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Submission + - I guess it's a scoop if ...

Submitted by tkjtkj
tkjtkj writes: if i'm the only one complaining about /. 's pages ..
1) Lately, 1 or 2 'cartoon-type' balloons appear at ends of article topic listings .. Normally ok, BUT for fact that if the title is long enough, the nearly-useless ballons completely conver/obvuscate the end text of the title!
2) I come to an article and there's no way to comment .. Just what is going on?

Submission + - Favicon Bug Crashes Browsers (techworm.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A 10GB+ Favicon makes Chrome and Firefox download the huge favicon files to the point till they crash the browser.

Submission + - Monsanto Develops First Genetically Modified Strain of Marijuana (wisconsinagconnection.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Monsanto has announced it has patented the first genetically modified strain of marijuana. Global AgInvesting reports that the news has been welcomed by scientists and leaders of the agriculture business alike as a move forward towards the industrial use of marijuana and hemp products could bring a major shift towards marijuana policies in the U.S.A. and ultimately, to the world.

Under present U.S. federal law, it is illegal to possess, use, buy, sell, or cultivate marijuana, since the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 classifies marijuana as a Schedule I drug, although it has been decriminalized to some extent in certain states, Monsanto's interest in the field has been interpreted by experts as the precursor to "a major shift in marijuana policy in the U.S." as it is believed the company would not have invested so much time and energy if it had not had "previous knowledge" of the Federal government's "openness" towards the future legalization of marijuana.

Submission + - Notepad++ Leaves SourceForge (notepad-plus-plus.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: SourceForge was a good place; unfortunately, sometimes good places don't last.

Recently SF hijacked its hosted projects to distribute their wrapped crapware:

        SourceForge grabs GIMP for Windows' account, wraps installer in bundle-pushing adware
        Black “mirror”: SourceForge has now taken over Nmap audit tool project
        What happened to Sourceforge? The full story between VLC and Sourceforge

Obviously, the paid component per installation system is one of their important income generating scams. I would be fine with that, if they were the actual owners of the legitimate software. The real problem is, they are polluting these open source software installations for the purpose of filling their pockets by this scam, and worst of all, without even notifying the authors/creators of this software, while the creators are struggling against such parasitic software in order to keep their installers cleaner and safer.

Such a shameless policy should be condemned, and the Notepad++ project will move entirely out of SourceForge.

I humbly request that Notepad++ users not encourage such scams, and educate others not to download any software from SourceForge. I request as well that the project owners on SourceForge move out of SourceForge, in order to preserve the purpose of the Open Source Community and encourage the works of true authors/creators.

Submission + - Restaurateur settles after being extorted by BMI (nypost.com) 1

Submitted by Frosty Piss
Frosty Piss writes: BMI claims Amici III in Linden, New York didn't have a license when it played four tunes in its eatery one night last year, including the beloved “Bennie and the Jets” and “Brown Sugar,” winning a $24,000 judgment earlier this year, as well as more than $8,200 in attorney’s fees. Giovanni Lavorato, who has been in business for 25 years, says the disc jockey DJ brought into the eatery paid a fee to play tunes. 'It’s ridiculous for me to pay somebody also,' he said. 'This is not a nightclub. This is not a disco joint . . . How many times do they want to get paid for the stupid music?'

Submission + - Home Depot using 2013 SCOTUS FISA Ruling to Challenge Data Breach Damages Suit (securityledger.com)

Submitted by chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: As Citizens United and Bush v. Gore have shown us: there's no end to the trouble (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War) that can be caused by bad Supreme Court rulings. The latest example of that may be unfolding in an Atlanta courtroom, where Home improvement giant Home Depot is attempting to use a 2013 Supreme Court ruling concerning the U.S. government’s FISA court to block efforts by its customers to sue the company over damages (https://digitalguardian.com/blog/are-data-breaches-victimless-crime) resulting from a 2014 incident that resulted in the theft of more than 50 million credit card numbers (http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/09/19/1251234/home-depot-says-breach-affected-56-million-cards) from the company’s network.

Huh? Exactly. Home Depot in late May filed a motion (http://media.bizj.us/view/img/6039561/home-depot-dismiss.pdf ) asking the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia to dismiss the case, citing Clapper vs. Amnesty International, a 2013 case in which Supreme Court ruled, in a 5-4 decision, that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue the Federal Government, as they couldn’t prove harm as a result of the actions of the secretive court.(http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/clapper-v-amnesty-international-usa/)

Home Depot’s argument rests on a couple points that were also raised in the Clapper vs. Amnesty case. First: that there is no real harm caused because “the few plaintiffs who allege some economic harm fail to explain why the losses they allege were not reimbursed.” That’s an apparent reference to the U.S. law that requires consumers to not be held liable for fraudulent charges on their credit cards. That, Home Depot argues, fails the Supreme Court’s charge, in Clapper, that alleged injuries must be “concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent.”

The second point made by Home Depot is that the individuals who claim they were injured base their claims on “the hypothetical future acts of third parties, which the Supreme Court held in Clapper is insufficient to establish Article III standing because such conduct is not ‘fairly traceable’ to the defendant.”

In other words: even though it is clear that cyber criminals 1) compromised Home Depot’s network, 2) stole credit cards on millions of its customers and 3) foist those numbers upon cyber criminal exchanges after which they were used for fraudulent purposes (http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/09/banks-credit-card-breach-at-home-depot/), the plaintiffs in the case can’t prove that Home Depot’s failure to secure its network was the direct cause of the fraud. The plaintiffs “statutory claims fail because they have not identified any deceptive act by Home Depot and do not allege any actual damage flowing from Home Depot’s purported delay in providing notice.”

