Reader schwit1 writes: The drone that reportedly hit a British Airways jet earlier this week may have actually been a plastic bag, a minister has said. Transport minister Robert Goodwill admitted authorities had not yet confirmed whether what struck the Airbus A320 was a remote-controlled device. The collision on Sunday night is believed to have been at around 1,700 ft near Richmond Park in south west London, over four times higher than the legal height limit. The Air Accidents Investigation Branch is investigating, alongside the Metropolitan Police. But following his comments today, Mr Goodwill also dismissed calls for tighter rules on drone use to protect against terror threats insisting current rules governing drone use were strong enough.From a Quartz report: Motherboard's Jason Koebler dove into the data the FAA released last August dove into the data the FAA released last August, and found that, among other things, "a 'large vulture,' a 'fast moving gray object,' a 'mini blimp,' a 'red UAS or balloon,' and 'a UFO' were all classified as drones in the FAA's report." This led him to decide that, when it comes to verifiable sightings -- even from trained pilots -- "drones are the new UFOs."

Shaun Nichols, reporting for The Register: The UK's biggest broadband provider BT redirected its customers' outgoing emails to a single account for three hours on Tuesday. The telco said the flooded inbox was an internal account it uses for test purposes and not a random unlucky subscriber. While BT did not provide details on the reason for the disruption, it appears to be the result of testing or maintenance gone awry. "A small number of customers reported an issue sending emails earlier. Sorry about this, it's fixed now," BT said in a statement to El Reg. "The mailbox in the delivery failure notification was for internal/test use and appeared in error, sorry for any confusion that caused." The emails were going to an account which belonged to someone named Steve Webb. The Register reports that Steve Webb works for one of BT's contractors. For Webb, I fear, Tuesday wasn't a productive day.

netbuzz writes: Stung by a ferocious backlash on social media, AMC Entertainment this morning took to Twitter to announce that it will not be experimenting with "texting friendly" movie theaters, a trial balloon floated only days ago by the company's boss. "NO TEXTING AT AMC. Won't happen. You spoke. We listened," the company said.That escalated quickly.

An anonymous reader writes: A Moscow court this week convicted and sentenced seven hackers for breaking into countless online bank accounts -- including "Paunch," the nickname used by the author of the infamous "Blackhole" exploit kit. Once an extremely popular crimeware-as-a-service offering, Blackhole was for several years responsible for a large percentage of malware infections and stolen banking credentials, and likely contributed to tens of millions of dollars stolen from small to mid-sized businesses over several years. According to Russia's ITAR-TASS news network, Dmitry "Paunch" Fedotov was sentenced on April 12 to seven years in a Russian penal colony. In October 2013, the then 27-year-old Fedotov was arrested along with an entire team of other cybercriminals who worked to sell, develop and profit from Blackhole."He was helping a lot of gangs that were robbing Russian banks," Krebs tweeted, "They tend not to have a sense of humor about that."

An anonymous reader writes: AMC Entertainment realizes Millennials' increasingly growing love for and reliance on smartphones for things, which is why it says it is open to the idea of phone-friendly movie theaters. "When you tell a 22-year-old to turn off the phone, don't ruin the movie, they hear 'please cut off your left arm above the elbow,'" Adam Aron, AMC Entertainment CEO tells Variety. "You can't tell a 22-year-old to turn off their cellphone. That's not how they live their life." Aron believes that AMC needs "to reshape our product in some concrete ways so that millennials go to movie theaters with the same degree of intensity as baby boomers went to movie theaters throughout their lives." AMC also realizes that if it allows people to use cellphones in theater, and text and talk to their friends, this might disturb the fellow citizen who just want to watch the god-damn movie in peace. He says the company is "going to have to figure out a way to do it that doesn't disturb today's audiences. [...] That's one possibility. What may be more likely is we take specific auditoriums and make them more texting-friendly."

