An anonymous coward writes: Just like clockwork, the Linux 4.6 kernel was officially released today. Details on the kernel changes for Linux 4.6 can be found via Phoronix and KernelNewbies.org. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 900 Maxwell support and Dell XPS 13 Skylake support are among the many hardware changes for 4.6. For Linux 4.7 there are already several new features to look forward to from new DRM display drivers to a new CPU scaling governor expected. prisoninmate also writes: Linus Torvalds announced the final release of the anticipated Linux 4.6 kernel, which, after seven Release Candidate builds introduces features like “the OrangeFS distributed file system, support for the USB 3.1 SuperSpeed Plus (SSP) protocol, offering transfer speeds of up to 10Gbps, improvements to the reliability of the Out Of Memory task killer, as well as support for Intel Memory protection keys, ” [according to Softpedia]. “Moreover, Linux kernel 4.6 ships with Kernel Connection Multiplexor, a new component designed for accelerating application layer protocols, 802.1AE MAC-level encryption (MACsec) support, online inode checker for the OCFS2 file system, support for the BATMAN V protocol, and support for the pNFS SCSI layout.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Scientists made see-through wood that’s stronger than glass
Researchers at the University of Maryland were able pull away color and chemicals from a block of wood to leave it impressively see-through. The result is a material that is both stronger and more insulating than glass, with better biodegradability than plastic. “We were very surprised by how transparent it could go, ” said Liangbing Hu, who wrote about the project in Advanced Materials . Hu’s team isn’t the only group that’s developed a technique for transparent wood — Swedish researchers have also been able to clear out that pesky visible pulp, replacing it with a transparent polymer. The treatment techniques appear pretty similar: it’s a two-stage process. The researchers first boiled the wood in water, sodium hydroxide and other chemicals for roughly two hours. This flushes out lignin, the molecule responsible for giving wood its color. The team then poured epoxy over the block which makes the wood four to five times stronger, although it makes it all a little less environmentally-friendly in the process. One of the great properties of the treated wood is how it retains the structure and natural channels from when it was a tree. These micro-channels can then deliver light similarly to how it moved nutrients around as part of a plant. “In traditional material the light gets scattered, ” said Hu. “If you have this waveguide effect with wood, more light comes into your house.” So what’s stopping us living in see-through wood houses, aside from privacy issues? Size limitations. Five by five-inch wood blocks are as large as they’ve been able to make it work, ranging in thickness from paper thin to about a centimeter thick — far more substantial than what Swedish researchers have shown off so far. Dr. Hu and the University of Maryland scientists are is still working to scale it up further. If the team can accomplish that there’s no shortage of applications, ranging from windows, building materials and furniture to smaller, precise, optical equipment that’s normally made from glass or plastic. Source: New York Times
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Scientists made see-through wood that’s stronger than glass
Hidden FBI Microphones Exposed In California
An anonymous reader writes: “Federal agents are planting microphones to secretly record conversations, ” reports CBS Local, noting that for 10 months starting in 2010, FBI agents hid microphones inside light fixtures, and also at a bus stop outside the Oakland Courthouse, to record conversations without a warrant. “They put microphones under rocks, they put microphones in trees, they plant microphones in equipment, ” a security analyst and former FBI special agent told CBS Local. “I mean, there’s microphones that are planted in places that people don’t think about, because thats the intent!” Federal authorities are currently investigating fraud and bid-rigging charges against a group of real estate investors, and the secret recordings came to light when they were submitted as evidence. “Private communication in a public place qualifies as a protected ‘oral communication’…” says one of the investor’s lawyers, “and therefore may not be intercepted without judicial authorization.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Hidden FBI Microphones Exposed In California
Ethical Hackers Donate 1,000,000 Air Miles To Charity
