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Android

Submission + - Facebook Smartphone a Dumb Idea (theage.com.au)

Submitted by beaverdownunder
beaverdownunder writes: Farhad Manjoo examines Facebook's rumoured entry into the smartphone market, concluding, "So what would be the point in using the Facebook phone? Well, remember, it will be cheap. But so are lots of Android phones. If Facebook makes a phone, then, the device will necessarily spark a battle for the low end of the phone market, with each company offering ever-cheaper devices in the hopes of cashing in on some future advertising bonanza. If you're looking for a cheap, ad-heavy phone based on a dubious business model, you should rejoice. Otherwise, try to stifle your yawns."
Canada

Submission + - Canadian agency investigates US aircrash (nationalpost.com)

Submitted by knorthern knight
knorthern knight writes: When 2 light civilian planes collide in US airspace in Virginia, the usual response includes calling in the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) and NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) to investigate and make recommendations based on their results. But what do you do when the crash involves two planes piloted by a crash investigator with the FAA and the chief medical officer with the NTSB? In order to avoid conflict of interest by American investigators working for these agencies, the investigation has been turned over to to the Transportation Safety Board of Canada as a neutral 3rd party.

Submission + - Copyright infringer tries to shut down reporting on her infringement. (atty4kids.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Further to the previous story on slashdot where attorney Candice Schwager threw threats to sue a photographer who reported a DMCA violation against her for infringing use of his photography; Candice has now made a DMCA threat of her own against Petapixel, a photography site that reported on her infringement. The kicker? She's sent the DMCA notice an apparent six times not to Petapixel's registrar or their hosting service, but to godaddy, her own registrar.
Android

Submission + - VIA's $49 Android-Based Mini-PC is No Bigger Than a Banana (apc.io) 4

Submitted by
tcheleao
tcheleao writes: "VIA Technologies is seemingly riding the frenzy of the Raspberry Pi craze by offering its own miniature PC around the size of a small banana (Ed. note: at least it appears so in terms of volume). But unlike the current Pi,(almost impossible to get) this APC Android PC system comes ready to roll right out of the box and packs extra features like 2 GB of on-board storage and VGA output.But there is a catch 720p only www.apc.io."
Social Networks

Submission + - Online Social Networks can be Tipped by as Little as 0.8% of their Population (arxiv.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A new algorithm developed by researchers at West Point seems to break new ground for viral marketing practices in online social networks. Assuming a trend or behavior that spreads in an online social network based on the classic “tipping” model from sociology (based on the work of Thomas Schelling and Mark Granovetter), the new West Point algorithm can find a set of individuals in the network that can initiate a social cascade – a progressive series of “tipping” incidents — which leads to everyone in the social network adopting the new behavior. But the real good news for viral marketers is that this set of individuals is often very small – a sample of the Friendster social network can be influenced when only 0.8% of the initial population is seeded. The trick is finding the seed set – which the West Point algorithm often does in only a few minutes. The algorithm is described at a paper to be presented later this summer at the prestigious IEEE ASONAM conference. A copy of the paper is available at http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.4431. Further info on this new algorithm can also be found at http://blog.netsciwestpoint.org/2012/05/30/online-social-networks-can-be-tipped-by-as-little-as-0-8-of-their-population/.
Government

Submission + - Whose Cameras Are Watching New York Roads? (northcountrynow.com)

Submitted by NormalVisual
NormalVisual writes: License-plate reading cameras are popping up on utility poles all over St. Lawrence County in upstate New York, but no one is willing to say who they belong to . One camera was found by a utility crew, removed from the pole, and given to the local police. "Massena Police Chief Timmy Currier said he returned it to the owner, but wouldn’t say how he knew who the owner was, nor would he say who he gave it to....(Andrew) McMahon, the superintendent at Massena Electric Department, said one of his crews found a box on one of their poles and took it down because “it was in the electric space,” the top tier of wires on the pole above the telephone and cable TV wires, and whoever put it there had taken a chance with electrocution. He said they had never received a request or been informed about its placement."
Space

Submission + - No Intelligent Aliens Detected in Gliese 581 (discovery.com)

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "Using an Australian very long baseline array (VLBA) of three radio antennae, the first very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) campaign has been carried out on a SETI target star: the famous Gliese 581 red dwarf. However, after 8 hours of observing the star — thought to play host to six exoplanets, two of which are in the star's "habitable zone" — no alien signals were detected. This result isn't surprising, as the likelihood of us stumbling across intelligent aliens living in the Gliese 581 system transmitting radio is extremely slim, but it does validate VLBI as a very exciting means of using the vast amount of exoplanetary data (coming from missions such as the Kepler space telescope) for "directed SETI" projects."
Businesses

