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Submission + - Mozilla Trials Native Firefox Ad Blocking Tools For All 1

Submitted by Mickeycaskill
Mickeycaskill writes: Mozilla could add a degree of native ad blocking to Firefox in a future release if a test of the ‘Tracking Protection’ feature in the browser is successful.

Tracking Protection arrived with Firefox 42 last November, giving users control over what types of data third parties received from their browsing. This could mean certain online advertisements might not display properly.

However until now, Tracking Protection has been limited to private browsing. Mozilla is looking at extending this protection to all tabs but first needs to see where the feature “breaks” the web – this includes ads.

To achieve this, it is inviting users to participate in a ‘Test Pilot’, a scheme which sees Firefox users test experimental features in the early stage of development.

Submission + - Fears of a Hacked Election May Keep 15 Million Voters Away from Polls (carbonblack.com)

Submitted by rmurph04
rmurph04 writes: According to a survey conducted by security firm Carbon Black, more than one in five registered U.S. voters may stay home on Election Day because of fears about cybersecurity and vote tampering. Respondents believe a U.S. insider threat poses the most risk (28 percent), followed by Russian hackers (17 percent) and then the candidates themselves (15 percent), the survey found.

Submission + - Woman Who Took Husband's Intestine on Flight to Europe Wanted It Tested

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: The NYT reports that a Moroccan woman who took a piece of her dead husband’s intestine on a flight to their home in Austria was carrying the sample because she suspected that he had been poisoned and she wanted European doctors to examine it. The woman packed the four-inch piece in her checked baggage on a flight to the southern Austrian city of Graz, where she and her husband had been living for eight years. She acted on the advice of a doctor in Marrakesh who shared her suspicion that her husband had been poisoned at a meal the couple ate while visiting his relatives. The woman was travelling through Graz airport in the south of Austria but was reportedly stopped by officials after they observed her behaving suspiciously. Officers determined that the woman had violated no Austrian laws by bringing the sample into the country. A Moroccan doctor extracted the piece of intestine and apparently helped pack it in formaldehyde and in thick plastic containers. Gerald Höfler, who leads the pathology institute in Graz where the intestine is being examined, described the packaging as very professional. “I would imagine that it was done by a pathologist,” Höfler said. “It was absolutely secure, triple wrapped, according to European Union norms.”

Submission + - Stop the transfer if ICANN (nytimes.com)

Submitted by s.petry
s.petry writes: We all knew it was going to come up again, and again, but this time I don't see Google and Facebook giving people banners and raising a stink over a massive negative change to the Internet like we did with CISPA/SOPA.

The transfer of ICANN and IANA to an unaccountable international body would mean the end of the Internet as we know it because it would lose all protection provided by the United States First Amendment.

For the not so Internet / DNS savvy here is a good discussion on the issue (it's not bad even if you are savvy).

This may be a rehash of previous posts, but the transfer is scheduled for October 1st and still on the table.

People in the US can find the correct Government contacts here.

Submission + - Commodore C64 Survives Over 25 Years Balancing Drive Shafts In Auto Repair Shop (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: One common gripe in the twenty-first century is that nothing is built to last anymore. Even complex, expensive computers seem to have a relatively short shelf-life nowadays. However, one computer in a small auto repair shop in Gdansk, Poland has survived for the last twenty-five years against all odds. The computer in question here is a Commodore C64 that has been balancing driveshafts non-stop for a quarter of a century. The C64C looks like it would fit right in with a scene from Fallout 4 and has even survived a nasty flood. This Commodore 64 contains a few homemade aspects, however. The old computer uses a sinusoidal waveform generator and piezo vibration sensor in order to measure changes in pressure, acceleration, temperature, strain or force by converting them to an electrical charge. The C64C interprets these signals to help balance the driveshafts in vehicles.

Submission + - Maryland Hobbyist Suing the FAA over Drone Registry 1

Submitted by jenningsthecat
jenningsthecat writes: Maryland drone builder and attorney John Taylor, who in January took the FAA to court over its drone registry program, is now receiving financial help with his suit from DC DUG, the D.C. area Drone User Group. In his Petitoner's Brief, (PDF), Taylor maintains that "(f)or the first century of American aviation and beyond, the federal government made no attempt whatsoever to regulate recreational model aircraft", and that "(t)he FAA seeks to revise history when it argues its failure to register model aircraft, or otherwise treat them in any manner as ‘aircraft,’ in the past was the exercise of an ‘enforcement discretion'"

As of this writing I have been unable to find any news on the progress of the suit beyond its having been filed.

Submission + - What is employers obsession with programming languages? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Just got off the phone with a recruiter for a company and the lady asked if I had 3-4 years C++ and 3-4 years Java experience. Okay, so first off, C++ and Java are two different programming languages used for two completely different purposes.

C++ being used mainly for low-level platform specific programming and Java being platform independent. My response was I programmed in C++ throughout college, but haven't worked any jobs specifically writing C++ and I've had Java experience in past jobs, but mostly used C# which was similar.

She said, "Oh well we are only looking for those two languages so thanks anyways". Is it just me or is this absolutely insane? It's like wanting to hire a mechanic who has 3-4 years experience working with just 1978 ford trucks. I mean really? How did we get to this point as engineers?

As any developer worth their weight in salt can attest, the languages are so similar it's kind of difficult to distinguish between them looking at syntax alone and if you've got a computer science background or equiv what's it really matter if the underlying OOP concepts are the same.

Is this just a result of incompetent managers and ignorant recruiters or as engineers have we set ourselves up by succumbing to a label such as Java Engineer or C# Programmer.

Should I just say yes, and move forward with the interview? I mean, I could probably answer most C++/Java programming questions unless they are truly looking for people who spend all their time memorizing specific libraries or API's which in my opinion is insane. I equate that to trying to memorize a phone book. You can but why would you want to?

Not only is it frustrating as a job candidate, but it seems to really be limiting your hiring pool to a small few who by chance happen to work in a couple different programming languages over the course of their career. How do most of you handle this sort of thing?

Submission + - F-35A Catches Fire at Mountain Home Air Force Base (defensenews.com)

Submitted by theweatherelectric
theweatherelectric writes: Writing for Defense News, Valerie Insinna reports that another F-35 has caught fire during an exercise. She writes, "The incident took place at around noon and involved an F-35A aircraft from the 61st Fighter Squadron located at Luke Air Force Base, the service said in a statement. No serious injuries seem to have been sustained by the pilot or nearby crew.

'The pilot had to egress the aircraft during engine start due to a fire from the aft section of the aircraft,' Air Force spokesman Capt. Mark Graff said in an email. 'The fire was extinguished quickly. As a precautionary measure, four 61st Aircraft Maintenance Unit Airmen, three Airmen from the 366th Maintenance Group and the 61st Fighter Squadron pilot were transported to the base medical center for standard evaluation.'"

Submission + - Ask Slashtot: How to determine if your IOT device is part of a botnet? 1

Submitted by galgon
galgon writes: There has been a number of stories of IoT devices becoming part of
Botnets and being used in DDOS Attacks. If these devices are seemingly working correctly to the user how would they ever know the device was compromised? Is there anything the average user can do to detect when they have a misbehaving device on their network?

Comment Re:In other words.. (Score 3, Insightful) 221

by Z00L00K (#52955977) Attached to: Tuesday Was Microsoft's Last Non-Cumulative Patch

And this is what's most worrying, we don't really know what's in "Telemetry", and I have a feeling that it's going to be a problem.

And we can't figure out which part of a future monolithic patch that actually causes the system to behave bad, some patches aren't even possible to uninstall without a lot of hard work.

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