Steve Dower, a Python developer at Microsoft, describes how the language become popular internally: In 2010, our few Pythonistas were flying under the radar, in case somebody noticed that they could reassign a few developers to their own project. The team was small, leftover from a previous job, but was chipping away at a company culture that suffered from "not invented here" syndrome: Python was a language that belonged to other people, and so Microsoft was not interested. Over the last eight years, the change has been dramatic. Many Microsoft products now include Python support, and some of the newest only support Python. Some of our critical tools are written in Python, and we are actively investing in the language and community.... In 2018, we are out and proud about Python, supporting it in our developer tools such as Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code, hosting it in Azure Notebooks, and using it to build end-user experiences like the Azure CLI. We employ five core CPython developers and many other contributors, are strong supporters of open-source data science through NumFOCUS and PyData, and regularly sponsor, host, and attend Python events around the world. "We often felt like a small startup within a very large company" Downer writes, in a post for the Medium community "Microsoft Open Source Stories."

Waymo's testing dozens of self-driving mini-vans near Phoenix. Now the Arizona Republic asks why the vehicles are getting so much hate, citing "a slashed tire, a pointed gun, bullies on the road..." "Police have responded to dozens of calls regarding people threatening and harassing Waymo vans." That was clear August 19, when police were called because a 37-year-old man who police described as "heavily intoxicated" was standing in front of a Waymo and not allowing the van to proceed. "He stated he was sick and tired of the Waymo vehicles driving in his neighborhood, and apparently thought the best idea to resolve this was to stand in front of one of these vehicles," Officer Richard Rimbach wrote in a report. Phil Simon, an information systems lecturer at Arizona State University and author of several books on technology, said angst from residents is probably less about how the Waymo vans drive and more about people frustrated with what Waymo represents. "This stuff is happening fast and a lot of people are concerned that technology is going to run them out of a job," Simon said. Simon said it is hard for middle-class people to celebrate technological breakthroughs like self-driving cars if they have seen their own wages stagnate or even decline in recent years. "There are always winners and losers, and these are probably people who are afraid and this is a way for them to fight back in some small, futile way," Simon said. "Something tells me these are not college professors or vice presidents who are doing well." Police used video footage from Waymo to identify the license plate of a Jeep that kept driving head-on toward Waymo's test car -- six different times, one in which the driver then slammed on the brakes, jumped out of their car, and demanded that Waymo get out of their neighborhood. Another local resident told the newspaper that "Everybody hates Waymo drivers. They are dangerous." On four separate occasions, people have thrown rocks. A 69-year-old man was even arrested for pointing a revolver at the test driver in a passing Waymo car. He later told police he was trying to scare Waymo's driver, and "stated that he despises and hates those cars." He was charged with aggravated assault and disorderly conduct. The man's wife told reporters he'd been diagnosed with dementia, but the Arizona Republic calls it "one of at least 21 interactions documented by local police during the past two years where people have harassed the autonomous vehicles and their human test drivers," adding "There may be many undocumented instances where people threatened Waymo drivers..." "The self-driving vans use radar, lidar and cameras to navigate, so they capture footage of all interactions that usually is clear enough to identify people and read license plates," the paper adds. (Waymo later cites its "ongoing work" with communities "including Arizona law enforcement and first responders.") When one local news crew followed Waymo vehicles for 170 miles to critique their driving, a Waymo driver eventually pulled into a police station "because the driver was concerned we might've been harassing them. After they learned we were with the media, they let us go on our way."

An anonymous reader quotes a CNN opinion piece by Stanford business school lecturer David Dodson: "Senator, we run ads." That's what Mark Zuckerberg told Senator Orrin Hatch earlier this year during his congressional testimony when asked to describe Facebook's business model. The 84-year-old senator was later mocked on social media for not understanding modern technology. But I'd argue that the wily senior senator understood Facebook's business quite well. Hatch was simply getting Mark Zuckerberg to say it out loud. Sometimes it takes an old guy to call out a youngster.... For media companies that run ads, especially ones that use public networks, we tell them that they can't lie or mislead, that it's not okay to advertise cigarettes to children or push prescription drugs without including the risks. We have laws governing deceptive advertisements and Truth in Advertising laws. Companies that run ads can't say a car gets 40 miles per gallon unless it's true. They can't say a movie won an Academy Award unless it did. If you say the wool comes from New Zealand, it must.... When nearly half of Americans get their news from Facebook, its newsfeed should be subjected to the same standards of fairness, decency and accuracy as newspapers, television and other media outlets.... Calling Facebook a tech company is how we got into so much trouble. It's also why, when Zuckerberg answered Hatch, the 34-year-old billionaire smiled in a way that was interpreted by many as smug. As if the senator was too antiquated to grasp the complexities of Facebook's revenue model. I see it differently. The company founder was offering a grin of acknowledgment. The jig was up. Facebook places ads just like most media companies do and should be held to the same overall standards.

