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Comment Screw Sony. (Score 1) 85

by 3vi1 (#53078079) Attached to: You Can Now Claim Your Cash In the PS3 'Other PS3' Settlement

If you google my slashdot handle and OtherOS, it will be blatantly clear that I was really big into using my PS3 for OtherOS. I helped others past the technical hurdles of trying different distros/DE's on it back in the day. Hell, playing with OtherOS was what I used my ps3 most for - just for fun, even though I had Linux on my PCs.

That said: I can't claim my $55. In fact, I can't even get the $9:

Two years or so back, my PS3 got the yellow light of death. I refuse to give Sony any more money, so I did not have them repair it. I trashed it and now use an AlienWare Steam Machine. So, I don't have the PS3 serial number. I also don't have statements (if I even used a credit card - don't remember) beyond the last few years - definitely not all the way back to the release day in 2006. So, proof #1 can't be provided.

Sony has records. They know I bought it because the can see it logged into the PS network. They could probably even show login records that make visible the year gap where I refused to update so I could keep OtherOS. But they're adding a hurdle that will save them money and screw over a bunch of their former customers.

Fuck Sony. They're never getting another dime from me or anyone in my family.

Comment That's it? (Score 4, Insightful) 56

by 3vi1 (#53027265) Attached to: Unity 8 Desktop Session Arrives in Ubuntu 16.10

It's been many months since I last tried Unity 8, and I'm quite disappointed to see the current state. With the focus Canonical has claimed towards convergence, I expected it to present a much friendlier interface by now... yet it doesn't appear to have progressed at all. Are they spending all their time on it fixing Mir, or building yet another web browser which no one is going to use?

At this rate, when will it be ready for "real" users? 18.04? If that's their pace, why bother? Considering the other *complete* desktops are already building steam with Wayland, can Unity 8 hope to be anything except underwhelming when it finally crosses the finish line? Wayland's bound to be more feature-complete and stable than Mir when all is said and done due to the multiple desktop implementations being built on it, and those desktops have years of development over the components that Unity 8's now building from scratch.

I've always been an Ubuntu supporter, but Canonical just seems too stubborn to steer away from the lighthouse now. It's frustrating to see a company I like wasting their time and resources hoping for a revolutionary product where there's no particular market or demand, as they've done with the phone.

Submission + - Microsoft Patents AI To Monitor All Actions In Windows And Feed It To Bing (hothardware.com) 1

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Microsoft has angered users over the past year for its willingness to push the boundaries of acceptable practice for promoting adoption of its operating system. Also, some feel it crossed that line with respect to user data collection and privacy concerns. However, Microsoft stands to garner a lot more criticism if its recent patent filing comes to life in a production software product. The title of the filing is "Query Formulation Via Task Continuum" and it aims to make it easier for apps to share data in real-time so that the user can perform better searches. Microsoft feels that the current software model in which applications are self-contained within their own silos potentially slows the user down. To combat this disconnect, Microsoft has devised a way to facilitate better communications between apps through the use of what it calls a "mediation component." This is Microsoft's all-seeing-eye that monitors all input within apps to decipher what the user is trying to accomplish. All of this information could be gathered from apps like Word, Skype, or even Notepad by the mediator and processed. So when the user goes to the Edge web browser to further research a topic, those contextual concepts are automatically fed into a search query. Microsoft says that this will provide faster, more relevant searchers to users. The company says the mediator can be introduced as an optional module that can be installed in an operating system or directly built in. If it's the latter, plenty of people will likely be looking for a kill switch.

Submission + - Appeals Court Decision Kills North Carolina Town's Gigabit Internet (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: In early August the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled the FCC had no authority to prevent states from imposing restrictions on municipal internet. This was a result of the FCC stepping in last year in an effort to "remove barriers to broadband investment and competition." However, the courts sided with the states, which said that the FCC's order impeded on state rights. In the end, this ruling clearly favored firmly entrenched big brand operators like Time Warner Cable, Comcast, and AT&T, which lobby hard to keep competition at bay. The federal ruling specifically barred municipal internet providers from offering service outside of their city limits, denying them from providing service to under-served communities. The fallout from the federal court's rejection of the FCC order to extend a lifeline to municipal internet providers has claimed another victim. The small community of Pinetops, North Carolina — population 1,300 — will soon have its gigabit internet connection shut off. Pinetops has been the recipient of Greenlight internet service, which is provided by the neighboring town of Wilson. The town of Wilson has been providing electric power to Pinetops for the past 40 years, and had already deployed fiber through the town in order to bolster its smart grid initiative. What's infuriating to the Wilson City Council and to the Pinetop residents that will lose their high-speed service, is that the connections are already in place. There's no logical reason why they should be cut off, but state laws and the lobbyists supporting those laws have deemed what Greenlight is doing illegal. Provide power to a neighboring town — sure that's OK. Provide better internet to a neighboring town — lawsuit

Submission + - Samsung Unveils 960 Pro and 960 EVO SSDs At Up To 3.5GB/sec And 2TB Capacity (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Samsung announced a new family of 960 EVO and 960 Pro NVMe PCI Express M.2 Solid State Drives today. Built on Samsung's 3D V-NAND technology and employing the new Samsung Polaris SSD controller, the 960 Pro is Samsung's highest performance, high endurance drive and the successor to last year's 950 Pro. The 960 EVO is the lower cost model and a follow-on to last year's Samsung 950 EVO drive. The 960 EVO is also powered by the same Samsung Polaris controller but employs more cost-efficient Samsung TLC NAND memory. Both drives arrive in standard M.2 gumstick form factors with PCI Express Gen 3 X4 interfaces and utilizing the NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) protocol for lightning-fast speeds and low latency. Specifically, the 960 Pro offers up to 3.5GB/sec and 2.1GB/sec of sequential read and write throughput respectively, with endurance rated at up to 1200TB writes per day. The 950 EVO's specs drop in at a peak 3.2GB/sec and 1.9GB/sec for reads and writes respectively, with a top-end endurance rating of 400TB written per day. The 960 Pro will come in 512GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities starting at $329, while the 950 EVO comes in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB capacities starting at $129. Samsung will be shipping the drives in October this year.

