By msmash from
Slashdot's hmm department:
Uber has launched an appeal against a landmark employment tribunal ruling that its minicab drivers should be classed as workers with access to the minimum wage, sick pay and paid holidays. From a report on The Guardian: The taxi-app company filed papers with the appeal tribunal on Tuesday in an attempt to overturn the October judgment that, if it stands, could affect tens of thousands of workers in the gig economy. The move came as several dozen Uber drivers picketed City Hall on Wednesday holding placards demanding Transport for London, which licences Uber as a private hire operator in the capital, "end sweated labour now." It also mounted a protest at the City of London offices of Salesforce, a US computing company that is a major Uber client. Two Uber drivers, James Farrar and Yaseen Aslam, took Uber to court on behalf of a group 19 others who argued that they were employed by the San Francisco-based company, rather than working for themselves. Uber's business model has been based on treating drivers who log on to its app as self-employed contractors and taking a cut of their fares, which Uber dictates.
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By msmash from
Slashdot's bolstering-security department:
Some of the world's leading photojournalists and filmmakers are calling on the manufacturers of the cameras they use to add encryption to their products, as the number of threats they face from having their devices seized is "literally too high to count." From a ZDNet report: Over 150 documentary makers and reporters signed an open letter by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, asking for camera makers -- including Nikon, Sony, and Canon -- to ensure that their work is protected while often "attempting to uncover wrongdoing in the interests of justice." "Documentary filmmakers and photojournalists work in some of the most dangerous parts of the world, often risking their lives to get footage of newsworthy events to the public," said Trevor Timm, the foundation's executive director. But, he said, "they face a variety of threats from border security guards, local police, intelligence agents, terrorists, and criminals when attempting to safely return their footage so that it can be edited and published." The filmmakers say that camera security has lagged behind the rest of the industry, leaving their work "dangerously vulnerable."
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By msmash from
Slashdot's aggressive-expansion department:
Amazon announced Wednesday it is expanding its on-demand video streaming service Prime Video to nearly every country and territory except China. Prime Video, home to popular shows such as "The Grand Tour," "Transparent" and "The Man in the High Castle," will be bundled with Prime subscriptions in 19 countries including India, and Canada. In other new regions, Prime Video customers will have to pay $2.99 or 2.99 euros per month for the first six months, after which the price will be doubled to $5.99 or 5.99 euros. From a report: The global expansion of Prime Video comes nearly a year after Netflix announced it is making its streaming service available in 130 nations. Netflix is currently available in roughly 200 regions. Interestingly, Amazon is not only fighting back Netflix on content, but it is using its money power to gain instant foothold worldwide. In India, for instance, Amazon Prime Video costs less than a dollar per month for access.
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By BeauHD from
Slashdot's third-world department:
Britain's National Infrastructure Commission has said in a major new report that the country's mobile phone coverage is worse than that in Albania, Panama, Peru and Romania, as users are able to connect to the internet barely half the time. The report also found that the country's data volumes are four to five times less than the U.S. and Japan. The Guardian reports: The commission, chaired by Andrew Adonis, the crossbench peer and former Labour minister, said the government must now ensure that the next generation of 5G spectrum does not have the failures that dog 4G coverage. "Britain is 54th in the world for 4G coverage, and the typical user can only access 4G barely half the time," Adonis said. "Our 4G network is worse than Romania and Albania, Panama and Peru. Our roads and railways can feel like digital deserts and even our city centers are plagued by not spots where connectivity is impossible. That isn't just frustrating, it is increasingly holding British business back as more and more of our economy requires a connected workforce." In a list of recommendations, it argued there should be a new dedicated cabinet minister in charge of the UK's digital future, ensuring mobile connectivity is competitive with the rest of the world. On top of that, it called for ministers and Ofcom, the media regulator, to work together to ensure a set of standards known as a universal service obligation no later than 2025. The crucial priorities for coverage are key rail routes, major roads such as motorways and all towns and cities, Adonis said.
