Comment Impressive... (Score 1) 74
...that an LA art studio so quickly developed an AI chat bot that is superior to anything Google has managed to put out in the past year in the field of AI.
Comment Re:Will they prepare a good version of Bard, first (Score 1) 10
I've yet to see it worth donating my time to test. I keep thinking Google is could do something interesting, but 'free' is too expensive for what it can do right now.
Credit where due though, it isn't bad at referencing GAS REST API. GPT4 rather consistently suggests using fully deprecated methods.
Visualizing 100,000 Stars In Chrome 68
An anonymous reader writes "Google has rolled out a new web experiment for Chrome. This one is a visualization of the locations of over 100,000 nearby stars. It pulls data from astrometric databases and catalogs to show accurate relative locations of the stars. You can zoom and pan around the cluster, zoom all the way in to the solar system, or zoom all the way out to see how even this huge number of stars is dwarfed by the rest of the Milky Way. It also has data on a number individual stars in our stellar neighborhood. This web app works best in Chrome (much like their previous one, Jam With Chrome), but I was able to try it in Firefox as well."
The Web Won't Be Safe Or Secure Until We Break It 180
CowboyRobot writes "Jeremiah Grossman of Whitehat Security has an article at the ACM in which he outlines the current state of browser security, specifically drive-by downloads. 'These attacks are primarily written with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, so they are not identifiable as malware by antivirus software in the classic sense. They take advantage of the flawed way in which the Internet was designed to work.' Grossman's proposed solution is to make the desktop browser more like its mobile cousins. 'By adopting a similar application model on the desktop using custom-configured Web browsers (let's call them DesktopApps), we could address the Internet's inherent security flaws. These DesktopApps could be branded appropriately and designed to launch automatically to Bank of America's or Facebook's Web site, for example, and go no further. Like their mobile application cousins, these DesktopApps would not present an URL bar or anything else making them look like the Web browsers they are on the surface, and of course they would be isolated from one another.'"
Submission + - Linus' Fuck You Brought NVIDIA Optimus Support To Linux (muktware.com)
sfcrazy writes: Good news for Linux users, NVIDIA is finally working on a new vesion of its' non-free drivers for Linux which will bring support for its infamous Optimus technology. NVIDIA's plans to support Linux was revealed in an email by Aaron Plattner who has managed to get a proof of concept working.
Submission + - AntiSec Hacks FBI Laptop, Leaks Over a Million iOS Device UDIDs (paritynews.com)
hypnosec writes: Anonymous affiliated hacking collective Antisec has leaked more than a million records of Apple iOS Unique Identifies (UDIDs) that were present on an FBI laptop. The hackers have posted their message on a Pastebin whereby they have explained their motive behind the hack and how did they get hold of these records. Giving a reference to July 2012 NSA's General Keith Alexander speech at DefCon, whereby he urged hackers to help out the government in securing the Internet. The hacking collective said, “We decided we'd help out Internet security by auditing FBI first.”
Submission + - World's first Linux Ultrabook ships (pcworld.com)
Rozzin writes: "Everyone here has heard of Dell's `Project Sputnik', but a little manufacturer of strictly Linux computers in California appears to have beat them to the punch: PCWorld reports that ZaReason has started shipping the world's first Linux Ultrabook. And they've somehow managed to fit 16 GB of RAM and two solid-state drives inside, along with a 6-hour battery and 14" display. CEO Cathy Malmrose explains: "It's one of my pet peeves that the world's most robust, high-end software is so often housed in low-end, unappealing machines or, worse, tweaked to work on machines that were built for Windows. Our goal is to build hardware that more aptly matches the high-end aspects of FOSS"."
Republican Platform To Include Internet Freedom Plank 459
First time accepted submitter jay.madison writes "The new Republican Party platform includes language which promises action to promote freedom on the Internet. The move is being driven by Rand Paul's libertarian wing of the party. The text, which is still in draft form, says Republicans will work to guarantee that 'individuals retain the right to control the use of their data by third parties,' and that 'personal data receives full constitutional protection from government overreach.' Republicans would resist moves toward international governance of the Internet, and seek to 'remove regulatory barriers that protect outdated technologies and business plans from innovation and competition, while preventing legacy regulation from interfering with new technologies such as mobile delivery of voice and video data as they become crucial components of the Internet ecosystem.' The platform is due to be adopted at the Republican National Convention next week."
