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HughPickens.com writes: Employees and employers alike have the right under at-will employment laws in almost all states to end their relationship without notice, for any reason, but the two-week rule is a widely accepted standard of workplace conduct. However, Sue Shellenbarger writes at the WSJ that a growing number of workers are leaving without giving two weeks' notice. Some bosses blame young employees who feel frustrated by limited prospects or have little sense of attachment to their workplace. But employment experts say some older workers are quitting without notice as well. They feel overworked or unappreciated after years of laboring under pay cuts and expanded workloads imposed during the recession. One employee at Dupray, a customer-service rep, scheduled a meeting and announced she was quitting, then rose and headed for the exit. She seemed surprised when the director of human resources stopped her and explained that employees are expected to give two weeks' notice. "She said, 'I've been watching 'Suits,' and this is how it happens,'" referring to the TV drama set in a law firm.

According to Shellenbarger, quitting without notice is sometimes justified. Employees with access to proprietary information, such as those working in sales or new-product development, face a conflict of interest if they accept a job with a competitor. Employees in such cases typically depart right away -- ideally, by mutual agreement. It can also be best to exit quickly if an employer is abusive, or if you suspect your employer is doing something illegal. More often, quitting without notice "is done in the heat of emotion, by someone who is completely frustrated, angry, offended or upset," says David Lewis, president of OperationsInc., a Norwalk, Conn., human-resources consulting firm. That approach can burn bridges and generate bad references. Phyllis Hartman says employees have a responsibility to try to communicate about what's wrong. "Start figuring out if there is anything you can do to fix it. The worst that can happen is that nobody listens or they tell you no." What do you Slashdotters think about providing employers notice of departure? Has there ever been a circumstance that warranted quitting your job without any prior notice?

Samsung said on Thursday that its second-quarter operating profit likely rose 17.4% from a year earlier. The figure marks the highest for Samsung in more than 2 years. The company adds that sales of Galaxy S7 flagship smartphone propelled its mobile earnings. Engadget reports: While Samsung won't be releasing its detailed earnings until the end of July, Reuters believes the top earner this quarter is none other than the mobile division, which also topped the last one. The news source says the division's profit could be up 54.5 percent from the same period last year. According to Yonhap News, Samsung shipped out around 15 million S7 and S7 edge units from April to June, with the latter beating out the basic S7 despite being more expensive.The company's mobile division, which once mostly had to compete with Apple's iPhone in the smartphone market, has been facing stiff competition from Chinese players such as Xiaomi and Huawei especially in the emerging market. But interestingly, some of these Chinese players have started to cut the big margin that their phones enjoyed in the recent months to make more profit.

An anonymous reader writes: A new report from Android Police says Google is working on two Android Wear smartwatches. The Verge reports: "The two smartwatches -- one codenamed Angelfish, the other Swordfish -- are said to place a heavy focus on the Google assistant artificial intelligence 'bot' that headlined the company's recent I/O keynote. In terms of size and design, the larger Angelfish watch fits somewhere in between the 42mm and 46mm sizes of Lenovo's Moto 360. It'll feature LTE connectivity, built-in GPS, and a heart rate monitor, so it's got everything necessary for a little independence from your smartphone. The watch design reportedly features three buttons. There's a circular crown like many other Android Wear devices, but Angelfish also has two other buttons, and it's not yet known what they do. The smaller, thinner Swordfish watch has a look that resembles the Pebble Time Round, according to Android Police, with much less bezel surrounding the circular display. It's got just a single button, and might ship without the LTE, GPS, and heart rate sensor included inside the higher-end model. They could appear sometime this fall alongside new Nexus phones and the launch of Android Wear 2.0, though Android Police suspects they'll be announced separately." Researchers at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, were able to track a smartwatch wearer's hand movements at an ATM and figure out their pin with 80 percent accuracy on the first try.