Submission + - SpaceX Brownsville Space Port Opposed by Texas Environmentalists (yahoo.com)

Submitted by
MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: "The proposed SpaceX space port in Brownsville, Texas, has run into opposition from an environmental group. Environment Texas is conducting a petition drive to stop the project. According to a news release by the group, the proposed space port, which would include a launch pad and control and spacecraft processing facilities, would be "almost surrounded" by a park and wildlife refuge. Environment Texas claims the launching of rockets would "scare the heck" out of every creature in the area and would "spray noxious chemicals all over the place." The petition will demand SpaceX build the space port elsewhere."
Your Rights Online

Submission + - Why the GPL licensing cops are the good guys (infoworld.com)

Submitted by rtfa-troll
rtfa-troll writes: 'GPL enforcement by Software Freedom Conservancy puts electronics makers on notice, leaves business users untouched', says Infoworld, going on to explain 'You are several orders of magnitude more likely to be raided by your proprietary suppliers, in the form of the Business Software Alliance, than to ever hear from SFC, let alone face any action. License compliance is a major and costly issue for proprietary software, but the case concerns an end-user license agreement (EULA), not a source license.' the expertly written article gives a good summary of why having GPL licenses enforced helps everybody except for 'hardware manufacturers — typically those creating low-cost consumer and business electronics' who need to verify that they pass on the same rights to others as they received with the original code.
Censorship

Submission + - New Restrictions Create Uncertainty For Chinese Social-Media Users

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Sina Weibo, the popular Chinese social-media network and innovative microblogging service, has been running on new rules to restrict unlawful and disruptive discourse since May 28.

Sina Weibo users each will now receive 80 points to begin with, and this can be boosted to a full 100 points by those who provide their official government-issued identification numbers (like Social Security numbers in the U.S.) and link to a cellphone account.

Spreading falsehoods will lead to deductions in points, among other penalties. Spreading an untruth to 100 other users will result in a deduction of two points. Spreading it to 100-1,000 other users will result in a deduction of five points, as well as a week's suspension of the account. Spreading it to more than 1,000 other users will result in a deduction of 10 points, as well as a 15-day suspension of the account.
Programming

Submission + - Light Table Funding Success (chris-granger.com)

Submitted by omar.sahal
omar.sahal writes: Chris Granger's Light Table IDE, covered here previously on Slashdot has been successfully funded by a Kickstarter campaign. 7,317 backers brought in $316,720, obliging Chris to support the Python Programming language with his first release. Chris and his team have also been successful in being funded by xy combinator.

Some more back ground on the concepts developed by Bret Victor found in Light Table http://vimeo.com/36579366

More on Light Table
http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/04/12/light-table---a-new-ide-concept/

The previous Light Table story
http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/06/01/45-days-later/

Submission + - Geezers (over 55 years) pick stronger passwords than youngins (under 25) (newscientist.com)

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: Joseph Bonneau, a computer scientist at the University of Cambridge, calculated the password strengths of nearly 70 million Yahoo! users. He compared the strengths of passwords chosen by different demographic groups and compared the results.

People over the age of 55 pick passwords double the strength of those chosen by people under 25 years old.

Submission + - Machine Learning Algorithms to Crack Morse Code (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
mni12
mni12 writes: "Morse code has been used since early 1840's and is still a very popular mode of communication especially among ham radio operators. While it takes some effort for humans to learn Morse code it is a very efficient way in communicating short messages over radio waves, especially under noise, interference, propagation fading or other adverse conditions. Experienced human operators can easily outperform any publicly available Morse decoding software.
I have done some experiments with machine learning algorithms, especially with Self Organizing Maps (SOM) applied to real-time decoding Morse code in real world noise & interference filled signals. Early test results look promising but I would like to turn to Slashdot community for some advice and ideas.

What kind of machine learning algorithms would be applicable for real time Morse decoder when signals contain a lot of noise, interference from other stations, fading, irregular timing and other problematic features?"
Security

Submission + - Is Flame a weapon of the US-led Cyberwar or just more Corporate Spyware? (theconversation.edu.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It is somewhat surprising that no commentators have made the connection between Flame and the dozens of commercially available spyware. The levels of sophistication between Flame and commercially available surveillance software are similar – the only difference being that Flame has the ability to replicate and infect other machines whereas surveillance software’s installation is normally targeted.

