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Submission + - Lego robot crushes Rubik's Cube world record (theverge.com)

Submitted by kzanol
kzanol writes: Two engineers in England have set the world record for completing a Rubik's Cube with a robot made from the ubiquitous plastic blocks. The (somewhat) cleverly-named Cubestormer 3 robot accomplished the impressive feat in just 3.253 seconds — about 62 percent faster than the previous world record, which was held by the second-generation version of the robot. That time also destroyed the current human record, set by the Dutchman Mats Valk, who set a 5.55 second time last year.

Submission + - The End is Near (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A NASA study suggests that that nagging feeling we all have is true. Things are going in the wrong direction and there will be nothing done to stop it resulting in the collapse of civilization.

Submission + - Firefox Was the Most Attacked & Exploited Browser at Pwn2own 2014 (eweek.com)

Submitted by darthcamaro
darthcamaro writes: Though IE, Chrome and Safari were all attacked and all were exploited, no single web browser was as humiliated at this year's Pwn2own hacking challenge as was Mozilla Firefox. A fully patched version of Firefox was exploited 4 different times by attackers, each revealing new zero-day vulnerabilities in the open-source web browser. When asked why Mozilla was attacked so much this year, Sid Stamm, senior engineering manager of security and privacy said:

"Pwn2Own offers very large financial incentives to researchers to expose vulnerabilities, and that may have contributed in part to the researchers' decision to wait until now to share their work and help protect Firefox users."

The Pwn2own event paid researcher $50,000 for each Firefox vulnerability. Mozilla now pays researcher only $3,000 per vulnerability.

Submission + - How do API call limits affect your development process?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I have been looking at some of the various ways that providers of public facing Web services restrict API calls, and I was wondering if and how these might restrict software development and testing. Most of the bigger companies seem to have fairly generous limits that would not pose any limits for verifying the function of new software that uses them. On the other hand, it seems like some of the limits, and the ways they are restricted might pose a problem for testing out the performance of new applications that leverage them.
I have not seen anything written on this topic recently, and maybe this is because no one is doing performance testing of these kinds of applications, or because the sandbox APIs provided by many services are sufficient for testing, or other reasons I have not thought of.
Have other developers run into a problem with this, and if so how did you work around them? And if it really isn't a big deal, then why not?
Some examples of the different types and the range of API call limits I have come across include:

Amazon Product Advertising API
                                Applications are throttled based on the vendor's 30-day sales. Vendors with less than $720 in monthly sales are limited to 3,600 API calls per hour. Vendors with $20,000 in monthly sales can make up to 18,000 API calls per hour.
https://affiliate-program.amaz.......

eBay
                                New applications are limited to 5000 API calls per day. If the developer is able to get the application certified by eBay as a "compatible application," the limits rise to 500,000 to 1.5 million calls per day depending on the service. However the feedback API is limited to 10 calls per day for all applications. https://go.developer.ebay.com/...

Facebook
                                Facebook limits application testing to 2000 test users. Some developers have reported working with the test users from multiple applications to test the scalability of applications across a larger potential base of users. https://developers.facebook.co...
http://stackoverflow.com/quest......

Foursquare
Foursquare call limits include up to 5,000 userless requests per hour to venues, 500 userless requests per hour to other groups, and 500 authenticated requests per hour using OAuth. These limits can be increased upon request. https://developer.foursquare.c...

Google Analytics
The general Google Analytics API call limits include 50,000 requests per day per project and 10 queries per second per IP address. However the management API only allows up to 500 write requests per project per day and 50 upload operations per project per day.
                                https://developers.google.com/......

Google Maps
The Google Maps API has call limits based on requests, waypoints, and elements. All services are limited to 10 requests per second per web service. The Directions Web Service is limited to 100,000 requests per day, and 23 waypoints per request. The Distance Matrix Service is limited to 100,000 elements per day, 625 elements per query, and 1,000 elements per 10 seconds.https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/business/faq#usage...

Instagram
The Instagram API is limited to 5,000 requests per hour per access token or client ID.
http://instagram.com/developer...

LinkedIn
There are currently about 40 different types of API call limits for LinkedIn. These range from only 5 calls per day per user for posting network updates to 100,000 calls per day for returning profile data.
                                https://developer.linkedin.com...

