SoylentNews

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

The Christian Science Monitor reports

Nashville residents who dropped by their local Arby's beginning [the week of November 2] could try the restaurant's limited-time-only venison, or deer meat, sandwich, which the fast-food chain debuted in commemoration of the beginning of deer hunting season.

[...] Many of the Arby's locations that are selling the sandwich are located in more populous or urban areas rather than rural areas where one might expect people to hunt. But Evan Heusinkveld, the president and CEO of the Sportsmen's Alliance, tells The Christian Science Monitor that the urban population is exactly the group that should have the opportunity to try venison.

"Many people who live in the country either have their own freezer of venison or know somebody who hunts", he says, "Selling to city dwellers is exactly what the hunting community would love to see."

While Arby's venison is sourced from farm-raised deer in New Zealand due to USDA rules against serving wild-harvested meat, it will still give customers a taste of what they're missing. The sandwich features a juicy venison steak, crispy onions, and juniper berry sauce.

Arby's venison sandwiches will be offered in just 17 locations in six states (Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Georgia) during deer season, with the promotion ending the Monday after Thanksgiving.

So far, the company says the sandwich has been a big hit.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37882973

Los Angeles police have charged Playboy model Dani Mathers over a "body-shaming" image she took of an older woman in a gym locker room. The picture of the naked 70-year-old was taken in LA Fitness in July without her consent and posted on social media. She uploaded the photo to Snapchat alongside one of herself and the caption: "If I can't unsee this then you can't either". Ms Mathers faces a charge of invasion of privacy. She could face up to six months in jail and a $1,000 (£800) fine if convicted.

Ms Mathers, 29, apologised soon after uploading the image, saying she thought her Snapchat post had been a private conversation and acknowledging that "body-shaming" is wrong. However, her lawyer, Thomas Mesereau, is quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying his client did nothing illegal, neither invading anyone's privacy nor violating any laws. Announcing the decision to charge the model, Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer took aim at "body-shaming", calling it "humiliating, with often painful, long-term consequences".

Original Submission

frojack writes:

In the last several weeks I've been getting spam via my Google Drive Account.

It seems someone can share a document with you knowing nothing more than that you have a Google Email Account.
They simply put some spam in a folder, and then share that widely to thousands of Google users.

The files sit in their google drive, not yours. And you don't have to click on them. But if you do, who knows what sort of malware can be hidden in there.

If you have the Google Drive App installed on your Android device, it wants to notify you about each new item shared with you.

So the app, running on your phone dutifully opens the shared item, and shows you a thumbnail. And if you tap the notification it takes you right into the Google Drive app, and opens that unknown shared item and shows text and images to you.

By the time you realize how dumb that tap was the damage could already be done.

[Continues...]

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Mythbuntu: So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

It's been a long and fun ride from 7.10, but it's time to turn in our badge.

What is happening?
Mythbuntu as a separate distribution will cease to exist. We will take the necessary steps to pull Mythbuntu specific packages from the repositories (17.04 and later) unless someone steps up to take these packages over. MythTV packages in the official repositories and the Mythbuntu PPA will continue to be available and updated at their current rate.

Why is this happening?
Mythbuntu is a necessary distribution for easing some of the setup of MythTV, however through attrition we have dwidled from a team of ten down to two developers doing all of the work. Although we have automated as much as we can, the effort to both fix issues that pop up from underlying changes and release an ISO is more than the team can support in our free time.

What does this mean for users?
MythTV will continue to be available from the repositories just like any other package.

For users wanting to install new installations, there will no longer be an ISO, the mythbuntu-desktop package, nor the Mythbuntu-Control-Centre. We recommend installing a slim distro (perhaps Xubuntu), add the Mythbuntu Repos, and install and configure MythTV from there.

For users looking for up to date versions of MythTV, we will continue to provide these updates through our PPA.

http://www.mythbuntu.org/home/news/mythbuntusolongandthanksforallthefish
https://web.archive.org/web/20161106073403/http://www.mythbuntu.org/home/news/mythbuntusolongandthanksforallthefish

=== Huh? What was Mythbuntu?

http://www.mythbuntu.org/home
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythbuntu

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

[Ed Note: This reads a little like a Soylvertisement, but the concept that the blog is talking about regarding using WebSocket to send the advertising (and the tool he uses to see the traffic) is interesting. The "How It Works" section of the blog article (not posted here) is worth a read.]

Pornhub Bypasses Ad Blockers With WebSockets

TLDR: Watch the BugReplay Recording of Pornhub dodging AdBlock

(NSFW level: medium)

We tried to find the most PG page on MindGeek's network to use as an example- it wasn't easy.

