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Submission + - Harvard/MIT Student Creates GPU Database, Hacker-Style

Submitted by IamIanB
IamIanB writes: Harvard Middle Eastern Studies student Todd Mostak's first tangle with big data didn't go well; trying to process and map 40 million geolocated tweets from the Arab Spring uprising took days. So while taking a database course across town at MIT, he developed a massively parallel database that uses GeForce Titan GPUs to do the data processing. The system sees 70x performance increases over CPU-based systems, and can out crunch a 1000 node MapReduce cluster, in some cases. All for around $5,000 worth of hardware.

Mostak plans to release the system under an open source license; you can play with a data set of 125 million tweets hosted at Harvard's WorldMap and see the millisecond response time.

Submission + - Linode hacked, CCs and passwords leaked 6

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: On Friday Linode announced a precautionary password reset due to an attack despite claiming that they were not compromised. The attacker has claimed otherwise, claiming to have obtained card numbers and password hashes. Password hashes, source code fragments and directory listings have been released as proof. Linode has yet to comment on or deny these claims.
Facebook

Submission + - Facebook's Graph Search Is a Privacy Test For Internet Users (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An article in the NY Times makes the case that Graph Search, Facebook's recently unveiled social search utility, will be a test for users of the social networking site which will have consequences for the internet at large. The test will show whether people are willing to take the next step in sharing parts of their lives, and whether social search is the future for online interaction. '...the company engineers who created the tool — former Google employees — say that the project will not reach its full potential if Facebook data is "sparse," as they call it. But the company is confident people will share more data, be it the movies they watch, the dentists they trust or the meals that make their mouths water.' CompSci professor Oren Etzioni says it's a watershed moment for the social internet because of the scale at which Facebook operates. A decade ago, people began making the choice to share their lives online; buying into social search would be the biggest step since then.
NASA

Submission + - Saturn's largest moon undergoes crater makeover (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by MightyMartian
MightyMartian writes: NASA scientists say Cassini has discovered that far fewer craters on Titan than on the other moons of Saturn. The craters they have discovered are far shallower than other moons' craters and appear to be filling with hydrocarbon sand. On top of being yet another reason Titan's active geology is very cool, it adds to the mystery of where all the methane on Titan is coming from.
Apple

Submission + - Has Apple made programmers cool? (cnet.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: CNET suggests that Apple has totally changed the general public's perception of programmers: It's now suddenly cool to code. No matter what platform you're on. They argue that App Store millionaire success stories have "turned a whole generation of geek coders from social misfits into superheroes". Apparently, gone are the days when a programmer was the last person you wanted to talk to at a party: "Mention to someone that you make apps and their interest will pick up instantly. This is an astonishing change from what a programmer in the 80s could have expected in reaction to their job description". The App Store millionaires, or 'Appillionaires', may have done all of us programmers a huge favour. Programming is now socially acceptable: "Previous generations strapped on electric guitars and fought for superstardom in sweaty dive bars, but today's youth boot up Xcode on their MacBook Pros."
Apple

Submission + - Fake Steve Jobs Says: 'Leave The Real One Alone' (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Stoobalou
Stoobalou writes: Dan Lyons, who has been lampooning Apple's Steve Jobs for many years, has posted his last item as Fake Steve Jobs and signed off.

Lyons, who has been impersonating the messianic Apple supremo in the notorious tech blog since 2006 and even managed to maintain his anonymity for quite some time, despite being a well-known tech hack, has parked his vitriolic pen for the last time.
The Media

