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Submission + - The NES Mini is a $60 single board computer (and it runs Linux)

Submitted by romiz
romiz writes: As the first samples of the NES Mini reach reviewers, its hardware specifications are now easy to find. With a quad-core ARM Cortex-A7, 256 MiB of RAM, and 512 MiB of NAND Flash, it is typical of the hardware found in Linux single board computers, like the RaspberryPi 2. Surprisingly for Nintendo, there does not seem to be any custom components in it, and it looks like it even does run Linux. The GPL license for the kernel and many other open source components is visible in the legal information screen. The source, however, is not available on Nintendo's open source page yet.

But it is the re-edition a 1980s video console: there is no network access, no hardware expansion port, and the 30 games cannot be changed. Changing the system runnning on it will probably be difficult.

Submission + - All New 'Starship Troopers' Reboot in the Works 1

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Hollywood Reporter reports that Columbia Pictures is rebooting Starship Troopers, the 1997 sci-fi film directed by Paul Verhoeven. The studio is not remaking the film but is said to be going back to the original Heinlein novel for an all-new take and no personnel from the 1997 film are involved. Verhoeven’s film, which starred Casper van Dien and Denise Richards, received critical acclaim for its surprising satire but was a disappointment at the box office, making just $121m worldwide from a $105m budget. The original movie, considered a mixed success at the time of its release went on to achieve a cult following and during the DVD boom of the 2000s, it became a mini-franchise for the studio, which produced three additional direct-to-DVD movies. The newly announced reboot is said to be more faithful to Robert A. Heinlein's original book, but is that a good idea? "Starship Troopers has been decried as promoting fascism and being racist in its creation of a society where democracy has been severely restricted and warfare against the alien "bugs" comes with its own coded terminology that hews too closely to real-world racism for many," says Graeme McMillan. "The question then becomes: in updating Starship Troopers to make it more acceptable to today's audience, can it still manage to remain faithful enough to Heinlein's original to please the existing fan base?"

Submission + - Mythbuntu Linux Distribution Has Been Discontinued

Submitted by prisoninmate
prisoninmate writes: The team behind the Mythbuntu GNU/Linux distribution sadly announced this morning that the project has been discontinued, effective immediately, and no new releases will be made. Mythbuntu was an operating system based on the widely-used Ubuntu Linux distro and built around the MythTV free and open source digital video recorder (DVR) project. The first release of the OS was back when Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) was announced, and the last one was Mythbuntu 16.04.1 LTS (Xenial Xerus). From this point, no new releases of the Mythbuntu Linux operating system will be created, which means that there will be no new ISO images anymore. Also, the mythbuntu-desktop and Mythbuntu-Control-Centre packages are now discontinued and won't be available from the Ubuntu repositories anymore. However, users will still be able to install the MythTV software and configure it as they see fit. The Mythbuntu team recommends users who want to use "Mythbuntu" to install the latest release of the Xubuntu Linux operating system and then add the Mythbuntu PPA (Personal Package Archive), which will continue to provide the latest MythTV releases and other related packages.

Submission + - Face electrodes let you taste and chew in virtual reality (newscientist.com)

Submitted by walterbyrd
walterbyrd writes: Experiments with “virtual food” use electronics to emulate the taste and feel of the real thing, even when there’s nothing in your mouth. This tech could add new sensory inputs to virtual reality or augment real-world dining experiences, especially for people with restricted diets or health issues that affect their ability to eat.

Submission + - Researchers Create Undetectable Rootkit That Targets Industrial Equipment

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Two researchers presenting at the Black Hat Europe security conference in London revealed a method of infecting industrial equipment with an undetectable rootkit component that can wreak havoc and disrupt the normal operations of critical infrastructure all over the world.

The attack targets PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers), devices that sit between normal computers that run industrial monitoring software and the actual industrial equipment, such as motors, valves, sensors, breakers, alarms, and others.

Researchers say they packed their attack as loadable kernel module (LKM), which makes it both undetectable and reboot persistent. The attack goes after PLC pin configurations, meaning the PLC won't be able to tell which are the actual input and output pins, allowing the attacker full-control to make up bogus sensor data, send fake commands, or block legitimate ones.