---

When I was building the prototype for BugReplay, I was evaluating different methods of capturing and analyzing network traffic from Chrome. One of the first things I saw that looked promising was the chrome.webRequest API.

From the docs: "Use the chrome.webRequest API to observe and analyze traffic and to intercept, block, or modify requests in-flight."

That seemed to be exactly what I needed.

After experimenting with the Chrome webRequest API, I quickly realized there was a big problem. It didn't allow me to analyze any WebSocket traffic, something I really wanted to support.

As I was searching the web trying to see if I was misreading the documentation or was looking in the wrong spot, I found a relevant bug report from 2012: "chrome.webRequest.onBeforeRequest doesn't intercept WebSocket requests." In the bug report, users were complaining that without the ability to block WebSockets, websites could get around ad blockers fairly easily. If WebSocket data was not visible to Chrome extensions via the webRequest API, they could not be blocked without some heavy duty hacks.

Initially, the risks to ad blockers seemed theoretical; the examples of sites that were employing this technique were very obscure. Then in August 2016, an employee of the company that owns Pornhub.com (MindGeek) started arguing against adding the WebSocket blocking capabilities to the Chrome API. Pornhub is the 63rd most visited site on the Internet according to Alexa. I checked out a few of MindGeek's sites and sure enough, I could see ads coming through even though I had Adblock Plus on. The ads on Pornhub are marked 'By Traffic Junky,' which is an ad network owned by MindGeek.

In the screenshot below, you can see a banner at the top of the page announcing that the site is aware that the user is using an Ad Blocker, with an invitation to subscribe to a premium ads free version of the site. On the right side of the page you can see an advertisement.

http://blog.bugreplay.com/post/152579164219/pornhubdodgesadblockersusingwebsockets

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

martyb writes:

The weekend is upon us and if you are looking for something to help pass the time, look no further! The Ars Technica science fiction bucket list—42 movies every geek must see ...and nine bonus stinkers from which you should run away screaming.

[...] Lists of science fiction movies are a common item for discussion on the Ars staff Slack channel—particularly short lists of the best science fiction movies ever made. But "best" is an impossible word to quantify in any broadly applicable way—one person's "best ever" might be another person's worst, especially in a genre of movies as rich and varied as science fiction.

["Science fiction" is a meta term that refers to a huge host of sub-genres, from "hard" science fiction to skiffy to all points between. For this list, we've chosen to constrain eligibility requirements to movies that deal speculatively with science and/or the future. This lets us include classics like Frankenstein (which is properly sci-fi) while excluding films that skew heavily toward fantasy. Then again, we've got Star Wars in the list and that's not a future movie, so author's discretion trumps all, I suppose!]

While the Ars staff has some bitter disagreements on which movies are better than others, it's undeniable that some science fiction movies are mandatory viewing for the modern geek. To that end, rather than try to pull together another tired "top ten sci-fi movies" listicle, we've instead polled the Ars staff to try to come up with a definitive "science fiction bucket list"—that is, a list of sci-fi movies that you should absolutely see at least once before you die. They aren't necessarily the "best" movies by any specific set of criteria, but every film on this list is outstanding in some particular way. Some were groundbreaking in their stories or subject matter, some were controversial, and some contained a character or plot twist that went on to become an archetype, referenced in and reused by countless other films. Some films on the list, like Fritz Lang's Metropolis, are pure cinematic poetry; others, like Pacific Rim, are pure popcorn fun. And, as a bonus, we even included a bonus list of a few absolutely terrible stinkers at the very bottom.

[Continues...]

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Several years ago Platform Computing (now owned by IBM) released an open source version of LSF (Platform Load Sharing Facility) -- their premier software product. LSF is a workload management platform and job scheduler for distributed HPC environments. In recent years that open source product has begun to flourish, and now IBM is using the DMCA in an attempt to erase all progress made on the project since it was first released. I guess if you can't compete, you call your legal team...

As posted on the OpenLava mailing list:

> Hello all, this is David Bigagli the founder of OpenLava, I am writing
> on behalf of the OpenLava project. As some or most of you might have
> noticed the GPL2 OpenLava project is under attack by the IBM
> corporation. The github software repository have been shut down under
> the US DMCA law and now the OpenLava website www.openlava.org, hosted
> on Amazon S3, which provides the source code to the latest 4.0 and 3.0
> version will be shut down in the next 24 hours unless the source code
> is removed.
>
> IBM claims that the versions of OpenLava starting from 3.0 infringe
> their copyright and that some source code have been stolen from them,
> copied, or otherwise taken from their code base.
>
> I have developed most of the OpenLava code and I have reviewed all
> contributions. All this development was done without access to any
> IBM code. All IBM claims regarding the source code are false and
> fabricated.

