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Vanderhoth writes:

"According to a story from the Washington Post, Microsoft is using gamer profiles to create targeted political ads. The article talks mostly about XBox Live, but other services like Skype and MSN will be included. The article also presents some interesting, to non-gamer, stats about the typical gamer that Microsoft was promoting at the CPAC. As an example, 40% of it's 25 million subscribers are actually married! who'd of thunk it?"

Marneus68 writes

"Digital DRM-free game distributor GOG.com is finally jumping on the Linux bandwagon.

Following the steps of Desura and Steam, GOG.com plans to offer Linux compatible games starting this year. Along with games already available for Linux, GOG.com will also be selling 'a variety of classics that are, for the first time, officially supported and maintained [by them].'

Most of the DOS titles already provided by GOG.com will probably pose no major technical challenge since GOG has been using DosBox on Windows and Mac OS X since the very beginning however, all the exclusive ports will probably be more difficult to provide."

elias writes:

"A very public and sometimes acrimonious dispute in the Debian ecosystem about upstart versus systemd has been settled in favour of systemd. Some go as far as to brand it a new era after the Linux civil war [Beware popups].

We also had an asksoylentnews question on what the fuzz was all about. But what can upstart contribute to systemd now the war is over, or will it simply be a technology that we remember fondly, but do not see any more in a few years time?"

Anonymous Coward writes:

"2048, the most addictive game since Tetris, was recently released. Its origin has been traced back as far as Threes!, which inspired 1024, which inspired 2048. Finally, an improved version, with animations, was written by Gabriele Cirulli, 19 year old from Italy.

The game has enthralled many, and led directly to the waste of countless potentially productive hours. A variety of permutations have since surfaced: 2048 in 3D, 2048 in 4D, and 9007199254740992.

Some ask why it's so addictive. I say, it attacks our pleasure centers in ways that Wesley Crusher already warned us about."

Anonymous Coward writes:

"BBC News reports that an Argentinian program that offered a Netflix-like interface for accessing torrents has resurfaced after its main website closed over the weekend.

Their site now hosts a goodbye letter. In it, they said that the software is legal, and that they're shutting down the service "Not because we ran out of energy, commitment, focus or allies. But because we need to move on with our lives".

All is not lost, though, as the project has been picked up by at least one torrent site, and the software is available on github. Yarr, 'tis a fine day to be a pirate!"

mrbluze writes:

"The eye keeps getting bigger. The Guardian Reports on the U.K. Ministry of Defence's plans to weaponize social media:

With the advent of sophisticated data-processing capabilities (including big data), the big number-crunchers can detect, model and counter all manner of online activities just by detecting the behavioural patterns they see in the data and adjusting their tactics accordingly.

'Cyberwarfare of the future may be less about hacking electrical power grids and more about hacking minds by shaping the environment in which political debate takes place,' he (Dr. Tim Stevens, Kings College London) added. The research into the programmes, which are designed to emulate human conversation and are familiar as 'virtual assistants' on retailers' websites, envisages a future in which 'an influence bot could be deployed in both covert and overt ways - on the web, in IM/chatrooms/forums or in virtual worlds.'

The proposed uses for this research are to keep tabs on the activities of soldiers, as an example, but the possibility of manipulating the public is also at the forefront."

Janek Kozicki writes:

"Ever wanted to precisely control the rotational speed of a single molecule? Now these guys can:

Quoting abstract:

Chemical reactions taking place in outer space can now be more easily studied on Earth. Scientists discovered an efficient and versatile way of braking the rotation of molecular ions. The spinning speed of these ions is related to a rotational temperature. Using an extremely tenuous, cooled gas, the researchers have lowered this temperature to about -265 degrees Celsius. From this record-low value, the researchers could vary the temperature up to -210 degrees Celsius in a controlled manner.

Exact control of the rotation of molecules is not only of importance for studying astrochemical processes, but could also be exploited to shed more light on the quantum mechanical aspects of photosynthesis or to use molecular ions for quantum information technology.

The original article from the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, in English, is here."

ed.goforth writes:

"Gears of war: When mechanical analog computers ruled the waves over at Ars is a quick recap of the history of naval targeting & fire control systems and the transition from analog to digital. In short, you'll never believe just how good those old designs were, and how much work it's taken to make GPS-based guidance be as accurate."

mrbluze writes:

"Rachel Nuwer from the Smithsonian Mag gives a good summary around a paper entitled "Highly reduced mass loss rates and increased litter layer in radioactively contaminated areas" (Oecologia, March 2014):

In the areas with no radiation, 70 to 90 percent of the leaves were gone after a year. But in places where more radiation was present, the leaves retained around 60 percent of their original weight.

