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Submission + - What does it take to build a foundry?

Submitted by Tsolias
Tsolias writes: People working on I.T. have always been inventing new ways of offering cheap alternatives to expensive products, without compromising, sometimes, the quality of the end service/product; while sometimes the alternative was even better. A great example is the trend of 3D printing that has lead to very cheap solution, OSS designs, while several other examples are the RPI and Arduino/Arduino-like products that made technology available to everyone. I really wonder what is keeping chip manufacturing still a big deal to do it on your own. Is it possible to make an inexpensive fab that produces chips like USB controllers or simple CPUs like Atmels in your garage, even at technologies used 30 years ago?

Submission + - New Oculus SDK Adds Experimental Linux Support and Unity Free for Rift Headset (roadtovr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Oculus, creator of the Rift VR headset, has released a new version of their SDK which brings with it long sought after support for Linux, which the company says is "experimental". Linux support was previously unavailable since the launch of the company's second development kit, the DK2 (http://www.oculus.com/dk2/). The latest SDK update also adds support for Unity Free (https://unity3d.com/unity/download), the non-commercial version of the popular game authoring engine. Previously, Unity developers needed the Pro version—costing $1,500 or $75/month—to create experiences for the Oculus Rift.

Submission + - What Do Americans Fear Most?

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Chapman University has initiated the first comprehensive nationwide study on what strikes fear in Americans and the top five things Americans fear the most are:1) Walking alone at night 2) Becoming the victim of identity theft 3) Safety on the internet 4) Being the victim of a mass/random shooting 5) Public speaking (PDF). "What initially lead us into this line of research was our desire to capture this information on a year-over-year basis so we can draw comparisons with what items are increasing in fear as well as decreasing," says Dr. Christopher Bader, who led the team effort. "We learned through this initial survey that we had to phrase the questions according to fears vs. concerns to capture the information correctly, so that is how we present it," The top five things Americans worry or are concerned about are: 1) Having identity stolen on the internet 2) Corporate surveillance of internet activity 3) Running out of money in the future 4) Government surveillance of internet activity 5) Becoming ill/sick. The remainder of The Chapman Survey on American Fears looks at factors that influence fear including: age, gender, race, work status, education, income, region of the country, urban vs. rural, political preference, religion, TV viewing, and gun ownership. Through their analysis two key factors emerged: having a lower level of education and also high frequency of television viewing were the most consistent predictors of fear.

Submission + - Yosemite Wi-Fi Problems

Submitted by Capt.Albatross
Capt.Albatross writes: Sophos' Naked Security blog is reporting that some users of Apple's OSX 10.10 (Yosemite) operating system are having problems with wi-fi: "Your network works fine for a while, typically between about 30 seconds and five minutes, and then fairly abruptly begins to suffer almost total traffic loss. The network shows up as active, and low-level packets such as PINGs can be sent and received as normal. But traffic such as UDP and TCP just doesn't get through."

Apple's own Support Community has much discussion, and some proposed workarounds, but no definite explanation or solution appears to have emerged yet.

Submission + - EU Sets Goal To Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions 40% by 2030 (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The 28 nations in the European Union agreed Friday to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40% (going by 1990 levels) by the year 2030. The deal received widespread criticism; industry bosses said the 2030 targets were too extreme, while many environmental groups said the goals weren't ambitious enough. The deal requires each nation to achieve the goal independently — earlier targets could use international offsets to avoid or reduce action. EU officials hope the deal will encourage the U.S. and China to take a more aggressive stance on fighting climate change.

Submission + - High speed evolution (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: Normally the 'evolution conjures up an image of "super-long time frame" but at least in the case of lizards on Florida islands the evolution seems to have shifted to the fifth gear

Sientists working on islands in Florida have documented the rapid evolution of a native lizard species — in as little as 15 years — as a result of pressure from an invading lizard species, introduced from Cuba. After contact with the invasive species, the native lizards began perching higher in trees, and, generation after generation, their feet evolved to become better at gripping the thinner, smoother branches found higher up

The change occurred at an astonishing pace: Within a few months, native lizards had begun shifting to higher perches, and over the course of 15 years and 20 generations, their toe pads had become larger, with more sticky scales on their feet. "We did predict that we'd see a change, but the degree and quickness with which they evolved was surprising," said Yoel Stuart, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Integrative Biology at The University of Texas at Austin and lead author of the study

