barrettlight50 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Reporter of an e-voting vulnerability raided in Argentina

Submitted by TrixX on Saturday July 04, 2015 @12:37AM

TrixX writes: There have just been police raids at the home of an Argentinian security professional who discovered and reported several vulnerabilities in the electronic ballot system to be used next weeks for elections in the city of Buenos Aires. The vulnerabilities (exposed SSL keys and ways to forge ballots with multiple votes) had been reported to the manufacturer of the voting machines, the media, and the public about a week ago.
There have been no arrest but his computers and electronics devices have been impounded. Meanwhile, the information security community in Argentina is trying to get the media to report this notorious attempt to "kill the messenger".

Submission + - How much did your biggest "tech" mistake cost?

Submitted by NotQuiteReal on Friday July 03, 2015 @10:23PM

NotQuiteReal writes: What is the most expensive piece of hardware you broke (I fried a $2500 disk drive once, back when 400MB was $2500) or what software bug did you let slip that caused damage? (No comment on the details — but about $20K cost to a client.)

Did you lose your job over it?

If you worked on the Mars probe that crashed, please try not to be the First Post, that would scare off too many people!

Submission + - Someone Will Die Playing a Game in Virtual Reality

Submitted by SlappingOysters on Friday July 03, 2015 @07:56PM

SlappingOysters writes: Grab It has detailed a hands-on session with horror VR title Kitchen — from Resident Evil creator Capcom — and argues how the physical reaction to the experience could lead to death. The site also believes that classifying VR games will be a challenge and many titles could be banned. Virtual Reality has a big year ahead, with the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Project Morpheus all set to release, while Microsoft is working on the HoloLens, which the site argues adds a further challenge to traditional gaming.

Feed Google News Sci Tech: Solar-powered plane breaks solo flight record - Brisbane Times (google.com)

From feed by feedfeeder on Friday July 03, 2015 @06:52PM

Brisbane Times

Solar-powered plane breaks solo flight record
Brisbane Times
The pilot of the Solar Impulse lands his aircraft in Hawaii, shattering the solo flight record threshold of 76 hours while crossing the Pacific. 04/07/15. Supporters of the. Up next... Countdown on to Greek vote. Play now. Return to video...
Solar Impulse 2: Sun powered the plane, yoga helped pilot on Japan-to-Hawaii ... San Jose Mercury News
Solar-powered airplane lands in Hawaii after record-breaking 5-day flight from ... Minneapolis Star Tribune
Solar Impulse 2 reaches Hawaii, shatters records in historic Pacific flightFox News
San Francisco Chronicle (subscription)-Newsweek-ABC Online
all 709 news articles

Submission + - FBI wants Pirate Bay logs for criminal investigation into copyright trolls. (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by the simurgh on Friday July 03, 2015 @05:59PM

the simurgh writes: It has been revealed today that In the past few months, two of the Pirate Bay co-founders have been repeatedly questioned by Swedish authorities, acting on behalf of the FBI. the internet now has clear evidence that Prenda is indeed being investigated by the US Government for uploading their own copyrighted content in torrents placed onto The Pirate Bay, for the sole purpose of creating a honeypot trap to sue over pirated downloads. the full story is included in the link below

Submission + - The making of sci-fi Robot Overlords - nice robot VFX (robohub.org)

Submitted by Hallie Siegel on Friday July 03, 2015 @03:19PM

Hallie Siegel writes: Ever wonder how they make robots look so awesomely real in movies? Visual effects expert Graham Edwards goes behind the scenes with the makers of Robot Overlords to take you through the development of the robots in this movie, from script development and sketches, to filming and post FX. Really cool to see how these robots come to life.

