Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Privacy

Submission + - "Anonymous" File-Sharing Darknet Ruled Illegal by German Court (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A court in Hamburg, Germany, has granted an injunction against a user of the anonymous and encrypted file-sharing network RetroShare . RetroShare users exchange data through encrypted transfers and the network setup ensures that the true sender of the file is always obfuscated. The court, however, has now ruled that RetroShare users who act as an exit node are liable for the encrypted traffic that’s sent by others.

Comment Zeta Power (Score 4, Informative) 341

by Penurious Penguin (#42075329) Attached to: The World Falls Back In Love With Coal
This should be great for the zeta cartels - it seems they've expanded from drugs and mass-murder to the coal industry.

Now when we do such things as turn on a light, we can relish more than our collective carbon boot-print on the Earth's bemired face -- we can smile as we bask in the sanguineous luminosity of torture and intoxication too!
Science

Submission + - Water From Water Vapor With Hydrophilic Beetle-Emulating Coatings (astounde.com)

Submitted by mbstone
mbstone writes: The Namib Desert Beetle generates water from water vapor via its shell, which has alternating hydrophilic and hydrophobic bumps which channel water droplets into its mouth. Scientists at MIT developed a self-filling water bottle using this technology, and have announced a contest for the best design of a countertop water-from-air generator.
Google

Submission + - Australian Govt pledges action on Google tax evasion (delimiter.com.au)

Submitted by daria42
daria42 writes: Looks like Google's habit of funnelling billions of dollars in revenue through its Irish and Bermuda subsidiaries, in a tactic known as the "double Dutch sandwich", continues to attract unfavourable government attention globally. France has already announced plans to take on the search giant's tax evasion habits, and the Australian Government, to which Google paid just $74,000 in tax last year despite having Australian revenues close to $1 billion, has now confirmed plans to do the same. How does tax evasion relate to Google's 'don't be evil' motto? Perhaps Google should re-consider its stance in this area.
Security

Submission + - HTTP Strict Transport Security becomes Internet standard (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes: "A Web security policy mechanism that promises to make HTTPS-enabled websites more resilient to various types of attacks has been approved and released as an Internet standard — but despite support from some high-profile websites, adoption elsewhere is still low. HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) allows websites to declare themselves accessible only over HTTPS (HTTP Secure) and was designed to prevent hackers from forcing user connections over HTTP or abusing mistakes in HTTPS implementations to compromise content integrity."
Google

Submission + - DuckDuckGo - Is Google Playing Fair? (huffingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Penurious Penguin
Penurious Penguin writes: Privacy-oriented search-engine and Google-rival, DuckDuckGo, is contending possible anti-competitiveness on the part of Google. MIT graduate and founder of DuckDuckGo, Gabriel Weinberg, cites several examples; his company's disadvantages in the Android mobile OS; and browsers, which in Firefox requires only a single step to set DuckDuckGo as the default search — while doing so in Chrome requires five. Weinberg also questions the domain duck.com, which he offered to purchase before it was acquired by Google. His offer was declined and duck.com now directs to Google's homepage.

Weinberg isn't the first to make similar claims; there was scroogle.org, which earlier this year, permanently shut down after repeated compatibility issues with Google's algorithms. Whatever the legitimacy of these claims, there certainly seems a growing market for people interested in privacy and objective searches — avoiding profiled search-results, aka "filter bubbles".
Firefox

Submission + - No more 64-bit Firefox nightlies for now (mozilla.org)

Submitted by SD-Arcadia
SD-Arcadia writes: A bugzilla item informs us that 64-bit nightly builds of Firefox are not to be produced any more. This follows the somewhat one-sided discussion seen here.
Confusion caused by incompatible plugins are cited as the main reason for this decision. Those in favor of keeping the 64-bit build going mention that the most important plugins like flash and java already have 64-bit versions. Furthermore the future of computing is 64-bit, and with 64-bit IE and Opera already available (and Chrome coming soon) this could leave Firefox in a strange spot.
Earth

Submission + - The World Falls Back in Love with Coal

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Richard Anderson reports on BBC that despite stringent carbon emissions targets in Europe designed to slow global warming and massive investment in renewable energy in China, coal, the dirtiest and most polluting of all the major fossil fuels, is making a comeback with production up 6% on 2010, twice the rate of increase of gas and more than four times that of oil. “What is going on is a shift from nuclear power to coal and from gas to coal; this is the worst thing you could do, from a climate change perspective,” says Dieter Helm. Why the shift back to coal? Because coal is cheap, and getting cheaper all the time. Due to the economic downturn, there has been a "collapse in industrial demand for energy," leading to an oversupply of coal, pushing the price down. Meanwhile China leads the world in coal production and consumption. It mines over 3 billion tons of coal a year, three times more than the next-biggest producer (America), and last year overtook Japan to become the world's biggest coal importer. Although China is spending massive amounts of money on a renewable energy but even this will not be able to keep up with demand, meaning fossil fuels will continue to make up the majority of the overall energy mix for the foreseeable future and when it comes to fossil fuels, coal is the easy winner — it is generally easier and cheaper to mine, and easier to transport using existing infrastructure such as roads and rail, than oil or gas. While China is currently running half a dozen carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects — which aim to capture CO2 emissions from coal plants and bury it underground — the technology is nowhere near commercial viability. "Renewed urgency in developing CCS globally, alongside greater strides in increasing renewable energy capacity, is desperately needed," writes Anderson, "but Europe's increasing reliance on coal without capturing emissions is undermining its status as a leader in clean energy, and therefore global efforts to reduce CO2 emissions.""

Submission + - Saudi Arabia implements electronic tracking system for women (rawstory.com)

Submitted by dsinc
dsinc writes: Denied the right to travel without consent from their male guardians and banned from driving, women in Saudi Arabia are now monitored by an electronic system that tracks any cross-border movements.

Since last week, Saudi women’s male guardians began receiving text messages on their phones informing them when women under their custody leave the country, even if they are travelling together.

“The authorities are using technology to monitor women,” said columnist Badriya al-Bishr, who criticised the “state of slavery under which women are held” in the ultra-conservative kingdom.

Women are not allowed to leave the kingdom without permission from their male guardian, who must give his consent by signing what is known as the “yellow sheet” at the airport or border.

Comment DHS (Score 1) 164

by Penurious Penguin (#42067883) Attached to: This Is What Happens When You Deep Fry a Frozen Turkey
The DHS warned about this last year. Where there aint be no terrorists or journalists, there be birds without feathers.
And don't mind that strange man in a trench-coat lurking outside your house; he's just one of many TSA agents volunteering to frisk your turkey. If you stuff it in a diaper first, he'll give you free Pre-Check when he's finished.

Submission + - Should conferences embrace diversity? (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Register is reporting how Josh Susser has managed to get a Ruby conference in the UK cancelled as the speakers are 100% white male.

Should conferences embrace diversity from the start or should they put the best speakers up even if they are all white and male or should we have quotas, say 10% need to be non-white, 50% women, 6% gay to better reflect the mix of your local population? How far do we have to go to ensure we are diverse? Do we need to ensure that all minorities are represented?

Slashdot Top Deals

What this country needs is a good five cent microcomputer.

Close