Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - CSI:Cyber leaked early to torrent sites. 2

MouseTheLuckyDog writes: In a major piece of irony, the first episode of the new version of CSI:Cyber, a new CSI dealing with cybercrimes, has been leaked to torrent sites " before it has been shown by CBS.

PS: Ars is reporting it too.
Canada

Star Trek Fans Told To Stop "Spocking" Canadian $5 Bill 223

bellwould writes The Toronto Sun is reporting that Bank of Canada executives are urging Star Trek fans to stop altering Wilfred Laurier's face on the Canadian $5 bill to look like Spock. Although not illegal to draw on the bills, a Bank of Canada spokesperson points out that the markings may reduce effectiveness of the security features or worse, the money may not be accepted.

Submission + - Yahoo and Alibaba: Joined at the Balance Sheet (medium.com)

An anonymous reader writes: When Yahoo bought a 40% stake in the Chinese internet giant Alibaba, then-CEO Jerry Yang thought it a wise investment to compensate for the fact that his own company was “failing in China,” as he put it. Almost two decades later, the Alibaba stake has turned out to be both a wildly valuable asset and a huge liability to Yahoo, as one activist investor after another tried to pry loose those shares and return the value to shareholders. The situation became particularly grotesque once the value of Yahoo’s Asia holdings eclipsed that of Yahoo’s core business. So to silence those investors—and to protect her job—CEO Marissa Mayer is now spinning off a separate company, SpinCo, simply to hold the Alibaba stock. It could be a brilliant move—or yet another boondoggle for the beleaguered company.
Cellphones

Microsoft Convinced That Windows 10 Will Be Its Smartphone Breakthrough 445

jfruh (300774) writes At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, handset manufacturers are making all the right noises about support for Windows 10, which will run on both ARM- and Intel-based phones and provide an experience very much like the desktop. But much of the same buzz surrounded Windows 8 and Windows 7 Phone. In fact, Microsoft has tried and repeatedly failed to take the mobile space by storm.

Submission + - NVIDIA Unveils Tegra X1 Powered SHIELD Console, Yes It Runs Crysis 3 (hothardware.com)

MojoKid writes: NVIDIA held an event in San Francisco last night at GDC, where the company unveiled a new Android TV streamer, game console, and supercomputer, as NVIDIA's Jen Hsun Huang calls it, all wrapped up in a single, ultra-slim device called NVIDIA SHIELD. The SHIELD console is powered by the NVIDIA Tegra X1 SoC with 3GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, Gig-E and 802.11ac 2x2 MIMO WiFi. It's also 4K Ultra-HD Ready with 4K playback and capture up to 60 fps (VP9, H265, H264) with encode/decode with full hardware processing. The company claims the console is 2X as powerful as an Xbox 360. NVIDIA demo'ed the device with Android TV, streaming music and HD movies and browsing social media. The device can stream games from a GeForce powered PC to your television or from NVIDIA's GRID cloud gaming service, just like previous NVIDIA SHIELD devices. Native Android games will also run on the SHIELD console. NVIDIA's plan is to offer a wide array of native Android titles in the SHIELD store, as well as leverage the company's relationships with game developers to bring top titles to GRID. The device was shown playing Gearbox's Borderlands The Pre-Sequel, Doom 3 BFG Edition, Metal Gear Solid V, the Unreal Engine 4 Infiltrator demo and yes, even Crysis 3.

Comment Re:From the linked information (Score 1) 267

> I've seen plenty of markets that seemed mature, but the fact those were stagnated due to lack of interest in innovating

Or investment. PV is a clear example of this - panels are selling today below the cost that was predicted only a few years ago to be the lowest possible cost of product. The mad rush of money into the market raised production so much that supply/demand pressed all the input costs way down, while the manufacturers were slitting each other's throats squeezing costs out of their lines. I can't recall anything like it, a 5x decrease in price in under 5 years.

Comment Re:Cape Wind Will Die (Score 1) 267

> First priority for electricity is big hidro / biomass from biodigestors+other natural wastes.
> Then nuclear.
> Then rooftop solar PV.
> Then wind.
[snip]
> it will take 20 years just to license the first MSR reactor

So, is your argument that we should do nothing for 20 years? No, I know, I'm being silly. But the point in there is valid: nuclear is too slow to fix the problem.