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By BeauHD from
Slashdot's no-place-to-hide department:
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey interviewed Edward Snowden via Periscope about the wide world of technology. The NSA whistleblower "discussed the data that many online companies continue to collect about their users, creating a 'quantified world' -- and more opportunities for government surveillance," reports TechCrunch. Snowden said, "If you are being tracked, this is something you should agree to, this is something you should understand, this is something you should be aware of and can change at any time." TechCrunch reports: Snowden acknowledged that there's a distinction between collecting the content of your communication (i.e., what you said during a phone call) and the metadata (information like who you called and how long it lasted). For some, surveillance that just collects metadata might seem less alarming, but in Snowden's view, "That metadata is in many cases much more dangerous and much more intrusive, because it can be understood at scale." He added that we currently face unprecedented perils because of all the data that's now available -- in the past, there was no way for the government to get a list of all the magazines you'd read, or every book you'd checked out from the library. "[In the past,] your beliefs, your future, your hopes, your dreams belonged to you," Snowden said. "Increasingly, these things belong to companies, and these companies can share them however they want, without a lot of oversight." He wasn't arguing that companies shouldn't collect user data at all, but rather that "the people who need to be in control of that are the users." "This is the central problem of the future, is how do we return control of our identities to the people themselves?" Snowden said.
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By BeauHD from
Slashdot's good-to-go department:
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Monday, energy company Deepwater Wind announced that its wind farm three miles off the coast of Block Island, Rhode Island, has the all-clear to sell electricity to the regional power grid. The Block Island Wind Farm is the first offshore wind energy plant in the U.S., and it's expected to produce 30 MW of electricity at full capacity. Deepwater Wind is slowly ramping up energy output and still must provide additional paperwork to the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council, but the executive director of that organization, Grover Fugate, told the Providence Journal, "we don't anticipate any major issues" to getting the wind farm fully online. The one hitch in the Deepwater's plan is that one of the five turbines was recently damaged when a drill bit was left in a critical part of turbine. According to the Providence Journal, "the bit had caused damage to an unspecified number of the 128 magnet modules that line the circular generator and are critical to producing energy." Although the magnet modules can apparently be replaced easily, Deepwater needs to have the components shipped from France, where General Electric, the manufacturer of the wind turbines, makes them. For now, four turbines capable of churning out 6 MW of power each are operational. The Providence Journal notes that National Grid will pay Deepwater Wind 24.4 cents per kilowatt hour of power, with the price escalating over time to 47.9 cents per kilowatt hour. Because the residents of Block Island have some of the most expensive electricity rates in the nation, they will actually see energy savings, despite the price. Mainland Rhode Islanders, on the other hand, will pay an extra $1.07 per month on average.
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By BeauHD from
Slashdot's better-luck-next-time department:
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Windows Central: Microsoft is surging forward with its commitment to artificial intelligence (AI), formally announcing its latest chatbot, Zo. In a post outlining its commitment to AI, Microsoft introduced Zo as the next chapter in the evolution of its attempts to create a social chatbot. Zo is built on the back of the same technology that powers Microsoft's other chatbots in China and Japan, Xiaoice and Rinna. Zo is meant to learn from her interactions with humans, and is able to respond to conversations with her own personality. In a nod to an awkward turn of events involving Microsoft's last attempt at a social chatbot, Tay, the company notes that Zo has guards in place to prevent exploitation. While you can currently only strike up a conversation with Zo on Kik messenger, Microsoft says it has plans to bring the chatbot to Skype and Facebook Messenger as well. Still, if you use Kik, you can start a conversation up with Zo now. Otherwise, head to Zo.ai to request an invite to chat with the bot on Messenger when it's available.
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By BeauHD from
Slashdot's moving-on-to-bigger-and-better-things department:
The co-founder and CEO of Oculus, Brendan Iribe, is stepping down from the company he helped create with Palmer Luckey over four years ago in Irvine, California. Iribe writes in a statement to UploadVR: "We've decided to establish new PC and mobile VR groups to be more focused, strengthen development and accelerate our roadmap. Looking ahead and thinking about where I'm most passionate, I've decided to lead the PC VR group -- pushing the state of VR forward with Rift, research and computer vision. As we've grown, I really missed the deep, day-to-day involvement in building a brand new product on the leading edge of technology. You do your best work when you love what you're working on. If that's not the case, you need to make a change. With this new role, I can dive back into engineering and product development. That's what gets me up every day, inspired to run to work." UploadVR adds: When we asked Oculus PR what this meant for Max Cohen, the current Head of Mobile at Oculus, we were told that, "he's still focused on mobile and growing the mobile ecosystem on Jon's team." After publication, Oculus PR also informed us of how this affects the roles of Nate Mitchell, VP of Product, and Michael Abrash, Cheif Scientist, upon further inquiry: "Nate will be leading Rift, on Brendan's PC VR team. Michael Abrash still leads Oculus Research on Brendan's team. When asked about John Carmack, CTO, and Michael Antonov, Chief Software Architect, Oculus PR informed us that, "they are both still at Oculus and they work on the mobile team. Michael Antonov is leading the Carmel and ReactVR effort today."