the_newsbeagle writes: By gaining access to the sensors in someone's smart watch, hackers could track the person's hand movements at an ATM and figure out his/her pin. The hacker needn't be anywhere near the ATM; data can be lifted from the smart watch by either a discreet wireless sniffer or by malware on the watch that sends info to a server. This is hardly the first demonstration of the security flaws in smart watches. Last year, a research group showed that a watch's sensors can reveal keystrokes on a computer keyboard. The team of researchers, led by Chen Wang and Yingying Chen at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, were able to record movements down to the millimeter and crack private ATM PINs with 80 percent accuracy on the first try. To eliminate the security breach, manufacturers could better secure the data stored in their wearables, and/or add noise so one's physical hand movements cannot be as easily translated. Of course, consumers could simply wear their smart watch on their non-dominant hand.

Google isn't done with its victory over Oracle. Court filings suggest that Google will be filing a motion for sanctions against Oracle and its law firm, Orrick, Sutcliffe & Herrington. The Mountain View-based company is apparently irked that Oracle attorney disclosed the financial agreements between Google and Apple. From an Ars Technica report: Speaking in open court, Oracle attorney Annette Hurst said that Google's Android operating system had generated revenue of $31 billion and $22 billion in profit. She also disclosed that Google pays Apple $1 billion to keep Google's search bar on iPhones. "Look at the extraordinary magnitude of commerciality here," Hurst told a magistrate judge as she discussed the revenue figures. The $1 billion figure comes from a revenue-split that gives Apple a portion of the money that Google makes off searches that originate on iPhones. The revenue share figure was 34 percent, "at one point in time," according to Hurst. Google lawyers asked for the figure to be struck from the record. "That percentage just stated, that should be sealed," Google lawyer Robert Van Nest said, according to a transcript of the hearing. "We are talking hypotheticals here. That's not a publicly known number."

Pinterest is figuring out new ways to bolster its revenue. On Tuesday, the social media company announced a range of new e-commerce features that will encourage its users (the service attracts more than 100 million users every month) to purchase items directly from its website. One of the biggest features is visual search for products, which will allow users to take a picture of an object and then see similar items to buy on Pinterest. The company has also announced a shopping bag that can be accessed on its mobile apps and website. From a Fortune report:Merchants will be able to create dedicated pages displaying all the merchandise being sold through Pinterest and, like Amazon, will suggest items that a user might want to buy. [...] The company wants to make it increasingly easier for people to buy items on its site. If Pinterest does have ambitions of becoming more of an e-commerce destination, it makes sense for Pinterest to start emulating moves made early on by e-commerce giant Amazon, such as personalization and recommended items. The key to personalization for Amazon has been the trove of data it has accumulated in order to recommend more products to its users. Pinterest said that its users are currently pinning four million items per day, and this data could be key to providing users with more personalized recommendations.

Fusion's Kashmir Hill is reporting that Facebook is using your phone's location to suggest new friends. It's unclear exactly when the social juggernaut began doing this, but a number of instances suggest it only started recently. From the report:Last week, I met a man who suspected Facebook had tracked his location to figure out who he was meeting with. He was a dad who had recently attended a gathering for suicidal teens. The next morning, he told me, he opened Facebook to find that one of the anonymous parents at the gathering popped up as a "person you may know." [...] "People You May Know are people on Facebook that you might know," a Facebook spokesperson said. "We show you people based on mutual friends, work and education information, networks you're part of, contacts you've imported and many other factors." One of those factors is smartphone location. A Facebook spokesperson said though that shared location alone would not result in a friend suggestion, saying that the two parents must have had something else in common, such as overlapping networks.While this feature could be useful in some cases, many may -- and they should -- see it as a big invasion of their privacy -- Hill has succinctly explained a number of them.

An anonymous reader writes:Whoever said crime doesn't pay didn't know about the booming ransomware market. A case in point, the latest version of the scourge known as CryptXXX, which raked in more than $45,000 in less than three weeks. Over the past few months, CryptXXX developers have gone back and forth with security researchers. The whitehats from Kaspersky Lab provided a free tool that allowed victims to decrypt their precious data without paying the ransom, which typically reaches $500 or more. Then, CryptXXX developers would tweak their code to defeat the get-out-of-jail decryptor. The researchers would regain the upper hand by exploiting another weakness and so on. Earlier this month, the developers released a new CryptXXX variant that to date still has no decryptor available. Between June 4 and June 21, according to a blog post published Monday by security firm SentinelOne, the Bitcoin address associated with the new version had received 70 bitcoins, which at current prices is valued at around $45,228. The figure doesn't include revenue generated from previous campaigns.

