An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: This year alone, at least 15 separate takedown notices ask Google to remove ThePirateBay.org from its index. Most of these are sent by the reporting agency Digimarc, on behalf of book publishers such as Penguin Random House, Kensington Publishing, and Recorded Books. This year alone, at least 15 separate takedown notices ask Google to remove ThePirateBay.org from its index. Most of these are sent by the reporting agency Digimarc, on behalf of book publishers such as Penguin Random House, Kensington Publishing, and Recorded Books. Over the years, The Pirate Bay's homepage has been targeted more than 70 times. While there's no shortage of reports, TPB's homepage is still in Google's index.

Since TPB's homepage is not infringing, Google categorically refuses to remove it from its search results. While the site itself has been downranked, due to the high number of takedown requests Google receives for it, ThePirateBay.org remains listed. Google did remove The Pirate Bay's homepage in the past, by accident, but that was swiftly corrected. "Google received a (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) take-down request that erroneously listed Thepiratebay.org, and as a result, this URL was accidentally removed from the Google search index," Google said at the time. "We are now correcting the removal, and you can expect to see Thepiratebay.org back in Google search results this afternoon," the company added.

In the next software update for its vehicles, Tesla will include several playable Atari games as new Easter eggs. CEO Elon Musk said the update would be released in "about four weeks" and should include games like Pole Position, Tempest, and Missile Command. The Verge reports: Pole Position's controls will apparently be linked to the Tesla's actual steering wheel -- while the vehicle is stopped, Musk made clear. It goes without saying, but no one should be messing around with any of these when they're behind the wheel of a moving car. A much bigger deal for Tesla owners is that, according to Musk, software version 9.0 will begin to enable "full self-driving features" in eligible vehicles. The new update might be discussed further during Tesla's earnings call later today.

Today, Samsung unveiled the successor to the Galaxy Tab S3 from last year. The aptly named Galaxy Tab S4 features a 10.5-inch Super AMOLED display with a 2560 x 1600 resolution, Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor with 4GB RAM, 64GB internal storage (expandable via microSD card) and 13-megapixel f1.9 rear-facing camera. Unlike the Tab S3, it includes Samsung Dex software that lets users connect a Samsung mobile device to a monitor and then use the device as a pseudo-desktop. Ars Technica reports: The first Dex dock came out over a year ago and was designed to be used with Samsung smartphones. Users could plug their device into the dock, connect it to a monitor, pair a keyboard and a mouse, and use the setup as they would a full desktop PC. The system ran a version of Android that Samsung modified to better suit a desktop UI, which included a lock screen and a task bar area with app icons. Dex on the Galaxy Tab S4 works just like this, with a couple of extra features that leverage the power of a tablet. When connected to a monitor, both the big screen and the tablet's screen can be used simultaneously. In a short demo, Samsung showed how the device supports up to 20 open windows at once and how features like split screen and drag-and-drop can be used just as they would on a desktop PC. Users can launch Dex when not connected to a monitor as well, and that produces the same modified Android UI on the tablet's 10.5-inch, 2560 x 1600 Super AMOLED display. When connected to a monitor, both the big screen and the tablet's screen can be used simultaneously. In a short demo, Samsung showed how the device supports up to 20 open windows at once and how features like split screen and drag-and-drop can be used just as they would on a desktop PC. Users can launch Dex when not connected to a monitor as well, and that produces the same modified Android UI on the tablet's 10.5-inch, 2560x1600 Super AMOLED display. The tablet carries a $649 price, but includes all the specs mentioned above, as well as support for signature Samsung features like Air Command, translate, and off-screen memos, and a redesigned S Pen.

NBA superstar LeBron James is opening a new school that many are calling a "game changer." It extends the length of a traditional school day and focuses on teaching a STEM curriculum to students who have a higher probability of failing academically or dropping out of school. An anonymous Slashdot reader shares a report from SB Nation: LeBron James' I Promise School opened Monday to serve low-income and at-risk students in his hometown, and the public school could be an agent of change in the eastern Ohio city. The institution is the intersection of James' philanthropic Family Foundation and the I Promise Network he helped kickstart. I Promise began as an Akron-based non-profit aimed at boosting achievement for younger students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Now the movement has the means to educate these students year-round. I Promise will feature longer school days, a non-traditional school year, and greater access to the school, its facilities, and its teachers during down time for students. That's a formula aimed at replicating some of the at-home support children may be missing when it comes to schoolwork. The school has also anchored its curriculum in math and science-based teaching, dipping into the STEM -- science, technology, engineering, and math -- curriculum that prepares students for the jobs of the future.

