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Submission + - Google Search Will Be Your Next Brain (medium.com)

Submitted by Steven Levy
Steven Levy writes: A deep dive into Google's AI effort. In 2006, Geoffrey Hinton made a breakthrough in neural nets that launched Deep Learning. Google is all-in, hiring Hinton, have its ace scientist Jeff Dean build the Google Brain, and buying the neuroscience-based general AI company DeepMind for $400. Here's how the push for scary-smart search work, from mouths of the key subjects.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Migrating a router from Linux to *BSD? (example.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I'm in the camp that doesn't trust systemd. You can discuss the technical merits of all init solutions all you want, but if I wanted to run Windows NT I'd run Windows NT, not Linux.
So I've decided to migrate my homebrew router/firewall/samba server to one of the BSDs. Question one is: which BSD? Question two: where's some good documentation regarding setting up a home router/firewall on your favorite BSD?
It's fine if the documentation is highly technical, I've written linux kernel drivers before :)

Submission + - UK considers new Internet surveillance powers (ispreview.co.uk)

Submitted by Ellie K
Ellie K writes: UK Prime Minister David Cameron is trying, again, to introduce legislation to expand data retention requirements. Specifically, that would mean compelling ISPs to log more online activity, e.g. Skype usage and Facebook chat logs, regardless of whether or not a crime was committed. Cameron also suggested banning encryption for secure communications.

Submission + - UBER TO OFFER CITIES TRANSIT DATA (civsourceonline.com)

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: Uber is set to begin providing cities with its transit data, according to a blog post from the company released earlier today. Boston will be the first city to get Uber’s data, which is anonymized trip-level data by ZIP Code Tabulation Area (ZCTA) – the U.S. Census’ geographical representation of zip codes.

This isn’t the first time Uber has shared its data, but it is the first time it is doing so as part of a broader effort to work with municipal governments where it operates. Notably, despite the flowery and positive language surrounding the program in the company’s blog post, Uber is currently in a fight with New York City over sharing the exact same data. In fact, New York suspended nearly all of Uber’s bases last week and is demanding data be turned over. Uber is also the only car service in New York that opposes proposed measure to require this kind of transit data from car services.

No details were provided in the blog post on the specifics of the deal between Uber and Boston, which could explain its opposition in NYC, if the company plans to make money from data sharing. We have reached out to the city to find out what, if anything the deal will cost local taxpayers.

Boston recently voted to recognize Uber’s services, but the company has had a contentious relationship with most local regulators where it operates. That relationship is poised to get worse before it gets better, with a handful of municipalities currently considering regulatory reactions to the service. Popular outrage over Uber’s practice of price gouging consumers with its so-called “surge pricing” have also made it a target for regulatory scrutiny.

Uber has recently hired several new faces to focus on issues ranging from user privacy, to improving the public image of the company. The data sharing initiative is just the latest in these efforts.

Newly elected Mayor Marty Walsh had this to say in a statement – “We are using data to change the way we deliver services and we welcome the opportunity to add to our resources. This will help us reach our transportation goals, improve the quality of our neighborhoods and allow us to think smarter, finding more innovative and creative solutions to some of our most pressing challenges.”

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Best Customer/Donor Relations Management Software for Non-profits?

Submitted by BigVig209
BigVig209 writes: I am a fundraiser for a public university in the Midwest, and I have mostly used the Raiser's Edge by Blackbaud. I believe this question was asked of the Slashdot community in 2009, but, considering the developments in the industry, what are the best donor relations management software solution on the market today?

Submission + - Bernie Sanders offers amendment declaring human caused global warming to be real (examiner.com)

Submitted by MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: As deliberations for the Keystone XL pipeline continue in the Senate, the new Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has allowed any amendments any senator might offer to be considered and voted on. Taking full advantage of that indulgence, the independent senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders has proposed one of the strangest amendments ever to make its way to the United States Senate. The amendment will state that it is the opinion of the Senate that human-caused global warming is real, according to a Tuesday story in the Hill.

