In 2000 Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak answered questions from Slashdot readers. More than 20 years later, CNET writes: Party on, Woz. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak turned 70 on Tuesday, and invited the world to his virtual birthday party. The event raised funds for singer Jewel's Inspiring Children Foundation, which provides mentorship and mental health resources for at-risk youth. And while the star-studded event is over, you can watch the replay online.

Wozniak and his wife, Janet, can be seen in party footage watching the event from their Northern California home. The celebration featured recorded performances and birthday greetings from such celebrities as William Shatner, Kristi Yamaguchi, Shaquille O'Neal, Chris Rick, Nancy Pelosi, Emmylou Harris and more.

There's now a three-hour-plus video of the party, complete with comments from those who already watched, available to view online. If you want it in shorter slices, Wozniak has been sharing brief videos from the party on his Twitter account...

The party may be over, but it was the kickoff event for "11 Days of Wozdom," a series of social media challenges, with prizes for some participants.
There's also a terrific biographical video on the site — plus a link to 24 special auctions supporting Woz's favority charity. Bid on a dinner with both Woz and comedian Drew Carey, a tour with Woz of comedian Jay Leno's classic car garage, or a private concert with Jewel that's hosted by Woz. (And there's also a meeting with Woz on Zoom, and a chance to have him record a personalized video message.)

It looks like everyone's celebrating. In 2010 Jonathan Mann, who writes a song a day, recorded the viral hit "That's Just the Woz" to celebrate Steve Wozniak's 60th birthday. This week -- now up to song #4,235 -- Mann recorded a follow-up song, also pointing his viewers to the URL for Woz's favorite charity.

"Instead of presents, help save and transform children's lives," Woz tweeted on Monday.

"Computer user freedom is a matter of justice," argues a new video released Friday by the Free Software Foundation: The University of Costumed Heroes is an animated video telling the story of a group of heroes falling prey to the powers of proprietary software in education. The university board acquires cutting-edge remote learning software that enables them to continue their operations online, but -- [SPOILER ALERT] -- it may sow the seeds of their downfall.

This video is the second in a series of animated videos created by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), and this one is themed around our campaign against the use of proprietary remote education software. We must reverse the trend of forsaking young people's freedom, which has been accelerating as corporations try to capitalize on the need to establish new remote education practices. Free software not only protects the freedoms of your child or grandchild by allowing people to study the source code for any malicious functionalities, it also communicates important values like autonomy, sharing, social responsibility, and collaboration.
"Help give students #UserFreedom," reads a tagline below the video, which shows what happens when the university forsakes an ethical remote-learning platform that safeguards computer user freedom for a proprietary AI-powered alternative. But don't worry, the bad guys eventually learn their lesson.

"Noo!! Defeated by the Free Software Foundation once again!"

"Silicon Valley, long obsessed with computer chips, is now disrupting chocolate ones," writes the New York Post: Remy Labesque, a Los-Angeles based industrial engineer working for Elon Musk's Tesla, has re-engineered the chocolate chip for the optimization-obsessed set.

Thirty bucks gets you 17.6 ounces, or about 142, of the expertly forged chocolate geodes, which are molded to "melt at the right rate," according to Todd Masonis, co-founder of San Francisco's Dandelion Chocolate, which makes and sells the chips... Labesque's flattened pyramid-like structures feature thick middles and thinly tapered edges. A 15-degree slope, according to blueprints for the morsel, creates a glossy finish when baked.

Masonis said it took years to realize Labesque's original multifaceted mold. "We did 3-D renderings of different options for shapes, test prints of a few molds and, of course, baking tests," he said. The goal? To emphasize the complex chips' cacao bean essence, which is said to have notes of chocolate buttercream frosting and banana. "We found that if you take a huge chunk of chocolate and put it in your mouth, that taste can be overwhelming," said Masonis. "The flat shape helps slow down the experience."

The single-origin chocolate is carefully tempered — a process where chocolate is heated then cooled to create a hard shell — and is designed to melt without ruining the structural integrity of its mold-cast hard edge.

The perfect chip weight, according to the engineers, is 4.05 grams.
The primitive shape of our current chocolate chips "isn't a designed shape," Labesque tells Bloomberg. "It's a product of an industrial manufacturing process."

