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Submission + - When a developer goes bad (atavist.com)

Submitted by techfilz
techfilz writes: Paul Le Roux is a South African Programmer who went from running dubious pharmacy web sites to controlling an international cartel of drug and gun runners. He also set up his own private militia in Somalia, commissioned hitmen to murder his opponents and apparently considered invading an island off the coast of Africa. He was arrested in Liberia in 2012 in a DEA sting and taken back to the USA where he has since been assisting authorities with their investigations. The Atavist has been serialising Evan Ratliff's investigation of the Le Roux story and it makes for a gripping read. Five out of seven installments are available on the site now.

Comment Re:the War on Cash (Score 1) 208

by techfilz (#51783235) Attached to: Is Old Tech Putting Banks Under Threat Of Extinction?
Spot on with your comments. And in a modern DevOps environment, you dont need to treat the Mainframe Developers (and their associated Ops colleagues) any different to the Java (or similar) guys. Put them all together and get them collaborating and treat the Mainframe like any other Server (albeit with a bit more care). There are enough people out there looking for jobs that you can get a code academy to train some junior COBOL devs for you or x-train some of the Java guys. The offshore guys in Eastern Europe (Belarus for example) can do some quality COBOL code if needed. The Indians also built up a lot of COBOL skills for Y2K that they can still deploy and they are not adverse to retraining if required. I dont think that you can beat the mainframe for transaction handling right now (like overnight batch for ATMs) except in some isolated cases. Compare some modern Core Banking platforms with MF on transactions per second - as in actually do performance testing and not just listen to the Vendors empty promises. Sure you have places like Google and Amazon where the Devs are brilliant & can manage just about anything on new platforms but that's not the case in the Banks :-)

Submission + - Bethesda To Unleash The Hounds Of Hell On May 13th, Doom Release Date Confirmed (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Bethesda and id Software are in the process rebooting the Doom franchise and it seems like it's been in development for ages. When we last visited the upcoming Doom remake, Bethesda had posted a giblet-filled trailer which showed some pretty impressive gameplay visuals, killer hand-to-hand combat and plenty of head stomping. Today, Bethesda clued gamers in on something that Doom fans have been anticipating for years, an actual release date. http://hothardware.com/news/be...">Mark your calendars for May 13th, because that's when Doom will be available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and of course, the PC platform. Bethesda also dropped a new http://hothardware.com/news/be...">campaign trailer for you to ogle.

Submission + - Don't hate perky morning people: It might be their DNA's fault. (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Striek
Striek writes: Aggregated genome data from 23andme.com was analyzed and published in Nature magazine, and now further evidence has been added to the belief that being a morning person or a night owl is wired in our DNA.

It's not the first time such research has been published, either.

So those of us who work late into the night and prefer to rise at noon, much to the chagrin of our partners, can point to our DNA as the reason, not our lazy habits.

Submission + - Bruce Schneier: China and Russia Almost Definitely Have the Snowden Docs (wired.com)

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes: Writing at Wired, Bruce Schneier states that he believes that China and Russia actually do have the Snowden documents, but that the path by which they got them may be different than what has been reported: "... The vulnerability is not Snowden; it’s everyone who has access to the files. I’ve handled some of the Snowden documents myself, and even though I’m a paranoid cryptographer, I know how difficult it is to maintain perfect security. It’s been open season on the computers of the journalists Snowden shared documents with since this story broke in July 2013. And while they have been taking extraordinary pains to secure those computers, it’s almost certainly not enough to keep out the world’s intelligence services. .... Which brings me to the second potential source of these documents to foreign intelligence agencies: the US and UK governments themselves. I believe that both China and Russia had access to all the files that Snowden took well before Snowden took them because they’ve penetrated the NSA networks where those files reside. After all, the NSA has been a prime target for decades."

Submission + - Assange's Stay In Embassy Has Cost British Taxpayers $17 Million

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Harriet Alexander reports in The Telegraph that Julian Assange's three-year stay in the Ecuadorian embassy has cost British taxpayers more than $17 million for around the clock. police surveillance at the embassy. The Metropolitan Police refused to discuss how many policemen were deployed to the embassy, but they did confirm the cost. The Met said the figure included $10.3m of what they termed "opportunity costs" – police officer pay costs that would be incurred in normal duties – and $4.3m of additional costs such as police overtime. A further $1.7m was put down to "indirect costs" such as administration. Assange challenged his extradition order to Sweden through the courts, but when his appeals failed he absconded and sought refuge inside the embassy of Ecuador – a country whose president has spoken publicly of his support for the 43-year-old computer hacker. Ecuador granted him asylum in August 2012, but as soon as he sets foot outside the building Britain will deport him to Sweden. He has been indoors ever since.

