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Submission + - Bitcoin Snafu Causes Miners to Generate Invalid Blocks (bitcoin.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A notice at bitcoin.org warns users of the cryptocurrency that many miners are currently generating invalid blocks. The cause seems to be out-of-date software, and software that assumed blocks were valid instead of checking them. They explain further "For several months, an increasing amount of mining hash rate has been signaling its intent to begin enforcing BIP66 strict DER signatures. As part of the BIP66 rules, once 950 of the last 1,000 blocks were version 3 (v3) blocks, all upgraded miners would reject version 2 (v2) blocks. Early morning UTC on 4 July 2015, the 950/1000 (95%) threshold was reached. Shortly thereafter, a small miner (part of the non-upgraded 5%) mined an invalid block--as was an expected occurrence. Unfortunately, it turned out that roughly half the network hash rate was mining without fully validating blocks (called SPV mining), and built new blocks on top of that invalid block. Note that the roughly 50% of the network that was SPV mining had explicitly indicated that they would enforce the BIP66 rules. By not doing so, several large miners have lost over $50,000 dollars worth of mining income so far."

Comment Re:Clickbait bullshit. (Score 1) 144

by Demonoid-Penguin (#50046211) Attached to: Someone Will Die Playing a Game In Virtual Reality

Dear coward, there are 15 stories listed on /. these days, there were 10 then (no need to reach for your calculator - that's 50% more). Compare apples with oranges much?

The 15 stories in your first link include how many that use drama and rhetoric to direct readers to advertising driven sites that have merely reposted stories from elsewhere? Or do you consider a "story" about the fucking muppets something that wouldn't get rightfully slammed as clickbait spam if it was run today - you muppet.

Today's stories:-

curl,grep,sed,foobar
Brain-Inspired 'Memcomputer' Constructed
Microsoft Edge, HTML5, and DRM
Researcher Who Reported E-voting Vulnerability Targeted By Police Raid in Argentina
Frank Herbert's Dune, 50 Years On
When Nerds Do BBQ
Ask Slashdot: How Much Did Your Biggest Tech Mistake Cost?
Why Electric Vehicles Aren't More Popular
Solar Impulse 2 Completes Record-Breaking Flight
Wired Cautions Would-Be Drone Photogs on the 4th
Someone Will Die Playing a Game In Virtual Reality
Machine Learning System Detects Emotions and Suicidal Behavior
How To Design Robot Overlords For "Robot Overlords"
In Response to Open Letter, France Rejects Asylum For Julian Assange
Japanese Court Orders Google To Delete Past Reports Of Man's Molestation Arrest
Turing Near Ready To Ship World's First Liquid Metal Android Smartphone

I guess you'd call them all click-bait huh? No - what percentage then?

From the archived page you reference - fourth story, about fucking muppets, (which may be too personal for you to call it clickbait). "This Week's Episode - Will War of the Worlds' aliens scare off our cranky coots? Will Bewitched be the end of Will? Plus, Pepe the Prawn begs Miss Congeniality to cuff him.". 10% bin-spam I'd of called it then. Now it's just over-hyped bullshit that doesn't belong on /. (that's long hand for click-bait).

More ads - yeah, more troll posters, yeah, are the stories generally lower quality since Cowboy left, yeah. Do I think the current "story" about leased LEDs is spam - yeah (that's why I block all that shit). Are more people submitting spam as stories - yeah. Are people using comment to promote their products (like a recent scifi "writer and his sockpuppets) yeah. Are a huge percentage of so-called stories on the wider internet (from which /. sources it's stories) clickbait - absolutely. Are as many people using Firehose - no, and they don't seem to mark much as bin-spam.

Face it, Paco.

Go fuck yourself with a garden tool you moronic bigot.

