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Submission + - Questionable ad content served on Slashdot 4

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I appreciate that Slashdot has a need for revenue, but it also has editorial standards. Is the garish banner ad for detox-my-mac.com (which will send the victim to whatever's hosted at [randomizedalphanumerics].hop.clickbank.net) supposed to be there, or has Slashdot been compromised? The ad appears:below the sidebar, on the homepage when Javascript is disabled. (When Javascript is enabled, the ad does not appear because the sidebar doesn't scroll and it renders below the sidebar, far below the viewport. Curiously, the ad does not render in Firefox, but the HREF is present in the HTML source.)

Submission + - Anonymous "Anonymous Cowards" are, for now, not welcome on Slashdot (arstechnica.com) 7

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: On August 9 Slashdot quietly removed one of its earliest features: the ability to post comments as an "Anonymous Coward." Users can now only access the "Anonymous Coward" feature if they are logged in with a valid account. Slashdot administrators say this change is currently "temporary."

In an email interview, Slashdot President Logan Abbott says that the decision has nothing to do with Cloudflare's moves to cut ties with 8chan, Daily Stormer, or other controversial sites. Instead, he says the change is "absolutely, only" meant to combat spam.

"The spam was simply too great and coming from extremely dedicated trolls," Abbott says, and he points to large walls of text and SEO spammers as some of the site's most notorious posters. Abbott claims that the move is meant to make the site's existing moderation system more productive. "The improvement in quality of discussion so far speaks for itself."

Submission + - WebKit introduces new tracking prevention policy (webkit.org)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: WebKit, the open source HTML engine used by Apple's Safari browser and a number of others, has created a new policy on tracking prevention. The short version is that many forms of tracking will now be treated the same way as security flaws, being blocked or mitigated with no exceptions.

While on-site tracking will still be allowed (and is practically impossible to prevent anyway), all forms of cross-site tracking and covert tracking will be actively and aggressively blocked.

Submission + - 'Sex With Stalin' BDSM Game On Steam Enrages Russian Communists (themoscowtimes.com) 1

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: A satirical BDSM game that has not even been released yet has enraged Russian Communists who call on it to be banned. In "Sex With Stalin", you play a time traveller who goes back in time to meet the great dictator. Your relationship with Josef is up to you — you can give him political advice, get him to start wars, or seduce him with BDSM sex and even kill him, altering the course of history. The probably satirical game is quite sexually explicit from the looks of it, and the developers say that they are creating a "friend for the dictator", who appears to be Adolf Hitler ( https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.ne... ), also in a state of undress. Maxim Suraikin, head of the Communists of Russia party, called the adult-themed game’s developers “insane.” “This has to be banned, no question,” he told the Govorit Moskva radio station. “The title itself already sounds outrageous and perverted.” Suraikin said that the developers, whose only other release appears to be “Boobs Saga,” a bosom-themed “satirical 3D action” game released last winter, could be held criminally liable for the contentious game. “On the other hand, they’re simply people without honor and conscience who are outrageously trying to latch on to Stalin’s growing popularity,” he said.
Education

Is Believing In Meritocracy Bad For You? (fastcompany.com) 480

Posted by EditorDavid from the thinking-bad-thoughts dept.
An anonymous reader quotes Fast Company: Although widely held, the belief that merit rather than luck determines success or failure in the world is demonstrably false. This is not least because merit itself is, in large part, the result of luck. Talent and the capacity for determined effort, sometimes called "grit," depend a great deal on one's genetic endowments and upbringing.

This is to say nothing of the fortuitous circumstances that figure into every success story. In his book Success and Luck, the U.S. economist Robert Frank recounts the long-shots and coincidences that led to Bill Gates's stellar rise as Microsoft's founder, as well as to Frank's own success as an academic. Luck intervenes by granting people merit, and again by furnishing circumstances in which merit can translate into success. This is not to deny the industry and talent of successful people. However, it does demonstrate that the link between merit and outcome is tenuous and indirect at best. According to Frank, this is especially true where the success in question is great, and where the context in which it is achieved is competitive. There are certainly programmers nearly as skilful as Gates who nonetheless failed to become the richest person on Earth. In competitive contexts, many have merit, but few succeed. What separates the two is luck.

In addition to being false, a growing body of research in psychology and neuroscience suggests that believing in meritocracy makes people more selfish, less self-critical, and even more prone to acting in discriminatory ways.
The article cites a pair of researchers who "found that, ironically, attempts to implement meritocracy leads to just the kinds of inequalities that it aims to eliminate.

"They suggest that this 'paradox of meritocracy' occurs because explicitly adopting meritocracy as a value convinces subjects of their own moral bona fides."

Comment Late-Breaking News from the Council... (Score 3, Funny) 95

by Tackhead (#58119004) Attached to: NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity Concludes a 15-Year Mission

Early this evening, the Council of Elders announced a planetary day of mourning and magnanimity.

K'Nord, Speaker for the Council, spoke thusly:

"Citizens and Podmates, the Council is pleased to announce that after seven and a half full years -- the longest campaign in the history of the Martian Defense Force -- the diabolical mechanized adversary from the blue world has been defeated. Our defense forces, counted in the billions, have finally surrounded and denied the invader the light and warmth it needs to survive. The blueworlders have acknowledged defeat and ceased contact. Ths invasion, at least on this front, is now over.

Let us raise our glasses to mourn the lost gelsacs of at least half our press corps, some of whose entire careers have been dedicated to coverage of this conflict -- and in a spirit of magnanimity in victory, we -- the victors of the Conflict at Endeavour Crater -- must also raise our glasses in awe and respect of our longest-lived and most challenging foe."

Shortly thereafter, a wizened old retired Councilmember, his gelsacs having long ago been ceremonially ground into a fine tartare and shared amongst the Council, wiped a perchlorate tear from his eye: "Well-done, blueworlders. Well-done."

Submission + - AmigaOS 3.1.4 released for classic Amiga (hyperion-entertainment.com)

Submitted by Mike Bouma
Mike Bouma writes:

The new, cleaned-up, polished Amiga operating system for your 68K machine fixes all the small annoyances that have piled up over the years. Originally intended as a bug-fix release, it also modernizes many system components previously upgraded in OS 3.9.

Contrary to its modest revision number, AmigaOS 3.1.4 is arguably as large an upgrade as OS 3.9 was, and surpasses it in stability and robustness. Over 320K of release notes cover almost every aspect of your favourite classic AmigaOS — from bootmenu to datatypes.

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