The Swedish director of public prosecutions, Marianne Ny, has grown impatient. In March she said that she would consent, reluctantly, to interview Assange inside the embassy – because the statute of limitations for some of the alleged crimes runs out in August. "Now that time is of the essence, I have viewed it therefore necessary to accept such deficiencies to the investigation and likewise take the risk that the interview does not move the case forward, particularly as there are no other measures on offer without Assange being present in Sweden."

Comment Java is the new COBOL (Score 0) 382

by techfilz (#49754653) Attached to: How Java Changed Programming Forever
The most boring and brain-sapping 'Enterprise' technology out there. Honestly - who goes home and thinks 'Aah - a couple of nice quiet hours programming in my favourite language on my favourite projects'. Even the outsource Indians at work seen tired of Java. Or life. Can't tell.

Comment Re:How... (Score 1) 131

Spot on. Everyone with a degree or a diploma wants a better life, and there is simply not enough money going around to provide that. Helping the populace develop some basic coding skills is useless - what do they do with these skills ? It does not mean that lots of people become coders capable of working on enterprise level software ? And if they have half a brain they will know that IT is not going to be the field of their dreams. The competition with India and China is economic - they can survive on a lot less money and in the USA you can't. So yes, this is a drive towards the bottom. As salaries and living standards in China and India adjust upwards, it will be easier for the West to compete - but our salaries and living standards would need to go down substantially. And there will be no money for the welfare state to support us if we are ill or out of work. There are plenty of other nations like Vietnam standing by to provide coders when the Chinese or Indian ones get too expensive. What I find most appalling is that when I started out in IT , it was a middle class White Collar job. We were well paid professionals with some respect in the market and aspirations. Now the best we can come up with as a replacement job is fixing toilets or cutting hair.

Submission + - Could an Apple Watch Have Saved Dave Goldberg's Life?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: One of the use cases pitched by Apple for the new Apple Watch was vacation training on hotel gym treadmills, so one wonders if Tim Cook and Apple might not be a little worried by the remote possibility that SurveyMonkey CEO Dave Goldberg may have been distracted by an Apple Watch when he died while vacationing in Mexico with his wife, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. A day before her husband's fatal hotel gym treadmill accident, Bloomberg reported that Sandberg was an early adopter of the Apple Watch, and Goldberg himself had presented the results of a SurveyMonkey Apple Watch poll on CNBC a week before his death, which showed that messaging and tracking one's exercise and movement would be big draws for consumers. One also wonders if Apple Watch training apps — e.g., a heart monitor or I've-fallen-and-I-can't-get-up messaging app — could possibly have saved Goldberg, or prevent others from suffering a similar fate.

Submission + - FWD.us to Laid-Off Southern California Edison Workers: Boo-Hoo 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Speaking at a National Journal LIVE event that was sponsored by Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us and Laurene Powell Jobs' Emerson Collective, FWD.us "Major Contributor" Lars Dalgaard was asked about the fate of 500 laid-off Southern California Edison IT workers, whose forced training of their H-1B worker replacements from offshore outsourcing companies sparked a bipartisan Senate investigation. "If you want the job, make yourself able to get the job," quipped an unsympathetic Dalgaard (YouTube). "Nobody's going to hold you up and carry you around...If you're not going to work hard enough to be qualified to get the job...well then, you don't deserve the job." "That might be harsh," remarked interviewer Niharika Acharya. Turning to co-interviewee Pierre-Jean Cobut, FWD.us's poster child for increasing the H-1B visa cap, Acharya asked, "Do you agree with him?" "Actually, I do," replied PJ, drawing laughs from the crowd. In August, Zuck's close friend and college roommate Joe Green, then President of FWD.us, drew fire after arguing that Executive Action by President Obama on tech immigration was needed lest his billionaire bosses have to hire 'just sort of OK' U.S. workers.

