Submission + - MIT Releases Aaron Swartz Report (mit.edu)
An anonymous reader writes: The MIT president released the findings of MIT's involvement in Aaron Swartz' death. It is pretty self explanatory.
Submission + - How one software developer lived entirely on Android (networkworld.com)
colinneagle writes: Bryan Lunduke took on another challenge recently, trying to conduct all of his daily work-related tasks (from writing to designing a comic to software development) exclusively on Android platforms. Surprisingly, it worked out pretty well.
The writing and design processes were pretty easy — Photoshop Touch and Google Drive on a Nexus 7 tablet. For software development, it got a little more tricky, involving a remote desktop, a virtual private server, and a mouse-and-keyboard connected to the Nexus. While he admits that using a remote desktop maybe considered cutting corners, he still gets to program on a mobile device, and that was the point in the first place.
The writing and design processes were pretty easy — Photoshop Touch and Google Drive on a Nexus 7 tablet. For software development, it got a little more tricky, involving a remote desktop, a virtual private server, and a mouse-and-keyboard connected to the Nexus. While he admits that using a remote desktop maybe considered cutting corners, he still gets to program on a mobile device, and that was the point in the first place.
Submission + - Farm 432: The handy kitchen appliance that breeds fly larva for protein (gizmag.com)
cylonlover writes: Flies are usually considered unwelcome guests in the kitchen, but one industrial designer is aiming to turn them into a renewable food source. Katharina Unger's Farm 432 concept is a fly-breeding device for home use that continually collects fly larva as a protein source for less squeamish diners. As unappetizing as it may sound, the designer hopes that convincing the Western world to add insects to its diet could help increase the planet's overall food supply.
Submission + - How Are You Celebrating National Sysadmin Day? (itworld.com)
jfruh writes: July 26 is Sysadmin Day, the system administrator's version of Secretary's Day. Are you giving your hardworking sysadmin the recognition they deserve? Blogger (and, yes, sysadmin) Sandra Henry-Stocker argues that a holiday like this is needed because due to the nature of their job, in everyday life sysadmins "get noticed least when they do the best work." So if your systems run so smoothly that you sometimes forget you even have a sysadmin on staff, be sure to recognize them for their excellent work today.
Submission + - Open-source project, Crypton, seeks to make encryption easier (networkworld.com)
alphadogg writes: An open-source software project aims to give software developers a simple way to wrap encryption into their applications to thwart online surveillance efforts. The project, called Crypton, comes from SpiderOak, a company known for its Dropbox-like online storage and synchronization service. SpiderOak differentiates itself by encrypting data in a such a way that none of its employees can access it, unlike Dropbox, where a few employees do have limited access to some kinds of data. Crypton started out as an internal tool that SpiderOak needed for some of its other software projects, said CEO Ethan Oberman. The company wanted a way for data to be securely encrypted without the need for users to download a separate program.
Submission + - iPhone Security Flaws Selling for $500,000 (ibtimes.co.uk)
DavidGilbert99 writes: Apple's iOS is seen as one of the most secure pieces of software out there, but so-called "zero-day" vulnerabilities in the operating system are selling on the open market for upwards of $500,000. This news comes in the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations about the extent of NSA spying in the US, and highlights just what a large industry selling security flaws is becoming....
Submission + - How Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages (guardian.co.uk)
Kaneda2112 writes: "The latest NSA revelations further expose the tensions between Silicon Valley and the Obama administration. All the major tech firms are lobbying the government to allow them to disclose more fully the extent and nature of their co-operation with the NSA to meet their customers' privacy concerns. Privately, tech executives are at pains to distance themselves from claims of collaboration and teamwork given by the NSA documents, and insist the process is driven by legal compulsion." Who the heck do you believe anymore?
Submission + - Leaked letter shows ISPs and government at war (bbc.co.uk)
An anonymous reader writes: A letter sent to the UK's four leading ISPs from the government has made them very cross indeed.
The letter comes from the Department for Education but it sets out a list of demands from Downing Street, with the stated aim of allowing the prime minister to make an announcement shortly. The companies are asked, among other things, for a commitment to fund an "awareness campaign" for parents. They're not particularly happy about promising cash for what the letter concedes is an "unknown campaign" but it's the next item on the menu which is the source of most of their anger.
