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+ - Ask Slashdot: What Makes A Great Hackathon?

Submitted by beaverdownunder
beaverdownunder writes "I recently attended a 'hackathon' that was really just another pitching contest, and out of frustration am tempted to organise an event myself that is better suited to developers and far less entrepreneur-centric than some of the latest offerings.

What I'd like to know from the /. community is, what would you like to see in a hackathon? What are some good hackathons you've attended that weren't just thinly-veiled pitch-development workshops? I have an idea around assigning attendees to quasi-random teams based on their skillsets, then giving them 48 hours to complete a serious coding / engineering challenge (probably in the not-for-profit space) — but maybe you've got some better ideas?"

+ - Apple Decreasing In Relevance To Gen Y Says Social Researcher->

Submitted by beaverdownunder
beaverdownunder writes "Fairfax Media Editor Steve Colquhoun writes: "Apple has again been rated as the world's top brand this week, but a leading social researcher warns the omnipresent technology giant is losing touch with its Generation Y heartland.

"Michael McQueen tracks the changing tastes of Gen-Y and believes the inventor of genre-defining devices such as the iPhone, iPad and iPod could be largely irrelevant to people under 30 within five years.

"The Sydney-based researcher has written four books on social trends with the most recent, Winning The Battle For Relevance, based on a survey of more than 500 companies.

"He created a "relevance curve" for the book to describe a company's importance to its core market and believes Apple is "past the turning point"."
Link to Original Source

Comment: Awesome! (Score 0) 143

by beaverdownunder (#43737355) Attached to: Interactive Raycaster For the Commodore 64 Under 256 Bytes

Awesome! If only we could teleport today's knowledge back to 1983! =)

I had been looking for a small demo to include with our Android .TAP-file renderer https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.kica.tapdancer, and this will be perfect! (Assuming it's free to distribute -- demos usually are but I'm attempting to clarify this...)

+ - Snapchat Doesn't Delete Your Photos->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "So, apparently Snapchat stores its 'self-destructing' images in a cache on your flash storage. A data-recovery expert has pointed out that you could recover the deleted images with software, however a larger danger could be a system daemon designed to 'sniff out' Snapchat images, and then copy them elsewhere before the application trashes them.

Either way, if you Snapchat your junk, you might soon be sharing it with more than your sext-buddy."
Link to Original Source

+ - 'Liberator' 3D Printed Gun Blueprints Removed By US State Department->

Submitted by coolnumbr12
coolnumbr12 writes "A notification on Defense Distributed’s website, says that the blueprints for the “Liberator,” the world’s first 3D-printed handgun, have been removed by the US Department of Defense Trade Controls.
The U.S. State Department has issued the following letter. In summary, the letter states that the Liberator may fall under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation and that Defense Distributed did not have the proper authorization to publish the blueprints."
Link to Original Source

Comment: It's all about ads (again) (Score 1) 114

The three to five people you choose as 'Trusted Contacts' are likely to be the 'closest' to you and thus the most likely to share behaviour and preferences with you.

Once you identify those people, Facebook can use their patterns to (presumably) target ads at _you_ better, and charge a premium to advertisers for this 'more accurate' imprint.

Whether this works remains to be seen, but in any case this has nothing to do with convenience and much more to do with monetization.

+ - Australia Pioneers Solution To Space-Junk Congestion->

Submitted by beaverdownunder
beaverdownunder writes "An Australian company is proposing to use laser technology to solve the growing problem of space junk at the fraction of the time and cost of other methods.

The company's CEO, Craig Smith, says blasting space junk with lasers could be a viable alternative to costly satellite removal of space junk.

Mr Smith says their plan, to shoot high-energy lasers at space debris to move them out of harm's way, is more practical, cost-effective and timely.

"You can't really destroy it unless you can bring it down into the Earth's orbit and burn it up," Mr Smith said."
Link to Original Source

+ - vTel deploying gigabit Internet in Vermont at $35/month->

Submitted by symbolset
symbolset writes "Up to 17,500 rural Vermont subscribers of vTel, a legacy copper telephone company stand to get gigabit fiber to the premises. Funded by a $95 million US grant and $55 million in coinvestment from a utility for smart meters, if every subscriber takes the gigabit Internet the 1,200 mile fiber network will cost $8,500 per home. Currently the company is doing its best to convince people this is a product they need, but have seen only 600 takers so far.