"it is clear to me that open source -- now several decades old and fully adult -- is going through its own midlife crisis," writes Joyent CTO Bryan Cantrill. [O]pen source business models are really tough, selling software-as-a-service is one of the most natural of them, the cloud service providers are really good at it -- and their commercial appetites seem boundless. And, like a new cherry red two-seater sports car next to a minivan in a suburban driveway, some open source companies are dealing with this crisis exceptionally poorly: they are trying to restrict the way that their open source software can be used. These companies want it both ways: they want the advantages of open source -- the community, the positivity, the energy, the adoption, the downloads -- but they also want to enjoy the fruits of proprietary software companies in software lock-in and its concomitant monopolistic rents. If this were entirely transparent (that is, if some bits were merely being made explicitly proprietary), it would be fine: we could accept these companies as essentially proprietary software companies, albeit with an open source loss-leader. But instead, these companies are trying to license their way into this self-contradictory world: continuing to claim to be entirely open source, but perverting the license under which portions of that source are available. Most gallingly, they are doing this by hijacking open source nomenclature. Of these, the laughably named commons clause is the worst offender (it is plainly designed to be confused with the purely virtuous creative commons), but others...are little better... "[T]heir business model isn't their community's problem, and they should please stop trying to make it one," Cantrill writes, adding letter that "As we collectively internalize that open source is not a business model on its own, we will likely see fewer VC-funded open source companies (though I'm honestly not sure that that's a bad thing)..." He also points out that "Even though the VC that led the last round wants to puke into a trashcan whenever they hear it, business models like 'support', 'services' and 'training' are entirely viable!" Jay Kreps, Co-founder of @confluentinc, has posted a rebuttal on Medium. "How do you describe a license that lets you run, modify, fork, and redistribute the code and do virtually anything other than offer a competing SaaS offering of the product? I think Bryan's sentiment may be that it should be called the Evil Proprietary Corruption of Open Source License or something like that, but, well, we disagree."

An anonymous reader quotes Inc: Our attention in the workplace is a precious resource that often falls victim to tools like email, Slack, and so on, which bring a nonstop supply of things to read, things to respond to, things to file, things to loop others in on, things to follow up on, and in general, things to do. This "always on" dynamic has roots in a desire for increased workplace collaboration and productivity, but as is so often the case, it turns out there is a balance to be struck for optimal results. New research shows that groups who collaborate less often may be better at problem solving.... In a study titled "How Intermittent Breaks in Interaction Improve Collective Intelligence", the authors use a standardized problem-solving test to measure the contrast between time spent in collaboration mode against the quality and quantity of problem solving results. The group with no interaction predictably had the highest options for solutions, but those solutions were of lower overall quality. The group with high interaction had higher quality solutions, but less variety and a lower likelihood to find the optimal solution. The intermittent collaboration groups found the desirable middle ground to balance out the pros/cons of the no interaction and high interaction groups, leading them to become the most successful problem solvers. The article warns of a "collaboration drain", suggesting managers pay closer attention to when collaboration is (and isn't) necessary. "Once upon a time in the land of business, people primarily communicated through conversations, meetings, and internally circulated printed memos. In the absence of email, Internet, cell phones, and CRMs there was a repeating cadence of connection, then disconnection, even while in the office." "In this case, 'disconnected' really amounts to uninterrupted -- and able to focus."

