By msmash from
Slashdot's not-as-planned department:
As anticipated, wearable leader Fitbit kicked off the week by announcing a six-percent reduction in global work force, following disappointing fourth quarter financials. From a report: A preliminary statement issued this morning details the loss of 110 jobs, as part of a "reorganization of its business" designed to "creat[e] a more focused and efficient operating model." The news follows what has been a disappointing several months for the wearable space at large, impacting even Fitbit, the dominant player in the space. As rivals like Jawbone grapple with the future and the smartwatch space looks dismal, however, the Fitbit has been making acquisitions, including the once promising smartwatch pioneer Pebble, which met with its own struggles as the year drew to a close. The financials detail 6.5 million devices sold for the fourth quarter of last year, with quarterly revenue and annual revenue growth both falling below the company's guidance range.
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By EditorDavid from
Slashdot's 3D-glasses department:
Released five days ago, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard already has over 800,000 players -- and 84,036 of them are using a PlayStation VR headset. An anonymous reader quotes Digital Trends:
These numbers show that VR might have some real legs if compelling software is made... The numbers are also being updated live, so expect them to go up in the coming weeks. Earlier this week, numbers were in the 60-thousand range, meaning that positive buzz is driving gamers to pick up the game along with a VR headset.
Unfortunately for many gamers, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is a PSVR exclusive, meaning PC gamers that own an HTC Vive or Oculus Rift are unable to experience the game in VR... Luckily, patient PC gamers will be able to experience the game in VR next year, when Sony and Capcom's PSVR exclusivity deal expires.
It's the first Resident Evil game using the first-person point-of-view. Are there any Slashdot readers who have already tried gaming with a VR headset?
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By EditorDavid from
Slashdot's second-Second-Life department:
An anonymous reader writes:
After four years of development, Sansar, the new virtual reality world from Second Life's creators will arrive later this year on Oculus Rift and HTC Vive headsets. "It is trying to solve some of the big problems that plagued Second Life for years," reports MIT Technology Review, "such as that most users come in through what is essentially a front door and have a hard time finding things to do once they get in... In the demos I tried, I navigated via an atlas that shows a simple clickable thumbnail image of each destination along with its name."
But it still has to prove itself to users like John Artz, an associate professor at George Washington University who once taught a class about using Second Life for business applications. Artz "thinks Sansar will still suffer from the same fundamental issue that dogs Second Life: while the technology behind it is good, he says, it just got boring after a while."
Second Life still has 800,000 monthly users -- and in Sansar, virtual land will be cheaper, with Linden Lab concentrating "more on making money from selling virtual objects like clothing for avatars and furniture."
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By EditorDavid from
Slashdot's softening-software-markets department:
An anonymous reader writes:
Microsoft is having trouble selling $7-a-month subscriptions to Office 365. In the last three months of 2016, Microsoft added just 900,000 new subscriptions -- and throughout all of 2016, subscriptions increased by just 4.3 million. In fact, a chart at IT World shows that new subscriptions actually peaked in a year ago, with a steady decline in new subscribers ever since. "In each of the last three quarters, Office 365 grew by about 900,000 subscribers, the smallest quarterly increase since early 2014," they write. "Prior to the nine-month stretch of 2016, subscribers were accumulating at rates two to three times larger per quarter."
This explains why Microsoft announced 97 new markets for the software nine weeks ago. So far after four years, Microsoft's found just 25 million subscribers for Office 365 -- and it's not clear how many of those came from their $100 five-user packages. (Although those figures suggest that Office 365 subscriptions are still earning Microsoft at least half a billion dollars a year.)
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By EditorDavid from
Slashdot's Rocket-Road department:
SpaceX is livestreaming a competition between hyperloop pods from outside their headquarters in Hawthorne, California, and at least one Los Angeles newspaper is also covering the event live on Facebook.
"This competition is the first of its kind anywhere in the world," SpaceX writes, noting that 27 teams put their pods through a "litany" of pre-qualifying tests hoping to qualify for a run on the track on "Rocket Road".
