Recently a well-respected UI consulting firm (the Nielsen Norman Group) published their analysis of academic studies on the question of whether Dark Mode or Light Mode was better for reading? Cosima Piepenbrock and her colleagues at the Institut für Experimentelle Psychologie in Düsseldorf, Germany studied two groups of adults with normal (or corrected-to-normal) vision: young adults (18 to 33 years old) and older adults (60 to 85 years old). None of the participants suffered from any eye diseases (e.g., cataract)... Their results showed that light mode won across all dimensions : irrespective of age, the positive contrast polarity was better for both visual-acuity tasks and for proofreading tasks... Another study, published in the journal Human Factors by the same research group, looked at how text size interacts with contrast polarity in a proofreading task. It found that the positive-polarity advantage increased linearly as the font size was decreased: namely, the smaller the fon...
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19 min ago 5 Read on 19 min ago Read on 19 min ago Streaming You Can Watch Shows for Free on Redbox's New Live TV Service Emily Price 4 5 If you’re looking for something to watch this holiday weekend, now you have one more place to look. Redbox, the company behind those DVD rental boxes at gas stations and grocery stores, launched its own free television service this week . from Gizmodo | We come from the future https://ift.tt/321ZuXR via IFTTT
"Google has revealed plans to initially warn Chrome users about 'insecure' downloads and eventually block them outright," reports The Verge. The warnings will begin in April: "Today we're announcing that Chrome will gradually ensure that secure (HTTPS) pages only download secure files ," Joe DeBlasio of the Chrome security team wrote in a blog post. "Insecurely-downloaded files are a risk to users' security and privacy . For instance, insecurely-downloaded programs can be swapped out for malware by attackers, and eavesdroppers can read users' insecurely-downloaded bank statements." Beginning with Chrome 82, due for release in April, Chrome will warn users if they're about to download mixed content executables from a secure website. Then, when version 83 is released, those executable downloads will be blocked and the warning will be applied to archive files. PDFs and .doc files will get the warning in Chrome 84, with audio, images,...
25 min ago Save io9 Movies 25 min ago io9 Movies 25 min ago io9 Movies Sonic the Hedgehog Had the Best Domestic Opening of Any Video Game Movie Ever Julie Muncy 1 Save It used to be conventional wisdom that video game movies were not a way to walk the path to success. Warcraft , Assassin’s Creed , and a whole pile of bizarre failed ‘90s game adaptations tell the tale of a film niche that was better left alone. But that may be changing, and Sonic the Hedgehog might be the harbinger. from Gizmodo | We come from the future https://ift.tt/2HqNzcI via IFTTT
2 hrs ago Save News 2 hrs ago News 2 hrs ago News Hate Those Robocalls? This Service Lets You Sue Them for Up to $3,000 Per Annoying Call Jody Serrano Save Until now, the majority of us might have simply hung up on robocallers. However, there’s now a way to get back at the companies who torment you with endless robocalls that ask you for your information or try to sell you stuff. The solution is called Robo Revenge, a service that lets you sue the unwanted caller for up… from Gizmodo | We come from the future https://ift.tt/2vzIYCv via IFTTT
"A multibillion-dollar, privately-owned infrastructure is now essential to the modern internet economy," writes Wired. And if you care about net neutrality, "That should freak you out." [T]here's an even bigger issue brewing, and it's time to start talking about it: cloud neutrality . "While its name sounds soft and fluffy," Microsoft president and general counsel Brad Smith and coauthor Carol Ann Browne write in their recent book, Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age , "in truth the cloud is a fortress...." Each data center costs hundreds of millions of dollars to build and many millions more to maintain; and you pretty much can't build a successful new company without them. So, thank goodness for Microsoft, right? The book means to portray this might and power as both a source of wonder and an enabling feature of the modern economy. To me, it reads like a threat. The cloud economy exists at the pleasure,...
