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lhsi writes:

Mark Rosewater, the head designer for Magic: The Gathering, has written an article where he explains Lenticular Design. Some of the article uses cards from Magic: The Gathering as examples, but the main explanation is mostly generic.

The idea of Lenticular Design is that when designing a game, make some components mean different things to different levels of players so all skill levels can access them. If a component is complex, a newer player might be confused by it (which will put them off playing your game), but highly experienced players may eventually get bored with too many simple parts. Lenticular Design adds hidden complexity into components so newer players don't notice them, but more advanced players can take advantage of this additional level of complexity.

He lists a number of rules when designing (within the context of designing a card game, however the descriptions are general enough that they could apply to a lot of game types).

Rule #1 Some Complexities are Invisible to Inexperienced Players
Rule #2 Cards Have to Have a Surface Value
Rule #3 Experience Is Connected to How Far Ahead a Player Thinks
Rule #4 Novices Tend Not to Think of Causality
Rule #5 Players Will Try to Use the Cards to Match Their Perceived Function
Rule #6 Let the Players Play the Game They Want to Play

jmoschner writes:

The BBC reports that Microsoft has been showcasing a new virtual assistant, named Cortana, as part of an upcoming update for Windows phones. Cortana, tries to be chatty like Siri on Apple's iPhones and iPads, while anticipating information users might want, like Google Now on Android devices. Cortana uses both the Bing and data stored on the user's phone to make personalised recommendations and carry out tasks. And yes, it is named after the character in the Halo video game series.

From the article:

"...when asked to reveal the secret plot of the next game in the Halo series, Cortana objected. 'I'm quite certain that you don't have the proper security clearance for that information,' it retorted."

randmcnatt writes:

Citizens of Deer Trail, Colorado have overwhelmingly (73%) rejected issuing licenses for drone-hunting.

Now, stay with me here for a moment, when I first read the title I thought that it implied using drones for hunting purposes. Now that is certainly 'geekish' but not very sporting. But I was mistaken. The drones would be the target! Some citizens of Deer Trail, Colorado, (55 miles east of Denver), thought it might attract tourists if they could buy a license to take pot shots at any passing government drones. I'm not sure how many government drones there usually are in the skies above Deer Trail, Colorado, but, if this law had been passed, there might have been a few less.

We didn't act like you'd expect Mozilla to act. We didn't move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We're sorry. We must do better.

Brendan Eich has chosen to step down from his role as CEO. He's made this decision for Mozilla and our community.

Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard.

Our organizational culture reflects diversity and inclusiveness. We welcome contributions from everyone regardless of age, culture, ethnicity, gender, gender-identity, language, race, sexual orientation, geographical location and religious views. Mozilla supports equality for all.

We have employees with a wide diversity of views. Our culture of openness extends to encouraging staff and community to share their beliefs and opinions in public. This is meant to distinguish Mozilla from most organizations and hold us to a higher standard. But this time we failed to listen, to engage, and to be guided by our community.

As of this time, there is no named successor or statement on who will be taking over Mozilla's leadership.

khakipuce writes:

There seems to be a growing movement around "cards" for web layout. Here's an article from Intercom and both Twitter and Google Now are developing offerings. A card is a small, often colourful piece of information that can be aggregated with other cards to fill a page, screen or other display. How many cards are shown and how they are laid out depends on on the screen size and resolution.

On the one hand it seems like a nice solution to distributing information to the vast range of display sizes that have emerged for mobile devices but on the other could it be further dumbing down. The cards can have a flip-side that gives more details but it hints at a future where anything that can't be said in a few words and primary colours does not need saying.

So have we seen it all before (HyperCard or Web Portal) or is this a layout approach that is set to dominate and I need to be moving my UI design in this direction?

Pslytely Psycho writes:

After the marketing company Squad, creators of Kerbal Space Program game, hyped the release of the Asteroid Redirect Mission patch in collaboration with NASA, they were bitten by the notorious Space Kraken. A game breaking bug was discovered that pushed the release into "sometime in April," displeasing a large number of their fans who were looking forward to the new content. Squad publicly admitted to the P.R. error and asked for understanding in the matter. Overall their transparency in the issue placated the majority of their user base.

The extremely fast fix (followed hours later by a hotfix for a gamesave bug that cropped up) puts them in the unusual spotlight of 'Company that made a P.R. gaffe and chose honesty instead of spin, and then apparently worked major overtime to correct the problem and subsequent problems.'

