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Submission + - "Stupid App" Yo Reached Over 1 Million Users (gizmobeast.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: YO, a one-tap messaging app that was labeled by a US TV host as a stupid app has surpassed 1 million users and raised over 1 million dollars in venture capital funding. What made it so appealing? Its simple and easy to use.
Here’s how this app works. Want to say “good morning” to your friends? Just Yo to them. wanna say “Baby I miss you” just simply put Yo. Possibilities are endless. Sound absurd? For some, not really. Why tweet 140 characters, when you can just Yo.

Some critics say the popularity will soon fade, but so far, the app is still currently in the top charts.

Submission + - $500k "Energy-Harvesting" Kickstarter scam unfolding right now. (drop-kicker.com)

Submitted by FryingLizard
FryingLizard writes: For a while I've been following the saga of the Kickstarter "iFind" Bluetooth 4.0 tracking tag. Nothing new about such tags (there are many crowdfunded examples; some have delivered, some have disappointed), but this one claims it doesn't require any batteries — it harvests its energy from electromagnetic emissions (wifi, cell towers, TV signals, etc). The creators have posted no evidence other than some slick photoshop work, an obviously faked video, and some easily disproven data and classic bad science.
So far they've picked up half a million in pledges. With six days to go until they walk off with the money, skeptics abound (10min in) including some excellent dissections of their claims. The creators have yet to post even a single photo of the magical device, instead posting empty platitudes and claims that such secrecy is necessary to protect their IP.

Using just their published figures, their claims are readily refuted, yet still backers flock in. Kickstarter appear uninterested in what can only be described as a slow-motion bank robbery, despite their basic requirement to demonstrate a prototype.
It seems self-evident that such scams should not be allowed to propagate on Kickstarter, for the good of other genuine projects and the community at large.
Skeptics are maintaining a google doc with many of the highlights of the action.

Bring your own popcorn and enjoy the show.

Submission + - McMillen: Net Neutrality is not about cost of bandwidth

Submitted by ygslash
ygslash writes: Robert McMillen of Wired claims that we have gotten Net Neutrality all wrong. While we are all busy arguing about whether there should be regulations preventing large content providers from getting preferential bandwidth, McMillen says that not only have the large content providers already had preferential bandwidth for ten years, but that by now this has become an inherent part of the structure of the Internet and in practice cannot be changed. Instead, he says, the Net Neutrality discussion should be about ensuring a free and open competitive market for bandwidth, so that anyone who wants bandwidth can purchase it at a fair price.

Submission + - Best mass email software/services?

Submitted by badlapje
badlapje writes: I'm a second year ACS student doing volunteer work for a national non-profit (country = Belgium). One of the things they'd like me to implement is a new system for sending out news-letters. Currently they're using Interspire Email Marketer, which seems to be a very bad fit and unbelievably slow in use (10-30 seconds for a page load/response after a click). The only alternative i've experience with is Mailchimp, but that seems to be rather expensive. We're talking several email lists with near 30k subscribers, with emails being sent out 1-4 times/month, and the number of subscribers growing fast.

So what EMSP's/Mass Mail Software/other possible solutions would slashdot users recommend? The main concerns for the non-profit are:
- price (being non-profit they don't have a lot of money to throw around)
- usability: volunteers and a not so tech-savvy staff will have to use this so the easier in use the better
- multi-accounting or subaccounts so that their local groups can send newsletters to the local members with as little bother as possible
- responsive design (i can code this if the service/software allows for own templates, better if the service/software can do this via some kind of wizard/wysiwyg)
- possibility of integration with a membership database to import lists and add people to the email lists automatically if at all possible

Comment Re:Liability (Score 1) 474

Seriously, what idiot thought this would be a good idea? Punish your customers and give moochers, criminals and cheapskates free and anonymous internet.

Only people who provide the service from their own wifi will be able to use it from others. It's actually an attractive idea. The OP is framing it as a problem only because Comcast is doing it as "opt-out", enabling it remotely without people explicitly giving their permission. I suppose that's true. But in practice, it's not much different than "opt-in". Our local provider is doing it as "opt-in", but almost everyone signs up for it. You get sent to the opt-in screen automatically as part of the installation procedure whenever you put in a new modem. And why not? It costs you essentially nothing, and it's really convenient.

Landline telephone providers are doing this all over world, and pushing it very aggressively. Here's why: landline providers are quickly losing their market share. Mobile providers are eating their lunch. Many young people are not ever signing up for a landline phone anymore, and some people who already have a landline are getting rid of it to save money. Share-alike free wifi service not only gives you convenient wifi access almost wherever you are; it also ties you to your landline. And makes it less attractive to shell out as much money for mobile data plans.

Comment Interesting, but sounds like spam (Score 1) 1

by ygslash (#47210267) Attached to: Your promise is mocking you?
This actually sounds like an interesting app. But I downvoted your submission, because it is worded like an advertisement. Ads are not appropriate for Slashdot articles; that's called "spam". Please submit again as a description of this kind of technology, with your app just mentioned as an example. Be sure to mention other similar or related technology. One example is Beeminder, which charges you money instead of publicly shaming you if you don't make good on your promise. Extra points if you are honest and mention one or more direct competitors - it will help you, not hurt you, if yours really is the best.

