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?
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
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
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Target is the top corporate installer of solar power in the USA with 147MW installed on 300 stores. Walmart is close behind with 140MW, while Ikea has installed solar on 90% of its retail locations. The Solar Energy Institute of America (SEIA) report shows over 1, 000MW of solar installed in almost 2, 000 unique installations by the largest corporate entities in the country. Additionally these groups have more than doubled their installation volume year on year, with 2015 seeing a total of 130MW, while 2016 is projected to be closer to 280MW. Big box retail locations offer some of the best potential spaces for solar power to be installed — on top of square, flat structures and in previously built parking lots. The average size of an installation by a company in this group is about 500kW — 75X the size of an average residential solar installation. The RE100 organization has signed up 81 global corporations (many on the SEIA list) who have pledged 100% renewable energy. “We’re incredibly proud of the progress we’ve made in improving building efficiencies and reducing environmental impact. Our commitment to installing solar panels on 500 stores and distribution centers by 2020 is evidence of that progress” — said John Leisen, vice president of property management at Target. The geographic breakdown of solar installations is based upon three main drivers — good sunlight, expensive electricity and state level renewable mandates, with Southern California having all three. The northeast USA, with its expensive electricity and aggressive clean energy push, has been on par with California (50% of total solar) for commercial installations. A report put together by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the World Resources Institute (WRI) breaks down the various state level laws that support corporations going green — and, without surprise, it becomes clear that the legal support of renewable energy is a definite driver. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Target Passes Walmart As Top US Corporate Installer of Solar Power
It’s annoying to pay for a movie service and wonder where all the good movies are . Vudu’s hoping that you won’t mind that feeling quite as much if you get your movies for free (with a few ads, of course). Read more…
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Vudu Movies On Us Offers Thousands of Free Movies, If You Don’t Mind Some Ads
mattydread23 writes: Great story about the Open Compute Project from Business Insider’s Julie Bort here, including this fun tidbit: “‘OCP has a cultlike following, ‘ one person with knowledge of the situation told Business Insider. ‘The whole industry, internet companies, vendors, and enterprises are monitoring OCP.’ OCP aims to do for computer hardware what the Linux operating system did for software: make it ‘open source’ so anyone can take the designs for free and modify them, with contract manufacturers standing by to build them. In its six years, OCP has grown into a global entity, with board members from Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Intel, and Microsoft. In fact, there’s a well-known story among OCP insiders that demonstrates this cultlike phenom. It involves Apple’s networking team. This team was responsible for building a network at Apple that was so reliable, it never goes down. Not rarely — never. Building a 100% reliable network to meet Apple’s exacting standards was no easy task. So, instead of going it alone under Apple’s secrecy, the Apple networking team wanted to participate in the revolution, contributing and receiving help. But when the Apple team asked to join OCP, Apple said ‘no.’ ‘The whole team quit the same week, ‘ this person told us.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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‘Cultlike’ Devotion: Apple Once Refused To Join Open Compute Project, So Their Entire Networking Team Quit
Using skin cells extracted from mice, researchers in Japan have produced fully functional egg cells that were used to produce healthy mouse pups. Should the method work in humans, it could introduce powerful new ways of treating infertility—and even allow same-sex couples to produce biological offspring. Read more…
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Scientists Create Fully Functional Eggs from Skin Cells
There’s enough slang within the English language to make up a whole new language. If you need to do some research for an English assignment, or you’re just into linguistics, this online dictionary is your best bet. Read more…
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Explore Over 500 Years of English Slang With This Online Dictionary
Under the Fourth Amendment, Americans are protected from unreasonable searches and seizures, but according to one group of federal prosecutors, just being in the wrong house at the wrong time is cause enough to make every single person inside provide their fingerprints and unlock their phones . Read more…
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Feds Claim They Can Enter a House and Demand Fingerprints to Unlock Everyone’s Phones
Verizon has unveiled a new pay-as-you-go unlimited mobile data offering yesterday called PopData that has some significant strings attached. The option charges you $2 for 30 minutes or $3 for 60 minutes of unlimited internet data. The Verge reports: Think of it like a microtransaction or in-app purchase in a mobile game, where you can’t enjoy the full benefits of a product you ostensibly already own or pay for without ponying up a few extra bucks. There does appear to be some legitimate reasons to want unfettered data access for a short amount of time. For instance, perhaps you know youâ(TM)ll be downloading large files to your phone like numerous Spotify playlists, or maybe you want to enjoy an uninterrupted stream of a sports game or Netflix movie without having to worry about your data cap. But thereâ(TM)s no telling really whether this is a good or bad deal, as it complicates how we think of the value of data by blending a monthly bucket metaphor with that of a time-based subscription system. This wouldnâ(TM)t be such a big deal if customers could simply pay for unlimited data every month. Yet Verizon — unlike ATT, T-Mobile, and Sprint — does not offer customers a standard unlimited plan, and the company has made an effort to kick users off their grandfathered plans in the past. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Verizon Is Now Selling Unlimited Data In 30-Minute Increments