f1vlad - Slashdot User

Man-Shaped Robots Harass Britain Once Again 54

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @09:43AM from the typical-government-IT-project dept.

NotRicky writes: The UK's terrible string of luck with violent robots continues. The man-shaped metal monstrosities that have plagued the country at seemingly random times throughout history rose up once more yesterday. No one yet knows their source, or what phenomenon — natural or man-made — keeps drawing them to that area of the world. While initial reports indicated trillions of dollars worth of damage and countless lives lost, the re-establishment of communications paints a much more hopeful picture. The British government remains quiet about the situation, politely refusing foreign aid and letting one of their intelligence agencies direct efforts to restore order. Reporters and camera crews are having difficulty documenting the situation — it's not clear whether this is due to interference from the government or simply the chaotic nature of the robot uprising. A medical professional on the scene was quoted as saying, "It's simple, really — even the flattened brick you call a computer can undelete, can't it?"

Submission + - German Man Creates the World's First Working 3D Printed Solar Powered Engine

Submitted by ErnieKey on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @09:29AM

ErnieKey writes: An engineer in Germany has 3D printed what is believed to be the first working solar powered engine. It runs entirely off of the sun's heat, and can be fabricated on virtually any desktop 3D printer. It is designed after the concept of the Stirling engine, and he says that it could be scaled up to actually function as a working engine for a vehicle.

Corporation Investigates Spurious Signal -- What They Found Will Shock You 85

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @08:58AM from the your-chest-will-swell-with-pride dept.

Mother_01101 writes: The Weyland-Yutani Corporation announced today one of the most fantastic discoveries in human existence: alien life! Colony LV-426 made first contact, and one of W-Y Corp's long-term research vessels, Nostromo, has gone to provide assistance and bring these life forms home to engage in peaceful learning and negotiation. Initial reports from Nostromo indicate all has gone well, though they're now under radio silence for security purposes. W-Y Corp says they will, of course, honor all quarantine procedures and do everything they can to make sure the transition goes smoothly. Their CEO reminded us: "Safety is paramount!"

Tatooine Youth Suspected In Terrorist Attack 179

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @08:12AM from the strange-two-dimensional-shockwave-still-puzzles-scientists dept.

BeruHadItComing writes: Imperial investigators are still trying to piece together what happened in last week's horrifying terrorist attack on our largest orbital defense station. Over a million loyal citizens, scientists, and medical staff lost their lives in the grisly attack while the station was being put through training exercises near the Yavin system. Billions more are in mourning, while a number of powerful senators have renewed calls to increase defense spending. Initial reports have confirmed Rebel involvement, and officials are making inquiries about a young insurgent from Tatooine with known ties to religious fundamentalists.

California Has Become the First State To Get Over 5% of Its Power From Solar 265

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @05:11AM from the ignore-the-next-group-of-stories-if-you-hate-fun dept.

Lucas123 writes: While the rest of the nation's solar power generation hovers around 1%, California clocked in with a record 5% of power coming from utility-grade (1MW or more) solar power sources, according to a report from Mercom Capital Group and the Energy Information Administration. That's three times the next closest state, Arizona. At the same time, 22 states have yet to deploy even one utility-grade solar power plant, according to the Solar Energy Industry Association. Meanwhile, the rest of the world saw a 14% uptick in solar power installations in 2014 for a total of 54.5GW of capacity, and that figure is expected to grow even faster in 2015. While China still leads the world in new solar capacity, Japan and the U.S. come in as a close second and third, respectively. In the U.S. distributed solar and utility-grade solar installations are soaring as the solar investment tax credit (ITC) is set to expire next year. The U.S. is expected to deploy 8.5GW of new solar capacity in 2015, according to Mercom Capital Group.

Submission + - Press release: Neocities Raises $400 million at $14b valuation (neocities.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @04:51AM

Submission + - Announcing HTML 6, the New Version of the Web

Submitted by Shlomi Fish on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @03:49AM

Shlomi Fish writes: The World-Wide-Web Consortium (W3C) is excited to announce HTML 6 ("HTML Sicks"), the new version of the Web standards, that will supplant and succeed HTML5, and will feature many new features and innovations. Do you find it exciting as well?

