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Businesses

For Game Developers, It's About the Labor of Love 164

Posted by samzenpus from the just-play dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes With "GamerGate" and all the debates over who counts as a "gamer," it's easy to forget that games are created by people with a genuine love of the craft. Journalist Jon Brodkin sat down with Armin Ibrisagic, game designer & PR manager for Coffee Stain Studios, the Swedish studio that made Goat Simulator, to talk about why they built that game and how it turned into such a success. Brodkin also talked to Leszek Lisowski, founder of Wastelands Interactive, about the same topic. While these developers might debate with themselves (and others) over whether to develop games for hardcore gamers, or jump on the mobile "casual gaming" bandwagon, they'll ultimately in it because they love games — a small but crucial detail that seems too easy to forget these days.
Apple

Apple Announces iPad Air 2, iPad mini 3, OS X Yosemite and More 355

Posted by samzenpus from the brand-new dept.
Many outlets are reporting on Apple's iPad event today. Highlights include:
  • Apple pay will launch Monday.
  • WatchKit -- a way for developers to make apps for the Apple Watch will launch next month.
  • iOS 8.1
  • Messages, iTunes, and iWork updated and many more new features in OS X Yosemite.
  • You can send and receive calls on your Mac if you have an iPhone with iOS 8 that's signed into the same FaceTime account.
  • iPad Air 2: New camera, 10 hour battery life, 12x faster than the original iPad.
  • iPad mini 3.
  • iMac with Retina display.
  • And a Mac mini update: Faster processors, Intel Iris graphics, and two Thunderbolt 2 ports.
Security

FBI Warns Industry of Chinese Cyber Campaign 106

Posted by samzenpus from the protect-ya-neck dept.
daten writes The FBI on Wednesday issued a private warning to industry that a group of highly skilled Chinese government hackers was in the midst of a long-running campaign to steal valuable data from U.S. companies and government agencies. "These state-sponsored hackers are exceedingly stealthy and agile by comparison with the People's Liberation Army Unit 61398 ... whose activity was publicly disclosed and attributed by security researchers in February 2013," said the FBI in its alert, which referred to a Chinese military hacker unit exposed in a widely publicized report by the security firm Mandiant.
Government

Journalists Route Around White House Press Office 111

Posted by samzenpus from the indirect-route dept.
Tailhook writes Pool reports written by White House correspondents are distributed to news organizations via the White House Press Office. Reporters have alleged that the Obama White House exploits its role as distributor to "demand changes in pool reports" and has used this power to "steer coverage in a more favorable direction." Now a group of 90 print journalists has begun privately distributing their work through Google Groups, independent of the Press Office. Their intent is to "create an independent pool-reporting system for print and online recipients."

Comment Re:hubris (Score 1) 421

by Tom (#48157407) Attached to: Texas Health Worker Tests Positive For Ebola

You're not a luminary shining light on the true inner workings of human minds,

I'm not? Now you confuse me. :-)

Maybe I'm influenced by being a European, so I don't have this history of living-memory slavery of black people and so the word is not such a trigger. But that's not the point. I didn't intend or claim to read peoples minds, but let's be honest here: If the Ebola outbreak were in Italy, the worlds reaction would be quite different. There is a definite element of racism involved in how we treat the matter, including the often made "let's just stop all travel" argument.

I don't care enough to try and dox you, but thanks for giving public permission to anybody who might. If what you say is true and you ever decide to run for public office, you're accused of a serious crime, you go through family court litigation, or you face any other circumstance whereby others have incentive to put your character under scrutiny, then God help you.

You're a bit strange. If you run for office, your private address will be public record almost immediately. Your family can be assumed to know where you live. If you're accused of a serious crime, you're going to be in jail, so it doesn't matter. So whatever point you were trying to make, I'm afraid your rage blurred your rationality.
Medicine

How Nigeria Stopped Ebola 381

Posted by samzenpus from the keeping-it-under-control dept.
HughPickens.com writes Pamela Engel writes that Americans need only look to Nigeria to calm their fears about an Ebola outbreak in the US. Nigeria is much closer to the West Africa outbreak than the US is, yet even after Ebola entered the country in the most terrifying way possible — via a visibly sick passenger on a commercial flight — officials successfully shut down the disease and prevented widespread transmission. If there are still no new cases on October 20, the World Health Organization will officially declare the country "Ebola-free." Here's how Nigeria did it.

