Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - China pulls plug on genetically modified rice and corn (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: China’s Ministry of Agriculture has decided not to renew biosafety certificates that allowed research groups to grow genetically modified (GM) rice and corn. The permits, to grow two varieties of GM rice and one transgenic corn strain, expired on 17 August. The reasoning behind the move is not clear, and it has raised questions about the future of related research in China.

Submission + - If fusion is the answer, we need to do it quickly (thebulletin.org)

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: Yale's Jason Parisi makes a compelling case for fusion power, and explains why fusion is cleaner, safer, and doesn't provide opportunities for nuclear smuggling and proliferation. The only downside will be the transition period, when there are both fission and fusion plants available and the small amount of "booster" elements (tritium and deuterium) found in fusion power could provide would-be proliferators what they need to boost the yield of fission bombs: 'The period during which both fission and fusion plants coexist could be dangerous, however. Just a few grams of deuterium and tritium are needed to increase the yield of a fission bomb, in a process known as “boosting.”' Details about current research into fusion power and an exploration of relative costs make fusion power seem like the answer to a civilization trying to get away from fossil fuels.

Submission + - Ballmer Leaves Microsoft Board

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: After leaving his position as CEO of Microsoft a year ago, Steve Ballmer has still held a position as a member of the board of directors for the company. Now, he is leaving the board, along with a letter to the fresh CEO Satya Nadella. 'I have become very busy,' Ballmer explains. 'I see a combination of Clippers, civic contribution, teaching and study taking up a lot of time.' Despite his departure, the former-CEO is still invested in the company's success, and he spent most of the letter encouraging Nadella and giving advice. Nadella shot back a supportive, equally optimistic response, promising that Microsoft will thrive in 'the mobile-first, cloud-first world.'

Submission + - Man arrested, strip-searched after photographing NYPD wins $125,000 (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: Settlement comes weeks after a bystander's video captured NYPD chokehold arrest.

A New York man who claimed police arrested and strip-searched him after he photographed a stop-and-frisk of three African-American youths has settled his civil rights suit with the New York Police Department for $125,000.

The settlement, first reported Monday by the Daily News, comes weeks after the NYPD reminded its officers that it was legal to peacefully record police activity. That department-wide memo followed the videotaped NYPD arrest of a man who died after being subdued by a chokehold last month.
The NYPD settled with a man named Dick George, who alleged that while he was sitting in his parked car in Flatbush in 2012, he saw two NYPD officers get out of an unmarked car and perform what is known as a stop-and-frisk of three youths. George said he captured the search on his mobile phone. He claimed he went up to the youths and told them next time that happens to make sure they get the officers' badge numbers.

He said the two officers overheard his comments, followed him briefly in his vehicle and then arrested him for disorderly conduct—and strip-searched him at the station.

After being held for about an hour, he was released. He said he injured a knee during his arrest, and the cops erased his photographs from his mobile phone.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Learning Linux Sys Admin via networked Raspberry Pis?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I'm finding myself getting tired of the internal politics of the MegaCorp for whom I do Tech Support, and I feel treated more as a call center person now than as 3rd-level tech support. So I was thinking of getting back into Linux Sys administration, and I'd like to know if any of you have (re)learned Linux system admin skills via a network of RaspBerry Pi? (I just don't have the spare room to spend on bigger Linux boxen). I was thinking of buying 4 or so Raspberries, a router, and the cabling etc. Have any of you done this? Any caveats or things I forgot? (I've got the VGA monitor, as I'm thinking of using one main Raspberry Pi with the VGA monitor, and then RDPing/SSHing to the rest).

Submission + - Groundwork Layed For Superfast Broadband Over Copper (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Telecom equipment vendor Adtran has developed a technology that will make it easier for operators to roll out broadband speeds close to 500Mbps over copper lines. Adtran's FDV (Frequency Division Vectoring), enhances the capabilities of two technologies — VDSL2 with vectoring and G.fast — by enabling them to better coexist over a single subscriber line, the company said. VDSL2 with vectoring, which improves speeds by reducing noise and can deliver up to 150Mbps, is currently being rolled out by operators, while G.fast, which is capable of 500Mbps, is still under development, with the first deployments coming in mid-2015. FDV will make it easier for operators to roll out G.fast once it's ready and expand where it can be used, according to Adtran.

Submission + - Involuntary Eye Movement May Provide Definitive Diagnosis of ADHD (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: If a child who's simply very active is mistakenly diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), they can end up on pharmaceuticals such as Ritalin unnecessarily. The problem is, it can be quite difficult to determine if someone actually has ADHD, and misdiagnoses are common. Now, however, researchers from Tel Aviv University have announced that analyzing a patient's eye movements may be the key.