Hospitals will need to use new strategies to tackle bacteria experts have warned, after finding a type of hospital superbug is becoming increasingly tolerant of alcohol -- the key component of current disinfectant hand rubs. From a report: Handwashes based on alcohols such as isopropanol have become commonplace as a method of infection control. But while the move has been linked to benefits, including a fall in rates of hospital infections of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), new research suggests it might also have had unexpected consequences. Scientists say they have discovered that superbugs known as vancomycin-resistant enterococci, or VRE, appear to be becoming more tolerant to alcohol.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Earth's resources are limited. We only have so much water and food, let alone oil and gold. But humans are using more than Earth has to offer, and have been since 1970. In 2018, it's predicted we will use the equivalent of 1.7 Earths worth of resources -- which is, oh, almost a whole Earth more than we have. And the date at which we've consumed more than one Earth in a given year is called... Earth Overshoot Day.

In the 1960s, our consumption was almost perfectly synched to the Earth's resources, with humanity consuming one year's worth of Earth's resources in one year. But by 1971, that number slid backward, and has been sliding ever since. This year, 2018, saw the earliest Earth Overshoot Day yet: one Earth's worth of resources gobbled up by Aug. 1. (Last year, it happened on Aug. 2.) This doesn't mean that we've run out of clean water or timber today, and will have to live on scraps until New Year; it's that by exceeding the Earth's resources in August, we're bankrupting our future by consuming materials that are better off preserved for days to come.

An anonymous reader writes: NetMarketShare reports on the state of the desktop operating system market on the first day of each month. [...] In July, [the market share of] Windows 10 went from 35.71 percent to 36.58 percent, an increase of 0.87 percentage points. That's down from the 0.97 percentage points it grew in June, but shows that the OS is still packing on share at a steady rate. In July, Windows 7 lost 0.51 percentage points and now sits on 41.23 percent, just 4.65 percentage points ahead of the newer OS.

Three Ukrainians associated with the hacking group FIN7 have been arrested in Europe in connection with hacks of more than 100 U.S. companies that led to tens of millions of dollars in losses, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing U.S. officials and court documents. From the report: Fin7 has been linked to breaches affecting hotels bearing the name of U.S. President Donald Trump, Whole Foods, Chipotle, Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor, according to cyber security firm Trend Micro. The suspects, Fedir Hladyr, Dmytro Fedorov and Andrii Kolpakov, were arrested in Europe between January and June of this year, the Justice Department said on Wednesday. Hladyr is in U.S. custody and U.S. authorities are seeking extradition of the other two, the department said. The three were arrested in connection with computer hacks to steal customer payment card data and other information from more than 100 U.S. companies, the department said.

wiredmikey writes: The leak of an alleged Russian hacker's conversations with a security researcher shows more about the shadowy group of 12 Russian spies indicted by the FBI for targeting the 2016 U.S. election. The researcher, who gave her exchanges with the alleged hacker to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said she wasn't pleased to learn she had been corresponding with an alleged Russian spy. But she wasn't particularly surprised either.

The Republican-controlled Senate has defeated a push by Democrats to set aside an additional $250 million for states to upgrade their voting systems to protect against hacking and other cyberattacks. From a report: An amendment offered by Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy received 50 yes votes, 10 short of the 60 needed for approval. Leahy said securing U.S. elections and "safeguarding our democracy" is not a partisan issue. He said the Senate "must send a clear message to Russia and other foreign adversaries that tampering in our elections will not be tolerated. The president will not act. This duty has fallen to us." A similar effort was also rejected in the House.

A hacker broke into a few of Reddit's systems and managed to access some user data, including some current email addresses and a 2007 database backup containing old salted and hashed passwords, Reddit said Wednesday. From the announcement: Since then we've been conducting a painstaking investigation to figure out just what was accessed, and to improve our systems and processes to prevent this from happening again. Reddit says the incident occurred between June 14 and June 18 when the hacker "compromised a few of our employees' accounts with our cloud and source code hosting providers." Interestingly, even as Reddit employees maintain 2FA on their accounts, the attacker managed to get access to their data. "We learned that SMS-based authentication is not nearly as secure as we would hope, and the main attack was via SMS intercept," the company said. The company says it has a reason to believe the attacker had access to the following data: All Reddit data from 2007 and before including account credentials and email addresses. What was accessed: A complete copy of an old database backup containing very early Reddit user data -- from the site's launch in 2005 through May 2007. In Reddit's first years it had many fewer features, so the most significant data contained in this backup are account credentials (username + salted hashed passwords), email addresses, and all content (mostly public, but also private messages) from way back then. How to tell if your information was included: We are sending a message to affected users and resetting passwords on accounts where the credentials might still be valid. If you signed up for Reddit after 2007, you're clear here.