Submission + - Want 30 Job Offers a Month? It's Not as Great as You Think

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Software engineers suffer from a problem that most other industries wish they had: too much demand. There's a great story at the Atlantic entitled Imagine Getting 30 Job Offers a Month (It Isn't as Awesome as You Might Think). This is a problem that many engineers deal with: place your resume on a job board and proceed to be spammed multiple times per day for jobs in places that you would never go to (URGENT REQUIREMENT IN DETROIT!!!!!, etc). Google "recruiter spam" and there are many tales of engineers being overwhelmed by this. One engineer, fed up by a lack of a recruiting spam blackhole, set up NoRecruitingSpam.com with directions on how to stop this modern tech scourge. How many of you slashdotters have been the victim of recruiting spam?

Submission + - New Test Suggests NASAs EM Drive Works (io9.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Last year, NASAâ(TM)s advanced propulsion research wing made headlines by announcing the successful test of a physics-defying electromagnetic drive, or EM drive. Now, this futuristic engine, which could in theory propel objects to near-relativistic speeds, has been shown to work inside a space-like vacuum.

NASA Eagleworks made the announcement quite unassumingly via NASASpaceFlight.com. Thereâ(TM)s also a major discussion going on about the engine and the physics that drives it at the siteâ(TM)s forum.

Submission + - Giant Survival Ball Will Help Explorer Survive a Year on an Iceberg

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Ben Yeager writes in Outside Magazine that Italian explorer Alex Bellini plans to travel to Greenland’s west coast, pick an iceberg, and live on it for a year as it melts out in the Atlantic. But it is a precarious idea. Bellini will be completely isolated, and his adopted dwelling is liable to roll or fall apart at any moment, thrusting him into the icy sea or crushing him under hundreds of tons of ice. His solution: an indestructible survival capsule built by an aeronautics company that specializes in tsunami-proof escape pods. " I knew since the beginning I needed to minimize the risk. An iceberg can flip over, and those events can be catastrophic.” Bellini plans to use a lightweight, indestructible floating capsules, or “personal safety systems" made from aircraft-grade aluminum in what’s called a continuous monocoque structure, an interlocking frame of aluminum spars that evenly distribute force, underneath a brightly painted and highly visible aluminum shell. The inner frame can be stationary or mounted on roller balls so it rotates, allowing the passengers to remain upright at all times.

Aeronautical engineer Julian Sharpe, founder of Survival Capsule, got the idea for his capsules after the 2004 Indonesian tsunami. He believes fewer people would have died had some sort of escape pod existed. Sharpe hopes the products will be universal—in schools, retirement homes, and private residences, anywhere there is severe weather. The product appeals to Bellini because it’s strong enough to survive a storm at sea or getting crushed between two icebergs. Bellini will spend almost all of his time in the capsule with the hatch closed, which will pose major challenges because he'll have to stay active without venturing out onto a slippery, unstable iceberg. If it flips, he’ll have no time to react. “Any step away from [the iceberg] will be in unknown territory,” says Bellini. “You want to stretch your body. But then you risk your life.”

Submission + - Tiredness enhances the brain's creativity

Submitted by monkeyzoo
monkeyzoo writes: Research has found that people perform better on creative tasks when they are a bit tired than when they are fully awake. One study published in Thinking and Reason divided people into two groups (night owls and morning people) according to their answers to a questionnaire and then asked them to solve two types of problems: "analytical" math-based problems and "insight" problems that require creative thinking. Both groups of subjects did consistently better on the insight problems during their sleepier time of day. The explanation offered is that creative problem solving requires seeing things from a new point of view, and during your most productive hours of the day, your ability to focus and block out distracting thoughts is higher. When you are a bit groggy, the brain is more prone to random, passing thoughts, and these can lead to a breakthrough in solving a challenging problem.

Submission + - Tesla to announce home battery-based energy storage (latimes.com)

Submitted by Okian Warrior
Okian Warrior writes: Billionaire Elon Musk will announce next week that Tesla will begin offering battery-based energy storage for residential and commercial customers.

The batteries power up overnight when energy companies typically charge less for electricity, then are used during the day to power a home.

In a pilot project, Tesla has already begun offering home batteries to SolarCity (SCTY) customers, a solar power company for which Musk serves as chairman. Currently 330 U.S. households are running on Tesla's batteries in California.

The batteries start at about $13,000, though California's Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PCG) offers customers a 50% rebate. The batteries are three-feet high by 2.5-feet wide, and need to be installed at least a foot and a half off the ground. They can be controlled with a Web app and a smartphone app.

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