The federal grant is part of $7.2 billion in broadband stimulus funds that seem to have accomplished very little."
Link to Original Source

+ - Microsoft Managers Now In Charge of Washington State's Budget->

Submitted by reifman
reifman writes "The Seattle Times reports 'For the first time in state history, the Washington state budget is being written by Microsofties,' Representative Ross Hunter has 'tamed his Microsoft-style head-butting with a politician’s trust-building.' While Senator Andy Hill is 'the first Senate budget chair ever to request Excel files instead of paper spreadsheets.' 'The two must find $1 billion in new money for the state’s K-12 system.' Unfortunately, The Times neglects to mention that Hunter and Microsoft are behind the deficit and cutbacks in the first place. Hunter helped pass the amnesty bill for Microsoft's $1.5 billion dollar Nevada tax dodge ($4.37 billion if you include impacts from its lobbying to reduce tax rates) that contributed to $4 billion in cuts to K-12 and higher education since 2008. The state has resorted to taxing using Yelp to tax dancing to try to make up the shortfall (for real)."
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:He's crazy but... (Score 2, Insightful) 625

by beaverdownunder (#43553173) Attached to: 3D-Printed Gun May Be Unveiled Soon

That you might actually believe your laughable, ridiculous argument is frightening.

By your reckoning, Australia should have turned into a fascist state by now; let me assure you, it hasn't. Those who hold the power do not become totalitarian by nature simply because there is less chance of armed revolution.

I will, however, counter your argument as simply as it ever could be by pointing out that regardless of how many rifles, handguns, etc. you own, you will never be able to defeat a military that has the ability to wipe you off of the face of the earth with a few keystrokes. The entire NRA could never hope to hold off the American military for more than a few hours at best when the 'enemy' has conventional bombs that can level a small city, and nuclear options that produce minimal fallout.

This is simply about personal empowerment -- the ability to shoot at those who 'threaten' you, the comfort that 'if you had to' you could take the life of another human being. It's thinly-veiled psychopathy that becomes blatant once you actually kill somebody.

Comment: Emperor Skywalker (Score 1) 342

Given some of the plot-lines in PotC, I hope Disney won't shy away from Lucas' original vision of Luke going bad, and Han going Ben Kenobi like the suits at LucasFilm did.

I honestly think most of the nerds here are far more frightened to discover the brave-new-jedi-utopia went horribly wrong than they are about suffering Jar Jar Binks again.

Personally, I'd be happy to see Emperor Skywalker frying Ewoks. After all, he's in love with his sister, his 'parents' were violently killed, and how many people did he kill when he blew up the Death Star? It's not going to take too much to push him over the edge.

The Military

United States Begins Flying Stealth Bombers Over South Korea 567

Posted by samzenpus
from the nice-day-for-a-flight dept.
skade88 writes "The New York Times is reporting that the United States has started flying B-2 stealth bomber runs over South Korea as a show of force to North Korea. The bombers flew 6,500 miles to bomb a South Korean island with mock explosives. Earlier this month the U.S. Military ran mock B-52 bombing runs over the same South Korean island. The U.S. military says it shows that it can execute precision bombing runs at will with little notice needed. The U.S. also reaffirmed their commitment to protecting its allies in the region. The North Koreans have been making threats to turn South Korea into a sea of fire. North Korea has also made threats claiming they will nuke the United States' mainland."
GNOME

GNOME 3.8 Released Featuring New "Classic" Mode 267

Posted by Unknown Lamer
from the extend-freely dept.
Hot on the heels of the Gtk+ 3.8 release comes GNOME 3.8. There are a few general UI improvements, but the highlight for many is the new Classic mode that replaces fallback. Instead of using code based on the old GNOME panel, Classic emulates the feel of GNOME 2 through Shell extensions (just like Linux Mint's Cinnamon interface). From the release notes: "Classic mode is a new feature for those people who prefer a more traditional desktop experience. Built entirely from GNOME 3 technologies, it adds a number of features such as an application menu, a places menu and a window switcher along the bottom of the screen. Each of these features can be used individually or in combination with other GNOME extensions."
Google

Google Pledges Not To Sue Any Open Source Projects Using Their Patents 153

Posted by Unknown Lamer
from the now-and-forever dept.
sfcrazy writes "Google has announced the Open Patent Non-Assertion (OPN) Pledge. In the pledge Google says that they will not sue any user, distributor, or developer of Open Source software on specified patents, unless first attacked. Under this pledge, Google is starting off with 10 patents relating to MapReduce, a computing model for processing large data sets first developed at Google. Google says that over time they intend to expand the set of Google's patents covered by the pledge to other technologies." This is in addition to the Open Invention Network, and their general work toward reforming the patent system. The patents covered in the OPN will be free to use in Free/Open Source software for the life of the patent, even if Google should transfer ownership to another party. Read the text of the pledge. It appears that interaction with non-copyleft licenses (MIT/BSD/Apache) is a bit weird: if you create a non-free fork it appears you are no longer covered under the pledge.

"Contrary to popular belief, penguins are not the salvation of modern technology. Neither do they throw parties for the urban proletariat."

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