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Submission + - A drastic drop in complaints after San Diego outfitted its PD with body cameras

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Surprise, surprise! Immediately after San Diego outfitted its police force with 600 body camera the number of complaints plunged.

The report, which took one full year into account, found that complaints against police have fallen 40.5 percent and use of “personal body” force by officers has been reduced by 46.5 percent. Use of pepper spray has decreased by 30.5 percent.

Two benefits can be seen immediately. First, the police are being harassed less from false complaints. Second, and more important, the police are finding ways to settle most disputes without the use of force, which means they are abusing their authority less.

These statistics do confirm what many on both the right and the left have begun to believe in recent years, that the police have been almost certainly using force against citizens inappropriately too often. In San Diego at least the cameras are serving to stem this misuse of authority.

Submission + - NY Times: "All The News That Mark Zuckerberg Sees Fit To Print"?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Two years ago, Politico caught Mark Zuckerberg's soon-to-be launched FWD.us PAC boasting how its wealthy tech exec backers would use their companies to 'control the avenues of distribution' for a political message in support of their efforts. Now, the NY Times is reporting that Facebook has been quietly holding talks with at least half a dozen media companies about hosting their content inside Facebook, citing a source who said the Times and Facebook are moving closer to a firm deal. Facebook declined to comment on specific discussions with publishers, but noted it had provided features to help publishers get better traction on Facebook, including tools unveiled in December that let them target their articles to specific groups of Facebook users. The new plan, notes the Times, is championed by Chris Cox, the top lieutenant to Facebook CEO Zuckerberg and a "major supporter" of FWD.us. Exploring Facebook's wooing of the media giants, the Christian Science Monitor asks if social media will control the future of news, citing concerns expressed by Fusion's Felix Salmon, who warns that as news sites sacrifice their brands to reach a wider audience, their incentives for accuracy and editorial judgment will disappear. So, will the Gray Lady's iconic slogan be changed to "All The News That Mark Zuckerberg Sees Fit To Print"?

Submission + - Ordnance Survey releases mapping tool (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by rHBa
rHBa writes: The BBC reports that the UK mapping organisation Ordnance Survey has added 4 new products to its open data portfolio: OS Local, Names, Rivers and Roads. Perhaps the most interesting of the free data sets is OS Local which provides a base map to identify ‘hotspots’ such as property pricing, insurance risk, and crime.

The OS are not creating a new Google Maps-style service of their own but rather are providing their data for use by other third-party apps and online tools. They expect developers and designers to use the data to enhance their own products and improve the information people can access via the web.

What uses would you put this sort of data to if it were available in an easily parsable format for your area?

Submission + - Australian government outlines website-blocking scheme (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by angry tapir
angry tapir writes: The Australian government has revealed its (previously mooted) proposed legislation that will allow copyright holders to apply for court orders that will force ISPs to block access to pirate websites. It forms part of a broader Australian crackdown on online copyright infringement, which also includes a warning notice scheme for alleged infringers.

Submission + - Did Neurons Evolve Twice? (quantamagazine.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: When Leonid Moroz, a neuroscientist at the Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience in St. Augustine, Fla., first began studying comb jellies, he was puzzled. He knew the primitive sea creatures had nerve cells — responsible, among other things, for orchestrating the darting of their tentacles and the beat of their iridescent cilia. But those neurons appeared to be invisible. The dyes that scientists typically use to stain and study those cells simply didn’t work. The comb jellies’ neural anatomy was like nothing else he had ever encountered.

After years of study, he thinks he knows why. According to traditional evolutionary biology, neurons evolved just once, hundreds of millions of years ago, likely after sea sponges branched off the evolutionary tree. But Moroz thinks it happened twice — once in ancestors of comb jellies, which split off at around the same time as sea sponges, and once in the animals that gave rise to jellyfish and all subsequent animals, including us. He cites as evidence the fact that comb jellies have a relatively alien neural system, employing different chemicals and architecture from our own. “When we look at the genome and other information, we see not only different grammar but a different alphabet,” Moroz said.

Submission + - Facebook Sued For Alleged Theft of Data Center Design (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: British engineering company BladeRoom Group says it contacted Facebook in 2011 about using its technique, which involves constructing data centers in a modular fashion from pre-fabricated parts. What happened next isn’t clear, since much of the public version of BRG’s lawsuit is redacted. But it claims Facebook ended up stealing its ideas and using them to build part of a data center in Lulea, Sweden, that opened last year. 'Facebook’s misdeeds might never have come to light had it decided that simply stealing BRG’s intellectual property was enough,' the company said in its lawsuit, filed Monday at the federal district court in San Jose, California. 'Instead, Facebook went further when it decided to encourage and induce others to use BRG’s intellectual property though an initiative created by Facebook called the ‘Open Compute Project’.'

