out a portion of the internet in the United States on Friday... 'I'm not gonna sit around watching these f----rs laughing at us.'"

MojoKid writes: The Internet took a turn for the worst this morning, when large parts of the DNS network were brought down by a massive distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) targeting DNS provider Dyn. If you couldn't access Amazon, Twitter, and a host of other large sites and online services earlier today, this was why. Now, if a couple of additional tweets are to be believed, it appears supporters of WikiLeaks are responsible for this large scale DDoS attack on Dynamic Network Services Inc's Dyn DNS service. WikiLeaks is alleging that a group of its supporters launched today's DDoS attack in retaliation for the Obama administration using its influence to push the Ecuadorian government to limit Assange's internet access. Another earlier tweet reassures supporters that Mr. Assange is still alive, which -- along with a photo of heavily armed police posted this morning -- implies that he may have been (or may still be) in danger, and directly asks said supporters to stop the attack. WikiLeaks published this tweet a little after 5PM: "Mr. Assange is still alive and WikiLeaks is still publishing. We ask supporters to stop taking down the US internet. You proved your point." It was followed by: "The Obama administration should not have attempted to misuse its instruments of state to stop criticism of its ruling party candidate."

MojoKid writes: The Internet took a turn for the worst this morning, when large parts of the DNS network were brought down by a massive distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) targeting DNS provider Dyn. If you couldn't access Amazon, Twitter, and a host of other large sites and online services earlier today, this was why. Now, if a couple of additional tweets are to be believed, it appears supporters of WikiLeaks are responsible for this large scale DDoS attack on Dynamic Network Services Inc's Dyn DNS service. WikiLeaks is alleging that a group of its supporters launched today's DDoS attack in retaliation for the Obama administration using its influence to push the Ecuadorian government to limit Assange's internet access. Another earlier tweet reassures supporters that Mr. Assange is still alive, which -- along with a photo of heavily armed police posted this morning -- implies that he may have been (or may still be) in danger, and directly asks said supporters to stop the attack. WikiLeaks published this tweet a little after 5PM: "Mr. Assange is still alive and WikiLeaks is still publishing. We ask supporters to stop taking down the US internet. You proved your point." It was followed by: "The Obama administration should not have attempted to misuse its instruments of state to stop criticism of its ruling party candidate."

FastCompany got an exclusive look at how Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump stacked up in terms of their emotional intelligence when analyzed by HireVue's artificial intelligence platform. The platform analyzes "video, audio, and language patterns to determine emotional intelligence and sentiment." The company also partnered with Affectiva for facial analysis "to measure the candidate's emotional engagement correlated down to the micro-expressions level." FastCompany reports the findings: Trump versus Clinton across all three debates. Here we see the range of emotions both candidates showed during all three debates. Clinton seemed to dominate the top-right area, which represented both "joy" and facial expressions like smiles and smirks. Conversely, Trump had a stronghold on the "sadness," "disgust," and "fear" quadrants, along with both "negative sentiment" and "negative valence." The third debate. Looking more closely at just this week's debate, negativity prevailed. Both candidates exhibited disgust during the 90-minute spectacle. Trump, however, seemed to dominate the strongest emotions with heightened scores for "fear," "contempt," and "negative sentiment." Clinton, according to the data, presented the only positive emotional elements, which included some "joy" and "smiles." Clinton's performance. Clinton's range of emotions and reactions seemed pretty consistent throughout all three debates, although she exhibited the most positive emotions during the second. What's more, according to the graph, she was most negative during this week's debate. Trump's performance. Similar to Clinton, Trump's range of emotions seemed relatively consistent throughout the three debates. The third one, however, was when he emoted the most negatively. He smirked a lot during this event, too. "Negative sentiment," "contempt," and "anger" were persistent throughout all three conversations.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from GameSpot: Nintendo confirmed this evening that it will broadcast new details about the company's next big console on Thursday, October 20 at 7am PT | 10am ET. We don't yet know how long it'll be. We don't know if we'll see games or hardware. But it's going to be exciting. Notably, Nintendo calls the announcement a "trailer" and not a full direct presentation. But regardless, we'll update this page tomorrow with a link to whatever Nintendo unveils. While we've known about the NX for quite a while, Nintendo has been stoic on any specific details. Back in 2015, the device was rumored to be a console/handheld hybrid, and current speculation says the device will use cartridges. But no matter what it looks like, Nintendo has confirmed two things: it's slated to launch in March of 2017, and it will be able to play the upcoming Zelda game Breath of the Wild. Nintendo of America tweeted about the big news earlier today, alongside a picture of Mario: "Be among the first to discover #NX. Watch the Preview Trailer at 7am PT/10am ET!"