Considering how many AAA companies react under similar situations, this utter transparency at a time of high promotion for the indie developer is indeed a welcome sight. The game is still in Alpha development, and does have a long way to go, but is already rich with content and has a large modding community. If you have any interest in physics-based space games, this one is genuinely a step up from anything else, even Orbiter.

KSP's front page is here, and bring your best computer, you'll need it. The game is not optimized yet and tends to lag, especially on older systems due to Unity not yet supporting multithreaded physics or 64 bit (except on Linux). I suggest reading some of the forums if you're on the fence. Asteroids was never this much fun, or as difficult!

[Submitter's Note] Cross submitted to Pipedot

A couple of interesting tidbits came out of Build 2014 yesterday. The conference is being streamed for those who cannot attend in person.

Microsoft Planning on $0 Windows for Some Devices

AndyTheAbsurd writes:

Apparently competition, combined with a desire for Microsoft to invade new market spaces, is applying downward pressure on the price of some forms of Windows licenses. Microsoft announced that Windows would be available at no cost for "Internet of Things" devices as well as for phones and tablets with screens less than 9 inches. Not included: Whether this applies to Windows 8.1 or Windows 8.1 RT, but the inclusion of "phones and tablets" leads me to believe that it will be the RT version.

Start Menu To Return To Windows 8.1

NCommander writes:

After nearly a year and a half since it was removed in Windows 8, the start menu is finally returning. The previews shown at BUILD show that live tiles (similar to those on Windows Phone) will be displayed side-by-side with the more traditional hierarchy of groups. No word on when this will finally be released to users.

dx3bydt3 and jmoschner wrote:

NASA has released a statement indicating that they are "suspending the majority" of "ongoing engagements with the Russian Federation". Cooperation will continue "to maintain safe and continuous operation of the International Space Station." They have taken this action citing violations Ukraine's sovereignty by Russia.

NASA apparently is focusing on regaining human spaceflight capabilities and ending dependence on Russia. The statement goes on to say: "The choice here is between fully funding the plan to bring space launches back to America or continuing to send millions of dollars to the Russians." According to time.com the "information initially came to light from a leaked memo".

This comes after a recent statement by Charles Bolden a NASA administrator indicating that relations with Russia were fine. There are currently Two Americans, Three Russians, and the Japanese Commander aboard the ISS Expedition 39.

cosurgi writes:

I am getting fed up with all those app stores that just sell apps, but never give the source code. I used to fix in the source code the things that annoyed me. In the case of app stores, I just get generic (and very kind) replies from authors. Apart from those replies they never improve their apps, just collect more money from people who purchased (and can't get money back if not satisfied).

I have decided to install Debian on a tablet but I need some really nice hardware first that I can use for that. I would prefer a bigger screen, but in fact if you know any tablet that will run nicely with Debian or Ubuntu please tell!

bucc5062 writes:

An article in Popular Mechanics asks the question "How Many People Does It Take to Colonize Another Star System?". The study explored the issue of genetic diversity, as well as issues relating to the dangers of space travel:

Genetic diversity keeps groups healthy, and larger populations tend to have more diversity. ... Over many generations, inbreeding leads to the loss of more than 80 percent of the original diversity found within the hypothetical gene.

...The second threat to interstellar voyagers is catastrophes-plague, war, collisions, and mechanical failures-that could wipe out large portions of the population at any time.

In the end, bigger is better, though splitting even a large group up may have the greatest chance of success.

Luckily, tens of thousands of pioneers wouldn't have to be housed all in one starship. Spreading people out among multiple ships also spreads out the risk. Modular ships could dock together for trade and social gatherings, but travel separately so that disaster for one wouldn't spell disaster for all, says Smith.

The study did not go into any aspect of costs to build ships to transport thousands of people to the stars, nor the geo-political issues which could have huge impacts upon success even before leaving orbit. From the article, a teasing line gave the idea that even the average human could have a shot at traveling to the stars.

Five hundred people picked at random today from the human population would not probably represent all of human genetic diversity . . . If you're going to seed a planet for its entire future, you want to have as much genetic diversity as possible, because that diversity is your insurance policy for adaptation to new conditions.

jmoschner writes:

Scientific American is running a piece on how a new paper just published in Science has taken the dataset on global migrant flows by the United Nations and generated a new view of the data in an interactive chart. It is interesting to take a look and see how many people are moving from one region to another and how interconnected people are. The largest moves appear to be between regions in Sub-Saharan Africa(probably due to war and refugees), from South Asia to Western Asia, and Central America to North America.

