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Technology

Submission + - Falling Off The Agile Waterfall (devopsonwindows.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It's been over 12 years since the Agile Manifesto was published, but has its promise ever really been realized? Many organizations like to claim they follow Agile process, but is their process and their software truly more agile or are they just following process for the sake of process? Are they just "Falling Off the Agile Waterfall"?
Privacy

Submission + - Mobile Phone Use Patterns Identify Individuals Better Than Fingerprints (securityledger.com)

Submitted by
chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: "Mobile phone use may be a more accurate identifier of individuals than even their own fingerprints, according to research published on the web site of the scientific journal Nature.
Scientists at MIT and the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium analyzed 15 months of mobility data for 1.5 million individuals who the same mobile carrier. Their analysis, “Unique in the Crowd: the privacy bounds of human mobility” showed that data from just four, randomly chosen “spatio-temporal points” (for example, mobile device pings to carrier antennas) was enough to uniquely identify 95% of the individuals, based on their pattern of movement. Even with just two randomly chosen points, the researchers say they could uniquely characterize around half of the 1.5 million mobile phone users. The research has profound implications for privacy, suggesting that the use of mobile devices makes it impossible to remain anonymous – even without the use of tracking software.

For their research, they studied anonymized carrier data from a “significant and representative part of the population of a small European country.” In the study, the researchers used sample data collected between April 2006 and June 2007. Each time a user interacted with their mobile phone operator network by initiating or receiving a call or a text message, the location of the connecting antenna was recorded, providing both a spatial and temporal data point.
“We show that the uniqueness of human mobility traces is high, thereby emphasizing the importance of the idiosyncrasy of human movements for individual privacy,” the researchers write. Given the amount of information that can be inferred from mobility data, as well as the potentially large number of simply anonymized mobility datasets available, this is a growing concern.”"
Chrome

Submission + - Chrome 26 Arrives With Spell Checking Improvements

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google on Tuesday released Chrome version 26 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The new version features "Ask Google for suggestions" spell checking improvements, desktop shortcuts for multiple users (profiles) on Windows, and an asynchronous DNS resolver on Mac and Linux. You can update to the latest release now using the browser's built-in silent updater, or download it directly from google.com/chrome.

Submission + - FBI Pursuing Real-Time Gmail Spying Powers as "Top Priority" for 2013 (slate.com)

Submitted by Fnord666
Fnord666 writes: Despite the pervasiveness of law enforcement surveillance of digital communication, the FBI still has a difficult time monitoring Gmail, Google Voice, and Dropbox in real time. But that may change soon, because the bureau says it has made gaining more powers to wiretap all forms of Internet conversation and cloud storage a “top priority” this year.

Submission + - USPS discriminates against "Athiest" merchandise (atheistberlin.com) 3

Submitted by fish waffle
fish waffle writes: Suspecting that their strongly branded "Athiest" products may be treated differently by more religiously-oriented postal regions, Kickstarter success Athiest Shoes conducted an experiment. They sent 178 envelopes to 89 people in different parts of the US, each person receiving one envelope prominently branded as "Athiest" merchandise, and one not. The results: packages with the athiest label were nearly 10 times more likely to never be received, and took on average 3 days longer to show up when they did. Control experiments were also done in Europe and Germany---it's definitely a USPS problem.

Submission + - Fantastic JS1K submissions (js1k.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: With just five days left in the current "write 1kb of JavaScript" competition, the submissions are becoming increasingly impressive. Take for instance a beautiful 3d animation, written in 1k and drawing on a 2d canvas. Or a mine cart animation. If you wait long enough you'll actually get to caves! Can you manage to write a demo that fits on the hall of fame before the deadline closes?
Science

Submission + - Washington's Exploding Manholes Explained? (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Drive around Washington, D.C., and the phrase "passing gas" takes on a whole new meaning. Researchers who mapped methane concentrations on the streets of the nation's capital found natural gas leaks everywhere, at concentrations of up to 50 times the normal background levels. The leaking gas wastes resources, enhances ozone production, and exacerbates global warming—not to mention powering the city's infamous exploding manholes.
Encryption

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Encrypted digital camera/recording devices?