Submission + - Samsung Unveils Gear S3 Classic And Frontier Smartwatches Powered By Tizen (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Samsung just wrapped up an event at the IFA expo in Berlin, where the company unveiled two new Gear S3 branded smartwatches. The new Samsung Gear S3 Classic and Gear S3 Frontier leverage many of the design elements from last-year's Gear S2 — like their Tizen OS, rotating control dial, round display, and fast wireless charging. However, other aspects of the Gear S3 have received significant upgrades. Although they are internally similar, there are a few external differences between the Gear S3 Classic and Frontier. The Gear S3 Classic is the sleeker, more streamlined version of the two. The Classic has a polished finish, with round buttons at the 2 and 4 o'clock positions and no addition protrusions on its chassis. The Gear S3 Frontier is more rugged and has a darker, brushed finish, with flat, rectangular textured buttons and protrusions on either side of the body to shield the buttons from accidental presses. Both the Gear S3 Classic and Frontier are also outfitted with Gorilla Glass SR to protect their circular, Super AMOLED displays, and they're both compatible with industry standard 22mm watch bands too. They are also IP68 rated, so they're able to withstand dust and dirt and water resistant for up to 30 minutes under 1.5 meters of water. Depending on how heavily these devices are used, Samsung claims they can last roughly 3 – 4 days on a single charge. They also have support for NFC (compatible with Samsung Pay), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and have built-in heart rate monitors, altimeter/barometer, and GPS as well.

Submission + - New Fantom Ransomware Poses As Windows Update (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: A security researcher for AVG has discovered a new piece of ransomware called Fantom that masquerades as a critical Windows update. Victims who fall for the ruse will see a Windows screen acting like it's installing the update, but what's really happening is that the user's documents and files are being encrypted in the background. Fantom is based on the open-source EDA2 ransomware project, and unfortunately there's no way to decrypt the files without the culprit's help. The scam starts with a pop-up labeled as a critical update from Microsoft. Once a user decides to apply the fake update, it extracts files and executes an embedded program called WindowsUpdate.exe. As with other EDA2 ransomware, Fantom generates a random AES-128 key, encrypts it using RSA, and then uploads it to the culprit. From there, Fantom targets specific file extensions and encrypts those files using AES-128 encryption. Users affected by this are instructed to email the culprit for payment instructions. It's not clear how much it costs to decrypt the files or if the person responsible even follows through once payment is received.

Submission + - The coral die-off crisis is a climate crime and Exxon fired the gun (theguardian.com) 1

Submitted by mspohr
mspohr writes: An article published by Bill McKibben in The Guardian points the finger at Exxon for spreading climate change denial which led to lack of action to prevent widespread coral die-off.
"We know the biggest culprits now, because great detective work by investigative journalists has uncovered key facts in the past year. The world’s biggest oil company, Exxon, knew everything there was to know about climate change by the late 1970s and early 1980s. Its scientists understood how much and how fast it was going to warm, and how much damage that was going to do. And the company knew the scientists were right: that’s why they started “climate-proofing” their own installations, for instance building their drilling rigs to accommodate the sea level rise they knew was coming.

What they didn’t do was tell the rest of us. Instead, they – and many other players in the fossil fuel industry – bankrolled the rise of the climate denial industry, helping fund the “thinktanks” and front groups that spent the last generation propagating the phoney idea that there was a deep debate about the reality of global warming. As a result, we’ve wasted a quarter century in a phoney argument about whether the climate was changing."

Comment "5 to 10 years" (Score 1) 3

> The world's next energy revolution is probably no more than five or ten years away.

I have *literally* heard this said almost every other year about some new battery technology for the last 25 years.

These stories always have a "scientists in the lab just have one more hurdle to overcome, but everything else is solved" slant do them. [runs to peruse article...]

> Professor Michael Aziz, leader of the Harvard project, said there are still problems to sort out with the "calendar life" of storage chemicals but the basic design is essentially proven.

Oh, look... there it is. I swear, I *honestly* did not read the article before writing my last paragraph.

I'm not holding my breath.

Submission + - Leak Shows PlayStation 4 Neo Is Expected To Have Twice The Graphics Horsepower (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Following rumors of a more powerful console in Sony's not-too-distant future, one that will be capable of playing games at a 4K resolution, the Japanese electronics maker last month opted to confirm it is indeed in development. Called PlayStation 4 Neo, the upgraded system will bring better hardware to the console scene to meet the needs of gaming on a television with four times as many pixels as a Full HD 1080p display. What's it going to take to game at 4K in the living room? A leaked internal document outlines some very interesting specs of the new model PS4 console. Assuming the leaked document is up to date with Sony's current plans, the PS4 Neo will use the same Jaguar cores as the original PS4, but clocked 500MHz faster, with 8 cores at 2.1GHz (up from 1.6GHz). The more significant upgrade will be the GPU. According to the slide, the PS4 Neo will use an improved version of AMD's GCN compute units (CUs), with twice the number of CUs at 36 instead of 18. They'll also be clocked faster—911MHz versus 800MHz. The net result is a 2.3x improvement in floating point performance.

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