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Submission + - When you're being tracked by a trashcan, shouldn't you have to opt in first? (cnn.com)

Submitted by silver09
silver09 writes: "Are you being tracked by a recycling bin? If you’re a smartphone user who traverses certain parts of London, that rather insane proposition is actually reality. And telling the bin to stop tracking you isn’t a straightforward affair.

In the run-up to last year’s Olympics, 100 recycling bins with advertising screens were installed in the City of London (the financial district) by a startup called Renew. As Quartz reported on Thursday, 12 of these “Renew Pods” were recently fitted with “Renew ORB” devices that use Wi-Fi to sniff out certain information from passing smartphones, namely proximity, speed, duration and manufacturer. The manufacturer is gleaned from the smartphone’s MAC address, which acts as an identifier for the mobile device."

Submission + - Java concurrency is orders of magnitude harder than people think (ycombinator.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A user on StackOverflow claims to have lost $12 million of equipment due to a seemingly obscure behavior with concurrency in Java. A commenter on Hacker News writes

How can anyone program sanely in the presence of this: currentPos = new Point(currentPos.x+1, currentPos.y+1); does a few things, including writing default values to x and y (0) and then writing their initial values in the constructor. Since your object is not safely published those 4 write operations can be freely reordered by the compiler / JVM. [...] I'm not anywhere near smart or careful enough for that... I think I'll stick with Haskell.

Submission + - Syrian Electronic Army has proven one thing about the cybersecurity community

Submitted by Jeff Peters
Jeff Peters writes: From an editorial at HackSurfer describing the problem with cybersecurity that has emerged following the SEA hacks:

The state of the cybersecurity profession today, as well as the software industry it drives, is best described by using a religion analogy. Our business leaders are dependent on a largely crowded, confused, splintered, factious, self-righteous community of “holier than thou” experts and engineers convinced of the supremacy of their 10 billion differing points of view. If you've worked in the information technology industry as I have for 20 years (recovering software engineer), you may not admit it openly, but you know exactly what I’m talking about. One of my closest friends, a name most of you would recognize in the IT industry, once described most system administrators by saying:

“They’re either completely terrible or they’re self-righteous dicks. I always choose the dicks because at least I’ll be a little safer.”

Kinda captures it for me. “Sharing” and “plays well with others” not anywhere in the definition. I won’t even repeat his sentiments on most CISSPs.

Submission + - Non-Violent MMO in works from developer on League of Legends, Ultima Online (kickstarter.com)

Submitted by Runesabre
Runesabre writes: A 20-year veteran MMO game developer named Kirk Black who's worked on past entertainment products like League of Legends, Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies and The Lord of the Rings Online has his own Non-Violent MMO Adventure Game in development called Enspira Online. Enspira Online has the Vision of bringing Fun, Safe, Non-Violent, Inspiring Entertainment to a Global Community and needs support to help bring it to life. There's lots of talk about whether violent video gaming has harmful effects on kids and society. Now's a chance to support the creation of a non-violent alternative.

Submission + - Data Visualization: Too Easy To Be Too Slick? (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: Data visualization tools are finally putting a longtime dream within reach: offering the ability to make beautiful, slick-looking charts out of datasets almost automatically. But are our psyches ready for the shift? Data scientist Pete Warden quickly put together a visualization of Facebook name geography; though he didn't consider it to be a scientific sample that could drive major decisions, he quickly found that it drove discussion at the New York Times and on white supremicist websites. "There is an element of 'wow, it's so professionally presented that it must be true,'" said Jim Bell, chief marketing officer for Jaspersoft.

Submission + - China to Try Out Ocean Thermal Energy System (ieee.org)

Submitted by the_newsbeagle
the_newsbeagle writes: When you've got a wacky high-tech idea that will cost a lot of money, head to China. Lockheed Martin is the lastest company to heed this advice. For decades, Lockheed has investigated ocean thermal energy conversion, in which the temperature difference between warm surface water and cold deep water is leveraged to produce power. Just a few years ago, the company was working with the Navy and discussing a possible OTEC pilot project in Hawaii's Pearl Harbor. That idea has since been scrapped, and Lockheed is now partnering with a Chinese resort developer to build the 10-MW pilot plant off the coast of southern China. Lockheed hasn't disclosed the cost of building this plant, but outside experts say it might cost more than $300 million.

Submission + - Incredible Footage Shows a Perseid Meteor Exploding (universetoday.com)

Submitted by Nancy_A
Nancy_A writes: Photographer and digital artist Michael K. Chung said he couldn’t believe what he saw when he was processing images he took for a timelapse of the Perseid meteor shower this week. It appears he captured a meteor explosion and the resulting expansion of a shock wave or debris ring.

After this article was posted, Universe Today received more 'explody' footage from the Perseid meteor shower, which has been added to the article.

Submission + - Obama, Romney data scientists strike out on their own (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: The self-described nerds of President Obama's presidential campaign last year are back using big data analytics, this time to help Newark Mayor Cory Booker achieve a landside primary win Tuesday in the New Jersey Democratic primary for a vacant U.S. Senate seat. The data scientists from Obama and Romney campaigns recently formed their own consulting businesses within months of each other. The chief data scientist for Romney's campaign, Alex Lundry, co-founded Deep Root Analytics. He gives credit to the Obama campaign's data effort in 2012. But since last year's election, "what you are seeing is a flurry of activity on the right to make sure that we not only catch them, but surpass them," Lundry said. Meanwhile, the co-founder of BlueLabs, Chris Wegrzyn, a senior member of Obama's 2012 campaign analytics department, says last year was turning point for big data analytics in elections. "Usually the nerds in the back room don't warrant a great deal of attention, especially in politics," said Wegrzyn, "but the world is changing."

Submission + - New treatment for all cancers from Australia. (news.com.au)

Submitted by FirephoxRising
FirephoxRising writes: New protein based treatment from the University of NSW breaks down cancers by destroying their internal protein structures. The approach has been tried before but always resulted in too much damage to muscles and the heart. The new approach allows the new class of drug can attack tumours without damaging normal cells.

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