The first person to bring Ebola to Nigeria was Patrick Sawyer, who left a hospital in Liberia against the wishes of the medical staff and flew to Nigeria. Once Sawyer arrived, it became obvious that he was ill when he passed out in the Lagos airport, and he was taken to a hospital in the densely packed city of 20 million. Once the country's first Ebola case was confirmed, Port Health Services in Nigeria started a process called contact tracing to limit the spread of the disease and created an emergency operations center to coordinate and oversee the national response. Health officials used a variety of resources, including phone records and flight manifests, to track down nearly 900 people who might have been exposed to the virus via Sawyer or the people he infected. As soon as people developed symptoms suggestive of Ebola, they were isolated in Ebola treatment facilities. Without waiting to see whether a "suspected" case tested positive, Nigeria's contact tracing team tracked down everyone who had had contact with that patient since the onset of symptoms making a staggering 18,500 face-to-face visits.

The US has many of these same procedures in place for containing Ebola, making the risk of an outbreak here very low. Contact tracing is exactly what is happening in Dallas right now; if any one of Thomas Eric Duncan's contacts shows symptoms, that person will be immediately isolated and tested. "That experience shows us that even in the case in Nigeria, when we found out later in the timeline that this patient had Ebola, that Nigeria was able to identify contacts, institute strict infection control procedures and basically bring their outbreak to a close," says Dr. Tom Inglesby. "They did a good job in and of themselves. They worked closely with the U.S. CDC. If we can succeed in Nigeria I do believe we will stop it here."

Comment cute, but flawed (Score 1) 94

by Tom (#48157261) Attached to: Eggcyte is Making a Pocket-Sized Personal Web Server (Video)

It's a really cute idea, but from what I've seen so far is lacking a few fundamentals.

Firstly, there's little mention of user interface design, which if you want this to be used by average Joes and Janes is about the most important thing.

Secondly, sharing your stuff on your own server is cute, in fact we've only had it for about 30 years, even before the Internet with BBS etc. - the problem is connections, networks. Facebook solved that problem and that's why it works and people use it. If everyone has mynamewithsomerandomadditionbecauseitwasalreadytaken.eggcyte.com - how do you find them? You will need a social network layer on top, at which point you're basically back to Facebook, minus distributed data storage.

Thirdly, the idea of having it mobile and being able to plug it in anywhere is cute, but it also means that the device - and thus everything I want published - is unavailable while in transit. In practice, the mobility will be a non-issue because of this.
Crime

How an FBI Informant Led the Hack of British Tabloid "The Sun" 38

Posted by samzenpus from the behind-the-scenes dept.
Daniel_Stuckey writes Hector Xavier Monsegur, also known online as "Sabu," was caught by the FBI in June of 2011 for a litany of hacking-related offenses and, within hours, began cooperating with authorities in hopes of receiving a lenient sentence. Now, never-before-published FBI records and exclusive interviews detail how the informant rallied other hackers to attack various News Corp. interests, including The Sun, at a time that the FBI has said it was tracking all of Monsegur's online activity. And for a week shortly after his arrest, he was privy to the anti-Murdoch campaign waged by Anonymous, according to the documents obtained by Motherboard.
Privacy

Anonabox Accused of Lying About Its Product Being Open-Source On Kickstarter 72

Posted by samzenpus from the to-tell-the-truth dept.
blottsie writes The "anonabox" has raised more than $550,000 on Kickstarter in only three days. But some believe the company's claims that the router-like device, which is said to automatically route users' Internet traffic through Tor, is entirely open-source are false. Anonabox developer August Germar tells the Daily Dot, however, that the device was commissioned specifically to run their code.
Medicine

Early Childhood Neglect Associated With Altered Brain Structure, ADHD 87

Posted by samzenpus from the root-cause dept.
vinces99 writes "Under the rule of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, thousands of Romanian children were placed in overcrowded orphanages with bleak conditions and minimal human contact, a legacy that continued even after the 1989 revolution. Only recently have research and public concern caused policy changes.