The letter comes from the Department for Education but it sets out a list of demands from Downing Street, with the stated aim of allowing the prime minister to make an announcement shortly. The companies are asked, among other things, for a commitment to fund an "awareness campaign" for parents. They're not particularly happy about promising cash for what the letter concedes is an "unknown campaign" but it's the next item on the menu which is the source of most of their anger.
Submission + - Oldest lunar calendar found in Scotland
eionmac writes: The BBC in UK http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-23286928 publishes news that Archaeologists believe they have discovered the world's oldest lunar "calendar" in an Aberdeenshire field. Excavations of a field at Crathes Castle found a series of 12 pits which appear to mimic the phases of the moon and track lunar months. A team led by the University of Birmingham suggests the ancient monument was created by hunter-gatherers about 10,000 years ago. The pit alignment, at Warren Field, was first excavated in 2004. The experts who analysed the pits said they may have contained a wooden post. The Mesolithic "calendar" is thousands of years older than previous known formal time-measuring monuments created in Mesopotamia. The analysis has been published in the journal, Internet Archaeology
Submission + - This Student Project Could Kill Digital Ad Targeting (adage.com)
An anonymous reader writes: New School Student's System Confuses Ad Targeting With Cookie Misinformation.
Meet Rachel Law, a 25-year-old graduate student from Singapore, who has created a game that could literally wreak havoc on the online ad industry if released into the wild.
Meet Rachel Law, a 25-year-old graduate student from Singapore, who has created a game that could literally wreak havoc on the online ad industry if released into the wild.
Submission + - Zynga puts random stranger in customer support role (kotaku.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A server error has meant that for the past few months, a man not associated in any way with social gaming powerhouse Zynga has been getting customer support emails. When Zynga failed to return his messages, he started replying to the customers himself. Hilariously.
Comment Re:Self indulgent charity much? (Score 1) 36
Both posts by the same AC?
Submission + - Logged in to LinkedIn? I just got your first and last name, company and position (imasuper.com)
An anonymous reader writes: LinkedIn.com's Profile Stats feature allows any website to harvest your first name, last name, company name, position, and any other public LinkedIn information you have published to your profile. All they have to do is make a request to a harvesting profile, via a hidden iframe, img, or even ajax request.
Submission + - Google Code deprecates Download Service for Project Hosting (blogspot.com) 1
c0d3g33k writes: Google Project Hosting announced changes to the Download service on Wednesday, offering only "increasing misuse of the service and a desire to keep our community safe and secure" by way of explanation. Effective immediately, existing projects that offer no downloads and all new projects will no longer be able to create downloads. Existing projects which currently have downloads will lose the ability to create new downloads by January 2014, though existing downloads will remain available "for the foreseeable future". Google Drive is recommended as an alternative, but this will likely have to be done manually by project maintainers since the ability to create and manage downloads won't be part of the Project Hosting tools. This is a rather baffling move, since distributing project files via download is integral to FOSS culture.
Submission + - The Human Division (tor.com)
stoolpigeon writes: My review is below. I don't remember the exact fields from the review form and I can't figure out how to get to it here so here is what I have.
Title: The Human Division
Author: John Scalzi
Publisher: Tor Books
Pages: 432
ISBN: 978-0765333513
Rating: 9/10
How would humanity fare in a universe filled with other sentient races and the technology for all of them to interact? If human history is any indication there would be conflict. That conflict would be between many groups that saw themselves as people and the rest as monsters. What that universe and those interactions would look like is a key theme in John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series. The latest offering, The Human Division continues to dig deeply into a wide range of questions about what makes someone a person and how people treat one another at their best and worst.
It’s been five years since the publication of the last book in John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series, Zoe’s Tale. That entry saw Scalzi explore new ground with his first juvenile. The newest Old Man’s War book is another first for Scalzi. The Human Division was released on the web as a serial prior to being published in a complete volume in hardback and as an ebook. This was planned from the start and made for an interesting experience as those who chose to purchase chapters as they came out worked through the book together.
I have to admit I skipped out on reading the chapters as they were released. It seemed like a fun thing to do but I wanted to see what it would all cost in the end. Scalzi repeatedly said that the fully compiled story would cost the same as buying it in parts but I wanted to see how it would play out. So I avoided on-line discussion of the chapters as they were released and when it became available about a week ago I purchased the e-book version. The price was basically the same, though buying the complete book was a couple bucks cheaper and did include some extra content. I’d already read a big part of that extra content as it had been available earlier via Tor.com.