Submission + - Google's DeepMind AI Plans To Take On StarCraft II (venturebeat.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google and Blizzard are opening up StarCraft II to anyone who wants to teach artificial intelligence systems how to conduct warfare. Researchers can now use Google’s DeepMind A.I. to test various theories for ways that machines can learn to make sense of complicated systems, in this case Blizzard’s beloved real-time strategy game. In StarCraft II, players fight against one another by gathering resources to pay for defensive and offensive units. It has a healthy competitive community that is known for having a ludicrously high skill level. But considering that DeepMind A.I. has previously conquered complicated turn-based games like chess and go, a real-time strategy game makes sense as the next frontier. The companies announced the collaboration today at the BlizzCon fan event in Anaheim, California, and Google’s DeepMind A.I. division posted a blog about the partnership and why StarCraft II is so ideal for machine-learning research. If you’re wondering how much humans will have to teach A.I. about how to play and win at StarCraft, the answer is very little. DeepMind learned to beat the best go players in the world by teaching itself through trial and error. All the researchers had to do was explain how to determine success, and the A.I. can then begin playing games against itself on a loop while always reinforcing any strategies that lead to more success. For StarCraft, that will likely mean asking the A.I. to prioritize how long it survives and/or how much damage it does to the enemy’s primary base. Or, maybe, researchers will find that defining success in a more abstract way will lead to better results, discovering the answers to all of this is the entire point of Google and Blizzard teaming up.

Submission + - Why a Theoretical Phycisist Wants All State Bills To Be Online Before Final Vote (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Among a slew on ballot propositions that Californians will be asked to consider on Election Day (Nov. 8) is Proposition 54, a proposed constitutional amendment that seems like a no-brainer. If passed, the law would require that the final text of all proposed legislation be published on the Internet for 72 hours before lawmakers can conduct a final vote. Typically, the text of bills in California is put online as it goes through the committee and voting process, but sometimes those bills can change at the last minute. Accessing those changes isn't always easy. The initiative, which seems all-but-certain to pass, has massive support from Charles T. Munger, Jr., the son of billionaire Charles Munger. The younger Munger, an experimental physicist at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and a longtime Republican activist, has donated over $10.6 million to the “Yes on Prop. 54” campaign. The effort supporting the opposing view has taken in just over $27,000. Proposition 54 would also force the Assembly and State Senate to allow the public to record meetings as well, which could potentially be used in political advertising. So why would anyone oppose the bill? According to Steven Maviglio, the director of Californians for an Effective Legislature, a campaign committee formed to oppose Proposition 54. It all comes down to who is behind the initiative, and why. “The first thing you need to do is follow the money,” he told Ars, pointing us to Munger, Jr. “He’s been the top contributor to the California Republican Party. His goal is to disrupt the power of a legislature that’s getting things done.”

Submission + - Munich Court To Try Facebook's Zuckerberg For Inciting Hatred (dw.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A Munich court has opened a lawsuit against Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, German media reported on Friday. News outlet "der Spiegel" wrote on its website, before the main weekly magazine's Saturday release, that it had obtained court documents charging the social media mogul with incitement to hatred. Zuckerberg is reportedly being charged alongside Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg, chief Europe lobbyist Richard Allan, and his Berlin counterpart Eva-Maria Kirschsieper. According to Spiegel, the complaint comes from the Wurzburg-based attorney Chan-jo Jun. In the suit, he accuses Facebook of tolerating appeals for murder, threats of violence, and Holocaust denial, among other things. Laws regulating hate speech in Germany are extremely tight, with most Nazi symbolism and racist propaganda strictly forbidden, a legacy of Germany's role in World War II. Although Facebook is obliged to remove illegal content from its site, it has repeatedly garnered hefty criticism for the time it takes to do so.

Submission + - Samsung Is Cutting the Note 7's Access To Mobile Networks In New Zealand (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: No one can claim there hasn’t been ample warning. The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 saga dragged out over multiple months, encompassing two recalls, several travel bans and then, ultimately, the untimely end for the troubled handset. Even still, some people just have trouble letting go. Starting November 18, Note 7 owners will not be able to connect to mobile networks in New Zealand, courtesy of a joint effort by Samsung and the The New Zealand Telecommunications Forum (TCF) to “blacklist” the device. No calls, no texts, no mobile data. Users will still be able to access WiFi, but the device will essentially be turned into a big Samsung iPod Touch. Samsung New Zealand added that it will work to contact all remaining Note 7 owners twice prior to the shut down, “to ensure they have received adequate notice.” It remains to be seen whether the company will take similar action in other markets.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Totally private, anonymous browsing 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In an age of evercookies, zombie cookies, and always expanding efforts to track browsers, devices, and people — is there any way to browse totally anonymous to the sites you are visiting? How can a user today browse with confidence that they can't be tracked or identified, avoiding even being identified anonymously as a returning user or device?