Salesforce
Salesforce has concurrent API request limits ranging from 5-25 calls with a duration of 20-seconds or longer. It also has total API request limits ranging from 1,000 to 1,000,000 calls per day depending on the license.
                                http://help.salesforce.com/ape......

Twitter
The Twitter API limits most API call requests on a per user per window basis. Most of these are constrained to 15 requests per user per 15-minutes. A few calls for applications and friendship request supports up to 180 per 15-minute period.
                                https://dev.twitter.com/docs/r...
                                https://dev.twitter.com/docs/r...
Yelp
10,000 API calls per day to build a prototype. http://www.yelp.com/developers...

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Where can I find a decent smartphone without a camera? (inomobile.com.sg)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Dear Slashdot, I work in R&D for a large automotive company, and we are not allowed cameras in the office. The company restrictions also apply to webmail services and anything that could remotely be used to upload data. So far I have been getting by with an old dumbphone, but I'd really like to have a decent smartphone with me in order to be able to keep up with my private email and my life in general.
I have searched the internet and the best I could find is the iNO2 phone. However it seems to be impossible to get outside of Singapore (I am in Europe).
Does anyone know of other reasonable smartphones out there without a camera? Please note: I don't want to buy a smartphone and remove the camera. That does not cut it.
I am not looking for top notch performance, just something that can run basic apps and services. Android would possibly be the first choice, but I'd be happy with Blackberry or any other modern OS.
I also tried to look for a manufacturer that would allow for customization of phone specs, but I couldn't find anything.
Thank you!

Submission + - Russia Blocks Internet Sites Of Putin Critics (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Reuters reports, "Russia blocked access to the internet sites of prominent Kremlin foes Alexei Navalny and Garry Kasparov on Thursday under a new law critics say is designed to silence dissent in President Vladimir Putin's third term. The prosecutor general's office ordered Russian internet providers to block Navalny's blog, chess champion and Putin critic Kasparov's internet newspaper and two other sites, grani.ru and ej.ru, state regulator Roskomnadzor said. The move was the latest evidence of what government opponents see as a crackdown on independent media and particularly the internet, a platform for dissenting views in a nation where state channels dominate the airwaves. Ej.ru editor Alexander Ryklin called it "monstrous" and a "direct violation of all the principles of freedom of speech,"..." — More at EFF, and in earlier stories at the The Huffington Post , and Deutsche Welle, which notes, "This year's report by Reporters Without Borders on World Day against Cyber Censorship condemns Russia as one of the " Enemies of the Internet." "Russia has adopted dangerous legislation governing the flow of news and information and freedom of expression online," it concludes."

Submission + - Not Dead Yet! LAN Parties Live On (gamerzunite.com)

Submitted by Ranga14
Ranga14 writes: The number of people willing to participate in LAN gaming grows exponentially. The reason we have online multiplayer is to recreate LAN parties. Remember, before that thing called the Internet, people had to walk both ways up a hill with their rig/console in a back-pack to game with a friend. With record-breaking attendance numbers happening, one can only assume this is a community that’s far from dying. Are we wrong?!

Submission + - XKCD Author's Unpublished Book Has Already Become a Best-Seller (beyond-black-friday.com)

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: Wednesday the geeky cartoonist behind XKCD announced that he'd publish a new book answering hypothetical science questions in September. And within 24 hours, his as-yet-unpublished work had become Amazon's #2 best-selling book. "Ironically, this book is titled 'What If?'," jokes one blogger, noting it resembles an XKCD comic where "In our yet-to-happen future, this book decides to travel backwards through time, stopping off in March of 2014 to inform Amazon’s best-seller list that yes, in our coming timeline this book will be widely read..." Randall Munroe new book will be collecting his favorite "What If..." questions, but will also contain his never-before published answers to some questions that he'd found "particularly neat".

Submission + - Google Flu Trends gets it wrong three years running (newscientist.com)

Submitted by wabrandsma
wabrandsma writes: From NewScientist:

Google may be a master at data wrangling, but one of its products has been making bogus data-driven predictions. A study of Google's much-hyped flu tracker has consistently overestimated flu cases in the US for years. It's a failure that highlights the danger of relying on big data technologies.

