theodp writes: The Harvard Crimson reports that more than 60 of the 636 students enrolled in last fall's CS50: "Introduction to Computer Science I" course appeared before the College's Honor Council in a wave of academic dishonesty cases that has stretched the Council to its limits over the past few months. Former students and course staff, though, said course policy was unclear about what constituted cheating, creating the potential for unintentional violations. Consistently, one of the most popular courses at Harvard, CS50 is known for an unconventional atmosphere, complete with flashy promotional videos and corporate-sponsored events.

According to a recently published patent spotted by CB Insights, Walmart "describes a system of connected sensors that could monitor customers' product consumption," reports The Verge. "The sensors would be attached to products and rely on a variety of technology, like radio frequencies, Bluetooth, conventional barcodes, and RFID tags." From the report: Walmart doesn't suggest that any one sensor type would work best; rather, it lays out its options. Apparently it has a lot of ideas: these tags would all track how often a product is used and where it's located in a home. They could also help Walmart figure out what other products it could market to users based off their purchases. A tag reader installed on a fridge, for example, could scan every item that goes inside. This reader could then track when food is going bad or needs to be reordered. On the other hand, an RFID system could figure out when a person is picking up their toothbrush and use that information to estimate how much toothpaste is left. It could then be automatically reordered.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Prosecutors in Pueblo, Colorado are dropping felony drug and weapon-possession charges after an officer involved in the case said he staged body cam footage so he could walk "the courts through" the vehicle search that led to the arrest. The development means that defendant Joseph Cajar, 36, won't be prosecuted on allegations of heroin possession and of unlawful possession of a handgun. The evidence of the contraband was allegedly found during a search of Cajar's vehicle, which was towed after he couldn't provide an officer registration or insurance during a traffic stop. Officer Seth Jensen said he found about seven grams of heroin and a .357 Magnum in the vehicle at the tow yard. But the actual footage of the search that he produced in court was a reenactment of the search, the officer told prosecutors.

An anonymous reader writes: A new study shows that 53 percent of people believe it's legal to install a program on a family member's phone to snoop on their activity. The survey of more than 2,000 people in the US and UK by software comparison service Comparitech.com also finds 57 percent would consider spying on their children's phone conversations and messages. [...] It is generally illegal to install an app on another person's phone without their knowledge. Though this does depend on the circumstances. "It's a legal grey area, in that the laws haven't been truly tested in this arena as of yet since the technology is relatively new, so as relevant cases move through the legal system they'll be decided on a case by case basis," says Josh King, a legal expert in privacy laws and the chief legal officer of Avvo, an online legal marketplace in the US. "Intentional infliction of emotional distress, fraud claims -- all could be implicated, depending on the circumstances. It's also possible that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act could be used to prosecute someone who installs this type of app on someone else's phone."

An anonymous reader writes: Oracle sought to position itself once again this week as the best place for everything companies need to move to cloud computing. On Thursday, executives at the database and business software giant distanced Oracle from public cloud leaders such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure that provide computing, storage and other services to corporations looking to reduce or eliminate their data centers. "Our cloud is more comprehensive than any other cloud in the market today, a full end-to-end cloud," said David Donatelli, Oracle's executive vice president of converged infrastructure. "We design from the chip all the way up to the application, fully vertically integrated." What's interesting about that messaging, which Oracle has been refining since at least its OpenWorld conference last September, is not simply the competitive positioning. Oracle is essentially saying that the nature of cloud computing suggests customers need to move away from the notion that has dominated information technology since personal computers and PC-based servers began to displace mainframes and minicomputers: cherry-picking the best applications and hardware and cobbling together their own IT setups. In short, Oracle contends, it's time for another broad swing back to the integrated, uber-suppliers of a bygone era of technology. Of course, the new tech titans such as Google, Facebook and Amazon arguably wield as much power in their particular domains of advertising and e-commerce as the Big Blue of old. But it has been a long time since a soup-to-nuts approach has worked for enterprise tech companies, and for those few still attempting it, such as Dell and Oracle, it's far from obvious it will work. The cloud, Oracle contends, may well change that.

An oil refinery is an industrial cathedral, a place of power, drama and dark recesses: ornate cracking towers are its gothic pinnacles, flaring gas its stained glass, the stench of hydrocarbons its heady incense. Data centres, in contrast, offer a less obvious spectacle: windowless grey buildings that boast no height or ornament, they seem to stretch to infinity. Yet the two have much in common. From an article on The Economist: A new commodity spawns a lucrative, fast-growing industry, prompting antitrust regulators to step in to restrain those who control its flow. A century ago, the resource in question was oil. Now similar concerns are being raised by the giants that deal in data, the oil of the digital era (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source). These titans -- Alphabet (Google's parent company), Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft -- look unstoppable. They are the five most valuable listed firms in the world. Their profits are surging: they collectively racked up over $25bn in net profit in the first quarter of 2017. Amazon captures half of all dollars spent online in America. Google and Facebook accounted for almost all the revenue growth in digital advertising in America last year. Such dominance has prompted calls for the tech giants to be broken up, as Standard Oil was in the early 20th century.

