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Last updated 15 Nov, 08:40 PM

BBC News - Home

General election 2019: Boris Johnson quizzed on Russia, flooding and his children - Boris Johnson answered questions from the public in a special BBC programme.

Trump impeachment inquiry: President tweets furious attack on envoy - The president criticised the former US envoy to Ukraine in the middle of her impeachment testimony.

Roger Stone: Trump ally convicted of lying to Congress - The former adviser to President Donald Trump is convicted on charges stemming from Russia inquiry.

Flooded Venice battles new tidal surge - The Italian canal city's main square, waterbuses and schools are closed as the water rises again.

Taylor Swift's old label hits back in row over 'awards ban' - Taylor Swift claims Scooter Braun's label won't let her sing her own hits at an awards ceremony.

The Register

Denial of service kingpin hit with 13 months denial of freedom and a massive bill to pay - Illinois man gets more than a year in the slammer for $550K DDoS scheme A US court has sentenced the operator of a massive DDoS service to 13 months in prison.…

Uncle Sam prepping order to extradite ex-Autonomy boss Mike Lynch from the UK - Meanwhile, his co-defendant has troubles getting into land of the free The US State Department has until 1 December to get its paperwork in order and show how it wishes to proceed in attempting to extradite ex-Autonomy boss Mike Lynch to face charges.…

1Password hopes to cross some items off its todo list with help from $200m in venture capital - Though not much detail on said list, except security and privacy Some 14 years after it was founded and with no external funding taken in during that time, 1Password has finally succumbed to the charms - and $200m in cash - of venture cap biz Accel.…

Tonight on Tales from the Crypto: It lives! GPU flinger Nvidia bouncing back after miner affair - Just goes to show, stick with what you know The ill-conceived and costly error of doubling down on the crypto-market is almost a distant memory for Nvidia as the GPU maker reported results that indicate an upward turn in fortunes.…

White Screen of Death: Admins up in arms after experimental Google emission borks Chrome - Change rolled back, but it's not a good look An experimental feature silently rolled out to the stable Chrome release on Tuesday caused chaos for IT admins this week after users complained of facing white, featureless tabs on Google's massively popular browser.…

New Scientist - News

Eating a keto diet may give some protection against the flu - Giving mice a diet with lots of fat and few carbohydrates seemed to boost certain immune cells, which protected them from the flu

Long-term smokers who start vaping see health benefits within a month - Regular smokers who switch to e-cigarettes saw improved vascular health, potentially reducing the risk of heart attacks

Smoke from Australia's bushfires has spread to South America - Satellites show atmospheric pollution created by the fires across New South Wales and Queensland has travelled more than 10,000 kilometres to Chile and Argentina

Stone Age artists were obsessed with horses and we don’t know why - Stone Age artists loved drawing horses. One possible explanation is that this was because they believed horses were the most important of all the animals

A laser-sighted toxic goo gun is killing feral cats in Australia - A device that kills feral cats by squirting their fur with toxic gel they lick off while self-grooming is being used to protect endangered Australian animals

Hacker News

Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival - Comments

Distilling knowledge from neural networks to build smaller and faster models - Comments

Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes - Comments

Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy' - Comments

To motivate people, talk about the context of the work to be done - Comments

Slashdot

Billboards Love Streaming Wars Because That's Where Ads End Up - Streaming services are the hottest thing in entertainment these days. But when it comes to getting the word out about the newest offerings, it's traditional media that often benefits. From a report: Apple, Disney and other big tech and media giants are increasingly turning to outlets like TV, billboards and newspapers to promote their new online products. Spending on broadcast and cable ads by streaming services jumped 19% to $209 million over the past 10 weeks, according to data from researcher ISpot.TV. The biggest spender was Apple, which launched its Apple TV+ service on Nov. 1. It accounted for almost one-quarter of the spending, followed closely behind by Amazon.com , with $37 million in TV ad purchases. "Television is the easiest place to find people who like TV," said Brian Wieser, global president of business intelligence for GroupM, the ad buying unit of WPP. Disney, which introduced its new Disney+ streaming service on Tuesday, relied heavily on its own networks for marketing. Ads ran on ESPN's Monday Night Football, while ABC aired the first episode of the service's new "High School Musical" series the Friday before the launch. The company also promoted the service on its radio network and in the hotel rooms at its theme parks. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Disney + and 'The Mandalorian' Are Driving People Back To Torrenting - An anonymous reader shares a report: A simple glance at torrent websites shows that plenty of people are stealing from the brand new steaming services -- episodes of The Mandalorian and Dickinson all have hundreds or thousands of seeders and are among the most popular shows on torrent sites. I reached out specifically to Disney, Apple, and Netflix to ask what their policy was on going after pirated content, and haven't heard back, but it's obvious that these companies assume that at least some of their viewers aren't paying the full price for their services. Given that you can watch as many as six simultaneous streams with Apple TV+, and four with Disney+ and the top Netflix package, the more common form of piracy -- password sharing -- is built into the system. But for pirates who don't have any access to the legit services, what makes stealing content particularly appealing in this age is that there are few if any people who face consequences for the crime. Since the discontinuation of the "six strikes" copyright policy in 2017, there's been lax enforcement of copyright laws. Rather than going after individuals for exorbitant fines for downloading a handful of songs like copyright holders did a decade ago, enforcement these days has focused on the providers of pirated content, with the much more efficient goal of taking down entire streaming sites rather than just a few of their visitors. Of course, as the continued resilience of The Pirate Bay shows, the current strategy isn't particularly effective at stopping piracy, either. But it does mean that those who only download already-stolen content are safer than they've ever been. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Org That Doles Out<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.Org Websites Just Sold Itself To a For-Profit Company - Today, the Public Interest Registry (PIR), which maintains the .org top-level domain, announced that it will be acquired by Ethos Capital, a private equity firm. From a report: This move will make PIR, previously a non-profit domain registry, officially part of a for-profit company -- which certainly seems at odds with what .org might represent to some. Originally, ".org" was an alternative to the ".com" that was earmarked for commercial entities, which lent itself to non-profit use. That's not all: On June 30th, ICANN, the non-profit that oversees all domain names on the internet, agreed to remove price caps on rates for .org domain names -- which were previously pretty cheap. Seems like something a for-profit company might want. Removing price caps wasn't exactly a popular idea when it was first proposed on March 18th. According to Review Signal, only six of the more than 3,000 public comments on the proposal were in favor of the change. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Almost Made 100,000 Chest X-rays Public -- Until it Realized Personal Data Could Be Exposed - Two days before Google was set to publicly post more than 100,000 images of human chest X-rays, the tech giant got a call from the National Institutes of Health, which had provided the images: Some of them still contained details that could be used to identify the patients, a potential privacy and legal violation. From a report: Google abruptly canceled its project with NIH, according to emails reviewed by The Washington Post and an interview with a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity. But the 2017 incident, which has never been reported, highlights the potential pitfalls of the tech giant's incursions into the world of sensitive health data. Over the course of planning the X-ray project, Google's researchers didn't obtain any legal agreements covering the privacy of patient information, the person said, adding that the company rushed toward publicly announcing the project without properly vetting the data for privacy concerns. The emails about Google's NIH project were part of records obtained from a Freedom of Information Act request. Google's ability to uphold data privacy is under scrutiny as it increasingly inserts itself into people's medical lives. The Internet giant this week said it has partnered with health-care provider Ascension to collect and store personal data for millions of patients, including full names, dates of birth and clinical histories, in order to make smarter recommendations to physicians. But the project raised privacy concerns in part because it wasn't immediately clear whether patients had consented to have their files transferred from Ascension servers or what Google's intentions were. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Taiwan Stops Selling Huawei Phones That Identify It as Part of China - Taiwan suspended sales of three Huawei smartphone models that identify Taiwan as part of China, striking a fresh blow in a long-running conflict over references to sovereignty. From a report: Phone carriers were ordered to stop offering Huawei's P30, P3O Pro and Nova 5T models starting Thursday because their displays included the words "Taiwan, China" for time zones and contacts, said Peter Niou, a deputy director at the National Communications Commission in Taipei. The reference impairs Taiwan's "national dignity," Niou said. The halt adds Huawei to the list of global brands, from Coach and Givenchy to JPMorgan, that have had to respond to the sovereignty dispute between separately governed Taiwan and China, which claims Taiwan as part of its territory. The two fashion brands, owned by companies in the U.S. and France, apologized to China's government after offering T-shirts that identified Taiwan as a country. Read more of this story at Slashdot.