Submission + - Gecko feet inspire hand-held Spider-Man paddles

Submitted by ygslash
ygslash writes: DARPA is developing hand-held paddles that can be used to scale vertical walls. The adhesion technology employed in the paddles is based on Van der Waals force, inspired by the feet of certain species of geckos known for their excellent climbing ability. In a recent test, a man weighing almost 100 kg (220 lbs) and carrying a heavy pack that added about 23 kg (50 lbs) of additional weight, was able to scale a vertical glass wall almost 8 m (25 ft) high using the paddles. However, the paddles are reported to be 'not battlefield-ready yet'. Apparently, smooth glass walls are not usually what you need to climb in real battlefield conditions.

Submission + - Google admits tax laws need to change (afr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The managing director of Googleâ(TM)s Australia and New Zealand operations has called on governments to clarify grey areas in the global tax system and put an end to a blame game of shaming individual companies over transfer pricing practices. She said Google contributed to the economy in many areas, but the company supported the idea of changes in tax law.

Submission + - Why the Turing Test is Not an Adequate Way to Calculate Artificial Intelligence (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: You may have heard that a supercomputer succeeded in passing the infamous Turing Test over the weekend at a Royal Society competition, but scientists say this is not really a milestone for artificial intelligence at all.

One of the founding fathers of modern computing, in 1950, wartime code breaker Alan Turing published a paper considering the question "Can machines think?" In the paper, Turing mentioned the word "test", and stated that he believed that by the year 2000, computers might be able to be programmed to imitate humans so well that they would be able to fool an "average interrogator" for five minutes.

"He [made] predictions about the size, memory and speed of computers that are surprisingly accurate, and he thought that by the year 2000, 30% [of people] would be unable to tell which was which," Aaron Sloman, a professor of artificial intelligence and cognitive science at University of Birmingham tells IBTimes UK.

"Now, he didn't say that this would prove that machines are intelligent. He said that many people have published arguments about [the fact that machines can't think], and he decided to knock down each one.

"He only set up the test to provide a framework for refuting those arguments. He called it the "imitation game" and lots of people started referring to it as a test, but if you read the paper, it's clear that he doesn't think that this can be sensibly provided."

Submission + - There's No Wind Chill on Mars (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Even though daytime temperatures in the tropics of Mars can be about –20C, a summer afternoon there might feel about the same as an average winter day in southern England or Minneapolis. That’s because there’s virtually no wind chill on the Red Planet, according to a new study—the first to give an accurate sense of what it might feel like to spend a day walking about on our celestial neighbor. “I hadn’t really thought about this before, but I’m not surprised,” says Maurice Bluestein, a biomedical engineer and wind chill expert recently retired from Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis. The new findings, he says, “will be useful, as people planning to colonize Mars need to know what they’re getting themselves into.”

Comment Re:it's explained in the study (Score 1) 86

by ygslash (#47031067) Attached to: Static Electricity Defies Simple Explanation
The paper itself mentions only the ion hypothesis; the article linked by OP attributes the other hypothesis to "Keith Forward, a chemical engineer at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona". The point is that the study makes no claim about the validity of any hypothesis. It only rejects the previously widely accepted one. So the title of the article is quite fair; it's not "clickbait".

Comment Re:it's explained in the study (Score 3, Interesting) 86

by ygslash (#47030473) Attached to: Static Electricity Defies Simple Explanation

The title is unfortunate (it's clickbait)... At the end of the paper, they point out that small amounts of water adsorbed on the surfaces of these oxides should create H+ and OH- ions in a density that does explain the static generation effect.

No, that's just one of two alternative hypotheses mentioned at the end of the article. The second is transfer of the zirconium itself between the particles. There could be other ideas. The point of this study is only to eliminate the widely assumed electron-transfer hypothesis, not to establish any alternative. So the title is quite accurate.

Submission + - Will cloud services be traded just like stocks and bonds one day? (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by Brandon Butler
Brandon Butler writes: Today, cloud computing resources are bought and sold in a fairly straightforward process: A company needs extra compute capacity, for example, so they contract with a provider who spins up virtual machines for a certain amount of time.

But what will that process look like in, say, 2020? If efforts by a handful of companies come to fruition, there could be a lot more wheeling and dealing that goes on behind the scenes. An idea is being floated to package cloud computing resources into blocks that can be bought and sold on a commodity futures trading market. It would be similar to how financial instruments like stocks, bonds and agricultural products like corn and wheat are traded on exchanges by investors.

Blocks of cloud computing resources — for example a month’s worth of virtual machines, or a year’s worth of cloud storage — would be packaged by service providers and sold on a market. In the exchange, investors and traders could buy up these blocks and resell them to end users, or other investors, potentially turning a profit if the value of the resource increases.

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