New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick is not happy with the Surface tablet provided to him via a deal between Microsoft and the NFL. Not only has he physically thrown the tablets at things, but he has verbally expressed his negative opinions of them. TechCrunch reports: When asked about the Patriots' headsets malfunctioning during last weeks game, Belichick instead took the time to let everyone know he's "done with the tablets." While he didn't go into too much detail on the tablets, Belichick essentially said that Microsoft's surface tablets are too "undependable," and there "isn't enough consistency in their performance." In terms of the rest of the sideline technology like headsets, Belichick is essentially fed up with the fact that everything always malfunctions and is impossible to fix during games. So why is the sideline technology so hard to get right? The tablets (as well as the headphones and all other sideline technology) are owned and maintained by the NFL. That means it gets delivered to teams literally hours before the game and taken away when it ends. This makes it hard for teams to test for issues before a game and to troubleshoot when something goes wrong. Belichick's full rant can be read here, which reads in part: "As you probably noticed, I'm done with the tablets. They're just too undependable for me. I'm going to stick with (paper) pictures, which several of our other coaches do, as well, because there just isn't enough consistency in the performance of the tablets. I just can't take it anymore..."

Peter Thiel's support for U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has given Silicon Valley a headache. This past weekend, Thiel donated $1.25 million to his campaign, which is driving away partners from Thiel's Silicon Valley accelerator, Y Combinator. Today, Project Include, a community for building meaningful, enduring diversity and inclusion into tech companies, said that it would no longer work with Y Combinator startups. "Thiel's actions are in direct conflict with our values at Project Include," the group's co-founder, Ellen Pao, wrote in a Medium post. "Because of this continued connection to YC, we are compelled to break off our relationship with YC." The Verge reports: Founded in 2005, Y Combinator has incubated some of the biggest tech companies of the past decade, including Airbnb, Dropbox, and Stripe. It faced a barrage of criticism over the weekend for refusing to dissociate itself from Thiel, who took an advisory role with the organization in 2015. In a series of tweets, YC's president stood by Thiel. "Cutting off opposing viewpoints leads to extremism and will not get us the country we want," Sam Altman wrote. "Diversity of opinion is painful but critical to the health of a democratic society. We can't start purging people for political support." In her post, Pao rejected the idea that Thiel's donation could be dismissed as political speech. "We agree that people shouldn't be fired for their political views, but this isn't a disagreement on tax policy, this is advocating hatred and violence," she wrote. "Giving more power to someone whose ascension and behavior strike fear into so many people is unacceptable. His attacks on black, Mexican, Asian, Muslim, and Jewish people, on women, and on others are more than just political speech; fueled by hate and encouraging violence, they make each of us feel unsafe."

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Softpedia: Today, the Linux Foundation announced the creation of a new entity named the JS Foundation that will serve as an umbrella project and guiding force for various open-source utilities at the heart of the JavaScript ecosystem. The JS Foundation is actually the jQuery Foundation, which was expanded with the help of companies such as IBM and Samsung. With jQuery slowly bowing out to newer tools, the jQuery Foundation's members and their unmatched expertise will most likely be put to good use in managing the slew of new tools making up today's JavaScript landscape. The list of JS Foundation founding members includes Bocoup, IBM, Ripple, Samsung, Sauce Labs, Sense Tecnic Systems, SitePen, StackPath, University of Westminster and WebsiteSetup. In alphabetical order, the JS Foundation's initial projects are Appium, Chassis, Dojo Toolkit, ESLint, Esprima, Globalize, Grunt, Interledger.js, Intern, Jed, JerryScript, jQuery, jQuery Mobile, jQuery UI, Lodash, Mocha, Moment, Node-RED, PEP, QUnit, RequireJS, Sizzle, and webpack. "Using jQuery can constitute the use of a sledgehammer for putting small nails into an Ikea TV stand; however, as a piece of engineering, it really is a thing of beauty," says A. M. Douglas, British freelance web developer. "[T]he word 'jQuery' has become synonymous with 'JavaScript' for many. As of today, jQuery's days as a relevant tool are indeed numbered, but I think jQuery's source code will always have relevance, as it is a brilliant example to study for anybody seeking to learn and master JavaScript," Douglas also adds.