An anonymous reader writes:
The mile-long track is "roughly half the width of a full-scale Hyperloop system," according to Fortune -- but it's still a near-total vacuum inside, making it possible for the magnetically-levitated pods to attain extremely high speeds. "The winning team will be the one that hits the highest top speed -- then stops before hitting the end of the tube. 'There'll be a bit of tension," Elon Musk mused. 'Will it brake in time?'"
Sunday's event "will mark the first time anyone gets to see the Hyperloop pods in action," according to Business Insider, which has photos and descriptions of the 27 pods -- including the MIT Hyperloop and the crowdfunded non-profit rLoop, which crowdsourced their open source development effort on Reddit.
SpaceX will also host a second competition will be held this summer focused on one criterion: speed.
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By EditorDavid from
Slashdot's sharing-your-posts department:
An anonymous reader quotes CNET:
Border patrol agents are checking the Facebook accounts of people who are being held in limbo for approval to enter the U.S., according to a Saturday tweet by immigration lawyer Mana Yegani that was spotted by The Independent... Yegani, who is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told CNET that checking phones has been reported by other lawyers as part of the vetting process. "[G]oing through passengers phones from the seven banned countries happens when the individual is interrogated (put under extreme vetting)," Yegani said.
Yegani told The Independent that she and other lawyers have been fielding calls from people who are already cleared to live in America, but are getting stuck at the border regardless. "These are people that are coming in legally. They have jobs here and they have vehicles here," Yegani said in the report.
The EFF warns that "Fourth Amendment protection is not as strong at the border as it is in your home or office. This means that law enforcement can inspect your computer or electronic equipment, even if they have no reason to suspect there is anything illegal on it. An international airport, even if many miles from the actual border, is considered the functional equivalent of a border."
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By EditorDavid from
Slashdot's flash-in-the-pan department:
Lucas123 writes: Toshiba, which invented NAND flash, plans to sell off an as-of-yet undisclosed portion of its memory business, including its solid-state drive unit, to Western Digital. Toshiba is spinning the business off to WD, a business ally, because it hopes in the long run the Toshiba-WD alliance will enable an expansion in NAND flash production capacity and increased efficiency in storage product development... Currently, Toshiba and WD together represent 35% of global NAND flash production; Samsung leads that market with 36% of production. "Toshiba wants to put its memory business in a more stable financial position," said Sean Yang, research director of DRAMeXchange. "Facing mounting operational and competitive pressure, the spun-off entity will be more effective in raising cash to stay afloat or expand"... Toshiba's solvency and fundraising ability are also in trouble because of a $1.9 billion accounting scandal and a multi-billion dollar loss related to a nuclear plant purchase. Last week, Toshiba announced its share price had tumbled 13% after reports that its nuclear power business had lost $4.4 billion.
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By EditorDavid from
Slashdot's searching-for-certs department:
"Google Chrome users have been contacting me wondering why they no longer could access the detailed status of Chrome https: connections, or view the organization and other data associated with SSL certificates for those connections," writes Slashdot reader Lauren Weinstein, adding "Google took a simple click in an intuitive place and replaced it with a bunch of clicks scattered around."
Up to now for the stable version of Chrome, you simply clicked the little green padlock icon on an https: connection, clicked on the "Details" link that appeared, and a panel then opened that gave you that status, along with an obvious button to click for viewing the actual certificate data such as Organization, issuance and expiration dates, etc. Suddenly, that "Details" link no longer is present...
The full certificate data is available from the "Developers tools" panel under the "Security" label. In fact, that's where this info has been for quite some time, but since the now missing "Details" link took you directly to that panel, most users probably didn't even realize that they were deep in the Developers tools section of the browser.
On some systems you can just press F12, but the alternate route is to click on the three vertical dots in the upper right, then select "More Tools", and then "Developer Tools". (And if you don't then see "Security", click on the ">>".)
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