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Submission + - Once Slashdot beta has been foisted upon me, what site should I use instead? 2

Submitted by somenickname
somenickname writes: As a long time Slashdot reader, I'm wondering what website to transition to once the beta goes live. The new beta interface seems very well suited to tablets/phones but, it ignores the fact that the user base is, as one would expect, nerds sitting in front of very large LCD monitors and wasting their employers time. It's entirely possible that the browser ID information gathered by the site has indicated that they get far more hits on mobile devices where the new interface is reasonable but, I feel that no one has analyzed the browser ID (and screen resolution) against comments modded +5. I think you will find that most +5 comments are coming from devices (real fucking computers) that the new interface does not support well. Without an interface that invites the kind of users that post +5 comments, Slashdot is just a ho-hum news aggregation site that allows comments. So, my question is, once the beta is the default, where should Slashdot users go to?

Submission + - Slashdot beta sucks 9

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Maybe some of the slashdot team should start listening to its users, most of which hate the new user interface. Thanks for ruining something that wasn't broken.

Comment Campaign Contributions (Score 4, Interesting) 111

by Delarth799 (#46167985) Attached to: Utah Bill Would Prevent Regional Fiber Networks From Growing
With another election year here it's time to roll out the bribe.... I mean campaign contributions to those who are willing to support the legislation being presented before them. Wouldn't surprise me in the least if most of those opposed to this had the big telcos or any PAC they setup start rolling out attack ads against them shortly.

Submission + - Google's Quantum Computer Cannot be Explained Classically 2

Submitted by quax
quax writes: So writes the company that developed the machine on their blog. Admittedly, you would expect them to defend their architecture, but the founder of D-Wave, Geordie Rose, puts forward a compelling argument, that comes down to Occam's razor. The scientists who claim that the machine can be explained classically, as recently reported on slashdot, only base their model on the sub-set of data that they looked at in their research. But if you look at all the data amassed by D-Wave over time, only quantum annealing makes for a perfect fit.

They are not the only ones who argue that D-Wave's claims in this regard hold up. Independent research performed by Matthias Troyer et al. confirms that quantum annealing is the best model to describe the machines performance, but they don't see evidence for quantum speed-up yet. A recent video nicely summarizes their research findings.

Submission + - With HTTPS Everywhere, is Firefox now the most secure mobile browser? (eff.org) 2

Submitted by Peter Eckersley
Peter Eckersley writes: Over at EFF, we just released a version of our HTTPS Everywhere extension for Firefox for Android. HTTPS Everywhere upgrades your insecure web requests to HTTPS on many thousands of sites, and this means that Firefox on Android with HTTPS Everywhere is now by far the most secure browser against dragnet surveillance attacks like those performed by the NSA, GCHQ, and other intelligence agencies.

Android users should install the Firefox app and then add HTTPS Everywhere to it. iPhone and iPad users will unfortunately have to switch to Android to get this level of security because Apple has locked Mozilla Firefox out of their platforms.

Submission + - Scientists Solve Mystery of 'Chinese Pompeii' (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Scientists have long marveled at the immaculately preserved fossils unearthed from ancient lake sediments in northeastern China. The former creatures—including fish, birds, small dinosaurs, and mammals—still sport the outlines of muscles, skin, and feathers thanks to the fine-grained volcanic ash that blanketed the carcasses and then hardened into rock. Now, new analyses of the remains show that the material that entombed the animals also killed them, overwhelming them in a hot cloud of ash akin to the one that destroyed the Roman city of Pompeii nearly 2000 years ago.

Submission + - 2 breakthroughs that could disrupt the iOS/Android duopoly (techi.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "Not to jinx it, but a promising system with the potential to disrupt the Android-Apple duopoly has emerged. Tizen, a Linux-based operating system, is one big elephant in the room backed by companies like Intel and Samsung.

With the advent of wearable devices, Tizen stands to be the one system capable of seamlessly integrating with them. Tizen is both open source- and standards-based, giving it the ability to provide high interoperability to a myriad of systems — a capability which will soon be a necessity.

What’s the one thing holding Tizen back? It just needs one killer feature that will give users a compelling reason to switch platforms."

Submission + - Press Used to Print Millions of counterfeit US Banknotes Seized in Quebec Canada (rcmp-grc.gc.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Canadian Royal Mounted Police reports: An offset printing press used to manufacture counterfeit US$20 banknotes was seized by the RCMP and US Secret Service. This significant seizure was made earlier today in the Trois-Rivières area. The authorities had been looking for this offset press for several years. A large quantity of paper was also seized by police, that could have been used by the counterfeiters to manufacture from US$40 to US$200 million.

Those very high quality counterfeit notes were virtually undetectable to the naked eye. Some of the features they had were rather uncommon in this criminal industry, including the type of paper used, that was especially made with a Jackson watermark and a dark vertical stripe imitating the security thread found in authentic notes.

Submission + - JK Rowling Admits Harry Potter Ending Was Wrong

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: The Guardian reports that JK Rowling admits that she may have got it wrong by matching Hermione with Ron and that Hermione should have ended up with Harry Potter instead. In an interview with quarterly lifestyle magazine Wonderland, whose forthcoming edition is guest-edited by Hermione actress Emma Watson, Rowling admits she made a mistake in having Hermione marry Ron at the end of her seven-novel cycle. "I wrote the Hermione-Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That's how it was conceived, really," says Rowling. "For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended up with Ron." Some fans of the books never warmed to the idea that the bookish girl and the clumsy but loyal red-head were meant to be — especially since Harry and Hermione always seemed so perfect for each other. “If I’m absolutely honest, distance has given me perspective on that,” concludes Rowling. “It was a choice I made for very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility. Am I breaking people’s hearts by saying this? I hope not.”

Submission + - Super Bowl Ads: Worth the Price or Waste of Time?

Submitted by samzenpus
samzenpus writes: Every year companies are willing to dish out big bucks to reach tens of millions of consumers with their Super Bowl ads. This year is no exception with an average price tag of $4 million for a 30-second commercial. We've seen: beer obsessed frogs, field goal kicking horses, celebrities drinking various beverages, explosions of all sizes, homages to 1984, and day trading babies in the past. Since talking about the commercials has become almost as popular as the game itself, here's a place to do just that. What have you liked and what do you think would have been better left on the cutting room floor.

Submission + - Something Hit Earth in 773 AD But Nobody Knows What (medium.com)

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: In November 2012, a group of Japanese scientists discovered that the concentration of carbon-14 in Japanese cedar trees suddenly rose between 774 AD and 775 AD. Others have since found similar evidence and narrowed the date to 773 AD. Astronomers think this stuff must have come from space so now the quest is on to find the extraterrestrial culprit. Carbon-14 is continually generated in the atmosphere by cosmic rays hitting nitrogen atoms. But because carbon-14 is radioactive, it naturally decays back into nitrogen with a half-life of about 5700 years. This constant process of production and decay leaves the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere relatively constant at about one part in a trillion will be carbon-14. One possible reason for the increase is that the Sun belched a superflare our way, engulfing the planet in huge cloud of high energy protons. Recent calculations suggest this could happen once every 3000 years and so seems unlikely. Another possibility is a nearby supernova, which bathed the entire Solar System in additional cosmic rays. However, astronomers cannot see any likely candidates nearby and there are no historical observations of a supernova from that time. Yet another possibility is that a comet may have hit the Earth, dumping the extra carbon-14 in the atmosphere. But astronomers have ruled that out on the basis that a comet carrying enough carbon-14 must have been over 100 km in diameter and would surely have left other evidence such as an impact crater. So for the moment, astronomers are stumped.

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