Tesla's senior vice president of engineering, Doug Field, is taking a leave of absence from the company (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source) at a crucial moment when the electric-car maker is struggling to boost production of the Model 3 sedan. While Tesla declined to say when he would come back, one person familiar with the matter described the absence as a "six-week sabbatical." The Wall Street Journal reports: Mr. Field has been a key leader at Silicon Valley auto maker since joining in 2013 from Apple. He oversees the engineering of Tesla's vehicles, and last year he was also given oversight of production to better align the two efforts. That changed this spring when Chief Executive Elon Musk acknowledge he retook control of production. The Silicon Valley auto maker is at a critical juncture as it tries to produce enough Model 3 cars to generate cash to fund the business and instill confidence in investors the company can create its first mass-market vehicle. Tesla has a history of key executives departing on so-called sabbaticals. Jerome Guillen, Tesla's current vice president of truck and programs, for example, took a sabbatical in 2015 from his role as vice president of worldwide sales and service only to return in the new role. He had led development of the Model S sedan. The hiring of Mr. Field from Apple, where he was vice president of Mac hardware engineering, was touted as a win for Mr. Musk who had big ambitions for the electric-car company. Mr. Field had also worked at Ford and Segway, giving him unique experience in both the tech and autos industry.

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Officials in French capital say person who carried out knife attack was overpowered by police.

The Associated Press is reporting North Korea has announced plans to dismantle its nuclear test site between May 23 and 25. The dismantling will occur before President Trump is scheduled to meet with Kim Jong-un in Singapore on June 12. NPR reports: Reuters reports that Punggye-ri nuclear test site has been the location of all of North Korea's six known nuclear tests. At the site, there's a system of tunnels under the mountain Mount Mantap. Journalists from the United States, South Korea, China, Russia and Britain will be invited to watch a special ceremony in which all of the tunnels at the testing ground will be destroyed and observation and research facilities and guard units will be taken down. The North Korean government will provide journalists with a charter flight from Beijing to Wosnan, North Korea. From there, a train will take them to the test site in the northeast part of the country. The AP also reports that at a ruling party meeting last month, North Korea announced the plan to close the nuclear testing ground, along with a commitment to suspend all tests of nuclear devices and ICBMs. At that same meeting, however, North Korea said it has been performing a kind of nuclear test classified as "subcritical." The "subcritical" experiments give scientists an opportunity to test weapons without causing an actual nuclear chain reaction and explosion.

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UNICEF warns that 400,000 children in the Democratic Republic of Congo could die from hunger.

It remains likely that Torra will clinch the position in a second vote on Monday that requires only a simple majority.

Gathering in Bleiburg commemorates wartime Croatian fascists and civilians amid a counter-protest.

An anonymous reader writes: "An unidentified hacker has breached Bycyklen -- Copenhagen's city bikes network -- and deleted the organization's entire database, disabling the public's access to bicycles over the weekend," reports Bleeping Computer. "The hack took place on the night between Friday, May 4, and Saturday, May 5, the organization said on its website. Bycyklen described the hack as "rather primitive," alluding it may have been carried out "by a person with a great deal of knowledge of its IT infrastructure." Almost 2,000 bikes were affected, and the company's employees have been working for days, searching for bikes docked across the city and installing a manual update to restore functionality. The company is holding a "treasure hunt," asking users to hunt down and identify non-functional bikes.

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The dismantlement of the Punggye-ri nuclear test site will take place between May 23-25, North Korean state media says.

Almost two years ago, Boston Dynamics unveiled their SpotMini robot to the world. It's a four-legged machine that can open doors and power through disturbances. CNET reports that the SpotMini will go on sale next year "for companies that want a mechanical quadruped to get to places a wheeled device can't reach." From the report: Boston Dynamics has 10 SpotMini prototypes now and will work with manufacturing partners to build 100 this year, company co-founder and President Marc Raibert said at a TechCrunch robotics conference Friday. "That's a prelude to getting into a higher rate of production" in anticipation of sales next year, he said. Raibert didn't reveal price plans, but said the SpotMini robots could be useful for security patrols or for helping construction companies keep tabs on what's happening at building sites. SpotMini can be customized with attachments and extra software for particular jobs, he said. Eventually, though, the company hopes to sell it for use in people's homes.

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Nearly 7,000 candidates from dozens of political alliances are competing for the 329 seats in Baghdad's parliament.

Perl module to manage the PDF imposition

Alien distribution for Raylib

On Thursday, a federal appeals court ruled that U.S. border agents need some sort of reason to believe a traveler has committed a crime before searching their cellphone. Slashdot reader Wrath0fb0b shares an analysis via Reason, written by Fourth Amendment scholar Orin Kerr: Traditionally, searches at the border don't require any suspicion on the theory that the government has a strong sovereign interest in regulating what enters and exits the country. But there is caselaw indicating that some border searches are so invasive that they do require some kind of suspicion. In the new case, Kolsuz (PDF), the Fourth Circuit agrees with the Ninth Circuit that at least some suspicion is required for a forensic search of a cell phone seized at the border. This is important for three reasons. First, the Fourth Circuit requires suspicion for forensic searches of cell phones seized at the border. Second, it clarifies significantly the forensic/manual distinction, which has always been pretty uncertain to me. Third, it leaves open that some suspicion may be required for manual searches, too. But wait, that's not all. In fact, I don't think it's the most important part of the opinion. The most important part of the opinion comes in a different section, where the Fourth Circuit adds what seems to be a new and important limit on the border search exception: a case-by-case nexus requirement to the government interests that justify the border search exception. Maybe I'm misreading this passage, but it strikes me as doing something quite new and significant. It scrutinizes the border search that occurred to see if the government's cause for searching in this particular case satisfied "a 'nexus' requirement" of showing sufficient connection between the search and "the rationale for the border search exception," requiring a link between the "predicate for the search and the rationale for the border exception." In other words, the Fourth Circuit appears to be requiring the government to identify the border-search-related interest justifying that particular search in order to rely on the border search exception. "The analysis is interesting throughout, and it would be a fairly large limitation on digital searches conducted at the border, both in requiring some articulable suspicion for digital searches and in the requirement to justify the relationship between the search and the border inspection," writes Wrath0fb0b.

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I've asked this question for years. It's a question that should be on the mind of everyone who has personally created a website with its own domain name. The question: What happens when I die?

It's not hypothetical. I am holding on to sites for two relatives who have passed on. My mother's blog was (and is) hosted on wordpress.com, so that's pretty well taken-care-of, I hope. But my father and uncle had their own domains.

Then there's a matter of scripting.com and all the other domains I've started over the years. In those sites are notes about early web technologies, and how they came to be. These will be interesting to future scholars. I know because I'm interested in how, for example, the subways were started in the United States (Boston was first, not New York, and a key invention made it possible). I'm glad historians have the records to refer to. I want to be sure that future historians have access to what I've written about the early development of the web, and the links I've kept in my blog. (In general, I am interested in how all technologies boot up, the older the better.)

Yes, I know about archive.org, but that's a backup. I'd like to do better. I'd like to put down some money now to reserve the name and protect the contents of the site, for perpetuity, or as long as possible.

A close vote is expected as Catalonia's parliament decides whether to appoint Quim Torra as regional president.