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Comment Re:Entitlement (Score 5, Informative) 325

by MouseR (#48714469) Attached to: Apple Faces Class Action Lawsuit For Shrinking Storage Space In iOS 8

And how do you figure they are wasting space? Ever examined the content of their apps?

It's all about distribution issues. One-size-fits-all ends up requiring App developers to ship with 1x, 2x and now 3x bitmaps for the artwork. This does inflate apps, just as having multiple interface files specialization for multiple device sizes (~iphone & ~ipad xib files, or the bloating AutoLayout + Size Classes super storyboards). It's inevitable.

But Apple is also taking steps towards reduced bitmap footprints.

As of iOS 7, there has been FAR fewer bitmaps in the core OS in favour of lighter (visually and storage-wise) user interfaces.

With the introduction of PDF-based image assets that auto-compiles all the required resolutions, developers are now in a position to gradually rid themselves of the burden of maintaining multiple bitmaps (those where getting quite a hassle in large projects where every image was a trio of increasing sized bitmaps).

In OS X, PDF images are rendered natively and bypass the asset compiler. In iOS 8, the path is paved for abandoning bitmaps altogether.

So, no, Apple is not making their OS fatter on purpose. It's the cost of added features and backward compatibility that does that.
Lord of the Rings

Ars: Final Hobbit Movie Is 'Soulless End' To 'Flawed' Trilogy 351

Posted by Soulskill from the things-you'll-pay-for-even-though-you-know-you'll-hate dept.
An anonymous reader writes: The final chapter to Peter Jackson's series of films based on The Hobbit debuted last week, and the reviews haven't been kind. Ars Technica just posted theirs, and it highlights all the problems with Battle of the Five Armies, a two-hour and twenty-four minute film based on only 72 pages of the book. Quoting: "The battles in Battle of the Five Armies are deadly boring, bereft of suspense, excessively padded, and predictable to the point of being contemptuous of the audience. Suspense is attempted mostly by a series of last-minute saves and switches. ... There are other problems. Everyone in this movie takes themselves way too seriously, which makes them even harder to sympathize with. Peter Jackson leans way too hard on voice modulation to make characters seem menacing or powerful. The movie's tone is still way out of step with the book's tone. ... There's one big thing that doomed these movies from the outset — the fiscally smart but artistically bankrupt decision to make a single, shortish children's novel into three feature-length prequel films." Other review titles: "Peter Jackson Must Be Stopped," "The Phantom Menace of Middle Earth," and "Lots of Fighting, Not Much Hobbit."
Censorship

"Team America" Gets Post-Hack Yanking At Alamo Drafthouse, Too 230

Posted by timothy from the meet-your-new-program-director dept.
Slate reports that even old movies are enough to trigger a pretty strong knee jerk: Team America, World Police, selected as a tongue-in-cheek replacement by Dallas's Alamo Drafthouse Theater for the Sony-yanked The Interview after that film drew too much heat following the recent Sony hack, has also been pulled. The theater's tweet, as reprinted by Slate: "due to circumstances beyond our control,” their Dec. 27 Team America screening has also been canceled." If only I had a copy, I'd like to host a viewing party here in Austin for The Interview, which I want to see now more than ever. (And it would be a fitting venue.)
AI

Research Highlights How AI Sees and How It Knows What It's Looking At 130

Posted by samzenpus from the what-am-I-looking-at-here dept.
anguyen8 writes Deep neural networks (DNNs) trained with Deep Learning have recently produced mind-blowing results in a variety of pattern-recognition tasks, most notably speech recognition, language translation, and recognizing objects in images, where they now perform at near-human levels. But do they see the same way we do? Nope. Researchers recently found that it is easy to produce images that are completely unrecognizable to humans, but that DNNs classify with near-certainty as everyday objects. For example, DNNs look at TV static and declare with 99.99% confidence it is a school bus. An evolutionary algorithm produced the synthetic images by generating pictures and selecting for those that a DNN believed to be an object (i.e. "survival of the school-bus-iest"). The resulting computer-generated images look like modern, abstract art. The pictures also help reveal what DNNs learn to care about when recognizing objects (e.g. a school bus is alternating yellow and black lines, but does not need to have a windshield or wheels), shedding light into the inner workings of these DNN black boxes.
Shark

US Navy Authorizes Use of Laser In Combat 225

Posted by samzenpus from the warning-do-not-look-directly-at-navy-laser dept.
mi writes The U.S. Navy has declared an experimental laser weapon on its Afloat Forward Staging Base (AFSB) in the Persian Gulf an operational asset and U.S. Central Command has given permission for the commander of the ship to defend itself with the weapon. The 30 kilowatt Laser Weapon System (LaWS) was installed aboard USS Ponce this summer as part of a $40 million research and development effort from ONR and Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) to test the viability of directed energy weapons in an operational environment. No word yet on a smaller, shark-mounted version.

Comment Re:Here come the certificate flaw deniers....... (Score 2) 80

by MouseR (#48563759) Attached to: New Destover Malware Signed By Stolen Sony Certificate

Your certificate is authenticated by checking against it's parent certificate authority. That parent also has a parent. Rinse and repeat until you reach one of the top certificate authorities. There are seven of those (or just about?).

For as long as the parents are valid and your certificate is valid, then it's considered signed.

VeriSign, a top certificate authority back in 2001, had made the news because it's DB got compromised. All certificates underneath where disabled and the whole tree had to be re-created. Symantec bought VeriSign since.
NASA

NASA's Orion Capsule Reaches Orbit 140

Posted by Soulskill from the well-done-folks dept.
PaisteUser sends word that NASA's Orion capsule successfully reached orbit this morning after a flawless launch atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket. Video of the launch is available on YouTube, and the Orion Mission blog has frequent updates as mission milestones are reached. Mission managers said the rocket and capsule performed perfectly during the initial phases of the test. "It was just a blast to see how well the rocket did," said Mark Geyer, NASA's Orion program manager. After Orion makes its first circuit around the planet, the rocket's upper stage will kick it into a second, highly eccentric orbit that loops as far as 3,600 miles from Earth. Then Orion will come screaming back into Earth's atmosphere at a speed of 20,000 mph — 80 percent of the velocity that a spacecraft returning from the moon would experience. This particular Orion is missing a lot of the components that would be needed for a crewed flight, and it won't be carrying humans. Instead, it's outfitted with more than 1,200 sensors to monitor how its communication and control systems deal with heightened radiation levels, how its heat shield handles re-entry temperatures that are expected to rise as high as 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and how its parachutes slow the craft down for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
Space

Why Pluto Still Matters 91

Posted by samzenpus from the where-the-mi-go-and-the-terran-federation-play dept.
StartsWithABang writes Nearly a century ago, Pluto was discovered, and for 48 years it remained the only known object whose orbit takes it beyond the gravitational pull of Neptune. In a single generation, we've now discovered more than 1,000 additional objects in the Kuiper Belt, but does that make Pluto any less special? Here's a strong argument for why Pluto might matter now more than ever.

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