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Submission + - SimCity's Empire Has Fallen and Skylines Is Picking Up the Pieces (vice.com)

Submitted by sarahnaomi
sarahnaomi writes: Mariina Hallikainen, CEO of small Finnish game developer Colossal Order, is having a good day. When I call her, it's only been a few hours since she learned that Colossal Order's SimCity-like game, Cities: Skylines, has sold more than half a million copies in its first week. The first 250,000 of those were sold in the first 24 hours, making it the fastest-selling game its publisher Paradox Interactive has ever released.

The irony here doesn't escape Hallikainen. Only a week before Skylines was released, game publisher Electronic Arts announced that it was shutting down SimCity developer Maxis' studio in Emeryville, which it acquired in 1997.

"I feel so bad about Maxis closing down," Hallikainen said. "The older SimCitys were really the inspiration for us to even consider making a city builder."

At the same time, Hallikainen admits SimCity's mistakes were Colossal Order's opportunity. "If SimCity was a huge success, which is what we expected, I don't know if Skylines would have ever happened," she said, explaining that it would have been a harder pitch to sell to Paradox if the new SimCity dominated the market.

Submission + - Mars One finalist accuses the company of fraud

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: One of the finalists in the one-way-to-Mars competition by the company Mars One has now accused the company of fraud.

Most egregiously, many media outlets continue to report that Mars One received applications from 200,000 people who would be happy to die on another planet?—?when the number it actually received was 2,761.

As [finalist Joseph] Roche observed the process from an insider’s perspective, his concerns increased. Chief among them: that some leading contenders for the mission had bought their way into that position, and are being encouraged to “donate” any appearance fees back to Mars One?—?which seemed to him very strange for an outfit that needs billions of dollars to complete its objective. “When you join the ‘Mars One Community,’ which happens automatically if you applied as a candidate, they start giving you points,” Roche explained to me in an email. “You get points for getting through each round of the selection process (but just an arbitrary number of points, not anything to do with ranking), and then the only way to get more points is to buy merchandise from Mars One or to donate money to them.”

There’s more at the link. Essentially, the whole operation has apparently devolved into a petty scam to milk money from the finalists themselves.

Submission + - How to prevent an idea from being patented? 6

Submitted by Simon Brooke
Simon Brooke writes: I have an idea for a simple medical device which would greatly help in the monitoring of a disease I have, and several other diseases as well. Sooner or later one of the medical device companies is going to come up with this idea, patent it, and make a monopoly profit from it. I would much rather it were in the public domain, so all device manufacturers could use it freely, and it would therefore be available to patients at lower cost. Is there any way I can publish it that puts it in the public record, and prevents patents? Or should I actually apply for a patent and then give it away royalty free?

Submission + - Petition for Linux Clients from Blizzard reaches 2,500. (change.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A petition for Blizzard to produce Linux Clients for their games has reached a moderate milestone of over 2500 signatures on change.org. A Blizzard representative has promised that it "will be read by our developers." Perhaps with a little help from the Slashdot Effect, this petition can reach even higher!

Submission + - Apple nixes FREAK SSL bug iOS 8.2, OS X and Apple TV (cso.com.au)

Submitted by River Tam
River Tam writes: FREAK. Apple users encouraged to install iOS 8.2, the iOS update released by Apple on Monday that adds support in iOS for Apple Watch and a host of important security updates. The bug known as FREAK affected multiple browsers, including Apple’s Safari on iOS and the OS X and apparently Apple TV.

Submission + - 7 Timeless Lessons Of Programming 'Graybeards'

Submitted by snydeq
snydeq writes: The software industry venerates the young — sometimes to its own detriment. There are just some things you can experiences come only after many lost weeks of frustration borne of weird and inexplicable bugs. InfoWorld's Peter Wayner offers up several hard-earned lessons of seasoned programmers that are often overlooked when chasing after the latest, trendiest architectures, frameworks, and stacks. 'In the spirit of sharing or to simply wag a wise finger at the young folks once again, here are several lessons that can't be learned by jumping on the latest hype train for a few weeks. They are known only to geezers who need two hexadecimal digits to write their age.' What are yours?

Submission + - Microsoft asks US court to ban Kyocera's Android phones (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by angry tapir
angry tapir writes: Microsoft has asked a court in Seattle to ban Kyocera's DuraForce, Hydro and Brigadier lines of cellular phones in the US, alleging that they infringed seven Microsoft patents. The software giant has in its complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington charged that some Kyocera phone features that come from its use of the Android operating system infringe its patents.

Submission + - Exploiting the DRAM Rowhammer Bug to Gain Kernel Privileges (blogspot.com) 2

Submitted by netelder
netelder writes: “Rowhammer” is a problem with some recent DRAM devices in which repeatedly accessing a row of memory can cause bit flips in adjacent rows. We tested a selection of laptops and found that a subset of them exhibited the problem. We built two working privilege escalation exploits that use this effect. One exploit uses rowhammer-induced bit flips to gain kernel privileges on x86-64 Linux when run as an unprivileged userland process. When run on a machine vulnerable to the rowhammer problem, the process was able to induce bit flips in page table entries (PTEs). It was able to use this to gain write access to its own page table, and hence gain read-write access to all of physical memory.

