×

Submission + - Poll: Most annoying culture/locale convention difference 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Most annoying culture/locale convention difference:
- Usage of ',' vs. '.' for decimal numbers
- Usage of 'dd/mm/yyyy' vs. 'mm/dd/yyyy' or 'yyyy/mm/dd' for dates
- Usage of '$1.00' vs. '1.00$' for currency
- Usage of 'A4' vs. 'Letter' for paper
- Usage of 'Sunday' vs. 'Monday' for the first day of the week

Submission + - The Good News About Cell Phone Upgrade Turnover (wsj.com)

Submitted by retroworks
retroworks writes: Slashdot has recently covered the bad news about demand for cell phones in poor countries -the effects of conflict metal mining (coltan/tantalum). Today, a Wall Street Journal op-ed cites an opposite effect. Without negating the "resource curse" in economies stuck in mining, professor Daniel Fletcher (UC Berkeley, Blum Center for Development Studies) points out the blessings of tinkerers. "New phones with larger screens and better cameras ... the push for more powerful devices — and manufacturers' willingness to respond to demand— is on track to improve the lives of millions of people living in extreme poverty. ... the latest, greatest smartphones are driving a dramatic decrease in cost and increase in functionality that will benefit people whose total annual income is often less than the cost of a single phone. The reason for this odd coupling between affluent smartphone purchasers and the poor is simple: The enormous capabilities of smartphones are being repurposed and redirected for use in the developing world."

Is it possible to be proud to be an "e-waste exporter?" Or is this simply an excuse to externalize the costs of WEEE recycling, and to ship the wealthy's junk as "toxics along for the ride?" See photos covering both sides of the emerging markets recycling story in new book by Adam Minter, Junkyard Planet, or read an excerpt in Bloomberg BusinessWeek..

Submission + - WikiLeaks Targets "Security Firms" Targeting WikiLeaks (wikileaks.org) 2

Submitted by retroworks
retroworks writes: Wikileaks press release from September 4 has not gotten much mainstream coverage (Digital Journal, Infosecurity-magazine). But it's an interesting circle... Wikileaks "Counter Intelligence" Unit is tracking the firms hired to track Julian Assange. The press release claims to have provided significant insight into "bulk interception methods for voice, SMS, MMS, email, fax and satellite phone communications." The released documents also show intelligence contractors selling the ability to analyse web and mobile interceptions in real-time, according to the release.

Submission + - Facebook Launches Advanced AI Effort to Find Meaning in Your Posts

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Tom Simonite reports at MIT Technology News that a new research group within Facebook is working on an emerging and powerful approach to artificial intelligence known as deep learning, which uses simulated networks of brain cells to process data. Applying this method to data shared on Facebook could allow for novel features, and perhaps boost the company’s ad targeting. Deep learning has shown already potential to enable software to do things such as work out the emotions or events described in text even if they aren’t explicitly referenced, recognize objects in photos, and make sophisticated predictions about people’s likely future behavior. Facebook’s chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, says that one obvious place to use deep learning is to improve the news feed, the personalized list of recent updates he calls Facebook’s “killer app.” Facebook already uses conventional machine learning techniques to prune the 1,500 updates that average Facebook users could possibly see down to 30 to 60 that are judged to be most likely to be important to them. “The data set is increasing in size, people are getting more friends, and with the advent of mobile, people are online more frequently,” says Schroepfer. “It’s not that I look at my news feed once at the end of the day; I constantly pull out my phone while I’m waiting for my friend, or I’m at the coffee shop. We have five minutes to really delight you.”

Submission + - Linking mass extinctions to the Sun's journey in the Milky Way (lanl.gov)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: In a paper published today on the Los Alamos astro-ph preprint service, astronomers propose that as many as eleven past extinction events can be linked to the Sun’s passage through the spiral arms of the Milky Way. (You can download the paper here [pdf].)

A correlation was found between the times at which the Sun crosses the spiral arms and six known mass extinction events. Furthermore, we identify five additional historical mass extinction events that might be explained by the motion of the Sun around our Galaxy. These five additional significant drops in marine genera that we find include significant reductions in diversity at 415, 322, 300, 145 and 33 Myr ago. Our simulations indicate that the Sun has spent ~60% of its time passing through our Galaxy’s various spiral arms.

Submission + - Ultimaker Debuts Ultimaker 2 3D Printer With Open Source Cura Software (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: 3D Printing start-up Ultimaker announced its second generation printer, the Ultimaker 2. The new printer features significant redesigns from the first iteration of the Ultimaker. The company says that the new machine is more accurate, more efficient, and it’s even quieter at 49dB. Specifically, the Ultimaker 2 has a new CNC-milled case (that’s all white with glowing sidewalls) with an OLED display, and its glass and aluminum build platform is designed to cool quickly so you can peel completed projects off more easily. The Ultimaker 2 can print with multiple materials, including PLA, ABS, and PVA, and is WiFi-compatible so you can print from a mobile device or computer. Ultimaker is also launching its Cura open source software, which the company claims can pre-process 3D files some 60 times faster than other open source applications and makes it easy to load and work with 3D files.