As the world makes peace with the news that the United Kingdom has voted to leave the European Union, people in the UK are increasingly trying to figure out what this means. Google noted on Twitter late Thursday that "What is the EU?" was the second top UK question on the EU since the news broke, with "Why did Britain leave the EU?" being the first. The questions also speak volume about the awareness of the issue among them. Understandably, some people also resorted to the search engine to look for Irish passports. "Getting an Irish passport" keywords saw a 100% surge.

In 2013, Uber told the Wall Street Journal that a typical Uber driver takes in more than $100,000 in annual gross fares. The ride-hail platform, which has shared similar estimates many times since, says that the company's efforts toward its drivers is a pathway to a modest, more attainable American dream. Turns out, the it has been exaggerating. According to BuzzFeed News, which obtained leaked documents, drivers in some markets don't take home much more than service workers at major chains like Walmart when it comes to net pay. According to the publication, drivers in three major U.S. markets -- Denver, Detroit, and Houston -- earned less than an average of $13.25 an hour after expenses. From the report:Based on these calculations, it's possible to estimate that Uber drivers in late 2015 earned approximately $13.17 per hour after expenses in the Denver market (which includes all of Colorado), $10.75 per hour after expenses in the Houston area, and $8.77 per hour after expenses in the Detroit market, less than any earnings figure previously released by the company.

blottsie writes: Chris Vickery, a security researcher at MacKeeper, has uncovered a new voter database containing 154 million voter records, exposed as a result of a CouchDB installation error. The database includes names, addresses, Facebook profile URLs, gun ownership, and more. Who exposed the voter database? Vickery believes the suspect may be linked to L2, a company specializing in voter data utilization, after he noticed that the voter ID field was labeled "LALVOTERID." After calling the company, L2 said the database likely belongs to one of their clients, noting that there are very few clients big enough to have a national database like that. The database was secured within three hours of their phone call. L2's CEO Bruce Willsie said that the client told L2 that they were hacked and the firewall had been taken down. Their client is conducting their own research to figure out the extent of the incursion. The Daily Dot reports: "Why does this keep happening, and what is our government doing about it? No federal agency is enforcing data security in political organizations or non-profits, and so far, neither are state attorneys general."

Remember when FBI's director James Comey was spotted using a piece of tape over the camera on his laptop? At the time, Comey noted that he started doing it after he saw a person "smarter" than him do it as well. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg apparently also puts a tape over his webcam. Zuckerberg posted an image on Facebook yesterday, celebrating Instagram's big milestone of hitting 500 million monthly active users. In the background, we can see that his laptop has a tape over the webcam, as well as something around the microphone port. From a report on The Guardian: Even experts who don't cover their cameras think they should. Why doesn't Matthew Green, an encryption expert at Johns Hopkins University? "Because I'm an idiot," he said. "I have no excuse for not taking this seriously ... but at the end of the day, I figure that seeing me naked would be punishment enough." While Zuckerberg probably does have any number of advanced persistent threats trying to break his digital security, normal people shouldn't be too complacent either. Installing backdoors on compromised computers is a common way for some hackers to occupy their time.On an unrelated note, it appears, Zuckerberg uses Mozilla's Thunderbird as his primary email client.

