Month: October 2016

"Splat" of Schiaparelli Mars Lander Likely Found

Long-time Slashdot reader Tablizer quotes Space Flight Now: Views from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter released Friday show the crash site where Europe’s experimental Schiaparelli lander fell to the red planet’s surface from a height of several miles, leaving a distinct dark patch on the Martian landscape…The image from MRO’s context camera shows two new features attributed to the Schiaparelli spacecraft, including a large dark scar spanning an estimated 50 feet (15 meters) by 130 feet (40 meters). Schiaparelli’s ground team believes it is from the high-speed impact of the lander’s main body… A little more than a half-mile (1 kilometer) to the south, a bright spot appears in the image, likely the 39-foot-diameter (12-meter) supersonic parachute and part of Schiaparelli’s heat shield, which released from the lander just before ESA lost contact.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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"Splat" of Schiaparelli Mars Lander Likely Found

Feds Walk Into a Building, Demand Everyone’s Fingerprints To Open Phones

An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes the Daily Herald: Investigators in Lancaster, California, were granted a search warrant last May with a scope that allowed them to force anyone inside the premises at the time of search to open up their phones via fingerprint recognition, Forbes reported Sunday. The government argued that this did not violate the citizens’ Fifth Amendment protection against self incrimination because no actual passcode was handed over to authorities… “I was frankly a bit shocked, ” said Andrew Crocker, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, when he learned about the scope of search warrant. “As far as I know, this warrant application was unprecedented”… He also described requiring phones to be unlocked via fingerprint, which does not technically count as handing over a self-incriminating password, as a “clever end-run” around constitutional rights. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Feds Walk Into a Building, Demand Everyone’s Fingerprints To Open Phones

AT&T has $80 billion deal to purchase Time Warner Inc. (and with it, HBO)

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Tim Boyle) Following up on news reported yesterday, AT&T has reached a deal to buy Time Warner Inc. for more than $80 billion,  The Wall Street Journal wrote today . The boards of the companies are meeting today to approve the merger, “with a deal likely to be announced as soon as Saturday evening.” Original story from yesterday follows: AT&T and Time Warner Inc. have recently met “to discuss various business strategies including a possible merger,”  Bloomberg reported Thursday . Discussions are still in early stages, according to Bloomberg’s anonymous sources. “The talks, which at this stage are informal, have focused on building relations between the companies rather than establishing the terms of a specific transaction, the people said, asking not to be identified as the deliberations are private,” Bloomberg wrote. “Neither side has yet hired a financial adviser, the people said.” Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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AT&T has $80 billion deal to purchase Time Warner Inc. (and with it, HBO)

Canonical Names Ubuntu Linux 17.04 ‘Zesty Zapus’

“Linux distributions and silly names go together like peanut butter and jelly, ” notes BetaNews. BrianFagioli writes: One of the most well-known Linux distributions to use funny names is Ubuntu. It famously uses the convention of an adjective and a lesser-known animal, each starting with the same letter… For example, Ubuntu 16.10 uses the letter “Y” — “Yakkety Yak”. The next version of the operating system will use the letter “Z” [and] Canonical has chosen “Zesty Zapus”… It is apparently a type of jumping mouse… “As we come to the end of the alphabet, I want to thank everyone who makes this fun. Your passion and focus and intellect, and occasionally your sharp differences, all make it a privilege to be part of this body incorporate. Right now, Ubuntu is moving even faster to the centre of the cloud and edge operations. From AWS to the zaniest new devices, Ubuntu helps people get things done faster, cleaner, and more efficiently, thanks to you…”, says Mark Shuttleworth, CEO, Canonical… “we are a tiny band in a market of giants, but our focus on delivering free software freely together with enterprise support, services and solutions appears to be opening doors, and minds, everywhere. So, in honour of the valiantly tiny leaping long-tailed over the obstacles of life, our next release which will be Ubuntu 17.04, is hereby code named the Zesty Zapus”. My favorite was Xenial Xerus. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Canonical Names Ubuntu Linux 17.04 ‘Zesty Zapus’

New Text Adventures Compete In 22nd ‘Interactive Fiction Competition’

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: 58 brand-new text adventures are now available free online for the 22nd Annual Interactive Fiction Competition. The public is encouraged to play the games, and on November 16th the contest’s organizers will announce which ones received the highest average ratings. After 22 years, the contest is now under “the auspices of the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation, a new, charitable non-profit corporation dedicated to supporting the technologies and services that enable IF creation and play…” according to the contest’s organizers. “[T]he competition now runs on servers paid for by the IF-loving public, and for this I feel sincere gratitude.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New Text Adventures Compete In 22nd ‘Interactive Fiction Competition’

What Is DNS and Why Does It Make the Internet Break?

Today, half of America’s internet shut down when hackers unleashed a large distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the servers of Dyn , a major DNS host. It’s still unclear exactly who carried out the attack and why, but regardless, the event served as a demonstration of how easily large swaths of the web can be wiped out if attacked by determined hackers. Read more…

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What Is DNS and Why Does It Make the Internet Break?

Facebook Employees Tried To Remove Trump Posts As Hate Speech

An anonymous reader quotes a report from USA Today: Facebook employees pushed to remove some of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s Facebook posts — such as one proposing the ban of Muslims from entering the U.S. — from the service as hate speech that violated the giant social network’s policies, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday. The decision not to remove the Trump posts was made by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the newspaper reported. Employees complained that Facebook was changing the rules for Trump and some who review content on Facebook threatened to quit. “When we review reports of content that may violate our policies, we take context into consideration. That context can include the value of political discourse, ” Facebook said in an emailed statement. “Many people are voicing opinions about this particular content and it has become an important part of the conversation around who the next U.S. president will be. For those reasons, we are carefully reviewing each report and surrounding context relating to this content on a case by case basis.” Senior members of Facebook’s policy team posted more details on its policy on Friday: “In the weeks ahead, we’re going to begin allowing more items that people find newsworthy, significant, or important to the public interest — even if they might otherwise violate our standards.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Facebook Employees Tried To Remove Trump Posts As Hate Speech

Watch America’s Internet Get Wiped Out by a Massive DDoS Attack

Today a massive DDoS attack took out a major piece of Internet infrastructure , causing huge outages across the United States and Europe. Watch it spread like a disease across the States. Read more…

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Watch America’s Internet Get Wiped Out by a Massive DDoS Attack

Executive Accidentally Reveals Layoffs in Reply All Nightmare

The Wall Street Journal wants a “substantial number” of newsroom employees to take a buyout, editor-in-chief Gerard Baker announced to his staff in a memo sent to WSJ staff Friday morning. Read more…

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Executive Accidentally Reveals Layoffs in Reply All Nightmare