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Submission + - Patent Hints At New Google Glass Design

Submitted by rjmarvin
rjmarvin writes: Google was granted a patent http://www.ggdevcon.com/news/n... for what deceptively looks like a normal pair of glasses, but is referred to in the patent office document as a “wearable display device.” The US Patent and Trademark Office issued the patent, which concerns ornamental design of the wearable display device, to Mitchell Henrich, who has previous ties to Project Glass and the Google Smart Contact Lens.

Submission + - Brain-Inspired Computing Software Mimics Human Brain Patterns

Submitted by rjmarvin
rjmarvin writes: Microsoft's Project Adam, IBM's Watson, Google Now and an array of other technologies and brain-inspired computing methods are developing breakthrough algorithms and software that function like human brains http://sdtimes.com/computers-b.... Companies like Intel and Qualcomm are building neuron-inspired cores and chips, while others experiment with deep learning neural networks or the novel architecture approach of machine learning. According to developers, software engineers, tech analysts and academics, as scientific and technological knowledge of how the brain works continues to expand, the early stages of brain-inspired computing features like speech recognition, question-and-answer capabilities and predictive recommendations may evolve into unparalleled levels of computing and problem-solving power.

Submission + - Microsoft Is Testing Developer Biometrics To Predict Software Bugs 1

Submitted by rjmarvin
rjmarvin writes: Microsoft Research is testing a new method for catching errors and bugs in while developers code: biometrics
http://sdtimes.com/sd-times-bl.... By measuring a developer's eye movements, physical and mental characteristics as they code, the researchers measured alertness and stress levels to predict when a programmer will make a coding error. In a paper entitled "Using Psycho-Physiological Measures to Assess Task Difficulty in Software Development" http://research.microsoft.com/..., the researchers summarized their study of 15 developers where they strapped an eye tracker, an electrodermal sensor and an EEG sensor to developers as they programmed various tasks. The study found that biometrics predicted task difficulty for a new developer 64.99% of the time. For a new development task, the researchers found biometrics to be 84.38% accurate. The researchers did not, however, comment on the invasiveness of biometric sensors to developers.

Submission + - The NSA Is Becoming Skynet By Monitoring Tor Nodes

Submitted by rjmarvin
rjmarvin writes: Tor is the backbone of the anonymous Internet, and the NSA is turning the proxy network into Skynet by monitoring and even running its own Tor nodes http://sdt.bz/content/article..... A German news outlet has released a scathing report http://daserste.ndr.de/panoram... on just how the NSA monitors Tor traffic. Specifically, the NSA is tagging IP addresses that come to Tor nodes and watches them. They're especially watching anyone who knows about XKeyscore, a tool built at the NSA to do deep packet analysis of monitored traffic.the NSA has, effectively, built a huge stack of offensive intrusion tools that can be automatically triggered by something like searching for information about XKeyscore, and is the beginning of the end of Internet freedom.

Submission + - Java's Generics Are Getting More Generic In OpenJDK 9

Submitted by rjmarvin
rjmarvin writes: OpenJDK 9 will make generics easier to turn into specialized classes http://sdt.bz/71490. Java language architect and Oracle engineer Brian Goetz detailed some of Java's proposed future plans in a lengthy blog post http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~br..., explaining how generics can be extended over primitives and eventually value types.The changes being bandied about now are variations of what other languages do with generic specialization, but the first proposal is to use *T at the end of a typename or bytecode to signify that the type is derived from the erasure of T.

Submission + - Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Employee Memo: "We Will Reinvent Productivity"

Submitted by rjmarvin
rjmarvin writes: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sent out a lengthy memo to employees http://sdt.bz/71478 laying out a proposed reorganization of the company, a renewed focus on devices and services and a call to action to “reinvent productivity.” The memo, entitled “Bold Ambition & Our Core,” http://www.microsoft.com/en-us... talks about transforming Microsoft from a self-described “devices and services” company to a “productivity and platform company.” Nadella also reaffirmed Microsoft’s commitment to the Xbox platform and touted CloudOS and its Enterprise Mobility Suite.

Submission + - WebRTC: The Future Of In-Browser Real-Time Communication

Submitted by rjmarvin
rjmarvin writes: WebRTC, an open project enabling real-time communication in web browsers,brings real-time audio and video communication to the browser for instantaneous connection and data exchange http://sdt.bz/71475. The standard. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the standards organization working to stabilize the Web standard by rectifying competing API specifications and HTML5 video codecs, and a year after being heralded "the future of enterprise communication" http://sdt.bz/61943, WebRTC is enabled in most major browsers and inching toward wider developer and user adoption. WebRTC Working Group staff contact Dominique Hazaël-Massieux talks progress, what obstacles WebRTC and the W3C still face, and the future of the real-time communication API definition.

