Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Facebook Has A New Private Mobile Photo-Sharing App, And They Built It In C++

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: Facebook today announced Moments, a new mobile app that uses Facebook's facial recognition technology to let you sync up photos only with friends who are in those photos with you. Somewhat unusually for a new app, the bulk of it is built in the venerable C++ language, which turned out to be easier for building a cross-platform mobile app than other more "modern" languages.

Submission + - "Right To Be Forgotten" Applies To Google.com, Not Just Google.fr

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: Enforcement of the EU's controversial "right to be forgotten" has forced Google to remove thousands of URLs from its search index, but Europeans who wanted to find the banned links had an easy workaround — they could simply change their search engine from google.fr or google.de to google.com. But now a French court has declared that, if an IP address indicates that a user is inside the EU, even google.com searches should "forget" the offending pages.

Submission + - US Teen Pleads Guilty To Teaching ISIS About Bitcoin Via Twitter

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: Ali Shukri Amin, a 17-year-old from Virginia, has pled guilty to charges that he aided ISIS by giving the group advice about using bitcoin. An odd and potentially troubling aspect of the charges is that this all took place in public — he Tweeted out links to an article on his blog about bitcoin and Darknet could help jihadi groups, making it difficult to say whether he was publishing information protected under free speech or was directly advising the terrorist organization.

Submission + - FCC Nixes PayPal's Forced Robocalls Plan

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: As part of a new user agreement created in preparation for its spinoff from eBay as an independent company, PayPal told users that the only way to avoid advertising robocalls from PayPal and its 'partners' was to stop using the service. This caused something of a firestorm, and now the FCC is saying the policy may violate Federal law, which requires an explicit opt-in to receive such messages.

Submission + - So Long Voicemail, Give My Regards To the Fax Machine (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Yes, it was just a matter of time before voicemail, the old office relic, the technology The Guardian's Chitra Ramaswamy called “as pointless as a pigeon with a pager,” finally followed the fax machine into obscurity. Last week JPMorgan Chase announced it was turning off voicemail service for tens of thousands of workers (a move that CocaCola made last December). And if Bloomberg's Ramy Inocencio has the numbers right, the cost savings are significant: JPMorgan, for example, will save $3.2 million by cutting voicemail for about 136,000. As great as this sounds, David Lazarus, writing in the LA Times, warns that customer service will suffer.

Submission + - Xilinx and AMD: An Inevitable Match? (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Steve Casselman at Seeking Alpha was among the first to suggest that Xilinx should buy AMD because, among other reasons, it 'would let Xilinx get in on the x86 + FPGA fabric tsunami.' The trouble with this, however, is that 'AMD's server position is minuscule.... While x86 has 73% of the server market, Intel owns virtually all of it,' writes Andy Patrizio. At the same time, 'once Intel is in possession of the Altera product line, it will be able to cheaply produce the chip and drop the price, drastically undercutting Xilinx,' says Patrizio. And, he adds, buying AMD wouldn't give Xilinx the same sort of advantage 'since AMD is fabless.'

Submission + - Alibaba Expands Cloud Service To U.S.; Microsoft Worries About Azure In China (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: China's web retail giant Alibaba is taking on Amazon head-on in more ways than one, looking to expand its cloud services to the U.S. to compete with Amazon's AWS. Microsoft, meanwhile, has made inroads into the cloud services business in China, but is worried that tightening government regulations will strangle its business there.

Submission + - HP Will Pay $100 Million To Settle Autonomy-Related Lawsuit (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Although it 'believes the action has no merit,' HP today announced it will pay $100 million in a settlement with PGGM Vermogensbeheer B.V., the lead plaintiff in the securities class action arising from the impairment charge taken by HP following its acquisition of Autonomy. This is just the latest episode in the fallout from HP's Autonomy acquisition.

Submission + - EasyJet Turning To Drones for Aircraft Inspections

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Would you trust your aircraft inspection to a drone? Budget airline easyJet is testing just such a system, aimed at reducing the amount of time an aircraft is out of service. Instead of having humans perform on-site visual inspections, the drone will 'fly around an aircraft snapping images, which will then be fed to engineers for analysis.'

Submission + - Microsoft Will Help Iowa Caucuses Go High-Tech

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: Poltical party caucuses are one of the quirkier aspects of American political life: local party members gather in small rooms across the state, discuss their preferences, and send a report of how many delegates for each candidate will attend later county and statewide caucuses to ultimately choose delegates to the national convention. It's also a system with a lot of room for error in reporting, as local precinct leaders have traditionally sent in reports of votes via telephone touch-tone menus and paper mail. In 2016, Microsoft will help both Democrats and Republicans streamline the process in a fashion that will hopefully avoid the embarassing result from 2012, when Mitt Romney was declared the winner on caucus night only for Rick Santorum to emerge as the true victor when all votes were counted weeks later.

Submission + - Japanese Startup Aims To Provde Low-Cost 3-D Printed Artificial Limbs (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: An advanced prosthetic limb that can move in response to a person's muscle movements can cost an amputee as much as $10,000. But now a Japanese startup is aiming to use 3-D printing technology and open source Arduino computers to radically decrease the cost, with materials for each limb only running into a few hundred dollars.

Comment personal responsibility (Score 5, Interesting) 1032

by jfruh (#49866825) Attached to: Writer: "Why I Defaulted On My Student Loans"

Funny how when a corporation defaults on its debt and files for bankruptcy so that it can break union contracts and pay workers less, it's seen as a sharp business move, a recognition that their expenditures have come to surpass their income in a structural and unsustainable way. But when an individual decides the same, perhaps after coming to the conclusion that an investment in a home or university education wasn't as lucrative as it seemed it would be at the time, people start thundering about the moral necessity of paying back loans.

Submission + - NSA Said To Increase Monitoring of US 'Net Traffic To Catch Hackers (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: The U.S. National Security Agency is reportedly intercepting Internet communications from U.S. residents without getting court-ordered warrants, in an effort to hunt down malicious hackers. The previously undisclosed NSA program monitors Internet traffic for data about cyberattacks originating outside the U.S., according to a New York Times article published Thursday and based on leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Slashdot Top Deals

2.4 statute miles of surgical tubing at Yale U. = 1 I.V.League

Close