74341421
submission
itwbennett writes:
OpenBSD Journal on Tuesday announced that Microsoft has become the OpenBSD Foundation's first-ever Gold contributor (Google and Facebook are both Silver contributors). The move makes good on an earlier comment by Angel Calvo in a post on the Windows PowerShell Blog that they won't be just adopting the openSSH, they will also be contributing to it. (OpenSSH is an OpenBSD Foundation project.) The dollar amount of the contribution won't blow you away, though: $25,000-$50,000 will get you the Gold.
74339037
submission
jfruh writes:
Google Street View keeps going to all sorts of exotic places — up the sheer cliff wall of El Capitan, for example. So why are there so many gaps in, for instance, the streets of the Sunset District, an easily accessible residential neighborhood in San Francisco, just a few miles from Google HQ? The answer may be a combination of privacy requests and technical glitches, but Google is talking. Observers noted in one case on an island road, the Street View car apparently stopped its journey right next to a bar.
74338781
submission
jfruh writes:
GNU project founder Richard Stallman can seem a little (if you'll forgive the turn of phrase) proprietary at times over open source software, to the point of insisting on calling Linux "GNU/Linux." But one thing he'll always admit is that nobody can control how properly licensed open source software can be used — even if it's being used by government agencies for purposes he opposes. That was his take on the recent intra-open source debate that arose upon revelations of the NSA's extensive use of free and open source software.
74336783
submission
itwbennett writes:
That was one of the findings of a survey of 50,000 U.S. college students and recent graduates by Looksharp, a marketplace for internships and entry-level jobs. For general findings across all majors, check out Looksharp's State of College Hiring Report 2015. But the company shared some more computer science-specific findings with ITworld's Phil Johnson. Among them: 'Of all majors, students studying in CS had the highest average starting salary, $66,161.' And, what's more, they know the value of their degree: 'On average, they expected a starting salary of $68,120, slightly above the actual average starting salary of $66,161.'
74309349
submission
itwbennett writes:
A router failure is reportedly to blame for yesterday's grounding of United Airlines planes. 'While it might seem like redundant routers and cables could keep that kind of problem from having a nationwide impact on an airline, networking problems are rarely as simple as routing around a failure,' writes Stephen Lawson. And that's because a router failure can mean a lot of things besides a total shutdown, and simple failover mechanisms only work for total failures that can be immediately detected, says Gartner analyst Joe Skorupa.
74288235
submission
itwbennett writes:
Intelligent Environments, a UK-based company that provides security solutions for banks, has just launched the first emoji-only passcode. The security firm’s emoji system uses 44 images, giving you 3,498,308 unique permutations in comparison with '7,290 unique permutations of four non-repeating numbers,' the company said in a press release. And those strings of little images might be easier to remember than your typical 4-digit passcode. According to a study by the National Academy of Sciences, humans 'have a remarkable ability to remember pictures' that 'consistently exceeds our ability to remember words.'
74286983
submission
itwbennett writes:
The hacker group, which security researchers from Kaspersky Lab and Symantec call Wild Neutron or Morpho, has broken into the networks of over 45 large companies since 2012. After the 2013 attacks against Twitter, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft were highly publicized, the group went underground and temporarily halted its activity. However, its attacks resumed in 2014 and have since intensified, according to separate reports released Wednesday by Kaspersky Lab and Symantec.
74284077
submission
jfruh writes:
Renee James, Intel's president and head of the company's software group has departed, supposedly to "pursue other opportunities." But a high-profile heir apparent doesn't just leave voluntarily, and it seems likely that she is in part taking the fall for Intel's acquisition of McAfee, the promised synergies of which have failed to materialize. Then again, Intel is a traditionally very stable company, but there's been a lot of churn in the uper ranks lately: is something wrong?
74258411
submission
jfruh writes:
Artificial intelligence typically requires heavy computing power, which can only help manufacturers of specialized chip manufacturers like Nvidia. That's why the company is pushing its Digits software, which helps users design and experiment with neural networks. Version 2 of digits moves out of the command line and comes with a GUI interface in an attempt to move interest beyond the current academic market; it also makes programming for multichip configurations possible.
74258299
submission
jfruh writes:
Samsung's profits were below expectations, but to look on the bright side, the reason is one that many companies want to have: so many people want to buy Galaxy S6 phones that the company can't make them fast enough to meet demand. The phone features curved glass that is tricky to manufacture.
74237873
submission
itwbennett writes:
Back in May, former Goldman Sachs programmer Sergey Aleynikov was convicted by a jury for stealing 32MB of code for Goldman's high-frequency trading system, code that Aleynikov maintained he copied for intellectual pursuits and was, in fact, open-source. On Monday, Judge Daniel P. Conviser of New York's State Supreme Court dismissed the conviction, saying that Aleynikov acted wrongfully by taking the code, but his actions did not meet the standard under the law in which he was charged. 'The evidence did not prove he intended to appropriate all or a major portion of the code’s economic value,' Conviser wrote.
74227943
submission
jfruh writes:
Kotver is in many ways a typical clickfraud trojan: it hijacks the user's browser process to create false clicks on banner ads, defrauding advertisers and ad networks. But one aspect of it is unusual: it updates the victim's installation of Flash to the most recent version, ensuring that similar malware can't get in.
74227877
submission
jfruh writes:
Japan may have just lost the Women's World Cup to the U.S., but the country is hoping for a comeback in another competition: a battle between giant robots. Suidobashi Heavy Industry has agreed to a challenge from Boston-based MegaBots that would involve titanic armored robots developed by each startup, the first of its kind involving piloted machines that are roughly 4 meters tall. 'We can’t let another country win this,' Kogoro Kurata, who is CEO of Suidobashi, said in a video posted to YouTube. 'Giant robots are Japanese culture.'
74136351
submission
itwbennett writes:
Faithful Slashdot readers may recall the story of Adam Wulf, who spent two weeks live-streaming himself writing a mobile app. The phenomenon has quickly become thing, by which we mean a business. Twitch.TV, Watch People Code (which is an offshoot of the subreddit by the same name), Ludum Dare, and, of course, YouTube, are bursting with live or archived streams of lots of people writing lots of code for lots of different things. And just this week, Y Combinator-backed startup Livecoding.TV launched. The site has signed up 40,000 users since its beta went live in February, but unlike the other sites in this space what it doesn't have (and doesn't have plans for) is advertising. As co-founder Jamie Green told ITworld: 'We have some different ideas around monetisation in the pipeline, but for now we are just focussed on building a community around live education.'
74116171
submission
jfruh writes:
While most Slashdot readers probably enjoy the latest and greatest smartphones and heavy-use data plans, millions of Americans use low-cost, prepaid featurephones, and many of those are sold under various brand names owned by TracFone. Today, after much pressure from the FCC, TracFone admitted that its customers also have the right to an unlocked phone that they can port to a different provider, including those low-income customers who participate in the government-subsidized Lifeline program, widely (though incorrectly) known as "Obamaphone".
