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Angry Jesus writes:

"The EFF has put together a quick tutorial on using FedBizOpps to see what sorts of surveillance technologies US federal agencies have been buying.

Examples of documents that anyone can retrieve from the database include the Director of National Intelligence's funding of a program to dramatically increase facial recognition algorithms, the FBI purchasing fiber-optic tapping systems and a contract for drone programs in Burundi, Kenya and Uganda."

Jaruzel writes:

"I have an on-premises Microsoft Exchange system that hosts my families personal email, which has gone through several upgrades over the years. However Exchange 2013 is now too bloated for my needs, and I find myself wanting to migrate my email services to a cloud provider.

The kicker is that although I only have about 5 live accounts, I have over 200 email aliases attached to those accounts. Most of the cloud providers out there do not support this configuration, or charge per 'address' which makes the cost prohibitive for personal email.

Do any SoylentNewsers know of, or can advise the best way to migrate this lot out of my garage without losing all my aliases or having to pay through the nose?"

First time submitter hoopsman notes that Crytek are matching the Unreal Engine 4 recent announcement, and writes:

"From the article:

Crytek counters Unreal Engine announcement with royalty-free "engine-as-a-service" available for under $10 a month.

Both programs are targeting small developers, but Crytek is making cost-effectiveness a main part of its pitch. The CryEngine program will cost developers $9.90 a month (or 9.90 Euros in Europe), with no royalties due to Crytek. On the other hand, Epic Games' program costs $19 a month, with developers having to pay the company 5 percent of gross revenues from all projects that use any part of the Unreal Engine code.

Crytek's program also supports "all of today's leading platforms," while the Unreal Engine subscription currently does not extend to consoles. Because part of that program involves giving developers access to the full C++ source code, Epic said that various non-disclosure agreements are keeping it from adding the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions of Unreal Engine 4 to the program (for the moment, at least)."

frojack writes:

"Stone throwing might not remain the anonymous act of aggression in the future that has been in the past.

It is commonly thought that you can't get a finger print from a stone. However, the Israel Police are using new (and old) technology to lift prints from stones, up to 80% of the time from some stones if finger-printed with in an hour. The type of stone is important, but even bricks can yield prints.

Apart from eyewitness testimony, it's usually impossible to figure out who threw a stone after the fact. But that could change if police investigators can lift fingerprints from the evidence. Until now, most forensic teams haven't bothered fingerprinting stones used in a crime, for the same reason that they usually don't fingerprint clothing. Fingerprints are left behind by oils and sweat carried on the hands. Prints don't form neatly on rough surfaces, and porous surfaces tend to absorb and spread fats and oils.

The new techniques involve combinations of old methods, dusting, fuming with heated cyanoacrylate, and ninhydrin etc.

The key is speed. Testing the rock within an hour can yield results 80% of the time, while waiting 24 hours can drop your chances as low as 10%. The practicality of testing for fingerprints within 60 minutes is not considered. Also choosing which rocks to bother with makes a difference. The more porous stones often yield surprisingly good results. Researchers got visible fingerprints from the limestone, chert, granite and brick.

Link to Paywalled Study is here."

Hell_Rok writes:

"Neovim is an effort to aggressively re-factor the Vim source code and improve on:

• It will provide first class support for embedding.
• It lets you extend the editor in any programming language.
• It supports more powerful GUIs.
• Vim plugins will work with it.

Hosted on Bounty Source it has reached $25,500 of it's goal of $10,000, although there are still 3 days to reach further stretch goals! You can view the projects current progress and even pitch in over at GitHub. As someone who has started using Vim full-time over the last 6 months I feel that this is a very good project for the longevity of Vim."

calmond writes:

"Researchers from the University of Michigan have created a super-thin light detector that can pick up the entire infrared spectrum in addition to visible and ultraviolet light. The heat vision technology is made of graphene, which is considered to be the world's strongest material, and is small enough to fit on a contact lens.

Its developers say the technology could one day give people super-human vision and is particularly relevant for use by the military. Other, non-military uses, such as checking power distribution cables or search-and-rescue tasks are also possible.

A news release from the University team is to be found here, while a technical abstract is here. Unfortunately, the full technical paper is only viewable by payment or membership.

dalias writes

"The musl libc project has released version 1.0, the result of three years of development and testing. Musl is a lightweight, fast, simple, MIT-licensed, correctness-oriented alternative to the GNU C library (glibc), uClibc, or Android's Bionic. At this point musl provides all mandatory C99 and POSIX interfaces (plus a lot of widely-used extensions), and well over 5000 packages are known to build successfully against musl.

Several options are available for trying musl. Compiler toolchains are available from the musl-cross project, and several new musl-based Linux distributions are already available (Sabotage and Snowflake, among others). Some well-established distributions including OpenWRT and Gentoo are in the process of adding musl-based variants, and others (Aboriginal, Alpine, Bedrock, Dragora) are adopting musl as their default libc."

Rashek writes:

"Alex Kibkalo, an ex-Microsoft employee was just arrested for stealing and leaking company secrets.

