skade88 - Slashdot User

Submission + - GTK+ 3.8 Released with support for Wayland (gmane.org)

Submitted by kthreadd on Tuesday March 26, 2013 @02:10PM

kthreadd writes: Version 3.8 of the GTK+ GUI framework has been released in version 3.8. A new feature in GTK+ 3.8 is support for Wayland 1.0, the display server that will replace X on free desktops. Among the other new featurs are improved support for themeing, fixes to the geometry management and improved accessibility. There is also better support for touch, as part of a long going effort in making GTK+ touch-aware.

Submission + - New Brain Implant Transmits Wirelessly to Computer (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by

kkleiner

on Tuesday March 26, 2013 @02:03PM

kkleiner writes: "Scientists at Brown University have made a brain implant that can record and transmit brain signals to a computer wirelessly. Free from onerous connections and wires, the technology could foster the development of a new generation of more flexible robotics to help amputees, spinal cord injury victims, or people with crippling neurological disorders. Referred to the researchers affectionately as the “can,” the titanium-enclosed device measures 2.2 inches (56 mm) long, 1.65 inches (42 mm) wide, and 0.35 inches (9 mm) thick. That’s pretty small considering it contains an array of 100 electrodes, a lithium ion battery, and custom-designed ultralow-power integrated circuits, radio and infrared wireless transmitters, and a copper coil for recharging."

Submission + - Square Enix President Yoichi Wada stepping down, Extraordinary loss predicted. (forbes.com)

Submitted by skade88 on Tuesday March 26, 2013 @01:21PM

skade88 writes: Square Enix president Yoichi Wada will not have his one year contract renewed in June on news of a huge loss for the company.

From the Article: 'The revised guidance for the year ending 31 March 2013 makes for grim reading. The predicted 13.5 billion yen drop (around $143.2 million) in operating income turns a 7.5 billion yen operating income into a 6 billion yen outflow – a 16.7 billion yen drop from the 2012 financial year operating income of 10.7 billion yen. Net income is similarly affected, dropping from a previous guidance of 3.5 billion yen to a 13 billion yen loss, down 19.1 billion yen on the prior year.'

Submission + - Another Way Carriers Screw Customers: Premium SMS "Errors" (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26, 2013 @01:07PM

An anonymous reader writes: No one likes their carrier. And with behaviour like this it's not surprising. TechCrunch catches T-Mobile taking money from a new pay-as-you-go customer after signing her up to its own premium horoscope text message service — and taking money before she's even put the SIM in the phone.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Are We in a Tech Bubble? (slashdot.org)

Submitted by

Nerval's Lobster

on Tuesday March 26, 2013 @12:19PM

Nerval's Lobster writes: "When a major IT company pays a reported $30 million—roughly 90 percent of it in cash—for an iOS app with no monetization strategy and a million downloads since launch, is that a sign that the tech industry as a whole is riding a massive, overinflated bubble? That’s the amount of filthy lucre that Yahoo paid for 17-year-old Nick D’Aloisio’s Summly app, according to AllThingsD. The app offers “algorithmically generated summaries” (in its Website’s words) from hundreds of news sources across the Web, presented in an easy-to-read format; users can cherry-pick their topics and news sources of choice, save summaries for offline viewing, and share content with others. Yahoo isn't alone, by a long shot: over the past couple years, a few apps have been snatched up for enormous sums—think Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of Instagram in 2012, or Google buying Sparrow for a reported $25 million. Nor has the money train stopped there: in a pattern that recalls the late-90s market frothiness for anyone over the age of 28, a handful of tech companies have either launched much-hyped IPOs or witnessed their share price skyrocket into the stratosphere. But does all this IPO activity and app-acquiring actually mean "bubble"?"

Submission + - The next Solar Power Revolution (thefutureofthings.com)

Submitted by

Iddo Genuth

on Tuesday March 26, 2013 @08:52AM

Iddo Genuth writes: "A new Israeli startup called 3GSolar believes it has the solution to the problem of low cost renewable energy — solar cells that use an artificial form of photosynthesis based in part on organic material and nanotechnology."

Submission + - NVIDIA Launches Sub-$200 Graphics That Can Play Any DX11 Title, Even Crysis 3 (hothardware.com)

Submitted by

MojoKid

on Tuesday March 26, 2013 @08:34AM

MojoKid writes: "To counter the just-announced AMD Radeon HD 7790, NVIDIA is launching a new mainstream graphics card of its own, which is somewhat of a cross between the GeForce GTX 650 Ti and GeForce GTX 660. The new GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST reference specifications call for a base GPU clock of 980MHz with a boost clock of 1033MHz and a memory clock of 1502MHz (6008MHz effective). At those frequencies, the GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST will offer up to 144.2GB/s of memory bandwidth and 62.7GTexes/s of textured fillrate. Performance-wise, the new card offers playable frame rates in virtually any leading-edge DX11 title on the market currently, for well under $200. NVIDIA is also doing some rejiggering of its price structure, which makes the company’s entire mid-range lineup more affordable."

