Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - U.S. Gas Stations Vulnerable To Internet Attacks (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Automated tank gauges (ATGs), which are used by gas stations in the U.S. to monitor their fuel tank levels can be manipulated over the Internet by malicious attackers, according to security firm Rapid7. 'An attacker with access to the serial port interface of an ATG may be able to shut down the station by spoofing the reported fuel level, generating false alarms, and locking the monitoring service out of the system,' said HD Moore, the chief research officer at Rapid7.

Submission + - Disney turned down George Lucas scripts!

Submitted by ageoffri
ageoffri writes: So after the near disasters of movies that Star Wars episodes 1-3 are, it is now being reported that Disney did not use George Lucas's scripts at http://www.foxnews.com/enterta... . Some will take this as great news, some will shudder at JJ Abrams leading the effort.
Windows

Surface RT Devices Won't Get Windows 10 158

Posted by Soulskill from the take-that-early-adopters dept.
whoever57 writes: In its announcement of Windows 10, Microsoft indicated not all devices would get the updated operating system. Now, Microsoft says its Surface devices running Windows RT won't be receiving full updates, though it does plan to roll some new functionality into them. "Given that Windows RT and RT 8.1 were designed for power economizing devices sporting 32-bit ARM architecture, and never had the same functionality — to many users' frustration — as full-blown Windows 8 and 8.1, it comes as little surprise that the RT versions of the operating system should be left out of the latest update loop. In fact, a week before Microsoft's big Windows 10 reveal on January 21, the company released firmware updates for all three models of its Intel-powered Surface Pro series, but neither of the ARM-based Surface tablets — the Surface 2 or Surface RT — received any new updates this month." The Surface Pro line of tablets, which run a normal version of Windows, will be getting an update to Windows 10.

Submission + - New Nicotine Vaccine May Succeed Where Others Have Failed (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: If you're a smoker who's trying to quit, you may recall hearing about vaccines designed to cause the body's immune system to treat nicotine like a foreign invader, producing antibodies that trap and remove it before it's able to reach receptors in the brain. It's a fascinating idea, but according to scientists at California's Scripps Research Institute, a recent high-profile attempt had a major flaw. They claim to have overcome that problem, and are now developing a vaccine of their own that they believe should be more effective.
Space

Rare Astronomical Event Will See Triple Moon Shadows On Jupiter 53

Posted by Soulskill from the pretty-pictures dept.
hypnosec writes Stargazers are in for a treat: they will be able to witness a rare astronomical event early tomorrow morning (January 24, 2015) where shadows of three of Jupiter's largest moons — Io, Europa, and Callisto — will fall upon Jupiter simultaneously. Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles will provide a live online broadcast on its Livestream channel. It will begin on January 24 at 0430 GMT (January 23 at 11:30 PM EST, 8:30 PM PST) and end at 0700 GMT (2:00 AM EST, 11:00 PM PST). They've also posted a short animated video of how the event will appear.

Submission + - Twitter moves to curb Instagram links

Submitted by Hammeh
Hammeh writes: According to a report on Mashable, Twitter have sent out messages to some of their high profile users prompting them to share images using Twitter's own service rather than Instagram links. The news comes 2 years since Instagram pulled support for Twitter cards and has been part of the continuing battle between the two social networks. With Instagram now having overtaken Twitter in terms of users, this may be a move to try and use high profile users to show off Twitter's own image and content tools.

Submission + - Behind the Harassment Charges That Stunned MIT (insidehighered.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The complainant in a sexual harassment story has come forward and told her story about what happened when she was a student in a MOOC led by a rockstar professor.
The Internet

Eric Schmidt: Our Perception of the Internet Will Fade 228

Posted by Soulskill from the augmenting-our-reality dept.
Esra Erimez writes: Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt on Thursday predicted a change in how we perceive the internet. Schmidt says, "There will be so many IP addresses, so many devices, sensors, things that you are wearing, things that you are interacting with that you won't even sense it. It will be part of your presence all the time. Imagine you walk into a room, and the room is dynamic. And with your permission and all of that, you are interacting with the things going on in the room."

Submission + - Data Encryption On The Rise On The Cloud And Mobile 1

Submitted by dkatana
dkatana writes: Overall, demand for encryption is growing. Cloud encryption services provider CipherCloud recently received a $50 million investment by Deutsche Telekom, which the company said positions it for "explosive growth" this year. The services are designed to allow corporations to benefit from the cost savings and elasticity of cloud-based data storage, while ensuring that sensitive information is protected.