56 min ago Save io9 Trailer Frenzy 56 min ago io9 Trailer Frenzy 56 min ago io9 Trailer Frenzy The First Trailer for Syfy's Vagrant Queen Promises a Sassy Space Opera Adventure Julie Muncy 18 Save A queen on the run. A deadbeat. A mechanic. And a whole galaxy looking to shoot ‘em, or hunt ‘em down, or toss ‘em out the airlock. Sounds like fun. from Gizmodo | We come from the future https://ift.tt/39BQjA2 via IFTTT
Long-time Slashdot reader lkcl writes: Michael Larabel, of Phoronix, writes that the OpenPower Foundation has released a license agreement for Hardware Vendors to implement the Power ISA RISC instruction set in their processors. Hugh Blemings, the Director of OpenPower, was responsible for ensuring that the EULA is favourable and friendly towards Libre and Open Hardware projects and businesses. Of particular interest is that IBM's massive patent portfolio is automatically granted, royalty-free as long as two conditions apply: firstly, the hardware must be fully and properly Power ISA compliant, and secondly, the implementor must not "try it on" as a patent troll. Innovation in the RISC space just got a little more interesting. "Amidst the fully free and open RISC-V ISA making headway into the computing market, and ARM feeling pressured to loosen up its licensing, it seems they figured that it's best to join the party early ," argues Hackaday. from...
In 2017 Target bought a same-day home-delivery company called Shipt for $550 million . Shipt now services half of Target's stores, reports Motherboard, and employs more than 100,000 gig workers. Unfortunately, they're working for a company that "has a track record of censoring and retaliating against workers for asking basic questions about their working conditions or expressing dissent," reports Motherboard. For example, an hour after tweeting about how there was now much more competition for assignments, one Seattle gig worker found their account suddenly "deactivated" — the equivalent of being fired — and also received an email saying they were no longer "eligible to reapply". "They stamp out resistance by flooding the market with new workers..." complained one Shipt worker, "and they're actively monitoring all the social media groups. " On its official national Facebook group, known as the Shipt Shopper Lounge, which...
"Lazy Loading" would augment HTML's tag (and tag) with two new attributes -- "eager" (to load immediately) and "lazy" (to load only when it becomes relevant in the viewport). Felix Arntz, a developer programs engineer at Google (and a WordPress core committer) notes the updates in the HTML specification for the lazy loading attributes, adding that it's " already supported by several browsers, including Chrome and Edge" and also the Android browser and Opera. And lazy loading can now also be toggled on for Firefox 75 Nightly users, reports Neowin, though it's disabled by default: It's not clear if it will be enabled by the time Firefox 75 reaches the stable branch but according to comments on the Bugzilla thread , it's in high demand. Previously, websites could employ lazy loading by using JavaScript but now lazy loading syntax is supported directly in the web browser. The implementation in Firefox comes after Googl...
Slashdot reader Iwastheone shared a warning from the editor-in-chief at How-To Geek about a "shockingly convincing" scam: The scam text message says, "Your Verizon account security needs validation" and invites you to tap a link to "validate your account." Once you do, you end up at a phishing website that looks almost exactly like Verizon's real website. The fake website asks for your My Verizon mobile number or user ID and password. After you provide those, it'll ask for your account PIN. Finally, it requests all your personal details to "identify yourself." For smishing scams, this is convincing work. The website looks real and authentic — if you don't look too hard at the address, which isn't actually Verizon's actual website... At the end of the process, the phishing website thanks you for providing your information and "redirects you to the home page." For maximum deception, the phishing website actually r...