An anonymous reader writes: An unknown vigilante hacker has been sabotaging the operations of the recently-revived Emotet botnet by replacing Emotet payloads with animated GIFs, effectively preventing victims from getting infected. The sabotage, which started on July 21, has grown from a simple joke to a serious issue impacting a large portion of the Emotet operation, reducing the biggest malware botnet today to a quarter of its daily capabilities.

Since the attack started, the vigilante has replaced Emotet payloads with this Blink 182 "WTF" GIF, a James Franco GIF, and the Hackerman GIF from the Kung Fury movie.
The article points out this is all possible because Emotet stashes its malware on Wordpress sites they've breached with web shells — all of which have the exact same password.

Slashdot reader Charlotte Web quotes Mashable: Three years ago on this date, on July 17, 2017, McAfee, the eccentric founder of the antivirus software company bearing his name, made the bet of a lifetime. McAfee made a bet that in three years a single bitcoin (1 BTC) would be worth $500,000.

Now while most people would throw down money to make this bet, McAfee had a very different idea. "if not, I will eat my **** on national television...."

Fast forward to July 17, 2020, three years from the day McAfee made his bet. Today, a bitcoin is worth around $9,150. It's certainly up from three years ago, sure. But we're far away from $500,000. The world may be very different from the one we were living in three years ago, but a bet is a bet.

Many on Twitter reminded McAfee that it was time to make good on his bet.

McAfee's response? He appears to be chickening out... "The bet was the end 8f 2020."
McAfee also tweeted that at the end of 2020, he'd still honor the bet.

"Myself, or, perhaps, a subcontractor :)"

destinyland writes: Amber Lynn Gilles walked into a Starbucks without a mask, later complaining on Facebook about the server who'd asked her to wear one. ("Next time I will wait for cops and bring a medical exemption!") She says she's surprised by the attention "my little review" attracted. A GoFundMe campaign supporting the Starbucks barista who had to deal with her has now raised $105,450.

So she now says she wants at least half of that money, "because they're using me to get it." She complained to the New York Times that "They're using my name, they're using my face, and they're slandering me."

Meanwhile Lenin Gutierrez, the Starbucks barista, is meeting with a financial adviser to discuss the generous donations he's received from all around the world. Though he's still working at Starbucks, with these donations, he tells a local newscast, he'll now be able to go to college and pursue a degree in kinesiology (the scientific study of human movement). But he also plans to donate some of the money to charity. "I can't be grateful enough," he adds, saying he hopes to show back some of the kindness that people have shown to him.

The GoFundMe page supporting him adds, "Thank you CNN and Chris Cuomo for closing out Cuomo Prime Time with Lenin's story and the GoFundMe." And the page also calls attention to what it sees as the larger theme in this incident. "In the words of Chris Cuomo: 'This is not about your freedom. Your freedom to wear, or not wear a mask, ends where it encroaches on somebody else's freedom not to get sick from you. Surrender the me to the we.'"

"Masks are stupid and so are the people wearing them," posted one San Diego woman on Facebook (who is also an anti-vaxxer). "She has also shared previous posts expressing her refusal to wear masks, and her belief that those who wear them are 'not thinking clearly,'" reports the Washington Post.

Here's what happened next... Amber Lynn Gilles walked into a Starbucks in San Diego without a mask and was declined service, according to a Facebook post on her page. She took a photograph of the barista who didn't serve her... Her post backfired.

It quickly collected more than 100,000 reactions and comments, as well as nearly 50,000 shares. Many Facebook users defended the barista, Lenin Gutierrez, and some called Gilles a "Karen" — a name coined to describe an entitled white woman making inappropriate remarks. One Facebook user wrote: "There's no reason to publicly shame a kid who's trying to work his shift like any other day...." That's when Matt Cowan, a man who doesn't know Gutierrez but stumbled upon the post, decided to start a virtual tip jar for the barista on GoFundMe. Cowan called the donation page "Tips for Lenin Standing Up To A San Diego Karen..."