In fact, there is nothing to say that Flame was not actually installed or being used by the Governments of the countries involved to spy on their own citizens. The belief that Stuxnet was of Israeli or US origin was held on the basis that the programming skills required and funding for the development would have only been found in these countries. But as has been detailed on the Spyfiles site, the more general surveillance software is relatively inexpensive and can be bought “off-the-shelf”. So anyone could have been the originator, even private corporations.
Education

Submission + - Speech Recognition using the Raspberry Pi (aonsquared.co.uk)

Submitted by
aonsquared
aonsquared writes: "In a previous slashdot story I demonstrated a voice-controlled robotic arm using the open-source speech decoder Julius. This time, I have managed to port the system to a Raspberry Pi to control the same robotic arm, and as usual, posted the tutorial and source code. Some negative reviews of the Raspberry Pi are starting to appear, and they're missing the educational point of this device — I'm hoping this will counter the naysayers, and help inspire a new generation of hackers, as well as also bring open-source speech recognition the same attention as proprietary solutions (i.e Siri) are getting!"
Windows

Submission + - Build your own supercomputer (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by
Barence
Barence writes: "PC Pro has a feature explaining how a home-brew approach can provide a usable measure of supercomputing power at a comparatively realistic price. The feature explores how it's possible to create 16-core and upward home computers with clustering, even using a hotchpotch of systems including netbooks, laptops, workstations and high-performance servers.

"Windows-based clusters can be assembled quite easily using the Windows HPC Server 2008 operating system, and Microsoft provides guidelines for creating 'cluster-aware' applications that will make use of cluster resources when run on such a system," the feature explains. "Alternatively, there are various free Linux distributions that are designed for clustering, such as openMosix and ClusterKnoppix. These provide a user-friendly experience that makes it almost effortless to set up a cluster of any size using the popular Beowulf system.""
Censorship

Submission + - Google Mail now blocked in China

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For some time, access to Gmail has been deliberately "delayed" in China.
Since about 6pm on Friday, local time it has been completely blocked. The login screen "may" come up, but login itself just times out.
China

Submission + - China arrested a CIA spy (latimes.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: A 38-year-old Chinese national, who was a secretary to Qiu Jin, the deputy minister of state security, is alleged to have been recruited and trained by the CIA and was arrested by the Chinese authority sometime this year

It was reported that the man was approached by the CIA while he was a student studying in the USA

To "cement" the relationship, the CIA arranged a classic "honey trap", where the guy was photographed with a woman in a compromising setting in a Hong Kong apartment. And with that, the guy is coerced into spying for the CIA

Submission + - Making use of the LLVM project on Linux (llvm.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We're currently working on a C++ project, where we're able to use some new C++11 features and thus have decided to use a recent version of the Clang compiler and libc++, both from the LLVM(http://llvm.org) project. After manually editing and adapting some libc++ Makefiles for Linux specific settings we're very pleased, so far.
But why aren't tools like libc++(http://libcxx.llvm.org/) or the debugger lldb(http://lldb.llvm.org/) from LLVM more popular on Linux?
It seems to me that to some extend not even the buildsystem for those tools are Linux-friendly and you have to fiddle with it, by yourself.
May this be the case, or even cause of the low popularity?
Wireless Networking

Submission + - Your Neighbor's WiFi Wants You to Vote for Romney

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Megan Garber writes that wireless routers have become the lawn signs of the digital age particularly in large apartment buildings, where almost every unit has a unique wifi network that will be detected in turn by all the other unique wifi networks, SSIDs can be a cheeky, geeky way to broadcast messages to your immediate neighbors. Most of us keep it simple with "275_Elm_Street," "Apt23," or "my_network" but some get more creative with names like: "Apt112IHaveYourMail," "PrettyFlyForAWiFi," or "WeCanHearYouHavingSex" — a great way to freak out your annoying neighbors without hiding in their bushes or peeping in their windows late at night. Now the team at OpenSignalMaps, which maintains a database of geolocated wifi access points, analyzed the data they've collected about wireless routers to see whether wifi names are "being used to fly political colors" and have found, globally, 1,140 results for "Obama" and an additional six for "Romney" — an indication not necessarily of Romney's popularity relative to the president's, but of the attention that four years as president can confer. "There's something uniquely contemporary and incredibly old-school about that kind of broadcasting: It's messaging meant only for your immediate neighbors," writes Garber "It's both intimate and isolating, both invasive and impersonal, both omnipresent and invisible, both passive and aggressive." Which makes them a good metaphor for political discourse as it looks in the US today with its particular mix of intimacy and impersonality. "The politicized network names are like lawn signs for people who don't have lawns.""

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