By msmash from
Slashdot's closer-look department:
Every day, the frustrations of New York City subway riders spew out in the form of 2,500 often profanity-laced tweets directed at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. From a report: "Thanks @MTA for making sure we can't buy metrocards AGAIN," wrote @itzMzLori, 31-year-old beauty blogger Lori Tenn, who found her card machine closed. "I swear I f-ing hate y'all." The job of taking this vitriol -- and offering measured responses -- falls to the social-media team behind @MTA and @NYCTSubway. The two Twitter accounts for the agency that manages the New York City subway, bus and commuter rail system have more than two million often angry followers. "We're New Yorkers, we have thick skins, but we're human," said Molly Washam, an even-keeled 30-year-old. "We do sometimes gather around the monitor to see the meanest thing someone could come up with that day." To stay calm, she said she does yoga, and recently tried a pottery class. Rampant subway delays and breakdowns in recent years are making the work more intense. A 2017 report by the New York City comptroller found weekday subway delays rose 83% between 2013 and 2016. The agency has begun a modernization plan to make improvements, including upgrading the signaling system and hiring more subway workers. New Yorkers' response to repairs? "Really @MTA, More of your Bs complications," wrote @MattMercadoNYC, rider Matt Mercado, 34, of the Bronx. "You pick Thursday AND Friday for these 'Required Repairs'??!?" "We know they might not mean everything they're saying," said Sarah Meyer, the MTA's customer-service chief. But, "I can't personally change the signaling system."
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By msmash from
Slashdot's it's-back-baby department:
It's no secret
that sales of vinyl music are at the highest in decades. Even the lowly cassette tape is regaining popularity as some millennials embrace analog music over digital downloads and streaming services. But for the first time in more than two decades, a German company is reviving what may be the ultimate format: a new reel-to-reel tape machine. From a report: Dusseldorf-based Roland Schneider Precision Engineering this week will introduce four Ballfinger reel-to-reel machines, bringing back a technology that dominated professional music recording for most of the 20th century and is now making a comeback with audiophiles and artists including Lady Gaga. The sleek machines, some of them customizable, will retail from about 9,500 euros ($11,400) for the basic version to about 24,000 euros for the high-end model, which features three direct-drive motors, an editing system and walnut side panels. "Digital media is great, but experiencing music is more than just listening to a sound file -- it's sensual, it's reels that turn and can be touched," says Roland Schneider, the machine's designer. "When it comes to audio quality, nothing else in the analog world gets you closer to the experience of being right there in the recording studio than reel-to-reel tape."
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By BeauHD from
Slashdot's ripe-for-abuse department:
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Smart doorbell company Ring is making it easier for customers to call the cops on "suspicious" people and activities. The startup, which Amazon acquired for reportedly "more than" $1 billion this year, uses security cameras to let people monitor their entryways. Now, it's launching its Neighbors app -- a platform for reporting crime that, so far, police in Fort Lauderdale and Orlando, and the Ventura Sheriff's Department, have access to. "Over the next days and weeks, law enforcement across the U.S. will be joining Neighbors," a Ring spokesperson told me over email.
The app, while presented as a crime-fighting aid, could also be a new place for paranoid people to profile fellow citizens, as similar platforms in the past have turned out to be. According to the company's statement in a press release for Neighbors today: "In addition to receiving push notifications about potential security issues, app users can see recent crime and safety posts uploaded by their neighbors, the Ring team and local law enforcement via an interactive map. If a neighbor notices suspicious activity in their area, they can post their own text, photo or video and alert the community to proactively prevent crime."
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By BeauHD from
Slashdot's better-late-than-never department:
Microsoft's text editing app, Notepad, which has been shipping with Windows since version 1.0 in 1985, now supports line endings in text files created on Linux, Unix, Mac OS, and macOS devices. "This has been a major annoyance for developers, IT Pros, administrators, and end users throughout the community," Microsoft said in a blog post today. The Register reports: Notepad previously recognized only the Windows End of Line (EOL) characters, specifically Carriage Return (CR, r, 0x0d) and Line Feed (LF, n, 0x0a) together. For old-school Mac OS, the EOL character is just Carriage Return (CR, r, 0x0d) and for Linux/Unix it's just Line Feed (LF, n, 0x0a). Modern macOS, since Mac OS X, follows the Unix convention. Opening a file written on macOS, Mac OS, Linux, or Unix-flavored computers in Windows Notepad therefore looked like a long wall of text with no separation between paragraphs and lines. Relief arrives in the current Windows 10 Insider Build. Notepad will continue to output CRLF as its EOL character by default. It's not changing its stripes entirely. But it will retain the formatting of the files it opens so users will be able to view, edit and print text files with non-Windows line ends. Microsoft has thoughtfully provided an out for Windows users counting on the app's past inflexibility: the new behavior can be undone with a registry key change.