UK IP Chief Wants ISPs To Police Piracy Proactively 87

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @02:07AM from the he-believes-in-intellectual-property dept.

An anonymous reader sends this report from TorrentFreak: The UK's top IP advisor has published recommendations on how Internet service providers should deal with online piracy. Among other things, he suggested that Internet services should search for and filter infringing content proactively. According to the report, ISPs have a moral obligation to do more against online piracy. Mike Weatherley, a Conservative MP and Intellectual Property Adviser to UK Prime Minister David Cameron, has pushed various copyright related topics onto the political agenda since early last year. Previously Weatherley suggested that search engines should blacklist pirate sites, kids should be educated on copyright ethics, and that persistent file-sharers should be thrown in jail.

World's Largest Aircraft Seeks Investors To Begin Operation 140

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @01:06AM from the go-big-or-go-home dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The Airlander 10 is significantly larger than a 747. It's an airship that incorporates elements of blimps, planes, and hovercraft. Buoyed by a vast volume of helium, it's capable of cruising at a speed of 80 knots. It was built as a military venture, intended to be used for surveillance tasks. But as the war in Afghanistan wound down, government officials found they had no use for the airship. They ended up selling it back to the company who made it for $300,000 — after paying them $90 million to build it. Now, a small group of investors are trying to get it operational, in part to show people how safe the technology can be, and to hopefully spur construction of more airships. They say the Airlander 10 is capable of surviving a missile strike, but visions of the Hindenburg still loom large in our cultural memory.

Submission + - Google Exits Search, Email

Submitted by Applehu Akbar on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @12:33AM

Applehu Akbar writes: Early-morning Internet users today discovered that overnight a significant change had taken place in the way they are going to be accessing the Internet in the future. In search bars and Web browsers across America and around the world, Google was no longer functioning. Any search brought up nothing but a terse announcement page from Larry Page, Google CEO, that the Internet titan had "exited the advertiser-paid search and email product lines to concentrate on other business.” Even for a company known for its fast-changing product lineup, users deemed this a radical announcement.

Although industry analysts are by now accustomed to Google’s sudden decisions to drop products that were still in the process of finding an audience, many were perplexed at the decision to exit an arena where for years Google has been the iconic player. But this morning, as users fumble with Bing and Yahoo as replacement search engines, a strategy is becoming apparent to Internet insiders.

As one Wall Street analyst who refused to be named put it, “Now that through its search and email operations Google knows basically everything about everybody, its corporate database of user data has become the most valuable part of the company. Although up to now Google has been monetizing this data by selling a slow and constant drip of it to advertisers, the way is now clear for Google to squeeze its database into diamonds by filing for patents on every idea that can be gleaned from it. Google will become the greatest patent holding company in the world.'

A Silicon Valley blogger who covers social media offered an example. “Do you remember that time six months ago when you had a great idea for an improved plumbing leak detector and wondered if it had been done before? What you didn’t realize at the time is that that set of Google searches you did one Thursday midnight gave away your approach. You may never get around to filing for a patent on that idea, but Google will."

The End of College? Not So Fast 145

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @12:05AM from the beer-companies-and-loan-companies-won't-allow-it dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The advent of MOOCs, Khan Academy, and the hundreds of other learning sites that have popped up caused many people to predict the decline of expensive, four-year universities. But Donald Heller writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education that most of the people making these claims don't have a good understanding of how actual students are interacting with online classes. He points out that it's a lot easier for a 40-year-old who's in a stable life position, and who has already experienced college-level education to work through an MOOC with ease. But things change when you're asking 18- to 20-year-olds to give up the structure and built-in motivation of a physical university to instead sit at their computer for hours at a time. (The extremely low pass rate for free online courses provides some evidence for this.) Heller also warns that prematurely hailing MOOCs as a replacement for colleges will only encourage governments and organizations to stop investing in institutions of higher learning, which could have dire consequences for education worldwide.

