Bill Gates's climate-oriented venture fund "is plowing more money into climate adaptation," reports MIT Technology Review:To date, the fund has focused on "climate mitigation," which largely concentrates on driving down climate pollution. Climate adaptation refers to developing w … | Continue reading
Slashdot reader Charlotte Web writes: At 3:02 p.m. EST, vice president Kamala Harris began presiding over the U.S. Senate.After a vote on the very last proposed amendment, the Senate heard these final remarks from Democrat Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer on what he called " … | Continue reading
"Russian President Vladimir Putin approved a law Friday prohibiting the use of digital assets as forms of payments in Russia..." reports the tech/policy news site Protocol. The ban on crypto-form payments also apparently applies to NFTs:The new law also includes a provision that … | Continue reading
Babel Finance, the Asia-based crypto financial services firm, suspended client withdrawals five days after a similar move by Celsius triggered a fresh bout of turbulence in crypto markets. From a report: "Due to the current situation, Babel Finance is facing unusual liquidity pre … | Continue reading
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's attempt to appeal extradition was denied by the UK's Supreme Court on Monday. Assange was initially granted the right to petition the court in late January. From a report: The UK's highest court denied Assange's bid because "the application does … | Continue reading
MattSparkes writes: Bitstamp, Europe's largest cryptocurrency exchange, says it has handed over information on some of its customers to the UK's intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6. The news suggests that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are being used in serious organised cri … | Continue reading
The World Science Fiction Society has selected this year's winners for their prestigious Hugo award. The best novel award went to Network Effect, the fifth book in the Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells, which also won this year's Hugo award for best series. (And Network E … | Continue reading
RadioShack.com is now showing visitors a new message: "Bringing cryptocurrency to the mainstream..." With a 100-year-old brand, "we are going to lead the way for blockchain tech to reach mainstream adoption by other large brands." The RadioShack home page says they'll start wi … | Continue reading
Heidi Thorsen owns the coin-only laundromat "Lunar Laundry" in Seattle — and discovered an odd phenomenon, reports the Seattle Times. "Thorsen went to her bank to replenish her coin supply. But the bank was so short on change, she could only buy a few $10, 40-quarter rolls … | Continue reading
David Korn answers! You asked the questions a little while ago, and now David Korn has kindly responded with answers (some lengthy, some pithy, all appreciated) to queries about the eponymous shell, the famous Microsoft/Korn story (in short -- yep, it's like you've heard), and pr … | Continue reading
Late Friday night U.S. Congressmen passed a long-awaited Bipartisan Infrastructure bill. "The infrastructure package contains $550 billion in entirely new investments, including money for electric-car charging stations and zero-emission school buses," reports the Washington Post … | Continue reading
Today the iconic Bitcoin white paper "celebrates thirteen years of financial disruption," notes Cointelegraph, "after being first published on Oct. 31, 2008, by an anonymous person or entity named Satoshi Nakamoto." (Here's a 2013 story from Slashdot about version 0.3.) Cointe … | Continue reading
An anonymous reader shares a report: Leaked documents from company all-hands meetings in the summer of 2020 and January and February of this year, led by the school's now former chief operating officer, Molly Graham, who resigned earlier this month, and others led by its chief bu … | Continue reading
Slashdot has confirmed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware that after 18 years of legal maneuvering, SCO's bankruptcy case (first filed in 2007) is now "awaiting discharge." Long-time Slashdot reader rkhalloran says they know the reason: Papers filed 26 Au … | Continue reading
In January ElasticSearch made what it calls "an incredibly hard decision" — to change the licensing on its scalable data-search solution. They called this an effort to "stand up to" Amazon's AWS for offering ElasticSearch functionality as a service "without collaborating wi … | Continue reading
John Sullivan became the Free Software Foundation's Executive Director back in 2003 (at the age of 26). But now after 18 years, "I've decided to resign my position..." he tweeted Friday, "effective at the end of a transition period." "We'll be sharing further details, including … | Continue reading
