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.
72448909
submission
jfruh writes:
If your laptop doubles as a desktop and you're tired of plugging and unplugging monitor and USB cables from it, Dell has something for you: a wireless dock. The peripherals plug into the dock, and the dock connects to the laptop via WiGig, which is significantly faster than Wi-Fi.
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.
72406155
submission
jfruh writes:
Microsoft under Satya Nadella continues to move away from a Windows-centered world. The company today released Visual Studio Code, an IDE that runs not just on Windows but on OS X and Linux as well. It's a lightweight offering that shouldn't be confused with the company's world-class (and Windows-only) Visual Studio, but one observer calls it "aready one of the best editors for Mac and Linux."
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.
72406079
submission
jfruh writes:
The tech industry needs talent like never before, and isn't getting it through traditional means. A host of organizations have sprung up to help candidates who might look nontraditional get their skills and resumes in shape to snag a tech job. One organization, LaunchCode organizes classes and works with employers — and helped graduates' average salary jump from $17,000 to $50,000.
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.
72360871
submission
jfruh writes:
Google is trying a novel strategy to prevent trolls from buying up patents and then using them as weapons in litigation: buying the patents first. 'Unfortunately, the usual patent marketplace can sometimes be challenging, especially for smaller participants who sometimes end up working with patent trolls,' Allen Lo, Google's deputy general counsel for patents. wrote. 'Then bad things happen, like lawsuits, lots of wasted effort, and generally bad karma.' Google is building a portal where you can submit your patent to see if it piques the company's interest.
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).