Full release from OpenLava is here: http://www.openlava.org/download/download.html

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Fortune reports:

[18 year old] Meetkumar Hiteshbhai Desai was arrested[PDF] by the Cyber Crimes Unit of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, after he shared [with his 12,000 Twitter followers] a link to a JavaScript exploit that forced iPhones to call 911 repeatedly. The link was clicked 1,849 times, triggering over 100 "hangup calls" to the 911 dispatch center in Surprise, Arizona, within a matter of minutes. The Maricopa [Sheriff's] Office says that put the center in "immediate danger of losing service to their switches".

Large volumes of fraudulent calls were also directed to the Peoria, Arizona police department and to the Maricopa County [Sheriff's] office, also threatening 911 service in those areas. Other fake calls were also reportedly directed to agencies in California and Texas.

Desai has been charged with 3 felony counts of computer tampering, though he told the [Sheriff's] office that he distributed the exploit accidentally. Desai told investigators in part that he was researching bugs to turn over to Apple as part of its bug bounty program, announced at the Black Hat conference this summer.

Desai told investigators that while working to exploit a bug discovered by an acquaintance online, he developed two versions of the malicious JavaScript code--one that opened popups and executed other annoying commands on a phone that accessed it, and another that commanded the phones to repeatedly dial 911. He told investigators that he had intended to share the less-malicious version of the exploit as a kind of prank, but accidentally shared the 911-dialing version instead.

[...] Researchers demonstrated in September that only 6,000 phones affected by a similar hack could cause major disruptions to 911 services across a mid-sized U.S. state. 911 systems are particularly vulnerable because the FCC requires that mobile 911 calls be exempted from certain kinds of service filtering. Some forms of malware can even generate audio content with the calls, making it very difficult for call centers to distinguish between legitimate and fraudulent calls.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

nextBIGfuture is reporting on the creation of Solid Metallic Hydrogen (SMH).

Let that sink in for a moment.

Hydrogen is the lightest of all the chemical elements. We've heard of liquid hydrogen which, when combined with liquid oxygen, makes for some powerful rockets (think Saturn V). According to Wikipedia: "To exist as a liquid, H₂ must be cooled below hydrogen's critical point of 33 K. However, for hydrogen to be in a fully liquid state without boiling at atmospheric pressure, it needs to be cooled to 20.28 K[3] (−423.17 °F/−252.87 °C)"

Now some Harvard researchers have gone one step further and, for the first time ever reported, have created solid hydrogen! Not only that, they have confirmed that it is metallic; thus: Solid Metallic Hydrogen is now a reality!

From the article:

* they have made some metallic hydrogen and have it in a cryostat in liquid nitrogen
* they might leave it under pressure and let it warm to room temperature or they could keep it cold and release the pressure
* they are planning to test for high temperature superconductivity

If it stays a metal at room temperature and after releasing pressure and was also a superconductor then it would be the holy grail of physics.

Controlled nuclear fusion, production of metallic hydrogen, and high temperature superconductivity have been listed as the top three key problems of physics. These problems all involve hydrogen and its isotopes.

Early theoretical predictions of metallic hydrogen being created at a pressure of 25 GPa (100GPa=1megabar) was way off. Modern quantum Monte-Carlo methods, as well as density functional theory (DFT), predict a pressure of ~400 to 500 GPa for the transition. The most likely space group for the atomic lattice is I41/amd. Metallic hydrogen has been predicted to be a high temperature superconductor, first by Ashcroft, with critical temperatures possibly higher than room temperature. Moreover, SMH is predicted to be metastable so that it may exist at room temperature when the pressure is released. If so, and superconducting, it could have an important impact on mankind's energy problems and would revolutionize rocketry as a powerful rocket propellant.

takyon writes:

http://www.bbc.com/news/37875609

The Canadian military has investigated a mysterious pinging sound coming from the sea floor in a remote region of the Arctic, officials have told the BBC. The strange noise is reported by local people to have frightened animals away over the past few months.

A military aircraft conducted various multi-sensor searches in the area, officials said on Friday. But the military says it is so far unable to explain the cause of the "acoustic anomalies". "The [aircraft] crew did not detect any surface or sub-surface contacts," the military said in a statement released to the BBC. "The only thing the crew did observe were two pods of whales and six walruses in the area of interest."

Initial CBC reporting, and updated story.

[Maybe the pinging is from cetaceans who are looking to submit their own RFC? -Ed.]

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37879151

Rolling Stone magazine and a journalist have been found guilty of defamation over a false article about a gang rape at the University of Virginia.