> US NRC and their NATO counterparts are working really hard in making nuclear as expensive as they can

This tired old bromide. *sigh*

Regulatory load, the favourite bugaboo of nuclear supporters, accounts for 5 to 10% of system cost. It has no real effect, as one can see by the fact that regulatory load has fallen from as much as 20% to 5% over the last 30 years yet the number of reactor projects plummeted.

The actual problem, as it has been well known for decades, is size. Economic efficiency scales with reactor and plant size, which means the sweet spot is somewhere around 900 to 1100 MW per reactor, and 2 to 4 reactors per plant. This means that building costs alone push the price into the $30 billion range. And when you turn on such a system, supply and demand drops your spot price and your profit margins. Everyone's known this for decades, which is why there were efforts like CANDU6 and SMRs, but none of these exactly took the world by storm because their economic performance sucked.

This year the average price for new nuclear is $7.50/W and wind is $1.25/W. The cost of integrating wind is actually lower than nuclear, contrary to other bromides. Even scaling for CF, wind is at least 1/2 the price of nuclear on a kWh basis. That is everything you need to know about the state of the nuclear industry right there.

Submission + - LISA Pathfinder gravity probe moves to testing (gizmag.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A European Space Agency (ESA) mission aimed at testing new technologies for understanding the universe has left Britain for final testing before being launched into space. The LISA Pathfinder mission's propulsion and science modules left Airbus Defence and Space for Industrie Anlagen Betriebs Gesellschaft (IABG) in Germany for final tests before shipment to the ESA launch site in Kourou, French Guiana, where they will be shot into low-Earth orbit atop a Vega rocket.

Submission + - Mars Curiosity experiences short circuit; rover to be stationary for days (techienews.co.uk) 1

hypnosec writes: NASA has revealed that its Mars Curiosity rover has experienced a transient short circuit and has a result the rover has halted all work temporarily while its engineers analyse the situation. NASA reveled that from the telemetry data it received from Curiosity indicated a transient short circuit following which vehicle followed its programmed response, stopping the arm activity underway at the time of the irregularity in the electric current. NASA has parked Curiosity as its engineers analyse the issues and figure out if any damage has been done. NASA did say that transient short circuit would have little effect on rover's operations in some systems, but it could force the team to restrict use of rover's mechanism.

Submission + - Domain Shadowing Latest Angler Exploit Kit Evasion Technique (threatpost.com)

msm1267 writes: The Angler Exploit Kit continues to evolve at an alarming rate, seamlessly adding not only zero-day exploits as they become available, but also a host of evasion techniques that have elevated it to the ranks of the more formidable hacker toolkits available.

New research has been released on a technique used in a recent Angler campaign in which attackers are using stolen domain registrant credentials to create massive lists of subdomains that are used in rapid-fire fashion to either redirect victims to attack sites, or serve as hosts for malicious payloads.

The technique has been called domain shadowing, and it is considered the next evolution of fast flux; so far it has enabled attackers to have thousands of subdomains at their disposal. In this case, the attackers are taking advantage of the fact that domain owners rarely monitor their domain registration credentials, which are being stolen in phishing attacks.They’re then able to create a seemingly endless supply of subdomains to be used in additional compromises.

Comment Re:Cape Wind Will Die (Score 0) 267

> That's fairly trivial to handle

It's fairly trivial to handle, period. And this is a statement of fact, one based on the fact that 5% of all power in the US is generated by wind, yet grid performance continues to improve.

You see, the grid operators have this magical stuff called "software" that allows them to predict the output of all of the generation assets with extremely high accuracy faster than the actual changes take place.

This "software" thus allows them to switch from one power source to another faster than the rise and fall in production. And this "software" doesn't just work for wind, but any source at all.

You might want to look up this "software" thing, I hear it's going to be big.

Comment Re:Cape Wind Will Die (Score 1) 267

> I don't get why people who have no clue always write nonsense like this.

Because an ad campaign funded by the Koch brothers told them that if they don't believe this they're liberals.

Like this one: https://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2014/04/30/wont-anyone-think-of-the-seniors/

Apparently, being associated with "the kids today" is far more scary for old people than anything pollution or GHG might do.

Slashdot Top Deals

"The fundamental principle of science, the definition almost, is this: the sole test of the validity of any idea is experiment." -- Richard P. Feynman

Working...