An anonymous reader writes:Certified ethical hackers at Offensi.com identified a bug allowing remote code execution on one of United Airlines’ sites, and submitted their findings to the airline’s “bug bounty” program. After a fix was placed into production, their team was awarded 1, 000, 000 Mileage Plus air miles, which they say was accompanied by an email informing them that the IRS would consider their award as $20, 000 of taxable income. “If after evaluating the taxable amount you choose not to accept your award, you are also able to donate your award to charity, ” the e-mail explained. The hackers ultimately chose to distribute their air miles among three charities — the Ronald McDonald house, the Muscular Dystrophy Association, and the Casa de Esperanza de los Ninos Organization. Another security researcher complained in November that United failed to close a serious vulnerability he’d identified for almost six months. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Ethical Hackers Donate 1,000,000 Air Miles To Charity
Fitness App Runkeeper Secretly Tracks Users At All Times, Sends Data to Advertisers
An anonymous reader writes: FitnessKeeper, the company behind running app Runkeeper, is in hot water in Europe. The company has received a formal complaint from the Norwegian Consumer Council for breaching European data protection laws. But why? Runkeeper tracks its users’ location at all times — not just when the app is active — and sends that data to advertisers. The NCC, a consumer rights watchdog, is conducting an investigation into 20 apps’ terms and conditions to see if the apps do what their permissions say they do and to monitor data flows. Tinder has already been reported to the Norwegian data protection authority for similar breaches of privacy laws. The NCC’s investigation into Runkeeper discovered that user location data is tracked around the clock and gets transmitted to a third party advertiser in the U.S. called Kiip.me.Finn Myrstad, the council’s digital policy director, said: We checked the apps technically, to see the data flows and to see if the apps actually do what they say they do. Everyone understands that Runkeeper tracks users while they exercise, but to continue after the training has ended is not okay. Not only is it a breach of privacy laws, we are also convinced that users do not want to be tracked in this way, or for information to be shared with third party advertisers. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Fitness App Runkeeper Secretly Tracks Users At All Times, Sends Data to Advertisers
Wendy’s Plans To Automate 6,000 Restaurants With Self-Service Ordering Kiosks
An anonymous reader writes: In response to the rising minimum wage, the fast-food chain Wendy’s plans to start automating all of its restaurants. The company said it will have self-service ordering kiosks available to its 6, 000-plus restaurants in the second half of the year. Wendy’s President Todd Penegor said it will be up to franchisees to decide whether or not to adopt the kiosks in their stores, noting that many franchise locations have had to raise prices to offset wage increases. California’s decision to gradually raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2022 will impact Wendy’s 258 restaurants, all of which are franchise-operated. About 75% of 200-plus Wendy’s restaurants are run by franchisees in New York, a state that is also on its way to $15. Penegor said, wage pressures have been manageable both because of falling commodity prices and better operating leverage due to an increase in customer counts. The company is still “working so hard to find efficiencies” so it can deliver “a new QSR experience but at traditional QSR prices.” The CEO of Carl’s Jr., Andy Puzder, is also looking into replacing many of its workers with machines to save money. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Wendy’s Plans To Automate 6,000 Restaurants With Self-Service Ordering Kiosks
Samsung Unveils 256GB MicroSD Card, Highest Capacity In Its Class
Samsung recently unveiled its EVO Plus 256GB microSD card, capable of storing more than 12 hours of 4K video footage, 33 hours of full HD recording, 55, 200 photos or 23, 500 MP3s. While you most likely do not need such a large microSD card in your life, you’ll probably want one. The card features Samsung’s newest V-NAND technology, with read/write speeds of 95MB/s and 90MB/s, respectively. It will be available in June to over 50 countries at a price of $250, which includes a 10 year warranty. Personally, I have no need for such a high-capacity card at this time, but I marvel how far technology has progressed in the last few years, let alone months. SanDisk, for example, revealed a 200GB microSD card back in March, 2015, which was the highest capacity microSD card up until now. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Samsung Unveils 256GB MicroSD Card, Highest Capacity In Its Class
Facebook denies filtering conservative news stories
