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Transportation

Why Didn't Sidecar's Flex Pricing Work? 190

Posted by samzenpus from the you-get-what-you-pay-for dept.
Bennett Haselton writes Sidecar is a little-known alternative to Lyft and Uber, deployed in only ten cities so far, which lets drivers set their own prices to undercut other ride-sharing services. Given that most amateur drivers would be willing to give someone a ride for far less than the rider would be willing to pay, why didn't the flex-pricing option take off? Keep reading to see what Bennet has to say.
Space

Airbus Attacked By French Lawmaker For Talking To SpaceX 168

Posted by timothy from the eat-local dept.
schwit1 (797399) writes A French lawmaker lashed out at Airbus for daring to consider SpaceX as a possible launch option for a European communications satellite. "The senator, Alain Gournac, who is a veteran member of the French Parliamentary Space Group, said he had written French Economy and Industry Minister Emmanuel Macron to protest Airbus' negotiations with Hawthorne, California-based Space Exploration Technologies Corp. for a late 2016 launch instead of contracting for a launch on a European Ariane 5 rocket. "The negotiations are all the more unacceptable given that, at the insistence of France, Europe has decided to adopt a policy of 'European preference' for its government launches," Gournac said. "This is called playing against your team, and it smacks of a provocation. It's an incredible situation that might lead customers to think we no longer have faith in Ariane 5 — and tomorrow, Ariane 6."

Comment Re:Great... (Score 1) 377

by GIL_Dude (#48573201) Attached to: Bellard Creates New Image Format To Replace JPEG
Yes, the hard part is getting adoption. Just look how far Google's WebP image format has gotten. Or not gotten. (I'm not talking about their WebM video format which has also not gotten a lot of traction). Looks like they unveiled it in 2010 or before, but nobody has used it as far as I can see.
Security

Just-Announced X.Org Security Flaws Affect Code Dating Back To 1987 172

Posted by timothy from the we-have-a-history dept.
An anonymous reader writes Some of the worst X.Org security issues were just publicized in an X.Org security advisory. The vulnerabilities deal with protocol handling issues and led to 12 CVEs published and code dating back to 1987 is affected within X11. Fixes for the X Server are temporarily available via this Git repository.
Privacy

Uber's Android App Caught Reporting Data Back Without Permission 234

Posted by timothy from the distinguish-from-government dept.
Zothecula writes Security researcher GironSec has pulled Uber's Android app apart and discovered that it's sending a huge amount of personal data back to base – including your call logs, what apps you've got installed, whether your phone is vulnerable to certain malware, whether your phone is rooted, and your SMS and MMS logs, which it explicitly doesn't have permission to do. It's the latest in a series of big-time missteps for a company whose core business model is, frankly, illegal in most of its markets as well.
The Courts

Class-Action Suit Claims Copyright Enforcement Company Made Harassing Robo-calls 67

Posted by samzenpus from the will-you-pay-us-now?-how-about-now? dept.
An anonymous reader writes Morgan Pietz, one of the lawyers who took on Prenda Law, has a new target in his sights: copyright enforcement company Rightscorp. In a class action suit (PDF) Pietz claims the company made illegal, harassing robo-calls to people who were accused of illegal downloading and by doing so Rightscorp broke the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which limits how automated calling devices can be used. "They robo-called Jeanie Reif's cell phone darn near every day for a couple of months," Pietz said. "And there could be thousands of members of this class."
Electronic Frontier Foundation

Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court To Rule APIs Can't Be Copyrighted 260

Posted by Soulskill from the pleading-for-sanity dept.
An anonymous reader writes: The EFF, representing a coalition of computer scientists, filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court yesterday hoping for a ruling that APIs can't be copyrighted. The names backing the brief include Bjarne Stroustrup, Ken Thompson, Guido van Rossum, and many other luminaries. "The brief explains that the freedom to re-implement and extend existing APIs has been the key to competition and progress in both hardware and software development. It made possible the emergence and success of many robust industries we now take for granted—for example, mainframes, PCs, and workstations/servers—by ensuring that competitors could challenge established players and advance the state of the art. The litigation began several years ago when Oracle sued Google over its use of Java APIs in the Android OS. Google wrote its own implementation of the Java APIs, but, in order to allow developers to write their own programs for Android, Google's implementation used the same names, organization, and functionality as the Java APIs."
United Kingdom

Secret Policy Allows GCHQ Bulk Access To NSA Data 95

Posted by samzenpus from the have-some-data dept.
hazeii writes Though legal proceedings following the Snowden revelations, Liberty UK have succeeded in forcing GCHQ to reveal secret internal policies allowing Britain's intelligence services to receive unlimited bulk intelligence from the NSA and other foreign agencies and to keep this data on a massive searchable databases, all without a warrant. Apparently, British intelligence agencies can "trawl through foreign intelligence material without meaningful restrictions", and can keep copies of both content and metadata for up to two years. There is also mention of data obtained "through US corporate partnerships". According to Liberty, this raises serious doubts about oversight of the UK Intelligence and Security Committee and their reassurances that in every case where GCHQ sought information from the US, a warrant for interception signed by a minister was in place.