dryriver asks: Is there an open source video analysis tool available that can take a folder full of video captures (e.g. news, sports, movies, music videos, TV shows), analyze the video frames in those captures, and put a hard number on how optically sharp, on average, the digital video provided by any given digital TV or streaming service is? If such a tool exists, it could be of great use in shaming paid video content delivery services that promise proper "1080 HD" or "4K UHD" quality content, but deliver video that is actually Youtube quality or worse. With such a tool, people could channel-hop across their digital TV service's various offerings for an hour or so, capture the video stream to harddisk, and then have an "average optical sharpness score" for that service calculated that can be shared with others and published online, possibly shaming the content provider -- satellite TV providers in particular -- into upping their bitrate if the score turns out to be atrociously low for that service.... People in many countries -- particularly developing countries -- cough up hard cash to sign up for various satellite TV, digital TV, streaming video and similar services, only to then find that the bitrate, compression quality and optical sharpness of the video content delivered isn't too great at all. At a time when 4K UHD content is available in some countries, many satellite TV and streaming video services in many different countries do not even deliver properly sharp and well-defined 1080 HD video to their customers, even though the content quality advertised before signing up is very much "crystal clear 1080 HD High-Definition". What's the solution? Leave your thoughts and suggestions in the comments. And is there an open source tool measuring the sharpness of streaming video?

CNET just published a fierce pro-net neutrality editorial co-authored by Nancy Pelosi, the soon-to-be Majority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, with Mike Doyle, the expected Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, and Frank Pallone, Jr. the expected Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The three representatives argue that "the Trump FCC ignored millions of comments from Americans pleading to keep strong net neutrality rules in place." The FCC's net neutrality repeal left the market for broadband internet access virtually lawless, giving ISPs an opening to control peoples' online activities at their discretion. Gone are rules that required ISPs to treat all internet traffic equally. Gone are rules that prevented ISPs from speeding up traffic of some websites for a fee or punishing others by slowing their traffic down.... Without the FCC acting as sheriff, it is unfortunately not surprising that big corporations have started exploring ways to change how consumers access the Internet in order to benefit their bottom line.... Research from independent analysts shows that nearly every mobile ISP is throttling at least one streaming video service or using discriminatory boosting practices. Wireless providers are openly throttling video traffic and charging consumers extra for watching high-definition streams. ISPs have rolled out internet plans that favor companies they are affiliated with, despite full-page ads swearing they value net neutrality. And most concerning, an ISP was found throttling so-called "unlimited" plans for a fire department during wildfires in California. Make no mistake, these new practices are just ISPs sticking a toe in the water. Without an agency with the authority to investigate and punish unfair or discriminatory practices, ISPs will continue taking bolder and more blatantly anti-consumer steps. That is why we have fought over the past year to restore net neutrality rules and put a cop back on the ISP beat. In May, the U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan bill restoring net neutrality rules. Despite the support of a bipartisan majority of Americans, the Republican leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives refused our efforts to bring the bill to the floor for a vote. Fortunately, the time is fast coming when the people's voices will be heard. The editorial closes by arguing that "Large corporations will no longer be able to block progress on this important consumer protection issue."

Long-time Slashdot reader Mike Bouma quotes Gizmodo: Despite being ahead of its time when it was unveiled in 1985, the Commodore Amiga didn't survive past 1996. The machine, which went up against with the likes of the IBM PC and the Macintosh, offered far superior hardware than its competitors. But it just wasn't enough, as this video from Ahoy's Stuart Brown explains. While the Amiga had other 16-bit computers beat on technology, it didn't really have anything compelling to do with that hardware. "With 4096 colours, 4 channels of digital audio, and preemptive multitasking, [the Amiga] was capable of incredible things for the time...." nfortunately, internal struggles within Commodore would signal the beginning of the end. I'll always remember Joel Hodgson's Amiga joke on a 1991 episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. But in 2015 Geek.com reported on an Amiga which had been running a school's heating system for the last 30 years. A local high school student had originally set it up, and "he's the only one who knows how to fix software glitches. Luckily, he still lives in the area." Leave your own thoughts in the comments. Does anyone else have their own stories about Commodore's Amiga? And was the Amiga a computer ahead of its time?