Submission + - Brazilians Launch "Squeaky-Clean" Facebook Competitor, 100k Join First Month (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Telegraph reports, "It all started three years ago when Mr Barros and three other devout Christian colleagues working at the mayor's office in Ferraz de Vasconcelos, near Brazil's financial capital Sao Paulo, decided there was a market for a squeaky-clean version of Facebook. ... With help from the Ferraz de Vasconcelos mayor's own pocket, they set up a business with about $16,000 in start-up money and Facegloria was born. Anyone can sign up to Facegloria.com, but if they do, they better mind how they behave. Swearing is banned ... as is any violent or erotic content ... "We want to be morally and technically better than Facebook. ... Behind the scenes, more than 20 volunteers patrol online to weed out bad language and to decide whether or not to allow potentially risqué selfies and bikini shots. ... But the morality police don't have a hard job. "Our public doesn't publish these kinds of photos," said one of the volunteers ... Mr Barros expects Facegloria to become online Brazil's go-to site. "In two years we hope to get to 10 million users in Brazil. In a month we have had 100,000 and in two we are expecting a big increase thanks to a mobile phone app," he said. Acir dos Santos, the mayor of Ferraz de Vasconcelos, says there's no limit. "Our network is global. We have bought the Faceglory domaine in English and in all possible languages. We want to take on Facebook and Twitter here and everywhere," he said. "

Comment Re:Lawrence (Score 3, Insightful) 234

by lgw (#50045493) Attached to: Frank Herbert's Dune, 50 Years On

I think the fundamental difference here (so to speak) is that ISIS is not a fundamentalist uprising. Oh, sure, they claim to be a religious movement, but everyone in the region does. Fundamentalism, in any religion, is not typically accompanied by using sexual slavery as an incentive to get young men to fight for you (ISIS has quite the flexible and convenient moral code).

My understanding of ISIS (mostly from a Muslim Arab coworker, so of course my "expert" could be wrong) is that they're "religious" in the same way Scientology is: they have all the trappings of religion, but it's all quite contrived. They emphasize whatever parts of scripture helps their goals and ignore the rest in a very obvious and transparent way that fools almost no one. It's not that they're murdering "moderate Muslims" per se, they're simply murdering anyone who speaks up about how evil they are, or simply speaks against them, whether on religious grounds or any other grounds.

There are many other places in the world where IMO the problem really is religious fundamentalism, but those guys aren't raising armies and conquering vast territory. Even in Afghanistan it's just one tribe after another, not a united fundamentalist army.

I think it's a mistake to confuse the problem with fundamentalist Islam in other parts of the world and other cultures with ISIS and the Arabian Peninsula.

Comment Re:Oh boy! (Score 1) 172

You, on the other hand, need your own damned custom browser! LOL I am impressed. I think you have some sort of record (for intentional use) with the number of BHOs that you have going.

Some web developers develop for all browsers, I'm one of them, I use tools to do that - many of them Firefox extensions. As long as the browser loads quickly I'm happy - I avoid crappy extensions, of which there are plenty, which slow the browser or cause it crash. Likewise shitty page design and bad javascript - of which, unfortunately, like unrepentant idiots, there are far too many.

If another browser works best for your needs - more power to you. Choice is good.

Submission + - Microsoft Edge, HTML5, and DRM (windows.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft is building its new browser, Edge, with the intention of avoiding many of the flaws that plagued Internet Explorer over its long and tumultuous life. Part of this involves moving away from plug-ins, and Edge will not support ActiveX. Instead, they're focusing on interoperable media, and that means non-plug-in video players that meet HTML5 specs. Of course, not all video players want to disseminate their content for free, which means: DRM. Microsoft's Edge team has published a new post explaining how they'll be handling support for DRM and "premium media" in the new browser. They say, "Windows 10 and Microsoft Edge support DASH, MSE, EME and CENC natively, and other major browsers ship implementations of MSE and CENC compliant EME. This support allows developers to build plug-in free web video apps that runs across a huge range of platforms and devices, with each MSE/EME implementation built on top of a different media pipeline and DRM provider. In the days when DRM systems used proprietary file formats and encryption methods, this variation in DRM providers by browser would have presented a significant issue. With the development and use of Common Encryption (CENC), the problem is substantially reduced because the files are compressed in standard formats and encrypted using global industry standards. The service provider issues the keys and licenses necessary to consume the content in a given browser, but the website code, content and encryption keys are common across all of them, regardless of which DRM is in use."

Submission + - Their Baaack - Zombie LightSquared is back to try again (avweb.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: LightSquared, the company that three years ago was proposing a nation-wide cell phone network whose signals were shown to disrupt GPS signals, is back. In a multi-billion dollar gambit that could reduce the cost of cell service, potentially at the expense of GPS, it's also asking the FCC to force GPS companies to help solve the technical issues that killed its plans a few years ago.