Submission + - Twelve Keynote Videos From LinuxCon 2013 (linuxgizmos.com)

Submitted by __aajbyc7391
__aajbyc7391 writes: The Linux Foundation held its LinuxCon North America conference in New Orleans this week, and has once again pubished keynote session videos. The videos feature Linux luminaries including Google's Chris DiBona, Valve's Gabe Newell, Raspberry Pi's Eben Upton, Intel's Dirk Hohndel, and a panel with Tejun Heo, Greg Kroah-Hartman, Sarah Sharp, and Linus Torvalds (do sparks fly?). Lots of interesting insights and dicussion!

Submission + - RSA warns developers not to use RSA products (cryptographyengineering.com)

Submitted by Weezul
Weezul writes: "RSA has recommended that developers desist from using the Dual_EC_DRBG random number generator — which happens to be the default in RSA's BSafe cryptographic toolkit." "Dual_EC_DRBG is the random number generator voted most likely to be backdoored by the NSA."

Submission + - Trans-Pacific cable plans mired in US-China geopolitical rivalry (zdnet.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Attempts to build a new Telecommunications cable between the US, New Zealand and Australia have become a nexus for the growing rivalry between the US and China in the Pacific.

The US is reportedly creating a technology ring fence to match its military one and contain China's ambitions in the Pacific. US military could even help pay for any planned new cable to link its bases in American Samoa with its expanding military presence in Australia's Northern Territory.

It has been made "very clear" US authorities would not allow significant Chinese investment in one cable project and it followed that they would not tolerate the use of Chinese gear in its construction.

âoeIt was made very clear. These are cables connecting whole countries. These are very political things," one insider said.

Submission + - LinkedIn Accused of Hacking Customers' E-Mails to Get Contacts (businessweek.com) 1

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes: Business Week reports, "LinkedIn Corp. ... was sued by customers who claim the company appropriated their identities for marketing purposes by hacking into their external e-mail accounts and downloading contacts’ addresses. The customers, who aim to lead a group suit against LinkedIn, asked a federal judge in San Jose, California, to bar the company from repeating the alleged violations and to force it to return any revenue stemming from its use of their identities to promote the site ... “LinkedIn’s own website contains hundreds of complaints regarding this practice,” they said in the complaint filed Sept. 17, ... LinkedIn required the members to provide an external e-mail address as their username on its site, then used the information to access their external e-mail accounts when they were left open ... “LinkedIn pretends to be that user and downloads the e-mail addresses contained anywhere in that account to LinkedIn’s servers,” they said. “LinkedIn is able to download these addresses without requesting the password for the external e-mail accounts or obtaining users’ consent.” " — More at Bloomberg. — This puts an interesting twist on LinkedIn's recent call for transparency.

Submission + - Robotics research lab Willow Garage shutting down? (willowgarage.com)

Submitted by moglito
moglito writes: Willow Garage is/was acknowledge by many to be one of the best places for robotics research these days. Besides developing the PR2 it made itself a name for creating the open-source Robot Operating System ROS. But know it seems to be shutting down:
'Scott Hassan, founder of both Willow Garage and Suitable Technologies, said, "I am excited to bring together the teams of Willow Garage and Suitable Technologies to provide the most advanced remote presence technology to people around the world."

Willow Garage will continue to support customers of its PR2 personal robotics platform and sell its remaining stock of PR2 systems. Interest in PR2 systems or support should continue to be directed to Willow Garage through its portal at www.willowgarage.com.'

Submission + - How long can the ISS Last? (cbsnews.com) 2

Submitted by R3d M3rcury
R3d M3rcury writes: NASA and Boeing, along with other nations, are studying the feasibility of keeping the International Space Station in orbit until 2020 and possibly until 2028--the 30 year anniversary of the launch of the first module.

Submission + - NASA's Deep Impact comet probe is lost due to software glitch (torontosun.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: NASA has lost contact with its Deep Impact comet probe spacecraft, and the reason is software glitch

The spacecraft was launched in January 2005 for a close-up study of Comet Tempel-1

NASA is calling off attempts to find its Deep Impact comet probe after a suspected software glitch shut down radio communications in August, officials said on Friday.

