65416621
submission
snydeq writes:
Indie developers take heed: Heads-down coding is a one-way ticket back to the corporate grind, writes Steven A. Lowe, outlining the 14 most common mistakes that end up sinking independent developers' dreams of being their own bosses. 'Deciding to go it alone as an independent software developer is a liberating experience. The thrill of being your own boss cannot be denied — neither can the fact that being your own boss means building a business. It’s no longer simply about the code. Everything is your responsibility, from paperwork to partnerships, and with this increasing burden come greater pitfalls that can sink your business.'
65381315
submission
MojoKid writes:
Have you ever tried hunting and pecking on a miniature keyboard that's been crammed onto a smartwatch's tiny display? Unless the tips of your fingers somehow resemble that of a stylus, you're in for a challenge. Interestingly enough, it's Microsoft that might have the most logical solution for typing on small size displays running Google's Android Wear platform. Microsoft's research division has built an analog keyboard prototype for Android Wear that eliminates the need to tap at tiny letters, and instead has you write them out. On the surface, such a solution seems like you'd be trading one tedious task for another, though a demo of the technology in action shows that this could be a promising solution — watch how fast the guy in the video is able to hammer out a response.
65343231
submission
MojoKid writes:
One of the downsides to the news cycle is that no matter how big or hot a story is, something else inevitably comes along. The advent of ISIS and Ebola, combined with the passing of time, have pushed national security concerns out of the limelight — until, that is, someone at the NSA helps out by reminding us that yes, the agency still exists and yes, it still has some insane policies and restrictions. Earlier this year, the Federation of American Scientists filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the NSA. The group was seeking information it thought would be relatively low-key — what authorized information had been leaked to the media over the past 12 months? The NSA's response reads as follows: "The document responsive to your request has been reviewed by this Agency as required by the FOIA and has been found to be currently and properly classified in accordance with Executive Order 13526. The document is classified because its disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security." The NSA is insisting that it has the right to keep its lawful compliance and public disclosures secret not because the NSA is made of evil people but because the NSA has a knee-jerk preference and demand for secrecy. In a spy organization, that's understandable and admirable but it's precisely the opposite of what's needed to rebuild American's faith in the institution and it's judgment.
65303941
submission
MojoKid writes:
A new interview with Assassin's Creed Unity senior producer Vincent Pontbriand has some gamers seeing red and others crying "told you so," after the developer revealed that the game's 900p framerate and 30 fps target on consoles is a result of weak CPU performance rather than GPU compute. "Technically we're CPU-bound," Pontbriand said. "The GPUs are really powerful, obviously the graphics look pretty good, but it's the CPU that has to process the AI, the number of NPCs we have on screen, all these systems running in parallel. We were quickly bottlenecked by that and it was a bit frustrating, because we thought that this was going to be a tenfold improvement over everything AI-wise..." This has been read by many as a rather damning referendum on the capabilities of AMD's APU that's under the hood of Sony's and Microsoft's new consoles. To some extent, that's justified; the Jaguar CPU inside both the Sony PS4 and Xbox One is a modest chip with a relatively low clock speed. Both consoles may offer eight CPU threads on paper, but games can't access all that headroom. One thread is reserved for the OS and a few more cores will be used for processing the 3D pipeline. Between the two, Ubisoft may have only had 4-5 cores for AI and other calculations — scarcely more than last gen, and the Xbox 360 and PS3 CPUs were clocked much faster than the 1.6 / 1.73GHz frequencies of their replacements.
65272589
submission
MojoKid writes:
AMD has just announced a new chief and her name is Dr. Lisa Su. She replaces Rory Read, who has stepped down as president and CEO as part of a transition plan that will have him support the new boss in an advisory role. Read will remain with AMD through the end of the year. Read replaced Dirk Meyer as CEO of AMD back in August 2011. While not particularly animated or, quite frankly, all that interesting to listen to during keynotes, Read wasn't brought in to put on a show. His job was to promote the AMD brand and build connections with other industry players, and to his credit, that's what he did during the past three years. He also returned the company to non-GAAP profitability. Dr. Su brings with her an impressive resume that includes prior experience with Freescale Semiconductor, Inc., Texas Instruments, and IBM, the latter of which she spent 13 years in various engineering and business leadership positions.
65267829
submission
snydeq writes:
Membership in the Open Invention Network, a software community set up to protect Linux against patent aggressors, has grown dramatically in the past year just as the tide seems to be turning on patent trolls. 'Why all this interest in OIN? It offers little protection against nonpracticing entities — patent trolls who are organizationally small companies, even if the threat they pose is expensive and large. But it does offer protection against an equally insidious threat: big trolls,' writes Simon Phipps. 'The big corporations show up with their giant patent portfolios, threatening legal doom if royalties aren't paid. Attaching royalties to product or service delivery is a serious issue for companies, reducing margins long-term — especially in business models where the monetization is separated from the product. But OIN neutralizes that strategy for those building with open source, as the big corporations in the network both license their patent portfolios in and commit not to litigate against the open source software in the Linux System Definition. The bigger it gets, the better it protects.'
