72465699
submission
itwbennett writes:
Pacquiao-Mayweather is (seemingly) on everyone's mind these days, but the title 'Fight of the Century' could just as easily go to one of the perennial battles over the best tools, systems, and conventions to use or follow. As classic arguments go, there's Vi vs. Emacs, tabs vs. spaces, static typing vs. dynamic typing.
72456837
submission
itwbennett writes:
Some watch functions require direct contact with the skin to work. If the device can’t detect a pulse, it assumes it isn’t being worn, shutting downs apps and requiring people to enter their passcode. Turning off the wrist-detection function solves the issue, but prevents people from using Apple Pay. 'Permanent or temporary changes to your skin, such as some tattoos, can also impact heart rate sensor performance. The ink, pattern, and saturation of some tattoos can block light from the sensor, making it difficult to get reliable readings,' Apple wrote on the device’s product support page.
72429489
submission
itwbennett writes:
An initiative between Apple, IBM and Japan Post Holdings could put iPads in the hands of up to 5 million members of Japan’s elderly population. The iPads, which will run custom apps from IBM, will supplement Japan Post's Watch Over service where, for a monthly fee, postal employees check on elderly residents and relay information on their well-being to family members.
72406111
submission
jfruh writes:
Dozens died in the runup to Nigeria's most recent election — a shocking statistic to many Westerners, but a relief in comparison to the much more serious violence that plagued earlier elections. Observers are crediting technology with making the election safer: the use of biometric IDs gave voters more confidence in the results, and social media gave people a chance to blow of anger that might've otherwise results in street brawls.
72392547
submission
Lucas123 writes:
Disney CEO Bob Iger is one of eight co-chairs of the Partnership for a New American Economy, a leading group advocating for an increase in the H-1B visa cap. Last Friday, the partnership was a sponsor of an H-1B briefing at the U.S. Capitol for congressional staffers. The briefing was closed to the press. One of the briefing documents obtained after the meeting stated, "H-1B workers complement — instead of displace — U.S. Workers." Last October, however, Disney laid off at least 135 IT staff (though employees say it was hundreds more), many of them longtime workers. Disney then replaced them with H-1B contractors that company said could better "focus on future innovation and new capabilities." The fired workers believe the primary motivation behind Disney's action was cost-cutting. "Some of these folks were literally flown in the day before to take over the exact same job I was doing," one former employee said. Disney officials promised new job opportunities as a result of the restructuring, but the former staff interviewed by Computerworld said they knew of few co-workers who had landed one of the new jobs. Use of visa workers in a layoff is a public policy issue, particularly for Disney. Ten U.S. senators are currently seeking a federal investigation into displacement of IT workers by H-1B-using contractors. Kim Berry, president of the Programmer's Guild, said Congress should protect American workers by mandating that positions can only be filled by H-1B workers when no qualified American — at any wage — can be found to fill the position."
72391359
submission
itwbennett writes:
Earlier this month, jQuery creator John Resig annotated one of the earliest existing versions of jQuery, which was first released on January 24, 2005 at BarCamp NYC. Resig’s comments provide a number of interesting historical and technical notes about the early code, including this gem about the value of braces: 'I really dis-liked having unnecessary braces. This unfortunate style preference plagued us for quite a while and caused all sorts of avoidable logic errors. I like braces now, I think they provide extra clarity and help to prevent common mistakes.
72390411
submission
itwbennett writes:
Amateur radio has stepped in to fill communication gaps in Nepal, which is struggling with power outages and a flaky Internet after a devastating earthquake on Saturday killed over 5,000 people. Though 99 persons have ham licenses in Kathmandu, about eight use high-frequency (HF) radios that can transmit long distances, while another 30 have very high frequency and ultra high frequency sets for local traffic, said Satish Kharel, a lawyer in Kathmandu, who uses the ham call signal 9N1AA. The hobbyist radio operators are working round-the-clock to help people get in touch with relatives, pass on information and alert about developing crises.
72360789
submission
jfruh writes:
The "wild west" days of ridesharing services may be coming to an end. The governor of Massachusetts has proposed a bill that would regulate Uber, Lyft, and their rivals in the state. Among the new rules: ridesharing services would have to run background checks on their drivers and keep a roster of active drivers; vehicles would need to have some external marker indicating that they're a ridesharing car; and drivers would need to hold at $1 million worth of insurance when transporting passengers.
72359483
submission
itwbennett writes:
A pair of shape-shifting robots have ventured into the pressure vessel of reactor 1 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan — one of three reactors that suffered meltdowns after the devastating March 2011 tsunami. Just how radioactive it is can be seen on this video. The good news: it's 10x less radiation than Tokyo Electric Power was fearing.
72322785
submission
itwbennett writes:
The tools available to developers who need to build an application once and deploy everywhere have exploded. Frameworks like famo.us, Ionic, PhoneGap, Sencha Touch, Appcelerator, Xamarin, and others are reducing the grunt work and improving the overall quality of web based mobile applications dramatically. The benefits of a build once, deploy everywhere platform are pretty obvious, but are they enough to make up for the hits to user experience?
72322585
submission
itwbennett writes:
E-commerce giant Alibaba Group hasn’t given up on its YunOS mobile operating system, and is taking the software to China’s rural markets through a series of low-cost phones, which will be built by lesser-known Chinese brands and will range from 299 yuan ($49) to 699 yuan. Slashdot readers may remember that in 2012, Google claimed it was a variant of its Android OS, sparking a clash that threatened to derail Alibaba’s effort to popularize the mobile OS.
72322297
submission
itwbennett writes:
Attackers can potentially snoop on the encrypted traffic of over 25,000 iOS applications due to a vulnerability in a popular open-source networking library. The vulnerability stems from a failure to validate the domain names of digital certificates in AFNetworking, a library used by a large number of iOS and Mac OS X app developers to implement Web communications — including those over HTTPS (HTTP with SSL/TLS encryption).
72184745
submission
jfruh writes:
A few years ago, Facebook seemed on the verge of missing the transition to mobile altogether. But the company has made the transition with flying colors: now three-quarters of the company's income comes from mobile ads.
71948353
submission
itwbennett writes:
AMD has pulled out of the market for high-density servers, reversing a strategy it embarked on three years ago with its $334 million acquisition of SeaMicro. AMD delivered the news Thursday as it announced financial results for the quarter. Its revenue slumped 26 percent from this time last year to $1.03 billion, and its net loss increased to $180 million.
71943405
submission
itwbennett writes:
The Los Angeles Unified School District is seeking a multimillion dollar refund from Apple over a failed project to provide 650,000 students with iPads they could use at home. Apple hired Pearson Education as a subcontractor to develop software for the iPads, but according to a letter the school district sent to Apple this week, a 'vast majority' of the students have been unable to use the software.