Submission + - Linux Game Tome shutting down for good (happypenguin.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26, 2013 @08:23AM

An anonymous reader writes: It won't be a surprise to anyone who has visited the site in the last years, but now it's official — The Linux Game Tome is shutting down.

Submission + - NASA To Launch 13,000 sqft Solar Sail In 2014 (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by

kkleiner

on Monday March 25, 2013 @01:47PM

kkleiner writes: "In 2014, NASA hopes to launch a 13,000 square foot solar sail — the third to ever hit space and by far the biggest yet. The sci-fi inspired mission, Sunjammer, is named after Arthur C. Clarke’s 1964 tale of sun-yacht races through the solar system and will carry the ashes of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and his wife Majel Barrett Roddenberry to the mission’s destination, a gravitationally balanced orbit between the Earth and Sun (L1). Sunjammer’s sail is a third of an acre, about 124 feet to a side, and seven times the size of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Planetary Society’s solar sail IKAROS, the biggest sail successfully launched to date."

Submission + - Ephemeral Vacuum Particles Cause Fluctuations in the Speed of Light (scienceworldreport.com)

Submitted by skade88 on Monday March 25, 2013 @01:35PM

skade88 writes: From the article 'Is the nature of a vacuum really fixed? Not so, according to two forthcoming papers. Researchers have identified a quantum level mechanism for interpreting a vacuum as being filled with pairs of virtual particles with fluctuating energy values. They've also discovered that physical constraints, such as the speed of light and the so-called impedance of free space, are indications of the total number of elementary particles in nature.'

Submission + - NYC's Bloomberg On Drones: "Scary" But Inevitable (ibtimes.com) 1

Submitted by

redletterdave

on Monday March 25, 2013 @01:34PM

redletterdave writes: "New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg was asked in a radio interview about the domestic use of drones by the government: 'We're going into a different world unchartered, and like it or not, what people can do or governments can do is different, and you can to some extent control [that], but you can't keep the tides from coming in. We're going to have more visibility and less privacy. I don't see how you stop that. It's not a question of a question of whether I think it's good or bad — I don't see how you stop that.'"

Submission + - Will Google Drive Make A Real Impact? (geeksuper.com)

Submitted by

lance28

on Monday March 25, 2013 @12:38PM

lance28 writes: "Google Drive is Google’s file sync and storage service. Before the official launch, there were a lot of rumors and speculations about the service. To start with Google Drive gives its users 5 GB of cloud storage free of cost, through a paid monthly subscription plan, the storage space can be upgraded up to 16 TB. Google drive is technically an extension of Google Docs which allows users to store any type of file."

Submission + - Misplaced Parenthesis in Kernel Code Leads to Weak Keys in NetBSD 6.0 (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec on Monday March 25, 2013 @11:31AM

hypnosec writes: NetBSD has a serious flaw within its random number generator implementation at the kernel level because of which systems would generate weak and easy to crack cryptographic keys. The reason for this flaw in the code is allegedly misplaced parenthesis within the kernel source code. Because of the flaw the system could end up generating random number which wouldn’t be necessarily random. Risk is at its highest when system is booting as it has very little entropy at its disposal to generating random numbers. 32-bit systems are more vulnerable than their 64-bit counterparts as there would only be 4-billion possibilities for potential entropy, which is technically feasible to brute force considering the computing power available today.

Submission + - College student creates gel to stop bleeding, star healing (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by NotBornYesterday on Monday March 25, 2013 @10:28AM

NotBornYesterday writes: A 20-year-old New York University student has invented a gel which, according to him, can stop heavy bleeding instantly. With the introduction of the latest invention by Joe Landolina,routine bandages could soon become a thing of the past. According to Landolina the Veti-Gel produced by him, can not only stop bleeding but also instantly start the healing process even on major wounds and wounds on internal organs and key arteries.

The gel, according to the report, is an artificial version of extracellular matrix, which is a substance present in the connective tissue which holds up an animal body together.

In a video with the article, the experimenter can be seen cutting a deep slice into the pork flesh while real pigs blood is being injected into the flesh at the same time. Soon after the flesh is cut, the blood starts flowing freely. However, as soon as the gel is applied on the cut and second liquid sprayed over it, the bleeding suddenly stops.

Submission + - Apache CloudStack becomes a top-level project (apache.org)

Submitted by

ke4qqq

on Monday March 25, 2013 @10:28AM

ke4qqq writes: "The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of nearly 150 Open Source projects and initiatives, today announced that Apache CloudStack has graduated from the Apache Incubator to become a Top-Level Project (TLP), signifying that the Project's community and products have been well-governed under the ASF's meritocratic process and principles."

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