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Submission + - Silicon Valley Doesn't Have an Attitude Problem, OK? (dice.com)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: In Silicon Valley they think differently, and if that leads to arrogance, so be it. At least that’s what Bloomberg Businessweek’s Joel Stein implies in his long meditation on the area’s outlook on technology, money and changing the world. Stein set out to examine the underlying notion that Silicon Valley’s and San Francisco’s tech entrepreneurs are feeding a backlash by being, in a word, jerks. His conclusion seems to be that they may well be jerks, but they’re misunderstood jerks. He doesn’t deny that there’s sexism and boorishness at play in the young tech community, but he sees the industry trying to make itself better. He sees a lot of egotism at work, too but, he observes, if you’re setting out to change the world, you’re probably going to need a big ego to do it. But tell that to other people in Northern California: undoubtedly, you’ve read about the tempest in San Francisco recently, where urban activists are decrying the influx of highly paid tech professionals, who they argue are displacing residents suddenly unable to keep up with skyrocketing rents.

Submission + - Monkey "selfies" spark copyright dispute with Wikipedia (sfgate.com)

Submitted by Frosty Piss
Frosty Piss writes: A series of self-portraits taken by Indonesian monkeys has sparked a copyright dispute between Wikipedia and a British wildlife photographer, says Wikipedia is using his copyrighted images without permission. Photographer David Slater complained that Wikipedia rejected his requests for the images to be removed from the website. Although the monkeys pressed the button, Slater set up the self-portraits by framing them and setting the camera on a tripod. The Wikimedia Foundation claims that no one owns the copyright to the images, because under U.S. law, 'copyright cannot vest in non-human authors', the monkeys in this case.

Submission + - China smartphone maker Xiaomi apologizes for unauthorized data access 1

Submitted by SpzToid
SpzToid writes: Following up an earlier story here on Slashdot, now Xiaomi has apologized for collecting private data from its customers.

Xiaomi Inc said it had upgraded its operating system to ensure users knew it was collecting data from their address books after a report by a computer security firm said the Chinese budget smartphone maker was taking personal data without permission. The privately held company said it had fixed a loophole in its cloud messaging system that had triggered the unauthorized data transfer and that the operating system upgrade had been rolled out on Sunday. The issue was highlighted last week in a blog post by security firm F-Secure Oyg. In a lengthy blogpost on Google Plus, Xiaomi Vice President Hugo Barra apologized for the unauthorized data collection and said the company only collects phone numbers in users' address books to see if the users are online.

Submission + - Floridian, (and Southern) governmental regulations are unfriendly to solar power (latimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Few places in the country are so warm and bright as Mary Wilkerson's property on the beach near St. Petersburg, Fla., a city once noted in the Guinness Book of World Records for a 768-day stretch of sunny days.

But while Florida advertises itself as the Sunshine State, power company executives and regulators have worked successfully to keep most Floridians from using that sunshine to generate their own power.

Wilkerson discovered the paradox when she set out to harness sunlight into electricity for the vintage cottages she rents out at Indian Rocks Beach. She would have had an easier time installing solar panels, she found, if she had put the homes on a flatbed and transported them to chilly Massachusetts.

While the precise rules vary from state to state, one explanation is the same: opposition from utilities grown nervous by the rapid encroachment of solar firms on their business.

Submission + - LASIK with current medical improvements - yay or nay? 1

Submitted by stonedead
stonedead writes: I have been contemplating getting a LASIK surgery done on both my eyes. I am 26 years old and code for a living. I am near sighted and optical power required to correct my left and right eyes are -5 and -6 dioptres respectively. Considering the article on Slashdot today about a guy getting LASIK to enjoy VR, I am more curious about this.
I could find an Ask-Slashdot about this 12 years ago: http://ask.slashdot.org/story/...
I would like to know how much has this technology progressed since then. I have found a couple of forums that advocate the LASIK while some sites are completely against it (lasikcomplications.com for example). What is the opinion of the Slashdot crowd?

Submission + - Visual cryptography on postage stamps

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Have you heard of personalized postage stamps? You pay the value of the stamps plus a fee and the post office prints official stamps usable for postage which show (almost) anything you can put into a jpeg file. An Austrian Tibet supporter found out what 'almost' means. He submitted a picture of the Dalai Lama with the text 'His Holiness the Dalai Lama', but the Austrian post office refused to produce these stamps. Stampnews and the Neue Zuercher Zeitung reported that this had been due to pressure from the Chinese embassy in Vienna.
Now there is a video showing how visual cryptography has been used to get around this attempt at censorship.

Submission + - Netflix Now Works On Linux With HTML5 DRM Video Support In Chrome (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Beginning with the Chrome 38 Beta it's now possible to watch Netflix without any Wine/Silverlight plug-ins but will work natively using Chrome's DRM-HTML5 video capabilities with Netflix. The steps just involve using the latest beta of Chrome and an HTTP user-agent switcher to tell Netflix you're a Windows Chrome user, due to Netflix arbitrarily blocking the Linux build.

Comment Re:Great (Score 1) 175

by SpzToid (#47630473) Attached to: Yahoo To Add PGP Encryption For Email

I'm reminded of one encrypted E-mail provider in this regard. They did nothing wrong, but were given the choice between having people face jail time or hand over data... I still use them...

For a moment there, I thought you were talking about , Lavabit. (That citation is from Google's cache, of their website, that explains why they chose to go under)

Comment Re:It's a TRAP! (Score 1) 175

by SpzToid (#47630247) Attached to: Yahoo To Add PGP Encryption For Email

Did you not understand the part about the plebs taking responsibility, or not, for their own keys (private and public), in the post that you replied to? The plebs can barely understand how to manage their own passwords, let alone the legal ramifications of what it means to be a Safe Harbor.

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