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Android

Samsung Woos Developers As It Eyes Tizen Expansion Beyond Smartphones 80

New submitter Manish Singh writes: Why is Samsung, the South Korean technology conglomerate which has the tentpole position in Android, becoming increasinglu focused on its homegrown operating system Tizen? At its annual developer summit this week, the company announced new SDKs for smartwatches, smart TVs, and smartphones, and also shared its future roadmap.

Submission + - Non-invasive spinal cord stimulation gets paralyzed legs moving again (gizmag.com)

schwit1 writes: Five men with complete motor paralysis have regained the ability to move their legs voluntarily and produce step-like movements after being treated with a non-invasive form of spinal cord stimulation. The new treatment builds on prior work to generate voluntary movements in paralyzed people through electrical stimulation â" in particular, two studies (one completed in 2011, the other in 2014) that involved surgically implanting an electrode array on the spinal cord. This time, however, the researchers found success without performing any invasive surgery.

The new treatment uses a technique called transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, which involves strategically placing electrodes on the skin of the lower back. While receiving stimulation, the men's legs were supported by braces that hung from the ceiling. At first their legs only moved involuntarily, if at all. But they soon found they could voluntarily extend the distance their legs moved during stimulation. They doubled their range of voluntary motion after four treatment sessions.

Submission + - FireChat Weaves Smartphones Into an Alternative Internet (technologyreview.com)

schwit1 writes: What do people in Manila watching the Pope give Mass, Russian and Hong Kong protesters, and U.S. festivalgoers have in common? They have all turned to FireChat, an app that creates hyperlocal chat rooms that work even when cell networks are down by connecting phones within Wi-Fi range of one another (see "The Latest Chat App for the iPhone Needs No Internet Connection").

An upgrade to FireChat released today could make the app much more useful and powerful. It makes it possible to communicate with other FireChat users beyond the roughly 70 meters that your device can reach with Wi-Fi. Private and public messages can now travel longer distances by hopping between FireChat users until they get to the intended recipient-an approach known as mesh networking. Messages are encrypted as they travel through intermediate devices.

Privacy

One In Four Indiana Residents' E-Record Data Exposed in Hack 60

Reader chicksdaddy reports that a data breach involving four million patients and more than 230 different data holders (from private practices to large hospitals) hit Indiana especially hard. It's the home state of Medical Informatics Engineering, maker of electronic records system NoMoreClipBoard. While data exposed in the breach affected 3.9 million people, 1.5 millon of them are in Indiana. According to the Security Ledger, though: [The] breach affects healthcare organizations from across the country, with healthcare providers ranging from prominent hospitals to individual physicians' offices and clinics are among 195 customers of the NoMoreClipboard product that had patient information exposed in the breach. And, more than a month after the breach was discovered, some healthcare organizations whose patients were affected are still waiting for data from EMI on how many and which patients had information exposed.

'We have received no information from MIE regarding that,' said a spokeswoman for Fort Wayne Radiology Association (http://www.fwradiology.com/), one of hundreds of healthcare organizations whose information was compromised in the attack on MIE..

Comment Intelligence is Dangerous (Score 2) 262

Just look at how dangerous "natural" intelligence is and all the problems and disasters it has caused when it goes wrong - either through making mistakes or through mental disorders. Why should the artificial version be different? The question is will the benefits outweigh the downsides? Clearly for "natural" intelligence the answer is a resounding yes and I expect this will also be the case for the artificial version too.
AI

Answering Elon Musk On the Dangers of Artificial Intelligence 262

Lasrick points out a rebuttal by Stanford's Edward Moore Geist of claims that have led the recent panic over superintelligent machines. From the linked piece: Superintelligence is propounding a solution that will not work to a problem that probably does not exist, but Bostrom and Musk are right that now is the time to take the ethical and policy implications of artificial intelligence seriously. The extraordinary claim that machines can become so intelligent as to gain demonic powers requires extraordinary evidence, particularly since artificial intelligence (AI) researchers have struggled to create machines that show much evidence of intelligence at all.
The Internet

Facebook's Slender 'Aquila' Drone To Provide Internet In Remote Areas 55

Mickeycaskill writes: Facebook will start testing a 400kg drone with the wingspan of a Boeing 737 next year, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said, as part of the company's drive to connect people in remote areas to the Internet. Aquila will fly between 60,000ft and 90,000ft as to avoid adverse weather conditions and commercial air routes, while the attached laster can transmit data at 10Gbps. Facebook claims it can accurately connect with a point the size of a US 5-cent coin from more than 10 miles away.
Privacy

Ask Slashdot: Can You Disable Windows 10's Privacy-Invading Features? 492

An anonymous reader writes: I really want to upgrade to Windows 10, but have begun seeing stories come out about the new Terms and how they affect your privacy. It looks like the default Windows 10 system puts copies of your data out on the "cloud", gives your passwords out, and targets advertising to you. The main reason I am looking to upgrade is that Bitlocker is not available on Windows 7 Pro, but is on Windows 10 Pro, and Microsoft no longer offers Anytime Upgrades to Windows 7 Ultimate. However, I don't want to give away my privacy for security. The other option is to wait until October to see what the Windows 10 Enterprise version offers, but it may not be available through retail. Are the privacy minded Slashdot readers not going with Windows 10?