"Everybody is rallying around somebody for doing what they're supposed to do and trying to protect everyone else," Cowan said in an interview with KGTV. "It just goes to show you there are a lot of good people out there and that outweighs the bad...."
By Saturday the original Facebook post criticizing the Starbucks barista had brought him over $70,000 in donations through the GoFundMe campaign.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reports, "In an interview with KNSD-TV Channel 7 in San Diego, Gilles said she's received 'thousands' of death threats since the post went live."

A new article on The Hustle tries to explain why sports stadiums are suddenly full of fans made out of cardboard: Back in March, a German filmmaker and soccer aficionado named Ingo Müller was sitting at home, complaining to his wife about not being able to attend the matches of his favorite club team, Borussia Mönchengladbach. "She said, 'If you're really pissed about not going to the stadium, just take a photo and send it there,'" Müller tells The Hustle. So Müller contacted a local printer and a team to build a portal where fans could upload photos of themselves. For a sum of €19 ($21 USD), he'd print out each photo on a cardboard cutout and install it in the stadium, with the permission of club owners. Originally, he anticipated between 500 and 2k orders. So far, 21k+ people have purchased a cutout.

All the proceeds go back to charities associated with the team, including a portion to fans impacted by the pandemic. Now, Müller has received inquiries from sports teams in "at least 15 countries," including Sweden, Colombia, China, Russia, Serbia, and Austria, about setting up their own cardboard fan project. He's even decided to apply for a Guinness World Record. And Müller isn't the only one tapping into the trend. Cardboard fans are lining the stands at baseball games in Taiwan and South Korea, and soccer matches all over Europe. Shaquille O'Neal's cardboard likeness even turned up for a soccer match in Northampton, England. At least 8 Premiere League teams have been in talks to fill their stands with cutouts. Turkish soccer clubs are trying a model with two price tiers: 123 liras ($18) for season ticket holders and 149 liras ($22) for regular fans...

For sports teams trying to recoup ticket revenue, cardboard fans aren't the only idea in the mix. Using AR, an Iceland-based company, OzSports, is trying to project avatars of fans into seats. In Denmark, one team brought 10k fans into its stadium with Zoom. In South Korea, a soccer team filled its fan seats with actual sex dolls — a move that earned them widespread criticism and an ~$81k fine.

89-year-old Forrest Fenn had a secret, reports the Guardian. He'd hidden a treasure chest worth over $1 million somewhere in America's Rocky Mountains: For more than a decade, he packed and repacked his treasure chest, sprinkling in gold dust and adding hundreds of rare gold coins and gold nuggets. Pre-Colombian animal figures went in, along with prehistoric mirrors of hammered gold, ancient Chinese faces carved from jade and antique jewelry with rubies and emeralds.
For more than 10 years, "hundreds of thousands" of fortune-hunters searched for his hidden treasure chest, according to the Guardian (adding "Some have said it was a hoax and pursued lawsuits.") Fenn posted clues online, and included nine hints in a 24-line poem in his 2010 autobiography, The Thrill of the Chase. Many quit their jobs to dedicate themselves to the search and others depleted their life savings. At least four people are believed to have died searching for it.

Fenn, who lives in Santa Fe, said he hid his treasure as a way to tempt people to get into the wilderness and give them a chance to launch an old-fashioned adventure and expedition for riches.
"There seemed to be despair everywhere," Fenn told Business Insider in 2018. "I wanted to give people some hope and something to believe in... I hope parents will take their children camping and hiking in the Rocky Mountains. I hope they will fish, look for fossils, turn rotten logs over to see what's under them, and look for my treasure."

So where was it? "It was under a canopy of stars in the lush, forested vegetation of the Rocky Mountains," Fenn posted coyly on his web site, "and had not moved from the spot where I hid it more than 10 years ago."

"In one recent survey, 54 percent of respondents said they cook more than before the pandemic," writes a clinical associate professor at NYU's business school: 75 percent said they have become more confident in the kitchen and 51 percent said they will continue to cook more after the crisis ends. Interest in online cooking tutorials, recipe websites and food blogs has surged. Dozens of recipe writers and cookbook authors such as Alison Roman, Jet Tila, and Julia Turshen are frenetically posting ideas and answering questions on Twitter and Instagram. "I feel like this virus is a conspiracy to make me learn how to cook," Eliza Bayne, a television producer tweeted... The search term "online cooking classes" saw a fivefold increase on Google over the past four weeks, and the search title "cook with me" saw a 100 percent increase in average daily views on YouTube in the second half of March.

