An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Every week, Netflix sends out thousands of takedown requests, most of which target pirated copies of its movies and TV-shows. Yesterday, however, we spotted a series of copyright infringement notices with a different and rather uncomfortable theme. The streaming giant asked Twitter to remove dozens of tweets that included footage from the French coming-of-age film Cuties. This film hasn't been without controversy and the same can be said about the takedown requests too. To provide some context, Netflix acquired the global distribution rights for Cuties and started promoting it this summer. This created quite some backlash as many people felt that the young actors had been sexualized after being filmed in all kinds of suggestive poses. We won't go into the various viewpoints on this topic or the lawsuit Netflix faces in Texas over 'lewd visual material.' Opinions from both sides are readily available all over the web, including social media. Netflix didn't cancel Cuties, however, but this week it actively started to pull Cuties clips from Twitter. Not just a handful, but several dozens. Legally the company is allowed to do this of course, as they own the rights. However, it is at least a bit peculiar that the company appears to have targeted only negative tweets. The good news is that the texts of the tweets remain online. We don't know if that is Twitter's decision or if Netflix had a say in it. The takedown requests, which are posted on Lumen, target the full tweet URLs. The flagged tweets, according to TorrentFreak, all condemn Netflix. "The language is quite harsh at times, including terms such as child exploitation, pedophilia, as well as repeated calls to cancel Netflix," it adds. The company hasn't said why it's suddenly going after Cuties clips on Twitter. "The easy conclusion would be that Netflix is trying to shove these under the carpet," reports TorrentFreak. "However, there are still thousands of similar comments online, so that wouldn't be very effective."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has announced today that developers will be required to provide new privacy details to users in the App Store starting December 8. From a report: These privacy "nutrition labels" were first introduced at WWDC over the summer, with Apple saying the goal is to better inform consumers of the privacy practices of individual applications. In a post on the Apple Developer webpage today, Apple confirmed that the new privacy details will be required for new apps and app updates to the App Store starting on December 8.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Just when we need them the most, with print shops locked down, online schooling in session, and everyone working from home, they fail to step up. From a column: Printers have been my enemy ever since I can remember. My first office job involved an evil printer that suffered daily paper jams. Tasked with fixing it, I suffered frequent burns and paper cuts. It had a door you had to close just so, or it would immediately break again with the dreaded phantom paper jam. It tormented me for months, completely indifferent to my cries. There isn't even any paper in it! More than two decades later, printers haven't improved at all. It feels like printer companies stopped innovating sometime in the '90s when sales stopped climbing. In fact, it's almost as if they've regressed. Manufacturers tempt with unbelievably cheap deals on printers and then nail you on expensive ink. To make sure they get their pound of flesh, they focus an inordinate effort on making sure printers only work with proprietary ink cartridges. [...] Three years and a couple of printers later, sick of being gouged for ink cartridges that always seem to run out at the worst moment, I optimistically signed up for a printing subscription plan. The idea is you are charged a flat fee based on how many pages you print each month, and the printer automatically orders ink refills when it's running low. Reading this back, I can only cringe at my naivety. Things were fine for the first few weeks. Then I made the mistake of turning the printer off. It doesn't like to be turned off. It started emailing me, insisting that it needs to be turned on and connected to the internet so the subscription plan can work properly. Every time I turn it on, it prints an ink-heavy test page. It is incredibly good at printing test pages -- it just won't print the document you want. Things got worse when I made the mistake of changing my internet service provider. I forgot about the printer for a while. Then I suddenly needed it. I didn't have time to set up the Wi-Fi, so I plugged directly into the printer with a good old-fashioned cable. It refused to print. I refused to connect it to the internet, so it refused to print for me. To get it working again I had to completely uninstall everything related to the printer, update my drivers, install three separate programs, carry it to another room to plug directly into my desktop, carry it back again, hold down the correct button sequence at the stroke of midnight, spin around three times, and recite the printer incantation into a mirror. It's finally connected and working ... for now. But I know it's only a matter of time before it betrays me again.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MojoKid writes: AMD made bold claims when the company unveiled its new Zen 3-based Ryzen 5000 series processors early last month. Statements like "historic IPC uplift" and "fastest for gamers" were waved about like flags of victory. However, as with most things in the computing world, independent testing is always the best way to validate claims. Today AMD lifted the embargo on 3rd party reviews and, in testing, AMD's new Ryzen 5000 series CPUs set a new performance bar virtually across the board, and one that Intel currently can't touch. There are four processors in the initial Ryzen 5000 series lineup, though it's a safe bet more will be coming later. The current entry point is the Ryzen 5 5600X 6-core / 8-thread processor, followed by the 8-core / 16-thread Ryzen 7 5800X, 12-core / 24 thread Ryzen 9 5900X, and the flagship 16-core / 32-thread Ryzen 9 5950X. All of these new CPUs are backwards compatible with AMD socket AM4 motherboards. In comparison to Zen 2, Zen 3 has a larger L1 branch target buffer and improved bandwidth through multiple parts of its pipeline with additional load/store flexibility. Where Zen 2 could handle 2 load and 1 store per cycle, Zen 3 can handle 3 load and 2 stores. All told, AMD is claiming an average 19% increase in IPC with Zen 3, which is a huge uplift gen-over-gen. Couple that IPC uplift with stronger multi-core scaling and a new unified L3 cache configuration, and Zen 3's performance looks great across a wide variety of workloads for both content creation and gaming especially. AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X, Ryzen 9 5900X, Ryzen 7 5800X and Ryzen 5 5600X will be priced at $799, $549, $449 and $299, respectively and should be on retail and etail shelves starting today.