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Comment Re:Maybe they will move to court instead? (Score 1) 137

Maybe the UK consider to take Microsoft to court in case something happens and sue them under product responsibility laws or something.

Uhhh.. no one is forcing them to continue to use ancient software. They're quite welcomed and encouraged to upgrade to something newer and better. Certainly not Microsoft's problem. Microsoft and most of the rest of the world have long since moved on.

Submission + - Star 'Mass Grave' Surrounds Our Galaxy's Black Hole (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: Astronomers have zoomed into an X-ray emission region immediately surrounding our galaxy’s supermassive black hole, gaining the highest X-ray resolution view to date, and it looks like they’ve stumbled on a mysterious place where stars go to die. Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A*, is the enigmatic compact radio source surrounding the supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy. The black hole, which has a mass 4 million times that of our sun, dominates this region with its extreme gravitational well. Many efforts have been carried out in an attempt to understand the population of stars and other stellar phenomena in the immediate vicinity of Sgr A*, but resolving features from such an extreme environment at a distance of 25,000 light-years is not easy. Through measurements of X-ray spectra from the black hole’s neighborhood, however, astronomers are gradually adding some detail to Sgr A*’s landscape and in new research published in the journal Nature, it seems there’s a strange population of ‘dead’ stars accumulated in the black hole’s shadow.

Submission + - Did NASA Mistakenly Create a Warp Field? (reddit.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to posts on NASASpaceFlight.com, a website devoted to the engineering side of space news, when lasers were fired through the EmDrive’s resonance chamber, some of the beams appeared to travel faster than the speed of light. If that’s true, it would mean that the EmDrive is producing a warp field or bubble.

Submission + - Cosmologists Find Eleven Runaway Galaxies

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Discovery News reports that 11 homeless galaxies have been identified by Igor Chilingarian, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and Moscow State University, and his fellow astronomers. "The 11 runaway galaxies were found by chance while Chilingarian and co-investigator Ivan Zolotukhin, of the L’Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planetologie and Moscow State University, were scouring publicly-available data (via the Virtual Observatory) from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the GALEX satellite for compact elliptical galaxies."

Submission + - Nepal Earthquake: Facebook to Google, how tech is helping survivors reach out

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In the aftermath of the earthquake that struck Nepal, many social media sites and mobile applications have come up with features that could help locate friends and loved ones. From the Times of India: "Social networking website Facebook, and Google's Person Finder have helped locate the whereabouts of those stranded in quake-hit areas. For instance, members of one Himmatramka family residing in Birgunj in Nepal marked themselves safe on Facebook. 'Our relatives back in India were worried about our safety. So, we marked ourselves safe to inform them,' said Nitesh Himmatramka.

Submission + - Apple's Next Frontier Is Your Body (fastcompany.com)

Submitted by Lashdots
Lashdots writes: Amid the unveiling of the Apple Watch, Tim Cook's wrist distracted from another new product last month: ResearchKit, an open source iOS platform designed to help researchers design apps for medical studies—and reach millions of potential research subjects through their iPhones. Alongside the company's new frontiers, like the car and the home, Cook told Jim Cramer last month that health "may be the biggest one of all." As Fast Company reports, Cook says Apple's devices could could help pinpoint diseases within decades—and position the company at the center of a "significantly underestimated" mobile-health industry. Given the medical history of Silicon Valley, however, the prognosis for Apple remains unclear.

Submission + - In New AI Benchmark, Computer Takes on Four Top Professional Poker Players

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Stephen Jordan reports at the National Monitor that four of the world’s greatest poker players are going into battle against a computer program that researchers are calling Claudico in the “Brains Vs. Artificial Intelligence” competition at Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh. The pros — Doug Polk, Dong Kim, Bjorn Li and Jason Les — will receive appearance fees derived from a prize purse of $100,000 donated by Microsoft Research and by Rivers Casino. Claudico, the first machine program to play heads-up no-limit Texas Hold’em against top human players, will play nearly 20,000 hands with each human poker player over the next two weeks. “Poker is now a benchmark for artificial intelligence research, just as chess once was. It’s a game of exceeding complexity that requires a machine to make decisions based on incomplete and often misleading information, thanks to bluffing, slow play and other decoys,” says Tuomas Sandholm, developer of the program. “And to win, the machine has to out-smart its human opponents.” In total, that will be 1,500 hands played per day until May 8, with just one day off to allow the real-life players to rest.

