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Your Rights Online

Submission + - Delaware To Permit Instate Online Gambling (usatoday.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Delaware became the first state to enter the realm of legal online casino gambling Thursday with the governor's approval of legislation that allows for full-service betting websites offering slots play and games like roulette, poker and blackjack.

Federal law limits online gambling to players within the state's borders, which will be verified using geolocation software.

The state hopes to launch online gambling in 2013 and intends to make betting available on a variety of digital devices including smart phones and tablets.
AI

Submission + - A Program Learns Oriental Ink Painting (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: Using reinforcement learning to make a computer paint like an oriental Sumi-e artist isn't just a matter of shouting "well done" — and yet when you look at the results that's what you want to do...
Three researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have attempted to teach a computer how to do it using standard reinforcement learning. When the program used the brush to create a smooth stroke then it was rewarded. After it had learned to use the brush it was set to rendering some photos and the results look very good — one even looks like a sketch from Angry Birds but I'm sure this is a cultural thing...
NASA

Submission + - Is there a Titan Ocean? (nasa.gov)

Submitted by
Stirling Newberry
Stirling Newberry writes: "Luciano Iess and team have hypothesized that Titan joins Earth, Europa, and Ganymede as ocean worlds. They measure the size of the tidal bulges and find that the moon is likely not solid. Team member Jonathan Lunine points out that Titan's methane atmosphere is not stable, so needs some source, perhaps from outgassing. On earth, water means life, and in the future, ice covered ocean worlds are targets for human colonization, since as the late Arthur C. Clarke observed, water is the most precious substance in the universe to humans."
Security

Submission + - VPN Service for Deployed US Navy Ship 3

Submitted by
shinjikun34
shinjikun34 writes: "I am currently stationed on a US Navy ship deployed in a country with restrictive internet policies. We are currently in the process of setting up an entertainment internet connection for the crew to use in their downtime. I suggested, and thereby tasked with finding, a vpn service that would support 100 to 500 devices, have an end point inside the Continental United States, is reasonably priced, and secure/trustworthy. Something that is safe to use for banking and other financial affairs. Fast enough to support several voip calls (skype, google voice, etc) along side online gaming, with possible movie/music streaming. Has an end point in the US to allow for use of Google Books, Netflix, Hulu, and other services that restrict access based on region. I, in all honesty, have no idea where to begin searching and I ask the good folks of /. to aid me in my quest. One of the main requirements I was given is the company has to be trustworthy (and a company). A computer in someone's closet hosting a vpn isn't acceptable.

What services would /. recommend?
(I understand that our connection without a vpn probably won't be able to handle the described load but I would prefer a vpn service that offers capacity above our need. That way when T/S'ing the connection the vpn can be at least partially ruled out.)"
Government

Submission + - Boston Use IBM Engineers to Look at How to Solve Traffic Woes (gigaom.com)

Submitted by
vu1986
vu1986 writes: ""Boston won the opportunity to pick the brains of six IBM engineers — including one from Tokyo — who flew in to check out its traffic situation and figure out a way to consolidate, analyze and use existing traffic data feeds as well as new data sources including (of course) Twitter feeds, to ease the city’s notorious traffic jams."
http://gigaom.com/cloud/can-ibm-eggheads-slay-bostons-traffic-woes/"
Businesses

Submission + - Apple Transitions Hardware Leadership (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by
redletterdave
redletterdave writes: "Apple will begin transitioning the leadership role within its hardware engineering department, now that Bob Mansfield, who led the engineering of many of Apple's most successful products since 2005, has decided to retire. Apple was quick to name Dan Riccio — currently the VP of hardware engineering for the iPad — as Mansfield's successor, mentioning that Riccio will learn the new role over several months. During that time, the hardware engineering team will continue to report to Mansfield."
Hardware

Submission + - Researchers have shown off a means to spray-paint batteries onto any surface. (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
Warmlight
Warmlight writes: "'Their batteries, outlined in Scientific Reports, are made up of five separate layers, each with its own recipe — together measuring just 0.5mm thick.

To demonstrate the technique, the team painted batteries onto steel, glass, ceramic tile and even a beer stein.' What so you think this will do for future form-factors? Maybe a form fitting PipBoy style device, that doesn't weigh 30lbs?"
PHP

Submission + - The PHP Singularity (codinghorror.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror has a post about the awfulness of PHP — or, rather, a post about posts about the awfulness of PHP. He points out that PHP has been the whipping boy for the developer community for years, and while everybody seems happy to complain about it, nobody seems willing to do anything about it. He writes, 'From my perspective, the point of all these "PHP is broken" rants is not just to complain, but to help educate and potentially warn off new coders starting new codebases. Some fine, even historic work has been done in PHP despite the madness, unquestionably. But now we need to work together to fix what is broken. The best way to fix the PHP problem at this point is to make the alternatives so outstanding that the choice of the better hammer becomes obvious.'
Censorship

