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Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What do pre-Dice buyout users think of the change ten years on? 8

Submitted by couchslug
couchslug writes: As we all know Slashdot changed in 2012 from being a News for Nerds tech-centric site to a general news site with a smattering of tech stories.

What do long-term Slashdotters think of the changes over time?

How would you make Slashdot better?

Was ending what made Slashdot famous in favor of SEO-centric content readily available everywhere else a good thing?

Would you prefer the genuinely techy "News for nerds, stuff that matters" character of Slashdot restored? Do you like it better as a generic news site or something else?

What's your opinion of editorial quality in recent years vs pre-2012 Slashdot?

What would you like to tell the owners?

Please post at length because most current users have little or no idea of what Slashdot once was.

Submission + - Elon Musk's Ultimatum: Commit to 'Long Hours' Or Leave (nbcconnecticut.com)

Submitted by clawsoon
clawsoon writes: The full text of Elon Musk's email to Twitter employees, giving them one day to decide whether to leave or stay — and what the working conditions will be like at "Twitter 2.0" — has been leaked:

To: Team [at Twitter]


Subj. A Fork in the Road

Date: Nov. 16, 2022 [time stamp removed]

Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore. This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.

Twitter will also be much more engineering-driven. Design and product management will still be very important and report to me, but those writing great code will constitute the majority of our team and have the greatest sway.

At its heart, Twitter is a software and servers company, so l think this makes sense.

If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below:

[Link removed]

Anyone who has not done so by 5pm ET tomorrow (Thursday) will receive three months of severance.

Whatever decision you make, thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful.

Elon

Submission + - Facebook fact-checkers will stop checking Trump after presidential bid (cnn.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Facebook’s fact-checkers will need to stop fact-checking former President Donald Trump following the announcement that he is running for president, according to a company memo obtained by CNN.

While Trump is currently banned from Facebook, the fact-check ban applies to anything Trump says and false statements made by Trump can be posted to the platform by others. Despite Trump’s ban, “Team Trump,” a page run by Trump’s political group, is still active and has 2.3 million followers.

Tuesday’s memo from Meta underscores the challenges social media platforms face in deciding how to handle another Trump presidential campaign. The former president announced Tuesday night that he would seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, aiming to become only the second commander-in-chief ever elected to two nonconsecutive terms.

Facebook’s parent company Meta pays third-party fact-checking organizations to apply fact-check labels to misinformation across Facebook and Instagram.

Submission + - Fentanyl 'vaccine' may have been discovered, researchers say (scitechdaily.com) 1

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: A team of researchers at the University of Houston may have developed a "vaccine" blocking the ability of the dangerous synthetic opioid fentanyl to enter the brain.

The findings, published late last month in the journal Pharmaceutics, have been described as a potential game changer in addressing an epidemic that has claimed thousands of American lives.

Fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. A dose of only 2 milligrams – the size of two grains of rice – could potentially be fatal.

The study’s lead author, research associate professor Colin Haile, said the vaccine is able to generate "anti-fentanyl antibodies that bind to the consumed fentanyl and prevent it from entering the brain, allowing it to be eliminated out of the body via the kidneys."

"The individual will not feel the euphoric effects and can ‘get back on the wagon’ to sobriety," he said.

He added that the anti-fentanyl antibodies were specific to that, and a fentanyl derivative did not cross-react with other opioids like morphine. This means that a person vaccinated for fentanyl could still be treated with other opioids.

Submission + - KFC Marketing Bot Tells Customers to Celebrate Kristallnacht with Cheesy Chicken

Submitted by niaxilin
niaxilin writes: Blamed on an automated push bot linked to a national calendar, KFC sent messages to customer suggesting they celebrate Kristallnacht with some crispy chicken. Perhaps this would be appropriate for German Unity Day or even Easter Sunday, but being what many historians see as the start of the Holocaust, the advertising did not hit it mark.
Power

Submission + - BYU Professors Discover Nuclear Power Without Nuclear Waste or Risk of Meltdown

Submitted by thedarklaser
thedarklaser writes: Utah BYU Professors having created a nuclear reactor design that could produce enough energy for 1000 homes in the space of 4ft by 7ft. And bonus ... potentially no nuclear waste or risk of melt down.

They use molten salt that bonds with the dissolved fuel. Then, very valuable Molybdenum-99 (as in $30 million per gram) can be extracted from that salt and sold for use in medical imaging.

Additionally this system is very inexpensive, at a cost of around 3 cents per kilowatt hour.

