Iran's authorities have restricted mobile internet access in several provinces, an Iranian news agency reported on Wednesday, a day before new protests were expected to kick off following calls for demonstrations on social media. Reuters: Social media posts, along with some relatives of people killed in unrest last month, have called for renewed protests and for ceremonies to commemorate the dead to be held on Thursday. State media, meanwhile, said intelligence ministry agents had seized a cache of 126 mostly U.S.-made guns smuggled to the central city of Isfahan from abroad. The protests were initially sparked in November by hikes in gasoline prices but demonstrators quickly expanded their demands to cover calls for more political freedom and other issues. The government, which launched the bloodiest crackdown on demonstrators in the 40-year history of the Islamic Republic, blamed foreign enemies for stoking tensions.

From a report: Keybase started off as co-founder and developer Max Krohn's "hobby project" -- a way for people to share PGP keys with a simple username-based lookup. Then Chris Coyne (who also was cofounder of OkCupid and SparkNotes) got involved and along came $10.8 million in funding from a group of investors led by Andreesen Horowitz. And then things got increasingly more complicated. Keybase aims to make public-key encryption accessible to everyone, for everything from messaging to file sharing to throwing a few crypto-coins someone's way. But because of that level of accessibility, Keybase faces a very OkCupid kind of problem: after drawing in people interested in easy public-key crypto-based communications and then drawing in blockchain lovers with its partnership with (and funding from) Stellar.org, Keybase has also drawn in spammers and scammers. And that has brought a host of alerts and messages that have made what was once a fairly clear communications channel into one clogged with unwanted alerts, messages, and other unpleasantry -- raising a chorus of complaints in Keybase's open chat channel. It turns out there's a reason spell check keeps wanting to tell me that Keybase should be spelled "debase."

Keybase's leadership is promising to do something to fix the spam problem -- or at least make it easier to report and block abusers. In a blog post, Krohn and Coynes wrote, "To be clear, the current spam volume isn't dire, YET. Keybase still works great. But we should act quickly." But the measures promised by Keybase won't completely eliminate the issue. And Keybase execs have no interest in getting involved with additional steps that they see as censorship. "Keybase is a private company and we do retain our rights to kick people out," the co-founders said in the blog post. "That hammer will not be used because someone is mostly disliked, as long as they're playing nicely on Keybase."

"YouTube has a huge problem right now," argues videogame streamer Markiplier. "People's accounts are being suspended without reason, without provocation, and their appeals to get it back are being denied without explanation."

Engadget revisits "YouTube's occasionally questionable moderation" -- in this case, people being banned simply for using too many emojis (or "emotes") in their comments to videogame-streamer Markiplier during a YouTube-produced choose-your-own-adventure special. The service says it has reinstated legions of Markiplier fans' accounts after they were banned simply for spamming emotes (and not even to a great degree) while voting during a live playthrough of the interactive movie A Heist with Markiplier.

Not all of the accounts have been restored, Markiplier said, but YouTube added that it was "looking into" both why human moderators denied appeals and how it might "prevent this in the future." The change of heart came after Markiplier (aka Mark Fischbach) posted a video illustrating both how trivial the bans were, examples of denied appeals and the consequences for some users.

As he explained, this didn't just kick people out of chat. It affected entire Google accounts -- people lost videos, channel memberships or access to important services they needed, all because they spammed several emotes in one line. He also blasted YouTube for claiming that appeals were carefully reviewed, noting that there was at least one instance where someone succeeded with an appeal, and was almost immediately banned again for seemingly no reason... The incident highlights the complications and limitations of YouTube's approach to moderation. While the sheer size of YouTube virtually mandates some form of automated policing, it's not guaranteed to correctly interpret everything (especially if it's asked to be particularly strict).

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: New research shows that psilocybin might be an effective treatment for diseases such as depression and addiction. While the work is still in its early stages, there are signs that psilocybin might help addicts shake the habit by causing the brain to talk with itself in different ways. "These brain changes lead to, oftentimes, a sense of unity," says Matthew Johnson, an experimental psychologist at Johns Hopkins University. It all may sound a little "woo-woo," he admits, but it seems to be working. Early results suggest that psilocybin, coupled with therapy, may be far more effective than other treatments for smoking, such as the nicotine patch.

