“if you must goof off at work, then at the very least manage your notification settings so that your alerts are muted, and aren’t broadcast on the big screen when you screen share in the boardroom,” warns the New York Times — offering several examples of what can go wrong.

An anonymous reader quotes their follow-up report:
Whether it’s happened to you or in front of you, many of us are familiar with the screen-share disaster: the accidental exposure of something private while projecting your screen before a group of colleagues.

The only surefire way to avoid this is to do as the lawyers recommend and keep your personal things on your personal devices and your work things on you work computer. Sonia Farber, a partner and founder of , acknowledges that may not be feasible for everyone. “But, to the extent that you can keep some separation of church and state, you should make every effort to do that,” she said.

The Times offers a checklist for “how not to ruin your life (or just die of embarrassment) with a screen share” — offering common-sense tips like managing desktop notifications and signing out of messaging apps before meetings. (And of course, not leaving open any tell-tale browser tabs.) But have Slashdot’s readers seen (or experienced) any screen-sharing disasters in their own lives?
Share your stories in the comments. What are the dangers of sharing your screen with co-workers?

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Source: Slashdot – The Dangers of Sharing Your Screen With Co-Workers

Friday CNN reported on “what you can do right now to stop robocalls.”

“Short of throwing your phone in the garbage, there’s no way to avoid them altogether. But wireless providers and smartphone developers offer tools to filter out at least some unwanted calls.”
– Verizon’s Call Filter app is free to download on iPhones and Android devices. The company announced Thursday the app will offer some free features — including auto-blocking calls from known fraudsters, showing warning banners for suspicious calls, and a spam reporting tool. For $2.99 a month per line, the Call Filter app can use a phonebook feature to look up the names of unknown callers, and it can show a “risk meter” for spam calls.
– AT&T’s Call Protect has similar free features and add-ons with a $3.99 per month subscription. (iOS and Android)
– T-Mobile phones come loaded with Scam ID, which warns customers about suspicious phone numbers. It’s also free to activate Scam Block, which automatically rejects calls from those numbers. An additional app called Name ID offers premium caller identification for $4 per line monthly. (iOS and Android)

– Sprint’s Premium Caller ID , which comes pre-installed, looks up unknown numbers and filters and blocks robocalls for $2.99 per line.

– Google’s Pixel phones also give you the option to have your voice assistant answer suspicious calls for you. The phone can transcribe the conversation and lets you decide whether to answer.

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Source: Slashdot – Phone Carrier Apps Can Help Fight Robocalls — Sometimes, Even For Free

schwit1 quotes CNBC:

In the first test of its kind, the Pentagon on Monday carried out a “salvo” intercept of an unarmed missile soaring over the Pacific, using two interceptor missiles launched from underground silos in southern California.

Both interceptors zeroed in on the target — a re-entry vehicle that had been launched 4,000 miles away atop an intercontinental-range missile, the Pentagon said. The first interceptor hit and destroyed the re-entry vehicle, which in an actual attack would contain a warhead. The second interceptor hit a secondary object, as expected, according to a statement by the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency.

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Source: Slashdot – Missile Defense Test Intercepts ICBM Target, Says Pentagon

Slashdot reader RockDoctor writes: The project to actually construct Babbage’s Analytical Engine, the first design for a general purpose computing machine, continues with the documentation phase of the programme. Since Babbage continued to refine his design almost until the day of his death, working out what he actually wanted to build is quite a task.
The last year’s work is reported to includes work on a batch of previously unknown and uncatalogued materials discovered since the project’s inception in 2011.
These decades, people don’t think much of producing a new programming language to suit particular tasks — to “scratch an itch” in the vernacular. As with so many things, Babbage was a pioneer, according to the Plan 28 blog:
: There have already been significant finds. The Notations for Difference Engine 1, dating from 1834, thought to exist, had never come to light. These have now been found and represent a crucial piece in the puzzle of the developmental trajectory of the symbolic language Babbage developed as a design aid, to describe and specify his engine, and used extensively in the development of the Analytical Engine.

RockDoctor adds, “Anyone who has been tasked with taking over a project from someone else (retired, sacked, beheaded, whatever) will recognise this feeling…” The survey so far has identified mis-titled drawings, single drawings that have two unrelated catalogue entries, and drawings known to exist from earlier scholarly work but not located.
“The hope of the project is to have a working machine in time for Babbages sesquicentenary in 2021.”

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Source: Slashdot – Continuing Progress On Babbage Analytical Engine

IEEE Spectrum is publishing a six-part series exploring the human history of AI. the_newsbeagle writes: The 19th century British engineer Charles Babbage is sometimes called the father of the computer. But his first design for a massive computing machine, a contraption called the Difference Engine that had some 25,000 parts, was just a giant calculator intended to handle logarithmic tables. It wasn’t until he began designing his first Analytical Engine that he began to dream of a smart machine that could handle more general-purpose computations. This short essay argues that Babbage’s creative leap was inspired by an early example of AI hype: A supposed chess-playing machine called The Turk that had astounded onlookers throughout the courts of Europe. Babbage played two games against the Turk, and lost both.

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Source: Slashdot – When Charles Babbage Played Chess With the Original Mechanical Turk