Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Can Yahoo Actually Stage a Comeback? (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Fresh off purchasing Tumblr for $1.1 billion, Yahoo has moved to the next stage of what’s becoming a company-wide reboot: fixing Flickr, the photo-sharing service that it acquired in 2005 and subsequently allowed to languish. Yahoo boosted Flickr accounts' individual storage capacity to one free terabyte, revamped the Website's overall look, and launched a new Flickr app for Google Android, among other tweaks. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer clearly wants her company to fight toe-to-toe on features with Google and Facebook, but she faces a long road ahead of her: not only does she need to streamline Yahoo’s cumbersome corporate structure and product portfolio into something that resembles fighting shape, but she needs to reverse the general perception that Yahoo is teetering on the edge of history’s trash-bin, with an aging customer base and unexciting features. The question is, could anyone actually pull it off? Is Yahoo capable of an Apple-style turnaround, or are its current actions merely delaying the inevitable?

Submission + - Google and NASA Join Forces on Quantum Computing Project (informationweek.com)

Submitted by CowboyRobot
CowboyRobot writes: NASA's Ames Research Laboratory, in collaboration with Google and the Universities Space Research Association (USRA), has announced plans to host a 512-quantum-bit (qubit), quantum computer at its new Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab. Quantum computing combines the principles of quantum physics, where a bit of matter can exist in two states, with supercomputing processes that manipulate billions of bits of data. A bit can be 0, 1 or both, allowing the computer to test all possible solutions simultaneously. NASA's interest in quantum computing lies in trying to solve extremely complex problems in areas such as optimizing air traffic control, navigation and communication, and robotics. Google views quantum computing as having potential to solve high-level computer science problems, especially in the area of machine learning.

Submission + - IE 8 Zero Day Exploit Used Against Korean Military Targets (threatpost.com)

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: The Sunshop targeted espionage malware campaign has hit a number of Korean military and political-strategy websites, as well as a Uyghur forum with a pair of Java exploits and the IE 8 zero-day recently used against the U.S. Department of Labor and a number of other sites. The exploits were redirecting vulnerable visitors to sunshop[.]com[.]tw where a host of malware awaits including Lady Boyle, which has been deployed in other attacks against the Uyghur, in particular, and in the Winnti attacks.

Submission + - Quadcopter Drone Network Transports Supplies For Disaster Relief (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by kkleiner
kkleiner writes: A startup called Matternet is building a network of quadcopter drones to deliver vital goods to remote areas and emergency supplies to disaster-stricken areas. The installation of solar-powered fueling station and an operating system to allow for communications with local aviation authorities will allow the network to be available around the clock and in the farthest reaches of the world.

Submission + - Transporting a 15-m, 600-ton Magnet Cross Country

Submitted by necro81
necro81 writes: Although its Tevatron particle accelerator has gone dark, Fermi Laboratory outside Chicago is still doing physics. A new experiment, called muon g-2 will investigate quantum mechanical behavior of the electron's heavier sibling: the muon. Fermi needs a large ring chamber to store the muons it produces and investigates, and it just so happens that Brookhaven National Laboratory outside NYC has one to spare. But how do you transport a delicate, 15-m diameter, 600-ton superconducting magnet halfway across the country? Very carefully.

Submission + - HTML5 used for new, dynamic Transport for London website (v3.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Transport for London (TfL) which oversees the smooth (sometimes) running of the entire London transport network has unveiled plans to build a new website based entirely on HTML5 so it can meet the needs of mobile commuters on any device. It will also be ditching Microsoft's Bing Maps for Google's services in the process.

Submission + - Aurora Attackers Were Looking for Google's Surveillance Database

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: When in early 2010 Google shared with the public that they had been breached in what became known as the Aurora attacks, they said that the attackers got their hands on some source code and were looking to access Gmail accounts of Tibetan activists. What they didn't make public is that the hackers have also accessed a database containing information about court-issued surveillance orders that enabled law enforcement agencies to monitor email accounts belonging to diplomats, suspected spies and terrorists. Whether this was the primary goal of the attacks as well as how much information was exfiltrated is unknown. current and former U.S. government officials interviewed by the Washington Post say that the database in question was possibly accessed in order to discover which Chinese intelligence operatives located in the U.S. were under surveillance.