This surge in cooking is meaningful, as people who frequently cook meals at home eat more healthfully and consume fewer calories than those who cook less, according to multiple studies.

One of the biggest barriers to cooking frequently is that it takes practice and time to gain proficiency and ease. That initial training time has simply not been available to most Americans, as the pace of life has intensified over the decades. Nor has there been a perceived need to cook because prepared and fast foods were readily available. The pandemic has put everything on pause, and almost every "nonessential" worker, employed or unemployed, is now enrolled in a de facto home economics course... [W]e are acquiring an ancient skill that has been shown to help people live better and longer. If we apply that skill with greater frequency over the long run, it could reduce our risk of chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and stroke...

Once life rebounds, we may go back to our previous ways, but our palates will have experienced a reset and our hands would have acquired an artful skill... There will be many lessons from the coronavirus pandemic, but we would be wise not to forget this one. This newfound proficiency could be lifesaving.
Of course, he also notes that sales are also up for Hamburger Helper (and other packaged good). But what's your experience been like.

Are any Slashdot readers doing more cooking?

"We don't think it's practical for us to continue waiting and hoping for the best," explains the official Burning Man site, adding "public health and the well-being of our participants, staff, and neighbors in Nevada are our highest priorities."

And thus, SFGate reports that the 2020 festival's communal creation of Black Rock City scheduled to begin August 30th "will now be built virtually after organizers decided Friday to cancel this year's Burning Man event due to the coronavirus pandemic." "After much listening, discussion, and careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision..." the organizers said in a statement online. "Given the painful reality of COVID-19, one of the greatest global challenges of our lifetimes, we believe this is the right thing to do." While building the physical city in the Nevada desert is off, the event itself is still on, with this year's "Multiverse" theme taking place online.

"On a virtual playa, there's no limit to who can participate," organizers said. "Like That Thing in The Desert, we will have costs and will need to create some kind of 'ticket.' We're working out those details and will share them as soon as we can."
The official Burning Man site seems energized by the uncertainty: We're not sure how it's going to come out; it will likely be messy and awkward with mistakes. It will also likely be engaging, connective, and fun.

Some of you who already purchased a ticket for the playa may need that money now more than ever. We're committed to providing refunds to those who need them, but we're also committed to keeping Burning Man culture alive and thriving, and to ensuring our organization stays operational into next year's event season — which will require substantial staff layoffs, pay reductions, and other belt-tightening measures. Burning Man Project's survival is going to depend on ingenuity and generosity. Luckily, our community is rich in both.

Whether you have already purchased a ticket, have been waiting for the Main Sale, or are simply supportive of our vision and mission — if you have the means, it is our sincerest hope that you will consider donating all or a portion of your ticket value, and/or making a tax-deductible donation to Burning Man Project. This is going to be a tough year for us, as we know it will be for you, but we will get through it together...

We will tackle this challenge the same way humans across the globe are doing right now — by drawing strength and inspiration from one another. We are all Burning Man."

What happens when no one shows up for a tech conference?

Fast Company's technology editor harrymcc writes: From Apple to Microsoft to Google, major tech companies have responded to the coronavirus crisis by either canceling their 2020 conference or making them purely virtual. But one well-established event — Vancouver's CanSecWest — went ahead earlier this month, with streaming as an option but not mandatory. Only three attendees showed up in the flesh. But so did security reporter Seth Rosenblatt, who wrote about the eerie experience for Fast Company.
They were outnumbed by the six staffers at the event -- "there to run the online component" -- but the article notes that the conference's organizer and founder promised all attendees "infrared body temperature checks, on-site coronavirus testing, ample supplies of disposable face masks and hand sanitizer, and restrictions on physical contact and interaction..."

"Empty hallways and escalators echoed with every footstep, and it smelled empty, the ventilation system circulating unused air. At the conference registration desk, I was offered a disposable surgical face mask and gloves."

