New submitter DangerOnTheRanger writes "Torque3D, the game engine behind games such as Blockland and Tribes 2, has gone open-source. The engine itself — in addition to four game templates — are all included in a Git repository hosted on GitHub. Documentation is available in a separate repository. Quite the exciting time in the world of game development!"
New submitter kiriath writes "Walmart has followed Target in ceasing to sell the Amazon Kindle product line. This is not terribly surprising, since Amazon and Walmart are major competitors. From the article: 'The world's largest retailer, which has been trying to catch up to Amazon in online sales, said the decision was consistent with its overall merchandising strategy. ... Now, with two large chains no longer selling Kindle, speculation has grown that the dominant online retailer could open its stores where shoppers could try out and buy Kindles. Amazon "is a little bit of a Trojan horse" when the Kindle is sold in other stores, said Sucharita Mulpuru, retail analyst at Forrester Research. "They should have made this decision to not carry the Kindle a long time ago."'"
New submitter who_stole_my_kidneys writes "Evidence suggests the Iranian government is behind cyberattacks this week that have targeted the websites of JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America. The attacks are described by one source, a former U.S. official, as being 'significant and ongoing,' and looking to cause 'functional and significant damage.' Another source suggested the attacks were in response to U.S. sanctions on Iranian banks."
An anonymous reader writes "Early humans were able to move from Africa after a single genetic mutation allowed them to become vegetarians, scientists claim. The switch, which allowed humans to process vegetables, meant that humans were able to move away from water sources and spread across the continent. A team of geneticists compared DNA sequences from a variety of people around the world to see how different populations relate to one another and when they have gone their separate ways. The scientists found that a key genetic variant gave humans the ability to convert fats from plants into essential nutrients for the brain."
MassDosage writes "I've always found Chemistry interesting, particularly in high school when I had the good fortune of having a Chemistry teacher who was not only really good looking, but a great teacher too. I studied it for a year at University and then moved on and haven't really given the periodic table and its elements much thought since. This changed when the Wonderful Life with the Elements was delivered to me two weeks ago. It's one of those books that aims to make science fun and, unlike many other attempts which turn out to be pretty lame, this actually succeeds in presenting the periodic table in a fresh, original and interesting manner." Read on for the rest of Mass Dosage's review.
SquarePixel writes "Facebook has disabled face recognition features on its site for all new European users. The move follows privacy recommendations made by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner. Tag Suggest information has been turned off for new users, and Facebook plans to delete the information for existing EU users by October 15th. 'The DPC says today’s report (PDF) is the result of evaluations it made through the first half of 2012 and on-site at Facebook’s HQ in Dublin over the course of two days in May and four in July. The DPC says FB has made just about all of the improvements it requested in five key areas: better transparency for the user in how their data is handled; user control over settings; more clarity on the retention periods for the deletion of personal data, and users getting more control over deleting things; an improvement in how users can access their personal data; and the ability of Facebook to be able to better track how they are complying with data protection requirements.'"
OakDragon writes "Kickstarter has introduced some more stringent guidelines and requirements specifically for the Hardware and Product Design categories. These new requirements are laid out in a blog post called 'Kickstarter Is Not a Store.' Simulations will now be prohibited. Video cannot show a proposed product, action, etc. — only a real product and what it does at the time. Product renderings and other simulated illustrations also will not be sufficient — the project creator will have to have photographs of a real prototype."
An anonymous reader writes "It was revealed today during the annual X.Org Developers' Conference in Germany that NVIDIA will be publicly releasing Tegra graphics programming documentation. Initially this will cover their Tegra 2D engine but it's thought they might also be providing 3D engine documentation too. A slide shown at the conference says NVIDIA is committed to open-source. NVIDIA also allegedly has supplied documentation under NDA to one Nouveau developer and taken other covertly supportive steps. These actions come after NVIDIA has been notoriously unfriendly to open-source and months after Linus Torvalds pubilcly slammed the NVIDIA Linux support."
SquarePixel writes "Bloomberg has an interesting story about Microsoft's efforts to simultaneously woo younger workers and to get more apps into its Windows Store. Quoting: 'Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, designed Windows 8 for touch-screen technology included in the company's first tablet, Surface, and other devices coming this year. To gain share in tablets, a market expected by DisplaySearch to reach $66.4 billion in 2012, Microsoft needs enough apps to challenge the more than 200,000 available for iPad. Using student recruits is one way Microsoft can woo app developers who are used to building programs for mobile phones and tablets, where the company has little and no share, respectively. Luring programmers before graduation is particularly critical for recruitment in the U.S., which lags behind countries such as India and China in its ability to crank out qualified engineers.'"
