AMD

DirectX 12 Performance Tested In Ashes of the Singularity 96

Posted by samzenpus from the how's-it-look dept.
Vigile writes: The future of graphics APIs lies in DirectX 12 and Vulkan, both built to target GPU hardware at a lower level than previously available. The advantages are better performance, better efficiency on all hardware and more control for the developer that is willing to put in the time and effort to understand the hardware in question. Until today we have only heard or seen theoretical "peak" performance claims of DX12 compared to DX11. PC Perspective just posted an article that uses a pre-beta version of Ashes of the Singularity, an upcoming RTS utilizing the Oxide Games Nitrous engine, to evaluate and compare DX12's performance claims and gains against DX11. In the story we find five different processor platforms tested with two different GPUs and two different resolutions. Results are interesting and show that DX12 levels the playing field for AMD, with its R9 390X gaining enough ground in DX12 to overcome a significant performance deficit that exists using DX11 to the GTX 980.
Programming

"Father Time" Gets Another Year At NTP From Linux Foundation 157

Posted by samzenpus from the another-trip-around-the-sun dept.
dkatana writes: Harlan Stenn, Father Time to some and beleaguered maintainer of the Network Time Protocol (NTP) to others, will stay working for the NTP another year. But there is concern that support will decline as more people believe that NTP works just fine and doesn't need any supervision. NTP is the preeminent time synchronization system for Macs, Windows, and Linux computers and most servers on networks. According to IW, for the last three-and-a-half years, Stenn said he's worked 100-plus hours a week answering emails, accepting patches, rewriting patches to work across multiple operating systems, piecing together new releases, and administering the NTP mailing list. If NTP should get hacked or for some reason stop functioning, hundreds of thousands of systems would feel the consequences. "If that happened, all the critics would say, 'See, you can't trust open source code,'" said Stenn.
Android

Android M's Official Name Is Marshmallow 92

Posted by samzenpus from the chocolate-soon-to-come dept.
An anonymous reader writes: As they've done in the past, Google has revealed the name for the upcoming version of Android with a new statue in front of its headquarters. Android's sixth version will be called Marshmallow. Dave Burke, Android's VP of engineering, unveiled the statue on Twitter. Google has also released the Android 6.0 SDK and the final M preview.
Programming

Rupert Murdoch Won't Be Teaching Your Children To Code After All 57

Posted by samzenpus from the code-time dept.
theodp writes: Plans for Rupert Murdoch & Co. to teach your children to code just hit a bump in the road. Murdoch's News Corp. last week announced it plans to exit the education business as it announced a $371 million write-down of the investment in its Amplify education unit, which aimed to reinvent education via digital tools, tablets and curriculum reinforced with snazzy graphics. The news may help to explain why Amplify MOOC, the entity that offered online AP Computer Science A to high school students, was re-dubbed Edhesive ("online education that sticks") a couple of months ago. Tech-backed Code.org, whose $1+ million "Gold Supporters" include the James and Kathryn Murdoch-led Quadrivium Foundation, announced a partnership with Edhesive to bring CS to schools in June, around the same time Edhesive LLC was formed.
Businesses

How 'Rock Star' Became a Business Buzzword 80

Posted by samzenpus from the you-keep-using-that-word dept.
HughPickens.com writes: Carina Chocano writes in the NYT that once, a long time ago, a rock star was a free-spirited, convention-flouting artist/rebel/hero/Dionysian fertility god who fronted a world-famous band, sold millions of records and headlined stadium concerts where people were trampled in frenzies of cultlike fervor. Now 'rock star'' has made a complete about-face and in its new incarnation, it is more likely to refer to a programmer, salesperson, social-media strategist, business-to-business telemarketer, recruiter, management consultant or celebrity pastry chef than to a person in a band. The term has become shorthand for a virtuosity so exalted it borders on genius — only for some repetitive, detail-oriented task. According to Chocano, posting a listing for a job for which only ''rock stars'' need apply casts an H.R. manager as a kind of corporate Svengali; "That nobody is looking for a front-end developer who is addicted to heroin or who bites the heads off doves in conference rooms goes without saying. Pretty much anyone can be a ''rock star'' these days — except actual rock stars, who are encouraged to think of themselves as brands."
Programming