Psilocybin seems to work because it temporarily rewires the brain, according to Johnson. Sections that don't normally talk to each other appear to communicate more, and parts of the brain that normally do talk to each other talk less. Johnson's small initial psilocybin study was extremely promising. So now he is doing a larger, more rigorous trial comparing the nicotine patch to psilocybin. Results are still coming in, but right now, half of the people who took psilocybin are smoke-free after a year. That's about twice as effective as the patch. Nutt, who's now conducting his own follow-up trials on depression treatments, is impressed with Johnson's work. Nutt believes psilocybin potentially also could be used to treat other addictions, such as alcohol and opioids. But there are some reasons to be cautious. First of all, the amount of psilocybin Johnson administers in his trials is considered a high dose, and it's paired with months of counseling. Bad trips can be common for those using the drug for treatment of diseases, and memories and experiences brought up by the drug can be challenging and disturbing.

Second, the treatment is really expensive and the whole process takes months. Finally, not everybody should use psilocybin. People with predispositions for schizophrenia and other psychotic illnesses may be harmed by taking the drug.

An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet: Microsoft has launched a new 44-part series called Python for Beginners on YouTube, consisting of three- to four-minute lessons from two self-described geeks at Microsoft who love programming and teaching.

The course isn't quite for total beginners as it assumes people have done a little programming in JavaScript or played around with the MIT-developed Scratch visual programming language aimed at kids. But it could help beginners kick-start ambitions to build machine-learning apps, web applications, or automate processes on a desktop.... It has published a page on GitHub containing additional resources, including slides and code samples to help students become better at Python.

"It's that time of year again when we come together to support and celebrate the open source technologies we use and love," announces a post on Digital Ocean's blog. Hacktoberfest is a monthlong celebration of open source software. It was started at DigitalOcean as a way to foster a sense of community and encourage more participation in open source projects. To reward Hacktoberfest contributors, we've designed a limited edition T-shirt for those who complete the challenge each year. This year, the first 50,000 participants will be eligible to receive the limited edition shirt...

One of the enticing elements of this celebration is that you don't have to leave the comfort of your office or home to participate. But each year, more and more Hacktoberfest events have been organized since we introduced the Event Kit. In 2018 alone, there were 251 Hacktoberfest events. All of these took place during October and happened in 50 countries. With October five days away, we're already expecting to exceed last year's number of events! Wow... if you're in or around New York City, we invite you to join us at the Hacktoberfest kickoff celebration at the DigitalOcean headquarters...

This year, we're also hoping to drive awareness of the negative impacts many people around the world are experiencing due to the many environmental crises we're faced with -- and encourage participation in projects that are targeting these causes. We've identified a handful of projects on GitHub that focus on supporting the environment, which you can find in our Climate section. We hope you'll consider contributing to some of the impactful work being done by activists, scientists, and mission-driven organizations around the globe... Let's join forces to make a difference!
Last year's Hacktoberfest saw 401,231 pull requests on GitHub, according to the blog post.

Google and its industry allies are making a late bid to water down the first major data-privacy law in the U.S., seeking to carve out exemptions for digital advertising, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg and people familiar with the negotiations. Bloomberg reports: A lobbyist for Google recently distributed new language to members of California's state legislature that would amend the California Consumer Privacy Act. As currently drafted, the law limits how Google and other companies collect and make money from user data online, threatening a business model that generates billions of dollars in ad revenue. It's due to kick in next year and there are only a few more days to amend the law. The lobbying push seeks legislative approval to continue collecting user data for targeted advertising, and in some cases, the right to do so even if users opt out, according to the documents and the people familiar with the negotiations.