2/15/20 7:43 PM 2 News 2/15/20 News 2/15/20 News HQ Trivia Has One Final, Drunken Hurrah Alyse Stanley 3 2 After hearing yesterday’s news that HQ Trivia was penniless and abruptly shuttering , host Matt Richards paid $5 out of his own pocket so its last show could have some sort of prize for viewers who stuck around until the very end. from Gizmodo | We come from the future https://ift.tt/2HuAnDQ via IFTTT
"Now budding Python developers can read up on the National Security Agency's own Python training materials," reports ZDNet: Software engineer Chris Swenson filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the NSA for access to its Python training materials and received a lightly redacted 400-page printout of the agency's COMP 3321 Python training course. Swenson has since scanned the documents , ran OCR on the text to make it searchable, and hosted it on Digital Oceans Spaces. The material has also been uploaded to the Internet Archive ... "If you don't know any programming languages yet, Python is a good place to start. If you already know a different language, it's easy to pick Python on the side. Python isn't entirely free of frustration and confusion, but hopefully you can avoid those parts until long after you get some good use out of Python," writes the NSA... Swenson told ZDNet that it was "mostly just curiosity" that motivat...
Ring's promotional video includes the police chief of the small Florida suburb of Winter Park saying "we understand the value of those cameras in helping us solve crimes." But over the last 22 months, their partnership with Ring hasn't actually led to a single arrest, reports NBC News. The only crime it solved was a 13-year-old boy who opened two delivered packages, decided he didn't like what was inside, and rode away on his bike. "Eventually the boy was sent to a state diversion program for first-time offenders in lieu of being formally charged in court." Ring promises to "make neighborhoods safer" by deterring and helping to solve crimes, citing its own research that says an installation of its doorbell cameras reduces burglaries by more than 50 percent. But an NBC News Investigation has found -- after interviews with 40 law enforcement agencies in eight states that have partnered with Ring for at least three months -- that there is lit...
An anonymous reader quotes the Verge: In December, online coding bootcamp Lambda School quietly partnered with Edly, a digital marketplace that helps schools sell income-sharing agreements (ISAs) to accredited investors . The arrangement allows Lambda to receive money from the ISAs upfront, rather than waiting for students to find jobs. But it also flies in the face of the values Lambda typically espouses: namely, that ISAs align its incentives with the goals and aspirations of the students... Lambda's ISAs promise an alternative to traditional student loans by allowing students to defer tuition until they've landed a job that pays $50,000 a year or more. When that happens, they hand over 17 percent of their income until the $30,000 tuition is paid off. If students don't find work within five years of completing the program, the ISA is automatically dissolved. It's a business model that allows Lambda to brag about investing in students — which, in many ways, it still...
Today China announced it was taking unusual new steps to help stop the spread of the coronavirus. It's blocking the transfer of old bank notes between provinces and cities affected by the outbreak, according to the deputy governor of the People's Bank of China — and that's just the beginning. Bloomberg reports: The central bank also ramped up measures to sanitize old money to reduce contagion risks and added 600 billion yuan ($85.9 billion) of new cash for Hubei, the epicenter of the coronavirus, he said. " Money from key virus-hit areas will be sanitized with ultraviolet rays or heated and locked up for at least 14 days, before it is distributed again," Fan said at a press conference on Saturday. Money circulated in less riskier areas is subject to a week of quarantine and commercial lenders have been asked to separate cash from hospitals and food markets, he said. The share of cash in broad money supply has dropped steadily in recent years in China, with...
51 min ago Save io9 Television 51 min ago io9 Television 51 min ago io9 Television The Witcher Casts a Pair of New Witchers For Season 2 Julie Muncy 7 Save There are a lot of monsters on the Continent. So to take ‘em out, you need a lotta witchers. Whole schools of ‘em, in fact. For its second season, The Witcher is packing in a couple more. from Gizmodo | We come from the future https://ift.tt/2HsPb5G via IFTTT
New Documents Reveal One Driver’s Agony and Confusion During the Fatal Tesla Model 3 Crash in Florida
2 hrs ago Save News 2 hrs ago News 2 hrs ago News New Documents Reveal One Driver’s Agony and Confusion During the Fatal Tesla Model 3 Crash in Florida Jody Serrano 1 Save New documents released by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) this week reveal the agonizing experience of one of the drivers involved in the fatal crash with a Tesla Model 3 in Delray Beach, Florida in 2019 . The Tesla crash in Florida is one of two recent cases that have captured the federal government’s… from Gizmodo | We come from the future https://ift.tt/2HtWOc0 via IFTTT