Submission + - Google Announces Android 5.1 (blogspot.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google has officially announced Android Lollipop 5.1. This is a small update to the mobile operating system. The main features include support for multiple SIM cards, high definition voice calls on supported devices, and the ability to joining Wi-Fi networks and managed Bluetooth pairings through Quick Settings. The biggest features is "Device Protection." They say, "With Device Protection, your lost or stolen device will remain locked until you sign in with your Google account — even if someone resets your device to factory settings. This feature will be available on most Android phones and tablets shipped with Android 5.1 in addition to Nexus 6 and Nexus 9."

Submission + - UK Parliament: Banning Tor is Unacceptable and Technologically Impossible (dailydot.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Months after UK prime minister David Cameron sought to ban strong encryption, a new parliamentary briefing contradicts that, at least when it comes to Tor. The briefing says that "there is widespread agreement that banning online anonymity systems altogether is not seen as an acceptable policy option in the UK. Even if it were, there would be technical challenges." The briefing cites Tor's ability to circumvent such censorship in countries like China as well as looking at both legal and illegal uses of Tor.

Submission + - SpaceX Warns Fake Competitors Could Disrupt its Space Internet Plan

Submitted by Jason Koebler
Jason Koebler writes: The biggest impediment to SpaceX's plan to create a worldwide, satellite broadband network might not be the sheer technological difficulty of putting 4,000 satellites into space. Instead, outdated international and domestic regulations on satellite communications could stand in the way, according to a new Federal Communications Commission filing by the company.
The company's attorneys wrote that the FCC might make it too easy for competitors to reserve communications bandwidth that they will never use. "Spectrum warehousing can be extremely detrimental and unprepared, highly speculative, or disingenuous applicants must be prevented from pursuing 'paper satellites' (or 'paper constellations'), which can unjustly obstruct and delay qualified applicants from deploying their systems."

Submission + - Apple's "Spring Forward" Event Debuts Apple Watch and More

Submitted by samzenpus
samzenpus writes: There was a lot of news at Apple's Spring Forward keynote today. Here's a list of some of the most eye-catching announcements.
  • HBO Now standalone streaming service coming to Apple TV and iOS apps in early April for $14.99 a month.
  • Lowered price of Apple TV to $69.
  • Apple Pay accepted at up to 100,000 Coca-Cola machines by the end of the year.
  • ResearchKit Announced: Is open source and allows medical researchers to create apps, and use the iPhone as a diagnostic tool.
  • New MacBook: Lightest ever at 2 pounds, 13.1mm at its thickest point. 2304x1440 display, consumes 30% less energy. Fanless, powered with Intel's Core M processor. 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.0. and 9 hours of web browsing battery life. Supports many protocols through one connector USB-C. Ships April 10, starting at $1,299.
  • iOS 8.2 is available today
  • Apple Watch: Accurate within 50ms of UTC. Read and delete email, built-in speaker and mic so you can receive calls. It tracks your movement and exercise. Use Apple Pay, play your music, use Siri and get any notification you get on iPhone today. 18 hour battery life in a typical day. Sport model starting at $349, stainless steel price: $549-$1049 for 38mm, 42mm is $599-$1099, and gold edition starting at $10k. Pre-orders begin April 10th, available April 24th.

Submission + - Climate change turns mummies into black ooze (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Mummies made by the Chinchorro culture in Chile and Peru have survived for more than 7000 years. So when several of them suddenly started to turn into black ooze, scientists knew right away that something was wrong. It turns out that the mummies’ microbes kicked into high gear in high humidity—something the Chinchorro didn’t have to worry about living in and around the extremely arid Atacama Desert. In recent years, however, Arica has become increasingly more humid, possibly due to global climate change. Luckily for the museum’s mummies, more stringently controlling the humidity inside the collection is a relatively easy fix. But the changing climate in northern Chile may damage the hundreds of mummies that are likely still buried in shallow graves around Arica, with no protection from a changing climate.

Submission + - Intel Announces Xeon D SoC Line Based On Broadwell Core Architecture (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Intel is targeting big core performance and intelligence in a microserver form factor with its new Xeon D family of processors, the company's first ever Xeon-based System-on-Chip (SoC) design. The Xeon D line Intel is announcing today is built on their 14nm process technology and combines the performance and features of its traditional Xeon chips with the size and power savings of an SoC. According to Intel, Xeon D delivers up to 3.4x faster performance node and up to 1.7x better performance per watt compared to the company's Atom C2750. The Xeon D is the third generation of the family and it's actually based on Intel's Broadwell architecture. Intel unveiled two new Xeon D processors today, the D-1540 (8 cores, 16 threads, 2GHz, 45W TDP) and D-1520 (4 cores, 8 threads, 2.2GHz, 45W TDP). These chips have memory controllers capable of addressing up to 128GB. They also feature an integrated platform controller hub (PCH), integrated I/Os, and two integrated 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports. Again, all of this is based on Intel's Broadwell core CPU architecture, so performance per watt should be strong.

Submission + - Dog Sniffs out Cancer in Human Urine 1

Submitted by randomErr
randomErr writes: University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) found out that a scent-trained dog can identify thyroid cancer in human urine samples 88.2 percent of the time. Frankie, a male German shepherd mix identified the presence of cancerous cells in 30 out of 34 samples. The shepherd was only slightly less accurate than a standard thyroid biopsy. This offers the possibility of a cheaper, less invasive approach to diagnosis of the illness said Donald Bodenner, M.D., PhD, the study's senior investigator.

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