University of Washington research on children who began life in these institutions shows that early childhood neglect is associated with changes in brain structure. A paper published this month in Biological Psychiatry shows that children who spent their early years in these institutions have thinner brain tissue in cortical areas that correspond to impulse control and attention. "These differences suggest a way that the early care environment has dramatic and lasting effects for children's functioning," said lead author Katie McLaughlin, a UW assistant professor of psychology.

Since 2000, the Bucharest Early Intervention Project has worked to document and treat the children's health. McLaughlin joined the team about six years ago to focus on brain development. This study is among the first in any setting to document how social deprivation in early life affects the thickness of the cortex, the thin folded layer of gray matter that forms the outer layer of the brain. The study provides "very strong support" for a link between the early environment and ADHD, McLaughlin said.
Government

Worcester Mass. City Council Votes To Keep Comcast From Entering the Area 232

Posted by samzenpus from the and-stay-out dept.
First time accepted submitter _AustinPowell writes Comcast wants a cable television license in Worcester, Massachusetts. In response, the City Council voted 8-3 to urge Worcester's city manager to let the company's license request die. The deadline for the decision is Wednesday, but the manager is not bound by the vote of the Council. "It's a terrible company," City Councilor Gary Rosen said. "In my opinion, they should not be welcome in this city. Comcast is a wolf in wolf's clothing; it's that bad."
United States

Commerce Secretary: US Wants Multi-Stakeholder Process To Preserve Internet 57

Posted by samzenpus from the spreading-the-power dept.
Ted_Margaris_Chicago writes The United States will resist all efforts to give "any person, entity or nation" control of the Internet rather than the "global multi-stakeholder communities," said Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker in a Oct. 13 speech. "Next week, at the International Telecommunication Union Conference in Korea, we will see proposals to put governments in charge of Internet governance. You can rest assured that the United States will oppose these efforts at every turn," she said in prepared remarks to an Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, meeting in Los Angeles.
Television

HBO To Offer Online Streaming Without TV Subscription 139

Posted by samzenpus from the cutting-the-cord dept.
An anonymous reader writes By now, everyone not living in total isolation knows that HBO has announced plans to offer content streaming in 2015 with no TV subscription requirements. Many wonder what took HBO so long to make this transition. Some speculate that the growing unpopularity of ISP giants has shifted bargaining power in HBO's favor. Others say that it's purely maths; there are more cord-cutters and more people willing to shell out money for specific content, as evidenced by Netflix surpassing HBO in earnings this year "despite Netflix having a smaller customer base". Whatever the reason, all are expecting this development to induce "more content providers to make their shows more readily available online".
Businesses

Ask Slashdot: Handling Patented IP In a Job Interview? 224

Posted by samzenpus from the what's-mine-is-mine dept.
ZahrGnosis writes I'm in the midst of a rather lengthy job interview; something I haven't done for some time as I've worked as a contract employee with a much lower barrier to entry for years. Recently, I've started patenting some inventions that are applicable to my industry. One hope is that the patents look good to the prospective employer on a resume, but I don't want them to take the existing IP for granted as part of the deal. I'm worried I have the wrong attitude, however. My question is, how should I treat licensing of the patent as a topic with respect to the topic of my employment? Should I build the use of my patented ideas into my salary? Should I explicitly refuse to implement my patented IP for the company without a separate licensing fee? If I emphasize the patent during the interviews without the intent to give them the IP for free, is that an ethical lapse — a personal false advertising? At the same time, when I work for a company I feel they should get the benefit of my full expertise... am I holding back something I shouldn't by not granting a de-facto license while I work for them? I perceive a fine balance between being confrontational and helpful, while not wanting to jeopardize the job prospect nor restrict my ability to capitalize on my invention. Thoughts?

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