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How do you control privacy and tracking on the internet?

  • VPN / HTTPS and nothing else
  • uBlock Origin or similar
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  • Other - please expand in the comments

[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:74 | Votes:188

posted by martyb on Thursday October 20 2016, @10:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the how-did-they-model-the-removal? dept.

Microsoft has decided to drop the UML (Unified Modeling Language) designer tools from Visual Studio 15, reports Paul Krill at IT World. MS sales and support teams confirmed that few customers were actually using the feature.

"Removing a feature is always a hard decision, but we want to ensure that our resources are invested in features that deliver the most customer value," said Microsoft's Jean-Marc Prieur, senior program manager for Visual Studio.

I've almost never had occasion to use UML professionally other than a few hand drawn designs on scrap paper that were thrown away. I did have a coworker who had a tool that generated UML from code that was sometimes helpful when he explained his work in review sessions. In school UML appeared to be a nightmare that was used for modelling everything but software, yet academics talked about UML one day becoming executable and replacing code.

Do you use UML? Are you going to miss this feature in Visual Studio?


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Thursday October 20 2016, @08:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the counting-accounts-counts dept.

Business Insider reports that a compromise of Yahoo! that had been acknowledged to affect "at least 500 million" accounts may have affected significantly more. Citing an unnamed "former Yahoo executive familiar with its security practices," the story says that the company's "main user database, or UDB" which stores the details for users of several of the company's services, was compromised. If the entire database were copied, information on one to three billion accounts could have been stolen.

Previously:
Amid Fallout from Hack and Spying, Yahoo! Disables Email Forwarding
In Yahoo Breach, Hackers May Seek Intelligence, Not Riches
500 Million Yahoo Accounts Hacked


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Thursday October 20 2016, @07:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the circular-reasoning dept.

As soon as SRI explained how their new Abacus transmission worked, we were absolutely sure that it was cool enough to share. In a nutshell, here's why: It's the first new rotary transmission design since Harmonic Drive introduced its revolutionary gear system in the 1960s*, and it might give harmonic gears a literal run for their money.

Harmonic gears are great, but they're also super duper expensive, because they require all kinds of precision machining. Alexander Kernbaum, a senior research engineer at SRI International, has come up with an entirely new rotary transmission called the Abacus drive, and it's a beautiful piece of clever engineering that offers all kinds of substantial advantages:

The Abacus drive (named because it has components that look like the beads of an abacus) is what's called a pure rolling transmission: there are no parts that rub or slide against each other (like gear teeth), only parts rolling against other parts. Rubbing and sliding result in wasted energy, and in fact, conventional transmissions are typically only 50 percent efficient. Kernbaum says that Abacus has an efficiency "in the high 90s," a massive improvement.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/sri-demonstrates-abacus-rotary-transmission

[Video]: SRI Abacus Rotary Transmission [Javascript required]

* Harmonic drive gears are based on an ingenious mechanism known as a strain wave gear, which was invented in 1955 by a prolific engineer named C. Walton Musser (his other numerous inventions include the recoilless rifle and the ejection seat).


Original Submission

posted by CoolHand on Thursday October 20 2016, @05:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the his-remix-is-on-our-list dept.

Start with legendary singer/songwriter/producer John Oates (of Hall & Oates) and then add in a two-hour collaboration to write a new song with eight people — on stage in front of a live audience. Then release the song's stems royalty-free into the public domain and encourage anyone to remix it.

Billboard has a nice writeup on the original composition: John Oates Presents Berklee College of Music Collaboration Project 'Smoke and Mirrors':

As half of one of the greatest duos in pop history, John Oates is certainly no stranger to collaboration when it comes to songwriting and recording. But despite his half-century's worth of experience in the music industry, he says he's never been in involved in anything like new song "Smoke & Mirrors" before, whose studio video Billboard is premiering today.

"It was totally unique," he says of the endeavor. "We wrote a song in two hours with eight people. It was a very unique, cool thing to do."

The eight people he refers to are students of the Berklee College of Music, where Oates served as the Herb Alpert Visitng[sic] Professor for a 2015-16 residency. During his second year at the school, the "She's Gone" singer-songwriter devised (along with music business/management associate professor Stephanie Kellar) to work with that group on a new song, which they would write together in the space of a two-hour session, in front of a live audience.