Submission + - Brain-Inspired "Memcomputer" Built, Could Surpass Quantum Computers (sandiegouniontribune.com)

Submitted by DorkFest
DorkFest writes:

Inspired by the human brain, UC San Diego scientists have constructed a new kind of computer that stores information and processes it in the same place. This prototype "memcomputer" solves a problem involving a large dataset more quickly than conventional computers, while using far less energy...Such memcomputers could equal or surpass the potential of quantum computers, they say, but because they don't rely on exotic quantum effects are far more easily constructed.

The team, led by UC San Diego physicist Massimiliano Di Ventra published their results in the journal Science Advances.

Submission + - Wired Shares "Tech Time Warp" Video from 1996 (wired.com)

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: On a day when America looks back on those who came before, Wired is remembering a pioneering technology magazine named Mondo 2000 — and sharing video of its editors' legendary appearance on a mid-90s PBS series, "The Internet Cafe". When its host questioned them about cyberpunk, they turned the interview into an ironic media stunt by providing a live, sneering cyberpunk model named Malice (wearing a fake neural implant on his head), as the words "real cyberpunk" jokingly flashed on the bottom of the screen. "At a time when few people outside academia had access to the internet, Mondo 2000 was many a wannabe hacker's introduction to the online world," Wired remembers fondly, even acknowleding that they'd "borrowed" their own magazine's design motif from Mondo 2000, in those early years before ISPs started popularizing consumer internet access.

Submission + - Frank Herbert's Dune, 50 Years On (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This October will be the 50th anniversary of Frank Herbert's massively popular and influential sci-fi novel Dune. The Guardian has written a piece examining its effects on the world at least, and how the book remains relevant even now. Quoting: "Books read differently as the world reforms itself around them, and the Dune of 2015 has geopolitical echoes that it didn’t in 1965, before the oil crisis and 9/11. ... As Paul’s destiny becomes clear to him, he begins to have visions 'of fanatic legions following the green and black banner of the Atreides, pillaging and burning across the universe in the name of their prophet Muad’Dib.' If Paul accepts this future, he will be responsible for 'the jihad’s bloody swords,' unleashing a nomad war machine that will up-end the corrupt and oppressive rule of the emperor Shaddam IV (good) but will kill untold billions (not so good) in the process. In 2015, the story of a white prophet leading a blue-eyed brown-skinned horde of jihadis against a ruler called Shaddam produces a weird funhouse mirror effect, as if someone has jumbled up recent history and stuck the pieces back together in a different order."

Submission + - Why Electric Vehicles Aren't More Popular (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ars takes a look at a recent report from the National Academy of Sciences into the reasons why more people aren't driving electric vehicles. Of course infrastructure issues are a part of it — until charging stations are ubiquitous, the convenience factor for using a gas-powered car will weigh heavily on consumers's minds. (Despite the prevalence of outlets at home and work, where the vast majority of charging will be done even with better infrastructure.) But other reasons are much less intractable. Simply giving somebody experience with an EV tends to make the fog of mystery surrounding them dissipate, and the design of the car counts for a lot, too. It turns out car buyers don't want their EVs to look different from regular cars.

Submission + - When Nerds Do BBQ 1

Submitted by Rick Zeman
Rick Zeman writes: On this 4th of July, the day that Americans flock to their grills and smokers, Wired has a fascinating article on a computerized smoker designed by Harvard engineering students. They say, "In prototype form, the smoker looks like a combination of a giant pepper mill, a tandoori oven, and V.I.N.CENT from The Black Hole. It weighs 300 pounds. It has a refueling chute built into the side of it. And it uses a proportional-integral-derivative controller, a Raspberry Pi, and fans to regulate its own temperature, automatically producing an ideal slow-and-low burn."

After cooking >200 lbs of brisket fine-tuning the design, the students concluded, "“Old-school pitmasters are like, ‘I cook mine in a garbage can,’ and there’s a point of pride in that,” Parker says. “A lot of the cutting edge is when you take an art form and drag it back onto scientific turf and turn it into an algorithm. I don’t think we’ve diluted the artistic component with this."

Comment Re:Clickbait bullshit. (Score 2) 144

by Demonoid-Penguin (#50043313) Attached to: Someone Will Die Playing a Game In Virtual Reality

This is exactly the kind of fearmongering clickbait that the Slashdot of old was not subject to and its editors didn't fall for. If I would want to read crap like this I'd visit Kotaku, Gawker or Polygon.

You're not from around here are you? That, or your memories are damaged - 'cause ten years ago we did get this sort of bullshit ('course we didn't call it click-bait then - just spam).

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