A ransomware attack affecting a pipeline that supplies 45% of the fuel supplies for the Eastern U.S. has now led U.S. president Biden to declare a regional emergency providing "regulatory relief" to expand fuel delivery by other routes. Axios reports:Friday night's cyberattack is … | Continue reading
Sunday IT Wire counted up the number of signatories on two open letters, one opposing Richard Stallman's return to the FSF and one supporting it. - The pro-Stallman letter had 3,632 individual signers- The anti-Stallman letter had 2,812 individual signers (plus 48 companies and o … | Continue reading
"Outside were more than half a dozen officers in tactical vests brandishing a sledgehammer and automatic weapons. Hands held high, she opened the door..." A new article includes video of that moment — and describes not only what happened then, but what's happening now, and … | Continue reading
This week Digital Reality data center services announced it was also relocating its headquarters from the San Francisco Bay Area to Texas, citing factors like a low cost of living and "supportive business climate". (Though it will still maintain a "significant" presence in the B … | Continue reading
ZDNet takes a look at a new nonprofit group called the Organization for Ethical Source (OES): The OES is devoted to the idea that the free software and open-source concept of "Freedom Zero" are outdated. Freedom Zero is "the freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose … | Continue reading
Rudra Saraswat is the creator of the Ubuntu Unity distro (which uses the Unity interface in place of Ubuntu's GNOME shell). But this week they released Ubuntu Web Remix, "a privacy-focused, open source alternative to Google Chrome OS/Chromium OS" using Firefox instead of Google C … | Continue reading
"A victory by Joe Biden in the Nov. 3 election could usher in an abrupt change in the nation's telecommunications policy, restoring so-called net neutrality regulation," Bloomberg recently reported:Biden hasn't talked much about the FCC during the campaign, but his party's platfo … | Continue reading
"Joe Biden, the projected winner of the U.S. presidency, will move to restore dozens of environmental safeguards President Donald Trump abolished," reports the Washington Post, "and launch the boldest climate change plan of any president in history." destinyland shares their repo … | Continue reading
This week London's prestigious Financial Times published a 15-minute video investigating the question: "Is QAnon a game gone wrong?"In 2017, the Q team, whoever they may be, made use of the modern equivalent of the Playboy's letters page. It's a message board called 4Chan... A Y … | Continue reading
The Pulitzer prize-winning news nonprofit Propublica looks at Arise Virtual Solutions, part of the secretive world of work-at-home customer service companies that help large corporations shed costs at the expense of workers. And thanks to the pandemic, "business is booming."Aris … | Continue reading
Slashdot has featured "the 61 books Elon Musk has recommended on Twitter" as well as the 41 books Mark Zuckerberg recommended on Facebook. Both lists were compiled by a slick web site (with Amazon referrer codes) called "Most Recommended Books." But they've also created pages s … | Continue reading
Last week Slashdot featured "the 61 books Elon Musk has recommended on Twitter," as compiled by a slick web site (with Amazon referrer codes) called "Most Recommended Books." But the same site has also created a page of books recommended by Mark Zuckerbeg. Zuckerberg's list incl … | Continue reading
Science fiction writer Cory Doctorow (also a former EFF staffer and activist) explains why he's crowdfunding his new audiobook online. Despite the large publishers for his print editions, "I can't get anyone to do my audiobooks. Amazon and its subsidiary Audible, which controls … | Continue reading
"We have met with Tesla representatives and have confirmed that Tesla is not engaged in full operations, contrary to media reports" this week, read an announcement Wednesday from Alameda County's office of emergency services in its health care services agency. ("Tesla has confir … | Continue reading
Phoronix reports on a new concern about Qt, the free and open-source widget toolkit for creating GUIs and cross-platform applications:Wednesday a KDE developer who serves on the board of the KDE Free Qt Foundation commented that The Qt Company is evaluating restricting new releas … | Continue reading
DevNull127 writes: Good news — VA Public Health has certified my wife and me as no longer contagious with COVID19," tweeted 76-year-old Vint Cerf, one of the creators of the modern internet. He added one word. "Recovering!" It seemed especially appropriate that Cerf shar … | Continue reading