Submission + - Stem-Cell Treatment Restores Blind Man's Sight (medicaldaily.com)

Submitted by ewolfson
ewolfson writes: A blind man has received the gift of sight, thanks to an innovative stem-cell treatment. The treatment, which was part of a trial examining the safety of using human embryonic stem cells (hESCs), has restored the man's vision enough for him to pass any standard vision test for a driver's license.

"There's a guy walking around who was blind, but now can see," said Gary Rabin of Advance Cell Technology (ACT) . "With that sort of vision, you can get a driver's license."

This news comes on the heels of the announcement last week that U.S. scientists have successfully cloned human embryos to make stem cells, a development that has reignited the debate surrounding human cloning and the morality of experimentation with stem-cells.

Submission + - Justice Department got more than phone records in journalist probe (seattletimes.com)

Submitted by PolygamousRanchKid
PolygamousRanchKid writes: When the Justice Department began investigating possible leaks of classified information about North Korea in 2009, investigators did more than obtain telephone records of a working journalist suspected of receiving the secret material.

They used security-badge access records to track the reporter’s comings and goings from the State Department, according to a newly obtained court affidavit. They traced the timing of his calls with a State Department security adviser suspected of sharing the classified report. They obtained a search warrant for the reporter’s personal emails.

The case of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, the government adviser, and James Rosen, the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News, bears striking similarities to a sweeping leaks investigation disclosed last week in which federal investigators obtained records over two months of more than 20 telephone lines assigned to The Associated Press. AP executives and First Amendment watchdogs have criticized the Justice Department in part for the broad scope of the phone records it secretly subpoenaed. “The latest events show an expansion of this law-enforcement technique,” said attorney Abbe Lowell, who is defending Kim on federal charges filed in 2010 that he disclosed national-defense information.

Investigators also scrutinized computer records and found that someone who had logged in with Kim’s user profile viewed the classified report “at or around” the same time two calls were placed from his desk phone to Rosen, according to the documents.

Submission + - Electronics Made From Hemp (acs.org)

Submitted by MTorrice
MTorrice writes: A low-cost chemical process can turn hemp fiber into carbon nanomaterials. Researchers used the materials to make devices called supercapacitors that provide quick bursts of electrical energy. Supercapacitors made with the hemp nanosheets put out more power than commercial devices can.

Submission + - 41% Of San Francisco's Serious Crime Is Gadget Theft (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: Between November 2012 and April 2013, 579 people in San Francisco had cell phones or tablets stolen from them — making up 41% of what San Francisco police consider "serious" crimes. A quarter of those robberies involved the display of a knife or a gun. On several days in that period, cell phone thefts were the only serious crimes that occured. San Francisco is a particularly gadget-happy place, of course, but similar numbers come from police departments in Washington D.C. and New York. Smartphones are in some ways the perfect thing to steal: they're small, they have a high resale value, and the people using them are often not paying attention to their surroundings.

Submission + - Convicted Pirate Bay co-founder to run for European Parliament (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Peter Sunde aka brokep of TPB fame is going to run for European Parliament in 2014, as a Finnish Pirate Party candidate. As he still has a prison sentence to serve in Sweden, he might have to campaign from behind bars.

"Amusingly, the Pirate ticket in Finland could have been even bigger than it is now. Sunde informs TorrentFreak that he also reached out to Finnish-born Kim Dotcom to join the race, but the Megaupload founder currently has other priorities."

Submission + - Australian Government initiates covert Internet censorship (delimiter.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Remember how the Australian Government tried to enact a big bad Internet filter on the population? Well, that effort failed, but now there's a new initiative in place. At least one government agency, the country's financial regulator, has quietly started issuing legal notices to ISPs requesting them to block certain types of websites deemed illegal. There's no oversight or appeals process, and already a false positive event has resulted in some 1,200 innocent websites being blocked from Australians viewing them. Sounds ideal, right?

Slashdot Top Deals

Real Users know your home telephone number.

Close