Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - SPAM: China flight systems jammed by pig farm's African swine fever defenses. 2

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: A Chinese pig farm’s attempt to ward off drones – said to be spreading African swine fever – jammed the navigation systems of a number of planes flying overhead.

The farm, in northeastern China, was ordered last month to turn in an unauthorised anti-drone device installed to prevent criminal gangs dropping items infected with the disease, according to online news portal Thepaper.cn. . . .

Chinese state media reported last week that gangs were exploiting the African swine fever crisis by deliberately spreading the disease by using drones to drop infected items on to pig farms. The farmers are then forced to sell meat cheaply to the gangs, who then sell it on as healthy stock, according to China Comment magazine, which is affiliated to state news agency Xinhua.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Chuck Peddle, Lead Designer Of The 650x Microporcessors, Dies

Submitted by kackle
kackle writes: If you cut your teeth on 8-bit computers during their explosion into the mainstream, beginning in the 1970s, you were likely aware of and/or influenced by the work of electrical engineer Charles "Chuck" Peddle, who died this week. The general public may not know his name today, but his efforts had a big impact on the cost and availability of computing to the average person at the beginning of the personal computer era.

Submission + - The lawyers who took on Big Tobacco are aiming at Realtors and their 6% fee (marketwatch.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: A new class-action lawsuit takes aim at real estate agents and the tools they use to do business, and housing industry watchers say it could revolutionize the way Americans buy and sell the biggest asset they’ll ever own.

The suit was filed in Chicago on behalf of anyone who sold a home through one of 20 of the largest listing services in the country over the past five years. It charges that the mighty Washington-based lobby National Association of Realtors, as well as the four largest national real estate brokerages, and the Multiple Listing Services they use, have conspired to require anyone selling a home to pay the commission of the broker representing their buyer “at an inflated amount,” in violation of federal antitrust law.

...many housing observers call Realtors a “cartel” for the way they purposely steer clients to transactions in which traditional ways of doing business are observed.

Submission + - 'Impossible' Rocks Found on Remote Volcanic Island (livescience.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Researchers have found rocks on a small island between Madagascar and the eastern coast of Africa, a discovery that has been described as mysterious for one very important reason — they shouldn't be there.

The rocks in question, quartzite, were discovered by researchers at Columbia University, thanks to a grant from the National Geographic Society. They had heard about them from a number of different media reports but were finally able to confirm the presence of the quartzite, which is usually found in areas that have high temperatures and pressures, for themselves.

“This is contrary to plate tectonics,” said Cornelia Class, a geochemist at Columbia University, in a blog post. “Quartzite bodies do not belong on volcanic islands.”

Submission + - 'Bombe' Code-Breaking WW2 Computer Was Used To Decipher Message (bbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Computer historians have staged a re-enactment of World War Two code-cracking at Bletchley Park. A replica code-breaking computer called a Bombe was used to decipher a message scrambled by an Enigma machine. Held at the National Museum of Computing (TNMOC), the event honored Polish help with wartime code-cracking. Enigma machines were used extensively by the German army and navy during World War Two. This prompted a massive effort by the Allies to crack the complex method they employed to scramble messages. That effort was co-ordinated via Bletchley Park and resulted in the creation of the Bombe, said Paul Kellar who helps to keep a replica machine running at the museum. Renowned mathematician Alan Turing was instrumental in the creation of the original Bombe.

For its re-enactment, TNMOC recruited a team of 12 and used a replica Bombe that, until recently, had been on display at the Bletchley Park museum next door. The electro-mechanical Bombe was designed to discover which settings the German Enigma operators used to scramble their messages. As with World War Two messages, the TNMOC team began with a hint or educated guess about the content of the message, known as a "crib", which was used to set up the Bombe. The machine then cranked through the millions of possible combinations until it came to a "good stop", said Mr Kellar. This indicated that the Bombe had found key portions of the settings used to turn readable German into gobbledygook. After that, said Mr Kellar, it was just a matter of time before the 12-strong team cracked the message.