Following a report from WikiLeaks claiming that its co-founder's internet service was intentionally cut off by a state actor, the anti-secrecy organization released a statement confirming the state actor was Ecuador. WikiLeaks tweeted: "We can confirm Ecuador cut off Assange's internet access Saturday, 5pm GMT, shortly after publication of Clinton's Goldman Sachs speechs." BBC reports: There was no way to immediately verify if he had been knocked offline, and if so, what was Ecuador's motivation. The anti-secrecy organization did not return calls and emails on Monday, though it said in a tweet: "We have activated the appropriate contingency plans." A woman who picked up the phone at the Ecuadorean embassy said: "I cannot disclose any information." The Wikileaks claim follows the latest emails it disclosed from a hack of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's emails. It released three transcripts on Saturday of Mrs Clinton's paid speeches to Goldman Sachs, which her campaign had long refused to release. The scrips reveal her bantering relationship with the investment bank's executives, which is unlikely to allay fears among liberal Democrats that she is too cosy with Wall Street.

Following a report from WikiLeaks claiming that its co-founder's internet service was intentionally cut off by a state actor, the anti-secrecy organization released a statement confirming the state actor was Ecuador. WikiLeaks tweeted: "We can confirm Ecuador cut off Assange's internet access Saturday, 5pm GMT, shortly after publication of Clinton's Goldman Sachs speechs." BBC reports: There was no way to immediately verify if he had been knocked offline, and if so, what was Ecuador's motivation. The anti-secrecy organization did not return calls and emails on Monday, though it said in a tweet: "We have activated the appropriate contingency plans." A woman who picked up the phone at the Ecuadorean embassy said: "I cannot disclose any information." The Wikileaks claim follows the latest emails it disclosed from a hack of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's emails. It released three transcripts on Saturday of Mrs Clinton's paid speeches to Goldman Sachs, which her campaign had long refused to release. The scrips reveal her bantering relationship with the investment bank's executives, which is unlikely to allay fears among liberal Democrats that she is too cosy with Wall Street.

Following a report from WikiLeaks claiming that its co-founder's internet service was intentionally cut off by a state actor, the anti-secrecy organization released a statement confirming the state actor was Ecuador. WikiLeaks tweeted: "We can confirm Ecuador cut off Assange's internet access Saturday, 5pm GMT, shortly after publication of Clinton's Goldman Sachs speechs." BBC reports: There was no way to immediately verify if he had been knocked offline, and if so, what was Ecuador's motivation. The anti-secrecy organization did not return calls and emails on Monday, though it said in a tweet: "We have activated the appropriate contingency plans." A woman who picked up the phone at the Ecuadorean embassy said: "I cannot disclose any information." The Wikileaks claim follows the latest emails it disclosed from a hack of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's emails. It released three transcripts on Saturday of Mrs Clinton's paid speeches to Goldman Sachs, which her campaign had long refused to release. The scrips reveal her bantering relationship with the investment bank's executives, which is unlikely to allay fears among liberal Democrats that she is too cosy with Wall Street.

For the first time ever, secure HTTPS encryption was used for over half the pageloads served to Mozilla users, representing a big milestone for encryption. TechCrunch reports on the telemetry data tweeted by the Head of Let's Encrypt: Mozilla, which is one of the organizations backing Let's Encrypt, was reporting that 40% of page views were encrypted as of December 2015. So it's an impressively speedy rise...

The Let's Encrypt initiative, which exited beta back in April, is doing some of that work by providing sites with free digital certificates to help accelerate the switch to HTTPS. According to [co-founder Josh] Aas, Let's Encrypt added more than a million new active certificates in the past week -- which is also a significant step up. In the initiative's first six months (when still in beta) it only issued around 1.7 million certificates in all.
The "50% HTTPS" figure is just a one-day snapshot, and it's from "only a subset of Firefox users who are running Mozilla's telemetry browser...not default switched on for most Firefox users (only for users of pre-release Firefox builds)." But the biggest caveat is it's only counting Firefox users, which in July represented just 7.7% of web surfers (according to Statista), behind both Chrome (49.5%) and Safari (13.68%) -- but also ahead of Internet Explorer (5.4%) and Opera (5.99%).

An anoymous Slashdot reader reports: "I was dead for about 8 mins. on Wed. eve," EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow posted last year on Facebook. "total cardiac arrest...sad to report, no Ascending Light." The cyber-rights activist told the San Francisco Chronicle that he had gone "down the tunnel of eternity and it turned out to be a cheap carnival ride." He paused for a moment. "Probably not cheap, though."

