46782183
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"In the early days, Street View must have been a relatively easy project for Google to execute, considering the financial resources and employees at its disposal: strap a set of high-tech cameras to a fleet of vehicles and drive the latter around urban areas all over the world, recording every inch for viewers’ clicking-and-dragging pleasure. But there’s only so much of the world accessible via well-paved roads (or close to gas stations, for that matter), which meant Google had to regress a bit: instead of cars, it began strapping all that fancy camera equipment to human beings, who are a little bit maneuverable over rough terrain and narrow dirt paths than a four-door sedan. Google sent its Street View cyborgs into the Grand Canyon, where they recorded the craggy pathways and steep cliffs. Then it sent them to some of the world’s highest peaks. Now comes the next exotic locale: the Galapagos Islands, land of giant tortoises and other unique species, where Charles Darwin researched his famous theory of evolution. “It’s critical that we share images with the world of this place in order to continue to study and preserve the islands’ unique biodiversity,” read a May 23 note on the Google Lat Long blog. “Today we’re honored to announce, in partnership with Charles Darwin Foundation (CDF) and the Galapagos National Parks Directorate (GNPD), that we’ve collected panoramic imagery of the islands with the Street View Trekker.” That imagery will appear on Google Maps later in 2012. Nobody's asked the tortoises how they feel about it."Link to Original Source
46776297
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"Twitter is now offering two-factor authentication, a feature that could help prevent embarrassing security breaches. Twitter users interested in activating two-factor authentication will need to head over to their account settings page and click the checkbox beside “Require a verification code when I sign in." Twitter will ask that the user add a phone number to their Twitter account; once this is done, it’s worth taking a few moments to access the “Mobile” tab on the account settings page (visible in the left-side bar) and adjust all the text-notification settings left on by default—that is, unless the user enjoys their phone buzzing at 2 AM with alerts of new followers. After activating “Require a verification code when I sign in,” Twitter will send the user a test message (“Twitter can send verification codes to this device!”). From that point forward, a six-digit code (sent to that phone via SMS) will be needed in order to sign in. Other social networks and online services such as Facebook and Google already have two-factor authentication in place. In the wake of some high-profile hacks, it seemed inevitable that Twitter would adopt the feature as well. Back in April, for example, hackers allegedly associated with the Syrian Electronic Army hacked into the Associated Press Twitter account and posted a false message about a White House bombing, which led to a brief plunge in the stock market; combined with some other high-profile victims, including The Onion, the pressure must have been intense for Twitter executives to do something to bolster security."Link to Original Source
46742741
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"MariaDB is a fork of the MySQL source code, split off in the wake of concerns over what Oracle would do with MySQL licensing. In addition to its role as a “drop-in replacement” for MySQL, MariaDB also includes some new features that (some claim) make it better than MySQL. Jeff Cogswell compares MySQL and MariaDB and suggests (in his opinion) that there's "more than enough reason to ditch MySQL and switch over to MariaDB and stay there." Why? While he breaks down MariaDB's new features and thinks many of them aren't that fantastic, and while MariaDB's performance isn't that much better than that of MySQL ("MariaDB’s performance appears a bit better on multi-core machines, but I strongly suspect that one could tweak MySQL to match"), the questions over Oracle and MySQL licensing give him pause. "MariaDB shows every indication that it will be around for quite awhile, while you can’t really say the same of Oracle’s MySQL," he writes. "Free-and-open MySQL competes with Oracle’s proprietary and extremely competitive tools. That alone is grounds for concern—will Oracle do something to impede MySQL’s development?""Link to Original Source
46714371
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"Fresh off purchasing Tumblr for $1.1 billion, Yahoo has moved to the next stage of what’s becoming a company-wide reboot: fixing Flickr, the photo-sharing service that it acquired in 2005 and subsequently allowed to languish. Yahoo boosted Flickr accounts' individual storage capacity to one free terabyte, revamped the Website's overall look, and launched a new Flickr app for Google Android, among other tweaks. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer clearly wants her company to fight toe-to-toe on features with Google and Facebook, but she faces a long road ahead of her: not only does she need to streamline Yahoo’s cumbersome corporate structure and product portfolio into something that resembles fighting shape, but she needs to reverse the general perception that Yahoo is teetering on the edge of history’s trash-bin, with an aging customer base and unexciting features. The question is, could anyone actually pull it off? Is Yahoo capable of an Apple-style turnaround, or are its current actions merely delaying the inevitable?"Link to Original Source
