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Nintendo

Nintendo To Announce Virtual Boy 2 68

Posted by timothy from the you-are-not-actually-there dept.
SlappingOysters writes Nintendo has officially unveiled the development of its next home console, codenamed the NX. This article at finder puts forward the case that Nintendo will be stepping back into the virtual realty game with a follow-up to its ill-fated 1995 peripheral, the Virtual Boy. It would be going head-to-head with the Vive, Project Morpheus and the much-rumoured, not yet announced, Microsoft VR unit.
Privacy

Uber Sued Over Driver Data Breach, Adding To Legal Woes 32

Posted by samzenpus from the hits-keep-coming dept.
wabrandsma writes with news about the latest trouble facing Uber. "Uber Technologies Inc has been hit with a proposed class action lawsuit over a recently disclosed data breach involving the personal information of about 50,000 drivers, the latest in a series of legal woes to hit the Internet car service. The suit, filed Thursday in federal court in San Francisco by Sasha Antman, an Uber driver in Portland, Oregon, says the company did not do enough to prevent the 2014 breach and waited too long — about five months — to disclose it. Antman says Uber violated a California law requiring companies to safeguard employee's personal information."
NASA

Russia Abandons Super-Rocket Designed To Compete With SLS 179

Posted by samzenpus from the forget-about-it dept.
schwit1 writes Russia has decided to abandon an expensive attempt to build an SLS-like super-rocket and will instead focus on incremental development of its smaller but less costly Angara rocket. "Facing significant budgetary pressures, the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, has indefinitely postponed its ambitious effort to develop a super-heavy rocket to rival NASA's next-generation Space Launch System, SLS. Instead, Russia will focus on radical upgrades of its brand-new but smaller Angara-5 rocket which had its inaugural flight in Dec. 2014, the agency's Scientific and Technical Council, NTS, decided on Thursday, March 12." For Russia's space industry, it appears that these budgetary pressures have been a blessing in disguise. Rather than waste billions on an inefficient rocket for which there is no commercial demand — as NASA is doing with SLS (under orders from a wasteful Congress) — they will instead work on further upgrades of Angara, much like SpaceX has done with its Falcon family of rockets. This will cost far less, is very efficient, and provides them a better chance to compete for commercial launches that can help pay for it all. And best of all, it offers them the least costly path to future interplanetary missions, which means they might actually be able to make those missions happen. To quote the article again: "By switching upper stages of the existing Angara from kerosene to the more potent hydrogen fuel, engineers might be able to boost the rocket's payload from current 25 tons to 35 tons for missions to the low Earth orbit. According to Roscosmos, Angara-A5V could be used for piloted missions to the vicinity of the Moon and to its surface." In a sense, the race is now on between Angara-A5V and Falcon Heavy.
Mozilla

Mozilla: Following In Sun's Faltering Footsteps? 300

Posted by Soulskill from the don't-let-the-sun-go-down-on-them dept.
snydeq writes: The trajectory of Mozilla, from the trail-blazing technologies to the travails of being left in the dust, may be seen as paralleling that of the now-defunct Unix systems giant Sun. The article claims, "Mozilla has become the modern-day Sun Microsystems: While known for churning out showstopping innovation, its bread-and-butter technology now struggles." It goes on to mention Firefox's waning market share, questions over tooling for the platform, Firefox's absence on mobile devices, developers' lack of standard tools (e.g., 'Gecko-flavored JavaScript'), and relatively slow development of Firefox OS, in comparison with mobile incumbents.
Biotech

Human DNA Enlarges Mouse Brains 193

Posted by timothy from the what-about-vice-versa dept.
sciencehabit writes Researchers have increased the size of mouse brains by giving the rodents a piece of human DNA that controls gene activity. The work provides some of the strongest genetic evidence yet for how the human intellect surpassed those of all other apes. The human gene causes cells that are destined to become nerve cells to divide more frequently, thereby providing a larger of pool of cells that become part of the cortex. As a result, the embryos carrying human HARE5 have brains that are 12% larger than the brains of mice carrying the chimp version of the enhancer. The team is currently testing these mice to see if the bigger brains made them any smarter.
Education

Washington May Count CS As Foreign Language For College Admission 259

Posted by timothy from the alle-menschen-sind-auslaender dept.
theodp writes On Wednesday, Washington State held a public hearing on House Bill 1445, which proposes a study "to allow two years of computer sciences to count as two years of world languages for the purposes of admission into a four-year institution of higher education." Among the questions posed by the House Higher Education Committee to a UW rep at the hearing was the following: "What's the case for...not just world language is good, world language is well-rounded, but world language is so super-duper-duper good that you should spend two years of your life doing them and specifically better than something else like coding?" The promise of programming jobs, promoted by Microsoft execs and other MS folks like ex-Program Manager Audrey Sniezek (ironically laid off last summer), has prompted Kentucky to ponder a similar measure.
Cellphones

Samsung Set To Launch Mobile Payment System With Galaxy S6 At MWC 82

Posted by Soulskill from the because-every-company-needs-its-own-payment-system dept.
dkatana writes: Samsung will introduce the Galaxy S6 on Sunday, March 1st, at the Barcelona Forum, one day before the Mobile World Congress officially starts. Serious rumors from different sources indicate that the Korean giant will also introduce its version of a global mobile payment system, which will likely have the moniker "Samsung Pay." Samsung can't afford to give away its position in the smartphone market, and a payments system tailored to customers is a key factor.
Build