ananyo writes "Vesta, the second-most-massive body in the asteroid belt, was thought to be bone dry. But NASA's Dawn spacecraft has found evidence that smaller, water-rich asteroids once implanted themselves in Vesta's surface. The water stays locked up in hydrated minerals until subsequent impacts create enough heat to melt the rock and release the water as a gas, leaving pitted vents in the surface. The discovery shows that yet another body in the inner Solar System has a water cycle."
iFixit has posted a detailed teardown of the new iPhone 5. While the casing still uses Apple's proprietary pentalobe fasteners, the good news is that Apple has made the screen much easier to remove. Once the fasteners have been removed, the screen will lift out easily through the use of a suction cup. The screens are by far the most common parts of iPhones to break, and this change turns a complicated 38-step procedure that takes about 45 minutes at minimum into a quick, 5-10 minute job. The teardown also shows the iPhone 5 battery to be very similar to the iPhone 4S's, suggesting that the improvements to battery life come from other hardware and software changes. We get a look at the new A6 processor running the phone, which is a custom design based on ARMv7. iFixit also looks at the Lightning connector assembly; unfortunately, it includes the loudspeaker, bottom microphone, Wi-Fi antenna, and headphone jack as well, so fixing any one of those parts individually will be difficult. Whatever you think of Apple's decision to move to Lightning instead of micro-USB, it seems their switch away from the 30-pin connecter was necessitated by size constraints.
Hugh Pickens writes "Joseph Walker writes at the WSJ that although personality tests have a long history in hiring, sophisticated software has now made it possible to evaluate more candidates, amass more data and peer more deeply into applicants' personal lives and interests. This allows employers to predict specific outcomes, such as whether a prospective hire will quit too soon, file disability claims, or steal. For example after a half-year trial that cut attrition by a fifth, Xerox now leaves all hiring for its 48,700 call-center jobs to software. Xerox used to pay lots of attention to applicants who had done the job before. Then, an algorithm told the company that experience doesn't matter. It determined what does matter in a good call-center worker — one who won't quit before the company recoups its $5,000 investment in training. By putting applicants through a battery of tests and then tracking their job performance, Evolv has developed a model for the ideal call-center worker (PDF). The data recommend a person who lives near the job, has reliable transportation and uses one or more social networks, but not more than four. He or she tends not to be overly inquisitive or empathetic, but is creative. 'Some of the assumptions we had weren't valid,' says Connie Harvey, Xerox's chief operating officer of commercial services. However, data-based hiring can expose companies to legal risk. Practices that even unintentionally filter out older or minority applicants can be illegal under federal equal opportunity laws. If a hiring practice is challenged in court as discriminatory, a company must show the criteria it is using are proven to predict success in the job."
This video is a half-hour speech given by Dino Dai Zovi and Charlie Miller, two people Apple corporately hates because of their success in finding security holes in Apple operating systems and software. Both Charlie and Dino have been mentioned on Slashdot before and probably will be again. This is a chance to see how they sound and look in person, talking to a small "by invitation only" group. They have a book to push, too: The iOS Hacker's Handbook. (Please note that this book is supposed to help you secure iOS and iOS apps, not exploit security holes in them.)
This year's best images of the heavens include colliding galaxies, open star clusters, and frozen waterfalls beneath a twinkling night sky. All these photos are winners in the Royal Observatory Greenwich's annual Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition.
Facebook is moving away from "frictionless sharing" on the part of social news readers.
Fairly predictable, hell-bent on keeping old tropes from dying, and funny when it shouldn't be is a horror-thriller that never manages to be either fully horror or fully thriller. And ultimately in its confusion it loses its way to becoming a good movie of either genre. But it does have Jennifer Lawrence.
As the newest iPhones begin appearing in the palms of first adopters, its easy to forget that the devices traveled half-way across the globe so users could Instagram their food.
Writing on his Facebook page that he "cant take it no more," an armed man was posting updates on the social-networking site after taking a man hostage in downtown Pittsburgh.
Washington's favorite Iranian terrorist group has likely won. By a forthcoming edict of the State Department, you can now no longer call the Mujahideen-e Khalq -- formerly Saddam Hussein's proxies against the Iranian regime -- a terrorist organization. Erasing its status as a cult is a different story.
It's iPhone 5 launch day, and you know what that means: thousands of people lined up in front of Apple's retail stores, all waiting to be among the first to get their hands on Cupertino's newest creation.
By traveling from city to city on a map, microscopic protists known as slime molds have figured out how to take over the world.
Witness the renewed fervor for the iPhone 5 today: it goes way beyond function to sheer desire. Instead of competing on technology, everyone's now competing on design. But design is no longer the killer differentiator. Steve Jobs was the iconic CEO-as-artist. An artist is truly in it for themselves ? not just for reasons of wanting to get rich, or get famous, or find a path to comfort. The artist needs to understand the truth that lies at the bottom of an enigma. We buy his products not just because they are well designed, but out of respect for the integrity of his work. For this, we are happy to be tithed a little extra.