Papas Fritas writes:

The LA Times reports on the passing of Jeremiah Denton, the US Navy pilot held by the Viet Cong, who let the world know in a TV interview that POWs were being tortured by blinking out the word "torture" in Morse code. From 1965 to 1973, Denton was held at the "Hanoi Hilton" and several other infamous Vietnamese prisons and was held in isolation for lengthy periods totaling about four years. At points, he was in a pitch-black cell, a cramped hole crawling with rats and roaches. His beatings opened wounds that festered in pools of sewage. Frustrated that Denton would not confess to alleged American war crimes or reveal even basic details of US military operations, jailers subjected him to horrific abuse.

Taking command of fellow POWs he usually could not see, Denton fashioned a secret prison communication system using the sound of coughs, hacks, scratching, spitting and throat-clearing keyed to letters of the alphabet. "When you think you've reached the limit of your endurance, give them harmless and inaccurate information that you can remember, and repeat it if tortured again," he told his men. "We will die before we give them classified military information." Thinking they'd broken him, Denton's captors allowed a Japanese TV reporter to interview him on May 2, 1966. "The blinding floodlights made me blink and suddenly I realized that they were playing right into my hands," he wrote. "I looked directly into the camera and blinked my eyes once, slowly, then three more times, slowly. A dash and three more dashes. A quick blink, slow blink, quick blink." While his impromptu blinks silently told the world that prisoners were being tortured, he was unabashed in the interview, which was later broadcast around the world, in his denial of American wrongdoing. "Whatever the position of my government is, I believe in it yes, sir," said Denton. "I'm a member of that government and it is my job to support it, and I will as long as I live."

AndyTheAbsurd writes:

Intel has released a rendering of the new USB Type C connector, which is reversible so no more jokes about "USB cables exist in the fourth dimension". The new connector is smaller than the Type A connector that we're all used to seeing on our desktops and laptops and looks to be slightly larger than the micro-B connector found on most smart phones and tablets.

From the article:

Unlike today's USB connectors, which requires a user to correctly orient the plug, USB 3.1 Type-C cable is reversible. Initially, the USB 3.1 Type-C specification will support up to 10Gbps data transfer speeds.

The Type-C connector and cable will support scalable power charging in order to grow with future USB bus performance requirements. The first iteration will have a 5 volt power transfer rate, but that is expected to deliver up to 100 watts for higher power applications.

taylorvich writes:

A real-life mystery is brewing at Western University after a professor found a cryptogram tucked inside the pages of a library book; the first of many strange notes ultimately discovered at the London, Ont., campus.

At least 15 messages, all written in "Wingdings-esque" font and found inside library books, have been uncovered since the original note was found.

lhsi writes:

MEPs have voted to uphold Net Neutrality proposals.

http://www.greens-efa.eu/electronic-communications -12163.html
https://pirateparty.org.uk/press/euope-takes-leap- toward-net-neutrality

After the vote, Greens/EFA e-communications spokesperson Amelia Andersdotter stated:

Thankfully, a majority of MEPs has seen sense today and voted to uphold the principle of net neutrality in the EU. The proposals by the Commission, which would essentially have given large providers the all-clear for discriminating against users as they see fit, have been revised. Today's vote would explicitly provide for net neutrality and will hopefully ensure a level playing field for all online services and users, providing for a more open internet environment in which innovation is encouraged.

We now hope EU governments in Council will endorse this approach. Information online should not be subject to discrimination, blocking or interference by internet access providers. This is what net neutrality implies: guaranteeing an open and free internet, where everyone can have access and contribute to the same online information. Clearly, today's vote is important but we will have to remain vigilant to ensure any future threats to net neutrality can be headed off.

Adrian Harvey writes:

Vodafone is to import its African micro-banking technology, initially for use in Romania.

It's an interesting twist on mobile phone use, that transfer of pre-pay credit has become one of the main banking platforms in Kenya. The service was apparently started as a Corporate Social Responsibility programme by Vodafone, but has grown out of all proportion and is essentially the people's bank. Good to see mobile phone technology being essentially hacked to provide assistance to the disadvantaged.

Papas Fritas writes:

Michele Chabin reports that the possible US decision to free spy Jonathan Pollard, an American Jew convicted in 1987 of spying for Israel, has politicians, settlers and activists on all sides in an uproar over whether the price is too high. Israel's news media reported that the Obama administration is weighing the release of Pollard in return for Israeli concessions to the Palestinians on settlement building and freeing of Palestinian prisoners. Pollard was arrested on November 21, 1985 after the conclusion of an investigation into suspicion he was spying for Israel. He was convicted in 1987 to a life sentence for one count of espionage.