The 2015 Underhanded C Contest Has Begun 52

Posted by samzenpus from the and-the-winner-is dept.
Xcott Craver writes: The 8th Underhanded C Contest is now underway. The goal of the Underhanded C Contest is to write C code that is as readable, clear, innocent and straightforward as possible, but which performs some malicious function that is not obvious from looking at the source code. This year's challenge is based on a real problem in joint development for nuclear treaty verification, and the prize is $1000.
Education

Is There an Ed-Tech Critic In the House? 61

Posted by samzenpus from the won't-somebody-please-think-of-the-children? dept.
theodp writes: Educational technology has been stuck for awhile, laments Hack Education's Audrey Watters in And So, Without Ed-Tech Criticism... (an accompanying 1984 photo of Watters making a LOGO turtle draw a square looks little different than President Obama 'learning to code' 30+ years later by making a Disney Princess draw a square). "We might consider why we're still at the point of having to make a case for ed-tech criticism," writes Watters. "It's particularly necessary as we see funding flood into ed-tech, as we see policies about testing dictate the rationale for adopting devices, as we see the technology industry shape a conversation about 'code' — a conversation that focuses on money and prestige but not on thinking, learning. Computer criticism can — and must — be about analysis and action."
Security

One Petabyte of Data Exposed Via Insecure Big Data Systems 50

Posted by Soulskill from the unlock-it-up-and-throw-away-the-key dept.
chicksdaddy writes: Behind every big data deployment is a range of supporting technologies like databases and memory caching systems that are used to store and analyze massive data sets at lightning speeds. A new report from security research firm Binaryedge suggests that many of the organizations using these powerful data storage and analysis tools are not taking adequate steps to secure them. The result is that more than a petabyte of stored data is accessible to anyone online with the knowledge of where and how to look for it.

In a blog post on Thursday, the firm reported the results of research that found close to 200,000 such systems that were publicly addressable. Binaryedge said it found 39,000 MongoDB servers that were publicly addressable and that "didn't have any type of authentication." In all, the exposed MongoDB systems contained more than 600 terabytes of data stored in databases with names like "local," "admin," and "db." Other platforms that were found to be publicly addressable and unsecured included the open source Redis key-value cache and store technology (35,000 publicly addressable instances holding 13TB of data) and 9,000 instances of ElasticSearch, a commonly used search engine based on Lucene, that exposed another 531 terabytes of data.
Education

Federal Judge Calls BS On Homeland Security's 2008 STEM 'Emergency' 142

Posted by timothy from the skept-should-be-a-verb dept.
theodp writes: In 2008, the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security enacted 'emergency' changes to Optional Practical Training (OPT) to extend the amount of time foreign STEM graduates of US colleges could stay in the country and work ("to alleviate the crisis employers are facing due to the current H-1B visa shortage", as Bill Gates explained it in 2007). More than seven years later, U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle has found that the government erred by not seeking public comment when it extended the program, and issued a ruling that could force tens of thousands of foreign workers on OPT STEM extensions to return to their home countries early next year. Huvelle has given the government six months to submit the OPT extension rule for proper notice and comment lest it be revoked. From the ruling (pdf): "By failing to engage in notice-and-comment rulemaking, the record is largely one-sided, with input only from technology companies that stand to benefit from additional F-1 student employees, who are exempted from various wage taxes. Indeed, the 17-month duration of the STEM extension appears to have been adopted directly from the unanimous suggestions by Microsoft and similar industry groups." Microsoft declared a new crisis in 2012, this time designed to link tech's need for H-1B visas to U.S. children's lack of CS savvy.
Programming

UK Industry Group Boss: Study Arts So Games Are Not Designed By 'Spotty Nerds' 207