An anonymous reader writes: Following a report that Russian hackers penetrated the DNC's database, a hacker, who identifies himself as "Guccifer 2.0" after a popular Romanian hacker who hacked various American political figures, most notably Hillary Clinton and her private server, has published documents on Tuesday that he says came from the party's digital files. The documents detail Clinton's weaknesses as a candidate, and include a collection of negative press clips about the Clinton Foundation and a list of defenses against attacks on her private email use. Washington Examiner reports: "Another document, titled '2016 Democrats Positions Cheat Sheet,' listed major policy issues and indicated where Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Martin O'Malley, Jim Webb, Lincoln Chaffee, Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden -- all former or possible rivals for the Democratic nomination -- stood on each issue." The documents contain information ranging from how the Clinton Foundation and its allies should respond to criticisms of the Clinton Foundation's revenue sources to how Chelsea Clinton wasn't able to answer questions about Clinton Foundation donations and other instances in which Bill Clinton was called a "sexual predator" for his past indiscretions. Even though the cybersecurity breach was blamed on the Russian government, the Kremlin has denied any involvement. The DNC also has yet to confirm or deny the authenticity of the leaked documents.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Network World: Ahead of Apple's WWDC keynote this year, one of the more bizarre and sketchy rumors we saw take shape claimed that Apple was planning to deliver iMessage to Android. As is typically the case, the rumor mill took this somewhat ridiculous rumor and ran with it. The only problem is that some people were so busy trying to figure out the ramifications of iMessage hitting Android that they didn't take a step back and try and figure out if this is something Apple would even contemplate in the first place. Remember, every move Apple makes is strategic and geared towards making more money, either via device sales or software. That being the case, iMessage on Android would not only be a free app, but it would also eliminate a user-experience advantage of iOS. Interestingly enough, Walt Mossberg of The Verge asked a senior Apple executive about the rumor whereupon the nameless executive all but indicated that iMessage will never be coming to Android. Walt Mossberg writes: "First, he said, Apple considers its own user base of 1 billion active devices to provide a large enough data set for any possible AI learning the company is working on. And, second, having a superior messaging platform that only worked on Apple devices would help sales of those device -- the company's classic (and successful) rationale for years."

Firefox web browser has a new experimental feature that allows a user to segregate their online identities and sign in into multiple mail or social media accounts side-by-side without having to use multiple browsers. From a TechCrunch report: This new "container tab" feature, which is now available in the unstable Nightly Firefox release channel, provides you with four default identities (personal, work, shopping, and banking) with their own stores for cookies, IndexedDB data store, local storage and caches. In practice, this means you can surf Amazon without ads for products you may have looked at following you around the web when you switch over to your work persona. As the Firefox team notes, the idea behind this feature isn't new, but nobody has figured out how to best present this new tool to users.

An anonymous reader writes: A new study from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows that carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in the atmosphere are likely to remain above 400 parts per million (ppm) for many years. Specifically, scientists forecasted that levels would not dip below 400pm in "our lifetimes." The CO2 concentrations of "about 450ppm or lower are likely to maintain warming below 2 degrees Celsius over the 21st century relative to pre-industrial levels." However, lead author on the paper Richard Betts said we could pass that number in 20 years or less. In an article on The Guardian, he said even if we reduce emissions immediately, we might be able to delay reaching 450ppm but "it is still looking like a challenge to stay below 450ppm." El Nino has played a significant role in climbing carbon dioxide levels, but it's likely we'll see higher CO2 levels than the last large El Nino storm during 1997 and 1998 because "manmade emissions" have risen by 25 percent since that storm, according to The Guardian. Met Office experts predicted in November 2015 that in May 2016 "mean concentrations of atmospheric CO2" would hit 407.57ppm -- the actual figure was 407.7ppm. The NOAA reported during 2015 that the "annual growth rate" of CO2 in the atmosphere rose by 3.05ppm. NOAA lead scientist Pieter Tans said, "Carbon dioxide levels are increasing faster than they have in hundreds of thousands of years. It's explosive compared to the natural processes."