Pollard is the only person in US history to receive a life sentence for spying for an ally and the only American citizen convicted of such a crime to be sentenced to more than 10 years in prison. Pollard is considered by many in Israel and the American Jewish community to be a national hero. Supporters of his release argue that his sentencing was disproportionately harsh and that he was acting out of loyalty to Israel, not mal-intent against the U.S., and that the documents he handed over to Israel were about Arab countries and the Soviet Union, not US intelligence methods. US officials claim the damage done by Pollard's spying is far worse than people realize. In an interview with Foreign Policy, retired Adm. Thomas Brooks, the former director of naval intelligence, said Pollard's actions have been "exceeded only by Edward Snowden," the NSA whistleblower. The last time US officials considered releasing Pollard during the Clinton administration, CIA Director George Tenet told Clinton he would resign if Pollard were released.

jmoschner writes:

The BBC has a piece on a new advance in growing muscles in the lab. Duke University researchers have grown living muscle in the lab that looks and works like the real muscle and also heals by itself. So far trials have tested this out in mice. They hope that eventually the lab-grown muscle could be used to repair damage in humans.

From the article:

The Duke University researchers say their success was down to creating the perfect environment for muscle growth - well-developed contractile muscle fibres and a pool of immature stem cells, known as satellite cells, that could develop into muscle tissue.

In tests, the lab-grown muscle was found to be strong and good at contracting and was able to repair itself using the satellite cells when the researchers damaged it with a toxin.

randmcnatt and bob_super wrote:

Time magazine, among others are reporting the most recent Supreme Court ruling.

In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court strikes down overall limits on campaign contributions given by individual donors to candidates, political parties and political action committees, paving the way for donors to plough millions into federal campaigns.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that overall limits "intrude without justification", restricting free speech protected by the first amendment.

moondrake writes:

A well-known problem in computing is the existence of data in outdated or inaccessible formats. A common reason for this inability to access data is the use of proprietary file-formats that result in vendor lock-in. At the Libregraphics conference in Germany, project leader Fridrich Strba announced the Document Liberation Project sponsored by The Document Foundation, which aims to attract open source developers to help provide tools for the conversion of files to the ODF ISO standard document format.

The project goals are:

• to try to understand the structure and details of proprietary, undocumented file-formats
• to use the understanding of the file-formats to implement libraries that are able to parse such documents and extract as much information as possible from them;
• to use our existing framework to encode this data in a truly free and open standard file-format: the Open Document Format.

The project is associated with LibreOffice and is already helping compatibility with old formats in a number of FOSS projects.

tathra writes:

By now, most of us have heard of calorie-restrictive diets increasing the lifespan of mice. Nature now reports that monkeys also live longer on reduced calorie diets, somewhat contrary to the results of the 2012 study:

Monkeys on a reduced-calorie diet live longer than those that can eat as much as they want, a new study suggests. The findings add to a thread of studies on how a restricted diet prolongs life in a range of species, but they complicate the debate over whether the research applies to animals closely related to humans.

In the study, which has been running since 1989 at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center in Madison, 38 rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) that were allowed to eat whatever they wanted were nearly twice as likely to die at any age than were 38 monkeys whose calorie intakes were cut by 30%. The same study reported in 2009 that calorie-restricted monkeys were less likely to die of age-related causes than control monkeys, but had similar overall mortality rates at all ages.

"We set out to test the hypothesis: would calorie restriction delay ageing? And I think we've shown that it does," says Rozalyn Anderson, a biochemist at the University of Wisconsin who led the study, which is published today in Nature Communications. She said it is not surprising that the 2009 paper did not find that the calorie-restricted monkeys lived longer, because at the time too few monkeys had died to prove the point.

It is still unknown exactly how caloric restriction affects lifespan, and whether the same effects would be seen in humans, but with the idea out in the public mind, some people are using themselves as test subjects with the hopes of living longer.

Angry Jesus writes:

Ezra Klein of Vox.com interviews Susan Crawford about treating the internet as a utility. Crawford is the author of Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry & Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age. Former Special Assistant to president Obama on Science, Technology and Innovation Policy, she may well be the Telecomm Lobby's enemy #1.

From the interview:

We need a public option for internet access because internet access is just like electricity or a road grid. This is something that the private market doesn't provide left to its own devices. What they'll do is systematically provide extraordinarily expensive services for the richest people in America, leave out a huge percentage of the population and, in general, try to make their own profits at the expense of social good.