Deepa Seetharaman, writing for WSJ: Four years after Facebook bought WhatsApp for $22 billion, it is formally starting the messaging app on a new mission: bringing in revenue. WhatsApp on Wednesday detailed plans to sell advertisements and charge big companies that want to reach their customers through its service [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled: alternative source], launching its first major revenue streams as growth at Facebook's main app is starting to decelerate. The measures are aimed at connecting businesses with WhatsApp's user base of roughly 1.5 billion accounts, WhatsApp executives said.

The announcements follow disagreements between Facebook leaders and WhatsApp's co-founders, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, over how to monetize the popular, free service. Mr. Koum and Mr. Acton resisted efforts to put ads in WhatsApp, and over the past year both men have decided to leave Facebook and the messaging app they started in 2009 -- a breakup that was the subject of a Page One article in The Wall Street Journal in June. [...] Next year, WhatsApp plans to show ads in its Status feature, company officials told the Journal. Status allows users to post montages of text, photos and video that appear for 24 hours -- similar to an Instagram tool called Stories. About 450 million people use WhatsApp Status, compared with about 400 million who use Instagram Stories, which already shows ads.

Catalin Cimpanu, reporting for BleepingComputer: On Monday, officials from Matanuska-Susitna (Mat-Su), a borough part of the Anchorage Metropolitan Statistical Area, said they are still recovering from a ransomware infection that took place last week, on July 24. The ransomware infection crippled the Borough's government networks and has led to the IT staff shutting down a large swath of affected IT systems. [...] Officials said they were planning to clean and reinstall 650 desktop computers and servers located on the parts of the Mat-Su network believed to be affected. [...] "Without computers and files, Borough employees acted resourcefully," said Mat-Su Public Affairs Director Patty Sullivan last week. "They re-enlisted typewriters from closets, and wrote by hand receipts and lists of library book patrons and landfill fees at some of the 73 different buildings." Mat-Su IT Director Eric Wyatt identified the "virus" as the BitPaymer ransomware earlier this week, the report said.

Tia Han, reporting for NK News: 2018 marks the tenth year that cellphones have been legally available in North Korea. The number of users has been growing significantly since then, but overall use remains low: according to the country's state-run Sogwang outlet in January, more than 3.5 million -- out of a population of 25 million -- have mobile subscriptions. "We started providing the 3G service in December 2008, so this year marks the 10th year of the service," Han Jong Nye, from the Arirang Information and Technology Center in Future Scientist Street in Pyongyang, was quoted as having said in Sogwang in January. "The demand for mobile phones is growing larger and larger."

[...] North Korean mobile users cannot access the worldwide internet, of course: use is limited to the country's state-run intranet. Reports suggest various kinds of applications are now accessible for mobile users -- from games to shopping -- several state-run North Korean outlets have reported on their recent technological development, often with a great deal of emphasis on their local origins. State media suggests that North Koreans are playing games, reading books, listening to music, doing karaoke, learning to cook, and even increasing crop output on their smartphones.

[...] Since the majority of smartphone users do not have an access to the internet, according to one expert, users have to go to a technology service center where technicians install apps to their cell phone. "Most mobile users do not have data service even if they buy a smartphone, so they have to be happy with pre-loaded apps such as games and dictionaries," Yonho Kim, a non-resident fellow at Korea Economic Institute, told NK News.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft has launched a pilot program aimed at providing cybersecurity protection for political campaigns and election authorities. The pilot program -- named AccountGuard -- was launched at the end of July, Bleeping Computer has learned, and was set in motion for the 2018 US midterm elections. According to the pilot's website, AccountGuard "provides additional security and threat monitoring for Microsoft accounts belonging to participating US campaigns, political committees, campaign tech vendors, and their staff, who are likely to be at a higher risk in the lead up to elections."

Microsoft is now running a website where participants in the 2018 US midterm elections can sign up for this increased protection. According to the portal, participation is offered on a non-partisan basis and is by invitation only. Users from the following organizations are eligible to participate: (1) US-based political campaigns (2) US-based political committees (3) Select campaign technology vendors (4) Select individuals may also participate, if invited by eligible campaigns and affiliated organizations Last month, Microsoft said they had detected and helped block hacking attempts -- the first known example of cyber interference in the midterm elections -- against three congressional candidates this year. On Tuesday, Facebook said it was blocking more than two dozen pages that it believed were part of an ongoing political influence campaign.