For reference, I am referring to these articles.
(Not to mention claims that it steals your bandwidth.)
The Internet

ARIN IPv4 Addresses Run Out Tomorrow 215

jcomeau_ictx provided that teaser of a headline, but writes: Not really. But the countdown at tunnelbroker.net should go to zero sometime tomorrow around noon, considering it's at 45,107 as I write this, it's counting down about one address every two seconds, and there are 86,400 seconds per day. Just happened to notice it today. Might be worth a little celebration at every NOC and IT enterprise tomorrow.
Windows

In Windows 10, Ad-Free Solitaire Will Cost You $10 -- Every Year 296

Wired UK reports that the pre-installed Solitaire on Windows 10 capitalizes on the long-cultivated addiction that some users have to the game with an interesting bargain: rather than being an ordinary included application like it used to be, what may be the world's most pervasive on-screen office time-sink of a game now comes with ads, unless a user wants to pay (by the month, or by the year) to remove those ads. Notes the linked piece: "To be entirely fair, this is the same as on the Windows 8 version, which wasn't installed by default but could be downloaded from the Windows Store."

At $1.49/month or $10/year, this might be enough to drive some people who otherwise would not to check out some of the free, open-source games out there; PySolitaire is one of many in this incomplete list.
Earth

Researchers Find That Queen Bees Vaccinate Their Offspring 26

The Washington Post reports that a team of researchers has discovered a previously unrecognized behavior in bees which gives the insects an extra layer of protection against certain diseases. Though the analogy to human-style vaccination is not perfect, it's close enough to make sense. Queen bees, the group found, break down some disease-causing pathogens found in the pollen and nectar brought to them by worker bees, but do not simply destroy them. Instead, after they are partly broken down, Bits of the pathogens are then transferred to the queen's "fat body," an organ similar to a liver, where they are packaged onto a protein called vitellogenin and delivered to eggs through the queen's blood stream. The result: newly hatched bee larvae that are already immune to the nasty germs that could have plagued the colony. The article notes that "the discovery could extend to other species throughout the animal kingdom," because all egg-laying animals have the same protein.

Submission + - ARIN IPv4 addresses run out tomorrow

jcomeau_ictx writes: not really. but the countdown at tunnelbroker.net should go to zero sometime tomorrow around noon, considering it's at 45,107 as I write this, it's counting down about one address every two seconds, and there are 86,400 seconds per day. just happened to notice it today. might be worth a little celebration at every NOC and IT enterprise tomorrow. cheers!

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Can you permanently disable Windows 10 privacy invading features?

An anonymous reader writes: I really want to upgrade to Windows 10, but have begun seeing stories come out about the new Terms and how they affect your privacy. It looks like the default Windows 10 system puts copies of your data out on the "cloud", gives your passwords out, and targets advertising to you. The main reason I am looking to upgrade is that Bitlocker is not available on Windows 7 Pro, but is on Windows 10 Pro, and Microsoft no longer offers Anytime Upgrades to Windows 7 Ultimate. However, I don't want to give away my privacy for security. The other option is to wait until October to see what the Windows 10 Enterprise version offers, but it may not be available through retail. Are the privacy minded Slashdot readers not going with Windows 10?

For reference, I am referring to these articles:
http://www.theguardian.com/tec...
http://betanews.com/2015/07/31...
Microsoft

Microsoft Taps PBS To Advance Its National Talent Strategy With 'Code Trip' 43

theodp writes: You don't have to be Mitt Romney to question PBS's announcement that it will air the Microsoft-funded 'reality' show Code Trip, in which Roadtrip Nation and Microsoft YouthSpark will send students across the U.S. for a "transformative journey into computer science." Of the partnership, Roadtrip Nation co-founder Mike Marriner said, "Roadtrip Nation is proud to partner with Microsoft's YouthSpark initiative not only to inform others of the many career routes one can take with a computer science background, but also to engage in the much-needed conversation of diversifying the tech field with more pluralistic perspectives." YouthSpark is part of Microsoft's National Talent Strategy (pdf), which the company describes as "a two-pronged approach that will couple long-term improvements in STEM education in the United States with targeted, short-term, high-skilled immigration reforms." The Official Microsoft Blog reports that filming of Code Trip began this week, with the three students traveling around the country to speak with leaders including Hadi Partovi, the co-founder of Code.org and 'major supporter' of FWD.us, who coincidentally once reported to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and is the next door neighbor of Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith and a jogging partner of Steve Ballmer.

Submission + - Answering Elon Musk on the dangers of Artificial Intelligence (thebulletin.org)

Lasrick writes: Stanford's Edward Moore Geist takes apart the recent panic over superintelligent machines in a terrific, thorough piece of analysis: 'Superintelligence is propounding a solution that will not work to a problem that probably does not exist, but Bostrom and Musk are right that now is the time to take the ethical and policy implications of artificial intelligence seriously. The extraordinary claim that machines can become so intelligent as to gain demonic powers requires extraordinary evidence, particularly since artificial intelligence (AI) researchers have struggled to create machines that show much evidence of intelligence at all.'

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