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Submission + - MIT computer program makes TCP twice as fast (mit.edu)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: MIT is claiming they can make the Internet faster if we let computers redesign TCP/IP instead of coding it by hand. They used machine learning to design a version of TCP that's twice the speed and causes half the delay, even with modern bufferbloated networks. They also claim it's more "fair." The researchers have put up a lengthy FAQ and source code where they admit they don't know why the system works, only that it goes faster than normal TCP. On the same day that MIT went to court to stop Aaron Swartz's documents from being published, the school is devoting its main website to an animated GIF about faster TCP.

Submission + - Google is going Puritan on us (zdnet.com)

Submitted by DougDot
DougDot writes: In three days, Google's Blogger will begin to delete scores of blogs that have existed since 1999 on Monday under its vague new anti-sex-ad policy purge.

On Wednesday night at around 7pm PST, all Blogger blogs marked as "adult" were sent an email from Google's Blogger team.

blogger sex purge
The email told users with "adult" blogs that after Sunday, June 30, 2013, all adult blogs will be deleted if they are found to be "displaying advertisements to adult websites" — while the current Content Policy does not define what constitutes "adult" content.

To say that Twitter ignited with outrage would be an understatement. Blogger users are panicked and mad as hell at Google.

Submission + - IT Spending In Engineering

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I work in the engineering division at a large organization, about 2000 people total and about 900 in the engineering division. As I'm sure many institutions have been faced with recently, we are dealing with reduced budgets. We have a new director who has determined that the engineering division spends too much on "IT" and has given us a goal of reducing IT spending by 50%. We currently spend about 8% of the total engineering budget on IT related purchases. About 10% of that (i.e. 0.8% of the total budget) is spent on what I consider traditional IT such as email, office automation software, etc.. The rest goes towards engineering related IT such as clusters for large computations, workstations for processing, better networks to handle the large data sets generated, data collection systems for testing facilities, etc.. My gut says that 8% is low compared to other engineering institutions. What do other engineering organizations spend on IT (traditional and engineering)? What strategy would you use to convince your management that 8% spending on IT is already very efficient?

Submission + - Japan Spends Millions of 2011 Tsunami Relief Funds On Sea Turtle Research (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by Rebecka
Rebecka writes: “Priorities” is the word residents of Japan may be uttering today after reports that officials reportedly spent a majority of the 200 billion set aside for 2011 tsunami relief efforts not on rebuilding their cities, but on sea turtle research.

The prefecture Kagoshima, located roughly 800 miles from the affected zone of Ishinomaki, was awarded three million yen after the devastating 2011 storm, a new report claiming the donated funds were reportedly spent in an effort for researchers to observe and protect sea turtles according to The Telegraph via the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.

Submission + - How Unity3D Became a Game-Development Beast (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: In the early 2000s, three young programmers without much money gathered in a basement and started coding what would become one of the most widely used pieces of software in the video game industry. “Nobody really remembers how we survived in that period except we probably didn’t eat much,” said David Helgason, the CEO and co-founder of Unity Technologies, maker of the Unity3D game engine. A decade later, untold numbers of developers have used Unity3D to make thousands of video games for mobile devices, consoles, browsers, PCs, Macs, and even Linux. The existence of Unity3D and similar products (such as the Unreal Engine and CryEngine) helped democratize game development, making the kinds of tools used by the world’s largest game companies available to developers at little or no cost. This has helped developers focus less on creating a video game’s underlying technology and more on the artistic and creative processes that actually make games fun to play. In this article, Helgason talks about how Final Cut Pro helped inspire his team during the initial building stages, how it's possible to create a game in Unity without actually writing code, and how he hopes to make the software more of a presence on traditional consoles despite Unity3D being several years late to supporting the PS3 and Xbox 360.

Submission + - Google Glass Developers Angered at Facial Recognition Ban (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by DavidGilbert99
DavidGilbert99 writes: Google Glass has caused its fair share of headlines already and it's not even on sale yet, but developers creating apps for the device are the latest to throw their toys out of the pram, angered by Google's move to ban apps which use facial recognition in response to growing concerns from privacy groups. One commenter on the Google Glass page, said: "The sky isn't falling and Glass will not steal your identity because it can see you. Go back to your caves and let the rest of us live in the future."

Submission + - Congressman's Chief of Staff Implicated in Internet Voter Fraud (miamiherald.com) 3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Voting technology and fair elections have been topics of many discussion on Slashdot. Now the repercussion of voter fraud, often asserted to be mythical, despite previous sightings and more than one recent conviction, have cost a congressman's chief of staff his job: "Congressman Joe Garcia’s chief of staff abruptly resigned Friday after being implicated in a sophisticated scheme to manipulate last year’s primary elections by submitting hundreds of fraudulent absentee-ballot requests. . . Hours earlier, law enforcement investigators raided the homes of another of Joe Garcia’s employees . . .The raids marked a sign of significant progress in the probe that prosecutors reopened in February, after a Herald investigation found that hundreds of 2,552 fraudulent requests for the Aug. 14 primaries originated from Internet Protocol addresses in Miami. The bulk of the requests were masked by foreign IP addresses."