Submission + - Pornhub is going to make a porn film in space (independent.co.uk)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: In one small thrust for man and one giant leap for mankind, two people are set to have sex in space for the first time in human history, but for porn not procreation — Pornhub is crowdfunding a space mission to shoot an adult film in low-Earth orbit.

The site hopes to launch the mission and shoot Sexplorations in 2016, covering the pre and post-production costs itself but seeking $3.4 million from IndieGogo crowdfunders.

Submission + - Batteriser extendes akaline battery life with voltage booster (pcworld.com)

Submitted by ttsai
ttsai writes: Batteroo is a Silicon Valley company preparing to release its Batteriser product in September. The Batteriser is a small sleeve that fits around alkaline batteries to boost the voltage to 1.5V. This means that batteries that would otherwise be thrown into the trash when the voltage dips to 1.3V or 1.4V could be used until the unboosted voltage reaches 0.6V, extending the useful life of a battery 8x, according to the company. This product has the potential to reduce the number of batteries in landfills as well as increasing the time between replacing batteries. The expected price of the sleeve is $10 for a pack of 4 sleeves.

Submission + - SourceForge grabs GIMP for Windows' account, wraps installer in bundle-pushing (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by shanehiltonward
shanehiltonward writes: SourceForge, the code repository site owned by Slashdot Media, has apparently seized control of the account hosting GIMP for Windows on the service, according to e-mails and discussions amongst members of the GIMP community—locking out GIMP's lead Windows developer. And now anyone downloading the Windows version of the open source image editing tool from SourceForge gets the software wrapped in an installer replete with advertisements.

Update: In a blog post issued shortly after this story posted, an unidentified member of SourceForge's community team wrote that, in fact, "this project was actually abandoned over 18 months ago, and SourceForge has stepped-in to keep this project current." That runs counter to claims by members of the GIMP development community.

The GIMP project is not officially distributed through SourceForge—approved releases are only posted on the GIMP project's own Web page. But Jernej Simoni, the developer who has been responsible for building Windows versions of GIMP for some time, has maintained an account on SourceForge to act as a distribution mirror. That is, he had until today, when he discovered he was locked out of the Gimp-Win account, and the project's ownership "byline" had been changed to "sf-editor1"—a SourceForge staff account. Additionally, the site now provided Gimp in an executable installer that has in-installer advertising enabled. Ars tested the downloader and found that it offered during the installation to bundle Norton anti-virus and myPCBackup.com remote backup services with GIMP—before downloading the installer authored by Simoni (his name still appears on the installer's splash screen).

Submission + - How Little It Cost Goldman To Bribe US Senators To Fast Track TPP Bill? (zerohedge.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes:
  • In just 24 hours, Wyden and five of those Democratic holdouts — Michael Bennet of Colorado, Dianne Feinstein of California, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Patty Murray of Washington, and Bill Nelson of Florida — caved and voted for fast-track.
  • Bennet, Murray, and Wyden — all running for re-election in 2016 — received $105,900 between the three of them. Bennet, who comes from the more purple state of Colorado, got $53,700 in corporate campaign donations between January and March 2015, according to Channing's research.
  • Almost 100% of the Republicans in the US Senate voted for fast-track — the only two non-votes on TPA were a Republican from Louisiana and a Republican from Alaska.
  • Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, who is the former US trade representative, has been one of the loudest proponents of the TPP. (In a comment to the Guardian Portman's office said: "Senator Portman is not a vocal proponent of TPP — he has said it's still being negotiated and if and when an agreement is reached he will review it carefully.") He received $119,700 from 14 different corporations between January and March, most of which comes from donations from Goldman Sachs ($70,600), Pfizer ($15,700), and Procter & Gamble ($12,900). Portman is expected to run against former Ohio governor Ted Strickland in 2016 in one of the most politically competitive states in the country.
  • Seven Republicans who voted "yea" to fast-track and are also running for re-election next year cleaned up between January and March. Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia received $102,500 in corporate contributions. Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, best known for proposing a Monsanto-written bill in 2013 that became known as the Monsanto Protection Act, received $77,900 — $13,500 of which came from Monsanto.
  • Arizona senator and former presidential candidate John McCain received $51,700 in the first quarter of 2015. Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina received $60,000 in corporate donations. Eighty-one-year-old senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who is running for his seventh Senate term, received $35,000. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who will be running for his first full six-year term in 2016, received $67,500 from pro-TPP corporations.

Submission + - SourceForge hijacks Win-Gimp, wraps installer in adware (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by slashdice
slashdice writes: Ars Technica (and, well, everybody other than slashdot) is reporting on the reprehensible behavior by SourceForge, Slashdot sister sister site. "SourceForge, the code repository site owned by Slashdot Media, has apparently seized control of the account hosting GIMP for Windows on the service, according to e-mails and discussions amongst members of the GIMP community—locking out GIMP's lead Windows developer. And now anyone downloading the Windows version of the open source image editing tool from SourceForge gets the software wrapped in an installer replete with advertisements."

Submission + - Does a black hole have a shape? 1

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: When you think about a black hole, you very likely think about a large amount of mass, pulled towards a central location by the tremendous force of gravity. While black holes themselves may be perfectly spherical (or for rotating black holes, almost perfectly spherical), there are important physical cases that can cause them to look tremendously asymmetrical, including the possession of an accretion disk and, in the most extreme case, a merger with another black hole.

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