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By BeauHD from
Slashdot's high-performance department:
MojoKid writes from a report via HotHardware: AMD has just officially unveiled that desktop variants of its Zen processor family will now be branded RYZEN. Zen-based processors will eventually target desktops, servers, and mobiles device, but the first wave of products will be targeted at the performance desktop market, where gamers and VR continue to spur growth. AMD is positioning RYZEN as a high-performance option and though there will be other core configurations as well, AMD has disclosed that one of the high-end options in the initial RYZEN line-up will feature 8 cores (16 threads with SMT) and at minimum a 3.4 GHz base clock, with higher turbo frequencies. That processor will also be outfitted with 20MB of cache -- 4MB of L2 and 16MB of L3 -- and it will be infused with what AMD is calling SenseMI technology. SenseMI is essentially fancy branding for the updated branch predictor, prefetcher, and power and control logic in Zen. AMD's upcoming AM4 platform for RYZEN will be outfitted with all of the features expected of a modern PC enthusiast platform. AM4 motherboards will use DDR4 memory and feature PCIe Gen 3 connectivity, and support for USB 3.1 Gen 2, NVMe, and SATA Express. Performance demos of RYZEN shown to members of the press pit a stock Intel Core i7-6900K (3.2GHz base, 3.7GHz turbo) with Turbo Boost that was enabled on the 6900K, versus RYZEN with boost disabled running at 3.4GHz flat. In the demo, the RYZEN system outpaced the Core i7-6900K by a few seconds.
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By BeauHD from
Slashdot's take-matters-into-your-own-hands department:
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google dropped a single National Security Letter into its most recent transparency report without much fanfare, but today the company published eight more NSLs in an attempt to shed more light on government surveillance of Google users. The eight letters published today were sent to Google from FBI offices across the country. Cumulatively, the NSLs seek broad access to content for around 20 user accounts. The names of the targets are redacted, but most of the letters seek access to Gmail accounts. The NSLs were sent to Google over a five-year period, from 2010 to 2015, with the majority coming from the Charlotte, North Carolina field office of the FBI. Others came from Florida, Arizona, New York, and California. "In our continued effort to increase transparency around government demands for user data, today we begin to make available to the public the National Security Letters (NSLs) we have received where, either through litigation or legislation, we have been freed of nondisclosure obligations," Richard Salgado, Google's director of law enforcement and information security, wrote in a blog post. Google has fought to make the letters public in part because the FBI can issue them without prior judicial oversight.
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By BeauHD from
Slashdot's constitutional-protections department:
A Florida appeals court has reversed a decision by a previous judge and ruled that a suspected voyeur can be made to reveal his iPhone passcode to police. "The defendant was arrested after a woman out shopping saw a man crouch down and aim what she believed was a smartphone under her skirt," reports BBC: Store CCTV captured footage of a man crouched down, holding an illuminated device and moving it towards the victim's skirt, according to court documents published by news site Courthouse News. Aaron Stahl was identified by law enforcement officers who reviewed the footage, according to court documents. After his arrest, Mr Stahl initially agreed to allow officers to search his iPhone 5, which he told them was at his home. However, once it had been retrieved by police - but before he had revealed his passcode - he withdrew consent to the search. The trial court had decided that Mr Stahl could be protected by the Fifth Amendment, which is designed to prevent self-incrimination. However, Judge Anthony Black's formal opinion to the court quashed the decision. Judge Black referred to a famous Supreme Court case, Doe v US 1988, in which Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that a defendant could be made to surrender a key to a strongbox containing incriminating documents but they could not "be compelled to reveal the combination to his wall safe." "We question whether identifying the key which will open the strongbox - such that the key is surrendered - is, in fact, distinct from telling an officer the combination," wrote Judge Black. "More importantly, we question the continuing viability of any distinction as technology advances."
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