From what I’ve read on Scalzi’s blog, his experiment with serializing the book was a success from a busienss standpoint. And I got the impression that most readers enjoyed the process as they went along, though I did try to avoid most discussion as it was happening to avoid spoilers. Publishing stories in this manner has been around for a long time, but I think the results may encourage others to do the same and we may see more of this in the near future. Scalzi has already agreed to do season 2, or the next book, in the same fashion.
Reading it all at once, I could still appreciate that it was written this way. Each chapter is self contained to a large extent. There are glimpses into the lives of various characters, changes of setting, and some wonderful storytelling. It all fits together and is certainly a novel, not a collection of short stories, but much more episodic. I thought it allowed for a nice amount of flexibility in the flow of the story and I appreciated the end result even if I got it all in one package at the end.
Aside from interest in the method of delivery, I was very excited to read The Human Division for the story itself. I hadn’t enjoyed Scalzi’s last sci-fi outing, Redshirts and was really looking forward to his return to my favorite universe he has created. The Old Man’s War series, fitting into the military sci-fi genre, has of course brought many comparisons between Scalzi and Heinlein. I imagine part of the enjoyment I get from Scalzi’s books are that he does have some commonality with R.A.H. who is one of my favorite authors. But really Scalzi does have his own voice, style and message and this comes more and more to the fore as the series moves on. The Human Division has all of the excitement, action and wit that makes reading Scalzi so fun. I think his ability to put together strong dialogue is unparalleled. And it is still military sci-fi, with our main protagonist being a soldier. Yet the world is so much more complex and rich than a simple kill or be killed scenario that moves from one point of action to the next. And even what would be slow points in a book that used action to carry a lack of plot, are full of rewarding interaction. We get to know and care about characters, lose some all too quickly and feel a sense of real people engaging one another as opposed to cardboard cutouts.
I wouldn’t put the Old Man’s War books into the hard sci-fi category but they aren’t just fantasy dropped into space either. Scalzi obviously gives some thought to settings and technology and so I find it easy to overlook some of the issues that are skipped over for the sake of story. In the end it is entertainment and interesting questions about people and society that draw me to these books, more than a desire to learn more about physics or astronomy.
I did read follow on comments after the series was complete and noticed a few people who felt that there was a cliffhanger ending. While the book does end with some larger scale issues unresolved, I think that to call it a cliffhanger is not really accurate. I found the ending to be an appropriate point of closure, to step away from the characters. As I would tell me kids if they have to pause a movie, it was a “good place to stop.” If we followed everyone to the completion of all that was going on in their lives, the book would be immense. As it is, it is already a solid read. It might feel a bit abrupt to some as it does set up some questions that are left unanswered that normally would be in a more formulaic treatment, but I’m glad Scalzi left them rather than a hasty or awkward finish.
As I mentioned, there are two extra stories in the newly published compilation of all 13 chapters. They both involve characters from the book and I thought that they both were a lot of fun. One is After the Coup which can be read on its own at Tor.com. The other, Hafte Sorvalh Eats a Churro and Speaks to the Youth of Today is shorter but very sweet and let me finish the book with a smile.
I’ve enjoyed every entry in the OMW series and I am very pleased to see it continue strongly. While reading the previous books is not necessary to enjoying this one, I can’t imagine not wanting to read the other four. If someone is unsure, feel free to start with The Human Division and if they enjoy it, jumping back and reading the others will still be very enjoyable. There will be some spoilers but I don’t think they’ll take much away from Scalzi’s real strengths in these stories, which are much more driven by character than plot. I think Scalzi will stand as a sci-fi great for some time to come and it is a lot of fun to get to watch it happen rather than just idolizing the masters of the past.
Title: The Human Division
Author: John Scalzi
Publisher: Tor Books
Pages: 432
ISBN: 978-0765333513
Rating: 9/10
How would humanity fare in a universe filled with other sentient races and the technology for all of them to interact? If human history is any indication there would be conflict. That conflict would be between many groups that saw themselves as people and the rest as monsters. What that universe and those interactions would look like is a key theme in John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series. The latest offering, The Human Division continues to dig deeply into a wide range of questions about what makes someone a person and how people treat one another at their best and worst.