Submission + - Is 'SimCity' Homelessness a Bug or a Feature? (vice.com)

Submitted by sarahnaomi
sarahnaomi writes: SimCity players have discussed a variety of creative strategies for their virtual homelessness problem. They’ve suggested waiting for natural disasters like tornadoes to blow the vagrants away, bulldozing parks where they congregate, or creating such a woefully insufficient city infrastructure that the homeless would leave on their own.

You can read all of these proposed final solutions in Matteo Bittanti's How to Get Rid of Homelessness, "a 600-page epic split in two volumes documenting the so-called 'homeless scandal' that affected 2013's SimCity." Bittanti collected, selected, and transcribed thousands of these messages exchanged by players on publisher Electronic Arts' official forums, Reddit, and the largest online SimCity community Simtropolis, who experienced and then tried to "eradicate" the phenomenon of homelessness that "plagued" SimCity.

Submission + - Sorry Kinect: Apple Wins Gesture-Control Patent (pcmag.com)

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: The U.S Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) today awarded Apple an incredibly broad patent for gesture-based controls.
The patent covers a "three dimensional user interface session control." In other words, you wave your hands and something happens on your device. When Apple bought PrimeSense last year, it was pretty clear the company wanted to own some—if not all—of the gesture-control space. Since then, all of PrimeSense's patents have been reassigned to Apple.

At its most ambitious, gesture controls deliver a Minority Report-style interface you can navigate by pinching your fingers in the air. At its worst, you are left waving your arms at an inanimate object like Harry Potter with a broken wand. Unfortunately, the reality is that gesture interfaces have been more like the latter.
The best known, and most controversial, gesture control system is the Kinect. In fact, PrimeSense developed the Kinect for Microsoft, which made it a central part of its Xbox 360 and Xbox One consoles. The technology is pretty amazing, especially in its latest, high-definition incarnation. The Xbox One Kinect can detect up to 25 joints across six people. It can read a player's heartbeat, and with 1,400 points of articulation, it can tell if your mouth is open or closed. It is undeniably kick-ass technology, and no one cared.

Submission + - Exploring Some Lesser-Known Scripting Languages (dice.com) 1

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Scripting languages are used in everything from games and Web pages to operating-system shells and general applications, as well as standalone scripts. While many of these scripting languages are common and open to modification, there are some interesting, open-source ones that are worth a look, even if they don't have the substantial audience of some of the popular ones. Wren, Candle, Fancy, Pikt, and PPL all show what a single developer can do if they set out with enough motivation to create open-source scripting languages. The results often prove surprisingly powerful.

Submission + - Authors alarmed as Oxford Junior Dictionary drops nature words 1

Submitted by Freshly Exhumed
Freshly Exhumed writes: Margaret Atwood, Andrew Motion, and Michael Morpurgo are among 28 authors criticizing Oxford University Press's decision to scrap a number of words associated with nature from its junior dictionary. In an open letter (PDF) released on Monday, the acclaimed writers said they are 'profoundly alarmed' and urged the publisher to reinstate words cut since 2007 in the next edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary. Amongst words to be dropped are acorn, blackberries, and minnows.

Submission + - Xbox Live and PlayStation Network both down due to an apparent attack

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: Both Xbox Live and PlayStation Network are down this morning, apparently due to a denial-of-service attack. The notorious hacking group Lizard Squad — which already carried out earlier attacks on Microsoft and Sony — has claimed responsibility on Twitter for these latest outages. While the group's role in all of this remains unconfirmed, it's worth noting that the group threatened last week to take down Xbox Live and PSN, according to Business Insider. And again, Lizard Squad has already proven it can successfully pull off such attacks, not to mention other malicious pranks.

