More than 1,000 celebrities, government employees and politicians recognized in the U.K.’s traditional New Year’s Honours list this year “have had their home and work addresses posted on a government website,” reports the Guradian. Shimbo (Slashdot reader #100,005) quotes their report: The accidental disclosure of the tranche of personal details is likely to be considered…

Inspired by the good old days when your computer would boot directly into BASIC, [Le Roux Bodenstein] has created a handheld device he calls “DumbDumb” that can drop you into a MicroPython environment at a moment’s notice. If that doesn’t interest you, think of it this way: it’s a (relatively) VT100 compatible serial terminal with…

“A Michigan woman got the Secret Santa gift of a lifetime this Christmas — an 81-pound package from Bill Gates,” reports CNN: The gifts included an original manuscript of “The Great Gatsby,” signed by Gates; books; toys for her cat and Harry Potter and “Twin Peaks” memorabilia, according to her post on RedditGifts.com. It arrived…

An anonymous reader quotes CNN: A North Carolina couple was watching a movie in their bedroom when they suddenly heard loud noises coming from downstairs. Worried that it was an intruder, the two called 911. The couple waited for police to arrive, hoping their 2-year-old daughter sleeping in her room wouldn’t get up to check…

Yoshua Bengio and Gary Marcus held a debate in Montreal on Monday about the future of artificial intelligence. Then they held another debate on Medium and Facebook about what the term “deep learning” means. …read more Source:: ZDNet

In October the Register reported that 20 Stack Exchange moderators had distanced themselves from the geeky Q&A site to protest policy changes and the removal of moderator Monica Cellio “over alleged violations of as-yet unpublished Code of Conduct changes.” Cellio just posted an update to the GoFundMe page where she’d raised $25,314 for legal action…

World Wide Stereo has the high-res Astell & Kern Kann audio player for 47% off, Denon’s HEOS 7 for just $389, and hundreds of other discounted products. …read more Source:: CNet

When [Kerry Wong] found an Amrel PPS 35-2 Programmable Power Supply from the late 90s on eBay, he recognized it as the single-channel version of another unit he owned, the dual-channel Amrel PPS-2322. Naturally, he purchased it and did a compare and contrast of the two models. From the outside, they look fairly different but…

An anonymous reader quotes Reuters’ reports on some more bad news for the Geneva-based Libra Association: Facebook’s Libra project has failed in its current form and needs reworking to be approved, said the president of Switzerland where the cryptocurrency is seeking regulatory consent. “I don’t think (Libra has a chance in its current form), because…

The best Alexa enabled or compatible devices to use with your Echo smart speaker or display. …read more Source:: CNet