Submission + - Europe's Most Valuable Tech Company Tries to Avoid the Chip War (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As the US escalates its campaign to undermine the Chinese semiconductor industry, Europe is trying—with some success—to avoid becoming collateral damage. At the center of the maneuvering is ASML, the Dutch manufacturer of chipmaking equipment and Europe’s most valuable tech company. It’s one of the very few producers of the sophisticated lithography machines needed to make midgrade semiconductors, and the only manufacturer of the equipment needed to make the most cutting-edge chips. That puts ASML in the spotlight for policymakers. ASML has never sold its extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, or EUVs, to Chinese clients. The Biden administration, as part of its attempt to keep China from developing the capability to make advanced semiconductors, has been trying to push the Dutch government to withhold ASML's older machines called immersion deep ultraviolet lithography machines, or DUVs, that can be used in combination with other technology to make advanced chips.

The European Commission, as well as the Dutch and German governments, have undertaken a coordinated lobbying campaign to oppose restrictions on a critical European company while US competitors continue to do business with Chinese companies, according to officials who spoke under the condition of anonymity because the talks are sensitive. They’ve argued in part that such restrictions are now pointless given that ASML, which generated 15% of its revenue in China last year, has already sold many of these machines to Chinese companies. When the US did push ahead in early October with more severe restrictions against doing business in China, its specific policies came as a relief to ASML and its political supporters. ASML wasn’t hit directly by the new restrictions, which did make it harder for its US peers, such as Applied Materials and Lam Research, to sell advanced chip gear to China. Both companies warned investors that the new restrictions would significantly affect their financial performance.

The US Department of Commerce, which is responsible for the majority of rulemaking and enforcement, won’t comment directly on specific companies or its negotiations with other governments. ASML is not an American company, limiting the US’s power over its operations. But it commonly uses parts from the US, which gives Washington a degree of leverage. In the past, export controls have applied to products when at least 25% of their components are sourced from the US. But senior US officials now say products that contain any US components or intellectual property could be subjected to Washington’s export approval process. Such a broad interpretation of the rules would be difficult for a company like ASML to work around.

Submission + - Britain public order bill right out of 1984 (theguardian.com) 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The new law passed by Parliament that not only criminalizes most protests–not just these particularly odious ones–but allows the government to put people arrested for both past and future protests under electronic surveillance:

The public order bill is the kind of legislation you might expect to see in Russia, Iran or Egypt. Illegal protest is defined by the bill as acts causing “serious disruption to two or more individuals, or to an organisation”. Given that the Police Act redefined “serious disruption” to include noise, this means, in effect, all meaningful protest.

For locking or glueing yourself to another protester, or to the railings or any other object, you can be sentenced to 51 weeks in prison – in other words, twice the maximum sentence for common assault. Sitting in the road, or obstructing fracking machinery, pipelines and other oil and gas infrastructure, airports or printing presses (Rupert says thanks) can get you a year. For digging a tunnel as part of a protest, you can be sent down for three years.

Even more sinister are the “serious disruption prevention orders” in the bill. Anyone who has taken part in a protest in England or Wales in the previous five years, whether or not they have been convicted of an offence, can be served with a two-year order forbidding them from attending further protests. Like prisoners on probation, they may be required to report to “a particular person at a particular place at particular times on particular days”, “to remain at a particular place for particular periods” and to submit to wearing an electronic tag. They may not associate “with particular persons”, enter “particular areas” or use the internet to encourage other people to protest. If you break these terms, you face up to 51 weeks in prison. So much for “civilised” and “democratic”.

Submission + - Report: Elon Musk to cut 75% of Twitter employees

Submitted by DesScorp
DesScorp writes: Elon Musk is apparently sharpening his scythe in preparations for his takeover of Twitter, with massive layoffs coming:

"The mega-billionaire has told potential investors in the Twitter deal that he plans to lay off almost 75% the company’s staff, or about 5,500 employees, to reduce the size of its workforce from 7,500 to just over 2,000, the Washington Post reported, citing anonymous sources and documents."

Even if the sale hadn't gone through, it seems that Twitter was going to begin cutting the workforce regardless:

"Per the Post story, Twitter management had planned to cut its payroll by $800 million by the end of 2023, representing a 25% reduction in headcount. As such, Musk’s $44 billion acquisition is a “golden ticket for the struggling company,” according to the Post article, “potentially helping its leadership avoid painful announcements that would have demoralized the staff and possibly crippled the service’s ability to combat misinformation, hate speech and spam.”

Along with Musk's previously stated commitment to rooting out bot accounts, and restoring Donald Trump's account, radical changes are coming to Twitter

Submission + - TikTok Parent ByteDance Planned to Monitor the Physical Location of Americans (forbes.com)

Submitted by koavf
koavf writes: TikTok spokesperson Maureen Shanahan said that TikTok collects approximate location information based on users’ IP addresses to “among other things, help show relevant content and ads to users, comply with applicable laws, and detect and prevent fraud and inauthentic behavior."