Submission + - Assange Makes Plea For Asylum After Leaking Details Of NSA Spying On French Pols (nypost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03, 2015 @03:12PM

An anonymous reader writes: The NY Post reports, "Assange wrote a letter to French President Francois Hollande published in Le Monde on Friday, appealing to France’s history as a beacon for the repressed. He noted that WikiLeaks recently revealed that the US National Security Agency spied on Hollande and his two predecessors and leading French companies. Hollande quickly said “no.” In a statement, his office noted that Assange is under a European arrest warrant and his life is not in imminent danger. ... French Justice Minister Christine Taubira suggested in a televised interview last week that she would be open to the idea. ... Assange has spent three years in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London ... In his letter to Hollande, Assange said that the mother of his youngest child is French. He said he is restricted to a space of 5.5 square meters (60 square feet), lacking access to “fresh air, sun as well as any possibility to go to a hospital,” and noted that police say round-the-clock surveillance of him has cost $17.6 million." — 9News adds, "... In his open letter ... Assange described himself as a "journalist pursued and threatened with death by the United States' authorities as a result of my professional activities" ... "only France now has the ability to offer me the necessary protection against, and exclusively against, the political persecution that I am currently the object of". Such an offer of protection would be a "humanitarian and symbolic gesture" and send a message of encouragement "to journalists and whistleblowers around the world". Assange said in his letter he had not seen his youngest child or the child's mother, who are both French, for five years. "I have had to keep their existence secret up to today in order to protect them," he wrote. " — also noted: "WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has denied filing a request for asylum in France "

Submission + - Clang Plays Tetris - Tetris as a C++ Template Metaprogram (mattbierner.com)

Submitted by mjvzb on Friday July 03, 2015 @01:48PM

mjvzb writes: Ever wish compiling was more fun? Well, I recently implemented Tetris as a C++ template metaprogram (Github). The game is played by recompiling its source, taking player input by compiler flag. The runtime program is only needed to print the game screen to the console and save the game state across compiler runs.

Implementing Tetris in templates is not as horrific as you may imagine, and I've put together a post covering the details. Once you get over the syntax, C++ metaprogramming is just like functional programming.

Submission + - Rumblefish claims it owns "America the Beautiful" by United States Navy Band (adafruit.com)

Submitted by ptorrone on Friday July 03, 2015 @01:18PM

ptorrone writes: Adafruit is now shipping the USA made open-source Arduinos, in celebration Ladyada the engineer posted a Arduino rotating in front of an American flag with the public domain “America the Beautiful” by United States Navy Band as the music. Adafruit immediately received notice from from YouTube stating that the song is owned by Rumblefish. Rumblefish previously claimed to own copyright to ambient birdsongs too.

Submission + - Square Enix Pulls, Apologizes For Mac Version of FFXIV

Submitted by _xeno_ on Friday July 03, 2015 @01:10PM

_xeno_ writes: Just over a week after Warner Bros. pulled the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight due to bugs, Square Enix is now being forced to do the same thing with the Mac OS X version of Final Fantasy XIV (which was released at the same time as Batman: Arkham Knight). The rather long note explaining the decision apologizes for releasing the port before it was ready and blames OS X and OpenGL for the performance discrepancy between the game's performance on identical Mac hardware running Windows. It's unclear when (or even if) Square Enix will resume selling an OS X version — the note indicates that the development team is hopeful that "[w]ith the adoption of DirectX11 for Mac, and the replacement of OpenGL with a new graphics API in Apple’s next OS, the fundamental gap in current performance issues may soon be eliminated." (I'm not sure what "the adoption of DirectX11 for Mac" refers to. OS X gaining DirectX 11 support is news to me — and, I suspect, Microsoft.) Given that the game supports the aging PS3 console, you'd think the developers would be able to find a way to get the same graphics as the PS3 version on more powerful Mac OS X hardware.

