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Last updated 21 Aug, 09:20 PM

BBC News - Home

Barcelona attack: Van driver shot dead by police - Younes Abouyaaqoub, wearing a fake explosive belt, was cornered west of Barcelona after a tip off.

Spain attack: Hugs and defiance on Las Ramblas - People hug and chant "no terrorism" on the street where people were killed in last week's attack.

Solar eclipse 2017: Americans gaze at sky spectacular - Skywatchers in the US are treated to a spectacular coast-to-coast eclipse.

Solar eclipse: See it in 60 seconds - A Nasa telescope captures the total solar eclipse as it passes over the western US state of Oregon.

Johnson & Johnson face $417m payout in latest talc case - The payout - to a woman who developed ovarian cancer - is the largest award so far against the firm.

The Register

AI leaders again seek limits on killer robots - No LAWS for us, please Leading roboticists and computer science researchers have again asked the United Nations to save us all from lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS).…

China's cyber court opens for business; a gavel-free zone? - Focus is to be specifically on online cases China has just opened a new court that will solely deal with internet-related cases.…

Hackers scam half a million from Enigma digital currency investors - Sucky security leaves MIT cryptoboffins red-faced Cunning hackers have successfully duped investors out of almost $500,000 after compromising the servers of the online currency platform Enigma.…

10% of UK's top firms would be screwed in a cyber attack – survey - And just 6% say they're fully prepared for GDPR Most of the UK's top businesses are underprepared for new data protection rules, while 10 per cent have no response plan for a cyber attack, according to a government survey.…

Bizzby balls-up: Handyman app spams customer's details to world+dog - Reuben from Hartlepool, today's your unlucky day Handyman-finding UK app Bizzby appears to have sent a number of people an unsolicited email containing the full name and address of one of its subscribers.…

New Scientist - News

Low-calorie pizza and burgers won’t fix our child obesity crisis - The latest push to tackle growing waistlines among England's children is a call to cut calories in junk food. It won't work wonders, warns Tom Sanders

Antarctic mystery microbe could tell us where viruses came from - Viruses are not like other organisms and nobody is quite sure where they originated, but a newly discovered single-celled organism seems to offer a clue

It could be snowing on Mars right now - The Red Planet may have had intense snowstorms long ago when it was wetter, but a model shows it could still have violent snowfall at night when the clouds cool

Solving how fish swim so well may help design underwater robots - Trout, dolphins and killer whales swim in remarkably similar ways – and a model of how they use little energy to do so may help design better aquatic robots

Inside the fighter jet of the future where AI is the pilot - Next-gen planes won't have controls – or maybe even a cockpit. Timothy Revell got on board to find out whether pilots are getting the ejector seat

Hacker News

Android Oreo - Comments

Examining a vintage RAM chip, I find a counterfeit with a different die inside - Comments

How JavaScript works: inside the V8 engine - Comments

Winning the War on Error: Solving the Halting Problem and Curing Cancer [video] - Comments