46684875
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"Location is everything when choosing the site of a data center. Firms such as Microsoft and Google and Facebook spend a lot of time looking into the costs of land, power, regulation and taxes before placing their respective data centers in a particular place. Sometimes, that local tax bill comes into play in a big way. Just ask the National Security Agency (NSA), which learned it faces a multimillion-dollar annual state tax on the power consumed by its new data center in Camp Williams, south of Salt Lake City. The Salt Lake Tribune obtained a series of email exchanges between the feds and the state, with the NSA protesting a $2.4 million tax on its annual power expenditure, pegged at about $40 million. Harvey Davis, director of installations and logistics for the NSA, sent a letter (subsequently quoted by the newspaper) to state officials that made the logistics argument: “Long-term stability in the utility rates was a major factor in Utah being selected as our site for our $1.5bn construction at Camp Williams. HP325 [the new law] runs counter to what we expected.”"Link to Original Source
46674895
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"Yahoo has agreed to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion. As you know, Yahoo is a major corporation with a need to monetize its assets in a way that makes its shareholders happy, leaving open the question of whether it’ll alter Tumblr’s DNA in order to make the latter more of a significant cash generator. But at least for the moment, Yahoo seems content to leave its new property alone. “Per the agreement and our promise not to screw it up, Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business,” read the company’s press release. “The product, service and brand will continue to be defined and developed separately with the same Tumblr irreverence, wit, and commitment to empower creators.” Tumblr CEO David Karp, who has been known to make some very anti-advertising comments in the past, will remain in place. Even so, anyone who likes Tumblr may have some cause for concern, because Yahoo has a history of making high-profile acquisitions that subsequently implode. Back in 1999, for example, it paid over $3 billion for GeoCities, another blogging network that it eventually shut down after years of failing the update the property. In 2005, it acquired popular photo-sharing Website Flickr, which it likewise allowed to languish and die. That same year it bought Delicious, a popular Webpage-bookmarking site, and did exactly nothing with it. So when Yahoo starts off its Tumblr press release with a promise not to screw things up, it’s a self-deprecating nod toward all that history. New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has been on a bit of a buying spree of late, snatching up startups such as Summly in an attempt to make her company “cool” and relevant."Link to Original Source
46603025
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"While many data center managers and administrators are paying lip service to being “green,” i.e. doing everything they can to reduce power consumption and costs, the fact is most are still not stepping up to be accountable. That’s the findings of a survey from the Uptime Institute, released this week at the group’s Symposium conference in Santa Clara, Calif., which suggests something it calls “green fatigue” is setting in when it comes to making data centers greener. “Green fatigue” is exactly as it sounds: managers are getting tired of the increasingly difficult race to chop their PUE, or Power Usage Effectiveness. The PUE is a measure of a data center’s efficiency. The lower the PUE, the better—and Microsoft and Google, with nearly limitless resources, have set the bar so high (or low, depending on your perspective) that it’s making less-capitalized firms frustrated. Just a few years ago, the Uptime Institute estimated that the average PUE of a data center was around 2.4, which meant for every dollar of electricity to power a data center, $1.4 dollars were spent to cool it. That dropped to 1.8 recently, an improvement to be sure. But then you have companies such as Google and Microsoft building data centers next to rivers for cheap hydroelectric power in remote parts of the Pacific Northwest and reporting insanely low PUEs (below 1.1 in some cases). The Institute latest survey of data center operators shows only 50 percent of respondents in North America said they considered energy efficiency to be very important to their companies, down from 52 percent last year and 58 percent in 2011."Link to Original Source
46595543