"We had a long table set up, and we had teams of two people working on each facet of the composition," Oates explains. "And I was kind of the ring master, you know, I bounced around." Different pairs of students (collectively referred to as "WritersBloc") were assigned different responsibilities -- track, lyrics, topline melody -- while their professor helped out as needed, and a studio audience observed. "It was just this sense of 'Let's see what we can do, let's see if we can create a song from scratch, in this kind of collaborative environment,'" Oates says.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer recalls being taken aback by how well the project came together. "To be honest from you, I was shocked from the very beginning that it was actually working," he admits. "It could have gone south really quickly... but everyone seemed to be able to relate." Oates explains that once the song's groove was in place, everything fell in step from there. "They came up with a certain feel, a certain tempo, which then began to dictate how the rest of the writers were going to attack the song and bring it to the next level."

Having the song's title in place also helped move the process along. "We had the title "Smoke and Mirrors," and [I said], 'That's a cool, evocative title, but it could go in any direction you want. It could literally be about smoke and mirrors, or it could be a metaphor for a relationship for whatever,'" Oates recalls. "And in the end, it did turn into a metaphor for an emotional relationship... once we locked into that, it really moved quickly."

Writing the song was only the beginning; now John Oates invites anyone to remix it:

[Continues...]

The first step was writing and recording a new song, titled "Smoke & Mirrors", which premiered last week on Billboard. The follow-up now finds Oates giving away the stems of the track, released royalty-free in the public domain, for any DJ to remix it as he or she sees fit.

The song's assets can be downloaded here. Oates is asking that remixes be uploaded to YouTube or Soundcloud with the hashtag #smokeandmirrorsremix in the title, so a complete playlist can be compiled.

"Pop songwriting today is largely done by committee," Oates says of his experience working with Berklee group WritersBloc. "We had two writers on beats, two on chords, two on melody, and two on lyrics. Each duo had a laptop, midi controller, and headphones, and sent their .wav files to a cloud service. The files were downloaded to the engineer's master laptop running ProTools and mixed on the fly so everyone could hear each other. It worked remarkably well."

"Smoke & Mirrors" features vocals by Amy & The Engine's Amy Allen, and was mixed and mastered at Boston studio The Record Company.

I can't help but notice similarities between this and the free software movement. Is this the start of a new trend in music writing and publishing? Are there any Soylentils who will take a try at their own remix?


Original Submission

posted by CoolHand on Thursday October 20 2016, @03:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the hardware-over-software dept.

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) says wind-powered electricity generation's "intermittency" had nothing to do with the blackouts following South Australia's catastrophic storms in late September.

In its ongoing investigation of what caused the "system black" event on 28 September, the AEMO says the storm caused a loss of 445 MW of wind output (out of a total loss of 900 MW), rather than the 315 MW of its original estimate.

However, AEMO's updated preliminary report (PDF) makes it clear that the political assertions made about wind energy were false.

"The most well known characteristic of wind power, variation of output with wind strength (often termed 'intermittency'), was not a material factor in the events of 28 September 2016", the report states on page 21.

Only 20 MW of wind power disconnected due to excessive wind speed. Instead, most loss of wind output was down to how the wind farms' control systems were configured – in particular, the settings for "voltage ride-through" events, which the report notes are proprietary settings in the control software.

For more information on the storm, see coverage by CNN, The Guardian , The Conversation and ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

"Bad Bespoke Software." Software shouldn't have spokes. That's the problem right there.


Original Submission

posted by cmn32480 on Thursday October 20 2016, @02:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the should-really-be-in-space-or-undersea dept.

When Apple finishes its new $5 billion headquarters in Cupertino, California, the technorati will ooh and ahh over its otherworldly architecture, patting themselves on the back for yet another example of "innovation." Countless employees, tech bloggers, and design fanatics are already lauding the "futuristic" building and its many "groundbreaking" features. But few are aware that Apple's monumental project is already outdated, mimicking a half-century of stagnant suburban corporate campuses that isolated themselves—by design—from the communities their products were supposed to impact.