Yesterday Barlow posted a Twitter update announcing a big benefit concert in Mill Valley, California to help pay his mounting medical bills on Monday, October 24th. Performers will include Bob Weir (also of The Grateful Dead), Jerry Harrison (of The Talking Heads), Lukas Nelson, Members of The String Cheese Incident, Sean Lennon and Les Claypool, plus 85-year-old folk singer Ramblin' Jack Elliott, as well as "special guests."
Barlow's family describes the last 18 months as a "medical incarceration" with "a dizzying array of medical events and complications" that has depleted his savings and insurance benefits. They've also set up a site for donations from "his fellow innovators, artists, cowboys, and partners-in-crime, to help us provide the quality of care necessary for Barlow's recovery."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: The former lead singer of Blink 182, Tom DeLonge, has publicly admitted to his obsession with UFOs -- but that still doesn't explain why he was sending two cryptic messages about alien spacecrafts to Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta, as the Wall Street Journal reported earlier today. The former rockstar's UFO emails became public in the latest Wikleaks dump, published earlier this month. DeLonge, who is best known for his shitty guitar riffs and vocals in songs like "What's My Age Again," emailed Podesta at least twice from his personal account, urging him to meet in person so he could introduce Podesta to high-level officials (presumably with info about UFOs). Here's a small taste of one of the messages: "I would like to bring two very 'important' people out to meet you in DC. I think you will find them very interesting, as they were principal leadership relating to our sensitive topic. Both were in charge of most fragile divisions, as it relates to Classified Science and DOD topics. Other words, these are A-Level officials. Worth our time, and as well the investment to bring all the way out to you. I just need 2 hours from you." In another email, DeLonge said he's been working with someone named General McCasland, and explained some of the General's public comments. The email is rather strange, given that there's no specific request made or really any context at all for the message: "He mentioned he's a 'skeptic,' he's not.... He just has to say that out loud, but he is very, very aware -- as he was in charge of all of the stuff. When Roswell crashed, they shipped it to the laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. General McCasland was in charge of that exact laboratory up to a couple years ago." It's unclear if Podesta ever responded to the messages, but he has shown interest in UFOs in the past. When he stepped down from his role as a senior advisor to President Barack Obama, Podesta tweeted, "Finally, my biggest failure of 2014: Once again not securing the #disclosure of the UFO files. #thetruthisstilloutthere cc: @NYTimesDowd." The famous tweet now appears under the name of Obama's new senior advisor Brian Deese.

WikiLeaks has released an additional 2,000 emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta -- the second leak in four days. The first leak contained thousands of emails from Podesta, including apparent excerpts from Ms Clinton's paid, closed-door speeches to Wall Street executives after leaving her position as Secretary of State. CNN reports: The emails appear to be mostly from 2015, covering a litany of policy and strategy discussions between Clinton staffers on how to handle issues of the day and the press, including the release of the book "Clinton Cash" alleging nefarious activity by the Clinton Foundation. Another email has long-time Clinton aide Doug Band referring to Chelsea Clinton as a "spoiled brat." Doug Band emailed Podesta and longtime Hillary Clinton aide Cheryl Mills about a damning story about his consulting company, Teneo, by lashing out at Chelsea Clinton. "I don't deserve this from her and deserve a tad more respect or at least a direct dialogue for me to explain these things," Band wrote. "She is acting like a spoiled brat kid who has nothing else to do but create issues to justify what she's doing because she, as she has said, hasn't found her way and has a lack of focus in her life." The emails also revealed that Clinton wanted to respond more forcefully to "Clinton Cash," the 2015 book that looked to connect Clinton Foundation actions and decisions made by Hillary Clinton's State Department. According to an email from another close aide, Huma Abedin, Clinton wanted to tape a straight-to-camera video responding to the allegations. Clinton campaign responded to the release by slamming the Trump campaign for "cheering on a release today engineered by Vladimir Putin," after Trump adviser Jason Miller tweeted a link to the document page with the phrase "And here...we...go."

Elon Musk says Tesla's autopilot has now driven over 222 million miles, and the company is now selling twice as many electric cars as it did in 2015. (Despite complaints from a coal-mining CEO that Tesla "is a fraud" because it receives tax-payer subsidies.)

But Slashdot reader mirandakatz writes, "It's not enough to build self-driving cars: we have to build the roads to accompany them. Roadside sensors might have once seemed a pipe dream, but with the advent of 5G internet infrastructure, they're not out of reach at all. And their implications span far beyond road safety, GMU researcher Brent Skorup explains at Backchannel: Cities could use sensor data for conducting traffic studies, pushing out real-time public bus alerts, increasing parking space occupancy, metering commercial loading times to prevent congestion, and enhancing pedestrian safety. There are also commercial applications for sensor data: How many cars drive by a billboard? How many people walk by a storefront per day? How many of those people have dogs? These are all questions we could easily answer with roadside sensors.