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Slashdot reader writes: Denmark plans to cull its entire population of roughly 15 million minks in farms after the animals spread a mutation of the coronavirus to humans. The country's prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said at a press conference Wednesday that the mutated virus could spread to other countries and it "may pose a risk to the effectiveness of a future vaccine." âoeWe have a great responsibility towards our own population, but with the mutation that has now been found, we have an even greater responsibility for the rest of the world as well,â she said. The mutated virus was found in a dozen people who got infected by minks. Half of the 783 human Covid-19 cases in northern Denmark "are related to mink," Health Minister Magnus Heunicke said. Mike Ryan, the head of the emergencies program for the World Health Organization, has called for scientific investigations of the "complex, complex issue" of people outside of China infecting minks, which in turn transmitted the virus back to humans. Kare Molbak, a director at the research center Statens Serum Institut, said the worst-case scenario would be "a new pandemic, starting all over again out of Denmark." "That's why we have to take this extremely seriously," Molbak said. There are between 15 million and 17 million minks in Denmark, one of the world's main mink fur exporters. According to government estimates, culling the country's mink population could cost up to $785 million. National police head Thorkild Fogde urged that 'it should happen as soon as possible."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon.com is launching air cargo operations in Europe, the online retailer's first such expansion outside of the U.S. as it looks to bring more freight operations in-house. From a report: Amazon Air will run a 20,000-square-meter regional air hub at Leipzig/Halle airport in Germany, with two branded Boeing Co. 737-800 freighters flown by ASL Airlines, the company said in a statement. The facility will employ 200 people. Operating its own aircraft will let the world's largest e-commerce company offer "more flexible delivery options," Amazon said. The company unveiled the air cargo service in 2016, reducing its reliance on United Parcel Service and FedEx.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gaming hardware makers have been diversifying their laptops recently, and Razer is the latest to join that trend. From a report: The company is announcing the Razer Book 13 today, which it's calling a "hyper focused productivity laptop." It's not just a subtler version of a Blade laptop, either. The emphasis on productivity means Razer also strove to include a generous array of ports, as well as interesting lighting features that could help highlight keyboard shortcuts. The Book 13 is also the company's first Intel Evo-certified notebook, meaning it meets certain requirements for performance, battery life and wake time. As its name indicates, the Book 13 has a 13.4-inch IPS display that comes in touch or nontouch configurations. If you opt for the matte nontouch version, you'll only get Full HD+ resolution, while the touch models also come in UHD+ (3,840 x 2,400). The touchscreens are also covered in Gorilla Glass for better durability and you can add an anti-reflective coating to reduce glare. All configurations feature a 16:10 aspect ratio, which is new to Razer's family of laptops and lets you see more on the screen at once than older 16:9 devices. The Book 13 also houses a 720p webcam in its slim bezels, and it's Windows Hello-compatible. There isn't a fingerprint scanner here, though. That's understandable -- Razer's already crammed a lot into the Book 13, which is impressive for a device thatâ(TM)s 0.6 inches thick and weighs 2.95 pounds. Plus, despite that sharp profile, the company managed to offer two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, a USB-A socket (at USB 3.2 speeds), a microSD card reader, a 3.5mm audio jack and an HDMI 2.0 slot. [...] The slim, lightweight package is something Razer fans are already accustomed to, and they'll also appreciate some other familiar features. The most prominent of these is Razer Chroma integration which allows users to customize the colors of individual buttons on the keyboard. Starts at $1,199. Pre-order starts today, with shipping to be followed later this month.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Many industries use heat-intensive processes that generally require the burning of fossil fuels, but a surprising green fuel alternative is emerging in the form of metal powders. Ground very fine, cheap iron powder burns readily at high temperatures, releasing energy as it oxidizes in a process that emits no carbon and produces easily collectable rust, or iron oxide, as its only emission. From a report: If burning metal powder as fuel sounds strange, the next part of the process will be even more surprising. That rust can be regenerated straight back into iron powder with the application of electricity, and if you do this using solar, wind or other zero-carbon power generation systems, you end up with a totally carbon-free cycle. The iron acts as a kind of clean battery for combustion processes, charging up via one of a number of means including electrolysis, and discharging in flames and heat. Recently, Swinkels Family Brewers in the Netherlands has become the first business in the world to put this process to work at an industrial scale. The company has been working with the Metal Power Consortium and researchers at TU Eindhoven to install a cyclical iron fuel system at its Brewery Bavaria that's capable of providing all the heat necessary for some 15 million glasses of beer a year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

