Tag: funny

3.46-Billion-Year-Old ‘Fossils’ Were Not Created By Life Forms

sciencehabit writes: What are the oldest fossils on Earth? For a long time, a 3.46-billion-year-old rock from Western Australia seemed to hold the record. A 1993 Science paper (abstract) suggested that the Apex chert contained tiny, wormy structures that could have been fossilized cell walls of some of the world’s first cyanobacteria. But now there is more evidence that these structures have nothing to do with life. The elongated filaments were instead created by minerals forming in hydrothermal systems, researchers report (abstract). After the minerals were formed, carbon glommed on to the edges, leaving behind an organic signature that looked suspiciously like cell walls. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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3.46-Billion-Year-Old ‘Fossils’ Were Not Created By Life Forms

New Dark Web Market Is Selling Zero-Day Exploits

Sparrowvsrevolution writes Over the last month, a marketplace calling itself TheRealDeal Market has emerged on the dark web, with a focus on sales of hackers’ zero-day attack methods. Like the Silk Road and its online black market successors like Agora and the recently defunct Evolution, TheRealDeal runs as a Tor hidden service and uses bitcoin to hide the identities of its buyers, sellers, and administrators. But while some other sites have sold only basic, low-level hacking tools and stolen financial details, TheRealDeal’s creators say they’re looking to broker premium hacker data like zero-days, source code, and hacking services, often offered on an exclusive, one-time sale basis. Currently an iCloud exploit is being offered for sale on the site with a price tag of $17, 000 in bitcoin, claiming to be a new method of hacking Apple iCloud accounts. “Any account can be accessed with a malicious request from a proxy account, ” reads the description. “Please arrange a demonstration using my service listing to hack an account of your choice.” Others include a technique to hack WordPress’ multisite configuration, an exploit against Android’s Webview stock browser, and an Internet Explorer attack that claims to work on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7, available for around $8, 000 in bitcoin. None of these zero days have yet been proven to be real, but an escrow system on the site using bitcoin’s multisignature transaction feature is designed to prevent scammers from selling fake exploits. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New Dark Web Market Is Selling Zero-Day Exploits

ISS Could Be Fitted With Lasers To Shoot Down Space Junk

An anonymous reader writes Japan’s Riken research institute has suggested a new idea for dealing with space junk. They say a fiber optic laser mounted onto the International Space Station could blast debris out of the sky. From the article: “To combat the increasingly dense layer of dead satellites and miscellaneous space debris that are enshrouding our planet, no idea — nets, lassos, even ballistic gas clouds — seems too far-fetched to avoid. Now, an international team of researchers led by Japan’s Riken research institute has put forward what may be the most ambitious plan to date. They propose blasting an estimated 3, 000 tons of space junk out of orbit with a fiber optic laser mounted on the International Space Station.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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ISS Could Be Fitted With Lasers To Shoot Down Space Junk

Facebook Working To Weed Out Fake Likes

jfruh writes In the early days of brands on Facebook, it was crucial for companies to garner as many “likes” as possible to boost their image, and that led to some unethical businesses selling likes that came from fake accounts. Now Facebook is informing brands that they’re working to root out fake likes, leaving like counts lower but realer. Now if only I could get my relatives to stop clicking on pictures that say they like puppies and are against cancer. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Facebook Working To Weed Out Fake Likes

Star Wars Battlefront Game Trailer Is So Realistic It Looks Like Movie Footage

MojoKid writes It has been a tremendous week for Star Wars fans. First we got to see Han Solo and Chewbacca make an emotional reappearance in the newest Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer (the second official trailer Disney has put out). Now, Electronic Arts is treating us to a visual smorgasbord of cinema-quality footage showing the forthcoming Star Wars Battlefront game. Battlefront will support to up 40 players divided between the Rebel Alliance and Galactic Empire, all shooting it out and playing with some of the coolest Star Wars vehicles and weapons around. We’re talking jetpacks, AT-AT war machines, AT-STs, TIE Fighters, X-wings, and more. Though the trailer allegedly shows actually “game engine footage, ” it’s questionable whether or not it’s actual gameplay or just pre-rendered cut scenes from the game engine. Either way, it’s still pretty impressive. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Star Wars Battlefront Game Trailer Is So Realistic It Looks Like Movie Footage