Eric King, Deputy Director of Privacy international, said: "We now know that data from any call, internet search, or website you visited over the past two years could be stored in GCHQ's database and analyzed at will, all without a warrant to collect it in the first place. It is outrageous that the Government thinks mass surveillance, justified by secret 'arrangements' that allow for vast and unrestrained receipt and analysis of foreign intelligence material is lawful. This is completely unacceptable, and makes clear how little transparency and accountability exists within the British intelligence community."
The Courts

Stan Lee Media and Disney Battle For Ownership of Marvel Characters 152

Posted by samzenpus from the mine-now-I-take-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Stan Lee Media and The Walt Disney Co. have taken their arguments to the U.S. Court of Appeals over who owns the rights (and profits) to Marvel characters. Though Disney bought Marvel in 2009, Stan Lee Media (no longer associated with Stan Lee, himself) still claims copyright of the characters."
Debian

Debate Over Systemd Exposes the Two Factions Tugging At Modern-day Linux 863

Posted by Soulskill from the fight-to-the-death dept.
walterbyrd (182728) sends this article about systemd from Paul Venezia, who writes: In discussions around the Web in the past few months, I've seen an overwhelming level of support of systemd from Linux users who run Linux on their laptops and maybe a VPS or home server. I've also seen a large backlash against systemd from Linux system administrators who are responsible for dozens, hundreds, or thousands of Linux servers, physical and virtual. ... The release of RHEL 7 has brought the reality of systemd to a significant number of admins whose mantra is stability over all else and who perhaps had not waded into the choppier waters of Fedora or Debian unstable to work with systemd before it arrived in RHEL.
The Internet

Ask Slashdot: Good Hosting Service For a Parody Site? 115

Posted by timothy from the just-keep-backups dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Ok, bear with me now. I know this is not PC Mag 2014 review of hosting services. I am thinking of getting a parody website up. I am mildly concerned about potential reaction of the parodee, who has been known to be a little heavy handed when it comes to things like that. In short, I want to make sure that the hosting company won't flake out just because of potential complaints. I checked some companies and their TOS and AUPs all seem to have weird-ass restrictions (Arvixe, for example, has a list of unacceptable material that happens to list RPGs and MUDS ). I live in U.S.; parodee in Poland. What would you recommend?"
Apple

Apple Announces iPad Air 2, iPad mini 3, OS X Yosemite and More 355

Posted by samzenpus from the brand-new dept.
Many outlets are reporting on Apple's iPad event today. Highlights include:
  • Apple pay will launch Monday.
  • WatchKit -- a way for developers to make apps for the Apple Watch will launch next month.
  • iOS 8.1
  • Messages, iTunes, and iWork updated and many more new features in OS X Yosemite.
  • You can send and receive calls on your Mac if you have an iPhone with iOS 8 that's signed into the same FaceTime account.
  • iPad Air 2: New camera, 10 hour battery life, 12x faster than the original iPad.
  • iPad mini 3.
  • iMac with Retina display.
  • And a Mac mini update: Faster processors, Intel Iris graphics, and two Thunderbolt 2 ports.
Businesses

Complain About Comcast, Get Fired From Your Job 742

Posted by timothy from the now-that's-some-customer-feedback dept.
ub3r n3u7r4l1st writes When you complain to your cable company, you certainly don't expect that the cable company will then contact your employer and discuss your complaint. But that's exactly what happened to one former Comcast customer who says he was fired after the cable company called a partner at his accounting firm. Be careful next time when you exercise your first amendment rights. From the article: At some point shortly after that call, someone from Comcast contacted a partner at the firm to discuss Conal. This led to an ethics investigation and Conal’s subsequent dismissal from his job; a job where he says he’d only received positive feedback and reviews for his work. Comcast maintained that Conal used the name of his employer in an attempt to get leverage. Conal insists that he never mentioned his employer by name, but believes that someone in the Comcast Controller’s office looked him up online and figured out where he worked. When he was fired, Conal’s employer explained that the reason for the dismissal was an e-mail from Comcast that summarized conversations between Conal and Comcast employees. But Conal has never seen this e-mail in order to say whether it’s accurate and Comcast has thus far refused to release any tapes of the phone calls related to this matter.
Bug

Bugzilla Bug Exposes Zero-Day Bugs 34

Posted by samzenpus from the bug-hive dept.
tsu doh nimh writes A previously unknown security flaw in Bugzilla — a popular online bug-tracking tool used by Mozilla and many of the open source Linux distributions — allows anyone to view detailed reports about unfixed vulnerabilities in a broad swath of software. Bugzilla is expected today to issue a fix for this very serious weakness, which potentially exposes a veritable gold mine of vulnerabilities that would be highly prized by cyber criminals and nation-state actors.

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