capsfan100 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Why Drone Package Delivery Will Be A Nightmare For Law Enforcement (forbes.com) 1

Submitted by SonicSpike on Tuesday December 03, 2013 @12:54AM

SonicSpike writes: Law enforcement may already be gritting its teeth over the idea of legal drone delivery. Being able to send things by drone could be hugely disruptive to the existing mail system: a peer-to-peer postal service that cuts out the USPS and FedEx. That’s fine when Amazon is shipping out books, but what about the kind of deliveries that law enforcement wants to be able to track? The existing postal system is full of surveillance.

If drones took off (heh) as a private way to send packages and letters over short or long distances, law enforcement would lose an important crime-fighting tool: their surveillance of the mail system. Much like electronic communication has gone “dark” thanks to encryption tools, the postal system could go “dark” thanks to private robot postmen.

This may sound far-fetched, but private, illicit drone deliveries are already happening. Last month, three men and a woman were caught smuggling tobacco into a Georgia prison. They used an Octocopter to do it. Unfortunately for them, their drone wasn’t an autonomous one and they had to crouch in the woods near the prison yard and watch the flight of their copter with binoculars. If it had been an autonomous drone, they may well have gotten away with the crime, and the smugglers wouldn’t be facing up to 20 years in their drone delivery zone for crossing prison guard lines with contraband.

Submission + - How to Burst the "Filter Bubble" that Protects Us from Opposing Views (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by Jah-Wren Ryel on Monday December 02, 2013 @07:17PM

Jah-Wren Ryel writes: Computer scientists have discovered a way to number-crunch an individual’s own preferences to recommend content from others with opposing views. The goal? To burst the “filter bubble” that surrounds us with people we like and content that we agree with.

A recent example of the filter bubble at work: Two people who googled the term “BP.” One received links to investment news about BP while the other received links to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, presumably as a result of some recommendation algorithm.

Submission + - Amazon reveals "Prime Air", their plans for 30-minute deliveries by drone (cbsnews.com)

Submitted by Z80xxc! on Sunday December 01, 2013 @10:29PM

Z80xxc! writes: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos revealed during a CBS 60 Minutes interview that the company is working on a service called "Prime Air" to deliver packages by autonomous octocopter drones within 30 minutes of hitting the "buy" button. The plan still requires more testing and FAA approval, but Bezos predicts it'll be available to the public in the next 4-5 years. With a lot of backlash against drones, and some towns even offering bounties to shoot them down, will this technology ever take off, or is this just another one of Amazon's eccentric CEO's fantastical flight ideas ?

Submission + - How Snapchat Could March Startups Right Off the Cliff, Lemming-Style (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster on Monday November 18, 2013 @03:36PM

Nerval's Lobster writes: Two investors are Tweeting that Instagram, had it stayed an independent company, could be worth between $5 billion and $15 billion today. That's led to talk of whether Snapchat was right to (reportedly) shoot down Facebook's bid of $3 billion for its business, considering how its growth and sizable user base. Snapchat’s founders evidently think they can score a better deal within the next few quarters. If they manage to sell their startup a year from now for twice as much, they’ll be lauded as extraordinarily smart businessmen—perhaps smarter than the folks at Instagram who sold for a “measly” $1 billion (and all this despite Snapchat making no revenue). But for other startups in the space, the Snapchat and Instragram stories won’t do them much good. Propelled by dreams of ever-increasing millions (perhaps billions!) startup founders could end up turning down perfectly good acquisition offers in favor of continuing to bootstrap—and find their businesses eroding and imploding, as the market for their particular app or service either fades away or (more likely) ends up crowded out by competing software. The startup market is a shark-tank, and most of those who don’t get out of the water as soon as possible are eaten, dreams of grandeur or no.

Submission + - Netflix Users in Danger of Unknowingly Picking up Malware

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18, 2013 @02:36PM

An anonymous reader writes: Users of Silverlight, Microsoft’s answer to Adobe Flash, are in danger of having malware installed on their computers and being none the wiser, as an exploit for a critical vulnerability (CVE-2013-0634) in the app framework has been added to the Angler exploit kit. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if an attacker hosts a website that contains a specially crafted Silverlight application that could exploit this vulnerability and then convinces a user to view the website. The attacker could also take advantage of compromised websites and websites that accept or host user-provided content or advertisements.

Submission + - Fuel Rod removal operation begins at Tsunami-hit Fukushima

Submitted by rtoz on Monday November 18, 2013 @12:32PM

rtoz writes: TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) has started removing fuel rods from a storage pond at the Unit 4 reactor building of Tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear power station in Japan.