It's unclear if the language circulating in the state capitol's corridors was drafted by Google, and other lobbyists are likely asking for similar changes. Industry groups, such as the California Chamber of Commerce and the Internet Association, often help write legislation and have been the face of industry during two years of debate over the CCPA. It's also common for interested parties to suggest late changes to bills. The Google representative, who distributed the revised language in recent weeks, has yet to find a lawmaker to sponsor the amendments, according to people familiar with negotiations. The proposal must be in a bill by Sept. 10 to be eligible for lawmakers to vote on it before they adjourn for the year on Sept. 13. One of the proposals would let Google and others use data collected from websites for their own analysis, and then share it with other companies that may find it useful. Currently, the CCPA prohibits the sale or distribution of user data if the user has opted out, with limited exceptions.

Another proposal would loosen the definition of "business purpose" when it comes to selling or distributing user data. The law currently defines this narrowly and has a list of specific activities, such auditing and security, that will be allowed. Google's lobbyist shared new language that significantly broadens the rule by replacing the phrase "Business purposes are" with "Business purposes include," before the list of approved activities.

"Seen in the wild, robots often appear cute and nonthreatening. This doesn't mean we shouldn't be hostile," argues a new article in Wired, reporting on what appears to be a pre-meditated kicking of a Knightscope K5 patrol robot in a parking lot in California: K5's siblings, it turns out, don't fare much better. In 2017 a drunk man attacked a K5 in a Mountain View parking lot. A few months later a group of angry protestors in San Francisco covered another one in a tarp, pushed it to the ground, and smeared barbecue sauce on it. Stacey Stephens, Knightscope's executive vice president, wouldn't say how many have been seriously damaged. "I don't want to challenge people," he says, afraid any number will inspire -- perhaps compel -- more miscreants to seek out K5s. (Stephens did specify that Knightscope prosecutes "to the fullest extent of the law," often pursuing felony charges for damaged K5s.)

Hard numbers or not, the assaults will continue -- that's not the question... The question is: Do we care...? [A]s an otherwise law-abiding citizen...all I could think as I watch and rewatch the security video from August 3 is: Way to go, dude. Because K5 is not a friendly robot, even if the cutesy blue lights are meant to telegraph that it is. It's not there to comfort senior citizens or teach autistic children. It exists to collect data -- data about people's daily habits and routines. While Knightscope owns the robots and leases them to clients, the clients own the data K5 collects. They can store it as long as they want and analyze it however they want. K5 is an unregulated security camera on wheels, a 21st-century panopticon.

The true power of K5 isn't to watch you -- it's to make you police yourself. It's designed to be at eye level, to catch your attention. Stephens likens it to a police car sitting on the side of the road: It makes everyone hyperaware of their surroundings. Even if you aren't speeding, you break, turn down the radio, and put your hands at 10 and 2. The debate over the proper treatment of robots can sometimes sound like the debate over violent videogames. Perhaps acting on violent impulses without hurting real-life humans is healthy, cathartic. Or it might be turning us into a race of psychopaths. Unlike the characters in videogames, though, robots don't exist virtually. In the case of K5 bots, they intrude, without permission, into the most mundane of activities: walking down the sidewalk, parking your car...

It is a sham, an ersatz impression of power that should be pushed to its limits -- right down onto the hard parking lot floor.

At Disney's biannual D23 Expo executives revealed that episodes on the upcoming Disney+ streaming service will follow a weekly release schedule, unlike Netflix's binge-able season drops. "A show like the Marvel Cinematic Universe spinoff Loki, which is slated to run approximately six hours (likely meaning six episodes total) will come out over the course of six weeks," reports The Verge. "That's similar to the way Hulu (which is also owned by Disney), Amazon, and HBO Now operate." From the report: But while HBO Now doesn't have streaming exclusives and is tied into HBO's weekly release schedule, Disney and Hulu aren't tied to traditional network schedules. They've voluntarily chosen to release most episodes on a week-to-week basis. (Hulu often releases three episodes at once to kick off a season, then drops to one per week afterward.) Apple is reportedly planning to take the same route when its streaming service, Apple TV Plus, launches this fall.