A Portuguese historian argues that Magellan's famous trip around the world in 1522 was much harder than sending humans to Mars: Tens of guys died making this crossing; of 250 crew, only 18 returned, Henrique Leitao, a historian at the University of Lisbon, told me... [O]nce NASA or other space agencies or private entities actually launch humans on a six month trajectory to the Red planet, they will likely have mitigated the lion's share of risks to the crew. In contrast, Magellan's crew realized that at least a third of them would likely never survive their journey, says Leitao...

Is there a comparison between the Age of Discovery and drivers for the exploration and commercialization of space? One could argue that minerals on asteroids could be seen as the present-day equivalent of the Age of Discovery's highly-prized Asian spices. And that actually getting these 16th century spices back to Europe was arguably just as arduous and seemingly difficult as any initiative to return exotic materials from a near-Earth asteroid... Risk is inherent in any off-world human voyage. But when it comes to safety, today's technology and current knowledge of in situ conditions on Mars itself will arguably give future explorers an inherent edge over Magellan's generation.
The article also summarizes Leitao observation that one of the crew members who died on the trip was Magellan. "For 40 days Magellan walked around The Philippines; gets involved in a completely absurd fight with locals on a beach and is killed."

An anonymous reader quotes Rock, Paper, Shotgun: For as long as there's been Minecraft, there's been people who want to re-create the world in Minecraft. For one modder, though, it's not enough to have a to-scale replica of our pale blue dot recreated in Mojang's block-builder. A new project named Build The Earth is looking for talented builders with too much time on their hands, bringing them together to fully recreate every last man-made structure on Earth in Minecraft.

YouTuber PippinFTS unveiled the project in a YouTube video earlier this week. It's awfully dramatic, but give the guy a break — he's only trying to go and build a planet.

PippenFTS' project is building from Terra 1 to 1, a project headed up by modders orangeadam3 and shejan0. Using a few extra mods to get around the game's strict world limitations, Terra 1 to 1 uses public terrain datasets, street maps and forest databases to accurately map the earth's terrain, roads and woodland areas in Minecraft... [H]e wants to build a community that can collectively recreate thousands of years of human history by filling out every single man-made structure on Earth. His "Build The Earth" project hopes to crowdsource player-recreated cities, towns, stadiums, bridges and otherwise. PippenFTS himself will contribute with his own hometown.

"Regardless," he writes, wistful in his obligation, "I will build Seattle. Super excited."
The project already has a Patreon account -- plus 5,500 members in its subreddit.

There's a Three Stooges movie where aliens try to attack the earthlings where it will hurt them the most -- Disneyland.

The Los Angeles Times points out that in fact the park has been closed just three times in the park's 65-year-history.

But now Business Insider reports: As the spread of the novel coronavirus impacts cities and communities around the world, Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California, announced that it will close until the end of the month. It's the first time the park has closed since 9/11... On Friday, representatives for Disneyland announced that the park will donate all excess food inventory that would have otherwise gone to waste during the resort's temporary closure to an Orange County, California, food bank...

Disney World in Orlando, Florida, is also closing starting Sunday until the end of the month, and Disney is also closing its cruise line and international parks in France and Asia for the time being.
31,000 Disneyland employees will now get an 18-day paid vacation starting Saturday, reports the Orange Country Register. And they also described the scene on the last day that Disneyland was open: One young woman put on a black mask for a photo op in front of the Pixar Pal-A-Round Ferris wheel and immediately removed it after a series of selfies. She admitted the mask was little more than a fashion statement for social media purposes.

"I can't breathe in that thing," she said with a laugh.

DevNull127 writes: MIT has a long-standing tradition. High school seniors who've been accepted into next year's class at MIT are informed on Pi Day (March 14th — that is, 3/14). And each year there's also a slick video touting the URL where students can check whether they've been admitted. (Last year's video documented a massive project that involved 30 sacks of charcoal plus several hundred pounds of — no, that would be telling...)

But in 2018 Dean of Admissions Stu Schmill appeared in a Star Wars-themed video titled "The Last Dean." (The 2017 video had also paid homage to another Disney franchise...) So for 2020, MIT's video returned again to their version of Star Wars universe.