Submission + - Newsday Gets 35 Subscriptions to Pay Web Site

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "In late October, Newsday put its web site behind a pay wall, one of the first non-business newspapers to take the pay wall plunge, so Newsday has been followed with interest in media circles anxious to learn how the NY Times own plans to put up a pay wall may work out. So how successful has Newsday's paywall been? The NY Observer reports that three months into the experiment only 35 people have have signed up to pay $5 a week to get unfettered access to newsday.com. Newsday's web site redesign and relaunch reportedly cost about $4 million and the 35 people who've signed up have earned Newsday about $9,000. Still publisher Terry Jimenez is unapologetic. "That's 35 more than I would have thought it would have been," said Jimenez to his assembled staff, according to five interviews with Newsday employees. The web project has not been a favorite among Newsday employees who have recently been asked to take a 10 percent pay cut. "The view of the newsroom is the web site sucks," says one staffer. "It's an abomination," adds another."
Games

Game Endings Going Out of Style? 190

Posted by Soulskill from the to-be-continued dept.
An article in the Guardian asks whether the focus of modern games has shifted away from having a clear-cut ending and toward indefinite entertainment instead. With the rise of achievements, frequent content updates and open-ended worlds, it seems like publishers and developers are doing everything they can to help this trend. Quoting: "Particularly before the advent of 'saving,' the completion of even a simple game could take huge amounts of patience, effort and time. The ending, like those last pages of a book, was a key reason why we started playing in the first place. Sure, multiplayer and arcade style games still had their place, but fond 8, 16 and 32-bit memories consist more of completion and satisfaction than particular levels or tricky moments. Over the past few years, however, the idea of a game as simply something to 'finish' has shifted somewhat. For starters, the availability of downloadable content means no story need ever end, as long as the makers think there's a paying audience. Also, the ubiquity of broadband means multiplayer gaming is now the standard, not the exception it once was. There is no real 'finish' to most MMORPGs."

Comment Re:Whining about folk-art webpages... (Score 1) 231

by zokuga (#30641976) Attached to: Jaron Lanier Rants Against the World of Web 2.0

I just pulled myself facebook, I got sick of all that faceless and meaningless interaction. I had nearly 300 friends and I informed everybody I would be leaving so they could give me their details and we could meet up in real life. Out of those 300 people, only 2 people gave me their details. That says a lot to me as it turns out nobody was really bothered, human interaction has become passive activity (when it should be much more important) and probably with a lot of people I was just a number.

I think Facebook is more paltable when you accept that for the majority of your acquaintances, you *are* a number, with or without Facebook. Before FB, did you really think you had the time in your daily life to have meaningful interaction with even just 20 people spread throughout the world? I don't claim to have close interactions with any but a dozen of the 12 out of 500-some FB contacts I have...but that's the way it would've been in real life too. So I do lose some time, maybe 10-15 min writing quick comments and voyeurstically checking out people who, without Facebook, I may not have given any thought to. But the tradeoff is that once in awhile I do make a valuable contact...say a long-absent acquaintance decides to move to my city...that would've only been knowable through Facebook. Sure, you can take the nostalgic-oldfashioned view that if that friendship was really worth something, that acquaintance would've put in the legwork to find my contact info and reach out to me when moving to the city. But that's like trying to argue that the old-fashioned way of meeting a girl by chatting her up at the bar or coffee shop is somehow more inherently meaningful and successful that Match.com. It is not necessarily so.

Comment Re:Sorry, but this is stupid (Score 5, Insightful) 95

by zokuga (#30494414) Attached to: Google In Talks To Buy Yelp

500 million for a very simple website that has people reviewing restaurants and shit? Half the people on Slashdot would be able to clone that website in a couple of months (working alone!), and the user base is *not* worth half a billion (BILLION!!!).

What is this world coming to?

Or, what am I missing? Is yelp.com offering something other than people subjectively reviewing things like food?

Yelp is the first place I go to when I want to find a new place to eat...it is extremely useful in a big city where there is no way that any other site or publication has reviewed all of the eateries. The tech behind Yelp isn't revolutionary, but it's a pretty slick site to use. more importantly, it basically owns the market for local reviews. Saying that a couple people could clone the site is like saying a couple people could come up with a Gatorade-like drink over the weekend...the response to which would be...So?

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