65229663
submission
MojoKid writes:
When Nvidia launched their new GeForce GTX 980 and 970 last month, it was obvious that these cards would be coming to mobile sooner rather than later. The significant increase that Maxwell offers in performance-per-watt means that these GPUs should shine in mobile contexts, maybe even more-so than in desktop. Today, Nvidia is unveiling two new mobile GPUs — the GeForce GTX 980M and 970M. Both notebook graphics engines are based on Maxwell's 28nm architecture, and both are trimmed slightly from the full desktop implementation. The GTX 980M is a 1536-core chip (just like the GTX 680 / 680M) while the GTX 970 will pack 1280 cores. Clock speeds are 1038MHz base for the GTX 980M and 924MHz for the GTX 970M, which is significantly faster than the previous gen GTX 680M's launch speeds. The 980M will carry up to 4GB of RAM, while the 970M will offer 3GB and a smaller memory bus. From eyeballing relative performance expectations, the GTX 970M should be well-suited to 1080p or below at high detail levels, while the GTX 980M should be capable of ultra detail at 1080p or higher resolutions. Maxwell's better efficiency means that it should offer a significant performance improvement over mobile Kepler, even with the same number of cores. Also with this launch Nvidia is introducing "Battery Boost" as a solution for games with less demanding graphics, where battery life can be extended by governing clock speeds to maintain playable frames, without overpower the GPU at higher than needed frame rates.
65218207
submission
snydeq writes:
PHP vs. Node, SQL vs. NoSQL, compiled vs. scripting, InfoWorld's Peter Wayner surveys the passionate debates and technical rifts that define programming today. 'With each new project we undertake, we're faced with the fundamental questions that underlie the differences in these technologies. Do we favor simplicity or correctness? Open source or corporate support? Brackets or whitespace? Like Yin and Yang, these questions define the great trade-offs enterprise developers face today.'
65203565
submission
coondoggie writes:
In his opening keynote Garter’s Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president and global head of research said that since 2013 650 million new physical objects have come online. 3D printers became a billion dollar market; 10% of cars became connected; and the number of Chief Data Officers and Chief Digital Officer jobs have doubled. By 2015, all of these items will double again, he said.
65201649
submission
MojoKid writes:
When Star Wars: The Old Republic made news in September, it was for announcing that one of the mythos' most enduring antiheroes, the onetime Sith Lord Revan, would be making an appearance in the MMO. Now, a new bug could wipe some of that goodwill off the map. Modder and TOR enthusiast SWTorMiner has created a video that shows him fixing a simple visual bug (introduced in one of the recent game patches) to make a character's eyewear render properly. SWTorMiner doesn't claim to have discovered the bug himself, but he's drawing attention to it precisely because it allows for much larger hacks than just replacing a bit of cosmetic detail. In theory, this same exploit could be used to allow access to areas of the game that are currently locked out, either because previous bosses haven't yet been killed, or because PvP battlegrounds are still in warm-up periods. These are the kinds of problems that can rapidly balloon and challenge the fundamental nature of the game.
65136307
submission
coondoggie writes:
iven enough computer power, desire, brains and some luck, the security of most systems can be broken. But there are cryptographic and algorithmic security techniques, ideas and concepts out there that add a level of algorithmic mystification that could be built into programs that would make them close to unbreakable. That’s what the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) wants for a new program called Safeware.
65115143
submission
snydeq writes:
Remember that incredibly stupid thing you did a decade or two ago? You wouldn't want to live it down every day. Neither should the Internet, writes Andrew C. Oliver, putting CGI squarely in the cross hairs, thanks to Shellshock. 'Frankly, this nasty bug in Bash should not be a big deal — and wouldn’t be if it weren’t for CGI, one of the most widespread, terrible ideas ever invented. ... If not for CGI, this bug would be a minor privilege escalation path for users with permissions to kick off shell scripts as root (or other more privileged users). It would not be an “oh, did someone break the Internet again?”-level threat. The issue is that CGI exposes the HTTP headers as environment variables, and since Bash may be kicking off your shell script, anyone on the Internet can do it.'
65114461
submission
coondoggie writes:
Far-reaching changes in the way we cool large structures and make alternative energy products are driving $60 million worth of research and product development from the Department of Energy.
Specifically, the DOE’s advanced research group Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) this week announced two programs, one that would focus on developing low-cost, highly efficient and scalable dry-cooling technologies for thermoelectric power plants and another to advance automated systems-level technology that would speed improvement of plant biomass crops to increase alternative fuel options.
65113409
submission
MojoKid writes:
Buried in the details of Microsoft's technical preview for Windows 10 is a bit of a footnote concerning the operating system's requirements. Windows 10 will have exactly the same requirements as Windows 8.1, which had the same requirements as Windows 8, which stuck to Windows 7 specs, which was the same as Windows Vista. At this point, it's something we take for granted with future Windows release. As the years roll by, you can't help wondering what we're actually giving up in exchange for holding the minimum system spec at a single-core 1GHz, 32-bit chip with just 1GB of RAM. The average smartphone is more powerful than this these days. For decades, the standard argument has been that Microsoft had to continue supporting ancient operating systems and old configurations, ignoring the fact that the company did its most cutting-edge work when it was willing to kill off its previous products in fairly short order. what would Windows look like if Microsoft at least mandated a dual-core product? What if DX10 — a feature set that virtually every video card today supports, according to Valve's Steam Hardware Survey, became the minimum standard, at least on the x86 side of the equation? How much better might the final product be if Microsoft put less effort into validating ancient hardware and kicked those specs upwards, just a notch or two?
65089835
submission
coondoggie writes:
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said this week one of its contractors, working on one of the agency’s anti-counterfeit projects has developed and deployed what it calls an Advanced Scanning Optical Microscope that can scan integrated circuits by using an extremely narrow infrared laser beam, to probe microelectronic circuits at nanometer levels, revealing information about chip construction as well as the function of circuits at the transistor level.
