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Submission + - SPAM: Google Has My Dead Grandpa's Data And He Never Used The Internet 2

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes:

Over the past couple months I’ve been held up on a regular basis by the fact that Google has been overriding my LastPass credential window with their own despite the fact that I’ve never given Google access to any of my sign in credentials. This has been happening to me more often than I’d like, and it has really started to bug me. Why? A couple reasons. For one, I don’t want Google perpetually scanning my form fields grabbing stuff I didn’t ask them to just because that’s their default status. And two, Google is prioritizing their credential services over others I had previously chosen. This is simply a small demonstration of Google’s monopoly power that I would prefer it not be in my life. So last week I decided it would be the last time.

My first step was to hit that little “Manage” button Google has deprioritized at the bottom of their credential window to see where it took me. What I found out is that Google, as expected, has been keeping track of me very well. Upon arrival to the controls page, I found a list of “Saved Passwords” (duh) as well as a list of “Never Saved” passwords.

Hmm. Never Saved? At no point did I tell Google to create and store a list of websites I had logged into that they didn’t get access to but would like access to at some point in the future. Maybe in the Terms of Service/Privacy Policy I agreed to this, but who knows? Not the majority of us, and it’s just creepy.

And you’ll still have to read further to get to the part where Google had a dossier on his non-internet using grandfather.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Microsoft rolls out major fall update to Windows 10 (windows10update.com)

Submitted by Ammalgam
Ammalgam writes: Microsoft have rolled out a major update to Windows 10 called the Fall Update, November Update or Threshold 2. The update is now publicly available for everyone to download and Microsoft have confirmed that it will be a staggered release.

This update is full of fixes and refinements to Windows 10 including substantial changes to Edge, Cortana, icons, the Start Menu, Activation and multiple enterprise features. Here is a full list of changes.

Have you updated your Windows 10 install yet? What was your experience?
The Internet

Ask Slashdot: How To Monitor Your Own Bandwidth Usage? 319

Posted by CmdrTaco from the with-a-yardstick dept.
Vrtigo1 writes "With many ISPs either already using bandwidth caps or talking about them, I was wondering how other Slashdot readers are keeping tabs on how much data is being transferred through their home Internet connections. None of the consumer routers I've used seem to make this information easily accessible. I'd like some way to see exactly how much data has been sent and received by the WAN port facing my ISP's modem so I can compare the numbers I get with the numbers they give me. I don't want to pay for their modem firmware updates and other network management traffic, so I'd like to see how the two numbers line up."
Government

Jerry Brown Confiscates 48,000 Cell Phones 738

Posted by samzenpus from the suede-denim-secret-police dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The Sacramento Bee reports that California Governor Jerry Brown, in his first executive order since taking office, has ordered the collection and return of 48,000 state government-paid cell phones — half of those now in use — by June 1. 'It is difficult for me to believe that 40 percent of all state employees must be equipped with taxpayer-funded cell phones,' says Brown in a written statement. 'Some state employees, including department and agency executives who are required to be in touch 24 hours a day and seven days a week, may need cell phones, but the current number of phones out there is astounding.' Brown's cell phone order directs state agency and department heads to retrieve the cell phones and the governor says he plans to continue reducing cell phone usage in months ahead. 'In the face of a multi-billion dollar budget deficit, a cell phone may not seem like a big expense,' adds Brown. 'But spending $20 million, and perhaps far more than that, on cell phones can't be justified.'"
News

Swedish Firm Proposes City Buildings On Rails 223

Posted by CmdrTaco from the jesus-does-not-have-wheels-ralph dept.
Lanxon writes "A Swedish architecture firm that came up with a plan to roll buildings through a city on rails has won third prize in a competition to develop the Norwegian city of Åndalsnes. The company, Jagnafalt Milton, suggested that existing and new railroads could be built to provide the base for buildings that could be positioned differently depending on the seasons and on the weather. It proposed designs for rail-mounted single- and double-berth cabins, along with a two-story suite, reports Wired."
Science

Sciencey Heroes For Young Children? 614

Posted by samzenpus from the how-about-godzilla? dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Unhappy that all his friends have heroes he knows nothing about (they've all chosen hockey players — actually a hockey player: Sidney Crosby), my eight-year-old son asked me if I would find him a 'cool hero.' When pressed to define 'cool,' he very earnestly gave me this list of acceptable professions: 'Astronauts, explorers, divers, scientists, and pilots.' A second and only slightly less worthy tier of occupations includes 'inventors, meteorologists, and airplane designers.' To be eligible for hero status, an individual must be (1) accomplished in one of these fields, (2) reasonably young (it pains me to report that Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger, NASA's youngest astronaut and now just 31, barely makes the cut), and, critically to my naive son's way of thinking, (3) respected by third graders nationwide. Ignoring that last criterion, or not, what heroes would you suggest from the sciences as people whose lives and accomplishments would be compelling to an eight-year-old mind?"
Idle