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By msmash from
Slashdot's watch-it department:
Americans are about to find it very difficult to avoid knowing how many calories they're consuming every day. From a report: That's because the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this week decided to move forward with an Obama-era food labeling rule that requires restaurants, grocery, and convenience stores with 20 or more locations to post calorie counts for standard menu items. The interesting thing about calorie counts is that, while they undoubtedly offer more transparency around the foods we choose to eat, there's not a lot of evidence to show they affect people's purchasing decisions. In 2017, a team of researchers led by a Harvard University professor conducted a systematic review of 53 studies on the topic. Their work was later published in the journal Obesity, and included an analysis of 18 studies of behavior in real-world restaurants, 9 from in cafeterias, and 21 from simulated settings. Five studies examined restaurant offerings. Overall, the review found that available research lacked strong designs, which ultimately makes understanding the effectiveness of calorie count labeling all the more cloudy.
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By msmash from
Slashdot's closer-assessment department:
An anonymous reader shares a report: Some bankers and observers have suggested that only the boring parts of jobs, drudgery like data entry and filling out forms, will disappear so the humans will be able to focus on more interesting tasks, and that no actual jobs will be lost. Bank employees themselves seem to think this. In an Accenture survey released last week of 1,300 nonexecutive bank employees, 67% said they believe AI will improve their work-life balance, and 57% expect it will expand their career prospects. But Autonomous Research also issued a report last week that estimated that in the U.S. alone, 2.5 million financial services employees will be "exposed" to AI technologies in the front, middle and back office -- 1.2 million working in banking and lending, 460,000 in investment management, and 865,000 in insurance. "These functions will see 20-40% productivity gains, or unemployment, depending on your vantage point," the report stated. About $1 trillion in costs will be exposed to AI transformation in financial services sectors by 2030, according to the report; $450 million of this would in banking. In banking, 70% of front-office jobs will be dislocated by AI, the researchers say: 485,000 tellers, 219,000 customer service representatives, and 174,000 loan interviewers and clerks. They will be replaced by chatbots, voice assistants and automated authentication and biometric technology. And 96,000 financial managers and 13,000 compliance officers will be laid off as AI-based anti-money-laundering, anti-fraud, compliance and monitoring software fills in. Another 250,000 loan officers will lose their jobs to AI-based credit underwriting and smart contracts technology.
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By BeauHD from
Slashdot's dreams-do-come-true department:
Google today announced Chrome OS is getting Linux support. "As a result, Chromebooks will soon be able to run Linux apps and execute Linux commands," reports VentureBeat. "A preview of Linux on the Pixelbook will be released first, with support for more devices coming soon." From the report: "Just go to wherever you normally get those apps, whether it's on the websites or through apt-get in the Linux terminal, and seamless get those apps like any other Linux distribution," Chrome OS director of product management Kan Liu told VentureBeat.
Support for Linux apps means developers will finally be able to use a Google device to develop for Google's platforms, rather than having to depend on Windows, Mac, or Linux machines. And because Chrome OS doesn't just run Chrome OS-specific apps anymore, developers will be able to create, test, and run any Android or web app for phones, tablets, and laptops all on their Chromebooks. Without having to switch devices, you can run your favorite IDE -- as long as there is a Debian Linux version (for the curious, Google is specifically using Debian Stretch here -- code in your favorite language and launch projects to Google Cloud with the command line.
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By BeauHD from
Slashdot's science-fiction-to-reality department:
At its I/O developer conference today, Google debuted "Duplex," an AI system for accomplishing real world tasks over the phone. "To show off its capabilities, CEO Sundar Pichai played two recordings of Google Assistant running Duplex, scheduling a hair appointment and a dinner reservation," reports Quartz. "In each, the person picking up the phone didn't seem to realize they were talking to a computer. The conversations proceed back-and-forth to find the right time, and confirm what the customer wanted. Even when conversations didn't go as expected, the assistant understood the context, responded appropriately, and carried on the task. (You can listen to the recordings here.)" From the report: It's a far more natural conversation than consumers may be used to with digital assistants. The AI's voice lacks a stilted cadence and comes complete with "ums" and natural pauses (which also helps cover up the fact that it is still processing). It uses the phone's on-board processing, as well as the cloud, to deliver the right response with just the right amount of pause. Google is taking advantage of its primary asset: data. It trained Duplex on a massive body of "anonymized phone conversations," according to a release. Every scheduling task will have its own problems to solve when arranging a specific type of appointment, but all will be underpinned by Google's massive volume of data from searches and recordings that will help the AI hold a conversation. Still, the technology cannot carry on just any conversation. Even though Duplex can seemingly handle far more context than other systems, it only works within a narrow set of queries (Google hasn't listed all of them yet). And despite releasing six new more natural sounding voices for the Assistant product available today, none approached the humanity of its Duplex example.
