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lubricus writes:

A post on the Revolution Analytics Blog announced today that it had been acquired by Microsoft.

For what it's worth, they say that users experiences' shouldn't change:

For our users and customers, nothing much will change with the acquisition. We’ll continue to support and develop the Revolution R family of products — including non-Windows platforms like Mac and Linux. The free Revolution R Open project will continue to enhance open source R. We’ll continue to offer expert technical support for R with Revolution R Plus subscriptions from the same team of R experts. We’ll continue to advance the big data and enterprise integration capabilities of Revolution R Enterprise. And we’ll continue to offer expert technical training and consulting services.

I hope that is true, but I'm far more worried that the talents of the likes of Hadley Wickham and the recent surge of R development are going to be subsumed by the M-Monster, much like we've seen when other open source projects have been acquired by large software companies *ahemORACLEahem*

Fnord666 writes:

In a recent post on Google Plus, Adrian Ludwig explains why Google is not fixing web security in old Android phones.

Engadget explains:

He does offer some suggestions though (and engadget summarizes them) on how to avoid or mitigate issues if you are on an older version of Android.

AnonTechie writes that Ars Technica is running a story If Dark Matter is Really Axions, we Could Find Out Soon:

From observations of the Milky Way galaxy, we’ve learned that in any given cubic meter of space, even the particular cubic meter that snugly fits your seated form as you read this article, there’s a small amount of matter—only about 50 proton masses worth—passing through in any given moment. But unlike the particles that make up your seated form, this matter doesn’t interact [electromagnetically]. It doesn’t reflect light, it isn’t repelled by solid objects, it passes right through walls. This mysterious substance is known as dark matter.

Since there’s so little of it in each cubic meter, you would never notice its presence. But over the vast distances of space, there’s a lot of cubic meters, and all that dark matter adds up. It’s only when you zoom out and look at the big picture that dark matter’s gravitational influence becomes apparent. It’s the main source of gravity holding every galaxy together; it binds galaxies to one another in clusters; and it warps space around galaxy clusters, creating a lensing effect.

But despite its importance to the large-scale structure of the Universe, we still don’t know what dark matter really is. Currently, the best candidate is WIMPs, or Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (Which makes sense, now that we know it’s not MAssive Compact Halo Objects, or MACHOs). But WIMPs are not the only option—there are quite a few other possibilities being investigated ( http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/09/exploring-the-monstrous-creatures-at-the-edges-of-the-dark-matter-map/1/ ). Some of them are other kinds of massive particles, which would constitute cold dark matter, while others aren’t particles at all. ( http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/11/looking-for-a-different-sort-of-dark-matter-with-gps-satellites/ )

[Paper]: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/01/07/1308788112.full.pdf+html

[Abstract]: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/01/07/1308788112

chromas writes:

An asteroid will be stopping by for a visit around Monday (or Tuesday, depending on your time zone). From National Geographic:

A mountain-size space rock will sail past Earth on Monday, offering stargazers a close look at an interplanetary pinball. Luckily, NASA says there is no risk of collision, but it will be a rare astronomically close encounter that backyard telescope owners can watch.

This will be a rare opportunity to see a bright flyby of a potentially hazardous asteroid from your backyard. For several hours on Monday, [asteroid] 2004 BL86 will reach a visual brightness of magnitude 9. That means small telescopes and possibly even large binoculars will reveal the asteroid—as long as you know where to look.

The asteroid will travel through the constellations Hydra and Cancer in the south-southeastern evening sky and will glide just to the right of a bright celestial guidepost, the planet Jupiter. Between 10 p.m. and 12 a.m. EST [3–5 UTC], it will be making a close pass of the famed Beehive star cluster.

AnonTechie writes:

A new site is attempting to put the enthusiasm and knowledge of amateur archaeologists and historians to work on current archaeological projects, with the help and guidance of professional academics.

MicroPasts, a joint project of University College London, the British Museum, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, is a new hybrid site combining citizen science and crowdfunding under one umbrella.