Submission + - Twitter Clampdown Could Impede Anonymous Tweets (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by
judgecorp
judgecorp writes: "Twitter is going to clamp down on abuse and "trolling" according to its CEO Dick Costolo. Actions could include hiding replies from users who do not have any followers or biographical information. The difficulty is that moves to stop trolling could also curtail the anonymous Tweets which have been useful for protest in repressive regimes."
The Military

Submission + - Spoofing Attack Hacks Drones (bbc.com)

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: The BBC is reporting that researchers from the University of Texas at Austin managed to hack an experimental drone by spoofing GPS signals. Theoretically, this would allow the hackers to direct the drone to coordinates of their choosing.
Android

Submission + - Best Cloud Finance Software?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I've been using GnuCash for over 7 years now to track my finances. But with the push into the cloud, I've been using my primary desktop less and less and my smartphone (Galaxy Nexus) and tablet (Kindle Fire) more and more. GnuCash is the only software that truly forces me to still use my desktop these days.

So, what are my options for converting my current GnuCash files into a cloud-based finance tracking solution? Something I can access via website or app on my phone/tablet? Ideally, something I can import my current GnuCash files to?
Android

Submission + - On the iPhone and Apple's meteoric rise to the top (bgr.com)

Submitted by zacharye
zacharye writes: Friday marks five years since the world first got its hands on a smartphone that would turn the industry on its head. In five short years, Apple went from the ground floor to being the most profitable company in the smartphone business by a staggering margin. Apple and Samsung — two companies that weren’t even on the smartphone industry’s map a few years ago — are now the only two major global vendors making money, and the split was estimated at 80/20 in Apple’s favor last quarter. That’s 80% of smartphone industry profits in less than five years with just five different smartphone models under its belt during that span...
The Internet

Submission + - ICANN Cancels 'Digital Archery' Program (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "ICANN announced today that it has canceled the Digital Archery contest that it had planned to use to decide which gTLD applications would be evaluated first and gave no indication of what it will do instead. In making the announcement, Cherine Chalaby, chair of the gTLD Program Committee, said, 'We will not make a decision in Prague but will take all of the ideas into account and build a roadmap,' adding that the roadmap will detail the next steps and timelines as well as assess implications to applicants and the risk to the program."
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - A Cashless, High-Value, Anonymous Currency: How? (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "The cashless future is one of those concepts that always seems to be just around the corner, but never quite gets here. There's been a lot of hype around Sweden going almost cashless, but most transactions there use easily traceable credit and debit cards. Bitcoin offers anonymity, but isn't backed by any government and has seen high-profile hacks and collapses in value. Could an experiment brewing in Canada finally take us to cashless nirvana?"
Security

Submission + - Radical Reduction in Online Vulnerabilities (net-security.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: WhiteHat Security reviewed serious vulnerabilities in websites during 2011, examining the severity and duration of the most critical vulnerabilities from 7,000 websites. Their research suggests that the average number of serious vulnerabilities found per website per year in 2011 was 79, a substantial reduction from 230 in 2010 and down from 1,111 in 2007. Despite the significant improvement in the state of website security, organizational challenges in creating security programs that balance breadth of coverage and depth of testing leave large-scale attack surfaces or small, but very high-risk vulnerabilities open to attackers.
Google

Submission + - Lone Grad Student Scooped the Government (motherjones.com)

Submitted by Pigskin-Referee
Pigskin-Referee writes: Jonathan Mayer had a hunch.

A gifted computer scientist, Mayer suspected that online advertisers might be getting around browser settings that are designed to block tracking devices known as cookies. If his instinct was right, advertisers were following people as they moved from one website to another even though their browsers were configured to prevent this sort of digital shadowing. Working long hours at his office, Mayer ran a series of clever tests in which he purchased ads that acted as sniffers for the sort of unauthorized cookies he was looking for. He hit the jackpot, unearthing one of the biggest privacy scandals of the past year: Google was secretly planting cookies on a vast number of iPhone browsers. Mayer thinks millions of iPhones were targeted by Google.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How would you install temporary bandwidth in a remote location? (racewindham.com)

Submitted by
Chris.Nelson
Chris.Nelson writes: "I have a friend in the media room at the Windham World Cup mountain bike race. The mountain is in a rural area with fairly limited Internet bandwidth but suddenly there are a hundred journalists trying to post photo and video of the event, not to mention thousands of spectators walking around with Wi-Fi enabled smart phones. Of course they can lock down the access points and prioritize traffic but a better answer would be to boost their bandwidth. The ISP doesn't have the pipes so another channel seems to be called for.

I've seen cell carriers bring temporary/mobile cells to fairs and festivals where there is a short-term burst of users. How would you do the same thing for a short-term burst of Internet users? The satellite Internet providers I've researched don't seem to have very big pipes either."
Android

Submission + - Adobe stops flash player support for Android (adobe.com)

Submitted by Craefter
Craefter writes: Adobe has finally seen the same light Steve Jobs already did in 2010 and is now comitted to put flash player in the history books as soon as possible. Adobe will not bring out any supported flash player as of Android 4.1 and will now focus on a desktop-only flash player.

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