In the 1940s and '50s, when American corporations first flirted with a move to the 'burbs, CEOs realized that horizontal architecture immersed in a park-like buffer lent big business a sheen of wholesome goodness. The exodus was triggered, in part, by inroads the labor movement was making among blue-collar employees in cities. At the same time, the increasing diversity of urban populations meant it was getting harder and harder to maintain an all-white workforce. One by one, major companies headed out of town for greener pastures, luring desired employees into their gilded cages with the types of office perks familiar to any Googler.

Rockstar coders don't do suburbs?


Original Submission

posted by cmn32480 on Thursday October 20 2016, @12:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the i-toe-tally-get-it-now dept.

It has long been known that the thickness of the epidermis varies around the body. For example, skin is thicker on the soles but thinner on the ears. However, the mechanism for maintaining the relative thickness of the outer skin, or epidermis, has been largely unknown.

Now, the research group, led by Professor Tomomi Nemoto of the university's Research Institute for Electronic Science, has established a new method for three-dimensional, real-time observation of the deep structure of the skin in living mice using advanced microscopy technology.
...
The team's analysis revealed for the first time that in thicker skin, basal cells divide obliquely with high frequency, whereas for basal cells in thin skin -- such as the back and ears -- divisions in the basement membrane were mostly parallel. By analyzing divisional direction three-dimensionally, correlations were found between the thickness of the epidermis and the frequency of oblique division with regard to the basement membrane.

In case you always wondered.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Thursday October 20 2016, @11:08AM   Printer-friendly
from the where's-a-muckraker-when-you-need-one? dept.

Okay, so, I wasn't going to submit these here because I've really had quite enough of politics for the year but it seems the mainstream media are having an absolute blackout on anything critical of Hillary, to the point of CNN has both coincidentally lost a sitting congressman's satellite feed immediately after mentioning wikileaks and tried to tell their viewers that even reading the wikileaks emails is illegal.

These two videos by Project Veritas Action, apparently with more to come, are the result of a year or so of actual investigative journalism and deserve coverage somewhere though. I don't personally care at all if you like Hillary or not but it's always better to know the truth than to stick your head in the sand, so here they are.

The first part in the series is titled Clinton Campaign and DNC Incite Violence at Trump Rallies. It basically shows precisely what it says it does. Hidden cameras capture Scott Foval of Americans United for Change not so much admitting as bragging that they have operatives in numerous major cities that are actually trained in how best to incite violence at Trump rallies.

The second part of the series is again aptly titled Mass Voter Fraud. In this video Scott Foval is again captured going into minute detail on how not only go commit mass voter fraud but how to get away with it.

Scott Foval and Robert Creamer (also in the videos) are currently unemployed as a result of these videos. Whether Mrs. Clinton should be as well, that's for you to decide.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Thursday October 20 2016, @09:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the mandatory-opt-in dept.

It is illegal today to use DNA testing for employment, but as science advances its understanding of genes that correlate to certain desirable traits -- such as leadership and intelligence -- business may want this information.

People seeking leadership roles in business, or even those in search of funding for a start-up, may volunteer their DNA test results to demonstrate that they have the right aptitude, leadership capabilities and intelligence for the job.

This may sound farfetched, but it's possible based on the direction of the science, according to Gartner analysts David Furlonger and Stephen Smith, who presented their research at the firm's Symposium IT/xpo here. This research is called "maverick" in Gartner parlance, meaning it has a somewhat low probability and is still years out, but its potential is nonetheless worrisome to the authors.

Businesses could also weed out people with diabetes, heart defects, and any other congenital defects that can lead to absenteeism.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Thursday October 20 2016, @07:57AM   Printer-friendly
from the monumental-effort dept.

New dating on the stone buildings of Nan Madol suggests the ancient coral reef capital in the Pacific Ocean was the earliest among the islands to be ruled by a single chief.

The discovery makes Nan Madol a key locale for studying how ancient human societies evolved from simple societies to more complex societies, said archaeologist Mark D. McCoy, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. McCoy led the discovery team.

McCoy deployed uranium series dating to determine that when the tomb was built it was one-of-a-kind, making it the first monumental scaled burial site on the remote islands of the Pacific.