Hands On With MakerBot's 3D-Printed Wood 72

Posted by Soulskill from the how-much-wood-would-a-wood-printer-print dept.
angry tapir writes: 3D printing has lost a bit of its novelty value, but new printing materials that MakerBot plans to release will soon make it a lot more interesting again. MakerBot is one of the best-known makers of desktop 3D printers, and at CES this week it announced that late this year its products will be able to print objects using composite materials that combine plastic with wood, metal or stone.
Botnet

Ask Slashdot: What Should We Do About the DDoS Problem? 312

Posted by Soulskill from the build-another-internet-and-don't-tell-the-hackers dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Distributed denial of service attacks have become a big problem. The internet protocol is designed to treat unlimited amounts of unsolicited traffic identically to important traffic from real users. While it's true DDoS attacks can be made harder by fixing traffic amplification exploits (including botnets), and smarter service front ends, there really doesn't seem to be any long term solution in the works. Does anyone know of any plans to actually try and fix the problem?
Google

Job Postings Offer Clues to Future of Google Fiber 38

Posted by timothy from the it's-getting-oh-so-close dept.
New submitter Admiral Jimbob McGif writes Even as a massive firestorm burns uncontrollably threatening to scorch the very foundations of the internet with AT&T indefinitely halting future GigaPower FTTH rollouts due to uncertainty over the future of net neutrality and the Obama administration proposing to regulate the internet under Title 2, highly suggestive jobs were recently added to Google Careers.

These Google Fiber related positions include: "City Manager", "Community Impact Manager" and "Plant Manager" in all potential Google Fiber cities. Perplexing inconsistences abound, such as Portland, Phoenix, San Jose and Atlanta positions being listed as local. Whereas San Antonio, Raleigh, Charlotte, and Nashville are listed as telecommute positions.

One is inclined to speculate as to what these job postings mean despite Google's disclaimer: "Not all cities where we're exploring hiring a team will necessarily become Google Fiber cities." Would Google post jobs as an act of posturing much like AT&T's supposed "Gigabit smoke screen" bluff? Or, should we expect to see these so called Fiber Huts springing up like so many mushrooms after a heavy rain in an additional 9 metro areas?

At the rate Google is going, is it too soon to speculate over Fiber Dojos popping up in Japan?
Books

Book Review: Spam Nation 82

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
benrothke writes There are really two stories within Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime-from Global Epidemic to Your Front Door. The first is how Brian Krebs uncovered the Russian cybergangs that sent trillions of spam emails for years. As interesting and compelling as that part of the story is; the second storyline is much more surprising and fascinating. Brian Krebs is one of the premier cybersecurity journalists. From 1995 to 2009, he was a reporter for The Washington Post, where he covered Internet security, technology policy, cybercrime and privacy issues. When Krebs presented the Post with his story about the Russian spammers, rather than run with it, the Post lawyers got in the way and were terrified of being sued for libel by the Russians. Many of the stories Krebs ran took months to get approval and many were rejected. It was the extreme reticence by the Post to deal with the issue that ultimately led Krebs to leave the paper. Before Krebs wrote this interesting book and did his groundbreaking research, it was clear that there were bad guys abroad spamming American's with countless emails for pharmaceuticals which led to a global spam problem. Read below for the rest of Ben's review.
Intel

Intel Processor Could Be In Next-Gen Google Glass 73

Posted by samzenpus from the behind-the-glass dept.
An anonymous reader points out this story that Intel could be in charge of creating the chips for the new Google Glass. Intel is expected to supply the chips for a new version of Google's Glass device in 2015, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources. The Intel processor will replace one from Texas Instruments, which is used in the current version of Glass, which is a device that allows people to view the Internet or take pictures while wearing it on their heads. Intel hasn't commented yet. The Wall Street Journal said that Intel plans to promote Glass to hospital networks and manufacturers. Google watched the web-connected eyewear in 2012, but it carried a hefty price and was regarded as something that only nerds would wear.
Upgrades

Ask Slashdot: Making a 'Wife Friendly' Gaming PC? 720

Posted by timothy from the or-any-spouse-reallly dept.
shadeshope writes Having just gotten married, I find that for some inexplicable reason my wife doesn't like my huge, noisy, 'ugly' gaming PC being in the living room. I have tried hiding it in a TV cabinet: still too noisy. I have placed it in another room and run HDMI and USB cables, but the propagation delay caused horrible tearing and lag when playing games. Have any other slashdotters encountered this problem? I don't want to buy a console (Steam sales let me game so cheaply), or mess with water cooling. Ideally I would just hide it in the attic, is there some wireless technology that would be fast enough for gaming use? I have become quite attached to 'behemoth.' I have been upgrading him for years and he is the centre of my digital life. I run plex home theatre, media centre, steam, iTunes and air server. Will I have to do my gaming in the spare room? Once I have sorted this small problem going to try and make a case for the efficacy of a projector to replace the television..... it takes up less space, motorized screen could be hidden when not in use, etc.

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