"To put this shift in perspective, if human height were evolving as fast as these lizards' toes, the height of an average American man would increase from about 5 foot 9 inches today to about 6 foot 4 inches within 20 generations — an increase that would make the average U.S. male the height of an NBA shooting guard," said Stuart. "Although humans live longer than lizards, this rate of change would still be rapid in evolutionary terms"

This latest study is one of only a few well-documented examples of what evolutionary biologists call "character displacement," in which similar species competing with each other evolve differences to take advantage of different ecological niches. A classic example comes from the finches studied by Charles Darwin. Two species of finch in the Galápagos Islands diverged in beak shape as they adapted to different food sources. The researchers speculate that the competition between brown and green anoles for the same food and space may be driving the adaptations of the green anoles. Stuart also noted that the adults of both species are known to eat the hatchlings of the other species

"So it may be that if you're a hatchling, you need to move up into the trees quickly or you'll get eaten," said Stuart. "Maybe if you have bigger toe pads, you'll do that better than if you don't"

Submission + - Italian Supreme Court Bans the 'Microsoft Tax' (fsf.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In a post at the Free Software Foundation, lawyer Marco Ciurcina reports that the Italian Supreme Court has ruled that the practice of forcing users to pay for a Windows license when they buy a new PC is illegal. Manufacturers in Italy are now legally obligated to refund that money if a buyer wants to put GNU/Linux or another free OS on the computer. Ciurcina says, "The focus of the Court's reasoning is that the sale of a PC with software preinstalled is not like the sale of a car with its components (the 4 wheels, the engine, etc.) that therefore are sold jointly. Buying a computer with preinstalled software, the user is required to conclude two different contracts: the first, when he buys the computer; the second, when he turns on the computer for the first time and he is required to accept or not the license terms of the preinstalled software.9 Therefore, if the user does not accept the software license, he has the right to keep the computer and install free software without having to pay the 'Microsoft tax.'"

Submission + - FCC Postpones Spectrum Auction Delayed Until 2016 (pcmag.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: 2014 was supposed to be the year broadcasters would be allowed to sell off their unused spectrum to mobile carriers. That got pushed back to 2015 in December, and now the Federal Communications Commission has bumped it to 2016 in the face of a lawsuit from the National Association of Broadcasters. The FCC says the legal briefs aren't even due until January 2015, and it will take them until the middle of the year to review the documents and respond in court. The delay is just fine with the NAB, but probably bad news for anyone hoping that spectrum would help to improve mobile communications in the U.S. any time soon.

Submission + - Profits! Profits! Profits! Ballmer Says Amazon Isn't a Real Business

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: According to Steve Ballmer, Amazon.com is not a real business. “They make no money,” Ballmer said on the Charlie Rose Show. “In my world, you’re not a real business until you make some money. I have a hard time with businesses that don’t make money at some point.” Ballmer’s comments come as Amazon posted a $437 million loss for the third quarter, disappointing Wall Street. "If you are worth $150 billion," Ballmer added, "eventually somebody thinks you’re going to make $15 billion pre-tax. They make about zero, and there’s a big gap between zero and 15." Fired-up as ever, LA Clippers owner Ballmer's diss comes after fellow NBA owner Mark Cuban similarly slammed IBM, saying Big Blue is no longer a tech company (Robert X. Cringely seems to concur). "Today, they [IBM] specialize in financial engineering," Cuban told CNBC after IBM posted another disappointing quarter. "They're no longer a tech company, they are an amalgamation of different companies that they are trying to arb[itrage] on Wall Street, and I'm not a fan of that at all."

Submission + - More brainlessness from Ebola experts and government operatives

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: A doctor, having just returned from Guinea where he was frequently exposed to ebola, wandered about New York City for days, thus ignoring government protocols that required him to limit his contact with outsiders.

Lo and behold, 9 days after his return he is diagnosed with Ebola.

However, this isn't the worst of it. The police, after securing the doctor's apartment, removed their gloves and masks used to protect them and dumped them in an ordinary street trash container on a public street.