An earlier version of the software called Tartanian 7 {PDF) was successful in winning the heads-up, no-limit Texas Hold’em category against other computers in July, but Sandholm says that does not necessarily mean it will be able to defeat a human in the complex game. “I think it’s a 50-50 proposition,” says Sandholm. “My strategy will change more so than when playing against human players,” says competitor Doug Polk, widely considered the world’s best player of Heads-Up No-Limit Texas Hold’em, with total live tournament earnings of more than $3.6 million. “I think there will be less hand reading so to speak, and less mind games. In some ways I think it will be nice as I can focus on playing a more pure game, and not have to worry about if he thinks that I think, etc.”

Submission + - Debian 8 Jessie released (debian.org)

Submitted by linuxscreenshot
linuxscreenshot writes: After almost 24 months of constant development the Debian project is proud to present its new stable version 8 (code name Jessie), which will be supported for the next 5 years thanks to the combined work of the Debian Security team and of the Debian Long Term Support team. Jessie ships with a new default init system, systemd. The systemd suite provides many exciting features such as faster boot times, cgroups for services, and the possibility of isolating part of the services. The sysvinit init system is still available in Jessie. Screenshots and a screencast is available.

Submission + - FCC Chairman: a Former Cable Lobbyist Who Helped Kill the Comcast Merger (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After Friday's news that the Comcast/TWC merger is dead, the Washington Post points out an interesting fact: FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, who was instrumental in throwing up roadblocks the for the deal, used to be a lobbyist for the cable and wireless industry. "Those who predicted Wheeler would favor industry interests 'misunderstood him from the beginning — the notion that because he had represented various industries, he was suddenly in their pocket never made any sense,' said one industry lawyer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he represents clients before the FCC." The "revolving door" between government an industry is often blamed for many of the problems regulating corporations. We were worried about it ourselves when Wheeler was nominated for his job. I guess this goes to show that it depends more on the person than on their previous job.

Submission + - Think Tanks: How a Bill [Gates Agenda] Becomes a Law

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: The NY Times' Eric Lipton was just awarded a 2015 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting that shed light on how foreign powers buy influence at think tanks. So, it probably bears mentioning that Microsoft's 'two-pronged' National Talent Strategy to increase K-12 CS education and the number of H-1B visas — which is on the verge of being codified into laws by the President and lawmakers — was hatched at an influential Microsoft and Gates Foundation-backed think tank mentioned in Lipton's reporting, the Brookings Institution. In 2012, the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings hosted a forum on STEM education and immigration reforms, where fabricating a crisis was discussed as a strategy to succeed with Microsoft's agenda where earlier lobbying attempts by Bill Gates and Microsoft had failed. "So, Brad [Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith]," asked the Brookings Institution's Darrell West at the event, "you're the only [one] who mentioned this topic of making the problem bigger. So, we galvanize action by really producing a crisis, I take it?" "Yeah," Smith replied (video). And, with the help of nonprofit organizations like Code.org and FWD.us that were founded shortly thereafter, a national K-12 CS and tech immigration crisis was indeed created. Last December, as Microsoft-backed Code.org 'taught President Obama to code' at a White House event to kick off the nations's Hour of Code (as a top Microsoft lobbyist looked on), Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was also in D.C. publicly lobbying for high-skilled immigration and privately meeting with White House officials on undisclosed matters. And that, kids, is How a Bill [Gates Agenda] Becomes a Law!

Submission + - Which smartphone is stable these days?

Submitted by janimal
janimal writes: It used to be true that the iPhone was the smartphone that "just works". Ever since the 4S days, this has been true less and less with each generation. My wife's iPhone 6 needs to be restarted several times per week for things like internet search or making calls to work. An older 5S I'm using also doesn't consistently stream to Apple TV, doesn't display song names correctly on Apple TV and third party peripherals (like a Mercedes Benz). In short, the mainstay of Apple that is quality is fast receding. In your opinion, which smartphone brand these days is taking up the slack and delivering a fully featured smartphone that "just works"?

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