AmiMoJo quotes the BBC: The next series of Doctor Who won't start until 2020, it's been confirmed. Series 11 ended on Sunday night, but after the festive special on New Year's Day, Jodie Whittaker won't be seen in the Tardis again next year. Showrunner Chris Chibnall said work on the new series had already begun... The first episode of the series, the first to feature a female Doctor, drew a record audience. It saw the highest launch viewing figures for the sci-fi stalwart in a decade, with 10.9 million people tuning in. The series has been considered a ratings success, with viewing figures above those of the last two series when Peter Capaldi starred in the title role.

schwit1 shared this article from Bloomberg: Brain scans of adolescents who are heavy users of smartphones, tablets and video games look different from those of less active screen users, preliminary results from an ongoing study funded by the National Institutes of Health show, according to a report on Sunday by "60 Minutes." That's the finding of the first batch of scans of 4,500 nine- to 10-year-olds. Scientists will follow those children and thousands more for a decade to see how childhood experiences, including the use of digital devices, affect their brains, emotional development and mental health. In the first round of testing, the scans of children who reported daily screen usage of more than seven hours showed premature thinning of the brain cortex, the outermost layer that processes information from the physical world.... Early results from the $300 million study, called Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD), have determined that children who spend more than two hours of daily screen time score lower on thinking and language tests. A major data release is scheduled for early 2019. The study's director cautions that "It won't be until we follow them over time that we will see if there are outcomes that are associated with the differences that we're seeing in this single snapshot." The study will ultimately follow over 11,000 nine- to 10-year-olds for a decade.

Thursday a bug report complained that the source code for OpenJDK, the free and open-source implementation of Java, "has too many swear words." An anonymous reader writes: "There are many instances of swear words inside OpenJDK jdk/jdk source, scattered all over the place," reads the bug report. "As OpenJDK is used in a professional context, it seems inappropriate to leave these 12 instances in there, so here's a changeset to remove them." IBM software developer (and OpenJDK team member and contributor) Adam Farley responded that "after discussion with the community, three determinations were reached": "Damn" and "Crap" are not swear words. Three of the four f-bombs are located in jszip.js, which should be corrected upstream (will follow up). The f-bomb in BitArray.java, as well as the rude typo in SoftChannel.java, *are* swear words and should be removed to resolve this work item. He promised a new webrev would be uploaded to reflect these determinations, and the bug has been marked as "resolved."

WE ALL HAVE ROAD RAGE SOMETIMES, but people in Arizona are taking things to a new level by slashing the tyres of Waymo's self-driving cars and even pulling guns on safety drivers. There have been 21 reported incidences of such assaults on vehicles, according to the Arizona Republic, with people apparently fed up of Waymo autonomous cars driving around their neighbourhoods. Why exactly folks are so angry at Waymo's driverless cars is a bit of a mystery, though it would seem to be a resistance to new technologies. And we can get why taxi drivers would be a bit angry given the threat autonomous vehicles pose to their jobs. Also, it's America we're talking about here, with many rather backwards-seeming states that probably think a smartphone is an object for a different planet; oh you want us to cite evidence of this perception? Well just look at who's president of the nation. But there was one nugget of insight according to a police report from Detective Cameron Jacobs following the arrest of 69-year-old Roy Leonard Haselton. "(The suspect) stated that he was the person holding up the gun as the Waymo vehicle passed by and that his intentions were to scare the driver," said the report. "Haselton said that his wife usually keeps the gun locked up in fear that he might shoot somebody," the report added. "Haselton stated that he despises and hates those cars (Waymo) and said how Uber had killed someone." Haselton's wife told the cops that her husband has dementia; yet another good argument for tighter gun control. Waymo seems a little miffed by the whole thing as well, going by the statement it put out. "Over the past two years, we've found Arizonans to be welcoming and excited by the potential of this technology to make our roads safer. We believe a key element of local engagement has been our ongoing work with the communities in which we drive, including Arizona law enforcement and first responders," the company said. Back in good ol' Blighty there haven't been any reports of self-driving car abuse, even though testing of autonomous vehicles is well underway. µ