“MicroPasts is a web platform that brings together full-time academic researchers, volunteer archaeological and historical societies and other interested members of the public to collaborate on new kinds of research about archaeology, history and heritage,” according to the site’s coordinators, including Chiara Bonacchi, Adi Keinan-Schoonbaert, Andrew Bevan, and Daniel Pett. “In particular, we want to improve how people traditionally distinguished as ‘academics,' ‘professionals,’ and ‘volunteers’ cooperate with one another (as well as with other people out there who as yet have no more than a passing interest).”

MicroPasts - Conducting, designing and funding research into our human past. http://micropasts.org

Portable Antiquities Scheme website: http://finds.org.uk

How does this work? - https://crowdfunded.micropasts.org/how-it-works

AnonTechie writes:

Politico Magazine asked 15 other big thinkers and doers for their ideas of what will change the world the most in the next 15 years. We got back lots of inspiration—from the transformative power of opening up national borders to the commercialization of the human genome—and one dyspeptic dissenter. Read on, for a sense of the possible in the world of 2030.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/15-big-breakthroughs-in-2015-114486.html

Would you agree with their predictions? What would surveillance be like in 2030? Would we have any freedoms at all, any privacy?

sudo rm -rf writes:

ESA has published some details of the now famous comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, the target object of the Rosetta mission and resting place of the lander Philae.

The richly illustrated article (sorry, no artist impressions, only photographs and a chart) contains — amongst other things — information about the measured density, a map of the 19 regions identified so far (all named after Egyptian deities) and ...

Some very steep regions of the exposed cliff faces [that] are textured on scales of roughly 3 m with features that have been nicknamed ‘goosebumps’. Their origin is yet to be explained, but their characteristic size may yield clues as to the processes at work when the comet formed.

These are among the very first scientific results from Rosetta and there is much more to come as the scientists work through the data and as the comet continues to evolve during its closest approach to the Sun. They are described in more detail in accompanying posts on the Rosetta blog and in the 23 January 2015 Science [paywalled] special edition

http://www.infowars.com/googles-eric-schmidt-greases-skids-for-internet-brain-chip/

Google CEO Eric Schmidt predicts the end of the web as an external concept at Davos conference: asked how he saw the Internet developing in future years, Schmidt responded. “I will answer very simply that the Internet will disappear.”

“There will be so many IP addresses…so many devices, sensors, things that you are wearing, things that you are interacting with that you won’t even sense it,” he added. “It will be part of your presence all the time. Imagine you walk into a room, and the room is dynamic. And with your permission and all of that, you are interacting with the things going on in the room.”

Schmidt, who previously caused controversy amongst privacy advocates when he stated, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place,” concluded his Davos speech by envisaging “A highly personalized, highly interactive and very, very interesting world.”

When Schmidt speaks of sensors that will replace the Internet as a platform accessed only through an external device, he is talking about implantable brain chips.

As we previously reported, in December 2013, Google engineering director Scott Huffman predicted that within five years web users would have microphones attached to their ceilings and microchips embedded in their brains in order to perform quicker internet searches.

This editor's view - marketing speak. It may be the aim of Google, but I cannot see 'embedded microchips' that are interfaced to the brain being available within decades, let alone the next 5 years. Sure, there will be research and, hopefully, some brilliant technological advances - but that is nowhere near it becoming a simple medical operation. Additionally, who would pay for this? Brain surgery doesn't come cheap and I don't envisage the infrastructure being provided for a handful of people. Anyone else have any opinions that they would wish to share?

dw861 writes:

The CBC announces:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/telus-pager-service-cancellation-worries-rural-communities-1.2927950

Some residents of Quebec’s rural communities are worried after receiving a letter saying Telus is cancelling its pager service across Canada, effective March 31.

The potential problem? Many of the province’s rural municipalities do not have cellphone service. As a result, they rely on the pager system to reach health-care workers and emergency responders.

As outlined in the CBC article, one suggestion is that organizations can create their own paging networks with "two-way radios, an antenna, a broadcast licence, an encoder, a telephone-connected device and some pagers." While an expensive up-front cost, it would be a one time expense.

