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Comment Re:Umm yea. (Score 5, Interesting) 513

I am surprised. I wonder if software vendors will continue to support the Mac line. I mean it's not like their shitty mobile apps are what laptop and workstation users want. There's some real effort involved in pleasing the fruit's decision of the day.

10 years ago I would say yes. Especially in the audio and visual software application markets. Today those applications are just as performance capable on the PC. When I hear of someone working in those fields, I asked what platforms they use and I'm hearing more say PC whereas the answer used to be exclusively a "Mac". There's a shift going on. And I feel, this time, Apples decision will hurt them more than help.

Submission + - If you own bitcoin, it's probable you own child porn too. (medium.com)

Submitted by yopes
yopes writes: From the article: "As a clever law officer, all I now need to obtain full wiretap access to all of your communications, and a warrant to search every square inch of your home, office, storage, and cloud services, is to show that you’ve used bitcoin. Once I’ve shown you’ve ever used bitcoin, I now have probable cause that you may be storing child porn. It’s a fourth amendment workaround we should all be terrified of."

Submission + - The 600+ Companies PayPal Shares Your Data With (schneier.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: One of the effects of GDPR — the new EU General Data Protection Regulation — is that we're all going to be learning a lot more about who collects our data and what they do with it. Consider PayPal, that just released a list of over 600 companies they share customer data with. Here's a good visualization of that data.

Is 600 companies unusual? Is it more than average? Less? We'll soon know.

Submission + - 'Slingshot' Malware That Hid For Six Years Spread Through Routers (engadget.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Security researchers at Kaspersky Lab have discovered what's likely to be another state-sponsored malware strain, and this one is more advanced than most. Nicknamed Slingshot, the code spies on PCs through a multi-layer attack that targets MikroTik routers. It first replaces a library file with a malicious version that downloads other malicious components, and then launches a clever two-pronged attack on the computers themselves. One, Canhadr, runs low-level kernel code that effectively gives the intruder free rein, including deep access to storage and memory; the other, GollumApp, focuses on the user level and includes code to coordinate efforts, manage the file system and keep the malware alive. Kaspersky describes these two elements as "masterpieces," and for good reason. For one, it's no mean feat to run hostile kernel code without crashes. Slingshot also stores its malware files in an encrypted virtual file system, encrypts every text string in its modules, calls services directly (to avoid tripping security software checks) and even shuts components down when forensic tools are active. If there's a common method of detecting malware or identifying its behavior, Slingshot likely has a defense against it. It's no wonder that the code has been active since at least 2012 — no one knew it was there.

Comment Re:Also Crime and Sh*t in the Streets. (Score 3, Insightful) 304

by tatman (#56217721) Attached to: Silicon Valley Is Over, Says Silicon Valley

Wrong. Our appeal was denied (!) and we were told we had to pay. We could go to their meeting in person to appeal again but I don't have the patience or time for that. It wasn't that expensive, so we paid the f-ing thing.

This is probably the reason they denied your appeal....they "knew" you would pay it rather than deal with the hassle. Its just another form of robbery imo.

Submission + - SPAM: Flares seen at Proxima Centauri reduces chance for life there

Submitted by Earthquake Retrofit
Earthquake Retrofit writes: A team of astronomers led by Carnegie’s Meredith MacGregor and Alycia Weinberger detected a massive stellar flare—an energetic explosion of radiation—from the closest star to our own Sun, Proxima Centauri, which occurred last March. This finding, published by The Astrophysical Journal Letters, [spam URL stripped]... raises questions about the habitability of our Solar System’s nearest exoplanetary neighbor, Proxima b, which orbits Proxima Centauri.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Amazon Studios to adapt Iain M. Banks' Culture series

Submitted by leathered
leathered writes: Jeff Bezos today annnounced that Amazon Studios has picked up the rights to adapt the late Iain M. Bank's acclaimed Culture novels to the small screen beginning with the first in the series, Consider Phlebas. This comes after nearly three decades of attempts to bring Banks' utopian, post-scarcity society to film or television.

A huge fan of the Culture series is Elon Musk, whose SpaceX drone ships are named after Culture space vessels.

Submission + - TypeScript is the bridge between JavaScript and WebAssembly (malloc.fi)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: WebAssembly is a technology that enables writing browser apps that are packaged to a binary format. These binaries are sent over wire to the browser and executed in a runtime, much like JavaScript. A key difference is that devs won't write WebAssembly by hand — they will do so in a myriad of languages. Most web developers are used to writing JavaScript and with TypeScript you can take advantage of your existing skillset to create (or modify) components that compile to the Wasm binary format..

Submission + - Boston Dynamics is teaching its robot dog to fight back against humans (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Zorro
Zorro writes: Boston Dynamics’ well-mannered four-legged machine SpotMini has already proved that it can easily open a door and walk through unchallenged, but now the former Google turned SoftBank robotics firm is teaching its robo-canines to fight back.

Boston Dynamics describes the video as “a test of SpotMini’s ability to adjust to disturbances as it opens and walks through a door” because “the ability to tolerate and respond to disturbances like these improves successful operation of the robot”. The firm helpfully notes that, despite a back piece flying off, “this testing does not irritate or harm the robot”.

But teaching robots to fight back against humans may might end up harming us.

Submission + - Elon Musk Explains Why SpaceX Prefers Clusters of Small Engines (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The company's development of the Falcon 9 rocket, with nine engines, had given Musk confidence that SpaceX could scale up to 27 engines in flight, and he believed this was a better overall solution for the thrust needed to escape Earth's gravity. To explain why, the former computer scientist used a computer metaphor. "It’s sort of like the way modern computer systems are set up," Musk said. "With Google or Amazon they have large numbers of small computers, such that if one of the computers goes down it doesn’t really affect your use of Google or Amazon. That’s different from the old model of the mainframe approach, when you have one big mainframe and if it goes down, the whole system goes down."

For computers, Musk said, using large numbers of small computers ends up being a more efficient, smarter, and faster approach than using a few larger, more powerful computers. So it was with rocket engines. "It’s better to use a large number of small engines," Musk said. With the Falcon Heavy rocket, he added, up to half a dozen engines could fail and the rocket would still make it to orbit. The flight of the Falcon Heavy likely bodes well for SpaceX's next rocket, the much larger Big Falcon Rocket (or BFR), now being designed at the company's Hawthorne, California-based headquarters. This booster will use 31 engines, four more than the Falcon Heavy. But it will also use larger, more powerful engines. The proposed Raptor engine has 380,000 pounds of thrust at sea level, compared to 190,000 pounds of thrust for the Merlin 1-D engine.

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