NSA Worried About Recruitment, Post-Snowden 247

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @10:02PM from the should-have-thought-of-that-before-being-jerks dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The NSA employs tens of thousands of people, and they're constantly recruiting more. They're looking for 1,600 new workers this year alone. Now that their reputation has taken a major hit with the revelations of whistleblower Edward Snowden, they aren't sure they'll be able to meet that goal. Not only that, but the NSA has to compete with other companies, and they Snowden leaks made many of them more competitive: "Ever since the Snowden leaks, cybersecurity has been hot in Silicon Valley. In part that's because the industry no longer trusts the government as much as it once did. Companies want to develop their own security, and they're willing to pay top dollar to get the same people the NSA is trying to recruit." If academia's relationship with the NSA continues to cool, the agency could find itself struggling within a few years.

Why More 'Star Wars' Actors Don't Become Stars 360

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @08:20PM from the thanks-george dept.

HughPickens.com writes: When you become an actor, landing a role in a movie as big as Star Wars may seem like a dream come true. But Tatiana Siegel and Borys Kit report at The Hollywood Reporter that six movies in, the Star Wars franchise has only spawned one megastar: Harrison Ford, unusual for a series of this magnitude. Neither Ewan McGregor nor Liam Neeson was helped by the franchise and the list of acting careers that never took off is even longer, from original stars Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher to Jake Lloyd (young Anakin Skywalker) and most notably Hayden Christensen, whose star was on the rise when he nabbed 2002's Attack of the Clones. Even Natalie Portman, who already had a hot career before Episodes I-III, admitted she struggled after the exposure. "Everyone thought I was a horrible actress," says Portman. "I was in the biggest-grossing movie of the decade, and no director wanted to work with me."

So what's the problem? "When you sign up for this, you're signing your life away, and you're keeping yourself from any other franchises out there," says an agent whose client is one of the stars of Episode VII. "They will not let you be in another franchise. They're going to be cranking out a new movie every year. These actors never get to read the script before signing on. They don't even know which [subsequent] one they are in. And then they become known for that role, and it's hard to see them in [another] kind of movie." Still, agents keep pursuing roles in the upcoming films even though newcomers can only command a meager $65,000 to $125,000 for Episode VII. "It secures all involved a place in film history," says agent Sarah Fargo, "and guarantees a huge global audience, enhancing an actor's marketability."

Why More 'Star Wars' Actors Don't Become Stars 360

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @08:20PM from the thanks-george dept.

HughPickens.com writes: When you become an actor, landing a role in a movie as big as Star Wars may seem like a dream come true. But Tatiana Siegel and Borys Kit report at The Hollywood Reporter that six movies in, the Star Wars franchise has only spawned one megastar: Harrison Ford, unusual for a series of this magnitude. Neither Ewan McGregor nor Liam Neeson was helped by the franchise and the list of acting careers that never took off is even longer, from original stars Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher to Jake Lloyd (young Anakin Skywalker) and most notably Hayden Christensen, whose star was on the rise when he nabbed 2002's Attack of the Clones. Even Natalie Portman, who already had a hot career before Episodes I-III, admitted she struggled after the exposure. "Everyone thought I was a horrible actress," says Portman. "I was in the biggest-grossing movie of the decade, and no director wanted to work with me."

So what's the problem? "When you sign up for this, you're signing your life away, and you're keeping yourself from any other franchises out there," says an agent whose client is one of the stars of Episode VII. "They will not let you be in another franchise. They're going to be cranking out a new movie every year. These actors never get to read the script before signing on. They don't even know which [subsequent] one they are in. And then they become known for that role, and it's hard to see them in [another] kind of movie." Still, agents keep pursuing roles in the upcoming films even though newcomers can only command a meager $65,000 to $125,000 for Episode VII. "It secures all involved a place in film history," says agent Sarah Fargo, "and guarantees a huge global audience, enhancing an actor's marketability."

Google Unveils the Chromebit: an HDMI Chromebook Dongle 50

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @07:39PM from the still-waiting-on-hardware-called-chromedome dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Today Google unveiled a new device: the Chromebit. It's a small compute stick that contains the Rockchip 3288 processor, 2GB RAM, and 16GB of storage — much like a low-end Chromebook. It connects to a TV or monitor through an HDMI port. (It also has a USB port for power and plugging in peripherals.) Google says the Chromebit is their solution for turning any display into a computer, and it will cost under $100. Google also announced a couple of new Chromebooks as well. Haier and Hisense models will cost $150, and an ASUS model with a rotating display will cost $250.

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