Evan Selinger, a technology ethicist at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, says Google Flu's failures hint at a larger problem with the algorithmic approach taken by technology companies to deliver services we all want to use. The problem is with the assumption that either the data that is gathered about us, or the algorithms used to process it, are neutral.

Google Flu Trends has been discussed at slashdot before: When Google Got Flu Wrong.

Submission + - How Bitcoin Cyberpunk'd Us (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: On paper, the technology is as elegant as it is promising. Bitcoin's big innovation is that it offers a system of verification that relies on math, not middlemen, to broker trust. That's a big deal, but it's also a little bewildering.

Among other things, Bitcoin undoes the internet's logic of copying and pasting: it proves that transactions have happened through math alone, which can, among other things, obviate the need for central financial institutions. It may not turn out to be a very good currency, but it's already looking like an interesting way to change the way we handle and send money.

Some regulators and banks are now taking it very seriously. A report out today from Goldman Sachs says Bitcoin isn't a very good store of value, but its payment technology could force "existing players to adapt or coopt it." In a December report, Bank of America Merrill Lynch predicted that Bitcoin could “become a major means of payment for e-commerce and may emerge as a serious competitor to traditional money transfer providers.” Other industry stalwarts remain puzzled: “Wow... It’s totally surreal," was how James P. Gorman, the head of Morgan Stanley, put it the other day. And yet, for all of its futuristic mystery, the technology rests on self-evidence and hard logic. It aims to replace messy human trust with rigid mathematical proof.

Submission + - Romanian Man Kill Himself and 4-Year-Old Son Because of Malware on PC (ibtimes.co.uk) 1

Submitted by DavidGilbert99
DavidGilbert99 writes: A tragic story has emerged from a small village in east Romania where a man is reported to have killed himself and his four-year-old son after finding malware on his computer demanding a payment of £13,000 or face time in jail. The man clearly believed the demand was real and came from Romanian authorities to have taken such terrible action. A suicide note left to his wife said: "I received a warning [on my computer] that said I have to pay 70.000 lei [£13,000] or go to prison for 11 years. I don't think it's normal what I've done...I apologise to all of you...I don't want Nicusor to suffer because of me...I can't stand going to prison. I can't."

Submission + - Mt. Gox knew it was selling phantom bitcoin two weeks before its collapse (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles wrote in a sworn declaration in the company's U.S. bankruptcy filing he suspected hundreds of thousands of bitcoins were missing on Feb. 7, more than two weeks before it finally halted trading. That means Mt. Gox allowed its customers to continue trading, knowing that its bitcoin stash was wiped out and collecting as much as US$900,000 in trading fees. Since Mt. Gox said it was also missing $27.3 million in cash from customer deposits, it raises the possibility that customers — despite seeing a cash balance displayed in their account — might have actually been buying bitcoins that did not exist, with cash that was already long gone.

Submission + - Engine data reveals that Flight 370 flew on for hours after it "disappeared". (wsj.com)

Submitted by Advocatus Diaboli
Advocatus Diaboli writes: "Aviation investigators and national security officials believe the plane flew for a total of five hours based on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing Co. 777's engines as part of a routine maintenance and monitoring program."

"As part of its maintenance agreements, Malaysia Airlines transmits its engine data live to Rolls-Royce for analysis. The system compiles data from inside the 777's two Trent 800 engines and transmits snapshots of performance, as well as the altitude and speed of the jet. Those snippets are compiled and transmitted in 30-minute increments, said one person familiar with the system."

Submission + - MtGox files for bankruptcy protection, confirms rumours 4

Submitted by Sockatume
Sockatume writes: The beleaguered MtGox bitcoin exchange has officially filed for bankruptcy in Tokyo, as reported in various news sources via AFP. According to the Wall Street Journal (paywalled; see The Verge for re-reporting) Bitcoin held an impromptu press conference that addressed recent rumours. They state that they have over $60m in liabilities against just $30m in assets, and confirm the loss of over $500m worth of Bitcoins, split between customers' balances (750,000 BTC) and company assets (100,000 BTC).

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