Long-time Slashdot reader StonyCreekBare shared this press release from the Texas Department of Information Resources (Dir) press release as of August 17, 2019, at approximately 5:00 p.m. central time: On the morning of August 16, 2019, more than 20 entities in Texas reported a ransomware attack. The majority of these entities were smaller local governments… At this time, the evidence gathered…
Tag: Texas
Trauma Counselors Were Pressured To Divulge Confidential Information About Facebook Moderators, Internal Letter Claims
Sam Biddle, reporting for The Intercept: Nearly 1,500 miles from the Menlo Park headquarters of Facebook, at a company outpost in Austin, Texas, moderators toil around the clock to screen and scrub some the most gruesome, hateful, and heinous posts that make their way onto the social network and its photo-sharing subsidiary, Instagram. They are required to view as many as…
New Electric Motor Design Massively Boosts Power, Torque, and Efficiency
A Texas-based, father/son team raised $4.5 million in seed funding to build “a remarkable electric motor technology,” reports New Atlas. Long-time Slashdot reader Namarrgon writes: Linear Labs’ impressive new circumferential flux motor design (video) uses four rotors [where other motors typically run one or two] and a software-reconfigurable, multi-coil stator, enclosed in a 3D magnetic “torque tunnel” to maximize efficiency even…
Should Some Sites Be Liable For The Content They Host?
America’s lawmakers are scrutinizing the blanket protections in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which lets online companies moderate their own sites without incurring legal liability for everything they host. schwit1 shared this article from the New York Times: Last month, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, said in a hearing about Google and censorship that the law was “a…
CEOs Who Cheat In Bedroom Will Cheat In Boardroom, Study Shows
Finance professors at the University of Texas at Austin and Emory University found a strong correlation between adultery and workplace misconduct by corporate executives and financial advisers. “[The researchers] were able to examine customers of Ashley Madison, a dating site for married people looking to have affairs, or ‘discreet encounters’ as it puts it,” reports Bloomberg. “That’s because a computer hack…
Walmart Takes Down Displays of Violent Video Games in Stores
Walmart is removing displays and signs of violent video games in its stores in the wake of two deadly shootings at its locations in Texas and Mississippi in recent weeks. From a report: “We’ve taken this action out of respect for the incidents of the past week, and this action does not reflect a long-term change in our video game assortment,”…
Trump Asks Social Media Companies To Develop Pre-Crime Algorithms
AmiMoJo shares a report from The Verge: After two recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, President Trump said his administration would ask social media companies to develop tools that could detect potential mass shooters. While delivering a speech on the recent violence, Trump said “we must do a better job of identifying and acting on early warning…
Possible Link Found Between Body Weight and the Immune System
The Atlantic talked to Lora Hooper, chair of the immunology department at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, one of the researchers investigating gut microbes, inflammation, and what may be a very important connection. They note that the rise of antibiotic usage among humans “coincides with the obesity epidemic.” This could be a spurious correlation, of course — lots of…
Researchers Build Device That Turns Heat Into Light, Possibly Boosting Solar Cell Efficiency
Kant (Slashdot reader #67,320) shared this story from the photovoltaics news site PV Magazine: Scientists at Rice University in Texas have developed a device which converts heat into light by squeezing it into a smaller bandgap. The ‘hyperbolic thermal emitter’ could be combined with a PV system to convert energy otherwise wasted as heat — a development the researchers say could…
After 8chan Possibly Linked To Another Shooting, Cloudflare CEO Defends Hosting It
The Guardian learned that the suspected mass shooter at an El Paso, Texas Walmart “is believed to also have posted a white nationalist rant on 8chan” — then interviewed the CEO of the company hosting it. If the connection between the 21-year-old suspect in Saturday’s massacre and the 8chan document is confirmed — and law enforcement sources told NBC News that…