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Submission + - Solus 1.0 released with

Submitted by deusmetallum
deusmetallum writes: A slightly late Christmas present has just landed — Solus 1.0. Complete with the GTK based Budgie desktop and the Raven Panel, Solus is a lightweight operating system, more akin to Gnome 2. Although many will lament the sheer number of packages available in other distros, many may find Solus to be a nice alternative.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How to get into Machine Learning?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I know this is a vague question, but hoping to get some useful feedback anyway. I'm an experienced SW Engineer/Developer who is looking to get into the Machine Learning arena. I have an MS in CS and a solid 15 years of experience in a variety of areas, but no experience in Machine Learning.

With that as background, my question is: What is the most time-efficient (and reasonable cost) way to:
(1) Decide whether Machine Learning is for me and
(2) Make myself employable in the field.
An additional constraint is that I can't afford to quit my full-time day job.
Thanks.

Submission + - Online Heavy Equipment Rental Booming

Submitted by esrasoderber
esrasoderber writes: Heavy equipment has literally and figuratively been a big industry in Asia for the last decade. Developing countries have been growing towards urbanization and infrastructures are constantly being built. In the midst of it, investors are creating more projects and needing more construction materials, manual labor and equipment. The construction industry goes in demand until it has become one of the leading markets and has been driving Asia’s economy.

As one of the pioneers in the business, Axis Capital Group, a company which sells and rents heavy equipment in Singapore acknowledges the fact that the sudden boost in business has also been because of the integration of technology to present machines. It made the workload easier and the task more convenient for timely realization of the project. Although the industry has been lagging behind for more advanced technological updates, it has adapted enough modernity to keep up to today’s demands.

One of the leading game changer in the boom of heavy equipment is the renting scheme. Since machines can easily be obsolete with new models and units in the market, heavy equipment rental can be relatively useful for short-time usage. Nowadays, it’s a huge business in Asia and is considered as a billion-dollar industry.

Since rental has started to become popular, other developing cities and countries who are separated by oceans and different regions, those who do not have their own local heavy equipment manufacturer complain of the lack of availability of high-quality equipment. Oceans and the separation of islands became a hurdle in the procurement of equipment.

Online equipment rental has been developed to solve the issue of isolation. Ever since shipment and online shopping has been available, isolated developing cities which are also developing their own urban world. Developing cities like Jakarta, Indonesia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and the Philippines had slowly risen to surprise the world of high city potential. China, Japan and other leading manufacturers also developed connection to other regions to selling and renting used equipment made by the likes of Komatsu or Hitachi to companies in other Asian countries.

However, the industry is not without issues. The most prevailing issue in online heavy equipment sales are fraudulent sales and online scams which have been a part of almost all e-commerce businesses. Clients are being fooled at taking prior payment for equipment which will never come or by delivering rusted and poorly maintained equipment which is not returnable.

The online world of heavy equipment can be unpredictable but the demand continues to grow. Despite this, the industry is promising higher growth and more development.

Submission + - Obama backs away from law to access encrypted information

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Obama's administration has changed course and is backing away from seeking legislation that would give law enforcement agencies access to individuals' encrypted messages. "We are actively engaged with private companies to ensure they understand the public safety and national security risks that result from malicious actors’ use of their encrypted products and services," said White House spokesman Mark Stroh. "However, the administration is not seeking legislation at this time."

Comment Hearing Aids (Score 3) 311

by udin (#50348013) Attached to: If I could make one medical technology vastly cheaper:
Hearing loss severely affects people's social interactions, entertainment, etc. Insurance doesn't cover hearing aids. The ones that work best are expensive, $2500 and up, each. Social isolation is especially harmful to the older population, and so is hearing loss. I think this is an area that could be addressed by open hardware and software, perhaps better than some of the other items on this list. Kickstarter, anyone?
Data Storage

Samsung Unveils V-NAND High Performance SSDs, Fast NVMe Card At 5.5GB Per Second 61

Posted by samzenpus from the greased-lightning dept.
MojoKid writes: Sometimes it's the enterprise sector that gets dibs on the coolest technology, and so it goes with a trio of TCO-optimized, high-performance solid state drives from Samsung that were just announced, all three of which are based on three-dimensional (3D) Vertical NAND (V-NAND) flash memory technology. The fastest of bunch can read data at up to 5,500 megabytes per second. That's the rated sequential read speed of Samsung's PM1725, a half-height, half-length (HHHL) PCIe card-type NVMe SSD. Other rated specs include a random read speed of up to 1,000,000 IOPS, random write performance of up to 120,000 IOPS, and sequential writes topping out at 1,800MB/s. The PM1725 comes in just two beastly storage capacities, 3.2TB and 6.4TB, the latter of which is rated to handle five drive writes per day (32TB) for five years. Samsung also introduced two other 3D V-NAND products, the PM1633 and PM953. The PM1633 is a 2.5-inch 12Gb/s SAS SSD that will be offered in 480GB, 960GB, 1.92TB, and 3.84TB capacities. As for the PM953, it's an update to the SM951 and is available in M.2 and 2.5-inch form factors at capacities up to 1.92TB.
Space