CHIPMAKER Qualcomm is asking courts in China to ban sales of Apple's latest iPhone XS, XS Max and XR smartphones. The move, first reported by the Financial Times, comes days after Qualcomm won a preliminary injunction that bans the import and sale of the iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus, iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X The Fuzhou Intermediate People's Court in China sided with Qualcomm's argument that Apple's iDevices infringe its patents related to resizing images and using touch-based navigation apps. "We plan to use the same patents to file suit against the three new iPhone models" Jiang Hongyi, a lawyer at Lexfield Law Offices who is representing Qualcomm, told the Financial Times. Jiang said additional suits covering Apple's new iPhone XS, XS Max and XR models were pending in courts in Beijing, Qingdao and Guangzhou. Apple hasn't commented on Qualcomm's latest strike, but the firm essentially ignored the original injunction, arguing that the case only applies to devices running iOS 11. Since all of the models named in the ban can run iOS 12, Apple argues they aren't infringing on Qualcomm's patents. "Qualcomm's effort to ban our products is another desperate move by a company whose illegal practices are under investigation by regulators around the world," Apple said in a statement earlier this week. "All iPhone models remain available for our customers in China. Qualcomm is asserting three patents they had never raised before, including one which has already been invalidated. We will pursue all our legal options through the courts." Reuters reports that, in a bid to ensure its iPhones aren't yanked from shelves, Apple has confirmed that it will push out a software update on at the start of next week "to address any possible concern about our compliance with the order." Qualcomm and Apple have been locked in legal battles over patent licensing fees for years. Apple has accused Qualcomm of charging exorbitant licensing fees and disputes the chipmaker's claim that Apple is legally required to give it a percentage of iPhone sales revenue. Recently, Qualcomm accused Apple of stealing trade secrets and giving them to rival chipmaker Intel. µ

MICROSOFT IS tracking your location, even if the settings appear to be set to 'off'. Both Timeline and Activity History now form part of the Windows 10 operating system and work by storing all your activity either locally or on the device, so you can easily jump back to a previous task. Thing is, a Redditor spotted that even with the entire feature disabled, your activity is still available to view online, meaning it is being transferred to the cloud and stored. Worse still, the whistleblower wasn't using a Microsoft account, but a simple local account like what we used to have in the olden days. We tried it. Of course we did. Same result. So let's talk about how you really stop the tracking. The setting is easily accessible in the Computer Configuration menus, under Administrative Templates. Disable "Allow publishing of user activities", Disable "Enable activity feed" and Disable "Allow upload of User Activities". Sufficed to say, we'd never been in this screen before (and lord knows, we love a tinker) and how a casual user would stumble across it is anyone's guess. It seems it was not meant to be disabled. A statement from Microsoft explains that this is no accident: "Microsoft is committed to customer privacy, being transparent about the data we collect and use for your benefit, and we give you controls to manage your data. "In this case, the same term 'Activity History' is used in both Windows 10 and the Microsoft Privacy Dashboard. Windows 10 Activity History data is only a subset of the data displayed in the Microsoft Privacy Dashboard. We are working to address this naming issue in a future update." The "naming issue" refers to a plan to give the feature a more explanatory title so that people aren't caught out. We'll leave you to decide whether it's because that's best for the customer, or whether they simply got rumbled. Again. μ

CODE REPOSITORY GitLab has opened its bug bashing programme to anyone - and there's some pretty tasty offers for participants. Critical bugs, which GitLab defines as affecting over half of its customers, could be in line for a cool $12,000 for finding vulnerabilities. High impact bugs score $7500, mediums get $3000, and even if you find a bug that doesn't actually affect anyone, it could still be worth a grand. The deals aren't quite as good as rival Github. Their top whack is $20000 and there's also a league table of contributors. Though smaller than GitHub, GitLab is doing nicely thank you very much, bolstered by Microsoft's purchase of its rival, which ground gears for some developers whose open source dogma has been whacked out of joint. Mixed metaphors anyone? GitLab's Kathy Wang explains that whilst some select partners have been getting payouts for a while, from now on, anyone can be a bug-zapper: "We have awarded over $200,000 in bounties since the bug bounty program went live last year. This means we mitigated nearly 200 vulnerabilities reported to us." She goes on to explain that the Mean Time to Mitigation (MTTR) - in other words, the time it takes for the bugs to be patched, has dropped to below 30 days for critical issues, rising to 60 days for those ranked as medium, adding: "In managing a public bug bounty program, we will now be able to reward our hacker community for reporting security vulnerabilities to us directly through the program." The first response also has a service level agreement, with 5 business days being the aim to acknowledge critical problems, with 10 business days covering lesser issues. There are also penalties for anyone who abuses the system with false reports, sends data to 3rd parties, spams or ‘typosquats'. Gitlab, which recently received a funding boost from merchant bank Goldman Sachs, has partnered with HackerOne to manage its bug bounties and there's already a dedicated page for them that wants. μ