An anonymous reader quotes the censorship-monitoring site Turkey Blocks: Turkey has blocked access to Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive and partially restricted Google Drive cloud file sharing services following the leak of a set of private emails allegedly belonging to Minister Albayrak by hacktivist group RedHack. Both Google Drive and Dropbox services were issuing SSL errors, indicating intercepted traffic at the national or ISP level. Microsoft OneDrive was also subsequently blocked off throughout Turkey.
The emails reportedly document Turkey's use of pro-government trolls on Twitter -- though ironically, it's Twitter that's now being used to document the censorship. (GitHub was also blocked last night, according to a status update from the group.) Google Drive was even displaying an official notice from the Turkish government's Information and Communication Technologies Authority describing their block as an "administration measure" -- although another Twitter update this morning says Google Drive is now back online after Google complied with the government's takedown order.

An anonymous reader quotes the censorship-monitoring site Turkey Blocks: Turkey has blocked access to Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive and partially restricted Google Drive cloud file sharing services following the leak of a set of private emails allegedly belonging to Minister Albayrak by hacktivist group RedHack. Both Google Drive and Dropbox services were issuing SSL errors, indicating intercepted traffic at the national or ISP level. Microsoft OneDrive was also subsequently blocked off throughout Turkey.
The emails reportedly document Turkey's use of pro-government trolls on Twitter -- though ironically, it's Twitter that's now being used to document the censorship. (GitHub was also blocked last night, according to a status update from the group.) Google Drive was even displaying an official notice from the Turkish government's Information and Communication Technologies Authority describing their block as an "administration measure" -- although another Twitter update this morning says Google Drive is now back online after Google complied with the government's takedown order.

An anonymous reader quotes the censorship-monitoring site Turkey Blocks: Turkey has blocked access to Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive and partially restricted Google Drive cloud file sharing services following the leak of a set of private emails allegedly belonging to Minister Albayrak by hacktivist group RedHack. Both Google Drive and Dropbox services were issuing SSL errors, indicating intercepted traffic at the national or ISP level. Microsoft OneDrive was also subsequently blocked off throughout Turkey.
The emails reportedly document Turkey's use of pro-government trolls on Twitter -- though ironically, it's Twitter that's now being used to document the censorship. (GitHub was also blocked last night, according to a status update from the group.) Google Drive was even displaying an official notice from the Turkish government's Information and Communication Technologies Authority describing their block as an "administration measure" -- although another Twitter update this morning says Google Drive is now back online after Google complied with the government's takedown order.

Microsoft is redesigning the Paint app with Windows 10 in mind. As mentioned in the leaked video posted by Twitter user WalkingCat, the "ability to create in 3D" is one of the biggest new features in the works. The Verge reports: A launch video notes that the new "Paint Preview" app includes all the familiar features of the regular version of Paint, but Microsoft is adding in 3D object support. Paint Preview users will be able to create 3D objects, and annotate them freely. Microsoft has a range of markers and art tools to help artists create objects, and brushes that can be used directly on 3D objects. All of the tools appear to be pen- and touch-friendly, with an interface that mixes 3D models, 2D images, stickers, and community tools for 3D content. Microsoft appears to be testing early "alpha" versions of the Paint app, and the videos indicate it could be ready to be released publicly soon. The timing of the Paint videos come just hours after Microsoft revealed it's planning to hold a special event in New York City later this month. Microsoft is widely expected to unveil a new Surface device at the event, with rumors suggesting it will be an all-in-one desktop PC.

The sequel to Ridley Scott's 1982 sci-fi classic "Blade Runner" is officially titled "Blade Runner 2049." Harris Ford is confirmed to be returning as Rick Deckard. Other stars include Ryan Gosling, Jared Leto, Robin Wright, Dave Bautista and Lennie James. The Verge reports: There's a hashtag included in the press release, of course (#BladeRunner2049), but other than that there's little else revealed about the story itself. There is a new picture out, however, with Scott, Villeneuve, Gosling, and Harrison Ford chatting over some Blade Runner weaponry. Whether you like or hate the new title will most likely depend on how excited you are about knowing the exact year that the new film takes place. The original was set in 2019, so it's good that they're tacking on an extra 30 years because the Los Angeles of today really doesn't look anything like the dystopian vision Scott wowed audiences with way back when. But hey -- there's still time. Blade Runner 2049 is scheduled to arrive in theaters on October 6th, 2017.