GitHub has denied rumors today of getting hacked after a mysterious entity shared what they claimed to be the source code of the GitHub.com and GitHub Enterprise portals. From a report: The "supposed" source code was leaked via a commit to GitHub's DMCA section. The commit was also faked to look like it originated from GitHub CEO Nat Friedman. But in a message posted on YCombinator's Hacker News portal, Friedman denied that it was him and that GitHub got hacked in any way. Friedman said the "leaked source code" didn't cover all of GitHub's code but only the GitHub Enterprise Server product. This is a version of GitHub Enterprise that companies can run on their own on-premise servers in case they need to store source code locally for security reasons but still want to benefit from GitHub Enterprise features. Friedman said this source code had already leaked months before due to its own error when GitHub engineers accidentally "shipped an un-stripped/obfuscated tarball of our GitHub Enterprise Server source code to some customers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For his monthly intention in November, Pope Francis prayed that AI will be beneficial for humanity. From a report: It's up for debate whether the development of automation and AI will ultimately be good for humankind, and it can't hurt to have a little divine intervention on our side. What he's saying: "We pray that the progress of robotics and artificial intelligence may always serve humankind," reads Francis' intention for November, which is published each month by the Pope's Worldwide Prayer Network. Background: This isn't the first time Francis has ventured into the fraught territory of AI ethics and alignment. In February, the Vatican hosted executives from IBM and Microsoft for a summit on "human-centered" ways of designing AI. They formulated the "Rome Call for AI Ethics," which called for AI to be designed with a focus on the good of the environment and "our common and shared home and of its human inhabitants."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Devs who want to leave a legacy of code, keep a copy of everything on GitHub. Here's why. 1. They host your projects for $0, so your code can persist even if your heirs stop paying hosting bills. 2. They're owned by Microsoft which will probably be around for a while.

A lot of development work is taking things from one list and putting it on another list.

I ❤️ America.

Secretaries of State are the nerd heroes of our democracy.

Owners of iPhones and iPads will soon be able to play Fortnite again, via a cloud service, the BBC has discovered. From a report: Nvidia has developed a version of its GeForce cloud gaming service that runs in the mobile web browser Safari. Apple will not get a cut of virtual items sold within the battle royale fighting title when played this way. Apple is embroiled in a legal fight with Fortnite's developer Epic, which led the iPhone-maker to remove the game from its iOS App Store. Epic has claimed that the 30% commission Apple charges on in-app gaming purchases is anti-competitive. But Apple has accused Epic of wanting a "free ride". The case is due to go to trial in May and could take years to be resolved. Papers filed in the case indicate that Fortnite had 116 million users on iOS, 73 million of whom only played it via Apple's operating system. Unlike Android, Apple does not allow games or other apps to be loaded on to its phones or tablets via app stores other than its own. But it does not restrict which third-party services can run within Safari or other web browsers available via its store.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.