IT'S A COMMON joke that Skyrim has been released for literally anything that supports a screen. But it's never been released for Fire TV Stick, which means that Sonic the Hedgehog now has it beaten. Actually, it isn't just Sonic: it's a collection of 25 Mega Drive games featuring the likes of Shinobi, Streets of Rage, Columns, Golden Axe and Altered Beast. It's available for a not unreasonable £11.99, which makes it 48p per game. Three of the bundled Sonic games - Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Sonic CD - are remasters, but the rest are plain old traditional ports. While the games themselves may be just as you remembered them - for better or worse - there are a few modern twists that Sega has included. As well as multiple save slots for each game, you can also rewind any title by a few seconds if you missed that crucial jump, or just want to hear the weird Sega choir over and over again to annoy anyone who has the misfortune of cohabiting with you. That means you can now play the original Sonic the Hedgehog on Mega Drive, Game Boy Advance, PC, 3DS, iOS, Android, Apple TV, Switch, Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, iPod, Saturn, GameCube, PS2, Xbox, PSP, DS, Ps4 and Xbox One. But I guess in a pinch you could try the Fire TV Stick. The sane way to do this is to pair it with a Bluetooth gamepad. The easier, but infinitely more maddening way is to use the bundled Fire Stick remote. Turn it on its side, and you use the circular directional button as a D-pad, with the forward, back and play buttons becoming the Mega Drive's face buttons. Well, doesn't that just sound like a recipe for hand cramp? Still, it's probably just a small mercy Sega didn't feel fit to make it voice controlled. "Alexa, make Sonic roll right" just doesn't feel like it would be the most efficient way of beating Dr Robotnik. µ

AS WE limp ever closer to Christmas, there's still an absolute glut of stuff going on at Google/Alphabet towers and we're the people to bring it to you. As ever, this is the news in brief - if you want to read the longer stories about Google this week, you can look (and bookmark) here. Avanti. First up, there seems to be a problem with supplies of the Pixel 3. Many Black Friday orders that were given an ETA for delivery have had it removed, with no replacement timescales offered. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to what is being delayed, and the advice from the Big G is to wait it out and don't pester them. Splendid stuff. But there are alternatives. A year after it first agreed, Amazon has started selling Google hardware again, starting with the newest iteration Chromecast. Amazon had pulled everything (though it was still available sporadically through third party sellers) in a spat with Google that was resolved this time last year, but today marks the first time we've seen evidence of them following through. Google Chrome is also getting an update, with a much requested feature, just added to the codebase. It will allow you to close all your tabs in one hit, and we're all for that. There's no indication when this will be available in the Canary channel, let alone the stable one, so give it a few months, yeah? The little Android TV device that could (and could, and could) has launched one of its most useful features yet. The Nvidia Shield TV has hit version 7.2 and the new download brings SMBv3 support. Put simply, this means that the console will be visible to Windows devices allowing you manage files stored on it like any other remote drive. That's something no other device of its type can boast right now and should be flippin' useful. Files by Google, which has graduated from being a Google One app to the official file manager has been updated to show external devices from USB. So if you've got some OTG to get out of your system, now is your chance. Third party file managers have been doing this for a while, but the love for FbG has been significant and this could tempt those on the fence to make the switch. If you've got a first generation Pixel device and you've been looking on with jealousy at the Call Screen service that takes your calls for you when you just don't want to answer, is now rolling out for you too. The Pixel exclusive (for now) feature has already hit the Pixel 2 and 3 ranges. Finally, congratulations to the new holder of "most disliked video on YouTube". The winner is… erm… YouTube itself, whose 2018 Rewind video has been heavily panned for creating a sanitised advertiser friendly video that doesn't reflect the ‘real YouTube'. Pew Die Pie is missing for a start. Can't think why. Point is, officially, there is now something worse than Justin Beiber. And you can take that to the bank. μ

shanen writes about Vitaminwater's latest "publicity stunt," where they will pay $100,000 to one select contestant who can live without their smartphone for a year: All you have to do is come up with the most amusing entry [about how you will spend 365 days without the device] and have sufficient willpower to give up your smartphone for a year. They obviously have to pick a power user to make it interesting, but that's not the reason I'm disqualified. I would just read more books, which is boring from their perspective. So maybe you want to share your idea here? If it's really good, you don't have to worry about someone stealing it. After all, you'd have the evidence that it was your idea first, but you might be able to refine your entry while amusing the mob. The company will reportedly give you a 1996 cellphone to use in times of emergencies. Also, they will reward you with $10,000 if you are able to get through 6 months. According to Tech Times, contestants can use computers or desktops, "but not smartphones or tablets, even those owned by other people, or anything which the candidate can scroll or swipe on." Always-listening smart speakers, like the Amazon Echo and Google Home, are permitted. To make sure the candidate doesn't cheat, Vitaminwater will subject them to a lie-detector test at the end of the year.

