52927693
submission
Dr Herbert West writes:
For those who don't know, the way Snapchat works is that you send a message—text photo, whatever—to a friend or group of friends. But instead of the message being persistent, it "disappears" rather quickly. The young 'uns like it because it's a superior method of sexting that doesn't leave yourself open to incriminating pictures of yourself circulating online.
The general consensus is that it's a mistake to turn down the offer since Snapchat has no revenue and doesn't seem like a promising ad service... but possibly the 23 year old founder may have felt that a threatening acquisition would ruin the platform (think Flickr and Yahoo).
Cash out early, or "dare to dream big"-- what do Slashdotters think?
41958391
submission
Dr Herbert West writes:
LAS VEGAS — Automakers, hoping to get ahead of the technology curve for once, are opening their dashboards and APIs to outside developers in a bid to ramp up the number of apps you can use behind the wheel.
Each automaker is providing developers with an SDK through an online portal. As part of the Ford Developer Program, the Dearborn-based automaker is offering support from its own mobile app development house as well as other app testing vendors.
The API guidelines are an interesting read, in that GM will “instantly deny” apps that incorporate video, excessive text and gaming in a bid to reduce the risk of distracted driving.
41704585
submission
Dr Herbert West writes:
Executing the cost-reduction plan CEO Mark Pincus announced in November, Zynga has shut down, pulled from the app stores, or stopped accepting new players to more than 10 games such as PetVille, Mafia Wars 2, FishVille, Vampire Wars, Treasure Isle, Indiana Jones Adventure World, Mafia Wars Shakedown, Forestville, Montopia, Mojitomo, and Word Scramble Challenge.
Comments from gamers on the shutdown notices included things like “my daughter is heartbroken” and “Please don’t remove petville. I been playing for 4 yrs. and I’M going to miss my pet Jaime.why do you want cause depression for me and others. Why do you want to kill my pet?”
For players that have invested a lot of microtransactions and/or time, this comes as a heavy blow. Most readers on /. have become used to game publishers disabling content or shutting servers down with little or no notice-- is this a further sign of things to come, or will this cause enough outrage to reverse the trend?
38301301
submission
Dr Herbert West writes:
The phrase "correlation != causation" goes back to 1880 (according to Google Books). However, the use of the phrase has increased exponentially starting 1990's-200's, and is becoming a quick way to short-circuit certain kinds of arguments.
In the late 19th century the British statistician Karl Pearson introduced a powerful idea in math: that a relationship between two variables could be characterized according to its strength and expressed in numbers. An exciting concept, but it raised a new set of issues-- how to interpret the data in a way that is helpful, rather than misleading.
When we mistake correlation for causation, we find a cause that isn't there, which is a problem...however, as science grows more powerful and government more technocratic, the stakes of correlation—of counterfeit relationships and bogus findings—grow larger.
37762161
submission
Dr Herbert West writes:
An art history book minus the art! Students at Ontario College of Art and Design were forced to buy a $180 textbook filled with blank squares. Instead of images of paintings and sculpture throughout history (that presumably would fall under fair-use) the textbook for ”Global Visual and Material Culture: Prehistory to 1800“ features placeholders with a link to an online image.
A letter from the school’s dean stated that had they decided to clear all the images for copyright to print, the book would have cost a whopping $800.
The screengrabs are pretty hilarious, or depressing, depending on your point of view.
32879751
submission
Dr Herbert West writes:
20 years ago today, ID software released "Wolfenstein 3D", a remake of a classic Apple II game, "Return to Castle Wolfenstein". To celebrate, Bethesda Softworks on Wednesday released a free, browser-based version of the iconic first-person shooter, Wolfenstein 3D.
Users can pick which level they wish to play in the browser version, even the secret levels.
30287379
submission
Dr Herbert West writes:
Today is an incredibly sad day for fans of comic books, concept art, and downright anything science fiction. Artist Jean "Moebius" Giraud, who provided some of the most stunning scifi and fantasy art ever to grace a page, has succumbed to illness at the age of 73. It's pretty hard to overstate the impact he had on film, comic books, and illustration in general. You can name most any fantasy or science fiction related piece of culture from the last 30 or 40 years, and chances are he provided concept art for it or was involved in some way. Alien, Dune, Heavy Metal, Tron (original AND the new one), The Abyss, Masters of the Universe, The Fifth Element, Willow... the list goes on.
With the recent passing of Ralph McQuarrie, it's been a tough week for scifi and fantasy artists...
21432396
submission
Dr Herbert West writes:
From WSJ:
Nintendo said today said Sunday that a server for its U.S. unit's website had been hacked into but that no company or customer information was compromised.
The hacker group Lulzsec, which allegedly was behind other breaches of Sony websites earlier this week, claimed responsibility.
Lulzsec posted a server configuration file as proof of its involvement yet said it wasn't targeting Nintendo. "We just got a config file and made it clear that we didn't mean any harm," the group said this morning via its Twitter. "Nintendo had already fixed it anyway.
The attack comes as Nintendo this week launches its new online service for its 3DS hand-held game machine.
11064164
submission
Dr Herbert West writes:
A trio of Google engineers have ported id Software's gib-filled first-person shooter Quake II to browsers— you know, for kicks—as a way to show just what HTML5 compatible web browsers are capable of.
According to the developers, "We started with the existing Jake2 Java port of the Quake II engine, then used the Google Web Toolkit (along with WebGL, WebSockets, and a lot of refactoring) to cross-compile it into Javascript. "
Here's a link to the developer blog if you don't feel like heading over to Kotaku.
