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Submission + - Valve censoring torrent references in Steam chat (playerattack.com) 1

dotarray writes: It seems Valve is restricting just what you can talk about when using the Steam chat service. Specifically, any reference to a particular torrent site is being stripped from conversation, while mentions of other pages trigger a warning that the site is "potentially malicious".

Submission + - NVidia puts the kibosh on overclocking of GTX 900M series (hothardware.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Nvidia surprised members of the overclocking community this week when it pulled OC support from drivers for its 900M series mobile graphics cards. Although Nvidia hasn’t gone out of its way the GTX 900M cards as being overclocking-friendly, many users (particularly those who bought laptops with higher-end cards like the 980m) were overclocking – until the latest driver update. Now, Nvidia is telling customers not to expect OC capabilities to return.

Submission + - Big Data MOOC: Measuring and Predicting Human Behaviour (futurelearn.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A new massive open online course highlights the potential of big data to measure and predict human behaviour in the real world. Our everyday interactions with technology and almost everything we do generates data from buying bread at the supermarket to taking a ride on public transport, to calling a friend for a chat. Warwick academics Preis and Moat demonstrate in their new MOOC how this is opening up a new era for our understanding of human behaviour.

Submission + - Drones and satellites spot lost civilizations in unlikely places (sciencemag.org) 1

sciencehabit writes: What do the Sahara desert and the Amazon rainforest have in common? Until recently, archaeologists would have told you they were both inhospitable environments devoid of large-scale human settlements. But they were wrong. Here today at the annual meeting of the AAAS, two researchers explained how remote sensing technology, including satellite imaging and drone flights, is revealing the traces of past civilizations that have been hiding in plain sight.

Submission + - 'Shadow biosphere' might be hiding strange life right under our noses (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: If we came across alien life, would we even know it was alive? All known life on Earth fits a particular mold, but life from other planets break might free from that mold, making it difficult for us to identify. We could even be oblivious to unfamiliar forms of life right under our noses. Scientists are now proposing some new things we should look for when it comes to identifying life in a “shadow biosphere”—an undiscovered group of living things with biochemistry different from what we’re used to.

Submission + - How to 3D print a hypercube (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: How can you visualize a 4D object in our 3D world? The answer involves some tricky projections and a 3D printer. One method you could use is to shine a light above the cube, projecting a shadow onto a 2D surface. Now imagine doing this with a hypercube instead of a cube, projecting it into three dimensions, and 3D printing the result.

Submission + - Be True to Your Online School: Bill Gates on Educating the World

theodp writes: During February, Bill Gates is playing Perry White at The Verge, expounding on the big bets the Gates Foundation is making to improve the world over the next 15 years. One of those bets is that online classrooms can help the world catch up. Gates' vision of universal online education extends to those who struggle with basic literacy and currently lack online access, far beyond the reach of MOOCs like Coursera, EdX, and Udacity, which have enjoyed their greatest success with higher-level courses aimed at the middle class. "Gates’ vision — a wave of smartphones that can act as ubiquitous, cheap computers — is central to solving this problem," explains The Verge's Adi Robertson. "And unfortunately, we’re not there yet." But eventually, Gates is betting that a world-class education will only be a few taps away for anyone in the world. And that's when things get really interesting. "Before a child even starts primary school," Bill and Melinda Gates wrote in their Foundation's 2015 letter, "she will be able to use her mom's smartphone to learn her numbers and letters, giving her a big head start. Software will be able to see when she's having trouble with the material and adjust for her pace. She will collaborate with teachers and other students in a much richer way. If she is learning a language, she'll be able to speak out loud and the software will give her feedback on her pronunciation." By the way, since Bill thinks interactive problem sets are a relatively new development, he might want to chat with ex-Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie about his experiences with PLATO in the '70s, a decade that saw PLATO teaching reading to young children, elementary math to 4th-6th graders, and computer science to college students. Hate to see the world's richest man reinvent the wheel!

Submission + - Will Cubans be exporting software and software services?

lpress writes: In an effort to support Cuba's nascent private sector, the Treasury Department announced on Friday that Americans can now import goods and services produced by “independent Cuban entrepreneurs.” Will the Cuban government allow that? Cuba is a communist nation, but they have a list of 201 job categories in which self-employment is permitted. Most of those jobs are goofy things like magician and pedal-taxi driver, but one is not – computer programmer. Will the Castro regime let private individuals and organizations export software and software services to the United States and the rest of the world?

Submission + - Hidden Apollo 11 artefacts found in Neil Armstrong's closet after over 40 years (techienews.co.uk)

hypnosec writes: Over 40 years after Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 space travel, a hidden bag full of artefacts has been discovered by his widow Carol Armstrong. Carol found the bag after Neil’s death in 2012 shortly after he underwent a heart surgery. The bag contains a total of 20 items including the priceless 16mm movie camera that recorded Apollo 11’s descent to the surface of the moon, optical alignment sight used by crew for docking manoeuvres, and Waist tether among other things. The purse and the contents are now on loan at the National Air and Space Museum for preservation, research and eventual public display.

Submission + - Measuring the value of open hardware designs (opensource.com) 1

An anonymous reader writes: Industry knows open source software has an immense value, but how valuable is an open hardware design? To answer that question, Dr. Joshua Pearce, an associate professor at Michigan Tech University analyzed three methods to quantify the value of open hardware design in the latest issue of the journal Modern Economy.

Comment Re:I do not (Score 1) 117

Convenience is a subjective quantity. It is much handier to just leave your keys in your ignition switch than to have to keep track of them or fish around in your pockets every time you want to do something as routine as open your car door or start the engine. (Don't we all just love car-computer analogies?)

Full disclosure has been shown to be the most reliable way to get companies to fix security problems in their software..

Bugs will be found and exploited privately whether public disclosure takes place or not. There is a thriving market for zero-day exploits--exploits that are then used either by governments of criminal organizations to render computing systems to be less reliable and/or secure than their owners would expect them to be.

Some convenience will always have to be sacrificed in the interest of security, whether the system in question is a computer, a car, or a house. The only way to absolutely maximize convenience is to absolutely sacrifice security. (and privacy)

Comment 5 GHz limit? (Score 1) 168

" Even if signals in the chip were moving at the speed of light, a chip running above 5GHz wouldn't be able to transmit information from one side of the chip to the other."

Eh?

At 300 Megameters per second, the signal would travel 6cm during one clock cycle. Just how large of a "chip" are we talking about, and how much clock skew can we design into our processor?

I call bullshit on the above statement.

Comment Re:If it is linked, it is public... (Score 3, Insightful) 92

When dealing with 'users' of the caliber that you describe, it really isn't possible to securely exchange data. Unfortunately, most 'users' can't be trusted not to have the file scraped off of their own box once they've received it. Without a minimal amount of computer knowledge and skills (which appears to be beyond the capabilities of most users), it just isn't possible to guarantee any security at all.

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