... the Chernobyl area is at risk of fire, and 27 years' worth of leaf litter, (researcher) Mousseau and his colleagues think, would likely make a good fuel source for such a forest fire. This poses a more worrying problem than just environmental destruction: Fires can potentially redistribute radioactive contaminants to places outside of the exclusion zone, Mousseau says. 'There is growing concern that there could be a catastrophic fire in the coming years.'

A forest fire burning radioactive plant debris could be catastrophic. The Fukushima disaster is likely to have the same problems locally, but it poses additional risks because radioactive water continues to flow into the sea at an alarming rate, which will likely affect oceanic bacterial levels in a similar way."

GungnirSniper writes:

"CGI Group, the Montreal-based IT consulting company behind the botched rollout of the Federal Healthcare.gov site, has been removed from the Massachusetts Health Connector project. This comes about two months after being removed from Healthcare.gov, and a few weeks after CGI admitted the MA site 'may not be fully functioning by the end of June, and that one option under consideration is to scrap the multi-million-dollar site and start over.'

Like Oregon's similar troubles, Massachusetts uses paper submissions as a workaround to meet Federal sign-up requirements. 'The paper backlog fell to 21,000 pending applications, from 54,000 two weeks ago.'

If you are in the US, have you used Healthcare.gov or a State equivalent? If you are not in the US, do you use similar online systems in your nation?"

Angry Jesus writes:

"The Telegraph has a recent story that is more science fiction than fact about the potential for drugs that slow down human perception of time to enable prison sentences that feel longer than the normal human lifespan. Like all good science fiction, it isn't so much about the technology as it is about the questions it provokes. Like which would be more humane forcing someone to waste the rest of their natural lifespan locked away or only making them feel as if that is what has happened to them?"

janrinok writes:

"Research carried out the the University of New South Wales (Australia) reveals that consuming a diet low in nutrients might, under certain circumstances, actually lead to a longer life."

The article continues:

Scientists have known for decades that severely restricted food intake reduces the incidence of diseases of old age, such as cancer, and increases lifespan.

'This effect has been demonstrated in laboratories around the world, in species ranging from yeast to flies to mice. There is also some evidence that it occurs in primates,' says lead author, Dr Margo Adler, an evolutionary biologist at UNSW Australia.

The most widely accepted theory is that this effect evolved to improve survival during times of famine. 'But we think that lifespan extension from dietary restriction is more likely to be a laboratory artifact,' says Dr Adler. Lifespan extension is unlikely to occur in the wild, because dietary restriction compromises the immune system's ability to fight off disease and reduces the muscle strength necessary to flee a predator.

janrinok writes:

"Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey and Reading University have demonstrated that moss can come back to life and continue to grow after being frozen for 1,500 years. This is the first study to show long-term survival in plants; hitherto, only bacteria have show similar timescales."

From the article:

Co-author Professor Peter Convey from the British Antarctic Survey explained 'What mosses do in the ecosystem is far more important than we would generally realise when we look at a moss on a wall here for instance. Understanding what controls their growth and distribution, particularly in a fast-changing part of the world such as the Antarctic Peninsula region, is therefore of much wider significance.'

The team took cores of moss from deep in a frozen moss bank in the Antarctic. This moss would already have been at least decades old when it was first frozen. They sliced the frozen moss cores very carefully, keeping them free from contamination, and placed them in an incubator at a normal growth temperature and light level. After only a few weeks, the moss began to grow. Using carbon dating, the team identified the moss to be at least 1,530 years of age, and possibly even older, at the depth where the new growth was seen. Regeneration also occurred in a liverwort embedded in organic material at the base of the core.

AnonTechie points us to a Wired article, "How Google Can Repel the Attack of the NSA Quantum Computer."

From the article:

Edward Snowden, the ex-government contractor who exposed the NSA's efforts to spy on the web's most popular services, offers a simple answer to this sweeping online surveillance campaign. The way to combat NSA eavesdropping, he says, is to encrypt data as it moves across the wire. Properly implemented, he explained, today's encryption techniques work: The NSA has no way of cracking them. The onus is on the tech world to actually use them. 'You guys who are in the room now are all the firefighters,' he said. 'And we need you to help fix this.' The good news is that the giants of the net - including Google and Microsoft - are already working to encrypt data, not only as it moves across the public internet but as it travels through private lines that run between the massive data centers that underpin their many web services.

sl4shd0rk writes:

"Bill Gates says everyone needs to prepare to be out of work in 20 years due to Robots/software taking over most jobs. In preparation for this, Gates recommends people 'should basically get on their knees and beg businesses to keep employing humans' and reduce operating overhead for businesses by 'eliminating payroll and corporate income taxes while also not raising the minimum wage'. Bill Gates, you may recall, is the former CEO of Microsoft whose business acumen has brought the technology sector such things as Metro, Windows Phone and Xbox One.

BusinessInsider took a similar theme earlier this year."