The weekly release model is a smart move for Disney -- and potentially any new streaming service that's initially focused on building a subscriber base, rather than servicing a demanding, preexisting one. Tying new content to beloved franchises, then doling it out a bit at a time is a way for Disney, in particular, to keep subscribers hooked. When Disney+ launches, people who want to watch all of Jon Favreau's Star Wars series, The Mandalorian, will need to keep their subscriptions active for at least a couple of months. While cord-cutters routinely look for ways to dip in and out of new services, bingeing the content they care about, Disney is looking to keep its initial subscribers stable while adding more throughout the year. The strategy is crucial for Disney to reach its estimated goal of around 10 million customers by the end of 2020.

The Guardian learned that the suspected mass shooter at an El Paso, Texas Walmart "is believed to also have posted a white nationalist rant on 8chan" -- then interviewed the CEO of the company hosting it. If the connection between the 21-year-old suspect in Saturday's massacre and the 8chan document is confirmed -- and law enforcement sources told NBC News that they are "reasonably confident" that they are linked -- then the El Paso attack will mark the third mass shooting in less than six months that was announced in advance on the message board... Throughout the day on Saturday, 8chan users discussed the massacre and the suspect, with many referring to the alleged shooter as "our guy" and praising the number of people killed...
UPDATE: 8:25 p.m. PST: Cloudflare's CEO announced that they are in fact terminating 8chan, effective at midnight PST.

Here are his remarks to the Guardian less than 24 hours earlier... "If I could wave a magic wand and make all of the bad things that are on the internet go away -- and I personally would put the Daily Stormer and 8chan in that category of bad things -- I would wave that magic wand tomorrow," [Cloudflare CEO Matthew] Prince said. "It would be the easiest thing in the world and it would feel incredibly good for us to kick 8chan off our network, but I think it would step away from the obligation that we have and cause that community to still exist and be more lawless over time."

Prince argued that keeping "bad" sites within Cloudflare's network means that the company is able to help monitor activity and flag illegal content to law enforcement. While he would not comment on specifics, he said that Cloudflare receives "regular requests" from law enforcement not to ban certain sites. "There are lots of competitors to Cloudflare that are not nearly as law abiding as we have always been," he said. "The minute that someone isn't on our network, they're going to be on someone else's network...." Prince also rejected any implication that Cloudflare's position is self-interested. "The right answer from a pure business perspective is just to kick them off," he said of 8chan. "Of the 2 million-plus Cloudflare customers, they don't matter, and the pain that they cause is well beyond anything else."

Keeping 8chan within its network is a "moral obligation", he said, adding: "We, as well as all tech companies, have an obligation to think about how we solve real problems of real human suffering and death. What happened in El Paso is abhorrent in every possible way, and it's ugly, and I hate that there's any association between us and that... For us the question is which is the worse evil? Is the worse evil that we kick the can down the road and don't take responsibility? Or do we get on the phone with people like you and say we need to own up to the fact that the internet is home to many amazing things and many terrible things and we have an absolute moral obligation to deal with that."

In honor of FreeDOS's 25th birthday, project founder and coordinator Jim Hall agreed to answer the 10 best questions submitted by Slashdot readers. You asked and he answered! Read on for Jim's interview.

Ericsson announced its plans to build a 5G factory in the U.S. sometime early next year. "The factory will be the Swedish telco equipment maker's first fully-automated factory, the company said, and will be used to produce 5G radios designed for urban areas," reports ZDNet. "It will also make Advanced Antenna System radios that it said are components for large-scale deployments of 4G and 5G networks for both rural and urban coverage." From the report: Ericsson did not provide details about where the factory will be located, but the company has plans to initially employ around 100 people at the factory, which will have "highly automated operations." Ericsson is currently signed on by T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, US Cellular, and GCI to help build out their respective 5G mobile networks. According to the Ericsson's latest mobility report, North America is expected to lead in the adoption of 5G, with the company predicting that 63% of North American mobile subscriptions will be 5G-based in 2024. Fierce Wireless says the company has made a direct investment of about $100 million, "which will kick in during the third quarter of this year."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Officials in San Francisco have proposed a new law to ban e-cigarette sales until their health effects are evaluated by the U.S. government. The law appears to be the first of its kind in the U.S. and seeks to curb a rising usage by young people. Critics, however, say it will make it harder for people to kick addiction. A second city law would bar making, selling or distributing tobacco on city property and is aimed at an e-cigarette firm renting on Pier 70. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released its proposed guidelines, giving companies until 2021 to apply to have their e-cigarette products evaluated. A deadline had initially been set for August 2018, but the agency later said more preparation time was needed. San Francisco city attorney Dennis Herrera, one of the co-authors of the bill, which is yet to be approved, said reviews should have been done before they were sold. Juul, one of the most popular U.S. e-cigarette firms, rents space on Pier 70. It said in a statement: "This proposed legislation begs the question -- why would the city be comfortable with combustible cigarettes being on shelves when we know they kill more than 480,000 Americans per year?"