The Placebo Effect Not Just On Drugs 824

Posted by samzenpus from the your-actions-are-futile dept.
dvdme writes "It seems the placebo effect isn't just valid on drugs. It's also a fact on elevators, offices and traffic lights. An article by Greg Ross says: 'In most elevators installed since the early 1990s, the 'close door' button has no effect. Otis Elevator engineers confirmed the fact to the Wall Street Journal in 2003. Similarly, many office thermostats are dummies, designed to give workers the illusion of control. "You just get tired of dealing with them and you screw in a cheap thermostat," said Illinois HVAC specialist Richard Dawson. "Guess what? They quit calling you." In 2004 the New York Times reported that more than 2,500 of the 3,250 "walk" buttons in New York intersections do nothing. "The city deactivated most of the pedestrian buttons long ago with the emergence of computer-controlled traffic signals, even as an unwitting public continued to push on."'"
Television

News Corp. Shuts Off Hulu Access To Cablevision 316

Posted by samzenpus from the no-fox-for-you dept.
ideonexus writes "Normally when we advocate Net Neutrality, we are talking about preventing ISPs from discriminating against content providers, but in this case, the content provider is discriminating against the ISP. Is this a new dimension in the Net Neutrality fight? From the article: 'Cablevision internet customers lost access to Fox.com and Fox programming on Hulu for a time Saturday afternoon — the result of a misguided effort on News Corp.'s part to cut off online viewing as an alternative in its standoff with the cable operator over retrans fees. Fox stations in NYC, Philadelphia, and New Jersey went dark at midnight Friday when negotiations between the two broke down.'"
The Internet

Meet NELL, the Computer That Learns From the Net 272

Posted by CmdrTaco from the nell-like-lolcat-pew-pew dept.
bossanovalithium writes "Carnegie Mellon University has taught a computer how to read and learn from the internet. According to Dennis Baron at the Oxford University press blog, the computer is called NELL and it is reading the internet and learning from it in much the same way that humans learn language and acquire knowledge. Basically by soaking it all up and figuring it out. NELL is short for Never Ending Language Learner and apparently it is getting brainier every day."
Data Storage

OCZ IBIS Introduces High Speed Data Link SSDs 76

Posted by CmdrTaco from the zoom-zoom-zoom dept.
Vigile writes "New solid state drives are released all the time, and the performance improvements on them have started to stagnate as the limits of the SATA 3.0 Gb/s are reached. SATA 6G drives are still coming out and some newer PCI Express based drives are also available for those users with a higher budget. OCZ is taking it another step with a new storage interface called High Speed Data Link (HSDL) that extends the PCI Express bus via mini-SAS cables and removes the bottleneck of SATA-based RAID controllers thus increasing theoretical performance and allowing the use of command queueing — vital to high IO's in a RAID configuration. PC Perspective has a full performance review that details the speed and IO improvements and while initial versions will be available at up to 960 GB (and a $2800 price tag), in reality, the cost-per-GB is competitive with other high-end SSDs when you get to the 240GB and above options"
Microsoft

To Ballmer, Grabbing iPad's Market Is 'Job One Urgency' 764

Posted by kdawson from the slate-envy dept.
Barence writes "Microsoft's Steve Ballmer has vented his frustration at the success of the iPad and said developing a Windows alternative is 'job one urgency.' 'Apple has done an interesting job of putting together a synthesis and putting a product out, and in which they've... they sold certainly more than I'd like them to sell, let me just be clear about that,' Ballmer told analysts. The Microsoft boss said the company plans to deliver a range of tablet formats in the next year, some based on Intel's next-gen Oak Trail processor. 'It is job one urgency around here. Nobody is sleeping at the switch. And so we are working with those partners, not just to deliver something, but to deliver products that people really want to go buy.'" In Microsoft's vision, slates will run a derivative of Windows 7.
Social Networks

Leaving a Comment? That'll Be 99 Cents, and Your Name 377

Posted by timothy from the slashdot-ai-ponders-this-idea dept.
netbuzz writes "Anxious to lift a ban on comments brought about by incessant trolling and anonymous slander, a Massachusetts newspaper has begun requiring two things of online readers who want to leave their thoughts on stories: a one-time fee of 99 cents and a willingness to use their real names. Says the publisher: 'This is a necessary step, in my opinion, if The Attleboro (MA) Sun Chronicle is going to continue to provide a forum for comments on our websites.'"

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