An anonymous reader writes: Scientists have proven that a lot of people will carelessly plug in a USB drive found on the ground, exposing themselves to potential infections from malware. The researchers dropped 297 USB flash drives on a university campus and saw that in 48% of the cases, people picked them up, plugged them in, and opened files from the drive on their computers. Should such people be mocked? Would you plug in a USB drive that you found on the ground? Bruce Schneier, an American cryptographer, computer security and privacy specialist makes a good point: People get USB sticks all the time. The problem isn't that people are idiots, that they should know that a USB stick found on the street is automatically bad and a USB stick given away at a trade show is automatically good. The problem is that the OS trusts random USB sticks. The problem is that the OS will automatically run a program that can install malware from a USB stick. The problem is that it isn't safe to plug a USB stick into a computer.

An anonymous reader cites an amusing article on Stuff: When Telstra offered its mobile customers unlimited data for two separate days this year as compensation for network outages, some customers took it as a challenge to download as much as they possibly could in one day. On Sunday, 27-year-old Sydney resident John Szaszvari outdid himself and everyone else by ploughing through almost a whole terabyte of data. That's more than double what he managed during the first free data day in February -- an already mammoth 425GB.

v3rgEz writes: Looking for a new office pool to get in on, but can't tell a layup from a low post? MuckRock has launched a FOIA bracket that pits 64 agencies against each other in a single-elimination tournament of transparency. The Freedom of Information website is working to get processing manuals for each of the agencies in the tournament, and invites you to pick winners across four divisions, with winners receiving free requests, MuckRock swag, and, of course, bragging rights among transparency aficionados.

itwbennett writes: Sky News reports that it was handed a USB stick with 'tens of thousands of documents' detailing phone numbers and family contacts of Islamic State members by 'a disillusioned convert' to Islamic State. 'One of the files marked 'Martyrs' detailed a brigade manned entirely by fighters who wanted to carry out suicide attacks and were trained to do so,' according to Sky News. CSO Online's Steve Ragan had a little fun at ISIS' expense and worked up a data breach notification that ISIS HR is free to use should they so choose.

MojoKid writes: Wondering what John McAfee is up to these days? It's not sniffing bath salts nor is he fleeing foreign countries as a person of interest in a murder investigation and faking heart attacks (been there, done all that) ; instead, he's on a mission to save America. How so? By cracking the code on the San Bernardino iPhone that's causing such a ruckus. McAfee didn't just criticize the FBI; instead he offered a potential solution. Let him and his team of hackers break into the iPhone without any help from Apple. "With all due respect to Tim Cook and Apple, I work with a team of the best hackers on the planet. These hackers attend Defcon in Las Vegas, and they are legends in their local hacking groups, such as HackMiami. They are all prodigies, with talents that defy normal human comprehension," McAfee said. Eccentric rant aside, McAfee's offer is simple - give him three weeks and he will, "free of charge, decrypt the information on the San Bernardino phone" with his team of hackers. He'll do it using mostly social engineering.

Mark Wilson writes: 13 years ago, BBC3 launched in the UK. Last night, the TV station broadcast over the airwaves for the last time. In a bid to slash expenditure, the youth-oriented channel that launched countless comedy careers is now only available online. The likes of Being Human, The Mighty Boosh, Gavin and Stacey, and the like will live on, but only on the web — which the BBC is spinning as an opportunity to be freed from the constraints of regular scheduling. The change has been known about for some time now, and there have been a number of campaigns and petitions to try to get the BBC to change its mind.

Mark Wilson writes: For a man so readily associated with words — and certainly for a wordsmith so enamored with technology — Twitter seems like something of a natural home for Stephen Fry. Over the years he has amassed hundreds of thousands of followers, but last night he closed his account. Fry's latest exit from Twitter (there have been several over the last few years for numerous reasons) came about because of the backlash he received for making a joke at an award ceremony. Hosting the BATFAs (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) on Sunday, he referred to costume designer and award winner (and, indeed, friend) Jenny Beavan as being 'dressed as a bag lady'. 'Offended' Twitter users attacked Fry in their droves, and he fought a valiant battle, before eventually giving up and terminating his account. It comes just days after Twitter set up a new Trust & Safety Council.

Trailrunner7 writes: Robocalls are among the more annoying modern inventions, and consumers and businesses have tried just about every strategy for defeating them over the years, with little success. But one man has come up with a bot of his own that sends robocallers into a maddening hall of mirrors designed to frustrate them into surrender. The bot is called the Jolly Roger Telephone Company, and it's the work of Roger Anderson, a veteran of the phone industry himself who had grown tired of the repeated harassment from telemarketers and robocallers. Anderson started out by building a system that sat in front of his home landlines and would tell human callers to press a key to ring through to his actual phone line; robocallers were routed directly to an answering system. He would then white-list the numbers of humans who got through. Sometimes the Jolly Roger bot will press buttons to be transferred to a human agent and other times it will just talk back if a human is on the other end of the line to begin with.