Visa and Mastercard, the two biggest U.S. card networks, are preparing to increase certain fees levied on U.S. merchants for processing transactions that will kick in this April, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. From a report: Some of the changes relate to so-called interchange fees, the report said. Interchange fees are what merchants pay to banks when consumers use a credit or a debit card to make a purchase from their store. Fees that Mastercard and Visa charge financial institutions, such as banks, for processing card payments on behalf of merchants are also set to increase, the report said.

An anonymous reader writes: The Japanese government approved a law amendment on Friday that will allow government workers to hack into people's Internet of Things devices as part of an unprecedented survey of insecure IoT devices. The survey will be carried out by employees of the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) under the supervision of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

NICT employees will be allowed to use default passwords and password dictionaries to attempt to log into Japanese consumers' IoT devices. The plan is to compile a list of insecure devices that use default and easy-to-guess passwords and pass it on to authorities and the relevant internet service providers, so they can take measures to alert consumers and secure the devices. The survey is scheduled to kick off next month, when authorities plan to test the password security of over 200 million IoT devices, beginning with routers and web cameras. Devices in people's homes and on enterprise networks will be tested alike

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has personally weighed in on high-profile decisions, frustrating some employees. An anonymous reader shares a report: When Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey testifies before Congress this week, he'll likely be asked about an issue that has been hovering over the company: Just who decides whether a user gets kicked off the site? To some Twitter users -- and even some employees -- it is a mystery. In policing content on the site and punishing bad actors, Twitter relies primarily on its users to report abuses and has a consistent set of policies so that decisions aren't made by just one person, its executives say. Yet, in some cases, Mr. Dorsey has weighed in on content decisions at the last minute or after they were made, sometimes resulting in changes and frustrating other executives and employees [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], according to people familiar with the matter. Understanding Mr. Dorsey's role in making content decisions is crucial, as Twitter tries to become more transparent to its 335 million users, as well as lawmakers about how it polices toxic content on its site.

Last month, after Twitter's controversial decision to allow far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to remain on its platform, Mr. Dorsey told one person that he had overruled a decision by his staff to kick Mr. Jones off, according to a person familiar with the discussion. Twitter disputes that account and says Mr. Dorsey wasn't involved in those discussions. Twitter's initial inaction on Mr. Jones, after several other major tech companies banned or limited his content, drew fierce backlash from the public and Twitter's own employees, some of whom tweeted in protest. [...] "Any suggestion that Jack made or overruled any of these decisions is completely and totally false," Twitter's chief legal officer, Vijaya Gadde, said in a statement. "Our service can only operate fairly if it's run through consistent application of our rules, rather than the personal views of any executive, including our CEO."

mikeebbbd writes: Back in the 1950s, many European carmakers (some of which are still in operation such as BMW) made tiny cars for one or 2 people that ran on tiny amount of gas. The remaining examples of bubble cars have become sort of a fetish. Now two Swiss brothers, according to Reuters, are trying to resurrect one of the more iconic designs -- the BMW Isetta. One wonders how it could meet any kind of safety standards, but a prototype is shown in the article. Perhaps it might be registered as a Neighborhood Electric Vehicle, which gets it by a few standards? Oliver and Merlin Ouboter have more than 7,200 orders for their Microlino, a modern version of the Isetta which swaps the old single-cylinder petrol engine for a 20 horsepower electric motor but keeps the famous front-opening door. The brothers, whose father Wim made millions from modernized kick-scooters, plan to launch the car in December. "The average modern car is way too big for normal use," said Oliver, the project's 24-year-old operations chief.