An anonymous reader writes: Following the report that Russian hackers penetrated the DNC's database and stole research on Donald Trump, a 200+ page Democratic anti-Trump playbook compiled by the DNC has leaked online. In the book, Trump is called a "bad businessman" and "misogynist in chief." The document was created on December 19th, 2015, and was sent to Gawker by a hacker calling himself "Guccifer 2.0." (Guccifer is a popular Romanian hacker who hacked various American political figures, most notably Hillary Clinton and her private server.) The hacker said in an email to Gawker that the package contains a variety of donor registries and other strategy files, "just a few docs from many thousands I extracted when hacking into DNC's network," adding that he's in possession of "about 100GB of data including financial reports, donors' lists, election programs, action plans against Republicans, personal mails, etc." His motive is to be "a fighter against all those illuminati that captured our world." The "Donald Trump Report," as it's called, appears to be a summary of the Democratic Party's strategy for delegitimizing and undermining Trump's presidential aspirations. There's a section titled "Top Narratives" that describes a seven-pronged attack on Trump's character and record. The hack was first revealed Tuesday by the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, linking the hack to Russian intelligence. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange says later this year it will publish enough new information about Hillary Clinton to indict her.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Yale scientists have found a way to greatly boost the intensity of light waves on a silicon microchip using the power of sound. Writing in the journal Nature Photonics, a team led by Peter Rakich describes a new waveguide system that harnesses the ability to precisely control the interaction of light and sound waves. "Silicon is the basis for practically all microchip technologies," said Rakich, who is an assistant professor of applied physics and physics at Yale. "The ability to combine both light and sound in silicon permits us to control and process information in new ways that weren't otherwise possible." Rakich said combining the two capabilities "is like giving a UPS driver an amphibious vehicle -- you can find a much more efficient route for delivery when traveling by land or water." "Figuring out how to shape this interaction without losing amplification was the real challenge," said Eric Kittlaus, a graduate student in Rakich's lab and the study's first author. "With precise control over the light-sound interaction, we will be able to create devices with immediate practical uses, including new types of lasers." The researchers said there are commercial applications for the technology in a number of areas, including fiber-optic communications and signal processing. The system is part of a larger body of research the Rakich lab has conducted for the past five years, focused on designing new microchip technologies for light.

It's been a while since Yahoo has been up for sale, but the interested companies are still struggling to figure out what parts of Yahoo are worth purchasing. "Being for sale is what Yahoo does for a living now," Kara Swisher reports. "This is a pretty basic deal with everyone trying to figure out the risk and reward here of taking over a clearly failing business," said one bidder quoted in the report. "Everyone has different criteria for what matters." Yahoo essentially has three things to offer, which come with their own set of problems. From the report: (1) Its core business that includes search, advertising and media assets, all of which are in decline and getting worse.
(2) Its patent portfolio that the company thinks is worth as much as $3 billion, but others peg at $1 billion.
(3) Its real estate, which the company is pegging at about $1 billion, while others put it at a much lower value.It's also being reported that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer will have to leave the company, regardless of whether it gets acquired or not. Some of the potential buyers include Verizon, which according to the report, isn't interested in getting Yahoo's patents. It is offering $3B to $3.5B all-cash. Several private equity firms, who are interested in getting hold of Yahoo-owned patents and real estate, are offering Yahoo a sum of $5 billion or more. "This deal is not one in which everyone's really enthusiastic, since there is a giant question of how quickly the business is deteriorating," said another bidder. "If you win, you might lose and vice versa."

The CEO of Endgame, Inc. is calling for an "offensive mindset" to defend enterprises from hackers. An anonymous reader quotes Nate Fick's article on Quartz: Rather than relying on imperfect prevention techniques, or waiting for a breach to happen and then reacting to it, defenders need to 'turn the map around' and hunt proactively for the attackers in order to root out adversaries before they have a chance to do real damage. This is the next frontier of cybersecurity... the vast majority of cybersecurity spending is still going to prevention and perimeter security. Prevention is necessary, but it's not sufficient and it certainly doesn't justify 90 cents of every security dollar...

The government has already figured this out. Across the Department of Defense, the intelligence community, and other forward-leaning agencies, this proactive hunting is already happening, and it's becoming more widespread. Enterprises need to embrace the same mindset.
Fick points out that despite $75 billion on enterprise-level security spending, more than three-quarters of Fortune 500 companies have been breached within the last year.