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    Alaska’s Last Two Blockbuster Stores Closing, Leaving Just One in the US

    Bear in mind that some places in Alaska are still so remote from Internet and even delivery services that the only way to get any media (TV, movies, magazines, etc) is by air delivery once a year. These would be the first binge watchers. Get close enough to the poles and you can't even get...
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    New Spectre 1.1 and Spectre 1.2 CPU Flaws Disclosed

    This is why our users are on thin clients and can only run approved executables on a VM. BYOD, but nothing touches our servers.
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    Aerial Robot Dragon

    Someone needs to revoke their acronym license for that one.
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    Ever Buy an Original PS3? Sony May Owe You $65

    There were 2 email addresses I used back then... 50/50 shot of getting in the settlement? You can verify by PSN ID name, email address on PSN, or the console serial number. I don't think they'll take a receipt since they can't correlate that with who enabled the Other OS functionality.
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    Violating Website ToS is Not a Crime

    Oracle's docs are behind a login, which mostly fits the definition of private. (Trust me, my not having the company login for Oracle has led to no end of bureaucratic nonsense when it comes to fixing problems in my professional capacity.) That said, if one has "general" access to a site, with or...
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    Violating Website ToS is Not a Crime

    While 80% of the 175 cases that went to the Supreme Court from the 9th Circuit between 1999 and 2008 were overturned (this is believed to be the source of the number quoted by several news agencies and the president), 114,199 cases from the 9th Circuit were appealed to the supreme court, meaning...
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    Scientists Claim They Found a Drug That “Significantly Reverses Memory Loss”

    Spent some time assisting in an Alzheimer's ward, it's why I believe in assisted suicide. Anything that keeps people out of places like that is OK by me.
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    Researchers Create Chips That Are Unhackable and Virtually Indestructible

    Er, even if the hardware itself is unclonable you can still clone its signature if you know what the reader is looking for. I may not be able to reproduce a fingerprint but I can bypass a scanner with a piece of tape.
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    White House Calls for Government IT to Adopt Cloud Services

    Hint: Don't go with the Russian bid this time. It just doesn't look good.
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    Redbox Launches a New On-Demand Streaming Service

    If Redbox is going to leverage anything it'd probably be licensing deals. Similarly priced, if they can get a better license rate than others they can make more money per rental. I don't see it working, exactly, but hey it's their risk to take. Another possibility would maybe be advertising...
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    Microsoft Quietly Adds Native OpenSSH Client to Windows 10

    It's enabled via an admin level area so if they're in that far you're pretty darn borked already. Sure you can turn it on via script but to do that you'd need a system or admin level exploit already, in which case you could just as easily turn on Telnet which was already available. Mostly if bad...
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    Microsoft Quietly Adds Native OpenSSH Client to Windows 10

    Microsoft: Rocketing us to the far flung future of 1995.
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    Apple’s iMac Pro Arrives December 14, Starting at $4,999

    The magic bit is, I believe, a graybeard geek tradition. http://catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html
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    AI Becoming so Complex its Creators Don't Know How it comes to a Decision

    There's always going to be a trust gap with machines. There's a trust gap with people and we (ostensibly) know how people think. And let's be honest here, most people have no idea why things work the way they do and even if they question it's more because of annoyance factor more than actually...
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    Phantom Auto Plans Remote-Control Centers For Autonomous Cars

    30 seconds could be disastrous on the highway if there's a wreck or something. The accordion effect being what it is if there's enough of these AIs on the road it could create a mini Bridgegate while people are waiting for robotruck to navigate around an obstacle, then the next truck, etc. while...
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    China Has Launched the World’s First All-Electric Cargo Ship

    Someone may need to check my math on this but despite the fact that coal burns dirtier than gasoline, the process of using coal heat to turn a turbine to generate electricity is a lot more efficient than a gasoline engine so by that ratio it ends up being cleaner per unit of energy. Of the...
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    China Has Launched the World’s First All-Electric Cargo Ship

