By BeauHD from
Slashdot's level-playing-field department:
An anonymous reader writes: Non-profit public interest group Public Knowledge has filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission regarding Comcast's Stream TV service. The complaint says that Comcast excludes Stream TV traffic from its own data cap, which is both a violation of its merger agreement and counter to the FCC's Open Internet rules. Stream TV is a $15 per month offering for Xfinity internet customers. It includes local channels, some basic cable, HBO, and the use of a cloud DVR. Most content is streamed over the home network. Public Knowledge's senior staff attorney, John Bergmayer says, "Comcast's actions could result in fewer online video choices for viewers nationwide, while increasing its dominance as a video gatekeeper. If its behavior persists, prices will go up, the number of choices will go down, creators will have a harder time reaching an audience, and viewers will have a harder time accessing diverse and independent programming."
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By BeauHD from
Slashdot's secrets-are-meant-to-be-shared department:
An anonymous reader writes: In traditional computing, numbers are represented by either 0s or 1s, but quantum computing relies on atomic-scale units, or "quibits," that can be simultaneously 0 and 1 -- a state known as a superposition that's far more efficient. It typically takes about 12 qubits to factor the number 15, but researchers at MIT and the University of Innsbruck in Austria have found a way to pare that down to five qubits, each represented by a single atom, they said this week. Using laser pulses to keep the quantum system stable by holding the atoms in an ion trap, the new system promises scalability as well, as more atoms and lasers can be added to build a bigger and faster quantum computer able to factor much larger numbers. That, in turn, presents new risks for factorization-based methods such as RSA, used for protecting credit cards, state secrets and other confidential data. "If you are a nation state, you probably don't want to publicly store your secrets using encryption that relies on factoring as a hard-to-invert problem," said Chuang. "Because when these quantum computers start coming out, [adversaries will] be able to go back and unencrypt all those old secrets."
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By timothy from
Slashdot's allegedly-apparently-oh-just-give-it-up department:
Seattle software developer Saul Pwanson has a hobby of developing crossword puzzles, but another related hobby, too: analyzing the way that existing puzzles have been constructed. He created a database that aggregates puzzles that have appeared in various publications, including, crucially, the New York Times and USA Today, and sorts them based on similarities. Puzzles that have a greater percentage of the same black squares, or the same letters in identical positions, are ranked as more similar. Crosswords often re-use answers; puzzle-solvers are used to encountering some of the usual glue words that connect parts of the grid. As 538 reports, though, Pwanson noticed something odd in the data: Many of the puzzles that appeared in USA Today and affiliated publications, listed under various creators' names but all published under Timothy Parker as editor, were highly similar to each other, differing in as little as four answer words. These Pwanson classifies as "shoddy" -- they seem to be about as different as test responses based on a passed-around answer sheet. These seem to shortchange readers expecting original works, but may represent no real copyright problem, since Universal Uclick holds the copyright to them all. Perhaps puzzle enthusiasts aren't surprised that a publishing syndicate economizes on crosswords with slight variations, or that horoscopes are sometimes recycled.
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article continued at Slashdot's allegedly-apparently-oh-just-give-it-up department >
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By timothy from
Slashdot's use-more-rice department:
MojoKid writes: The Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge don't officially launch for a few more days, but some carriers appear to have shipped pre-orders early and some phones are already in consumers' hands. One early Galaxy S7 Edge owner appears to have tested his phones' water-resistance already and uncovered another new feature in the process. The user submerged his Galaxy S7 Edge in water and snapped a photo, then about four hours later plugged the phone into its fast charger and a warning popped-up on screen that stated, "Moisture detected in charging port", and the phone wouldn't charge. The user dried the phone and let it sit for a while, and it eventually started to charge again, but it wouldn't quick charge any longer. Frustrated, the user RMA'd the phone and plans to send it back to T-Mobile. The Galaxy S7 is IP68 rated, which means it is sealed against dust and can handle continuous submersion in up to 1 meter of water. However, the water detection feature that's apparently built into the Galaxy S7 is a good idea. Though the devices are IP68 rated, a few drops of water in the charging port could easily cause a short when the phone is plugged in.
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BorgBackup 1.0.0 Released
Posted by News Fetcher on March 06 '16 at 09:52 AM
By timothy from
Slashdot's two-is-one-and-one-is-none department:
An anonymous reader writes: After almost a year of development, bug fixing and cleanup, BorgBackup 1.0.0 has been released. BorgBackup is a fork of the Attic-Backup project — a deduplicating, compressing, encrypting and authenticating backup program for Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X and other unixoid operating systems (Windows may also work using CygWin, but that is rather experimental/unsupported).
It works on 32bit as well as on 64bit platforms, x86/x64 and ARM CPUs (maybe as well on others, but these are the tested ones).
For Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X, there are single-file binaries which can be just copied onto a system and contain everything needed (Python, libraries, BorgBackup itself). Of course, it can be also installed from source.
BorgBackup is FOSS (BSD License) and implemented in Python 3 (91%), speed critical parts are in C or Cython (9%).
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By BeauHD from
Slashdot's there's-a-first-for-everything department:
New submitter daubney writes: Oregon lawmakers have approved legislation to eliminate coal from the state's electrical supply by 2035, the first U.S. state to do so. The bill, called the Clean Electricity and Coal Transition plan, commits the state to doubling its use of renewable energy, including solar and wind, to 50 percent by 2040. The bill, passed this week by both legislative branches, now heads to Gov. Kate Brown. Brown said in a statement that the legislation "equips Oregon with a bold and progressive path towards the energy resource mix of the future." Today, roughly one-third of Oregon's power is produced from coal, according to the Oregon Department of Energy. The measure makes Oregon the first state to eliminate coal by legislative action, The Associated Press reports. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Oregon is matched only by Hawaii, with a 100 requirement by 2045, Vermont, with a 75 percent target by 2032, and California and New York, with 50 percent goals by 2030.
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By timothy from
Slashdot's gift-for-one's-enemies department:
Just a day after it made headlines for announcing that it would remove encryption from its line of FireOS devices, reports Ars Technica, the company has reverted the change, and says that encryption will again be a user-selectable option, with an update to come sometime this Spring. Judging from comments here on Slashdot, that ought to please a lot of people. However, encryption isn't the Fire's only problem; Ricki Jennings at ComputerWorld has collected some of the user reaction to the change, and says that anemic hardware means that even with this small course correction, the Fire tablets themselves "still suck." I'm not so sure; I bought one of the low-end Fire tablets and returned it, disappointed not in the hardware (seemed not bad at all for $50, with a decent screen, snappy video, and sound that was better than reviews had led me to expect) but rather by the intentional limitations of the OS itself.
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By timothy from
Slashdot's who-will-watch-the-foremen? department:
An anonymous reader writes with this story from the New York Times, excerpting "After three years of planning, an immigrant rights group in Jackson Heights is set to start a smartphone app for day laborers, a new digital tool with many uses: Workers will be able to rate employers (think Yelp or Uber), log their hours and wages, take pictures of job sites and help identify, down to the color and make of a car, employers with a history of withholding wages. They will also be able to send instant alerts to other workers. The advocacy group will safeguard the information and work with lawyers to negotiate payment."
Adds the submitter: "Although I completely support the app, personally, I see this encountering some significant legal challenges. Hope they've lawyered up." Though the use case is different, this is similar in spirit to "cop watch" apps, like Cell411 and the ACLU's Mobile Justice. (And of course there's Periscope.)
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