Submission + - Massive Undersea Walls Could Stop Glaciers From Melting, Scientists Say (cnn.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Building walls on the seafloor could prevent glaciers from melting and sea levels rising due to global warming, scientists say. Barriers of sand and rock positioned at the base of glaciers would stop ice sheets sliding and collapsing, and prevent warm water from eroding the ice from beneath, according to research published this week in the Cryosphere journal, from the European Geosciences Union. The audacious idea centers on the construction of "extremely simple structures, merely piles of aggregate on the ocean floor, although more advanced structures could certainly be explored in the future," said the report's authors, Michael Wolovick, a researcher at the department of geosciences at Princeton University, and John Moore, professor of climate change at the University of Lapland in Finland.

Using computer models to gauge the probable impact of walls on erosion of the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica, one of the world's largest, Wolovick and Moore hoped to test the efficiency of "a locally targeted intervention." They claimed the simplest designs would allow direct comparison with existing engineering projects. "The easiest design that we considered would be comparable to the largest civil engineering projects that humanity has ever attempted," they said. "An ice sheet intervention today would be at the edge of human capabilities." For example, building four isolated walls would require between 0.1 and 1.5 cubic km of material. "That is comparable to the 0.1 km3 that was used to create Palm Jumeirah in Dubai ($12 billion)...(and) the 0.3 km3 that was used to create Hong Kong International Airport ($20 billion)," the report said.

Submission + - What happened when Boston Schools tried for bus fairness with an algorithm (bostonglobe.com) 1

Submitted by sandbagger
sandbagger writes: Last year, the Boston Public Schools asked MIT graduate students Sébastien Martin and Arthur Delarue to build an algorithm that could do the enormously complicated work of changing start times at dozens of schools — and rerouting the hundreds of buses that serve them. In theory this would also help with student alertness.

The political firestorm that erupted proved once more that computer can solve problems but whether or not the answer is politically or socially acceptable is another matter

Submission + - Why is browsing still so slow on my 50Mb link? (pxlnv.com) 3

Submitted by gb7djk
gb7djk writes: Ever wondered why pages see to load slower and slower? Or why it is that browsing seems to take just as long to load a page, even though your broadband connection doubled in speed a couple of months ago?

When I moved into my own apartment several years ago, I got to pick my plan and chose a massive fifty megabit per second broadband connection, which I have since upgraded. So, with an internet connection faster than I could have thought possible in the late 1990s, what’s the score now? A story at the Hill took over nine seconds to load; at Politico, seventeen seconds; at CNN, over thirty seconds. This is the bullshit web.

Submission + - FCC hopes to open 95 GHz, wants to boost innovation (yahoo.com)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: Today, the FCC voted to move forward with a proposal to open up communications spectrum beyond 95 GHz.

In a statement, it said that spectrum above this range has been thought to be at the edge of what's usable, but now it wants to provide different levels of authorization to use the spectrum to, as Chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement, "promote innovation and help put this spectrum to its best use."

Pai noted that some might be skeptical as to whether spectrum above 95 GHz can actually be used, but he added, "The point is that we must be open to new technologies that haven't even been developed. And while we don't know precisely how far the laws of physics will permit us to go, we do know there's potential and interest. Engineers and entrepreneurs need to have the ability to push the envelope."

Submission + - SPAM: The College Board Pushes for Compulsory High School Computer Science

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Education Week reports that The College Board wants high schools to make it mandatory for students to take computer science before they graduate. The call came as The College Board touted the astonishing growth in its Advanced Placement (AP) computer science courses, which was attributed to the success of its new AP Computer Science Principles (AP CSP) class, a "lite" alternative to the Java-based AP CS A course. "The College Board is willing to invest serious resources in making this viable-much more so than is in our economic interest to do so," said College Board President David Coleman. "To governors, legislators, to others-if you will help us make this part of the life of schools, we will help fund it." Just two days before Coleman's funds-for-compulsory-CS offer, EdWeek cast a skeptical eye at the tech sector's role in creating a tremendous surge of enthusiasm for K-12 CS education. Last spring, The College Board struck a partnership with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative with a goal of making AP CSP available in every U.S. school district. Also contributing to the success of The College Board's high school AP CS programs over the years has been tech-bankrolled Code.org, as well as tech giants Microsoft and Google. The idea of a national computer programming language requirement for high school students was prominently floated in a Google-curated Q&A session with President Obama (video) following the 2013 State of the Union address.