YC Summer 2017 Stats - Comments

Slashdot

Android O Is Now Officially Android Oreo - Android O is now officially going by the name of Android Oreo. The operating system is available today via Google's Android Open Source Project. OTA rollout is expected to arrive first to Pixel and Nexus devices, with builds currently in carrier testing. The Verge reports: The use of an existing brand makes sense for Google here -- there aren't a ton of good "O" dessert foods out there, and Oreos are pretty much as universally beloved as a cookie can be. There's also precedent for the partnership, as Google had previously teamed up with Nestle and Hershey's to call Android 4.4 KitKat. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Does the World Need Polymaths? - Two hundred years ago, it was still possible for one person to be a leader in several different fields of inquiry. Today that is no longer the case. So is there a role in today's world for the polymath -- someone who knows a lot about a lot of things? From a report: Bobby Seagull's fist-pumping and natty dressing, and Eric Monkman's furrowed brow, flashing teeth, contorted facial expressions and vocal delivery -- like a fog horn with a hangover -- made these two young men the stars of the last University Challenge competition. [...] They're still recognised in the street. "People often ask me, do you intimidate people with your knowledge," says Monkman. "But the opposite is the case. I have wide knowledge but no deep expertise. I am intimidated by experts." Seagull, like Monkman, feels an intense pressure to specialise. They regard themselves as Jacks-of-all-Trades, without being master of one. "When I was young what I really wanted to do was know a lot about a lot," says Monkman. "Now I feel that if I want to make a novel contribution to society I need to know a great deal about one tiny thing." The belief that researchers need to specialise goes back at least two centuries. From the beginning of the 19th Century, research has primarily been the preserve of universities. Ever since, says Stefan Collini, Professor of Intellectual History and English Literature at Cambridge University, researchers have labels attached to them. "They're professor of this or that, and you get a much more self-conscious sense of the institutional divides between domains of knowledge." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meeting and Hotel Booking Provider's Data Found in Public Amazon S3 Bucket - Leaks of personal and business information from unsecured Amazon S3 buckets are piling up. From a report: The latest belongs to Groupize, a Boston-area business that sells tools to manage small group meetings as well as a booking engine that handles hotel room-block reservations. Researchers at Kromtech Security found a publicly accessible bucket containing business and personal data, including contracts and agreements between hotels, customers and Groupize, Kromtech said. The data included some credit card payment authorization forms that contained full payment card information including expiration data and CVV code. The researchers said the database stored in S3 contained numerous folders, below; one called "documents" held close to 3,000 scanned contracts and agreements, while another called all_leads had more than 3,100 spreadsheets containing critical Groupize business data including earnings. There were 37 other folders in the bucket containing tens of thousands of files, most of them storing much more benign data. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cord-Cutting Still Doesn't Beat the Cable Bundle - I'd like to cut the cord, writes Brian Barrett for Wired, then, the very instant I allow myself to picture what life looks like after that figurative snip, my reverie comes crashing down. From an article: Cutting the cord is absolutely right for some people. Lots of people, maybe. But it's not that cheap, and it's not that easy, and there's not much hope of improvement on either front any time soon. Not to turn this into a math experiment, but let's consider cost. Assuming you're looking for a cord replacement, not abandoning live television altogether, you're going to need a service that bundles together a handful of channels and blips them to your house over the internet. The cheapest way you can accomplish this is to pay Sling TV $20 per month, for which you get 29 channels. That sounds not so bad, and certainly less than your cable bill. But! Sling Orange limits you to a single stream. If you're in a household with others, you'll probably want Sling Blue, which offers multiple streams and 43 channels for $25 per month. But! Sling Orange and Sling Blue have different channel lineups (ESPN is on Orange, not Blue, while Orange lacks FX, Bravo and any locals). For full coverage, you can subscribe to both for $40. But! Have kids? You'll want the Kids Extra package for another $5 per month. Love ESPNU? Grab that $5 per month sports package. HBO? $15 per month, please. Presto, you're up to $65 per month. But! Don't forget the extra $5 for a cloud-based DVR. Plus the high-speed internet service that you need to keep your stream from buffering, which, by the way, it'll do anyway. That's not to pick on Sling TV, specifically. But paying $70 to quit cable feels like smoking a pack of Parliaments to quit Marlboro Lights. You run into similar situations across the board, whether it's a higher base rate, or a limited premium selection, or the absence of local programming altogether. It turns out, oddly enough, that things cost money, whether you access those things through traditional cable packages or through a modem provided to you by a traditional cable operator. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Driverless Cars Need a Lot More Than Software, Ford CTO Says - In an interview, Ken Washington, Ford's Chief Technical Officer, shared company's views on how autonomy will change car design. From an article: The biggest influence will be how the cars are bought, sold and used: "You would design those vehicles differently depending on what business model (is being used). We're working through that business model question right now," he said. The biggest misconceptions about autonomous capabilities is that it's only about software: "People are imagining that the act of doing software for autonomy is all you need to do and then you can just bolt it to the car," he said. "I don't think it's possible to describe what an autonomous vehicle is going to look like," he added. Read more of this story at Slashdot.