Demonstrators gather near the office of prime minister in Amman to protest against price hikes and tax increases.

An anonymous reader writes: Some of the recent additions to the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) web standard are so powerful that a security researcher has abused them to deanonymize visitors to a demo site and reveal their Facebook usernames, avatars, and if they liked a particular web page of Facebook. Information leaked via this attack could aid some advertisers linking IP addresses or advertising profiles to real-life persons, posing a serious threat to a user's online privacy. The leak isn't specific to Facebook but affects all sites which allow their content to be embedded on other web pages via iframes. The actual vulnerability resides in the browser implementation of a CSS feature named "mix-blend-mode," added in 2016 in the CSS3 web standard. Security researchers have proven that by overlaying multiple layers of 1x1px-sized DIV layers on top of iframes, each layer with a different blend mode, they could determine what's displayed inside it and recover the data, to which parent websites cannot regularly access. This attack works in Chrome and Firefox, but has been fixed in recent versions.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Russian lawmaker says Moscow's plans 'will not change' by Riyadh's opposition to the sale of surface-to-air missiles.

Coalition of far-right and anti-establishment parties ends months of political deadlock.

Ontario law defines distracted driving as "holding or using a handheld wireless communication device" -- and a judge just fined Victoria Ambrose $400 for checking her Apple Watch while waiting at a stoplight. Long-time Slashdot reader innocent_white_lamb quotes the National Post: Even with its miniaturization and trendy technology, an Apple Watch is no safer "than a cellphone taped to someone's wrist," said a justice of the peace, while convicting a Guelph woman this month of holding or using a hand-held wireless communication device while driving... "The key to determining this matter is distraction. It is abundantly clear from the evidence that Ms. Ambrose was distracted..." When the light turned green Ambrose had remained parked at an intersection, according to the officer who ticketed her, though two cars ahead of her had moved forward. Ambrose testified that she was only checking the time, but the officer told the court he'd seen Ambrose check her watch four different times.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Easily provide JSON-LD mark-up for your objects.

API wrapper around the 'tar' utility

War-torn Yemen's third largest city, Hudaida, serves as the main entry point for about 90 percent of all food imports.

An Israeli sniper shot and killed medical volunteer Razan al-Najjar as she tried to evacuate a wounded protester.

Now that I’ve switched over to marketing, people — co-workers, even! — keep asking me what I actually do all day.

Fair question. Since I’ll probably get asked the same thing in San Jose next week, I figured I’d write it up.

The team

Our team could be a small software company on its own — we have engineers, testers, designers, and a person who makes movies. Everything I do is part of working with that team.

If you think I’m being paid to be a blogger and podcaster, you’re not too far off the mark, but that description misses some things.

I’ve traded in Xcode for BBEdit and Marked, since most of what I do is writing. I write for the blog and for the podcast, of course, and also lately I’ve written:

• Inside OmniFocus blog posts
• App Store editorial pitch
• Sponsorship blurbs for podcasts
• App Store description for OmniFocus 3 for iOS
• Product pages and related pages for OmniFocus 3 for iOS and OmniFocus 2 for Mac
• Some first-run text in OmniFocus 3
• Press release
• Other release-related email
• Omni microblog (OmniDogs!)
• Newsletter
• Various tweets

Note: again, though, it’s a team effort. Some things go through extensive feedback and editing before being finished.

And some things — like the product pages — will evolve a bunch during design and production. As it takes shape we can see where the writing needs to change.

And some things I write — especially anything that ends up in an app — will probably get revised by other people before it ships.

I do some things besides writing. I edit customer stories for Inside OmniFocus. I work with people who write to Omni’s marketing email address.

And even the writing isn’t just writing — I help figure out what to write, and when, and how to talk about things.

So there you have it. I’m part of a team, and my particular role is the words. And there are a lot of words.

PS See How We Do The Omni Show for what all goes into making the podcast.

dcblogs writes: Last summer, MIT ran a pilot program creating verifiable, tamper-proof "digital diplomas" for a small number of graduates. But they don't know how the pilot turned out, and there's a lot of experimentation underway. Eventually, all your credentials -- resume, employment history, occupational licenses, diplomas -- may be in a blockchain. The use of blockchain enabled digital credentials is growing. This could speed employment verification, and make lying on resumes harder. The article points out that while a number of universities are exploring blockchain, MIT "has not heard of a case where a student's digital diploma was either consumed or accepted by an employer," although "Many certificates were verified..." "MIT's pilot illustrates the state of blockchain in HR. It is in a beta, proof-of-concept, experimental phase. Blockchain verification is currently not a practical option for employers and recruiters."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Authorities imposed emergency rule in February after the sudden resignation of ex-Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn.

An anonymous reader quotes an associate technology editor at Fast Company's Co.Design: While the amount of data about me may not have caused harm in my life yet -- as far as I know -- I don't want to be the victim of monopolistic internet oligarchs as they continue to cash in on surveillance-based business models. What's a concerned citizen of the internet to do? Here's one no-brainer: Stop using Chrome and switch to Firefox... [W]hy should I continue to use the company's browser, which acts as literally the window through which I experience much of the internet, when its incentives -- to learn a lot about me so it can sell advertisements -- don't align with mine....? Unlike Chrome, Firefox is run by Mozilla, a nonprofit organization that advocates for a "healthy" internet. Its mission is to help build an internet in an open-source manner that's accessible to everyone -- and where privacy and security are built in. Contrast that to Chrome's privacy policy, which states that it stores your browsing data locally unless you are signed in to your Google account, which enables the browser to send that information back to Google. The policy also states that Chrome allows third-party websites to access your IP address and any information that site has tracked using cookies. If you care about privacy at all, you should ditch the browser that supports a company using data to sell advertisements and enabling other companies to track your online movements for one that does not use your data at all.... Firefox protects you from being tracked by advertising networks across websites, which has the lovely side effect of making sites load faster... Ultimately, Firefox's designers have the leeway to make these privacy-first decisions because Mozilla's motivations are fundamentally different from Google's. Mozilla is a nonprofit with a mission, and Google is a for-profit corporation with an advertising-based business model.. While Firefox and Chrome ultimately perform the same service, the browsers' developers approached their design in a radically different way because one organization has to serve a bottom line, and the other doesn't. The article points out that ironically, Mozilla supports its developers partly with revenue from Google, which (along with other search engines) pays to be listed as one of the search engines available in Firefox's search bar. "But because it relies on these agreements rather than gathering user data so it can sell advertisements, the Mozilla Corporation has a fundamentally different business model than Google."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I was looking forward to the first episode of The Break with Michelle Wolf on Netflix, but it was really the shits because of all the body shaming jokes. I'm willing to cut her all kinds of slack because I like the way she thinks and I find her comedy funny, but she knows she's doing it, and still doing it, and that's not cool.

When a president lies as much and as boldly as Trump does, not only does the press have to call him on it, but new forms of journalism have to develop around this new norm, to report on why he's lying. We can have a robust discussion about that.