Reader mirandakatz writes: It's the 10th anniversary of Scratch, the kids programming language that's become a popular tool for training the next generation of minds in computer science. But as Steven Levy writes at Backchannel, Scratch's real value is how it imparts lessons in sharing, logic, and hackerism: 'A product of the MIT Media Lab, Scratch is steeped in a complicated set of traditions -- everything from educational philosophy to open source activism and the pursuit of artificial life. The underpinnings of this tool subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, convey a set of values through its use... These values include reverence of logic, an unshakeable belief in the power of collaboration, and a celebration of the psychic and tangible rewards of being a maker.'

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft is in the testing stage of a new feature in its Edge browser for Windows 10 that is malware-proof as it partitions the browser window from the rest of the computer. This will be a welcome addition for users who are worried about the legitimacy of sites they want to visit. The new feature, catchily dubbed Windows Defender Application Guard, is part of the recently launched Windows Insider Previews. In order to access it you'll need to be a member of Microsoft's business service Enterprise, and have your settings calibrated so you're in the testing group called Fast Ring. Application Guard works by creating a virtual PC that is entirely separate from all storage, other apps, and the Windows 10 Kernel, meaning that the browser should be completely impervious to malware.

An anonymous reader shares a report: There's a reason that everyone you look at it is looking at a smartphone. According to the folks whose job it is to track such things, people can't get enough of apps, and global usage of them continues to increase. In its latest usage report, App Annie takes a look at the average user's app usage for the first quarter of 2017 and reaches the conclusion that mobile apps have become vital to our day-to-day lives. Last year's report found that time spent in apps reached 1 trillion hours. The average smartphone user, in the United States and other countries analyzed, used over 30 apps per month. That's about a third of the number that are actually installed on phones in the U.S. People use about 10 apps every day, the data shows, with iPhone users using slightly more than Android users. Utilities and tools are the most commonly used apps on a monthly basis, thanks to pre-installed apps such as Safari on iOS and Google on Android.

The UK government is planning to push greater surveillance powers that would force internet providers to monitor communications in near-realtime and install backdoor equipment to break encryption, according to a leaked document. From a report on ZDNet: A draft of the proposed new surveillance powers, leaked on Thursday, is part of a "targeted consultation" into the Investigatory Powers Act, brought into law last year, which critics called the "most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy." Provisions in proposals show that the government is asking for powers to compel internet providers to turn over the realtime communications of a person "in an intelligible form," including encrypted content, within one working day. To that end, internet providers will be forced to introduce a backdoor point on their networks to allow intelligence agencies to read anyone's communications.

An anonymous reader writes: Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, opted to deliver a speech in French on Friday morning because he said "English is losing importance" in Europe. He gave the comments, which are unlikely to mend fences after a war of words between Brussels and London over Brexit negotiations, at the "State of the Union" conference in Florence's Palazzo Vecchio -- an annual event for European dignitaries. Juncker said he was opting for French because "slowly but surely English is losing importance in Europe and France has elections this Sunday and I want the French people to understand what I am saying about the importance of the EU." He spoke in English.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Security firm G Data says that a new piece of Android malware is discovered every 10 seconds. At this rate, the company is predicting that there will be 3,500,000 new malicious Android files by the end of the year. "The threat level for users with smartphones and tablets with an Android operating system remains high. In all, the G DATA security experts expect around 3.5 million new Android malware apps for 2017," they said. The firm said that the risk was heightened by the fact that only a small minority of users are on the latest version of Android.

An anonymous reader shares an NPR report: The U.S. economy added 211,000 jobs to nonfarm payrolls in April, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says. Both the unemployment rate, at 4.4 percent, and the number of unemployed persons, at 7.1 million, saw only incremental changes in April. The new data follow disappointing results from March, when the Labor Department initially said less than 100,000 jobs were created. In April, some of the biggest job gains came in leisure and hospitality, health care and social assistance, financial activities, and mining, the agency says.

parallel_prankster quotes a report from Washington Post: The Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation into Uber's use of a secret software that was used to evade authorities in places where its ride-sharing service was banned or restricted, according to a person familiar with the government's probe. The investigation is in its early stages, but deepens the crisis for the embattled company and its chief executive and founder Travis Kalanick, who has faced a barrage of negative press this year in the wake of high-profile sexual harassment complaints, a slew of high-level executive departures, and a consequential trade secrets lawsuit from Google's parent company. The federal criminal probe, first reported by Reuters, focuses on software developed by Uber called "Greyball." The program helped the company evade officials in cities where Uber was not yet approved. The software identified and blocked rides to transportation regulators who were posing as Uber customers to prove that the company was operating illegally.