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Submission + - Hunt Intensifies for Aliens on Kepler's Planets (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: Could ET be chatting with colleagues or robots on sister planets in its solar system? Maybe so, say scientists who last year launched a new type of Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, project to eavesdrop on aliens. Using data collected by NASA’s Kepler space telescope, a team of scientists spent 36 hours listening in when planets in targeted solar systems lined up, relative to Earth’s perspective, in hopes of detecting alien interplanetary radio signals. “We think the right strategy in SETI is a variety of strategies. It’s really hard to predict what other civilizations might be doing,” Dan Werthimer, director of SETI research at the University of California Berkeley, told Discovery News. So far the search hasn't turned up any artificial signals yet, but this marks a change in strategy for radio searches for ETI with Kepler data taking a focused lead.

Submission + - Facebook Wants To Listen In On What You're Doing (forbes.com) 2

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: Facebook is rolling out a new feature for its smartphone app that can turn on users’ microphones and listen to what’s happening around them to identify songs playing or television being watched. The pay-off for users in allowing Facebook to eavesdrop is that the social giant will be able to add a little tag to their status update that says they’re watching an episode of Games of Thrones as they sound off on their happiness (or despair) about the rise in background sex on TV these days.

The feature is an optional one, something the company emphasizes in its announcement. The tech giant does seem well-aware that in these days of Snowden surveillance revelations, people might not be too keen for Facebook to take control of their smartphone’s mic and start listening in on them by default. It’s only rolling out the feature in the U.S. and a product PR person emphasized repeatedly that no recording is being stored, only “code.” “We’re not recording audio or sound and sending it to Facebook or its servers,” says Facebook spokesperson Momo Zhou. “We turn the audio it hears into a code — code that is not reversible into audio — and then we match it against a database of code.”

Submission + - No, HealthCare.gov Doesn't Require 500 Million Lines of Code (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Half a billion lines of code for a transactional website — more than five times as much code as that behind OS X — just didn’t pass the sniff test. But just how many lines of code does it take to generate HealthCare.gov? This question came up on Reddit again last week and it appears that we may now have an answer. One commenter who claimed to have worked on HealthCare.gov as part of the post launch clean-up crew at the end of 2013, provided counts of the lines of code behind HealthCare.gov, broken down by programming/markup language.
Transportation

Google Unveils Self-Driving Car With No Steering Wheel 583

Posted by Soulskill from the in-soviet-google,-car-drives-you dept.
cartechboy writes: "We've already discussed and maybe even come to terms with the fact that autonomous cars are coming. In fact, many automakers including Mercedes-Benz and Tesla have committed to self-driving cars by 2017. Apparently that's not ambitious enough. Google has just unveiled an in-house-designed, self-driving car prototype with no steering wheel or pedals. In fact, it doesn't have any traditional controls, not even a stereo. The as-yet-nameless car is a testbed for Google's vision of the computerized future of transportation. Currently the prototype does little more than programmed parking lot rides at a maximum of 25 mph, but Google plans to build about 100 prototypes, with the first examples receiving manual controls (human-operated). Google then plans to roll out the pilot program in California in the next several years. So the technology is now there, but is there really a market for a car that drives you without your input other than the destination?"

Comment Re:yeah whatever (Score 1) 225

by nullchar (#47105247) Attached to: Google Starts Blocking Extensions Not In the Chrome Web Store

I was wondering how, as a developer, one could load their own extension into a Windows Chrome build when I read the summary.

I assumed some developer mode within normal Chrome would allow non-store extensions to be added. Interesting if you need an entirely separate install to test your own extensions on Windows.

Comment Re:I beat it all using custom hosts files (Score 1) 248

by nullchar (#46914199) Attached to: Opting Out of Big Data Snooping: Harder Than It Looks

I still want dnsmaq or Bind or something that serves up this hosts file to my entire LAN/WLAN on my gateway box.

It seems tiresome to manage this on every device, and impossible on some devices (game console, smart TV, etc).

Can common router firmwares like Tomato or OpenWRT manage this? Seems easy to setup DNS rules, but managing changes to the file is the hard part.

Comment Re:hard, but not impossible (Score 1) 248

by nullchar (#46914165) Attached to: Opting Out of Big Data Snooping: Harder Than It Looks

Yes, I read the entire article looking for how Big Data found her.

Big Data didn't find her. She seemed to have only two problems:

  1. 1) It's hard to keep family and friends from posting about you on social media
  2. 2) It's hard to buy gift cards with cash to buy shit anonymously online.
    Solution: purchase them slowly over time from different brick and mortar stores until you need them. Or... don't buy expensive items online.

Comment Re:But streaming is easy! (Score 1) 200

by nullchar (#46826437) Attached to: How Much Data Plan Bandwidth Is Wasted By DRM?

They are potentially using more of their bandwidth that way -- by sending streams that may not be watched. It may cost Hulu more to show you the latest episode vs and older show. Still, you could "pin" a few shows in advance which would get them more overall views as they know some users cannot always stream.

They also cannot count the show watches nor ad views that way... I suppose they can pre-send the ads with the content to your cache, and then send your ad-watch/skip data back when you re-connect. But if you cannot "click" the ad, some advertisers may refuse to participate.

Comment But streaming is easy! (Score 3, Interesting) 200

by nullchar (#46825787) Attached to: How Much Data Plan Bandwidth Is Wasted By DRM?

Yes, downloading videos in advance over a wired or local wireless network does save you precious mobile bandwidth when you view the content later.

But, streaming is easy. The consumer does not have to pre-decide what they want to watch if they stream. They're not sure if they want to watch a TED talk or the final Colbert Report while "roaming".

With Google Play, I can "pin" a show on wifi and watch it later, assuming I want to watch it later. It's still DRM protected. The bandwidth savvy consumer would like to download more content and play it back at any time, but do those consumers even exist as the majority anymore?

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