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Suggested Beginning Windows Programming resources

Submitted by BootNinja
BootNinja writes: Hello, Slashdot; I took a couple of intro c++ classes in college back around 2000 and 2001. Since then I have picked up a bit of HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, and Perl. I've not done any coding in a couple of years, but I am interested in getting back in the saddle. However, everything I've ever done in past was simple text based web/console type stuff, and I'm looking to develop some skills in gui programming, preferably in C++. What books and/or websites would you recommend as a refresher for basic C++ sytax and data structures, as well as for basic windows and/or gnome programming? Also, what development tools do you find most helpful; i.e. compilers and/or IDE's?

Submission + - France Is Letting 14-Year-Olds Drive This Tiny Electric Car (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Being 14 sucks. You’re a freshman in high school, which puts you at the bottom of the social food chain. The opposite sex is endlessly confusing, you need to beg your parents and older siblings for rides, and (in the US at least) you’re half a lifetime away from the legal drinking age. Unless, that is, you live in France. Then you just need to beg your parents to buy you a Renault Twizy, a $7,600 “car” that 14-year-olds can now legally drive.

The Twizy is a quadricycle, a 1,000-pound, two-seat electric car meant for zipping around cramped European cities. It’s designed to be a safer alternative to bicycles and scooters for the urban set, sporting a 13-horsepower electric motor and enough batteries to take you 60 miles at a maximum speed of 50 mph. It won’t hold much cargo, but it’s got plenty of room for your baguettes, cigarettes, wine, and “On Strike” signs (because yes, French high schoolers love to faire la grève).

Submission + - Delhi officials look to block Uber and Ola IP addresses across Indian capital (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Delhi government officials have today called for the national Information Technology ministry to block the IP addresses linked to the mobile applications for the U.S. taxi-hailing app Uber and its local counterpart Ola, in an effort to further impose its ban on the companies’ operations in the city. In December 2014, following the alleged rape of a female passenger in New Delhi, India ruled that all unregistered vehicles using the smartphone-based service must stop offering taxi services until they hold the required operating license. The order has thus far been largely ignored, with both Ola and Uber continuing their operations throughout the city while they wait for their license applications to be processed. However, now insisting that the apps be blocked in the city is the final push to enforce the ban.

Submission + - "I beat a patent troll and you can too"

Submitted by heretic108
heretic108 writes: Chris Hulls, the CEO of tech startup Life360, received $50m in new funding, only to be almost immediately set upon by a patent troll, Advanced Ground Information Systems.
But unlike other startups who simply pay the ransom (cheaper than a trial, most folks figure), this guy went medieval, attacking not only AGIS's claims, but also their entire patent portfolio. Result? Not only were the troll's patents defeated by a jury, but with the heavy publicity, Life360 sent a clear warning to patent trolls that bullies will not be tolerated, going so far as to offer free legal support to other startups who have fallen victim to this troll.

Submission + - MuseScore 2.0 Released (musescore.org)

Submitted by rDouglass
rDouglass writes: MuseScore, the open source desktop application for music notation, has released MuseScore 2.0 for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. This release represents the culmination of four years of development, including technical contributions from over 400 people. In addition to a completely new UI, top features include linked parts (good for pieces with many instruments), guitar tablature, flexible chord symbols, and fret diagrams. The program integrates directly with the MuseScore.com online library of scores, and music written with the application can be displayed and played using the MuseScore mobile app.

Submission + - Second time's a charm: The Kickstarter comebacks (redbull.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Approximately only one in every ten Kickstarter projects is actually funded, but it's worth noting that some of the have actually failed on the crowdfunding site before. A new article looks at some of the game project failures that have struck gold the second time round, learning from the mistakes of their first attempts. Surprisingly, the target amount is often not the biggest issue or change in these instances, with creators revealing that they focused more on promoting the campaign or providing a playable demo to backers to get more attention in attempt two, perhaps suggesting that not every tool or service that game publishers provide to indies is a bad or stifling one.

Submission + - Steve Wozniak now afraid of AI too, just like Elon Musk

Submitted by quax
quax writes: Steve Wozniak maintained for a long time that true AI is relegated to the realm of science fiction. But recent advances in quantum computing have him reconsider his stance. Just like Elon Musk, he is now worried about what this development will mean for humanity. Will this kind of fear actually engender the dangers that these titans of industry fear? Will Steve Wozniak draw the same conclusion and invest in quantum comuting to keep an eye on the development? One of the bloggers in the field thinks that would be a logical step to take. If you can't beat'em, and the quantum AI is coming, you should at least try to steer the outcome.

Submission + - Test trial to use computer servers to heat homes (ap.org) 1

Submitted by MarcAuslander
MarcAuslander writes: Eneco, a Dutch-based energy company with more than 2 million customers, said Tuesday it is installing "e-Radiators" — computer servers that generate heat while crunching numbers — in five homes across the Netherlands in a trial to see if their warmth could be a commercially viable alternative for traditional radiators.

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