Now, both Apple and Google are providing full encryption as a default option on their mobile operating systems with an encryption scheme they are not able to break themselves, since they don’t hold the necessary keys.

Some corporations have gone as far as turning to "zero-knowledge" services, usually located in countries such as Switzerland. These services pledge that they have no means to unlock the information once the customer has entered the unique encryption keys. This zero-knowledge approach is welcomed by users, who are reassured that their information is impossible to retrieve — at least theoretically — without their knowledge and the keys.

Submission + - Rare astronomical event will see triple moon shadows on Jupiter (techienews.co.uk)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Stargazers are in for a treat as they will be able to witness a rare astronomical event early tomorrow morning (January 24, 2015) where shadows of three of Jupiter’s largest moons — Io, Europa, and Callisto — will fall upon Jupiter simultaneously. Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles will provide a live online broadcast on its Livestream channel. The event is slated to being on January 24, 2015 at 4:30 AM GMT and should end by 7:00 am GMT. For those in the PST, the event will happen today from 8:30 pm to 11:00 pm.
Medicine

Should Disney Require Its Employees To Be Vaccinated? 673

Posted by samzenpus from the goofy-with-disease dept.
HughPickens.com writes According to Joanna Rothkopf Disneyland is already a huge petri dish of disease with tired children wiping their snot faces on Goofy and then riding log flumes through mechanized rivers filled with the backwash of thousands of other sweaty, unwashed, weeping toddlers. Now John Tozzi reports at Businessweek that five workers at Disneyland have been diagnosed with measles in an outbreak that California officials trace to visitors at the theme park in mid-December. The measles outbreak is a publicity nightmare for Disney and the company is urging its 27,000 workers at the park to verify that they're inoculated against the virus, and the company is offering tests and shots on site for workers who are unvaccinated. One thing Disney won't do, however, is require workers to get routine vaccinations as a condition of employment. Almost no companies outside the health-care industry do. "To make things mandatory just raises a lot of legal concerns and legal issues," says Rob Niccolini. Disney has been working with public health officials, and they've already put some employees on paid leave until medically cleared. "They recognized that they were just a meeting place for measles," says Gilberto Chávez. "And they are quite concerned about doing what they can to help control the outbreak."
Windows

Microsoft Announces Office 2016 and Office For Windows 10 Coming Later This Year 148

Posted by samzenpus from the coming-soon dept.
An anonymous reader writes At its Windows 10 event yesterday, Microsoft unveiled the touch-optimized version of Office. Today, the company offered more details about that version, and then snuck in another announcement: the next desktop version is under development, it is called Office 2016, and it will be generally available "in the second half of 2015." Office for Windows 10 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Outlook), meanwhile, is also slated to arrive later this year, though Microsoft has shared more about it and plans to offer a preview in the coming weeks. These new Office apps will be pre-installed (they will be free) on smartphones and small tablets running Windows 10. They will also be available to download from the Windows Store for other devices.

Submission + - What Anti-Virus Software Should I Be Using in 2015 Slashdot, Free or Paid?

Submitted by CryoKeen
CryoKeen writes: Hey all I got a new laptop recently when I traded in my old laptop for store credit. Once I choose my new laptop and was in-line the sales guy just handed me some random antivirus software (Trend Micro) that was included with the purchase. We had to wait a long time in Best Buy the last time so we were in a hurry to get the hell out of there and I don't think he or I realized at the time that the CD/DVD he gave me would not work because my new laptop does not have a CD/DVD player.

Anyway I was wondering IF there is a series code on the Trend Micro should I try to use it on the Trend Micro site(can't find the damn disc atm) or should I just download something like Avast or Malwarebytes. Is one really better than the other?

Any other techniques or tips for better security would be greatly appreciated.

Submission + - Eric Schmidt says the Internet will Disappear 2

Submitted by Esra Erimez
Esra Erimez writes: Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt on Thursday predicted the end of the Internet as we know it. Schmidt says, “There will be so many IP addressesso many devices, sensors, things that you are wearing, things that you are interacting with that you won’t even sense it. “It will be part of your presence all the time. Imagine you walk into a room, and the room is dynamic. And with your permission and all of that, you are interacting with the things going on in the room.”

Slashdot Top Deals

We warn the reader in advance that the proof presented here depends on a clever but highly unmotivated trick. -- Howard Anton, "Elementary Linear Algebra"

Close