Submission + - Crowdsourcing Platforms Are Raising Developer Armies For-Hire

Submitted by rjmarvin
rjmarvin writes: More and more enterprises are turning to crowdsourced development, which gives organizations access to a high-dollar value, high-skill developer talent pool http://sdt.bz/71390. A recent Gartner report, “Use Crowdsourcing as a Force Multiplier in Application Development” http://blogs.gartner.com/eric-..., explores how crowdsourced development applies a cloud operating model to the development and delivery of custom software. platforms such as developer community TopCoder and testing community Applause open enterprise projects up as competitive challenges, breaking down the software’s components into itemized tasks for developers to complete.

Submission + - The Oracle v. Google Appeals Court Ruling Could Break 1

Submitted by rjmarvin
rjmarvin writes: The long-running lawsuit and countersuit between Google and Oracle resulted in a ruling last month that, in no uncertain terms, could break much of the software in use today.http://sdt.bz/71372.The decision insinuates that a developer who implements a standard or specification can now be open to lawsuit by the specification's creator. The federal circuit court did leave room for fair use to be found in Google's replication of the Java APIs. This fair use will be decided by Judge William Alsup, but may not matter in the end if the Supreme Court gets involved. If it sounds like this type of ruling would break the entire foundation of software development, that's because it does.

Submission + - Japanese Researchers Create Joke-Telling Robot Comedian

Submitted by rjmarvin
rjmarvin writes: A robot in Japan with its own standup routine https://www.youtube.com/watch?.... KOBIAN, an emotionally expressive biped robot platform http://sdt.bz/71371 was developed by researchers at Japan's Waseda University. The robot looks like a cross between a ventriloquist dummy and The Joker and while some of its jokes are lost in translation, the platform is...an iffy comedian. The researchers trained KOBIAN using a comedic rulebook they developed and presented at the 2014 IEEE ICRA Conference http://spectrum.ieee.org/autom....

Submission + - Inside Docker 1.0 And The Linux Container's Newfound Enterprise Following

Submitted by rjmarvin
rjmarvin writes: While Linux containers have existed for more than 10 years now, their usefulness and safety hadn't really made inroads with enterprise developers. This week at DockerCon http://sdt.bz/71357 however, marked a clear turning point in the evolution of Linux containers, with the release of Docker 1.0 http://blog.docker.com/2014/06... and Docker Hub http://blog.docker.com/2014/06.... DockerCon also featured speakers and attendees from IBM Google, Rackspace, Red Hat and other big enterprise names experimenting with and integrating Docker in the expanding Docker ecosystem http://sdt.bz/68736.

Submission + - Serena Revamps Dimensions CM To Compete With Git and Subversion

Submitted by rjmarvin
rjmarvin writes: The updated release of Dimensions CM 14 http://sdt.bz/71352 wants to be the modern alternative to Git and Subversion. lOne of the major additions to the configuration management tool is change and branch visualization. The visualization gives developers real-time visibility into the health and quality of their code. According to Serena Software's Ashley Owen, developers don’t get a visual display of all development activities in Git or Subversion unless they build it, and Dimensions CM 14 http://www.serena.com/index.ph... also comes with native integration support for Appcelerator’s mobile development platform, Apple’s Xcode, extended Safari support to include Mac OS X clients, CI integration and built-in Araxis file merge.

Submission + - Use Oracle's UPL, Abandon Your Intellectual Property

Submitted by rjmarvin
rjmarvin writes: Recently, Oracle submitted the new Universal Permissive License (UPL) for approval to the Open Source Initiative (OSI), claiming the UPL filled the need for a permissive, MIT-style open-source license with explicit patent grants. At a high level, the UPL copyright and patent licenses are overly broad http://sdt.bz/71327. They extend to current and future versions of both the UPL-licensed code as well as any software or hardware identified in a file included with the UPL-licensed code, there is no requirement that the UPL-licensed code be associated in any way with the software or hardware included in the file in order to use the expensive license, and there is no defensive termination clause under the UPL.

Submission + - Gitchain: Where Git Meets Bitcoin

Submitted by rjmarvin
rjmarvin writes: A New crowdfunding project is combining the collaborative coding of GitHub with the distributed cloud storage of Bitcoin to create Gitchain, an application that acts as a local proxy for a network of decentralized, peer-to-peer Git repositories http://sdt.bz/71271. Canadian developer Yurii Rashkovskii came up with the idea of applying the decentralized storage of the Bitcoin blockchain to Git hosting, and he started a Kickstarter project https://www.kickstarter.com/pr... to fund it, which has just about hit its $10,000 goal. By storing Git metadata across the DHT (distributed hash table) popularized by Bitcoin and BitTorrent, he aims to store data on every node of the Gitchain network to ensure Git code redundancy.

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