Popular API documentation browser Dash was pulled from the App Store this week after a routine migration request, its developer Bogdan Popescu wrote in a blog post. He said the migration was successful, but some features in iTunes Connect weren't available during account migration, Apple warned him. Later in the day, Apple sent another email saying the app has been pulled because of "fraudulent conduct," and did not offer any explanation. From the post: Today I called them and they confirmed my account migration went through and that everything is okay as far as they can tell. A few hours ago I received a "Notice of Termination" email, saying that my account was terminated due to fraudulent conduct. I called them again and they said they can't provide more information. Update: Apple contacted me and told me they found evidence of App Store review manipulation. This is something I've never done. Apple's decision is final and can't be appealed.Apple blogger Federico Viticci said. "This seems like a major screwup. Apple dev relationships should fix this soon." Marco Arment, the co-founder of Tumblr and founder of Instapaper, said This is a story with two major paths: Either the developer did something to deserve the rug being pulled out from under, something worthy of their developer credentials being cancelled. Or there's a colossal misunderstanding here. I suspect there's more to this than meets the eye. Either way, don't think this is the way this should have played out.

Popular API documentation browser Dash was pulled from the App Store this week after a routine migration request, its developer Bogdan Popescu wrote in a blog post. He said the migration was successful, but some features in iTunes Connect weren't available during account migration, Apple warned him. Later in the day, Apple sent another email saying the app has been pulled because of "fraudulent conduct," and did not offer any explanation. From the post: Today I called them and they confirmed my account migration went through and that everything is okay as far as they can tell. A few hours ago I received a "Notice of Termination" email, saying that my account was terminated due to fraudulent conduct. I called them again and they said they can't provide more information. Update: Apple contacted me and told me they found evidence of App Store review manipulation. This is something I've never done. Apple's decision is final and can't be appealed.Apple blogger Federico Viticci said. "This seems like a major screwup. Apple dev relationships should fix this soon." Marco Arment, the co-founder of Tumblr and founder of Instapaper, said This is a story with two major paths: Either the developer did something to deserve the rug being pulled out from under, something worthy of their developer credentials being cancelled. Or there's a colossal misunderstanding here. I suspect there's more to this than meets the eye. Either way, don't think this is the way this should have played out.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: As he has done over the past four years, Apple CEO Tim Cook has shared a tribute to the late Steve Jobs, touching on the importance of remembering the Apple co-founder and former CEO today, which marks the fifth anniversary of his death on October 5, 2011. In previous years, Apple also updated its website to remember Jobs, creating a two-minute slideshow of his various keynote presentations and most famous audio clips on the one year anniversary of his death. In the days following his passing, Apple started posting "Remembering Steve" comments from fans on its website. The company noted that well over one million submissions came in for the project, all from well-wishing fans in the wake of Jobs' losing battle with pancreatic cancer. "'Most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.' Remembering Steve and the many ways he changed our world," tweeted Apple CEO Tim Cook with a picture of Jobs. In remembrance of Jobs, Recode has compiled several of Steve Job's best interviews conducted at the D: All Things Digital conference. You can watch Recode's reflection video directly on YouTube here.

Martin Shkreli has agreed to answer your questions. Shkreli is the co-founder of the hedge fund MSMB Capital Management, the co-founder and former chief executive officer (CEO) of the biotechnology firm Retrophin, and the founder and former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals. Shkreli has been active on Twitter about a wide range of topics, including the 2016 presidential election. Most recently, he expressed interest in buying 4chan.

Ask him your questions here, and we'll post the full interview with Shkreli's answers in the near future.