Mysterious "Cold Spot": Fingerprint of Largest Structure In the Universe? 94

Posted by samzenpus from the biggest-there-is dept.
astroengine writes At the furthest-most reaches of the observable universe lies one of the most enigmatic mysteries of modern cosmology: the cosmic microwave background (CMB) Cold Spot. Discovered in 2004, this strange feature etched into the primordial echo of the Big Bang has been the focus of many hypotheses — could it be the presence of another universe? Or is it just instrumental error? Now, astronomers may have acquired strong evidence as to the Cold Spot's origin and, perhaps unsurprisingly, no multiverse hypothesis is required. But it's not instrumental error either. It could be a vast "supervoid" around 1.8 billion light-years wide that is altering the characteristics of the CMB radiation traveling through it.
Data Storage

Ask Slashdot: Permanent Preservation of Human Knowledge? 277

Posted by Soulskill from the you-mean-facebook-won't-survive-the-apocalypse? dept.
Wayne2 writes "While there have been many attempts to preserve human knowledge in electronic format, it occurred to me that these attempts all assume that human civilization remains more or less intact. Given humanity's history of growth and collapse with knowledge repeatedly gained then lost, has anyone considered a more permanent solution? I realize that this could be very difficult and/or expensive depending on how long we want to preserve the information and what assumptions we make regarding posterity's ability to access it. Alternatively, are we, as a species, willing to start over if we experience a catastrophe, pandemic, etc. of significant magnitude on a global scale that derails our progress and sends us back to the dark ages or worse?"

Comment Re:Profiting from criminal acts (Score 3, Interesting) 159

by udin (#42817843) Attached to: UK Court: MPAA Not Entitled To Profits From Piracy
You may not be allowed to profit from your own criminal behavior, but the 'criminal' is the person making the copy of the copyrighted material (once upon a time this was a tort, i.e. a wrong against someone that one could be sued for, not a crime against the state or general public; that's what these guys are always trying to do: turn torts into crimes so they can sic the government on you), not the specialized search engine or directory of links. The Usenet-indexers are profiting in the same way that Truman Capote profited when he wrote a book about a notorious murder.
Power

Ask Slashdot: Best Option For Heavy-Duty, Full-Home Surge Protection? 341

Posted by samzenpus from the protect-your-stuff dept.
First time accepted submitter kmoser writes "Like most people, I have a couple of surge protectors for sensitive/important electronics, and even a UPS for a couple of items like computers. But I don't have surge protector on all outlets, and these consumer-grade devices don't cover things like 220 volt appliances. Add to that the fact that I live in a lightning-prone area and it's only a matter of time before one of my expensive devices has a major meltdown. I've looked into full-home surge protectors that install next to the fuse box but the prices vary widely and I have no idea how reliable they are or what brands are good. An electrician friend tells me they can still blow out, and when they do they're difficult to replace if they were installed behind a wall. Can anybody shed some light on the best options for protecting all the electronics in my house with a single surge protector?"
Crime

UK Plans Private Police Force 252

Posted by Soulskill from the very-polite-unless-you-spill-their-tea dept.
An anonymous reader writes "'Private companies could take responsibility for investigating crimes, patrolling neighborhoods and even detaining suspects under a radical privatization plan,' The Guardian reports. 'The contract is the largest on police privatization so far, with a potential value of £1.5bn over seven years, rising to a possible £3.5bn depending on how many other forces get involved.' A worrying development in a country with an ever-increasing culture of surveillance and intrusive policing."
United States

FBI's Troubled Sentinel Project Delayed Again 96

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the project-delays-cost-american-lives dept.
gManZboy writes "The FBI's Sentinel project, a digital case-management system meant to replace outdated, paper-based processes, has been delayed again. The FBI's CIO and CTO bet big on using agile development to hasten the project's completion. But now performance issues have arisen in testing and deployment has been pushed out to May. It's the latest in a series of delays to build a replacement for the FBI's 17-year-old Automated Case Support system. In 2006, the FBI awarded Lockheed Martin a $305 million contract to lead development of Sentinel, but it took back control of the project in September 2010 amid delays and cost overruns. At the time, the FBI said it would finish Sentinel within 12 months, using agile development strategies."

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