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The Internet

France To Introduce Controversial Age Verification System For Adult Websites (politico.eu) 101

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
The French Parliament unanimously agreed this week to introduce a nationwide age verification system for pornography websites, months after President Emmanuel Macron pledged to protect children against such content. From a report: Macron made the protection of children against adult content online a high-profile issue well before the coronavirus crisis hit. In January, tech companies, internet services providers and the adult movies industry signed a voluntary charter, pledging to roll out tools to help ensure minors don't have access to pornographic content. Within a broader law on domestic violence, the Senate decided in June to introduce an amendment requiring pornography websites to implement an age verification mechanism.

In order to enforce the law, the French audiovisual regulator CSA will be granted new powers to audit and sanction companies that do not comply -- sanctions could go as far as blocking access to the websites in France with a court order. The choice of verification mechanisms will be left up to the platforms. But lawmakers have suggested using credit card verification -- a system first adopted by the U.K., which mulled similar plans to control access to pornography but had to drop them in late 2019 because of technical difficulties and privacy concerns. Italy also approved a similar bill in late June, which raised the same concerns over its feasibility and compliance with the EU laws.

Comment Innovation! Except... (Score 1) 132

Except that Qualcomm Eudora had this exact feature for email back in the 90's. It was called 'MoodWatch', depicted by varying amounts of chili peppers.

It would either warn you or delay sending of the message when queueing/sending.

1 Chili: Message seems it might be offensive.
2 Chilis: Message is probably offensive.
3 Chilis: Message is on fire!
Power

Ask Slashdot: Could Nikola Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower Have Worked? 365

Posted by BeauHD from the inventions-of-the-past dept.
dryriver writes: For those who are unfamiliar with the story, from 1901-1902, inventor Nikola Tesla had a 187-foot-tall experimental wireless electricity transmission tower called the "Wardenclyffe Tower" built in Shoreham, New York. Tesla believed that it was possible to generate electrical power on a large scale in one part of the world and transmit that electrical power to electrical receivers in far away parts of the world wirelessly, using parts of Earth's atmosphere as the conducting medium. Tesla had huge problems getting the project financed -- powerful banker J.P. Morgan didn't play along and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson didn't help a pleading Tesla either. An excerpt from a Wardenclyffe documentary shows the tower finally being dynamited and sold for scrap in 1917. The Wardenclyffe Tower never reached operational status; wireless electrical transmission between continents never happened; Tesla became an emotionally broken man who died regretting that he did not manage to finish his life's work; and to this day nobody knows exactly how the Wardenclyffe Tower was supposed to function technically. To the question: Do you believe that Tesla's dream of electrical devices anywhere in the world essentially being able to draw electrical power from the sky with a relatively simple antenna could have worked, had he gotten the necessary funding to complete his experiments?

Comment Why is this a thing? (Score 1, Interesting) 115

by sirsky (#58046652) Attached to: Electronics Are 'the Fastest-Growing Waste Stream in the World'
Why is this even a thing? So what? China, Hong Kong, etc. gathers the materials, manufactures it, and sells it in the US. We in the US buy it, use it, and when we're done with it, we send it back. If it's such a problem, they should figure out how to deal with it, since it's all going back from whence it came anyway.

Comment Common Knowledge (Score 5, Insightful) 185

It has been common knowledge that millions of comments were forged and faked from day one. An estimated 2 million American's stolen identities to post fake comments on an incredibly important issue doesn't matter -- until it's just 2 American Senators? What's wrong with this picture?
Transportation

Studies Are Increasingly Clear: Uber, Lyft Congest Cities (apnews.com) 370

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
One promise of ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft was fewer cars clogging city streets. But studies suggest the opposite: that ride-hailing companies are pulling riders off buses, subways, bicycles and their own feet and putting them in cars instead . From a report: And in what could be a new wrinkle, a service by Uber called Express Pool now is seen as directly competing with mass transit. Uber and Lyft argue that in Boston, for instance, they complement public transit by connecting riders to hubs like Logan Airport and South Station. But they have not released their own specific data about rides, leaving studies up to outside researchers. And the impact of all those cars is becoming clear, said Christo Wilson, a professor of computer science at Boston's Northeastern University, who has looked at Uber's practice of surge pricing during heavy volume. "The emerging consensus is that ride-sharing (is) increasing congestion," Wilson said. One study included surveys of 944 ride-hailing users over four weeks in late 2017 in the Boston area. Nearly six in 10 said they would have used public transportation, walked, biked or skipped the trip if the ride-hailing apps weren't available. The report also found many riders aren't using hailed rides to connect to a subway or bus line, but instead as a separate mode of transit, said Alison Felix, one of the report's authors.
News

Slashdot's 20th Anniversary: History of Slashdot 207

Posted by whipslash from the the-90s-called dept.

Slashdot turned 20 this month, which is ancient in internet years. How far have we come?

Also, we've set up a page to coordinate user meet-ups around the world to celebrate. Read on for the full 20-year history of Slashdot.

Comment No one wants to see a Winamp Four-skin! (Score 1) 332

by sirsky (#55058573) Attached to: What Happened To Winamp?

Winamp is installed standard on every Windows machine I use. Winamp v5.666, the Final Nullsoft Release, without the Media Library. This version has ALL of the AOL bundled streaming junk removed, as well as any mention even of AOL. No 'Modern' skins, just good old Winamp 2. Works perfectly for me.

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