92809717
submission
Noryungi writes:
NASA will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the launch of the twin Voyager probes next month. So let us celebrate both the probes and the people who are still working on them, and nursing them in their final years. Dedication and hard work all these years, make for an amazing story.
92806417
submission
dryriver writes:
In the 3D Computer Graphics Field, a number of GPU- rather than CPU-based 3D rendering engines, typically using CUDA or OpenCL, are becoming popular, because modern GPUs have considerably more floating point math horsepower than most CPUs. But there is an interesting problem with this. Most GPU render engines are severely constrained by limited VRAM. If you have a typical 3D scene that weighs in at 16 GB of 3D data stored in RAM (not very big for a 3D scene these days), but your GPU only has 8 GB of VRAM, you cannot render this scene on GPU — it doesn't fit into the GPU's memory. You'd have to render this scene on CPU instead, which is considerably slower. So here is the question: Is there some sort of technical barrier to a GPU accessing regular system RAM rather than (faster) VRAM for rendering larger 3D datasets under CUDA or OpenCL? Because the vast majority of GPU rendering engines currently available cannot currently do this. If you have a 24 GB 3D scene that fits just fine in your 32 GB system RAM, but only 12 GB of VRAM on the GPU, you cannot use the GPU to render it.
92804323
submission
pizzutz writes:
Chrome's popular Web Developer plugin was briefly hijacked on Wednesday when an attacker gained control of the author's Google account and released a new version (0.49) which injected ads into web pages of more than a million users who downloaded the update. The version was quickly replaced with an uncompromised version (0.5) and all users are urged to update immediately.
92785829
submission
doyouwantahotpocket writes:
As an avidly religious and daily reader of Slashdot since first stumbling upon the site as a teenager in 1999, I have always been fascinated by the stories: New and groundbreaking technologies, stories of distant galaxies and nebulae, breakthroughs in atom smashing, diagrams of technological wonder, the every so often in depth hacker expose'.
Slashdot has changed, and for the worse. The front page is dying, and not updated as nearly as frequently as it was back in the day. We used to have stories hour on the hour, sometimes 2 or 3 in one hour. Now days, the front page is just not updated as often. The submissions just aren't that great anymore. They're thin, and hastely chopped together. Firehose is more like a leaky waterhose.
Slashdot has been bought and sold so many times... I feel much of the community has left among a sense of betrayal.
Here is the question.
How do restore the glory of the old days to our beloved Slashdot?
92693859
submission
schwit1 writes:
Procter & Gamble said that its move to cut more than $100 million in digital marketing spend in the June quarter had little impact on its business, proving that those digital ads were largely ineffective.
Almost all of the consumer product giant’s advertising cuts in the period came from digital, finance chief Jon Moeller said on its earnings call Thursday. The company targeted ads that could wind up on sites with fake traffic from software known as “bots,” or those with objectionable content.
“What it reflected was a choice to cut spending from a digital standpoint where it was ineffective, where either we were serving bots as opposed to human beings or where the placement of ads was not facilitating the equity of our brands,” he said.Link to Original Source
92693101
submission
darkpixel2k writes:
Where you are de-referencing null pointers, or writing out of bounds, or not supporting fully qualified domain names, or giving root privileges to any user whose name begins with a number, there's no chance that the CVE number will referenced in either the change log or the commit message, but CVEs aren't really our currency any more, and only the lamest of vendors gets a Pwnie!"
92689405
submission
evolutionary writes:
A "hard fought" law requiring the ability of remote permanent kill switches in cell phones in the state of California claims to reduce "violence" caused by cell phone thefts because they are no longer worth the trouble.
92688921
submission
cyberchondriac writes:
Today is the day for employers to show a little love towards their IT people for all that they do to keep the world going 'round, as Information Technology is surely more significant than ever in it's key role supporting businesses, governments, and individuals. What institution doesn't rely on a database or a web server anymore?
92688805
submission
MarcusOutrageous writes:
Hey Slashdotters. We rate movies, tv, games, print and need a takedown-immune hosting solution. Our commentary is very popular on other sites. Yet it keeps getting taken down. For example, we suggested "Mad Max: Fury Road" was a commentary on a certain set of countries. (Women are property, Desert despot's power is scarce ground-extracted liquid, Villains are ethnic/theologically motivated, Suicidal warriors scream of the afterlife upon attack.) That got popular enough to get memory-holed.
We're happy to pay what's necessary. Our platforms are Linux & Win7. We operate through VPNs and all our own new accounts are on fresh identities created with burners and running on dedicated hardware. (We don't even want to risk a wrong cut & paste across a VM that doxxes us)
The Solution we Need would have the following
-DMCA can't take down our content. We provide 5-30 second clips of film and music in our comments.
-High quality English speaking 24/7 support, preferably with phone support. While all of us are techies, none of us are developers or particularly strong web devs. We would like to pay for a service that can walk us through something once or twice. We'll pay for work that would take us too much time to execute ourselves.
