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Submission + - The One App You Need on Your Resume if You Want a Job at Google

HughPickens.com writes: Jim Edwards writes at Business Insider that Google is so large and has such a massive need for talent that if you have the right skills, Google is really enthusiastic to hear from you — especially if you know how to use MatLab, a fourth-generation programming language that allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementation of algorithms, creation of user interfaces, and interfacing with programs written in other languages, including C, C++, Java, Fortran and Python. The key is that data is produced visually or graphically, rather than in a spreadsheet. According to Jonathan Rosenberg , Google's former senior vice president for product management, being a master of statistics is probably your best way into Google right now and if you want to work at Google, make sure you can use MatLab. Big data — how to create it, manipulate it, and put it to good use — is one of those areas in which Google is really enthusiastic about. The sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians. When every business has free and ubiquitous data, the ability to understand it and extract value from it becomes the complimentary scarce factor. It leads to intelligence, and the intelligent business is the successful business, regardless of its size. Rosenberg says that "my quote about statistics that I didn't use but often do is, 'Data is the sword of the 21st century, those who wield it the samurai.'"

Submission + - Blue chip software bug leads to 'instant pwnage' (cso.com.au)

An anonymous reader writes: An enterprise virtual browser claimed to offer “100 percent secure web browsing” used by some of the world's biggest organisations contained a critical vulnerability that “broke the basic value proposition” of the platform. The remote code execution bug could lead to "instant pwnage" of enterprise workstations using the Jetro Cockpit Secure Browsing platform.

Organisations using the vulnerable versions of the platform would be arguably "better off using no protection at all", the researcher wrote. Jetro customers include Coca-Cola; Carlsberg; Fisher & Paykel; Bayer; UPS; security firm G4S; the Israeli Police; Motorola, and Deloitte.

Submission + - Warner Bros Montreal news to costumers: no more bug fixes for Arkham Origins (vg247.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Warner Bros. Montreal told to users complaining on the company official forums for game bugs that it i'll not issue any more patches to fix them (game bugs), and that its workforce is totally focused on the upcoming DLC.
The statement come from a Community Manager who has said that "if" some future patch fix come it i'll be only for "game breaking" issues, the rest of the game bugs i'll remain unfixed.
Community users in the forum reacted whit enragement and indignation after the official statement.
Multiple news pages are covering the issue (like ign and vg247).

Submission + - Ugly Trends Threaten Aviation Industry (washingtonpost.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The Washington Post reports, "In the past several decades, the number of private and recreational pilots across the country has plummeted, as has the number of small aircraft being manufactured — trends that some say have been accelerated by increasingly strict federal regulations. If the decline continues, it will spell trouble for entrepreneurs ... Since 1980, the number of pilots in the country has nosedived from about 827,000 in 1980 to 617,000, according to the Frederick, Md.-based Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. During about the same period, data from the General Aviation Manufacturers Association in Washington show that production of single-engine planes plunged from 14,000 per year to fewer than 700."

Submission + - Pentago is a first player win (perfect-pentago.net)

jwpeterson writes: Like chess and go, pentago is a two player, deterministic, perfect knowledge, zero sum game: there is no random or hidden state, and the goal of the two players is to make the other player lose (or at least tie). Unlike chess and go, pentago is small enough for a computer to play perfectly: with symmetries removed, there are a mere 3,009,081,623,421,558 (3e15) possible positions. Thus, with the help of several hours on 98304 threads of Edison, a Cray supercomputer at NERSC, pentago is now strongly solved. "Strongly" means that perfect play is efficiently computable for any position. For example, the first player wins.

Submission + - Google Rumored to be Pulling its Team From the DARPA Robotics Challenge (popsci.com)

malachiorion writes: According to a participant in the DARPA Robotics Challenge, Google is withdrawing Team SCHAFT. This is the only story I've written based on a source who has requested anonymity, but it makes perfect sense. None of the roboticists I've talked to for related pieces have seen it as even remotely good business for Google to be a defense contractor, and this decision, if it plays out as described, might just calm the internet's jokey, jangled nerves for a while.

Submission + - When the Project Manager Is the Problem

Esther Schindler writes: Project managers need to be great traffic cops, coordinators, and problem solvers. When they do their jobs right, they make everyone around them more effective. But when they’re bad — ouch. They can become the worst sort of bottleneck, and inspiration for a lot of heavy drinking.

The question is: How can you tell that the source of the problem is the project manager rather than the situation in which an otherwise-good project manager finds herself? And even when it's obvious, what can you do about it? In The Cure After Diagnosing a Bad Project Manager, Tim Walker helps you identify when it’s the project manager who’s the problem as well as causes and some useful, non-career-limiting solutions. ("Copy out, then copy up" might have been useful to me in one poopstorm.)

Got suggestions to add to his list?

Submission + - The final confessions of a Silk Road kingpin (dailydot.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The Daily Dot has an extensive interview with Steven Sadler, aka Nod, one of the most popular cocaine and heroin dealers on the Silk Road—and one of the informants who brought down Silk Road owner Dread Pirate Roberts.

"The conditions of the bond were clear: Sadler wasn't allowed leave the state of Washington. He was also strictly forbidden from dealing or using drugs.

"Hold on,” he cut in at one point. “I have to buy some cocaine, can I call you back?"

Five minutes later, he was back on the line, as chatty as ever.

At the time, there was no clear direction forward. Maybe he'd go to Las Vegas on a wild bender. Maybe he'd try to start his drug empire over in Los Angeles. Maybe he’d visit old friends in his hometown who didn't know about his criminal enterprise.