Even if your Facebook News Feed is full of family members dropping racist memes or links to factually inaccurate articles, you might not see such showing up in the “trending news” portion of the social network’s landing page. And there’s a reason for that: Workers “routinely suppressed” news stories that’d interest conservative users from the section, according to a report from Gizmodo . Those stories apparently include anything about the Conservative Political Action Conference , two-time Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney and posts from conservative news outlet The Drudge Report . More than that, it appears Facebook wouldn’t curate a story with conservative origin ( Breitbart , for example) unless it was picked up by The New York Times or BBC first. While Facebook’s company line is that it “takes allegations of bias very seriously” in light of the Gizmodo report, claiming “rigorous guidelines” to ensure consistency and neutrality and that those guidelines don’t “permit the suppression of political perspectives, ” the sources for these allegations were contract workers — not full-on employees themselves. These contractractors worked for Facebook from the middle of 2014 until December 2015. What appears in the Trending News module isn’t exclusively determined by an algorithm of what its users are actively sharing, it’s curated much like how an editorial newsroom operates. One of Gizmodo ‘s sources — who leans politically conservative — says that what would populate the list was largely determined by who was working at the time. If that person happened to not subscribe to conservative points of view, a story would be blacklisted. More than that, if a particular story is trending on Twitter but not Facebook? It’s “injected” into the Trending News section. Specific instances of that include the Black Lives Matter conversation or the ongoing conflict in Syria. This isn’t the first time Facebook has come under fire for this type of thing. In 2014 the company admitted that it controversially, and experimentally, altered the News Feed to measure your emotional responses. Via: TechCrunch Source: Gizmodo
Kobo Customers Losing Books From Their Libraries After Software Upgrade
Reader Robotech_Master writes: After a recent Kobo software upgrade, a number of Kobo customers have reported losing e-books from their libraries — notably, e-books that had been transferred to Kobo from their Sony Reader libraries when Sony left the consumer e-book business. One customer reported missing 460 e-books, and the only way to get them back in her library would be to search and re-add them one at a time! Customers who downloaded their e-books and illegally broke the DRM don’t have this problem, of course.From the report: A Kobo representative actually chimed in on the thread, telling MobileRead users that they were following the thread and trying to fix the glitches that had been caused by the recent software changes and restore customers’ e-books. It’s good that they’re paying attention, and that’s definitely better than my first go-round with Barnes and Noble support over my own missing e-book. Hopefully they’ll get it sorted out soon. That being said, this drives home yet again the point that publisher-imposed DRM has made and is making continued maintenance of e-book libraries from commercial providers a big old mess. About the only way you can be sure you can retain the e-books you pay for is to outright break the law and crack the DRM in order to be able to back them up against your company going out of business and losing the purchases you paid for. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Kobo Customers Losing Books From Their Libraries After Software Upgrade
Tucows Bans Pop-Up Ads, Goes Ad-Free
HughPickens.com writes: Tucows began as a software downloads site nearly 25 years ago and has since evolved beyond that early core business and into domain names, mobile phone service and symmetrical gigabit fiber Internet in select towns and cities in the US. Now Tucows has announced that as a gesture of goodwill, Tucows has banned deceptive ads, hidden download buttons, pop-ups, flypaper, toolbars and other such Internet nastiness from the the nearly 40, 000 software titles it hosts for users on it’s download sites. “On the Tucows downloads site today, you’ll find no flashing ads. No toolbars. No pop-ups, ” says CEO Elliot Noss. “You might see a few plugs for other Tucows services, but nothing too egregious and certainly not anything that’s pretending to be a download button.” With Tucows’ success in domain names, mobile phone service (Ting) and fiber Internet (Ting Internet), Tucows’ revenue from downloads has become less relevant when looking at the balance sheet. “We don’t lightly walk away from opportunities or revenue, ” says Noss. “In the end, though, we’d rather have the Tucows name associated with good; with a belief in the power of the Internet to affect positive change. An ad-heavy site that packages browser toolbars along with every download isn’t something we want people to think of when they hear ‘Tucows, ‘.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Tucows Bans Pop-Up Ads, Goes Ad-Free