Submitted by
Ransak
Ransak writes: "As dashboard cameras catch more unplanned events, I've thought of equipping my vehicles with them just in case that 'one in a billion' moment happens. But given how much over reach law enforcement has shown, I'd only consider one if I could be ensured that the data was secure from prying eyes (ie, a camera that writes to encrypted SD memory, etc). Are there any solutions for the niche market of the paranoid photographer/videographer?"
Games

Submission + - Bioshock: Infinite Released

Submitted by kandelar
kandelar writes: Bioshock: Infinite has finally been released many gamers (including myself) are rejoicing. The game is getting rave reviews and appears to be nothing less than perfect. Kudos to Ken Levine and the Irrational team.
Enlightenment

Submission + - Enlightenment Terminal Allows Video Playback, PDF Viewing (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The E17 Enlightenment project has released a new version of its Terminology terminal emulator. With Terminology 0.3 comes several fancy features, including the ability to preview video files, images, and PDF files from within the terminal. There's new escape sequences, inline video playback, and other features to this terminal emulator that's only built on EFL and libc.
Data Storage

Submission + - Animation sophistication: The Croods required 80 million compute hours to create (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: It may be a movie about a stone age family, but DreamWorks said its latest 3D animated movie "The Croods" took more compute cycles to create than any other movie they've made. The movie required a whopping 80 million compute hours to render, 15 million more hours than DreamWorks' last record holder, "The Rise of the Guardians." The production studio said between 300 and 400 animators worked on "The Croods" over the past three years. The images they created, from raw sketches to stereoscopic high-definition shots, required about 250TB of data storage capacity. When the movie industry moved from producing 2D to 3D high-definition movies over the past decade, the data required to produce the films increased tremendously. For DreamWorks, the amount of data needed to create a stereoscopic film leaped by 30%.
Software

Submission + - Has Kickstarter Peaked? (slashdot.org)

Submitted by
Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: "Kickstarter has taken off in the past year, raising big money for a wide variety of projects. Look at some of their stats: in June 2012, only seven projects raised more than a million dollars apiece; in the past nine months, another 16 projects have passed that threshold. Since the site began operations in 2009, several of the 38,000 funded projects have broken out as superstars, including the Pebble Watch and a new gaming console. With all this competition, has crowdfunding gotten, well, too crowded? Is Kickstarter peaking? As the dollar amounts have grown, so has the potential for abuse. Hidden amidst all these success stories and multi-million dollar payouts are some sadder tales. The majority of the nearly 50,000 unfunded Kickstarter projects received less than 20 precent of their funding goals, with 11 percent never even getting a single pledge."
AI

Submission + - AI programmers struggle to makes games 'imitate life' (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Artificial intelligence, a field of programming employed by video game developers to make characters smarter and improve their decisions, still has a ways to go before it actually yields intelligent characters. "There are AI games with very little 'I' in them," said Brian Schwab, senior AI and gameplay engineer at Blizzard Entertainment, which has published the hugely successful "Warcraft," "StarCraft" and "Diablo" series of strategy games."
Advertising

Submission + - Advertising industry lashes out at Mozilla over 3rd-party cookie blocking. (iab.net)

Submitted by preflex
preflex writes: Unsurprisingly, Interactive Advertising Bureau president Randall Rothenburg is up in arms over Mozilla's decision to block third-party cookies in upcoming versions of Firefox and has issued the following statement:

"The Interactive Advertising Bureau strongly opposes the scheme by Mozilla to block third-party cookies by default in upcoming releases of its Firefox browser, and we vigorously encourage both the non-profit Mozilla Foundation and its for-profit subsidiary the Mozilla Corporation, which is reconfiguring the Firefox browser, to abandon this proposed change. This move will not put the interest of users first. Nor does it promote transparency or “move the web forward,” as Mozilla claims in its announcement. It will not advance Mozilla’s objective, as stated in its bylaws, of “promoting choice and innovation on the Internet,” but will, instead, impede both. If Mozilla follows through on its plan to block all third-party cookies, the disruption will disenfranchise every single internet user. All of us will lose the freedom to choose our own online experiences; we will lose the opportunity to monitor and protect our privacy; and we will lose the chance to benefit from independent sites like RightWingNews.com LiberalOasis.com, MotherhoodWTF.com, and SuburbanDaddy.com because thousands of small businesses that make up the diversity of content and services online will be forced to close their doors. ..."

He even manges to sneak in a Think-of-the-children argument:

"It is also the third-party cookie that enables urgent messages like AMBER Alerts and weather emergencies to be delivered to relevant, localized audiences."