When it comes to fiber penetration - that's the world class kind of network we should have - we're behind Sweden, Estonia, Korea, Hong Kong, Japan. A whole host of other developed countries. We should be looking the rest of the world in the rearview mirror. Instead, for more than 77% of Americans, their only choice for a high capacity connection is their local cable monopoly. So just as we have a postal service that's a public option for communications in the form of mail, we also need public options in every city for very high-capacity, very high-speed fiber internet access. That way we'll make sure and we can compete with every other nation in the 21st century.

What happens is that we deregulated this entire sector about 10 years ago and the cable guys already had exclusive franchises across across the country. They were able to very inexpensively upgrade those to pretty high-speed internet access connections. Meanwhile the telephone companies have totally withdrawn. They have copper line in the ground and it's expensive for them to build and replace it with fiber. Because of both deregulation and sweeping consolidation in the cable industry we've ended up on this plateau where for about 80% of Americans their only choice for a high-capacity internet access connection is their local cable monopoly.

In a sense I'm trying to have it both ways. This is by nature a monopoly. It really makes sense to have one wire going to your house. The problem is we've gotten stuck with the wrong wire. We've got a cable wire and it should be fiber and it should be then shared by lots of competitors. That's what drives prices down. If you hand the one company the ability to control that market they'll just reap their rewards and price discriminate and make lots of profits.

lhsi writes:

The Guardian is covering a story that the NSA conducted warrantless searches of emails and telephone calls of US citizens.

US intelligence chiefs have confirmed that the National Security Agency has used a "back door" in surveillance law to perform warrantless searches on Americans' communications.

The NSA's collection programs are ostensibly targeted at foreigners, but in August the Guardian revealed a secret rule change allowing NSA analysts to search for Americans' details within the databases. Now, in a letter to Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the intelligence committee, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has confirmed for the first time the use of this legal authority to search for data related to "US persons."

lhsi writes:

A study into the development of offspring from a parent with psychoses examines how these children understand the mental state of others and casual interactions of inanimate objects. Children of mothers with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder differed from each other, with folk psychology not being impaired in children of mothers with bipolar disorder, and being significantly impaired in children of mothers with schizophrenia. "Compared with healthy controls (n = 29), the children of mothers with schizophrenia displayed significantly impaired performances on the Eyes Test but not on the folk physics test when corrected for IQ. The children of mothers with bipolar disorder did not differ from the controls."

We found that folk psychology ("theory of mind") was significantly impaired in children of mothers with schizophrenia but not in children of mothers with bipolar disorder. This is consistent with the view that schizophrenia vulnerability is associated with more severe early impairments than vulnerability to bipolar disorder (Murray et al., 2004). Although the children of mothers with schizophrenia also achieved lower scores on the folk physics test as compared with the controls, this difference did not reach the level of statistical significance when it was corrected for IQ.

lhsi writes:

Research into language development between ages 2 and 3 looked at both prediction and risk factors between the ages. As with previous studies, the ability to predict whether a particular toddler will have problems was limited, but the authors noted some risk factors (falling below the 10th percentile of language skills, or the declining trajectory) and protective factors (rising above the 10th percentile, or the resiliant trajectory) "Exposure to alcohol during pregnancy, earlier birth term, lower level of parental education and lower frequency of maternal stimulation were associated with the declining trajectory. Breastfeeding was associated with the resilient trajectory".

Interestingly, some of the biological factors appeared to have more influence later on as opposed to earlier and closer to when the biological factor took place.

In our study, the effects of alcohol consumption during pregnancy, birth term and breastfeeding seem to be partly delayed. These results contrast with the intuitive idea that such biological factors show mostly early influences (i.e., up to 2 years), and that social factors rather have later influences. In fact it is perfectly possible that some biological factors may show increasing effects when language abilities become more elaborated (i.e., between 2 and 3 years).

lhsi writes:

The BBC is reporting that the email addresses of LinkedIn users can be exposed via a web browser add on. A LinkedIn spokesman told the BBC "We are doing everything we can to shut Sell Hack down. On 31 March LinkedIn's legal team delivered Sell Hack a cease-and-desist letter as a result of several violations"

NCommander adds: Sell Hack is a plugin for Chrome that allows you to retrieve emails from LinkedIn itself. The article goes on to say that Sell Hack is complying with the cease and desist, but actual details remain somewhat light. If anyone is familiar with the inner works of this plugin, I'll amend this article to include the details.

This isn't LinkedIn's first battle with third party services