Congratulations to the class of 2024! Even America's National Security Agency got into the Pi Day fun this year, daring readers on Twitter to try to crack the code hidden in this sentence:

"Now, I make a tasty delicious or hidden treat and share messages decrypted through numbering..."

"America is approaching one of its most contentious hours," writes the Phildadelphia Inquirer, "and officially, it's one that doesn't exist." According to the National Conference of State Legislators, lawmakers in 32 states are considering bills that would change the current system of splitting the year into about eight months of daylight time and the rest, standard. "It's been a hot issue," said Jim Reed, an NCSL official. And it's getting hotter, he added. Every year more state lawmakers are considering changing the system.

The preponderance are pushing for year-round daylight time, although Congress has forbidden states from doing so. Pennsylvania has four different proposed time-change bills, and three of those essentially endorse year-round daylight time. Yet, if the issue were put to a national primary, all-standard, all-the-time would win decisively, according to a poll conducted last year. More than 70% of those surveyed said, Please, stop with the changes, period...

DST critics have pointed to studies pointing to possible connections to an increase in heart disease when the clocks go up, and the impacts of disrupted body rhythms resulting from disrupted sleep patterns. Proponents say later sunsets mean more Vitamin D and more opportunities to luxuriate in the later twilights.

At a Chicago coffee shop, "the cashier wouldn't take my order until I took off my AirPod!" complained a patron named Kevin. "And it was only in one ear! Am I the asshole here?"

ZDNet's "Technically Incorrect" column shares the answer he got from the "Salty Waitress" etiquette columnist at a foodie site called The Takeout: She replied, in part: "I am trying hard here to give you the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps you were in the middle of a very important phone call/podcast/guitar riff that could not be paused for the 30 or so seconds it takes to order a cup of coffee. In which case, you very politely step aside to conclude your business and then order your coffee...."

The Salty Waitress was undeterred in her resistance. She explained that if Kevin wanted to embrace technology, he could push off to Starbucks or Dunkin', order via an app and pick up his coffee without the burden of any human interaction. She then warmed to her theme, mustering a fine froth: "Because that's the thing, sweetie pie. THE CASHIER IS A HUMAN BEING! JUST LIKE YOU! Their role in your life may be temporary and functional, but they've got feelings and hopes and dreams and aspirations. And like you (probably) they would like your full and undivided attention while you ask them to perform a service for you."

She explained that this is true for all service workers and should, indeed, work both ways.

I was glad she said that, as I've had two visits to AT&T stores where the salespeople were wearing a single AirPod and listening to their own music.

Lasrick quotes the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Scientists with only the pursuit of truth in mind have proven — through meticulous radio-carbon dating and no tasting at all — that half the bottles of expensive aged Scotch whisky they tested weren't as old and valuable as purported.

Researchers from the Radiocarbon Lab at the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre in Glasgow, Scotland used the amounts of radioactive carbon-14 in various Scotches that they absolutely did not sample to determine whether the whiskies were made before or after large-scale above-ground testing of nuclear devices began in the 1950s and 1960s.
LiveScience explains: Nuclear bombs that were detonated decades ago spewed the radioactive isotope carbon-14 into the atmosphere; from there, the isotope was absorbed by plants and other living organisms, and began to decay after the organisms died. Traces of this excess carbon-14 can therefore be found in barley that was harvested and distilled to make whisky.

Carbon-14 decays at a known rate; by calculating the amount of the isotope in a given whisky batch, scientists can then determine if a bottle's contents were produced after the start of the nuclear age — and if that age matches the date written on the bottle's label.

An anonymous reader quotes CNN: Today is a very special occasion -- the date is a palindrome, meaning it is the same when read forwards and backwards.

It is February 2, 2020, or 02/02/2020, in both the MM/DD/YYYY format and the DD/MM/YYYY format. At just after 2 a.m., it was 02:02:20 on 02/02/2020.

This is the only time such a date will occur this century.

The previous palindrome date in all formats came 909 years ago on 11/11/1111. The next will come in 101 years on 12/12/2121 and after that there will not be another until 03/03/3030.