An anonymous reader writes: Amazon has a new plan to keep self-published authors honest: they’re only going to pay them when someone actually reads a page. Peter Wayner at the Atlantic explores how this is going to change the lives of the authors — and the readers. Fat, impressive coffee table books are out if no one reads them. Thin, concise authors will be bereft. Page turners are in. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Link:
Amazon Is Only Going To Pay Authors When Each Page Is Read
Jason Koebler writes with a link to Motherboard’s article about research from the Schalk Lab of Albany, New York, where researchers “have just demonstrated for the first time that it’s possible to turn a person’s thoughts into a legible phrase using what they’re calling a “brain-to-text” interface, ” writing “It’s still still the early days of this technology—electrodes had to be placed directly on the brain and the ‘dictionary’ of phrases was limited. Still, brainwaves of thought patterns were turned into text at a rate much better than chance.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read More:
‘Brain-to-Text’ Interface Types Thoughts of Epileptic Patients
An anonymous reader writes: The newest version of the Unicode standard adds 7, 716 new characters to the existing 21, 499 – that’s more than 35% growth! Most of them are Chinese, Japan and Korean ideographs, but among those changes Unicode adds support for new languages like Ik, used in Uganda. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Follow this link:
Unicode Consortium Releases Unicode 8.0.0
An anonymous reader writes with a report at Mobipicker (linking to a Korea Times story) that a 12-member committee from the International Telecommunication Union has hashed out a formal definition of the speed requirements for 5G mobile networking; the result has been designated IMT-2020, and it specifies that 5G networks should provide data speeds of up to 20Gbps — 20 times faster than 4G. From the Korea Times story: The 5G network will also have a capacity to provide more than 100 megabits-per-second average data transmission to over one million Internet of Things devices within 1 square kilometer. Video content services, including ones that use holography technology, will also be available thanks to the expanded data transmit capacity, the ministry said. … The union also decided to target commercializing the 5G network worldwide by 2020. To do so, it will start receiving applications for technology which can be candidates to become the standard for the new network. Consequently, the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games will be the world’s first international event to showcase and demonstrate 5G technology. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
View the original here:
5G Network Speed Defined As 20 Gbps By the International Telecommunication Union
An anonymous reader writes: In late 2004, weeks before Tony Blair’s Freedom of Information (FOI) act first came into force, Downing Street adopted a policy of automatically deleting emails more than three months old (paywalled). The IT decision has resulted in a “dysfunctional” system according to former cabinet officials, with Downing Street workers struggling to agree on the details of meetings in the absence of a correspondence chain. It is still possible to preserve an email by dragging it to local storage, but the relevance of mails may not be apparent at the time that the worker must make the decision to do so. Former special adviser to Nick Clegg Sean Kemp said: “Some people delete their emails on an almost daily basis, others just try to avoid putting anything potentially interesting in an email in the first place.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Link:
British Government Instituted 3-Month Deletion Policy, Apparently To Evade FOIA
Skype’s real-time translator now understands French and German —along with the existing English, Italian, Mandarin and Spanish. Read more…
Read More:
Skype’s real-time translator now understands French and German—along with the existing English, Ital
The day is coming when the U.S. Navy will be able to use its electromagnetic launch system to hurtle all manner of aircraft into the skies, but for now we’re content to watch this rather impressive demonstration of its awesome power. Read more…
View the original here:
Watch The Navy’s Railgun Catapult A 4-Ton Sled Off An Aircraft Carrier
When Daniel Korell scanned a QR code on a bottle of Heinz Ketchup, he got more than he bargained for. Rather than bring up the competition page he was expecting to see, it instead linked to a German porn site called Fundorado. Oops. Read more…
See original article:
A QR Code on Heinz Ketchup Linked Straight to German Porn
An anonymous reader notes a report from El Reg on a major cross-app resource vulnerability in iOS and Mac OS X. Researchers say it’s possible to break app sandboxes, bypass App Store security checks, and crack the Apple keychain. The researchers wrote, “specifically, we found that the inter-app interaction services, including the keychain and WebSocket on OS X and URL Scheme on OS X and iOS, can all be exploited by [malware] to steal such confidential information as the passwords for iCloud, email and bank, and the secret token of Evernote. Further, the design of the App sandbox on OS X was found to be vulnerable, exposing an app’s private directory to the sandboxed malware that hijacks its Apple Bundle ID. As a result, sensitive user data, like the notes and user contacts under Evernote and photos under WeChat, have all been disclosed. Fundamentally, these problems are caused by the lack of app-to-app and app-to-OS authentications.” Their full academic paper (PDF) is available online, as are a series of video demos. They withheld publication for six months at Apple’s request, but haven’t heard anything further about a fix. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
View article:
Researchers Find Major Keychain Vulnerability in iOS and OS X
Chances are if you’ve opted for an ultra-portable laptop , you’ve made a few compromises when it comes to on-board storage. So an external hard drive for archiving your mountains of media is a must, and Samsung’s now squeezed four terabytes of storage inside a housing that matches your computer’s svelte dimensions. Read more…
Taken from:
The World’s Thinnest 4 TB External Drive Doesn’t Need Extra Power