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"At this week’s Google I/O in San Francisco, Google CEO Larry Page stood onstage and took unscripted questions from an auditorium of conference attendees. That’s an unusual move for any chief executive, the sort of thing that risks giving their PR people a heart attack. But Page wasn’t up there to offer insights into strategy or drop hints about upcoming products: he wanted to talk about how negativity in the tech industry stood in the way of innovation. “Despite the faster change we have in the industry, we’re still moving slow relative to the opportunities that we have,” he said. “And some of that, I think, has to do with the negativity. Every story I read about Google, it’s us versus some other company or some stupid thing.” Being negative, he added, is not how the tech industry makes progress. But minutes later, Page couldn't resist swiping at Oracle and Microsoft. And Google's battles are just one small element in the circular firing squad that comprises most of the tech industry: Apple versus Google versus Samsung versus Microsoft versus Oracle versus Salesforce versus lots of little startups. Those battles won’t fade away anytime soon, because corporations have one goal: profit. And so long as other rivals’ technological innovations or marketplace maneuvers stand in the way of that profit, the lawsuits and the CEO sniping will continue. The part of Page’s talk that centered on peace and love played well to the audience at Google I/O; but it’s easier to argue that the true mode of the tech industry, at its core, is Darwinian competition. Do you agree?"Link to Original Source
46593009
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"Windows 8 won’t become the enterprise standard, according to a new report from research firm Forrester. “Most IT shops are still too focused on migrating to Windows 7 to bother with Windows 8 anytime soon, if at all,” read the summary of Forrester’s report, which could have several Microsoft executives reaching for the Valium this morning. “IT won’t set Windows 8 as a standard, but that won’t stop workers from using it.” The research firm suggests that an operating-system version only becomes the “enterprise standard” once 50 percent of corporate-owned PCs actually run it. While Windows 7 passed that milestone, Forrester doesn’t think Windows 8 will do the same anytime soon, thanks in part to lower enterprise interest and the prevalence of Apple’s iOS on tablets. “Early enterprise interest in Windows 8 is half that of Windows 7 prior to its release,” the summary suggested. “IT decision-makers don’t yet see the new Windows experience as an improvement.” The firm also doesn’t believe that Windows 8 “offers firms enough savings in operations to make it a top priority.” Microsoft’s upcoming update, Windows 8.1 (known for quite some time by its codename, “Windows Blue”) will—if rumors prove correct—reintroduce some features deleted between Windows 7 and 8, most notably the desktop Start button. Those reinsertions could help Windows 8 in the eyes of longtime Windows users who like things to stay familiar; but whether those tweaks boost Windows 8 adoption within the enterprise remains to be seen."Link to Original Source
46568051
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"But at this year’s Google I/O conference in San Francisco, Google announced that it has a plan to make Google Plus users more engaged, courtesy of new features backed by a handful of data-analytics tricks. Google Plus postings now feature Google-generated hashtags that, when clicked, direct the user to related content from across their network. From a backend-infrastructure perspective, that sort of thing leans heavily on Google’s semantic analysis and the ability to make the right connections between various pieces of data. Google Plus will also automatically highlight certain photos out of dozens or even hundreds of shots. Say you went on vacation to India and took some photos of your significant other in front of the Taj Mahal; Google Plus will leverage its database of information to recognize that as a prominent landmark and pluck those photos out of the pile as “special.” In the words of that posting on the Google+ Blog: “Your darkroom is now a Google data center.” Are all these nifty, analytics-intensive features enough to change the larger fortunes of Google Plus? That’s the big question. Google has a handsome-looking platform, one that performs certain activities with a high degree of polish and zip—but is that enough to counter Facebook?"Link to Original Source
46562855
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"At this week’s Google I/O conference in San Francisco, Google announced a new app initiative designed to make the company more of a presence in classrooms—or at least those classrooms in school districts wealthy enough to purchase tablets for students. Google Play for Education allows school districts to purchase and instantly distribute apps to student devices, after browsing through options subdivided by curriculum, grade or standard. In theory, this sort of system works out well for everyone: app developers potentially profit from bulk sales to educational institutions, Google and its manufacturing partners earn considerable cash from sales of Android tablets, and students get educated in a cutting-edge way. But from a different perspective, Google’s push into the classroom can also be construed as an attempt to block the influence of a rival, Apple, which has made educational outreach a priority. In January 2012, Apple launched iBooks Author, which lets educators and publishers create interactive textbooks for the classroom; it also unveiled a revamped iTunes U, a platform for distributing course materials and video lectures. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was long interested in making his company a player in education. “He wanted to disrupt the textbook industry and save the spines of spavined students bearing backpacks by creating electronic texts and curriculum material for the iPad,” Walter Isaacson wrote in his popular Steve Jobs biography. That’s not to doubt the altruism of either company in the educational realm: if company resources need to be invested in something that betters the larger world, it’s hard to argue against preparing kids for the future. But tech companies also aren’t charities, and executives know that a kid using their PC or tablet in the classroom today is more likely to grow up to become a long-term customer. In these sorts of cases, there’s a thin line between philanthropy and pursuit of profit."Link to Original Source
46533247
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"The United States with its H-1B controversy isn't the only country going through that sort of immigration upheaval. As the cult of entrepreneurship spirals upward in Europe, the intricate vagaries of immigration policy on the continent are being newly scrutinized by our company-building classes. Freshly venture-backed European Internet companies want your talent, and they are going to remarkable lengths to get it—but not always legally. Milo Yiannopoulos talked to whole bunch of entrepreneurs and investors in Europe about the fudges, shortcuts, workarounds and, in some cases, “strategic decision-making” are—just about—getting their companies the talent they need. For example, one well-known Parisian venture capitalist told Milo that he knows of “at least nine” startups in France employing developers illegally, keeping them off the books not only to avoid France’s notoriously onerous labor laws but also because it would have been impossible, or simply too expensive, to import them officially. There's much more at the link."Link to Original Source
46501685
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"A small revolution of sorts is brewing. Some people are quietly discussing alternatives to the popular Top500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers. Bill Kramer, deputy project director for Blue Waters, the supercomputer belonging to the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has said previously that he will not be submitting scores to Top500.org, the organization that compiles the list. Kramer said that work is being done by people such as Michael Heroux, a distinguished member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories, to develop an alternative benchmark suite for evaluating supercomputer performance; Heroux acknowledged this. If such an alternative is agreed upon, the Top500 list might diminish in significance. Kramer’s reasons for seeking alternatives are simple: Linpack, the performance benchmark used to compile the list, doesn’t adequately measure the performance of today’s modern supercomputers. “It’s not only inadequate, it’s counter-productive,” he said in a recent interview. “First, to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with the Linpack benchmark, when used appropriately but it is no longer the dominant indicator for how well a system will do measuring real problems.""Link to Original Source
46499791
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"Roughly 85 percent of IT managers polled by Forrester said they would hold onto networking infrastructure longer, but vendors retire products prematurely in an effort to force customers to upgrade. In a response that may seem familiar to anyone who’s ever been pressured into buying a maintenance contract—either by an enterprise vendor or a major electronics retailer—over 80 percent of the 304 respondents said they don’t like the misrepresented cost savings, new fees, and inflexible pricing models—but buy the products anyway. One of the survey’s interesting points is that IT decision makers aren’t willing to contradict the vendor. The uncertainty seems to come from the fact that the vendor may in fact be right—and a customer who contradicts what they’re saying may end up shouldering the blame if the equipment goes south. It’s the “you never got fired for buying IBM” argument, applied to the networking space. The problem, of course, is that the vendor often works for its own agenda. Do you upgrade when the vendor (or reseller) suggests you do so? Or do you stick to your own way of doing things?"Link to Original Source
46476283
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"Sandeep Bhanot, a developer evangelist at Salesforce.com, argues that JavaScript is eating the world. "There are several trends and technologies that are coalescing at the same time to make Jeff Atwood’s famous 'law'—any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript—more true than ever," he writes. In the following column, he digs into everything from JavaScript's increasing maturity to its use in ultra-responsive UIs. "Love it or hate it, the one thing a modern developer cannot do is ignore JavaScript," he concludes. "It is slowly but surely eating your world." Do you agree?"Link to Original Source