But the material reviewed by Forbes indicates that ByteDance's Internal Audit team was planning to use this location information to surveil individual American citizens, not to target ads or any of these other purposes. Forbes is not disclosing the nature and purpose of the planned surveillance referenced in the materials in order to protect sources. TikTok and ByteDance did not answer questions about whether Internal Audit has specifically targeted any members of the U.S. government, activists, public figures or journalists.

Submission + - 11 deaths linked to automated-tech vehicles (latimes.com) 1

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: 'Eleven people were killed in U.S. crashes involving vehicles that were using automated driving systems during a four-month period this year, according to newly released government data, part of an alarming pattern of incidents linked to the technology.

Ten of the deaths involved vehicles made by Tesla, although it is unclear from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s data whether the technology itself was at fault or whether driver error might have been responsible.

The 11th death involved a Ford pickup. The automaker said it has to report fatal crashes to the government quickly, but it later determined that the truck was not equipped with its partially automated driving system.

The deaths included four crashes involving motorcycles that occurred during the spring and summer: two in Florida and one each in California and Utah. Safety advocates said that deaths of motorcyclists in crashes involving Tesla vehicles using automated driver assist systems such as Autopilot have been increasing.'

However they admit:
'The number of deaths involving automated vehicles is small compared with the overall number of traffic deaths in the U.S. Nearly 43,000 people were killed on U.S. roads last year, the highest number in 16 years, after Americans returned to the roads as the pandemic eased. Authorities blamed reckless behavior such as speeding and driving while impaired by drugs or alcohol for much of the increase'

Which doesn't tell us whether the 'autopilots' are saving lives compared to the outcome without them. This is the proper metric, of course, but is hard to know.

Comment Now this is (Score 2) 28

News for Nerds!

As an amateur radio operator for nearly 50 years, I cannot stand the chit-chat that goes on most frequencies. At least in the US, it's mostly old angry farts.

DX is kinda fun, since hams in other countries are often more constrained on what they can talk about and so it tends to be wham-bam-thank you-ma'am quick convos (QSOs) where it might be amazing to get any comms working. Summits on the Air, Islands on the Air, those are pretty cool, just because it's amazing how HF comms just works (well, sometimes %^).

Digital modes can be really cool too especially EME and other satellite stuff.

Cheers and 73 - Jon N7UV

Submission + - Businesses Secretly Pentest Partners Amid Software Supply Chain Fears (esecurityplanet.com)

Submitted by storagedude
storagedude writes: One casualty of supply chain attacks on the likes of SolarWinds and Kaseya has been trust between businesses and their partners.

Howard Taylor, CISO of Radware, calls it the "death of trust."

“People were shocked to discover that a long-trusted product had been compromised, creating vulnerabilities that bypassed thousands of its customers' carefully built security,” Taylor told eSecurity Planet.

As a result, some are now taking extra precautions such as hiring specialized companies to conduct penetration testing audits on externally facing partner resources. The process may include an in-depth search for IP addresses and ports inside their networks that may be communicating with suspect hosts. In other cases, businesses may go as far as scanning the dark web looking for any leakage of sensitive information from partners.

Some say there is nothing legally wrong with pentesting your business partners. But the mere presence of closet security testers secretly carrying out pentests on partner and customer internet-facing resources could have serious repercussions on relationships if discovered.

“Testing entities run the pentests and present the results to service providers and businesses,” said Taylor. “As they are guilty until proven innocent, they must address all the findings, including a myriad of false positives, that result from conducting tests without the full context of the environment.”

Taylor terms this "shadow compliance." And he says that it poses risks like negative impact on company reputation and lost productivity. Company reputation is not only of interest to current and potential customers, but it’s also important to market analysts, lenders, and insurance companies.

Taylor suggested that businesses should take the advent of potential snooping and testing by their partners as a reason to redouble their own cybersecurity efforts. Continuous monitoring of their cybersecurity posture by an outside entity can lower risk in the long term. Taylor urges businesses to allocate budget to hire a technically competent partner to proactively provide results and assist with the remediation of issues before vendors, supply chain associates, and customers find out and report them to you.

Steve Kerns, president of SKernal Security Consulting, sees legal risks for companies that secretly pentest their business partners. "[I]t could be dangerous to be pentesting other companies without their permission; you could be opening up your company to lawsuits,” he said.

Kerns always obtains permission before pentesting another company.

“I would suggest that companies ask partners and customers if they have had a pentest done on their internet-facing resources and what the results were, who did it (third party or internal) and when it was done,” said Kerns. “If they want to verify it, they should ask for permission first.”

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