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Submission + - Google might poach Windows Phone's biggest app developer (dailydot.com)

Submitted by Molly McHugh
Molly McHugh writes: Rudy Huyn is a French app developer and an avid fan of Windows Phone. Huyn has created more than 20 apps for Microsoft’s mobile operating system, and including mobile apps for Instagram, Snapchat, Vine, Wikipedia, 9gag, Secret, and Dropbox. He has also created his own apps like Fuse and TV Show. With a developer showing this much commitment, you’d think Microsoft would have taken notice and hired him. Not quite.

Submission + - Microsoft exec opens up about Research lab closure, layoffs (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: It's been a bit over a month since Microsoft shuttered its Microsoft Research lab in Silicon Valley as part of the company's broader restructuring that will include 18,000 layoffs. This week, Harry Shum, Microsoft EVP of Technology & Research, posted what he termed an "open letter to the academic research community" on the company's research blog.http://blogs.msdn.com/b/msr_er/archive/2014/10/21/harry-shum-open-letter-to-academic-research-community.aspx In the post, Shum is suitably contrite about the painful job cut decisions that were made in closing the lab, which opened in 2001. He also stresses that Microsoft will continue to invest in and value "fundamental research".

Submission + - Mark Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin at Tsinghua University in Beijing 1

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Abby Phillip reports at the Washington Post that that Mark Zuckerberg just posted a 30-minute Q&A at Tsinghua University in Beijing in which he answered every question exclusively in Chinese — a notoriously difficult language to learn and particularly, to speak. "It isn't just Zuckerberg's linguistic acrobatics that make this a notable moment," writes Philip. "This small gesture — although some would argue that it is a huge moment — is perhaps his strongest foray into the battle for hearts and minds in China." Zuckerberg and Facebook have been aggressively courting Chinese users for years and the potential financial upside for the business. Although Beijing has mostly banned Facebook, the company signed a contract for its first ever office in China earlier this year. A Westerner speaking Mandarin in China — at any level — tends to elicit joy from average Chinese, who seem to appreciate the effort and respect they feel learning Mandarin demonstrates. So how well did he actually do? One Mandarin speaker rates Zuckerberg's language skills at a seventh grader's speech: "It's hard not see a patronizing note in the Chinese audience's reaction to Zuckerberg's Mandarin. To borrow from Samuel Johnson's quip, he was like a dog walking on its hind legs: It wasn't done well, but it was a surprise to see it done at all."

Submission + - Radical 4-in-1 Piston Engine Promises Hybrid-Like Efficiency (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: One of the many challenges facing engine designers is the need to increase power output while simultaneously retaining or improving efficiency. Although a four-cylinder engine is still an engineering marvel, there remain many friction points that reduce energy output. Namikoshi Electronics of Japan believes its unorthodox 4-in-1 concept engine could provide an alternative powerplant to the automobile industry.

Submission + - This app can solve differential equations, just by taking a photo of them (geektime.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Croatian startup MicroBlink built an an app that solves differential equations, just by taking a photo of the equation. If there was concern in higher education about smartphones being used to cheat in exams, now that fear has become even more justified.
The app, called PhotoMath operates in the most intuitive and easy to use manner: You just need to use your smartphone’s camera. After running the app, you aim the camera at the equation or exercise, and within seconds, without even pressing one button, the solution will appear on the screen. Just like that. To reach this level of simplicity, the application uses an advanced and fast OCR algorithm that identifies the characters and digits in front of you instantaneously. But the application does not stop there. If you want, with one click you can see all the steps taken to get to your final answer. The solution can be broken down into the step-by-step actions, and the user can simply browse back and forth between the different steps. The app currently supports arithmetic functions like addition, subtraction, division and multiplication; fractions and decimals; roots and powers; and simple linear equations with one or two unknown variables. Application developers are promising that additional, more complicated functions will be introduced in the near future to solve calculus and combinatorics equations.

Submission + - CryptoWall Ransomware Infecting Visitors to Major Websites like Yahoo, AOL and M (ibtimes.co.uk) 1

Submitted by DavidGilbert99
DavidGilbert99 writes: Up to three million visitors to some of the web's more popular websites — like Yahoo, AOL and Match.com — are being put at risk of being infected with the pernicious ransomware known as CryptoWall through malicious advertisements, with the criminal gang behind the campaign thought to be raking in $25,000-a-day

Submission + - BitTorrent Performance Test: Sync Is Faster Than Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Now that its file synchronization tool has received a few updates, BitTorrent is going on the offensive against cloud-based storage services by showing off just how fast BitTorrent Sync can be. More specifically, the company conducted a test that shows Sync destroys Google Drive, Microsoft’s OneDrive, and Dropbox. The company transferred a 1.36 GB MP4 video clip between two Apple MacBook Pros using two Apple Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapters, the Time.gov site as a real-time clock, and the Internet connection at its headquarters (1 Gbps up/down). The timer started when the file transfer was initiated and then stopped once the file was fully synced and downloaded onto the receiving machine. Sync performed 8x faster than Google Drive, 11x faster than OneDrive, and 16x faster than Dropbox.

Comment Re:Why (Score 1) 529

by grub (#48205483) Attached to: Shooting At Canadian Parliament

" Do you know how many terrorists that wanted to kill me I have come face to face with? 0.

Remove the "I have come face to face with" and that answer will certainly not be zero.

Submission + - What It Took for SpaceX to Become a Serious Space Company (theatlantic.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Atlantic has a nice profile of SpaceX's rise to prominence — how a private startup managed to successfully compete with industry giants like Boeing in just a decade of existence. "Regardless of its inspirations, the company was forced to adopt a prosaic initial goal: Make a rocket at least 10 times cheaper than is possible today. Until it can do that, neither flowers nor people can go to Mars with any economy. With rocket technology, Musk has said, "you’re really left with one key parameter against which technology improvements must be judged, and that’s cost." SpaceX currently charges $61.2 million per launch. Its cost-per-kilogram of cargo to low-earth orbit, $4,653, is far less than the $14,000 to $39,000 offered by its chief American competitor, the United Launch Alliance. Other providers often charge $250 to $400 million per launch; NASA pays Russia $70 million per astronaut to hitch a ride on its three-person Soyuz spacecraft. SpaceX’s costs are still nowhere near low enough to change the economics of space as Musk and his investors envision, but they have a plan to do so (of which more later)."

Submission + - Government Vehicle Recall Site Overwhelmed (safercar.gov)

Submitted by darylb
darylb writes: The NHTSA's safercar.gov website appears to be suffering under the load of recent vehicle recalls, including the latest recall of some 4.7 million vehicles using airbags made by Takata. Searching recalls by VIN is non-responsive at present. Searching by year, make, and model hangs after selecting the year.

What can sites serving an important public function do to ensure they stay running during periods of unexpected load?

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