It’s been five years since the publication of the last book in John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series, Zoe’s Tale. That entry saw Scalzi explore new ground with his first juvenile. The newest Old Man’s War book is another first for Scalzi. The Human Division was released on the web as a serial prior to being published in a complete volume in hardback and as an ebook. This was planned from the start and made for an interesting experience as those who chose to purchase chapters as they came out worked through the book together.
I have to admit I skipped out on reading the chapters as they were released. It seemed like a fun thing to do but I wanted to see what it would all cost in the end. Scalzi repeatedly said that the fully compiled story would cost the same as buying it in parts but I wanted to see how it would play out. So I avoided on-line discussion of the chapters as they were released and when it became available about a week ago I purchased the e-book version. The price was basically the same, though buying the complete book was a couple bucks cheaper and did include some extra content. I’d already read a big part of that extra content as it had been available earlier via Tor.com.
From what I’ve read on Scalzi’s blog, his experiment with serializing the book was a success from a busienss standpoint. And I got the impression that most readers enjoyed the process as they went along, though I did try to avoid most discussion as it was happening to avoid spoilers. Publishing stories in this manner has been around for a long time, but I think the results may encourage others to do the same and we may see more of this in the near future. Scalzi has already agreed to do season 2, or the next book, in the same fashion.
Reading it all at once, I could still appreciate that it was written this way. Each chapter is self contained to a large extent. There are glimpses into the lives of various characters, changes of setting, and some wonderful storytelling. It all fits together and is certainly a novel, not a collection of short stories, but much more episodic. I thought it allowed for a nice amount of flexibility in the flow of the story and I appreciated the end result even if I got it all in one package at the end.
Aside from interest in the method of delivery, I was very excited to read The Human Division for the story itself. I hadn’t enjoyed Scalzi’s last sci-fi outing, Redshirts and was really looking forward to his return to my favorite universe he has created. The Old Man’s War series, fitting into the military sci-fi genre, has of course brought many comparisons between Scalzi and Heinlein. I imagine part of the enjoyment I get from Scalzi’s books are that he does have some commonality with R.A.H. who is one of my favorite authors. But really Scalzi does have his own voice, style and message and this comes more and more to the fore as the series moves on. The Human Division has all of the excitement, action and wit that makes reading Scalzi so fun. I think his ability to put together strong dialogue is unparalleled. And it is still military sci-fi, with our main protagonist being a soldier. Yet the world is so much more complex and rich than a simple kill or be killed scenario that moves from one point of action to the next. And even what would be slow points in a book that used action to carry a lack of plot, are full of rewarding interaction. We get to know and care about characters, lose some all too quickly and feel a sense of real people engaging one another as opposed to cardboard cutouts.
I wouldn’t put the Old Man’s War books into the hard sci-fi category but they aren’t just fantasy dropped into space either. Scalzi obviously gives some thought to settings and technology and so I find it easy to overlook some of the issues that are skipped over for the sake of story. In the end it is entertainment and interesting questions about people and society that draw me to these books, more than a desire to learn more about physics or astronomy.
I did read follow on comments after the series was complete and noticed a few people who felt that there was a cliffhanger ending. While the book does end with some larger scale issues unresolved, I think that to call it a cliffhanger is not really accurate. I found the ending to be an appropriate point of closure, to step away from the characters. As I would tell me kids if they have to pause a movie, it was a “good place to stop.” If we followed everyone to the completion of all that was going on in their lives, the book would be immense. As it is, it is already a solid read. It might feel a bit abrupt to some as it does set up some questions that are left unanswered that normally would be in a more formulaic treatment, but I’m glad Scalzi left them rather than a hasty or awkward finish.
As I mentioned, there are two extra stories in the newly published compilation of all 13 chapters. They both involve characters from the book and I thought that they both were a lot of fun. One is After the Coup which can be read on its own at Tor.com. The other, Hafte Sorvalh Eats a Churro and Speaks to the Youth of Today is shorter but very sweet and let me finish the book with a smile.
I’ve enjoyed every entry in the OMW series and I am very pleased to see it continue strongly. While reading the previous books is not necessary to enjoying this one, I can’t imagine not wanting to read the other four. If someone is unsure, feel free to start with The Human Division and if they enjoy it, jumping back and reading the others will still be very enjoyable. There will be some spoilers but I don’t think they’ll take much away from Scalzi’s real strengths in these stories, which are much more driven by character than plot. I think Scalzi will stand as a sci-fi great for some time to come and it is a lot of fun to get to watch it happen rather than just idolizing the masters of the past.