Telus has stated that the discontinuation of pager service is just a reflection of the times. With fewer people using the system, it has reached the end of its service life and that they are hard at work expanding their cellphone coverage.

Are there others who still use pagers?

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Blogger Carl Cheo, who maintains a website providing numbered lists of tips for maximizing online productivity, has pulled together an easy-to-follow graphic answering the newbie question "What programming language should I learn first?" (pdf here). Cheo chose nine commercially viable languages as possible destinations as the viewer navigates the flow chart. Further down the page, there are tabs with annotated links to educational resources for each language. So what's in it for Soylentils, most of whom I'm guessing were programming newbies in the previous millenium? Well, maybe you have nephews or nieces who chose the wrong major in college. Besides, the graphic is amusing and clever, though probably not the last word on the subject.

tonyPick writes:

The RISC-V project ran the first RISC-V workshop last week, and the content from the workshop is being brought online.

Currently the slide packs are available, with videos to follow. From the blog posting

The RISC-V Project aims to develop an open Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) under a BSD License; from the project homepage:

The motivation for the project is summarised in The Case for RISC-V (PDF Download) .

carguy writes:

Video of a Q&A session with Noam Chomsky yesterday, sponsored by the MIT Faculty Forum:     http://slice.mit.edu/2015/01/14/faculty-forum-online-noam-chomsky/

The questions cover a wide range from activism to some fine points of linguistics to nuclear nonproliferation - something for everyone and surprisingly positive overall. I spotted at least one small factual error, fairly minor in the grand scheme of things.

ah.clem writes:

Tumblr has long promoted itself as a hub for artists and creative entrepreneurs. Now, Tumblr wants to put those people to work.

To that end, the company unveiled a new initiative, in which it plans to hand-pick some of its most popular artists and creative users and pair them up with brands who want to advertise across the popular blogging platform.

Sell out here.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Stomp on the gas in a new Ford Mustang or F-150 and you’ll hear a meaty, throaty rumble—the same style of roar that Americans have associated with auto power and performance for decades. Now Drew Harwell reports at the Washington Post that the auto industry’s dirty little secret is that the engine growl in some of America’s best-selling cars and trucks is actually a finely tuned bit of lip-syncing, boosted through special pipes or digitally faked altogether. "Fake engine noise has become one of the auto industry’s dirty little secrets, with automakers from BMW to Volkswagen turning to a sound-boosting bag of tricks," writes Harwell. "Without them, today’s more fuel-efficient engines would sound far quieter and, automakers worry, seemingly less powerful, potentially pushing buyers away." For example Ford sound engineers and developers worked on an “Active Noise Control” system on the 2015 Mustang EcoBoost that amplifies the engine’s purr through the car speakers. Afterwards, the automaker surveyed members of Mustang fan clubs on which processed “sound concepts” they most enjoyed.

Among purists, the trickery has inspired an identity crisis and cut to the heart of American auto legend. The “aural experience” of a car, they argue, is an intangible that’s just as priceless as what’s revving under the hood. “For a car guy, it’s literally music to hear that thing rumble,” says Mike Rhynard, “It’s a mind-trick. It’s something it’s not. And no one wants to be deceived.” Other drivers ask if it really matters if the sound is fake? A driver who didn’t know the difference might enjoy the thrum and thunder of it nonetheless. Is taking the best part of an eight-cylinder rev and cloaking a better engine with it really, for car makers, so wrong? "It may be a necessary evil in the eyes of Ford," says Andrew Hard, "but it’s sad to think that an iconic muscle car like the Mustang, a car famous for its bellowing, guttural soundtrack, has to fake its engine noise in 2015. Welcome to the future."

"gewg_" writes:

Valve's changelog for the Steam client dated January 19 includes the fix for the Linux-related screwup.

Silviu Stahie notes at Softpedia

it might have deserved more than just an entry in a changelog, but we'll have to settle with just that.

"Fixed a rare bug where Steam could delete user files when failing to start"

Related:
rm -rf / Considered Harmful, to Steam Users