Submission + - Amazon Bans Incentivized Reviews Tied To Free or Discounted Products (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Amazon is making a significant change to its Community Guidelines, announced today, which will eliminate any incentivized reviews, except for those that emerge from within its own Amazon Vine program. This program allows Amazon – not the seller or vendor – to identify trusted reviewers, and has a number of controls in place in order to keep bias out of the review process. Amazon has historically prohibited compensation for reviews – even going so far as to sue those businesses who pay for fake reviews, as well as the individuals who write them, in an effort to make its review and rating system fairer and more helpful to online shoppers. However, it has allowed businesses to offer products to customers in exchange for their “honest” review. The only condition was that those reviewers would have to disclose their affiliation with the business in question in the text of their review. Reviewers were generally offered the product for free or at a discounted price, in exchange for their review. Although, in theory, these reviewers could write their true opinion on the product – positive or negative – these incentivized reviews have tended to be overwhelmingly biased in favor of the product being rated. Amazon says that, going forward, the only incentivized reviews will be those from Amazon Vine. These don’t work the same way, however. For starters, Amazon selects who will be allowed to review products, and it does so mainly to boost the review count on new or pre-release products that haven’t yet generated enough sales to have a large number of organic reviews. Vine reviewers are invited to join the program only after having written a number of reviews voted as “helpful” by other customers, and tend to have expertise in a specific product category. In addition, vendors don’t have any contact with Vine reviewers, nor do they get to influence which reviewers will receive their products, which are submitted directly to Amazon for distribution. These changes will apply to all product categories other than books, as Amazon has always allowed advance copies of books to be distributed, the retailer notes.

Submission + - Implication of Sabotage Adds Intrigue To SpaceX Investigation (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The long-running feud between Elon Musk’s space company and its fierce competitor United Launch Alliance took a bizarre twist this month when a SpaceX employee visited its facilities at Cape Canaveral, Fla., and asked for access to the roof of one of ULA’s buildings. About two weeks earlier, one of SpaceX’s rockets blew up on a launchpad while it was awaiting an engine test. As part of the investigation, SpaceX officials had come across something suspicious they wanted to check out, according to three industry officials with knowledge of the episode. SpaceX had still images from video that appeared to show an odd shadow, then a white spot on the roof of a nearby building belonging to ULA, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing. The SpaceX representative explained to the ULA officials on site that it was trying to run down all possible leads in what was a cordial, not accusatory, encounter, according to the industry sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. The building, which had been used to refurbish rocket motors known as the SMARF, is just more than a mile away from the launchpad and has a clear line of sight to it. A representative from ULA ultimately denied the SpaceX employee access to the roof and instead called Air Force investigators, who inspected the roof and didn’t find anything connecting it to the rocket explosion, the officials said.

Submission + - Tiny Particle Blows Hole In European Satellite's Solar Panel (go.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A tiny piece of debris has punched a gaping hole in the solar panel of one of Europe's Earth observation satellites, causing visible damage but not enough to affect its routine operations, the European Space Agency said Wednesday. The unknown particle just a few millimeters big slammed into the back of a solar panel on Copernicus Sentinel-1A on Aug. 23. Using on-board cameras, engineers have determined that the hole is about 40 centimeters (16 inches) in diameter. The European Space Agency said the loss of power caused by the strike is "relatively small" — less than 5 percent of the wing's usual output. The likelihood of such a strike is calculated at between 1:35 and 1:130 during the satellite's five-year lifetime, said Holger Krag, who heads the agency's space debris office. While the particle probably had a mass of less than one 1 gram (0.04 ounces), scientists calculated that it was traveling at up to 40,000 kilometers an hour (24,856 mph) when it hit Sentinel-1A.

Submission + - Samsung Unveils Gear S3 Classic And Frontier Smartwatches Powered By Tizen (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Samsung just wrapped up an event at the IFA expo in Berlin, where the company unveiled two new Gear S3 branded smartwatches. The new Samsung Gear S3 Classic and Gear S3 Frontier leverage many of the design elements from last-year's Gear S2 — like their Tizen OS, rotating control dial, round display, and fast wireless charging. However, other aspects of the Gear S3 have received significant upgrades. Although they are internally similar, there are a few external differences between the Gear S3 Classic and Frontier. The Gear S3 Classic is the sleeker, more streamlined version of the two. The Classic has a polished finish, with round buttons at the 2 and 4 o'clock positions and no addition protrusions on its chassis. The Gear S3 Frontier is more rugged and has a darker, brushed finish, with flat, rectangular textured buttons and protrusions on either side of the body to shield the buttons from accidental presses. Both the Gear S3 Classic and Frontier are also outfitted with Gorilla Glass SR to protect their circular, Super AMOLED displays, and they're both compatible with industry standard 22mm watch bands too. They are also IP68 rated, so they're able to withstand dust and dirt and water resistant for up to 30 minutes under 1.5 meters of water. Depending on how heavily these devices are used, Samsung claims they can last roughly 3 – 4 days on a single charge. They also have support for NFC (compatible with Samsung Pay), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and have built-in heart rate monitors, altimeter/barometer, and GPS as well.

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