news.slashdot.org - An anonymous reader writes: Following initial news of the project in March, IBM, under the supervision of the Linux Foundation and in partnership with several major tech interests including Fujitsu, has announced today that it will lead development of a new blockchain — a financial transaction...
news.slashdot.org - gb7djk writes: The investigative journalist Duncan Campbell has written an article at The Register claiming that the UK Government has been secretly creating a database of all telephone calls, financial and travel records for the last 15 years. From the article: "Located inside the riverside hea...
news.slashdot.org - theodp writes: Microsoft is boasting that UK Prime Minister David Cameron learned to code during this year's Hour of Code thanks to its Minecraft-themed tutorial, much like US President Barack Obama learned to code during 2014's Hour of Code thanks to Disney's Frozen Princess-themed tutorial. Int...
news.slashdot.org - HughPickens.com writes: Sewell Chan reports at the NYT that Britain's highest court has unanimously rejected an attempt by Donald J. Trump to block the construction of a wind farm near his luxury golf resort in northeast Scotland. Trump has vowed to stop further development on the project if the ...
news.slashdot.org - SmartAboutThings writes: Bill Gates is known as a big philanthropist, and now his own company will commit to even more charity work by launching a new organization, Microsoft Philanthropies. Microsoft's president and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith outlined the goals for the new organization, sayi...
news.slashdot.org - WeMedia is partly a think tank and partly a consulting firm that advises news organizations on how to deal with the ever-changing world of online journalism. Andrew Nachison cofounded WeMedia with Dale Peskin (who went back to newspaper editing in 2014) and is now the main sparkplug behind WeMedi...
news.slashdot.org - An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today launched Firefox 43 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Notable additions to the browser include a 64-bit version for Windows (finally!), a new strict blocklist for the browser's tracking protection feature, and tab audio indicators on Android. "There i...
news.slashdot.org - schwit1 writes: The Hurley Medical Center in Flint, Michigan released a study in September that confirmed what many Flint parents had feared for over a year: The proportion of infants and children with above-average levels of lead in their blood has nearly doubled since the city switched from the...
news.slashdot.org - MojoKid writes: AMD announced today that the company is releasing a slew of open-source software and tools to give game developers, heterogeneous applications, and HPC applications deeper access to the GPU and GPU resources. AMD and their Radeon Technologies Group (RTG) are looking for ways to ea...
news.slashdot.org - Ewan Palmer writes: A man has been arrested in connection with the alleged hacking of electronic toy manufacturer VTech which affected millions worldwide. The 21-year-old was arrested in Berkshire, South East England, on suspicion of unauthorized access to computers to facilitate the commission o...
news.slashdot.org - An anonymous reader writes: Joomla just issued a emergency security patch after Sucuri observed a large number of attacks on Joomla sites using malicious user-agent strings. Attackers were adding malicious code to custom-made user-agent strings, which were not sanitized and stored in the database...
news.slashdot.org - An anonymous reader writes: Peter Diamandis announced today the launch of a new Xprize competition. $7 million is available for teams who are capable of pushing the boundaries of ocean exploration. "Our oceans cover two-thirds of our planet's surface and are a crucial global source of food, energ...
news.slashdot.org - An anonymous reader writes: According to documents obtained by The Telegraph, Google considers the UK a key market for development of its self-driving car program. In one of the five meetings the documents describe, Sarah Hunter, head of Google's experimental SDV division, commented that the comp...
news.slashdot.org - As reported by The Wall Street Journal, The Verge, and many others (including this widely run Reuters story), a heavily backed non-profit group called OpenAI on Friday introduced itself and its utopian-sounding goals of open sourcing a great deal of AI research and, as The Verge puts it, "to sto...
news.slashdot.org - theodp writes: The WSJ's Yoree Koh reports that computer science has been recognized as important an academic subject as math and English in the new Every Student Succeeds Act, putting it on equal footing with other subjects when state and local policymakers decide how to dole out federal funds. ...
news.slashdot.org - jones_supa writes: 195 countries have adopted the first global pact to fight climate change by reducing emissions. Countries will have to publish greenhouse gas reduction targets and revise them upward every 5 years, while striving to drive down their carbon output as soon as possible, under the ...
news.slashdot.org - An anonymous reader writes: A couple months ago, we discussed news that Mozilla was planning to give back to the open source projects they rely on, to the tune of $1 million. Now, Mozilla has announced the first round of awards, giving out $503,000 in the process. The biggest payout, $200,000, we...
news.slashdot.org - An anonymous reader writes: Two of the largest and oldest chemical companies, Dow and DuPont, have planned a merger. Dow's 53,000 employees will join forces with DuPont's 63,000 employees, which will challenge Germany's BASF for the biggest chemical company in the world. Not for long, though —...
news.slashdot.org - jones_supa writes: One in three torrent sites is spreading malware, claims a recent joint report (PDF) from Digital Citizens Alliance and RiskIQ, which compiled data from over 800 sites. Most of the time, the sites expose visitors to drive-by attacks that silently download malicious files on comp...
news.slashdot.org - An anonymous reader writes: Insurance group Chubb will start offering the UK's first cyber-bullying policy – 'troll insurance' – through which it will accept claims of up to £50,000 to cover counselling and relocation costs, as well as time spent out of work. Chubb will provide its...