Sadler talked through each potential scenario, as if working through them in his mind, looking for possibilities and pitfalls. In roughly 10 hours of phone calls over the course of several weeks, Sadler told me almost everything.

Then he dropped off the grid."

Submission + - Virgin Galactic unveils it's other rocket engine (nbcnews.com)

mknewman writes: Two types of Newton engines have been designed for use on Virgin Galactic's two-stage LauncherOne rocket, which is destined to carry satellites into orbit from the WhiteKnightTwo carrier airplane starting as early as 2016. Future generations of the Newton could conceivably send rocket planes from, say, New York to London in 45 minutes.

The NewtonOne, an upper-stage engine designed to provide 3,500 pounds of thrust, has been run for its projected full mission duration of five minutes, Ringuette told NBC News during a tour of the test site. The NewtonTwo, which would serve as LauncherOne's first-stage engine, has been hot-fired for just a few seconds at a time so far. When it's ready for prime time, Virgin Galactic expects it to blast away for about two and a half minutes, with 47,500 pounds of thrust.

Bitcoin

Why Charles Stross Wants Bitcoin To Die In a Fire 691

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "SF writer Charles Stross writes on his blog that like all currency systems, Bitcoin comes with an implicit political agenda attached and although our current global system is pretty crap, Bitcoin is worse. For starters, BtC is inherently deflationary. There is an upper limit on the number of bitcoins that can ever be created so the cost of generating new Bitcoins rises over time, and the value of Bitcoins rise relative to the available goods and services in the market. Libertarians love it because it pushes the same buttons as their gold fetish and it doesn't look like a "Fiat currency". You can visualize it as some kind of scarce precious data resource, sort of a digital equivalent of gold. However there are a number of huge down-sides to Bitcoin says Stross: Mining BtC has a carbon footprint from hell as they get more computationally expensive to generate, electricity consumption soars; Bitcoin mining software is now being distributed as malware because using someone else's computer to mine BitCoins is easier than buying a farm of your own mining hardware; Bitcoin's utter lack of regulation permits really hideous markets to emerge, in commodities like assassination and drugs and child pornography; and finally Bitcoin is inherently damaging to the fabric of civil society because it is pretty much designed for tax evasion. "BitCoin looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central banking and money issuing banks, with a Libertarian political agenda in mind—to damage states ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens financial transactions," concludes Stross. "The current banking industry and late-period capitalism may suck, but replacing it with Bitcoin would be like swapping out a hangnail for Fournier's gangrene.""

Submission + - Microsoft Merges Windows Phone And Windows Store Developer Accounts

rjmarvin writes: There is now a unified registration procedure http://sdt.bz/65333 for Windows Store and Windows Phone developers. Developers of each can use the same account, while managing apps with separate Dev Center dashboards, to submit apps to each store. Windows App Store General Manager Todd Brix announced the merger in a blog post http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/appbuilder/archive/2013/11/06/unifying-developer-registration-windows-and-windows-phone.aspx yesterday, revealing that new developers need only pay a one-time fee of $19 for registration to both app stores, or $99 for a company account.

Submission + - French Court Orders Google To Block Pics and Links of Max Mosley (pcmag.com)

Virtucon writes: This one goes to the old adage "closing the stable door after the horse bolted." A French court on Wednesday ruled that Google must remove from its search results photos of a former Formula One racing chief, Max Mosley, participating in an Nazi-themed orgy. Google could be fined up to 1,000 Euros/day for not complying. What's strange here is that Mosley A) Sued in a French Court B) Didn't go after anybody else other than Google and C) has definitely strange tastes in extracurricular activities. In this day and age it's laughable to think that once your private photos/videos hit the Internet that you have any expectation of reigning them in or filtering the embarrassing parts out. Google isn't the only game in town so to speak in terms of Internet search. I wonder if his lawyers checked out Yahoo or WebCrawler? Of course Google plans to appeal the decision to ... be able to show pics of an old man getting er um never mind...

Submission + - A Playstation 4 Teardown

Dave Knott writes: Just over one week ahead of the launch of the Playstation 4, Wired has posted an article with a full teardown of Sony's new device. In an accompanying video Sony engineering director Yasuhiro Ootori dismantles the PS4 piece by piece, describing each component and showing just what is contained inside the sleek black box.

Submission + - Saudi Nuclear Weapons 'On Order' From Pakistan (bbc.co.uk)

cold fjord writes: The BBC reports, "Saudi Arabia has invested in Pakistani nuclear weapons projects, and believes it could obtain atomic bombs at will, ... While the kingdom's quest has often been set in the context of countering Iran's atomic programme, it is now possible that the Saudis might be able to deploy such devices more quickly than the Islamic republic. Earlier this year, a senior Nato decision maker told me that he had seen intelligence reporting that nuclear weapons made in Pakistan on behalf of Saudi Arabia are now sitting ready for delivery. Last month Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, told a conference in Sweden that if Iran got the bomb, "the Saudis will not wait one month. They already paid for the bomb, they will go to Pakistan and bring what they need to bring." Since 2009, when King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia warned visiting US special envoy to the Middle East Dennis Ross that if Iran crossed the threshold, "we will get nuclear weapons", the kingdom has sent the Americans numerous signals of its intentions. " — A Telegraph story from July discusses a recently identified Saudi missile base. The Christian Science Monitor reports on slow progress in negotiations on Iran's nuclear program. NBC news reports on strained relations between the US and Saudi Arabia.

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