Whatever the cause, the timing is obviously terrible: Plenty of people surely received one of the two consoles as Christmas presents today, while many more gamers would have happily spent the afternoon in front of the TV. In the meantime, both Sony and Microsoft have acknowledged the problem, with Sony issuing a tweet and Microsoft posting a message on its support website: "We're working to address this as quickly as we possibly can," reads its status website. "Thanks for your patience, Xbox members." In an email, a Microsoft spokesperson declined to comment further or say when the company expects to restore service. We've also asked Sony to comment and will update this post if and when it does.

Submission + - US Navy Sells 'Top Gun' Aircraft Carrier for One Penny 2

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Kitsap Sun reports at Military.com that the USS Ranger, a 1,050-foot-long, 56,000-ton Forrestal-class aircraft carrier, is being towed from the inactive ship maintenance facility at Puget Sound for a 3,400-mile, around-Cape Horn voyage to a Texas dismantler who acquired the Vietnam-era warship for a penny for scrap metal. “Under the contract, the company will be paid $0.01. The price reflects the net price proposed by International Shipbreaking, which considered the estimated proceeds from the sale of the scrap metal to be generated from dismantling,” said officials for NAVSEA. “[One cent] is the lowest price the Navy could possibly have paid the contractor for towing and dismantling the ship.”

The Ranger was commissioned Aug. 10, 1957, at Norfolk Naval Shipyard and decommissioned July 10, 1993, after more than 35 years of service. It was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on March 8, 2004, and redesignated for donation. After eight years on donation hold, the USS Ranger Foundation was unable to raise the funds to convert the ship into a museum or to overcome the physical obstacles of transporting the ship up the Columbia River to Fairview, Oregon. As a result, the Ranger was removed from the list of ships available for donation and designated for dismantling. The Navy, which can't retain inactive ships indefinitely, can't donate a vessel unless the application fully meets the Navy's minimum requirements. The Ranger had been in pristine condition, but for a week in August volunteers from other naval museums were allowed to remove items to improve their ships. The Ranger was in a slew of movies and television shows, including "The Six Million Dollar Man," "Flight of the Intruder" and "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" where it stood in for the USS Enterprise carrier. But the Ranger’s most famous role was in the 1980’s Tom Cruise hit, "Top Gun." “We would have liked to have seen it become a museum, but it just wasn’t in the cards,” Navy spokesman Chris Johnson told Fox. “But unfortunately, it is a difficult proposition to raise funds. The group that was going to collect donations had a $35 million budget plan but was only able to raise $100,000.”

Submission + - 300 Million Year Old Fossil Fish Likely Had Color Vision (nature.com)

Submitted by westlake
westlake writes: Nature is reporting the discovery of mineralized rods and cones in a 300 million year old fossil fish found in Kansas. The soft tissues of the eye and brain decay rapidly after death, within 64 days and 11 days, respectively, and are almost never preserved in the fossil record — making this is the first discovery of fossil rods and cones in general and the first evidence for color vision in a fossilized vertebrate eye.

Submission + - Hackers Used Nasty "SMB Worm" Attack Toolkit Against Sony

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: Just hours after the FBI and President Obama called out North Korea as being responsible for the destructive cyber attack against Sony Pictures, US-CERT issued an alert describing the primary malware used by the attackers, along with indicators of compromise.

While not mentioning Sony by name in its advisory, instead referring to the victim as a “major entertainment company,” US-CERT said that the attackers used a Server Message Block (SMB) Worm Tool to conduct the attacks.

According to the advisory, the SMB Worm Tool is equipped with five components, including a Listening Implant, Lightweight Backdoor, Proxy Tool, Destructive Hard Drive Tool, and Destructive Target Cleaning Tool.

US-CERT also provided a list of the Indicators of Compromise (IOCs), which include C2 IP addresses, Snort signatures for the various components, host based Indicators, potential YARA signatures to detect malware binaries on host machines, and recommended security practices and tactical mitigations.

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