140Mandak262Jamuna writes: CleanTechnica is reporting that someone hacked the infotainment system of a Tesla Model 3 and got root access and installed Linux distribution Ubuntu. Redditor trsohmers is able to show an Ubuntu command shell running alongside the Tesla OS. Since Tesla supports a browser that allows you to visit any site, could this be leveraged into remote hacks? It could also mean that if Tesla sells a long-range version of the Model 3, but limits it via software, people might try to remove the block. One could potentially get a 15-day trial of full self-driving for free and extend that 15-day window forever. At least he had some guts messing with $50,000 hardware that phones home all the time. Will Tesla brick his car to attempt to disprove the security issue?

Researchers at the University of Geneva Switzerland have used NASA's Hubble telescope to find an exoplanet that's evaporating. The exoplanet, GJ 3470b, shows signs of losing hydrogen in its atmosphere, causing it to shrink. USA Today reports: The study is part of exploration into "hot Neptunes," planets that are the size of Neptune, sit very close to their star, and have atmospheres as hot at 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit, says NASA. Finding a "hot Neptune" is rare because they sit so close to their star and tend to evaporate more quickly. In the case of GJ 3470b, scientists classify it as a "warmer" Neptune because it sits farther away from its star. The exoplanet discovered by astronauts is losing its atmosphere at a rate 100 times faster than a previous "warmer" Neptune planet discovered a few years before, according to a study published Thursday in the journal "Astronomy & Astrophysics." The planet sits 3.7 million miles from its star. For comparison, Earth is 92.9 million miles from the sun. Researchers say these "hot Neptune" planets shrink in size and morph into "Super Earths," versions of our planet that are massive and more rocky.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: A panel of 19 scientists drawn from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine recommended yesterday that the Department of Energy should continue an international experiment on nuclear fusion energy and then develop its own plan for a "compact power plant." A panel of 19 scientists drawn from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine recommended yesterday that the Department of Energy should continue an international experiment on nuclear fusion energy and then develop its own plan for a "compact power plant." But as the National Academies' report noted, major challenges must be overcome to reach these goals, beginning with how to contain and control a burning "plasma" of extremely hot gas, ranging from 100 million to 200 million degrees Celsius, that can produce more heat than it consumes. The report calls the resulting plasma "a miniature sun confined inside a vessel." The world's biggest experiment intended to create and draw energy from burning plasma is under construction at Cadarache, France. It's called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, and its centerpiece is a large, doughnut-shaped, Russian-inspired reactor called a tokamak. Several member nations have already developed their own national programs, and the assembled National Academies experts concluded that the United States should eventually follow, once the ITER experiment shows there are ways to contain and manipulate a sustained fusion reaction. "It is the next critical step in the development of fusion energy," says the report.

schwit1 shares a report from Variety: Streaming services snatched their biggest piece of the TV pie ever in 2018. According to FX's annual report on the number of scripted originals on TV, the number of streaming shows has surpassed the number of basic cable and broadcast shows for the first time ever. Out of 495 scripted originals that aired in 2018, 160 of them did so on a streaming platform. That is compared to 146 on broadcast and 144 on basic cable. Pay cable accounted for the remaining 45 shows. Streaming shows also saw the biggest increase year-to-year, growing from 117 last year. Broadcast dipped slightly, dropping from 153 in 2017. Basic cable saw a more sharp decline, compared to the 175 shows that aired on basic cable the previous year. Pay cable was up slightly from 42. On a percentage basis, streaming shows now account for approximately one third of all scripted originals, with approximately 32%. Broadcast made up 30% and basic cable 29%, with pay cable making up 9%. The total number of shows across all of TV was up again as well, rising from 487 in 2017. The year-to-year growth was less than that of previous years, however. For example, the number of shows grew from 455 to 487 between 2016 and 2017. The 495 scripted originals this year was also off from FX Networks CEO John Landgraf's prediction that 520 such shows would air this year.