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By BeauHD from
Slashdot's take-a-deep-breath department:
Several months after the data breach was first reported, Equifax has published the details on the personal records and sensitive information stolen in the cybersecurity incident. The good news: the number of individuals affected by the network intrusion hasn't increased from the 146.6 million Equifax previously announced, but extra types of records accessed by the hackers have turned up in Mandiant's ongoing audit of the security breach," reports The Register. From the report: Late last week, the company gave the numbers in letters to the various U.S. congressional committees investigating the network infiltration, and on Monday, it submitted a letter to the SEC, corporate America's financial watchdog. As well as the -- take a breath -- 146.6 million names, 146.6 million dates of birth, 145.5 million social security numbers, 99 million address information and 209,000 payment cards (number and expiry date) exposed, the company said there were also 38,000 American drivers' licenses and 3,200 passport details lifted, too. The further details emerged after Mandiant's investigators helped "standardize certain data elements for further analysis to determine the consumers whose personally identifiable information was stolen." The extra data elements, the company said, didn't involve any individuals not already known to be part of the super-hack, so no additional consumer notifications are required.
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By BeauHD from
Slashdot's new-and-improved department:
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A public beta for Android P, as it's still known, is out today for those who want to try the software for themselves. The usual caveats with installing unfinished software still apply. Notably, however, Google has made the beta available on devices beyond the company's own Pixel smartphones. Google says those who own the Essential Phone, Nokia 7 Plus, Sony Xperia XZ2, Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S, Vivo X21, Oppo R15 Pro, and the OnePlus 6 (when it comes out) can access the early build alongside those with a Pixel or Pixel 2 phone. Google is crediting its Project Treble updating initiative for making this expansion possible.
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article continued at Slashdot's new-and-improved department >
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By BeauHD from
Slashdot's lock-and-loaded department:
hyperclocker shares a report from Mac Rumors: The iOS 11.4 update, currently being beta tested, includes a USB Restricted Mode that introduces a week-long expiration date on access to the Lightning port on your iOS devices if your phone hasn't been unlocked, which has implications for law enforcement tools like the GrayKey box. USB Restricted Mode was outlined this morning by Elcomsoft after testing confirmed that the feature has indeed been enabled. In Elcomsoft's experience, after an iPhone or iPad has been updated to iOS 11.4, if it hasn't been unlocked or connected to a paired computer in the last 7 days using a passcode, the Lightning port is useless for data access and limited to charging. "At this point, it is still unclear whether the USB port is blocked if the device has not been unlocked with a passcode for 7 consecutive days; if the device has not been unlocked at all (password or biometrics); or if the device has not been unlocked or connected to a trusted USB device or computer," reports Elcomsoft. "In our test, we were able to confirm the USB lock after the device has been left idle for 7 days. During this period, we have not tried to unlock the device with Touch ID or connect it to a paired USB device. What we do know, however, is that after the 7 days the Lightning port is only good for charging."
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By msmash from
Slashdot's genuine-question department:
Amazon's product page for its new Echo Dot Kids Edition doesn't mention the words "privacy" or "data." Mozilla thinks it should. From a report: The e-commerce company last month introduced the new, child-friendly Echo device, powered by an Alexa voice assistant that was modified for kids ages 5 to 12. The $80 gadget becomes available Wednesday, along with new kid-friendly services called FreeTime on Alexa and FreeTime Unlimited on Alexa. Just ahead of those launches, Mozilla, the nonprofit behind the Firefox web browser and a growing political force in tech, on Monday said it spoke with Amazon directly about about the new device. It asked Amazon to update the Echo Dot Kids Edition product page with specific information on how it uses children's data collected through the smart speaker. That way, parents shopping for the gadget could easily read Amazon's privacy information without having to dig around for it, Mozilla argued. Mozilla has already posted a petition on its website calling for these changes, but Ashley Boyd, Mozilla's vice president of advocacy, said in a statement Monday night that Mozilla is "heartened" that Amazon listened to its concerns. She added that Mozilla is pausing that petition while it continues to talk with Amazon.
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By msmash from
Slashdot's next-on-the-agenda department:
The White House will hold a meeting Thursday with major tech corporations to discuss artificial intelligence, according to media reports. Axios: America finds itself in a race with other countries, most notably China, to advance AI technologies. What they're saying: "In order to maintain America's leadership on AI, the administration should continue to invest in research and development, and advance programs that equip the workforce with skills of the future," said Dean Garfield, the president of the Information Technology Industry Council, in a statement. The guest list includes companies like Facebook, Amazon, Google and Nvidia, per the Washington Post, which first reported the meeting.
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