An anonymous reader shares this update about programmer/game developer Brianna Wu as well as the FBI’s recently-released report on their GamerGate investigation:Wu has officially unveiled the web site for her campaign for a seat in the U.S. Congress, and says if elected she’ll confront the FBI over their “appalling failure” when investigating members of the controversial GamerGate coalition. “Wu catalogued more than 180 death threats that she said she received because she spoke out against sexism in the game industry and #GamerGate misogyny,” according to VentureBeat, which quotes Wu as saying “only a fraction of a fraction of the information we gave them was ever looked into.”
The article says the FBI did investigate — even asking Google to “preserve records” for several email addresses and YouTube accounts, and making a similar request to Microsoft. And the FBI also interviewed one minor who admitted to making at least 40 threatening phone calls, but after turning over that information learned that the state of Massachusetts had declined to prosecute. In the end the FBI’s 173-page report ultimately concluded that there were no actionable leads.
Wu’s response? “All this report does for me is show how little the FBI cared about the investigation.”

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Source: Slashdot – Running For Congress, Brianna Wu Criticizes The FBI’s GamerGate Report

An anonymous reader writes:
Microsoft is having trouble selling $7-a-month subscriptions to Office 365. In the last three months of 2016, Microsoft added just 900,000 new subscriptions — and throughout all of 2016, subscriptions increased by just 4.3 million. In fact, a chart at IT World shows that new subscriptions actually peaked in a year ago, with a steady decline in new subscribers ever since. “In each of the last three quarters, Office 365 grew by about 900,000 subscribers, the smallest quarterly increase since early 2014,” they write. “Prior to the nine-month stretch of 2016, subscribers were accumulating at rates two to three times larger per quarter.”
This explains why Microsoft announced 97 new markets for the software nine weeks ago. So far after four years, Microsoft’s found just 25 million subscribers for Office 365 — and it’s not clear how many of those came from their $100 five-user packages. (Although those figures suggest that Office 365 subscriptions are still earning Microsoft at least half a billion dollars a year.)

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Source: Slashdot – Microsoft Reports New Subscribers For Office 365 Plunged 62%

SpaceX is livestreaming a competition between hyperloop pods from outside their headquarters in Hawthorne, California, and at least one Los Angeles newspaper is also covering the event live on Facebook.

“This competition is the first of its kind anywhere in the world,” SpaceX writes, noting that 27 teams put their pods through a “litany” of pre-qualifying tests hoping to qualify for a run on the track on “Rocket Road”.
An anonymous reader writes:

The mile-long track is “roughly half the width of a full-scale Hyperloop system,” according to Fortune — but it’s still a near-total vacuum inside, making it possible for the magnetically-levitated pods to attain extremely high speeds. “The winning team will be the one that hits the highest top speed — then stops before hitting the end of the tube. ‘There’ll be a bit of tension,” Elon Musk mused. ‘Will it brake in time?'”

Sunday’s event “will mark the first time anyone gets to see the Hyperloop pods in action,” according to Business Insider, which has photos and descriptions of the 27 pods — including the MIT Hyperloop and the crowdfunded non-profit rLoop, which crowdsourced their open source development effort on Reddit.

SpaceX will also host a second competition will be held this summer focused on one criterion: speed.

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Source: Slashdot – SpaceX Is Livestreaming A Hyperloop Pod Competition

An anonymous reader quotes CNET:
Border patrol agents are checking the Facebook accounts of people who are being held in limbo for approval to enter the U.S., according to a Saturday tweet by immigration lawyer Mana Yegani that was spotted by The Independent… Yegani, who is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told CNET that checking phones has been reported by other lawyers as part of the vetting process. “[G]oing through passengers phones from the seven banned countries happens when the individual is interrogated (put under extreme vetting),” Yegani said.

Yegani told The Independent that she and other lawyers have been fielding calls from people who are already cleared to live in America, but are getting stuck at the border regardless. “These are people that are coming in legally. They have jobs here and they have vehicles here,” Yegani said in the report.

The EFF warns that “Fourth Amendment protection is not as strong at the border as it is in your home or office. This means that law enforcement can inspect your computer or electronic equipment, even if they have no reason to suspect there is anything illegal on it. An international airport, even if many miles from the actual border, is considered the functional equivalent of a border.”

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Source: Slashdot – The US Border Patrol Is Checking Detainees’ Facebook Profiles