Last month, engineers lost contact with Deep Impact and unsuccessfully tried to regain communications. The cause of the failure was unknown, but NASA suspects the spacecraft lost control, causing its antenna and solar panels to be pointed in the wrong direction

According to BBC Worldservice the spacecraft's software "ran out of digits"

After a month of fruitless attempts to find the probe, NASA on Friday announced it was formally ending the mission

NASA had hoped Deep Impact would play a key role in observations of the approaching Comet ISON, a suspected first-time visitor to the inner solar system that was discovered in September 2012 by two Russian astronomers

The comet is heading toward a close encounter with the sun in November, a brush that it may not survive

More information can be had from

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/nasa-declares-end-deep-impact-comet-mission-20318464

http://www.firstpost.com/world/nasa-gives-up-on-lost-comet-probe-1124107.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57603941/nasa-declares-comet-buster-lost-in-space/

http://www.torontosun.com/2013/09/20/nasa-gives-up-on-deep-impact-comet-probe

Submission + - RSA warns developers not to use RSA products (cryptographyengineering.com)

Submitted by rroman
rroman writes: RSA has recommended developers not to use Dual_EC_DRBG random number generator (RNG), which has been known to be weak and slow since 2006. The funny thing is, that even though this has been known for so long, it is the default RNG in BSafe cryptographic toolkit, which is product of RSA.

Submission + - A C++ library that brings legacy Fortran codes to supercomputers (libgeodecomp.org)

Submitted by gentryx
gentryx writes: In scientific computing a huge pile of code is still written in Fortran. One reason for this is that codes often evolve over the course of decades and rewriting them from scratch is both risky and costly. While OpenMP and OpenACC are readily available for Fortran, only few tools support authors in porting their codes to MPI clusters, let alone supercomputers. A recent blog post details how LibGeoDecomp (Library for Geometric Decompostition codes), albeit written in C++, can be used to port such codes to state-of-the-art HPC systems. Source code modification is required, but mostly limited to restructuring into a new pattern of subroutines.

Submission + - Never underestimate the bandwidth of a Suburban filled with MicroSD cards? (blogspot.com)

Submitted by toygeek
toygeek writes: If you've been in IT long enough, you're bound to have heard the phrase "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with backup tapes." These days moving data has become so much easier; We've surpassed baud rates and are into Gbps fiber on the backbones, and even in some homes. So, what's the modern equivalent to this, and what does it take to make the OC fiber connections cringe? Follow along as we theoretically stuff MicroSD cards into Chevy Suburban and see what happens, and take sneakernet to a whole new level.

Submission + - BlackBerry Confirms 4,500 Job Cuts, Warns of $950 Million Loss (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Today BlackBerry announced that it expects its quarterly net operating losses to be somewhere between $950 million and $995 million. It also confirmed earlier reports that it would be cutting 4,500 jobs, roughly 40% of its total workforce. 'The loss is mainly the result of a write-off of unsold BlackBerry phones, as well as $72 million in restructuring charges. The company said that it would discontinue two of the six phones it currently offers.' According to the press release BlackBerry is going to 'refocus on enterprise and prosumer market.' 'The failure of the BlackBerry 10 line of phones quickly led to speculation that the company, like Palm before it, would be broken apart and perhaps gradually disappear, at best lingering as little more than a brand name.'

Submission + - Amazon "Unlaunches" & Postpones $100,000 Civic Apps Contest for AWS (jeffreifman.com)

Submitted by reifman
reifman writes: In an unusual move, Amazon abruptly pulled the plug on its $100,000 Civic Apps contest for AWS, redirecting contestants to the AWS government site. All entrants through October 15th were to receive a $50 AWS credit. Amazon AWS PR says they, '...accidentally pushed this out early, but please stay tuned for more information on this program later this year.' The contest site, rules (pdf) and FAQ (pdf) of the apparently still upcoming contest can be read from the google cache. Contest prize winners would have had to 'spend' their AWS credits by December 2014.

Submission + - Given Recent Crypto Revelations, 'Everything is Suspect' (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Gunkerty Jeb
Gunkerty Jeb writes: So now that RSA Security has urged developers to back away from the table and stop using the maligned Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generation (Dual EC DRBG) algorithm, the question begging to be asked is why did RSA use it in the first place?

Going back to 2007 and a seminal presentation at the CRYPTO conference by Dan Shumow and Niels Ferguson, there have been suspicions about Dual EC DRBG primarily because it was backed by the National Security Agency, which initially proposed the algorithm as a standard. Cryptographer Bruce Schneier wrote in a 2007 essay that the algorithm contains a weakness that “can only be described as a backdoor.”

“I wrote about it in 2007 and said it was suspect. I didn’t like it back then because it was from the government,” Schneier told Threatpost today. “It was designed so that it could contain a backdoor. Back then I was suspicious, now I’m terrified.

Slashdot Top Deals