Comment Re:Time for Linux, finally? (Score 1) 489
You can avoid all the pain of researching hardware by purchasing a pre-configured Linux machine.
I've had great experiences from them. Great support, both official and community. Computer comes ready to go, with a system76 repo for support of very new hardware. After less than a year, my laptop now works with vanilla Linux without need of system76's software.
Ships with latest Ubuntu, but if you're not a fan of Unity, xubuntu is great.
Cisco Pushing 'Cloud Connect' Router Firmware, Allows Web History Tracking 351
Myrv writes "Reports have started popping up that Cisco is pushing out and automatically (without permission) installing their new Cloud Connect firmware on consumer routers. The new firmware removes the user's ability to login and administer the router locally. You now must configure the router using Cisco's Cloud connect service. If that wasn't bad enough, the fine print for this new service allows Cisco to track your complete internet history. Currently, it appears the only way to disable the Cloud Connect service is to unplug your router from the internet."
Wikipedia As a "War Zone," Rather Than a Collaboration 194
horselight writes "A new study by sociologists studying social networking has determined that Wikipedia is not an intellectual project based on mutual collaboration, but a war zone. The study finds that although the content does end up being accurate as a rule, it's anything but neutral or unbiased. The study includes extensive data on access and editing patterns of users related to major events, such as the death of Michael Jackson and the edit storms that ensued." The article explains that the research (here's the paper at PLoS One) looked in particular at controversial entries, not ones about obscure duck-hunting equipment or long-settled standards.
Submission + - NC Republicans Consider Outlawing Sealevel Rise Predictions (newsobserver.com) 2
ideonexus writes: "Republicans in North Carolina are floating a bill that would force planners to only consider past historical data in predicting the sea-level rise (SLR) for the state as opposed to considering projections that take Global Warming into account. NC-20, the pro-development lobbying group representing twenty counties along the NC coast, is behind the effort and asserts that the one-meter prediction would prohibit development on too much land as opposed to SLR predictions of 3.9 to 15.6 inches."
Study Suggests the Number-Line Concept Is Not Intuitive 404
An anonymous reader writes "The Yupno people of New Guinea have provided clues to the origins of the number-line concept, and suggest that the familiar concept of time may be cultural as well. From the article: 'Tape measures. Rulers. Graphs. The gas gauge in your car, and the icon on your favorite digital device showing battery power. The number line and its cousins – notations that map numbers onto space and often represent magnitude – are everywhere. Most adults in industrialized societies are so fluent at using the concept, we hardly think about it. We don't stop to wonder: Is it 'natural'? Is it cultural? Now, challenging a mainstream scholarly position that the number-line concept is innate, a study suggests it is learned."
Harvard: Journals Too Expensive, Switch To Open Access 178
New submitter microcars writes "Harvard recently sent a memo to faculty saying, 'We write to communicate an untenable situation facing the Harvard Library. Many large journal publishers have made the scholarly communication environment fiscally unsustainable and academically restrictive. This situation is exacerbated by efforts of certain publishers (called "providers") to acquire, bundle, and increase the pricing on journals.' The memo goes on to describe the situation in more detail and suggests options to faculty and students for the future that includes submitting articles to open-access journals. If Harvard paves the way with this, how long until other academic bodies follow suit and cut off companies such as Elsevier?"
Submission + - How to Manage make Programs in Linux 1
Arabian Nights writes: I've been using Linux since I was 16 (about a decade), and one thing I caught on to very quick was how package managers like Synaptic could undo installations of programs I installed. Now I am working at on a shared cluster where I need to use niche research programs/libraries that are only available through source code. The big turn off of ./configure, make, make install is if I don't like what I did and want to reinstall a different version, there's no obvious way to get my system back to it's original state. What do Slashdotters do to manage their programs built from source?