    At some point a charging accident becomes indistinguishable from getting struck by lightning. Kinda makes sense though, a large boat is gonna have a bank of many batteries so as long as you're distributing power correctly if each smaller battery charges in 2 hours then it's at least possible...
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    Detroit: Become Human under Fire for Controversial Domestic Abuse Scene

    That's fine, but it can't be a function of how well the material is presented that determines your basic right to present it. A statement needn't be eloquent to be valid, or even to be effective. Besides, taste is far too subjective to be used as a metric and not be abused politically. The...
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    Virtual Keyboard App Leaks 31 Million Users’ Personal Data

    You've gotta screw up on more than one level to pull off this amount of fail.
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    Li-Fi to the Rescue

    Try not to use it in high security environments. They're touting security in their ad copy, I was just pointing out that it's not any better.
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    Detroit: Become Human under Fire for Controversial Domestic Abuse Scene

    In that case, get rid of Pokemon. Literally every game starts out with a 10 year old kid leaving home to partake in sanctioned animal fights for money. Or Harry Potter which depicts neglect and abuse from the Dursleys in a lighthearted, humorous sort of way. And since when is the simple...
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    Samsung Applies for Patent to Read Your Palm

    Include IR in the profile, hard to print that out. Most CCDs can capture wavelengths far beyond human vision and just don't due to software and the blood vessels in your hand are far, far more unique than a fingerprint.
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    Li-Fi to the Rescue

    The tech's limited by LoS so no closed doors (and if you're drilling holes why not just put in copper) and outdoors it's very susceptible to rain, snow, fog and dust. The better solutions I've seen combine the high bandwidth laser or coherent light signal with a slower directional WiFi for...
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    Facebook Captcha Test Wants You to Upload a Clear Picture of Your Face

    You're all missing the point. This is all a long-term sociology experiment to see just how far people can be made to go in order to keep their farmvilles and their winky poop emojis.
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    Copyright Trolls Hit With Class Action Lawsuit For Theft by Deception

    Well the fake-hacker defendant thing is definitely in the federal indictment. When some courts got wise to the fact that an IP address wasn't sufficient to identify a pirate and started denying discovery in John Doe cases, Prenda created a shell company and claimed that some no-good hacker types...
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    Copyright Trolls Hit With Class Action Lawsuit For Theft by Deception

    More interesting and less predictable than the class action are the actual criminal charges filed against Prenda's principals. Prenda was not just being the usual sort of copyright troll, they were honeypotting by uploading content to pirate sites and also claiming damages for content they...
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    Piracy ‘Warnings’ Fail to Boost Box Office Revenues

    Distribution is kind of a monopoly for theaters. They dictate how and when the movies are played, on what hardware, with what speakers, etc. and violating it means you can't get the newest movies anymore, or even just that you won't be at the top of their distro lists and get new movies last if...
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    How To Opt Out Of Mandatory Arbitration

    It's less the specific product than the fact that everybody is trying to do this now, and it runs directly against public interest to allow it. Arbitration heavily favors the company over the individual, and it requires you to give up any claims as a member of a class. If a defect causes damages...
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    How To Opt Out Of Mandatory Arbitration

    Generally speaking if you register your product you're agreeing to the EULA, but unless you actually sign or click something the simple act of buying a product does not remove your rights to due process. What happens very often is that the company will act like you don't have a choice when you...
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    Piracy ‘Warnings’ Fail to Boost Box Office Revenues

    Tell me about it. Remember the "You wouldn't steal a car" bit? If I could download a car off the Internet I would do so with childlike glee, and laugh the entire time. The issue currently facing content creators in the modern world is foundational, as distribution has become effectively free...
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    Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 Capable Of Running Full Windows 10

    Windows-on-ARM isn't a bad idea from Microsoft's perspective. It allows them to leverage existing silicon to possibly make headway into a market that's been all but completely closed off to them in the past. They can't make a Phone worth more than a paperweight and X86 tablets have flopped but...
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    Piracy ‘Warnings’ Fail to Boost Box Office Revenues

    Theaters make next to nothing through ticket sales; the vast majority of that goes to their upstream suppliers all the way up to the studios. Food is really their main source of revenue, and with the costs associated with running a huge building and a bunch of high tech gadgets required to play...
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