Submission + - This Is The Rare PlayStation Console Built By Sony And Nintendo

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03, 2015 @12:30PM

An anonymous reader writes: Long before Sony and Nintendo were rivals, the two companies were partners for a brief time. In 1998 the duo started work on SNES-CD, a video game media format that was supposed to augment the cartridge-based SNES by adding support for higher-capacity CDs. In 1991 at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Sony introduced the “Play Station” (yes, with a space) but it never saw the light of day. Now, more than two decades later, Imgur user DanDiebold has uploaded images of the unreleased console. This particular model (about 200 Play Station prototypes were created) confirms that the system was supposed to be compatible with existing SNES titles as well as titles to be released in the SNES-CD format. In other words, it would have been the world's first hybrid console: game developers and gamers alike would be able to use both SNES cartridges and CDs. If you want to learn more about this particular prototype, check out the following thread on Assembler Games.

Submission + - Machine learning system detects emotions and suicidal behavior (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03, 2015 @10:58AM

An anonymous reader writes: A new machine learning technology is being developed by Israeli scientists which can identify emotion in text messages and email, such as sarcasm, irony and even antisocial or suicidal thoughts. The new computerised system, created by Eden Saig a computer science student at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, is described in a paper titled ‘Sentiment Classification of Texts in Social Networks.’ The system works by recognising repeated word patterns and was developed by Saig after he studied a course in artificial intelligence (AI) supervised by Professor Shaul Markovich. Saig explains that voice tone and vocal inflections are so crucial for conveying feelings in verbal communication, while with text and email messages these characteristics are lost – recently encouraging users to illustrate sentiment through superficial smileys or emoticons. Applying machine learning algorithms to popular opinion Facebook pages, Saig was able to use the results to pick out stereotypical habits in social network conversations. “Now, the system can recognise patterns that are either condescending or caring sentiments and can even send a text message to the user if the system thinks the post may be arrogant,” said Saig.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What Is Your Most Odd Hardware Hack?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03, 2015 @10:56AM

An anonymous reader writes: Another Slashdotter once asked what kind of things someone can power with an external USB battery. I have a followup along those lines: what kind of modifications have you made to your gadgets to do things that they were never meant to do? Consider old routers, cell phones, monitors, etc. that have absolutely no use or value anymore in their intended form. What can you do with them? Have you ever done something stupid and damaged your electronics?

Submission + - Turing Near Ready To Ship World's First Liquid Metal Android Smartphone (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid on Friday July 03, 2015 @10:24AM

MojoKid writes: Liquid Metal is an alloy metal (technically, bulk metallic glass) that manages to combine the best features of a wide variety of materials into one product. Liquid Metal also has high corrosion resistance, high tensile strength, remarkable anti-wear characteristics and can also be heat-formed. Given its unique properties, Liquid Metal has been used in a number of industries, including in smartphones. Historically, it has been limited to small-scale applications and pieces parts, not entire products. However, Turing Robotic Industries (TRI) just announced pre-orders for the world's first liquid metal-frame smartphone. The Turing Phone uses its own brand of Liquid Metal called Liquidmorphium, which provides excellent shock absorption characteristics. So instead of making a dent in the smartphone casing or cracking/chipping like plastic when dropped, a Turing Phone should in theory "shake it off" while at the same time protecting the fragile display from breaking. The Turing Phone does not come cheap, however, with pricing starting at $610 for a 16GB model and escalating quickly to $740 and $870 respectively for the 64GB and 128GB models, unlocked. Pre-orders open up on July 31.

Submission + - Firefox 39 Released, Bringing Security Improvements and Social Sharing (mozilla.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03, 2015 @10:17AM

An anonymous reader writes: Today Mozilla announced the release of Firefox 39.0, which brings an number of minor improvements to the open source browser. (Full release notes.)They've integrated Firefox Share with Firefox Hello, which means that users will be able to open video calls through links sent over social media. Internally, the browser dropped support for the insecure SSLv3 and disabled use of RC4 except where explicitly whitelisted. The SafeBrowsing malware detection now works for downloads on OS X and Linux(Full list of security changes.) The Mac OS X version of Firefox is now running Project Silk, which makes animations and scrolling noticeably smoother. Developers now have access to the powerful Fetch API, which should provide a better interface for grabbing things over a network.

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