Apple, Google and Microsoft -- three of the largest technology companies in the U.S. -- have each said they don't scan all incoming messages for the U.S. government, which is exactly what Yahoo does. According to Reuters, Yahoo secretly built a custom software program last year to search all of its customers' incoming emails for specific information provided by U.S. intelligence officials. The company complied with a classified U.S. government directive, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of the National Security Agency or FBI. Vocativ reports: In a statement, a Microsoft spokesperson told Vocativ that "We have never engaged in the secret scanning of email traffic like what has been reported today about Yahoo." While Apple declined to give a statement on the record, a representative for the company did, in response to Vocativ's question, refer to CEO Tim Cook's official letter on consumer privacy, which reads in part: "I want to be absolutely clear that we have never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services. We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will." The fact that both the companies declined further statement means it's not yet known if the NSA or FBI approached them to request they build a program like Yahoo's. Meanwhile, a spokesperson from Alphabet's Google issued a statement to CNBC: "We've never received such a request, but if we did, our response would be simple: 'no way.'" [The spokesperson later clarified that the company has not received a "directive" or "order" to that effect, either, according to The Intercept.] But the question is whether or not you believe them. With Yahoo's case, only a handful of employees knew about the program. The same could be true with Apple, Google, Microsoft or any other large tech company. Edward Snowden tweeted not too long after Reuters' report surfaced: "Heads up: Any major email service not clearly, categorically denying this tomorrow -- without careful phrasing -- is as guilty as Yahoo."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The infamous message board 4chan is struggling to stay afloat and will have to make changes to reduce costs, the site's owner wrote in a post on Sunday. "4chan can't afford infrastructure costs, network fee, servers cost, CDN and etc, now," writes Hiroyuki Nisimura, who bought the site from its founder last year. Nisimura says ads haven't been effective enough to support the site, nor have subscriptions offering additional features. "We had tried to keep 4chan as is. But I failed," Nisimura writes. "I am sincerely sorry." There are three options for 4chan to survive going forward, as far as Nisimura sees it: sell more subscriptions, include "much more" -- and potentially even malicious -- ads, or cut traffic to the site in half. That might be done by closing message boards, slowing down the site, or reducing the size of images that can be posted. Nisimura makes it sound bad (his post is titled "Winter is coming"), but he also proposes changes to save the site. Meanwhile, another infamous name -- Martin Shkreli -- says he's interested in buying 4chan; he's in touch with Nisimura, so maybe we'll see how that remarkably bad combination turns out. Martin Shkreli tweeted: "I'm open to joining the Board of Directors of 4Chan. @4chan." Not too long after, Hiroyuki Nisimura replied: "I have replied your DM. Thank you for supporting 4chan @MartinShkreli twitter.com/MartinShkreli/...."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The infamous message board 4chan is struggling to stay afloat and will have to make changes to reduce costs, the site's owner wrote in a post on Sunday. "4chan can't afford infrastructure costs, network fee, servers cost, CDN and etc, now," writes Hiroyuki Nisimura, who bought the site from its founder last year. Nisimura says ads haven't been effective enough to support the site, nor have subscriptions offering additional features. "We had tried to keep 4chan as is. But I failed," Nisimura writes. "I am sincerely sorry." There are three options for 4chan to survive going forward, as far as Nisimura sees it: sell more subscriptions, include "much more" -- and potentially even malicious -- ads, or cut traffic to the site in half. That might be done by closing message boards, slowing down the site, or reducing the size of images that can be posted. Nisimura makes it sound bad (his post is titled "Winter is coming"), but he also proposes changes to save the site. Meanwhile, another infamous name -- Martin Shkreli -- says he's interested in buying 4chan; he's in touch with Nisimura, so maybe we'll see how that remarkably bad combination turns out. Martin Shkreli tweeted: "I'm open to joining the Board of Directors of 4Chan. @4chan." Not too long after, Hiroyuki Nisimura replied: "I have replied your DM. Thank you for supporting 4chan @MartinShkreli twitter.com/MartinShkreli/...."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The infamous message board 4chan is struggling to stay afloat and will have to make changes to reduce costs, the site's owner wrote in a post on Sunday. "4chan can't afford infrastructure costs, network fee, servers cost, CDN and etc, now," writes Hiroyuki Nisimura, who bought the site from its founder last year. Nisimura says ads haven't been effective enough to support the site, nor have subscriptions offering additional features. "We had tried to keep 4chan as is. But I failed," Nisimura writes. "I am sincerely sorry." There are three options for 4chan to survive going forward, as far as Nisimura sees it: sell more subscriptions, include "much more" -- and potentially even malicious -- ads, or cut traffic to the site in half. That might be done by closing message boards, slowing down the site, or reducing the size of images that can be posted. Nisimura makes it sound bad (his post is titled "Winter is coming"), but he also proposes changes to save the site. Meanwhile, another infamous name -- Martin Shkreli -- says he's interested in buying 4chan; he's in touch with Nisimura, so maybe we'll see how that remarkably bad combination turns out. Martin Shkreli tweeted: "I'm open to joining the Board of Directors of 4Chan. @4chan." Not too long after, Hiroyuki Nisimura replied: "I have replied your DM. Thank you for supporting 4chan @MartinShkreli twitter.com/MartinShkreli/...."

Long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike writes that media outlets including Fox News were reporting WikiLeaks cancelled a big announcement scheduled for Tuesday and expected to reveal damaging information about Hillary Clinton. But they were all citing a tweet from NBC as their source. "Due to security concerns at the Ecuadorian Embassy, Julian Assange's balcony announcement on Tues has been cancelled," tweeted NBC producer Jesse Rodriguez -- which was apparently taken to mean the announcement had been cancelled altogether.

But six hours ago, citing WikiLeaks, that same producer reported that Assange "will appear via video link" at a Tuesday press conference in Berlin marking the 10th anniversary of WikiLeaks. While it's possible this "appearance" will be different than the originally scheduled "announcement," it also seems very possible that the NBC producer's tweets were just misunderstood.