Mark Zuckerberg isn't planning to fire himself. At least, not at the moment. From a report: During an interview with Recode's Kara Swisher published Wednesday, the Facebook CEO touched on Russians interfering with US elections, misinformation, data breaches, the company's business model and more. When asked by Swisher who's to blame for the Cambridge Analytica scandal and related data misuse, Zuckerberg said he "designed the platform, so if someone's going to get fired for this, it should be me." Swisher followed up by asking if he was going to fire himself. "Not on this podcast right now," he said. Zuckerberg also defended the social media platform's decision not to kick off conspiracy theory-peddling websites like the far-right InfoWars. From a report: Zuckerberg said that instead of banning websites outright, the company removes individual posts that violate Facebook's terms of service. Posts promoting violence are particularly likely to be taken down, he added. Zuckerberg, who is Jewish, said even Holocaust deniers have a place on the platform as long as they genuinely believe the content they share. "I find that deeply offensive," he said. "But at the end of the day, I don't believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. I don't think that they're intentionally getting it wrong."

The new tallest building on the San Francisco skyline -- and the tallest building in America west of the Mississippi -- includes a nine-story electronic sculpture that's been called the tallest piece of public art on Earth. It uses 11,000 LED bulbs reflected off the tower-topping aluminum panels -- each pixel created by a set of red, green, blue and white lights controlled by 8-bit PIC microcontrollers. "On a clear night, the show is visible for 30 miles," reports IEEE Spectrum.

Slashdot reader Tekla Perry shares their article about "the technology involved in the light show at the top of Salesforce Tower. Electrical engineer and artist Jim Campbell explains it all -- and how the window-washer problem stumped him for nearly a year." "[O]n the 62nd floor, a central PC-based computer runs Ubuntu Linux, sending instructions to a communications control system that splits the data and sends it at 11 Mbit to the 32 enclosures using a custom communications protocol... We will capture images throughout the day, sending them to Amazon's cloud, and run some algorithms designed to identify visual interesting-ness. For example, at its simplest, when we look at the sky, if it's all blue, it's boring, if it's all white, it's boring, if it has white and blue it is likely to be interesting. We'll chose the best half hour of the day at each camera, based on movement and color, to display...."

And finally, when the main display shuts down late at night, another system designed by Campbell will kick in. In this static display, a set of 36 white LEDs will create a three-dimensional constellation of lights that will look like stars. "It's quieter, it has a random aspect to it," he says.
"Since construction started, the tower has emerged as an icon of the new San Francisco -- techie, ambitious, perhaps a little grandiose," writes the New Yorker, capturing the moment when Campbell finally unveiled his four-year project -- while fighting stomach flu and a chest cold, on a night which turned out to be prohibitively foggy. The executive vice-president of Boston Properties told him cheerily, "Jim! Look on the brighter side. We've got every night for the rest of our lives."

"There was a long silence from the people on the terrace. The fog was thick. At last, someone exclaimed, 'Woo-hoo!,' and a volley of cheers followed." Although the colors they were seeing came from the celebratory fireworks and not from Jim's light sculpture.

Are there any San Francisco-area Slashdotters who want to weigh in on the Salesforce Tower?

Google plans to wade into the debate over whether technology -- and the time spent on devices -- is harmful to people's health, The Washington Post reports. From the report: At its annual developer conference, scheduled to kick off in its hometown of MountainView, Calif., on Tuesday, Google is set to announce a new set of new controls to its Android operating system, oriented around helping individuals and families manage the time they spend on mobile devices [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], according to a person familiar with the company's thinking.

In his keynote address on Tuesday, chief executive Sundar Pichai is expected to emphasize the theme of responsibility, the person said. Last year's keynote was more focused on developments in artificial intelligence. The anticipated shift in tone at the event reflects increased public skepticism and scrutiny of the technology industry as it reckons with the negative consequences of how its products are used by billions of people.