The $7.5m (£6m) lawsuit was brought by Nicole Eramo, an associate dean from the university, who said the article had cast her as the "chief villain".

The 2014 article, written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, included the rape claim of an unidentified female student.

The magazine retracted the article in April 2015, citing inconsistencies.

[...] An investigation by the Charlottesville Police Department had found no evidence that "Jackie" had been gang raped.

[...] The amount [Nicole Eramo] is due in damages will be determined at a later date.

The 10-member federal jury in Charlottesville found that Erdely, the journalist, was responsible for libel with actual malice.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Android will implement new texting features:

As promised earlier this year, Google is bringing RCS – Rich Communications Service, an upgrade to the SMS standard – to Android devices. Its first carrier partner on the initiative is Sprint, which is rolling out RCS messaging to its customers with Android devices, starting today. Once enabled, RCS will offer Android users an enhanced messaging experience over SMS, with features like better group chats, high-resolution photo sharing, read receipts and typing indicators.

[...] For consumers who gain access to the new messaging experience on Sprint Android phones, they'll be able to take advantage of features that rival Apple's iMessage or other third-party messaging apps. For example, though MMS today supports group messaging, you can't do some of the things people now expect – like naming the group, adding new members, or leaving an existing group. That will change with RCS. [...] RCS, as a technology, has been around since 2007, but it has only been launched by 49 carriers worldwide, according to the GSMA. However, the organization says that Sprint is the first to launch the new RCS profile initiative – the other launches involved older iterations on the standard.

Google announcement.

Rich Communication Services

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Wisconsin Public Radio reports

It's easy to forget how vast and complex the existing infrastructure for gas vehicles is. Not having that convenience is a problem the sellers and proponents of electric vehicles [have] been working to change.

Now, the Obama administration says it will significantly expand the nation's infrastructure for electric vehicles. The U.S. Department of Transportation is establishing 48 national electric vehicle charging corridors. Those vehicle routes dotted with charging stations are intended to cover 25,000 miles of highway in 35 states.

[...] The idea is to add thousands of electric charging stations around the country. In addition, states and local governments signed up to increase electric vehicles in their fleets.

[...] This all comes as consumers are turning away from sedans and moving toward SUVs and pickups. David Shepardson of Reuters looks at the problem of slow electric adoption by consumers.

[...] In August 2008, Obama set a goal of getting 1 million plug-in electric vehicles on the roads by 2015. Only about 520,000 electric cars have been sold in the United States since 2008, out of about 250 million cars and trucks on U.S. roads.

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

El Reg reports

Samsung says it will recall millions of washing machines that are prone to blowing up.

The South Korean electronics giant says that 34 models of top-loading machines are covered by the massive US-wide recall, which was sparked by hundreds of reports of units violently tearing themselves apart mid-cycle.

According to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, 733 reports have been received of the Sammy washers spontaneously disassembling, and at least nine of the incidents resulted in serious injuries such as broken jaws, shoulder damage, and "other impact or fall-related injuries".

[...] Samsung has been receiving these reports for months, but had not issued any sort of formal recall.

Owners of the self-destructing appliances have two options to remedy the situation:

1. Samsung is offering a free in-home repair to reinforce (read: bomb-proof) the doors on the affected washers.
2. Owners can receive a rebate from Samsung that may be applied to the cost of a replacement washer (either from Samsung or someone else). Delivery and installation costs will be covered by Samsung.

Those who have purchased one of the recalled washing machines in the last 30 days can return the unit for a full refund.

Barring those options, Samsung says it will send all washing machine owners a care package that includes a revised instruction manual, a new "control panel guide" and two "warning labels" to affix to the washers so that anyone using it will be cognizant of the danger.

[Continues...]

Phoenix666 writes:

VoCore2 is an open source Linux computer and a fully-functional wireless router that is smaller than a coin. It can also act as a VPN gateway for a network, an AirPlay station to play lossless music, a private cloud to store your photos, video, and code, and much more.

The Lite version of the VoCore2 features a 580MHz MT7688AN MediaTek system on chip (SoC), 64MB of DDR2 RAM, 8MB of NOR storage, and a single antenna slot for Wi-Fi that supports 150Mbps.

All this for $4.

Spend $12 and go for the full VoCore2 option and you get the same SoC, but you get 128MB of DDR2 RAM, 16MB of NOR storage, two antenna slots supporting 300Mbps, an on-board antenna, and PCIe 1.1 support.

The story goes on to cover 11 more relatively inexpensive computers (depending on your idea of inexpensive). Read on for the complete list and links to each one.

[Continues...]