An anonymous reader writes: Ashe Schow writes at the Washington Examiner that, "The Monty Python co-founder, in a video for Internet forum Big Think, railed against the current wave of hypersensitivity on college campuses, saying he has been warned against performing on campuses. "[Psychiatrist Robin Skynner] said: 'If people can't control their own emotions, then they have to start trying to control other people's behavior,'" Cleese said. "And when you're around super-sensitive people, you cannot relax and be spontaneous because you have no idea what's going to upset them next." Cleese said that it's one thing to be "mean" to "people who are not able to look after themselves very well," but it was another to take it to "the point where any kind of criticism of any individual or group could be labeled cruel." Cleese added that "comedy is critical," and if society starts telling people "we mustn't criticize or offend them," then humor goes out the window. "With humor goes a sense of proportion," Cleese said. "And then, as far as I'm concerned, you're living in 1984." Cleese is just the latest comedian to lecture college students about being so sensitive.

PolygamousRanchKid writes: The ballot to fill a legislative seat in Canada next month includes none of the above—and it's a real person. Sheldon Bergson, 46, had his name legally changed to Above Znoneofthe and is now a candidate for the Ontario legislature, the CBC reports. The election is Feb. 11. The ballot lists candidates in alphabetical order by surname so his name will be the 10th of the 10 candidates as Znoneofthe Above, according to CBC. One of his opponents is running on the line of the None of The Above Party. Maybe the American folks can learn from their cousins up north? Shouldn't every election have a line for "None of the above"? I can't wait until Little Bobby Tables hits 35.

An anonymous reader writes: Last month 188 entries turned up on GitHub in an event challenging programmers to write computer code to generate 50,000-word novels. "The 'novel' is defined however you want," wrote the organizer for National Novel-Generating Month. "It could be 50,000 repetitions of the word 'meow.' It could literally grab a random novel from Project Gutenberg. It doesn't matter, as long as it's 50k+ words." Novels were submitted as Issues on the event's GitHub repository, and this year saw intriguing titles like "The Hero with Arbitrarily-Many Faces," "THE CYBERWHALE – a cyberpunk version of Moby Dick," and "Terms and Conditions – a Legal Thriller."

jones_supa writes: Finland has rolled out images of a couple in a sauna, a legendary Nokia phone (the 3310) and a heavy metal music fan as part of a set of official national emojis to be used in communication. Billing the use of national symbols for themed emojis as a world first, the government plans to publish the full set in December – for anyone in the world to download on its promotional website. "The Finland emojis were designed with a tongue in cheek approach, but I hope that they will tell the world not only about our special features but also something about our strengths," said Petra Theman, director for public diplomacy at the foreign ministry.

I was both pleased and disappointed, as always, when I heard that a book I enjoyed was being made into a movie. Andy Weir's The Martian was the best new book I'd read in years. It was written for nerds, by a nerd — by somebody with an obvious love for NASA, science, and spaceflight. How could it possibly be condensed into the format of a Hollywood blockbuster? Well, director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Drew Goddard figured out how. The Martian is an excellent film, well worth watching. Read on for my review (very minor spoilers only), and feel free to share your own in the comments.

hypnosec writes: A YouTuber named Tom Scott has built a 1,000-key keyboard with each key representing an emoji! Scott made the emoji keyboard using 14 keyboards and over 1,000 individually placed stickers. While he himself admits that it is one of the craziest things he has built, the work he has put in does warrant appreciation. On the keyboard are individually placed emojis for food items, animals, plants, transport, national flags, and time among others.

sciencehabit writes: The Ig Nobel prizes award research that 'makes people laugh, and then think', and this year was no exception. At a ceremony at Harvard University Thursday night, awards were given for a variety of wacky science papers. Among the winners, a scientist who repeatedly had himself stung by bees to figure out the most painful place in the body to be stung, and a study of which animals take the longest to urinate.