-Speed. Users click away from stalled sites. We want content to load fast and are willing to pay for that.
-Management Dashboard. Nothing beats Linux, Yet we are not command line jockies and have to lookup answers all the time. 'Click to install the LAMP Stack' etc... would be helpful, especially so stuff can be delegated to GUI-only support staff.
-Native Optimizability for Streaming Video. Major studios routinely kill our content on YouTube when it is not politically correct. We intend on hosting our own player and we want it to be as snappy as user expectations for YouTube.
-Ad Revenue *NOT PRIORITY*. Really the least important, if at all. If the site every becomes really successful we think we'll be taken off the ad networks unless there are rogue-friendly ad networks. We'll take the advice!
Thanks!
P.S. I've lurked for a long time. This is my first submission. Thanks. You guys are great at the diversity of high quality opinions.
92688709
submission
sciencehabit writes:
In May 2014, a group of scientists took a field trip to a small brewery in an old warehouse in Seattle, Washington--and came away with a microbe scientists have never seen before. In so-called wild bear, the team identified a yeast belonging to the genus Pichia, which turned out to be a hybrid of a known species called P. membranifaciens and another Pichia species completely new to science. Other Pichia species are known to spoil a beer, but the new hybrid seems to smell better. The finding means brewers and scientists may be one step closer to unveiling the alchemy of spontaneous fermentation.
92685513
submission
cdreimer writes:
According to a report in The New York Times (possibly paywalled, alternative story), the Trump Administration has proposed selling off 250 hydropower dams on the Columbia River in the Northwest that provides power for half of the U.S. hydroelectric system:
"To ride down the Columbia River as the John Day Dam’s wall of concrete slowly fills the view from a tugboat is to see what the country’s largest network of energy-producing dams created through five decades of 20th-century ambition, investment and hubris. Nearly half of the nation’s hydropower electricity comes from more than 250 hydropower dams that were built on the Columbia and its tributaries — a vast and complex arc of industry and technology that touches tens of millions of lives across the West every day. Google taps the river’s energy to power a data center 90 minutes east of Portland, Ore. — drawn there by some of the cheapest, most environmentally friendly electricity in the nation. Farmers farther upriver in Washington State pump irrigation water into alfalfa fields — with both the water and the electricity supplied by a dam. The Space Needle in Seattle uses Columbia River electricity to slowly spin tourists in its sky-view restaurant. High-voltage transmission lines shoot south to California. Now, the Trump administration has proposed rethinking the entire system, with a plan to sell the transmission network of wires and substations owned by the Bonneville Power Administration, a federal agency that distributes most of the Columbia basin’s output, to private buyers."
92545971
submission
schwit1 writes:
If you're an advertiser who wants to market a product to millennials, you're going to have to make it quick.
A new study by comScore revealed online ads targeted toward millennials have to be around 5 to 6 seconds to be effective, a sharp contrast from the traditional 30-second commercial seen on TV.
"The length of time of an episode or a viewing period is really important and has got to be short, otherwise you just won't keep the attention of millennials," comScore CEO Gian Fulgoni told CNBC's "Squawk Alley."
The format of advertising may have to be radically changed to reach millennials, he suggested.
"You're going to have to make your case literally in a matter of seconds and make sure you grab somebody's attention, Fulgoni said.Link to Original Source
92545239
submission
dgatwood writes:
According to an Ars Technica article, Verizon recently began experimenting with throttling of video traffic. The remarkable part of this story is not that a wireless ISP would throttle video traffic, but rather that Verizon's own Go90 video platform is also affected by the throttling.
If even Verizon can get on board with throttling sans paid prioritization, why is Comcast so scared of the new laws that are about to go into effect banning it?
[From the cold feet dept.]
92543169
submission
cornholed writes:
In an update to previous posts on Slashdot, prominent Drupal and PHP Developer Larry Garfield is still defending his reputation against allegations by Drupal leadership against sexual misconduct. As previously reported by a variety of news organizations, Larry was exiled from the Drupal project for adherence to the Gor sci-fi lifestyle.
In the latest round of allegations, Garfield was reportedly asked to resign because an autistic "woman who attended Drupal community events ... was allowed to contribute by him". While some have accused Dries Buytart and the Drupal Association of "Autism Shaming", the leader of the Drupal project claims "this person could be vulnerable and may have been subject to exploitation", hence raising the risk of legal damage to the Drupal project. Larry refutes these allegations, saying these claims are post-hoc and has shared police reports purporting his innocence.
There is still much debate in the Drupal community around why Larry was ejected from his leadership positions. While there's much speculation over Larry's ouster, there is one thing for certain: become a leader in the OSS community and a dossier on your public statements just might be made about you.
92543081
submission
yzf750 writes:
Mission Control at Johnson Space Center is a wreck and this Kickstarter project is trying to save it. The nearby city of Webster, TX has promised to match Kickstarter funding up to $400,000.00. The goal is to raise $250,000.00 to add to the $3.5 million already budgeted to restore Mission Control.