How Uber Surge Pricing Really Works

minstrelmike writes with this analysis from Nicholas Diakopoulos of the Washington Post: At the core of Uber’s wild success and market valuation of over $41 billion is its data and algorithmically fueled approach to matching supply and demand for cars. It’s classic economics, supposedly….but is Uber’s surge pricing algorithm really doing what they claim? Do surge prices really get more cars on the road? My analysis suggests that rather than motivating a fresh supply of drivers, surge pricing instead re-distributes drivers already on the road. Adds minstrelmike: The writer goes on to analyze 4 weeks of pricing info from 5 areas in D.C. and plotted prices versus wait times. “Price surging can work in any of three ways: by reducing demand for cars (less people want a car for a higher price), by creating new supply (providing an incentive for new drivers to hit the roads), or by shifting supply (drivers) to areas of higher demand.” It moves current drivers from one side of town to the other. It does not put new drivers on the road. It can’t because the prices change every 3-5 minutes.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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How Uber Surge Pricing Really Works

FBI Overstated Forensic Hair Matches In Nearly All Trials Before 2000

schwit1 writes The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000. Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country’s largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence. The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death. Of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison, the groups said under an agreement with the government to release results after the review of the first 200 convictions. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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FBI Overstated Forensic Hair Matches In Nearly All Trials Before 2000

LAUSD OKs Girls-Only STEM School, Plans Boys-Only English Language Arts School

theodp writes: Citing statistics that showed a whopping 46 more boys than girls passed the AP Computer Science Exam in 2011-12, the 640, 000+ student Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) on Tuesday approved a waiver to enable the District to operate a single-gender, all-girls STEM School called the Girls Academic Leadership Academy (GALA). Students in GALA will follow a six year sequence of computer courses starting in middle school that will culminate in AP Computer Science Principles. “Fewer females take AP courses in math, science, or computer science, and they are not as successful as males in receiving passing scores of 3, 4 or 5, ” argued the General Waiver Request (PDF, 700+ pages). “An all girls environment is reasonably necessary for the school to improve the self-confidence of girls in their academic abilities, especially in STEM areas where an achievement gap currently exists. GALA’s admissions shall also comply with AB 1266 to ensure male students who identify as female are admitted to the school.” The school’s CS-related Partners include the UCLA Exploring Computer Science Program, as well as Google-bankrolled Girls Who Code, Black Girls Code, and NCWIT. One of the reasons the all-girls STEM school reportedly got the green light is that its backers satisfied federal regulations requiring a “substantially equal school” for excluded male students by submitting a plan for a companion all-boys school that would emphasize English Language Arts, where they often fall short of girls’ test scores, rather than GALA’s focus on STEM. One suspects the no-fan-of-gender-restricted-public-schools ACLU may call BS on this maneuver. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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LAUSD OKs Girls-Only STEM School, Plans Boys-Only English Language Arts School

Cyanogen Partners With Microsoft To Replace Google Apps

Unknown Lamer writes: Microsoft and Cyanogen Inc have announced a partnership to bring Microsoft applications to Cyanogen OS. “Under the partnership, Cyanogen will integrate and distribute Microsoft’s consumer apps and services across core categories, including productivity, messaging, utilities, and cloud-based services. As part of this collaboration, Microsoft will create native integrations on Cyanogen OS, enabling a powerful new class of experiences.” Ars Technica comments, “If Cyanogen really wants to ship a Googleless Android, it will need to provide alternatives to Google’s services, and this Microsoft deal is a small start. Microsoft can provide alternatives for Search (Bing), Google Drive (OneDrive and Office), and Gmail (Outlook). The real missing pieces are alternatives to Google Play, Google Maps, and Google Play Services.” Rather than distribute more proprietary services, how about ownCloud for Drive, K-9 Mail for Gmail, OsmAnd for Maps, and F-Droid for an app store? Mozilla and DuckDuckGo provide Free Software search providers for Android, too. With Google neglecting the Android Open Source Project and Cyanogen partnering with Microsoft, the future for Free Software Android as anything but a shell for proprietary software looks bleak. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Cyanogen Partners With Microsoft To Replace Google Apps

IT Worker’s Lawsuit Accuses Tata of Discrimination

dcblogs writes An IT worker is accusing Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) of discriminating against American workers and favoring “South Asians” in hiring and promotion. It’s backing up its complaint, in part, with numbers. The lawsuit, filed this week in federal court in San Francisco, claims that 95% of the 14, 000 people Tata employs in the U.S. are South Asian or mostly Indian. It says this practice has created a “grossly disproportionate workforce.” India-based Tata achieves its “discriminatory goals” in at least three ways, the lawsuit alleges. First, the company hires large numbers of H-1B workers. Over from 2011 to 2013, Tata sponsored nearly 21, 000 new H-1B visas, all primarily Indian workers, according to the lawsuit’s count. Second, when Tata hires locally, “such persons are still disproportionately South Asian, ” and, third, for the “relatively few non-South Asians workers that Tata hires, ” it disfavors them in placement, promotion and termination decisions. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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IT Worker’s Lawsuit Accuses Tata of Discrimination