A Next Generation Sequel Could Be Included in Alex Kurtzman's Expansive New Star Trek Deal

Found on Gizmodo on Tuesday, 19 June 2018
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Variety reports that Kurtzman has inked a $25 million deal with CBS as part of a five-year plan to bring more Trek shows to TV in the wake of Discovery’s success. According to the site, five series are currently in early development.

The trade reports that one show in Kurtzman’s new deal could bring back one of Trek’s most beloved characters: Sir Patrick Stewart’s Captain Jean-Luc Picard.

That's quite a lot. Hopefully they plan to make good series instead of just squeezing money out of it. Also, bring back normal looking Klingons.

Gmail proves that some people hate smart suggestions

Found on Techcrunch on Monday, 18 June 2018
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Gmail has recently introduced a brand new redesign. While you can disable or ignore most of the new features, Gmail has started resurfacing old unanswered emails with a suggestion that you should reply.

Even if the suggestions can be accurate, it’s a bit creepy, it’s poorly implemented and it makes you feel like you’re no longer in control of your inbox.

That's what you get for trusting a company which removed the 'Don't Be Evil' clause from its code of conduct. Just host your email yourself, or find a smaller provider which you can trust.

We’re all getting dumber, says science

Found on Fast Company on Sunday, 17 June 2018
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In their paper, “Flynn effect and its reversal are both environmentally caused,” which was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Bernt Bratsberg and Ole Rogeberg report that IQ scores have been steadily dropping since the 1970s.

They found that scores declined by an average of seven points per generation, a reversal of the so-called “Flynn effect” where IQ was seen to be rising during the first part of the 20th century.

Not much of a surprise if you take a look at humans today. The school system is going down, and along with a "panem et circenses" mantra, nobody in charge dares to do something against it.

17 Backdoored Docker Images Removed From Docker Hub

Found on Bleeping Computer on Saturday, 16 June 2018
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All 17 images were uploaded on the Docker Hub portal by the same person/group, using the pseudonym of "docker123321." Some of these packages have been installed more than one million times, while others were used hundreds of thousands of times.

Wiping systems entirely is probably the safest bet for users who've used one of the 17 Docker images listed in the tables above.

Congrats to all the clueless devs who pull in random software from random sources without checking anything. If you use Docker, build the images yourself.

ICANN pays to push Whois case to European Court of Justice

Found on The Register on Friday, 15 June 2018
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The California based non-profit said this week it would appeal a decision against it in German court but also, bizarrely, announced that it would also appeal that court's decision to the European Court of Justice if it gave the wrong answer.

Seemingly unaware of how the legal system works, ICANN criticized that court decision less for its actual decision than for the fact that it hadn't done what ICANN wanted: to state definitively what the correct interpretation of the GDPR legislation is when it comes to the Whois service.

Whois should have died years ago. Nothing good came ever out of it, except spam, spam and more spam to domain owners.

Verizon’s new $95 unlimited plan offers at least 75GB of high-speed data

Found on Ars Technica on Thursday, 14 June 2018
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Verizon Wireless next week will start selling a third unlimited data plan, one that costs $95 for one line and lets customers use 75GB each month without any possibility of throttling.

GoUnlimited slows you down in congested areas at any time during a monthly billing cycle regardless of how much data you've used.

There are several other differences among Verizon's three unlimited plans. While GoUnlimited allows only "DVD-quality" video streaming at 480p, BeyondUnlimited and AboveUnlimited both allow HD-quality video streaming at 720p.

That's HeavilyRestricted, not AboveUnlimited.

Internet luminaries urge EU to kill off automated copyright filter proposal

Found on The Register on Wednesday, 13 June 2018
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The proposal would see all companies that "store and provide to the public access to large amounts of works" obliged to "prevent the availability… of works… identified by rightholders."

"By inverting this liability model and essentially making platforms directly responsible for ensuring the legality of content in the first instance, the business models and investments of platforms large and small will be impacted," warns the letter signed by "Father of the Internet" Vint Cerf, world wide web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, as well a host of other internet luminaries including Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales, security expert Bruce Schneier and net neutrality namer Tim Wu.

Another day, another bad news coming from the EU. It feels like it's just trying to fail harder every day.

EU Explores Making GDPR Apply To EU Government Bodies... But With Much Lower Fines

Found on Techdirt on Tuesday, 12 June 2018
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The EU forced everyone else to comply by May of this year. But gave itself extra time -- time in which it is not complying with the rules and brushing it off as no big deal, while simultaneously telling everyone else that it's easy to comply.

Under the GDPR, companies can be fined 20 million euros or 4% of revenue, whichever is higher, meaning that any smaller company can be put out of business, but the plan for the EU itself is for fines to top out at €50,000 per mistake, with a cap of €500,000 per year.

Yet the politicians are wondering why more and more people dislike, or flat out hate, the EU and why nationalism is on the rise.

Microsoft Introduces Cloud Database Backup Service for SQL Server

Found on eWEEK on Monday, 11 June 2018
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This approach frees administrators from managing backup agents, servers, storage and other components that are typically required to maintain database backups and recover data when disaster strikes, explained Anurag Mehrotra, a Microsoft Azure Backup program manager, in a blog post.

Looks like you can sell everything if you just slap a "cloud" sticker onto it.

Worst. Birthday. Ever. IPv6's party falls flat

Found on The Register on Sunday, 10 June 2018
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The “IPv6 Launch Day” that happened on June 6, 2012, was a cross between official switch-on by a bunch of US service providers, and promotional exercise.

IPv6 co-author Bob Hinden gave another upside view, noting that “the current level of IPv6 deployment means that the technical hurdles have been overcome and the implementations are mature”.

Let's just skip IPv6 and wait for IPv8.