Comment Was it hacking or just good police work? (Score 4, Informative) 75

by papafox_too (#52705645) Attached to: Australian Authorities Hacked Computers in the US

Did the Queensland Police hack any computers? They appear to have simply sent emails containing links. When the link was clicked, the IP address of the mail client as recorded.

From the TLA:

>> Details on how exactly this was achieved are limited, but according to a court document from another case,
>> “When a user clicked on that hyperlink, the user was advised that the user was attempting to open a video
>> file from an external website. If the user chose to open the file, a video file containing images of child pornography
>> began to play, and the FLA [foreign law enforcement agency] captured and recorded the IP address of the user accessing the file.”

So it doesn't appear that any code was inserted into the target computer. The offenders didn't follow good opsec - they clicked on a link while they were not connected to a TOR proxy.

As for jurisdiction - it appears that the server was moved to Brisbane. Again from the TLA:

>> At one point, The Love Zone server was also reportedly moved to Brisbane, giving Task Force Argos,
>> the Queensland Police Service unit that took over the site, access to every private message on the site.

If the server was located in Queensland, then Queensland court orders could legitimately apply to it. So no evidence of hacking or of extra-territoriality. Move along folks, no misconduct, just good police work.

Submission + - Drug-test the Rich - Not the Poor - to Qualify for Tax Benefits (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Press2ToContinue
Press2ToContinue writes: "The (tax) benefits we give to poor people are so limited compared to what we give to the top 1%” of taxpayers, Congresswoman Gwen Moore says, “It’s a drop in the bucket.” Many states implement drug-testing programs to qualify for benefit programs so that states feel they are not wasting the value they dole out.

However, seven states who implemented drug testing for tax benefit program recipients spent $1m on drug testing from the inception of their programs through 2014. But the average rate of drug use among those recipients has been far below the national average – around 1% overall, compared with 9.4% in the general population – meaning there’s been little cost savings from the drug testing program. Why? “Probably because they can’t afford it,” say Moore.

“We might really save some money by drug-testing folks on Wall Street, who might have a little cocaine before they get their deal done,” she said, and proposes a bill requiring tests for returns with itemized deductions of more than $150,000.

“We spend $81bn on everything – everything – that you could consider a poverty program,” she explained. But just by taxing capital gains at a lower rate than other income, a bit of the tax code far more likely to benefit the rich than the poor, “that’s a $93bn expenditure. Just capital gains,” she added. Why not drug-test the rich to ensure they won't waste their tax benefits?

She is “sick and tired of the criminalization of poverty”. And, she added: “We’re not going to get rid of the federal deficit by cutting poor people off Snap. But if we are going to drug-test people to reduce the deficit, let’s start on the other end of the income spectrum.”

Submission + - Are Major Domains In Genuine Decline Or Going To Walled Gardens?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A look at the last 12 months of traffic performance shows a number of the internet's most popular domains taking a drastic fall in traffic. Sites including Wired, Forbes, The Wall St Journal, Buzzfeed and Time seems to be in freefall. But is the truth that meaningful publicly available statistics about a venture's reach are actually in decline, as sites exit traditional net-metrics for the walled gardens of bespoke apps and the hard-to-quantify reach created by direct content on social networks?

Submission + - Australian music industry wants ISPs to block Kickass Torrents (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by angry tapir
angry tapir writes: Four music labels have joined forces and launched legal action aimed at forcing Australia’s largest Internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to a major piracy-linked BitTorrent site. The move to block Kickass Torrents comes as a separate legal action involving The Pirate Bay and other sites launched by pay TV company Foxtel and movie studios is still in court. The legal action is taking place under a controversial amendment to the Copyright Act passed by the Australian parliament last year.

Slashdot Top Deals

"Plastic gun. Ingenious. More coffee, please." -- The Phantom comics

Close