Cloudflare is facing accusations that it's providing cybersecurity protection for at least seven terrorist organizations. "On Friday, HuffPost reported that it has reviewed numerous websites run by terrorist organizations and confirmed with four national security and counter-extremism experts that the sites are under the protection of Cloudflare's cybersecurity services," reports Gizmodo. "Among Cloudflare's millions of customers are several groups that are on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations, including al-Shabab, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, al-Quds Brigades, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and Hamas -- as well as the Taliban, which, like the other groups, is sanctioned by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)," reports HuffPost. "In the United States, it's a crime to knowingly provide tangible or intangible 'material support -- including communications equipment -- to a designated foreign terrorist organization or to provide service to an OFAC-sanctioned entity without special permission," the report continues. "Cloudflare, which is not authorized by the OFAC to do business with such organizations, has been informed on multiple occasions, dating back to at least 2012, that it is shielding terrorist groups behind its network, and it continues to do so." Gizmodo reports: The issue that HuffPost raises is whether Cloudflare is providing "material support" to sanctioned organizations. Some attorneys told HuffPost that it may be in violation of the law. Others, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argue that "material support" can and has been abused to silence speech. Cloudflare's general counsel, Doug Kramer, told Gizmodo over the phone that the company works closely with the U.S. government to ensure that it meets all of its legal obligations. He said that it is "proactive to screen for sanctioned groups and reactive to respond when its made aware of a sanctioned group" to which it may be providing services. HuffPost spoke with representatives from the Counter Extremism Project, who expressed frustration that they've sent four letters to Cloudflare over the last two years identifying seven terrorist-operated sites without receiving a reply. Kramer would not address any specific customers or situations when speaking with Gizmodo. He said that's simply company policy for reasons of protecting privacy.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: The biggest and perhaps best source of data about what people like to watch on the internet and what they would pay for doesn't come from streaming giants like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, or Hulu. It comes from porn. While consuming porn is typically a private and personal affair, porn sites still track your every move: What content you choose, which moments you pause, which parts you repeat. By mining this data to a deeper degree than other streaming services, many porn sites are able to give internet users exactly what they want -- and they want a lot of it. [...] MindGeek is the world's biggest porn company -- more specifically, it's a holding company that owns numerous adult entertainment sites and production companies, including the Pornhub Network. Like other streaming giants, MindGeek's sites analyze user data, but the company has an edge when it comes to producing tailor-made content in-house. With at least 125 million daily visits, MindGeek has a massive range of users to draw data from and create content for. The average user can watch as much porn as they'd like without so much as making an account, let alone paying, but in exchange for meeting desires that can't always be met elsewhere, companies like MindGeek access user data because the user more willingly lets them. And it eventually pays off, when users decide to pay for premium content and the habits of paying subscribers become even clearer. What's more, Pornhub, in particular, operates one of the most sophisticated digital data analysis operations that caters primarily to users and not advertisers. Pornhub Insights provides transparency into its data collection -- on the most intimate of subjects -- by making research and analysis from billions of data points about viewership patterns, often tied to events from politics to pop culture, available to the public. It offers more than many other tech giants do.

According to CNBC, T-Mobile and Sprint are expecting their merger to be approved by a U.S. national security panel as early as next week, after their respective parent companies said they would consider dropping Huawei. From the report: U.S. government officials have been pressuring T-Mobile's German majority owner, Deutsche Telekom, to stop using Huawei equipment, the sources said, over concerns that Huawei is effectively controlled by the Chinese state and its network equipment may contain "back doors" that could enable cyber espionage, something which Huawei denies. That pressure is part of the national security review of T-Mobile's $26 billion deal to buy U.S. rival Sprint, the sources said. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has been conducting a national security review of the Sprint deal, which was announced in April. Negotiations between the two companies and the U.S. government have not been finalized and any deal could still fall through, the sources cautioned. Sprint's parent, SoftBank Group, plans to replace 4G network equipment from Huawei with hardware from Nokia and Ericsson, Nikkei reported on Thursday, without citing sources.