The discovery enables archaeologists to study more precisely how societies transform to more and more complex and hierarchical systems, said McCoy, an expert in landscape archaeology and monumental architecture and ideology in the Pacific Islands.

"Pacific Islanders Invented New Kind of Society." So, abundant fish and fruit, sparkling beaches, crystalline water, mild weather, and half-naked Polynesian women weren't enough?


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Thursday October 20 2016, @06:21AM   Printer-friendly
from the never-travel-without-your-towel dept.

Earlier this year, Netflix launched in pretty much every country -- except China. That hasn't changed 10 months later, and it looks like it won't.

The company on Monday told shareholders that it's ditching efforts to bring its popular streaming service to the People's Republic, the world's most populous nation. Instead, it'll sell its shows, like "Narcos" and "Daredevil", to Chinese media companies.

"The regulatory environment for foreign digital content services in China has become challenging," the report read. "We now plan to license content to existing online service providers in China rather than operate our own service in China in the near term."

They didn't develop the right guanxi .


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Thursday October 20 2016, @04:45AM   Printer-friendly
from the nature'll-anguish-wreck-ignition dept.

Microsoft on Tuesday said that its researchers have "made a major breakthrough in speech recognition."

In a paper [PDF] published a day earlier, Microsoft machine learning researchers describe how they developed an automated system that can recognize recorded speech as well as a professional transcriptionist.

Using the NIST 2000 dataset of recorded calls, Microsoft's software performed slightly (0.4 per cent) better than the error rate the company attributes to professional transcriptionists (5.9 per cent) for the Switchboard portion of the data, in which strangers discuss a specified topic.

There goes your bright future as a court recorder...


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Thursday October 20 2016, @03:08AM   Printer-friendly

German firearms manufacturer Armatix LLC is planning to release its second smart gun in the U.S. next year after sales of its first model -- the .22 caliber iP1 -- were quashed by pressure from some gun owners and gun rights advocates who saw it as a threat to Second Amendment freedoms.

Unlike the iP1, which used RFID technology, the new iP9 9mm semi-automatic pistol will have a fingerprint reader. The iP9 will be available in mid-2017, according to Wolfgang Tweraser, CEO and president of Amratix LLC.

How long before the smart guns go all WOPR?


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Thursday October 20 2016, @01:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the what? dept.

"Could you repeat that?" The reason you may have to say something twice when talking to older family members at Thanksgiving dinner may not be because of their hearing. Researchers at the University of Maryland have determined that something is going on in the brains of typical older adults that causes them to struggle to follow speech amidst background noise, even when their hearing would be considered normal on a clinical assessment.

In an interdisciplinary study published by the Journal of Neurophysiology, researchers Samira Anderson, Jonathan Z. Simon, and Alessandro Presacco found that adults aged 61-73 with normal hearing scored significantly worse on speech understanding in noisy environments than adults aged 18-30 with normal hearing. The researchers are all associated with the UMD's Brain and Behavior Initiative.
...
Why is this the case? "Part of the comprehension problems experienced by older adults in both quiet and noise conditions could be linked to age-related imbalance between excitatory and inhibitory neural processes in the brain," Presacco said. "This imbalance could impair the brain's ability to correctly process auditory stimuli and could be the main cause of the abnormally high cortical response observed in our study."

In short, they think signal processing is to blame, not signal transmission.


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Wednesday October 19 2016, @11:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the for-poorer-nations-too? dept.

Sometimes, progress comes in baby steps, tiny improvements that move a whole series of events forward. The European Union has just approved regulations requiring that an electric car charger be included in every new and renovated home and all apartment buildings starting in 2019. Why is that important? Because charging infrastructure is vital to convincing mainstream buyers to switch to an electric car.

The regulations don't specify what type of charger has to be installed. Presumably, it won't be just a Level 1 piece of equipment, which is little more than an extension cord plugged into the nearest wall socket. On the other hand, it won't be a 150 kW charger like the one Porsche says its upcoming Mission E can use.

There are all kinds of stipulations in building codes like setbacks. Should a mandatory electric car charger be among them?


Original Submission