Having spent seven years working for Microsoft, Kibkalo is alleged to have leaked Windows 8 code to a French technology blogger in mid-2012, prior to the software's release. Kibkalo was apparently angry over a poor performance review."

chromas writes:

From the release page:

New features include initial support for volumetrics in Cycles, and faster rendering of hair and textures. The motion tracker now supports weighted tracks and has improved planar tracking. For mesh modeling there are new Laplacian deform and wireframe modifiers, along with more control in the bevel tool. The game engine now supports object levels of detail.

The first results from the new user interface project are also in this release, with dozens of changes to make the interface more consistent and powerful. This is also the first release of the multithreaded dependency graph, which makes modifier and constraint evaluation faster in scenes with multiple objects.

lhsi writes:

"The British Medical Journal has a new research paper that notes an increase in citations using Wikipedia as the source in peer reviewed health science literature, even when other permanent, evidence based sources are available. Over half of the times Wikipedia was cited was for definitions or descriptions. The authors did note that while Wikipedia was sometimes appropriate to use as a citation, in most cases a better source (one that can't be edited by anyone) would be more appropriate.

The authors conclude:

An increasing number of peer reviewed academic papers in the health sciences are citing Wikipedia. The apparent increase in the frequency of citations of Wikipedia may suggest a lack of understanding by authors, reviewers, or editors of the mechanisms by which Wikipedia evolves. Although only a very small proportion of citations are of Wikipedia pages, the possibility for the spread of misinformation from an unverified source is at odds with the principles of robust scientific methodology and could potentially affect care of patients. We caution against this trend and suggest that editors and reviewers insist on citing primary sources of information where possible."

AnonTechie writes:

"Raise Your Own Edible Insects With This Free Kit:

Daniel Imrie-Situnayake says that cockroaches taste pretty good. He also eats crickets and mealworms, and his favorite insect dish is something called silkworm patties. You can think of them as bug burgers.

Imrie-Situnayake is part of a new and growing community of people who treat insects as food. The practice is known as entomophagy, and though this sort of thing has long been common in other parts of the world, it's only beginning to find solid footing in the U.S. and Europe. The San Francisco chef Phil Ross and the London eatery Ento have made bugs the hip new thing among the foodie crowd, and people like Imrie-Situnayake want to push the practice forward even further. As the co-founder of an entomophagy startup called Tiny Farms, he sees insect cuisine not just as a lifestyle choice, but as a way of averting the world's looming food problems."

jas writes:

"At the beginning of 2014, the terms of the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement went into effect, bringing with it a flurry of unintended consequences. With an increased focus on keeping WHOIS records up to date, registrars are now being held to higher standards in verifying the information supplied by registrants. The proscribed way in which verification occurs is ham-fisted, and many registrars in the European Union (EU) have yet to sign the agreement amid concerns that the information collecting requirements are in violation of EU privacy laws. The verification method is not greatly secure, and will inevitably result in new email phishing campaigns."

wantkitteh writes:

"During his budget speech today, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced £45m in funding for the creation of a new institute to research the collection, analysis and application of Big Data and to be named after Alan Turing, the World War II codebreaker who operated at Bletchley Park and is often credited as providing the greatest single-handed contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany. Turing committed suicide in 1954 aged 41 following his conviction for Homosexuality, punishable by the cancellation of his official security clearance and a chemical castration. Although Prime Minister Gordon Brown apologized in 2009 for the Government's actions at the time, it is only last year that Turing received a royal pardon from Queen Elizabeth II.

The government said that big data 'can allow businesses to enhance their manufacturing processes, target their marketing better, and provide more efficient services'."

Papas Fritas writes:

"Megann Gannon reports that nearly 200 scientists are attending a conference, called "The Search for Life Beyond the Solar System: Exoplanets, Biosignature & Instruments," co-hosted by the Vatican Observatory with the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory.

The goal of the conference is to bring together the interdisciplinary community required to address this multi-faceted challenge: experts on exoplanet observations, early and extreme life on Earth, atmospheric biosignatures, and planet-finding telescopes. 'Finding life beyond Earth is one of the great challenges of modern science and we are excited to have the world leaders in this field together in Tucson,' says Daniel Apai. 'But reaching such an ambitious goal takes planning and time. The goal of this meeting is to discuss how we can find life among the stars within the next two decades.'

According to the organizers, the conference will cover the technical challenges of finding and imaging exoplanets and identifying biosignatures in the atmospheres of far-flung worlds. Other presentations will discuss the study of life forms that live in extreme environments on Earth, which could be apt analogs for life on other planets. Scientists will give more than 160 research presentations (PDF) during this week's conference and NASA's Astrobiology Institute will broadcast a live feed of the sessions. Catholic leaders say that alien life can be aligned with the Bible's teachings. 'Just as a multiplicity of creatures exists on Earth, so there could be other beings, also intelligent, created by God,' says Father Jose Funes"

NCommander writes:

"ArsTechnica reports that Unreal Engine 4 is being re-released under a subscription basis which provides full access to the source code, and a flat 5 percent gross royalty for use. Comments from EPIC show that Unreal Engine 4 is being ported to Linux and SteamOS as well as a variety of other platforms, and that you can cancel the subscription at any time. For educational usage, as well as free (as in beer) games, no costs beyond the subscription fee are incurred."

Ed Note: Updated title to be less misleading.