The first of the fuel-rod assemblies at the plant’s No. 4 reactor building was transferred from an underwater rack on the fifth floor to a portable cask. This step is an early milestone in decommissioning the facility amid doubts about whether the rods had been damaged and posed a radiation risk.

22 unused fuels will be moved to the cask a task which is planned to be completed by November 19. After being filled with fuel, the cask will be closed with a lid, and following decontamination, will be taken down to ground level and transported to the common spent fuel pool on a trailer. It is planned to take approximately one week from placing the fuel into the cask at the spent fuel pool to storing it in the common pool. The entire removal of all fuel inside the Unit 4 spent fuel pool is planned to take until the end of 2014.

Comment The NRA has their own national gun registry (Score 1) 531

by capsfan100 on Thursday September 05, 2013 @11:37PM (#44771575) Attached to: NRA Joins ACLU Lawsuit Against NSA

The NRA is no stranger to Big Data: http://www.buzzfeed.com/stevefriess/how-the-nra-built-a-massive-secret-database-of-gun-owners?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews

Submission + - Pimp my Android tablet! (pcworld.com)

Submitted by

capsfan100

on Saturday February 23, 2013 @03:15PM

capsfan100 writes: "At Christmas I got an $89 Android tablet by MID. The 7" tablet has sufficient RAM, etc. The battery, however, was rather pathetic out of the box. It's already fading, so we know where this is headed — decent tablet, but it constantly needs the plug.
How would you take this "old" tablet and turn it into a rockin' stereo component? Is there a ROM build out there titled Pimp My Tablet Into An MP3 Player? The current music app can lookup lyrics on-line. I'd like to keep that feature. Any ideas on a good app for syncing music videos with my *ahem* random music collection? Any fun, off-beat party apps this middle-aged suburban dad hasn't heard of?
Since the Android security nightmare is so well documented, I'd rather not use services that require passwords. I also need top-notch security and monitoring software so I can see what my kids and their friends are doing with it next year when I'm not home while keeping them anonymous and safe on-line.
As for my living room stereo system, how best to mount a sleek MP3 tablet? I was thinking velcro, but it would ruin the feel. Maybe a wall mount arm like my HDTV has? We want to be able to unplug it and move around the room, so I'll need to upgrade the speakers to wireless. Any thoughts there?
I'm not afraid of the command line — indeed, I insist on one — but no Gentoo-type projects, thank you. Just a good sleek and secure ROM for optimal tunage with all the top apps the kids are using today. Help me out Slashdot — Pimp my Android tablet!"

Comment Not Your Father's Republican Party (Score 1) 2

by capsfan100 on Saturday October 06, 2012 @09:31PM (#41573511) Attached to: Rep. Paul Broun says scientists are tools of the devil

It's bad enough that he doesn't believe in science, but to put a denier of science on the House committee where all science and tech bills originate - and must move out of before they can get to the floor for a vote - is a stick in the eye of all thinking people. The inmates are running in the asylum as long as the GOP controls the House (or Senate for that matter, and they're only 3 seats away in that chamber).

Submission + - Why Klout's Social Influence Scores Are Nonsense (itworld.com)

Submitted by

jfruh

on Wednesday October 03, 2012 @01:48PM

jfruh writes: "Klout is a new social media service that attempts to quantify how much "influence" you have, based on your social media profile. Their metrics are bizarre — privacy blogger Dan Tynan has been rated as highly influential on the topic of cigars, despite having only smoked one, decades ago. Nevertheless, Klout scores have real-world consequences, with people deemed influential getting discounts on concert tickets or free access to airport VIP lounges (in hopes that they'll tweet about it, presumably)."

Comment The Front-Running Aspect Is Already Illegal (Score 4, Interesting) 443

by capsfan100 on Wednesday August 08, 2012 @04:58AM (#40915911) Attached to: This Is What Wall Street's Terrifying Robot Invasion Looks Like

I'm an Investment Adviser Representative, so I work in the industry, a mere pawn 2000 miles from Wall St. HFT hits home for me, as it costs my clients money. There's a legal foothold here to ban this activity, called Front-Running. If I hear a co-worker say "I'll place that buy order for 1000 shares of Google as soon as we hang up" and I then race over to my computer to place my own Google buy order first I can be prosecuted. It's called Front-Running because I'm racing my order in in-front of a trade I know is coming. (My new holding should bump up a tick when their order comes in next driving up the market price. It works more reliably with thinly traded stocks. And did I mention it's illegal?) And yet the exchanges, for payment, allow the high-frequency traders to see incoming trades. It's illegal, plain and simple. The question is why no one has stopped it yet. The CFTC has done some good investigations, I hear. I can't give investment advice as every person's situation is unique. But do you think more or fewer potential investors will want to get in the market once this criminal activity is stopped?

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