Submission + - Atomic clock built with 10^-18 instability. (arxiv.org)

Submitted by c0lo
c0lo writes: Apropos accuracy polls and missing options:

A collective of NIST, University of Colorado, Instituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica and Politecnico di Torino announces (warning: PDF linked) the creation of an atomic clock with an instability of 10^-18. Such a level of instability is equivalent to specifying the Earth’s diameter with a precision to less than the width of an atom.
Better still, consider the gravitational redshift, a consequence of general relativity dictating that clocks ‘tick’ slower in stronger gravitational elds. With a maximum instability of 10^-18, one can discern a difference shown by two such clocks separated by only 1 cm in elevation above the Earths surface.

Now, it is likely that an operator of half-a-world-away-remote-controlled-drones won't actually need such a precision, but it becomes important in designing experiments to test unification theories employing non-metric couplings without asking for a cosmological setup (may one dream of gravitational waves detection without causing — or expecting — supernova explosions or birth of blackholes type of events?)
Cellphones

Submission + - Smartphone Screen Real Estate: How Big Is Big Enough? (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "Aside from the terrible nickname (it sounds like a term for the spoiled offspring of fabulous people), phablets are somewhat controversial because they seem to be the epitome of inflated phone sizes. A lot of people wanted bigger, and this is “bigger” to the extreme. A larger screen on a smartphone is attractive for obvious reasons, but surely there’s a limit. So how big is too big? If you’re not into parsing out the particulars of form factors and use cases, here’s a really easy way to figure out if your phone or phablet is too big: Can you hold the device in one hand and 1) unlock the phone, 2) type out a text message with your thumb, and 3) adjust the volume with the rocker without using your other hand? If not, you might need a smaller phone."

Comment Re:Fixed (Score 1) 1106

by RCGodward (#43018429) Attached to: The U.S. minimum wage should be
Minimum wage isn't for people to live off of. It's for high school kids. It's for entry level work. You aren't supposed to have kids on it. You aren't supposed to pay rent with it. You're supposed to save for college and buy video games and beer if you know someone with a fake.
News

Submission + - Obama gets notice of default in Calif. court over forgery allegations (examiner.com) 1

Submitted by Examiner News
Examiner News writes: On Friday, a district court in California issued a notice of default on Barack Hussein Obama for the president's lack of response to the plaintiff, Dr. Orly Taitz, in the latter's birther allegations. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California ruled that Obama had until Jan. 25, 2013 to respond to allegations that he had submitted fake IDs and forged documents in order to run for the nation's highest elected office in 2008 and 2012.
China

Submission + - First Details of Chinese Spacecraft's Asteroid Encounter

Submitted by the_newsbeagle
the_newsbeagle writes: Chinese aerospace engineers have revealed, for the first time, details about their Chang’e-2 spacecraft’s encounter with the asteroid Toutatis last month. They have plenty to boast of: The asteroid flyby wasn’t part of the original flight plan, but engineers adapted the mission and navigated the satellite through deep space.

Exactly how close Chang'e-2 came to Toutatis is still unclear. The article states that the first reports “placed the flyby range at 3.2 km, which was astonishingly—even recklessly—tight. Passing within a few kilometers of an asteroid only 2 to 3 km in diameter at a speed of 10 730 meters per second could be described as either superb shooting or a near disaster.” If the Chinese spacecraft did pass that near, it could provide a “scientific bonanza” with data about the asteroid’s mass and composition.
Games

Submission + - Steam on Linux Public Beta Status Update (linux.com)

Submitted by skade88
skade88 writes: Linux.com has an article that will bring you up to speed on the good and bad when it comes to the Steam on Linux Beta. Valve has brought gaming a long way, once they work the kinks out of the Steam On Linux Beta, it will be ready for the masses.
Open Source

Submission + - Why a Linux user is using Windows 3.1 (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: About two weeks back, I was using my Android tablet and looking for a good graphics editor. I wanted something with layers and good text drawing tools. That’s when it hit me. We already have that.

Photoshop used to run on Windows 3.1. And Windows 3.1 runs great under both DOSBox and QEMU, both of which are Open Source emulators available for Android and every other platform under the sun.

So I promptly set to work digging up an old copy of Photoshop. The last version released for Windows 3.1 was back in 1996. And finding a working copy proved to be...challenging. Luckily, the good folks at Adobe dug around in their vaults and managed to get me up and running.

And, after a bit of tweaking, I ended up with an astoundingly functional copy of Photoshop that I can now run on absolutely every device I own. And the entire environment (fonts, working files and all) are automatically backed up to the cloud and synced between systems.

But what other applications (and, potentially, games) does this give me access to? How far can I take this?

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