The U.S. agency overseeing elections has “quietly weakened a key element of proposed security standards…” reports the Associated Press, “raising concern among voting-integrity experts that many such systems will remain vulnerable to hacking.” The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) is poised to approve its first new security standards in 15 years after an arduous process involving multiple technical and elections community bodies…
Tag: leadership
Surround Sound From Lightweight Roll-To-Roll Printed Loudspeaker Paper
“Researchers from the fields of print media technology, chemistry, physics, acoustics, electrical engineering, and economics from six nations developed a continuous, highly productive, and reliable roll production of loudspeaker webs,” reports project manager Georg C. Schmidt. [For those unfamiliar with roll-to-roll processing, it is the process of creating electronic devices on a roll of flexible plastic or metal foil, which, among…
One-Third of Tech Workers Admit To Working Only 3 To 4 Hours a Day, Report Finds
According to a survey by Blind, 31% of professionals from 42 tech companies said they’re only putting in between three and four hours a day. Fast Company reports: Additionally, the survey found, 27% of tech professionals said they work five to six hours a day, and 11% reported only working one to two hours per day. In contrast, 30% said they…
Report Finds Extremists Did Use Facebook to Plan Capitol Attack
NBC News reports: A number of pro-Trump extremists used Facebook to plan their attack on the U.S. Capitol, a watchdog organization has found, contradicting claims by Facebook’s leadership that such planning was largely done on other sites. Private Facebook groups spent months advising one another about how to “take down” the U.S. government, particularly after Joe Biden was elected president, according…
Biden Rejoins Paris Climate Accord, Works To Overturn Trump’s Climate Policies
During his first moments in the Oval Office on Wednesday, President Biden returned the United States to the Paris climate accord and directed federal agencies to begin unraveling Donald Trump’s environmental policies. The Washington Post reports: Biden’s executive order recommitting the United States to the international struggle to slow global warming fulfilled a campaign promise and represented a stark repudiation of…
Estimated Cost of Poor Software Quality in the U.S. in 2020: $2.1 Trillion
TechRepublic shares a remarkable calculation by the not-for-profit IT leadership group the Consortium for Information and Software Security: CISQ’s 2020 report, The Cost of Poor Software Quality in the U.S., looked at the financial impact of software projects that went awry or otherwise ended up leaving companies with a larger bill by creating additional headaches for them. According to the consortium,…
Parler Users Breached Deep Inside US Capitol Building, GPS Data Shows
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: At least several users of the far-right social network Parler appear to be among the horde of rioters that managed to penetrate deep inside the U.S. Capitol building and into areas normally restricted to the public, according to GPS metadata linked to videos posted to the platform the day of the insurrection in…
Ask Slashdot: How Long Should a Vendor Support a Distro?
Long-term Slashdot reader couchslug believes that “Howls of anguish from betrayed CentOS 8 users highlight the value of its long support cycles…” Earlier this month it was announced that at the end of 2021, the community-supported rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS 8, “will no longer be maintained,” though CentOS 7 “will stick around in a supported maintenance state until…
Coursera Becomes Part of Global Services Administration Listing
Now Any Federal Government Agency Can Easily Engage Coursera for Upskilling Projects By Kevin Mills, Head of Government Partnerships Approximately 400,000 Federal employees will need to be reskilled by FY 2021, according to the Office of Management and Budget. That’s nearly 20% of the government’s current workforce. Today, we are excited to announce an agreement […]
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Do Games Made Under Crunch Conditions Deserve ‘Best Direction’ Awards?
The annual Game Awards ceremony awarded this year’s “Best Direction” award to Naughty Dog studio’s The Last of Us Part II — provoking a strong reaction from Kotaku’s staff writer. “I think it’s pretty obvious that no game that required its developers to crunch, like The Last of Us Part II did, should be given a Best Direction award.” It’s no…