Submission + - How Often Do You Change Your Wireless Lan Password?

Submitted by Zeorge
Zeorge writes: I was reading up on passwords and how a WPA is considerbly more secure then WEP. However, I realized that as I never have changed my password, it is still a question of "when" my wifi will be hacked if someone wanted to. Which begs me to ask other fellow Slashdotters, how often do you change your Wireless Lan password?

1) Password?
2) "Set-it-and-forget-it!"
3) Weekly
4) Monthly
5) Quarterly
6) Yearly

Submission + - T-Mobile ends contracts, ends subsidies.

Submitted by AlphaWolf_HK
AlphaWolf_HK writes: In what I see as a refreshing change, T-Mobile, the fourth largest carrier in the USA, has made sweeping changes to its service, with its CEO saying: "Here's the deal: If we suck this month, go somewhere else. If we're good, stay with us." after quietly ending contract plans last weekend. As part of that change, the new base plan will include unlimited access, including voice, text, and data. Data will be restricted to edge speeds after 500GB with no overage costs, but can be upgraded to 2.5GB for $10, or unlimited for $20. Portable wifi hotspot usage is also unrestricted for no additional cost. In addition, LTE services just went live in 8 markets. As is already standard practice with t-mobile, you are free to bring your own device. However, customers won't be fronting the full cost of the phone with unsubsidized plans. Unlike in the past, they'll know exactly what they're paying for the phone by means of interest free installments, and paying off the phone is an option at any time. Oh, and they're also offering the iphone 5 next month for $650. Or, you can do as I did and drop a cool $300 on a Nexus 4 directly from google, which unofficially works with t-mobiles LTE.
Microsoft

Submission + - MS updates Mail, Calendar and People apps & ditches Google Calendar support (pureinfotech.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft is finally refreshing its built-in Windows 8 apps: Mail, Calendar, and People as part of the effort to improve the Windows experience.

In this new update expect the Mail app to support flagging email messages and creating folders. In the Calendar app, the folks at Redmond are introducing a new look, forward invitations and several other tweaks. And the People app will incorporate a much improved navigations and filters.
Bitcoin

Submission + - The World's First Bitcoin ATM Dispenses Cyprus Bills (vice.com) 2

Submitted by
Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: "Charging ahead of the bitcoin start-up stampede, Jeff Berwick (Founder of Stockhouse.com and TDV Media), has announced the debut of Bitcoin ATM, with hope to launch its first machine in Cyprus. This couldn't be more timely, as Antreas Artemis, head of the island nation's largest bank, has suddenly resigned amidst a banking crisis in the small Mediterranean country.

To try to quell the crisis, which has led some to speculate that Cyprus might make a disastrous exit from the eurozone, the country will now enforce weekly withdrawal limits. Banks, meanwhile, are closed until Thursday, and Cyprus's finance minister has said that bank accounts with 100,000 euros or more may see up to 40 percent of those funds converted into bank shares."
GNOME

Submission + - GTK+ 3.8 Released with support for Wayland (gmane.org)

Submitted by kthreadd
kthreadd writes: Version 3.8 of the GTK+ GUI framework has been released in version 3.8. A new feature in GTK+ 3.8 is support for Wayland 1.0, the display server that will replace X on free desktops. Among the other new featurs are improved support for themeing, fixes to the geometry management and improved accessibility. There is also better support for touch, as part of a long going effort in making GTK+ touch-aware.
Science

Submission + - Researchers Build Fibre Cables Capable of Near Light Speed Communication (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Researchers have managed to build a fibre optic cable that is capable of transferring data between end points at near light speed. The team of researchers over at the University of Southampton in England have constructed a fibre that is hollow with special inner walls that will prevent light from refracting. Fibre optic cables transfer data using light beams and even though theoretically the cables can carry data at near light speed, the actual data throughput is reduced by 31 per cent — thanks to the refraction of light as it passes through silica glass. Refraction of light is less in air as compared to glass and to get around the above problem, researchers have been looking at options through which the core of the fiber can be replaced by air. Another hurdle was the question of how to get light beams to move through cables that bend and around curvatures. This is where the ingenuity of the research comes into play. The researchers have built fibre cables with a hollow core that allows for movement of light across bends while minimizing loss of light due to refraction. The researchers credit this achievement to what they have dubbed "ultra-thin photonic-bandgap rim" that not only minimizes data loss but also reduces latency while providing for wider bandwidth.

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