Submission + - Cisco Slashing Up To 6,000 Jobs (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Cisco Systems will cut as many as 6,000 jobs over the next 12 months, saying it needs to shift resources to growing businesses such as cloud, software and security. Cisco has about 74,000 employees, so the cuts will affect about 8 percent of its staff. The move will be a reorganization rather than a net reduction, the company said. It needs to cut jobs because the product categories where it sees the strongest growth, such as security, require special skills, so it needs to make room for workers in those areas, it said.

Submission + - Edward Snowden: NSA was responsible for 2012 Syrian internet blackout. (theverge.com)

Submitted by Dega704
Dega704 writes: When Syria's access to the internet was cut for two days back in 2012, it apparently wasn't the fault of dissenting "terrorists," as the Syrian government claimed: according to Wired, it was the fault of the US government. In a long profile of Edward Snowden published today, Wired writes what Snowden says is the truth about the internet outage. An elite hacking unit in the National Security Agency had reportedly been attempting to install malware on a central router within Syria — a feat that would have allowed the agency to access a good amount of the country's internet traffic. Instead, it ended up accidentally rendering the router unusable, causing Syria's internet connection to go dark.

Submission + - Inside the CryptoLocker Takedown

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: The takedown of the GameOver Zeus malware operation in June got more than its share of attention, but it was the concurrent demolition of the CryptoLocker ransomware infrastructure that may prove to have been the most important part of the operation. That outcome was the culmination of months of behind the scenes work by dozens of security researchers who cooperated with law enforcement to trace, monitor and ultimately wreck the careful work and planning of the CryptoLocker crew.

“This was something new. This was ransomware done right,” said John Bambenek, president of Bambenek Consulting, who was involved in the working group that tracked CryptoLocker and talked about the operation at the Black Hat USA conference here Thursday. “It made for a good case study on how to do threat intelligence.”

The working group that came together to defeat CryptoLocker was global and had people with all kinds of different skill sets: malware reverse engineering, math, botnet tracking and intelligence. Some members worked on taking part the domain-generation algorithm while others looked at the command-and-control infrastructure and still others broke down the malware itself. What the researchers began to notice as they dug deeper into the CryptoLocker operation was that the crew behind the ransomware had done a lot of things right, but had also exhibited some oddly inconsistent behaviors.

Submission + - Khronos Releases OpenGL 4.5, Announces Development Of New Graphics API (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Khronos Group announced from SIGGRAPH the OpenGL 4.5 specification that brings direct state access and other improvements to the GL standard. Khronos also announced they are developing a brand new graphics API from the ground-up to succeed OpenGL in its current form. "Key directions for the new ground-up design include explicit application control over GPU and CPU workloads for performance and predictability, a multithreading-friendly API with greatly reduced overhead, a common shader program intermediate language, and a strengthened ecosystem focus that includes rigorous conformance testing. Fast-paced work on detailed proposals and designs are already underway, and any company interested to participate is strongly encouraged to join Khronos for a voice and a vote in the development process."

Submission + - TEPCO: Nearly all nuclear fuel melted at Fukushima No. 3 reactor (asahi.com)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: Almost all of the nuclear fuel in the No. 3 reactor of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant melted within days of the March 11, 2011, disaster, according to a new estimate by Tokyo Electric Power Co.

TEPCO originally estimated that about 60 percent of the nuclear fuel melted at the reactor. But the latest estimate released on Aug. 6 revealed that the fuel started to melt about six hours earlier than previously thought.

TEPCO said most of the melted fuel likely dropped to the bottom of the containment unit from the pressure vessel after the disaster set off by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.

Submission + - Snowden granted three more years in Russia

Submitted by SiggyRadiation
SiggyRadiation writes: Edward Snowden is allowed to stay in Russia for three more years. According to the NYPost:
"His lawyer, Analtoly Kucherena, was quoted by Russian news agencies on Thursday as saying Snowden now has been granted residency for three more years, but that he had not been granted political asylum. That status, which would allow him to stay in Russia permanently, must be decided by a separate procedure, Kucherena said, but didn’t say whether Snowden is seeking it."

The question that remains of course is, did the Russians use this as leverage over him to get to more information or influence him or is the positive PR in itself enough for the Russians in the current climate of tensions and economic sanctions relating to the Ukraine crisis?

Slashdot Top Deals

"If you want to know what happens to you when you die, go look at some dead stuff." -- Dave Enyeart

Close