Apple's brand new iOS 6 features a new version of Mobile Safari which packs in some nice new tools for web developers.
If you've ever pondered what you would say to an alien, you may get that chance between 7:30 and 8 p.m. PT tonight. Tweets in Space is a project to capture 30 minutes worth of tweets with the hashtag #tweetsinspace to beam toward an exoplanet in hopes of messaging any aliens that live there.
A divided federal appeals court is approving a $9.5 million settlement to a class action lawsuit challenging Facebook's program that monitored and published what users of the social networking site were buying or renting from Blockbuster, Overstock and other locations. A dissenting judge said the deal "perverts the class action into a device for depriving victims of remedies for wrongs, while enriching both the wrongdoers and the lawyers purporting to represent the class."
The world of tomorrow is going to be a dark and sinister place, according to a group of Air Force futurists. One reason why it'll be so scary: Facebook.
Hurricane researchers are gathering unprecedented data this month by using two NASA Global Hawk unmanned aircraft. The airplanes were originally developed for the military, but have been modified to aid in atmospheric research.One of the Global Hawks was flown to its new base at NASA's Wallops Island Flight Facility on Virginia's Atlantic coast earlier this ...
Now that the private security company formerly known as Blackwater is under new ownership, it's entering into a new partnership with the Defense Department. The U.S. military's intelligence service is hiring the firm, along with five others, to train its operatives to defend themselves as they collect information in dangerous places -- something particularly salient as the Mideast continues to light up with anti-American fervor.
The website iFixit got its hands on a brand-new iPhone 5 Friday morning as soon as the device went on sale in Australia. As expected, the inquisitive crew immediately dissected it to assess its hackability -- and to give us some delicious gadget pr0n.
Apple's iPhone 5 is now in stores. But cases for the new smartphone aren't yet available as accessory makers are scrambling to catch up with the new handset design.
Bumblebees foraging in flowers for nectar are like salesmen traveling between towns: Both seek the optimal route to minimize their travel costs. Mathematicians call this the "traveling salesman problem," in which scientists try to calculate the shortest possible route given a theoretical arrangement of cities. Bumblebees, however, take the brute-force approach.
The current human-powered bike speed record is at 82 mph abut this record may be challenged by Graeme Obree, who has broken speed records before, and has a bike he believes could reach 100 mph.
Tailgating is about more than getting loaded and having fun. It's about creating microcosms of society that foster an inter-generational community while building the team?s brand, according to a Notre Dame anthropologist.
Yes, the $35 credit card-sized computer-on-a-chip Raspberry Pi is cheap and awesome. But it's not that powerful. Whether you're building an aerial drone or a supercomputer, you might want a bit more power under the hood. With this in mind, the organization behind the Raspberry Pi will now let you "turbocharge" the device, cranking it from the standard 700 MHz processor clock speed to as much as 1GHz -- without voiding your warranty.
Starbucks finds itself facing a big backlash over its decision to end free soy milk and flavored syrups for its most loyal customers.
Review: , out in theaters Friday, is a beautiful and fun shoot-'em-up movie made with an incredibly cool aesthetic. It's the perfect action flick to end the summer blockbuster season.
Arduino is probably the world's most popular open source physical computing platform. The little micro-controllers show up in everything from wild art projects to serious home automation efforts. It's great and all, but couldn't it be?smaller? Electrical engineer Ken Burns thought so, and got to work on the TinyDuino.
For non-gamers, there are few things more mind-numbing than watching someone play a videogame (unless its watching someone play golf). But don't tell that to the 20 million people who flock to livestreaming site Twitch each month to stare wide-eyed at other people doing battle on screen.
Hurricane researchers are enjoying some new capabilities this month thanks to a pair of unmanned Global Hawk aircraft capable of flying for up to 30 hours at a time. We had a chance to walk through the hangar where the Global Hawks are based at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center. Both airplanes were at various states of modification during our visit in preparation for their current hurricane observation mission.
The Army officer who once taught that the U.S. ought to consider "Hiroshima tactics" for a "total war" on Islam has put America's top general on notice for a possible lawsuit. Lt. Col. Matthew Dooley is accusing the government of concealing "the truth about Islam" at a time when proponents of his view of an inevitable clash between Islam and the West have succeeded at fanning precisely those flames.
Google's daily brainteaser helps hone your search skills.
Sci-fi legend and determined futurist Herbert George Wells is born into the lower middle class in England.
Buying real estate might not always be a smart bet, but investing in online real-estate listing company Trulia just might be. The San Francisco-based company Trulia (TRLA), started trading Thursday on the NYSE and enjoyed a 41 percent stock price pop by the trading day's close Thursday.