Baldrson (Slashdot reader #78,598) writes: First announced on Slashdot in 2006, AI professor Marcus Hutter has gone big with his challenge to the artificial intelligence [and data compression] community. A 500,000€ purse now backs The Hutter Prize for Lossless Compression … | Continue reading
Bruce Perens (Slashdot reader #3872) co-founded the Open Source Initiative with Eric Raymond in 1998. But on Thursday Perens posted "it seems to me that the organization is rather enthusiastically headed toward accepting a license that isn't freedom respecting. Fine, do it wi … | Continue reading
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: A Microsoft blog post notes the company has lined up K-12 educators to sing the praises of Minecraft Education Edition at the Future of Education Technology Conference, where it'll also be pitching Microsoft Education in general. A 2019 Re … | Continue reading
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: Clint Eastwood's new movie Richard Jewell recounts the incredible tale of the security guard. Jewell was later [erroneously] considered a suspect after being hailed by the media for saving many from injury or death by discovering a backp … | Continue reading
theodp writes: The Hour of Code home page captured by the Internet Archive on Dec. 17th boasted that 835,581,513 students had been 'served' an Hour of Code. Three days later, however, the numbers had jumped to 910,905,104 served, presumably due to counter updates that were deferr … | Continue reading
harrymcc writes:In the late 1990s, lots of people were concerned that the Y2K bug could lead to power outages, financial collapse, riots, and worse when the clock rolled over to January 1, 2000. Hundreds of books about the problem and suggestions on how to respond (quit your job … | Continue reading
In 1962, 24-year-old Donald Knuth began writing The Art of Computer Programming -- and 57 years later, he's still working on it.But he's finally released The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 4, Fascicle 5: Mathematical Preliminaries Redux; Introduction to Backtracking; Dancing … | Continue reading
theodp writes: In 2003, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg famously faced expulsion from Harvard after launching FaceMash, a type of "hot or not" website for Harvard students that asked visitors to review pictures of female students and rate their attractiveness. So perhaps it's fittin … | Continue reading
Jimmy Wales' new social network WT.Social started November with just 1,500 members. Four weeks later, it's skyrocketed up to 345,680 members -- and that's just the beginning. Next year Wales plans to hire journalists, with the site's users acting as their "editors-in-chief," fu … | Continue reading
I wanted to start out this interview by thanking Joel Hodgson, MST3k creator and soonto be star of Cinematic Titanic. I've beena fan so long, I can't even remember when. I've been shuttling my MST coffee mug fromdesk to desk for like 15 years now, so I'm pretty pumped that he'd w … | Continue reading
Slashdot reader Thelasko says his oldest child made some "interesting" statements when they came home from first grade:One particular phrase that bothers me is, "I can read pictures." Recently, I heard a radio show on NPR about whole-language reading instruction, and how it's a t … | Continue reading
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes:In years past, Microsoft's wildly popular Minecraft-themed Hour of Code tutorials were browser-based, pretty much allowing schoolchildren to participate regardless of whether their schools used PCs, Macs or Chromebooks. "Computer science is … | Continue reading
Slashdot reader dryriver writes: More and more professional 3D software like 3DMax, Maya, AutoCAD (Autodesk) and Substance Painter (Adobe) is now only available on a monthly or yearly subscription basis — you cannot buy any kind of perpetual license for these industry stand … | Continue reading
Jason Koebler shares Vice's analysis of demoparties -- "gatherings where programmers showcase artistic audiovisual works, known as demos, after a day- or days-long coding marathon that is part bacchanal and part competition" -- starting with a visit to New York's Synchrony.I had … | Continue reading
theodp writes: On Thursday evening, Amazon is hosting a national field trip of sorts, inviting kids and teachers to take part in a Twitch livestream tour inside an Amazon robotics fulfillment center with the goal of inspiring students to learn about robotics and to "illustrate th … | Continue reading
"27 GNU project maintainers and developers have signed on to a joint statement asking for Richard Stallman to be removed from his leadership role at GNU," writes Slashdot reader twocows. The statement argues that "Stallman's behavior over the years has undermined a core value of … | Continue reading