Long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike writes that media outlets including Fox News were reporting WikiLeaks cancelled a big announcement scheduled for Tuesday and expected to reveal damaging information about Hillary Clinton. But they were all citing a tweet from NBC as their source. "Due to security concerns at the Ecuadorian Embassy, Julian Assange's balcony announcement on Tues has been cancelled," tweeted NBC producer Jesse Rodriguez -- which was apparently taken to mean the announcement had been cancelled altogether.

But six hours ago, citing WikiLeaks, that same producer reported that Assange "will appear via video link" at a Tuesday press conference in Berlin marking the 10th anniversary of WikiLeaks. While it's possible this "appearance" will be different than the originally scheduled "announcement," it also seems very possible that the NBC producer's tweets were just misunderstood.

That group auctioning the NSA's hacking tools is "very upset" no one's bidding on them. An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes Motherboard: "TheShadowBrokers" authored another bizarre rant expressing their annoyance at the seeming lack of interest in ponying up bitcoins to release their full set of stolen files. "Peoples is having interest in free files ... But people is no interest in #EQGRP_Auction," the mysterious hacker group complained in a ranting post on Medium, which seems to be purposely written in Borat-style broken English. "TheShadowBrokers is thinking this is information communication problem."

The message also blindly lashes out at hackers, foreign intelligence services, and basically anyone else who hasn't bid on the files... At the time of this writing, TheShadowBrokers have only received bids for a total of 1.76 bitcoins -- or about $1,082 -- far below the group's asking price of $1 million.
At least five transactions came from a prankster who was trying to Rickroll the group with bitcoin addresses containing the words "Never Gonna Give You Up."

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: Online journalists at Buzzfeed are publicizing two controversial videos featuring Donald Trump. First the site "filed court motions seeking the release" of Trump's under-oath testimony in a June trial, in which the real estate mogul "says he planned his caustic remarks on immigration delivered during the launch of his presidential bid," bragging that they'd "led to my nomination in a major party in the country." And Buzzfeed is also publicizing a video clip from the 2000 softcore porn movie Playboy Video Centerfold: Bernaola Twins, in which Trump makes a cameo appearance. Playboy has even said that years earlier Trump actually pressured his second wife to pose for Playboy. ("Trump himself was on the phone negotiating the fee," remembered a top Playboy editor. "He wanted her to do the nude layout. She didn't.")

But his biggest problem may be the mainstream media. According to the New York Times, Trump "declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns, a tax deduction so substantial it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years..."

After Newsweek published a report titled "How Donald Trump's Company Violated The United States Embargo Against Cuba," the site found itself on the receiving end of a "massive" denial-of-service attack that managed to shut down the site for several hours. TPM reports: Editor-In-Chief Jim Impoco noted that the attack came as the story earned national attention. "Last night we were on the receiving end of what our IT chief called a 'massive' DoS (denial of service) attack," Impoco wrote in an email to TPM. "The site was down most of last evening, at a time when Kurt Eichenwald's story detailing how Donald Trump's company broke the law by violating the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba was being covered extensively by prominent cable news programs. Our IT team is still investigating the hack." Later Friday afternoon, Impoco emailed TPM that in an initial investigation, the "main" IP addresses linked to the attack were found to be Russian. It should be noted that it is possible to fake an IP address. "As with any DDoS attack, there are lots of IP addresses, but the main ones are Russian, though that in itself does not prove anything," he wrote. "We are still investigating." Eichenwald tweeted Friday morning: "News: The reason ppl couldnt read #TrumpInCuba piece late yesterday is that hackers launched a major attack on Newsweek after it was posted."

After Newsweek published a report titled "How Donald Trump's Company Violated The United States Embargo Against Cuba," the site found itself on the receiving end of a "massive" denial-of-service attack that managed to shut down the site for several hours. TPM reports: Editor-In-Chief Jim Impoco noted that the attack came as the story earned national attention. "Last night we were on the receiving end of what our IT chief called a 'massive' DoS (denial of service) attack," Impoco wrote in an email to TPM. "The site was down most of last evening, at a time when Kurt Eichenwald's story detailing how Donald Trump's company broke the law by violating the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba was being covered extensively by prominent cable news programs. Our IT team is still investigating the hack." Later Friday afternoon, Impoco emailed TPM that in an initial investigation, the "main" IP addresses linked to the attack were found to be Russian. It should be noted that it is possible to fake an IP address. "As with any DDoS attack, there are lots of IP addresses, but the main ones are Russian, though that in itself does not prove anything," he wrote. "We are still investigating." Eichenwald tweeted Friday morning: "News: The reason ppl couldnt read #TrumpInCuba piece late yesterday is that hackers launched a major attack on Newsweek after it was posted."