Submission + - Paranautical Activity Dev Apologizes for Valve Death Threat. (softpedia.com)

Submitted by DemonOnIce
DemonOnIce writes: Softpedia reported that Mike Maulbeck, one of the developers working at Code Avarice,the independent studio behind Paranautical Activity, has publicly apologized for issuing a death threat to Valve founder Gabe Newell and confirms that he's no longer associated with the team or the game.

Steam is the biggest digital distribution platform available across PC, Mac, and Linux, offering tens of millions of owners access to all sorts of games, such as the recent Paranautical Activity, which was made by startup studio Code Avarice.

Unfortunately, the game was at the center of a massive controversy, as after exiting the Steam Early Access section and becoming fully available on the storefront, Valve mistakenly listed it as still being in Early Access.

This sent one of its designers, Mike Maulbeck, into a Twitter tirade, which ended with a death threat to Valve boss Gabe Newell.

The game was promptly taken off of the Steam storefront, with Valve issuing a statement saying that it doesn't take threats to its employees lightly.

Now, Maulbeck is apologizing for his actions on the Code Avarice blog, and confirms that, while the threat wasn't serious, it was still unwarranted and Valve hasn't made a mistake by delisting the game.

Submission + - OwnCloud Developer requests removal from Ubuntu repos: multiple vulnerabilities (webupd8.org)

Submitted by operator_error
operator_error writes: ownCloud developer Lukas Reschke has sent an email to the Ubuntu Devel mailing list, requesting that ownCloud (server) is removed from the Ubuntu repositories because the package is old and there are multiple critical security bugs for which no fixes have been backported. He adds that:

        "Those security bugs allows an unauthenticated attacker to gain complete control about the web server process".

However, packages can't be removed from the Ubuntu repositories for an Ubuntu version that was already released, that's why the package was removed from Ubuntu 14.10 (2 days before its release) but it's still available in the Ubuntu 14.04 and 12.04 repositories (ownCloud 6.0.1 for Ubuntu 14.04 and ownCloud 5.0.4 for Ubuntu 12.04, while the latest ownCloud version is 7.0.2).

Furthermore, the ownCloud package is in the universe repository and software in this repository "WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu security team" (you should see this if you take a look at your /etc/apt/sources.list file) so it's up to someone from the Ubuntu community to step up and fix it. "If nobody does that, then it unfortunately stays the way it is", says Marc Deslauriers, Security Tech Lead at Canonical.

You can follow the discussion @ Ubuntu Devel mailing list.

So, until (if) someone fixes this, if you're using ownCloud from the Ubuntu repositories, you should either remove it or upgrade to the latest ownCloud from its official repository, hosted by the openSUSE Build Service

Submission + - Verizon Injects Unique IDs into HTTP Traffic

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Verizon Wireless, the nation's largest wireless carrier, is now also a real-time data broker. According to a security researcher at Stanford, Big Red has been adding a unique identifier to web traffic. The purpose of the identifier is advertisement targeting, which is bad enough. But the design of the system also functions as a 'supercookie' for any website that a subscriber visits.

Submission + - Interpol Developing "Guidelines" for Use of Facial Recognition Software (interpol.int)

Submitted by retroworks
retroworks writes: INTERPOL announced the first meeting of its "Facial Expert Working Group" in order to "begin the process of developing international facial recognition standards." The two-day meeting (14 and 15 October) gathered 24 technical and biometrics experts and examiners from 16 countries who produced a ‘best practice guide’ for the quality, format and transmission of images to be used in facial recognition. It will be circulated to all 190 INTERPOL member countries to serve as a guideline for improving the quality of images necessary for accurate and effective facial recognition.

Last December (Bloomberg News) described a similar "voluntary guidelines" meeting between Facebook and Walmart for use of visual recognition to keep identification by retail store cameras in targeted online advertising. CBS also covered the story last December. http://newyork.cbslocal.com/20.

As more technology start ups like Facedeals http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/... recognize the opportunity to sell our browsing habits at stores to online marketing firms, Minority Report seems closer than ever. And unlike programs to erase, block, or deliver false clicks (cookie camouflage) to online advertisers, the solutions (wearing a Guy Fawkes mask or Groucho Marx glasses) seem much more intrusive.

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