Posted by Soulskill from the you-must-be-a-blast-at-parties dept.
nickweller writes: John Cridland is the leader of the Confederation of British Industry, a group that represents over 100,000 UK businesses. In a recent interview, he spoke about his enthusiasm for adding arts education to more traditional STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) programs. Here's how he chose to express that: "One of the biggest growth industries in Britain today is the computer games industry. We need extra coders — dozens and dozens of them but nobody is going to play a game designed by a spotty nerd. We need people with artistic flair." Cridland also expressed support for an increased emphasis on foreign language education: "If we’re not capable of speaking other people’s languages, we’re going to be in difficulties. However, there is far too much emphasis placed on teaching French and German. The language we most need going forward is Spanish (the second most frequently spoken language in the world). That and a certain percentage need to learn Mandarin to develop relations with China."
Oracle

Oracle: Google Has "Destroyed" the Market For Java 457

Posted by samzenpus from the bad-name dept.
itwbennett writes: Oracle made a request late last month to broaden its case against Android. Now, claiming that 'Android has now irreversibly destroyed Java's fundamental value proposition as a potential mobile device operating system,' Oracle on Wednesday filed a supplemental complaint in San Francisco district court that encompasses the six Android versions that have come out since Oracle originally filed its case back in 2010: Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean, Kit Kat and Lollipop.
Security

Facebook Awards Researchers $100k For Detecting Emerging Class of C++ Bugs 73

Posted by timothy from the incentives-matter dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook has awarded $100,000 to a team of researchers from Georgia Tech University for their discovery of a new method for identifying "bad-casting" vulnerabilities that affect programs written in C++. "Type casting, which converts one type of an object to another, plays an essential role in enabling polymorphism in C++ because it allows a program to utilize certain general or specific implementations in the class hierarchies. However, if not correctly used, it may return unsafe and incorrectly casted values, leading to so-called bad-casting or type-confusion vulnerabilities," the researchers explained in their paper.
GUI

GitHub Desktop Launches To Replace Mac and Windows Apps 167

Posted by samzenpus from the brand-new dept.
An anonymous reader writes: GitHub today launched a unified desktop version for Mac and Windows — you can download it from desktop.github.com. GitHub Desktop will automatically replace the previous Mac and Windows apps and can be used alongside GitHub Enterprise. Venturebeat reports: "...GitHub was tired of the differences between its two apps and decided it was time to align them. The hope is that if Mac and Windows users have the same workflow, it will be easier for them to work together (and for individual users to switch between the two platforms)."
Oracle

Oracle Exec: Stop Sending Vulnerability Reports 229

Posted by timothy from the well-that-sends-a-message dept.
florin writes: Oracle chief security officer Mary Ann Davidson published a most curious rant on the company's corporate blog yesterday, addressing and reprimanding some pesky customers that just will not stop bothering her. As Mary put it: "Recently, I have seen a large-ish uptick in customers reverse engineering our code to attempt to find security vulnerabilities in it." She goes on to describe how the company deals with such shameful activities, namely that "We send a letter to the sinning customer, and a different letter to the sinning consultant-acting-on-customer's behalf — reminding them of the terms of the Oracle license agreement that preclude reverse engineering, So Please Stop It Already."

Later on, in a section intended to highlight how great a job Oracle itself was doing at finding vulnerabilities, the CSO accidentally revealed that customers are in fact contributing a rather significant 1 out of every 10 vulnerabilities: "Ah, well, we find 87 percent of security vulnerabilities ourselves, security researchers find about 3 percent and the rest are found by customers." Unsurprisingly, this revealing insight into the company's regard for its customers was removed later. But not before being saved for posterity.
Programming

Buzz: a Novel Programming Language For Heterogeneous Robot Swarms 30

Posted by Soulskill from the repurpose-the-old-robot-swarms-you've-got-laying-around-the-office dept.
New submitter pRobotika writes: Designing the behavior of robot swarms is difficult; the larger the group, the more tricky it is to predict its dynamics and the causes of errors. Buzz is a new open-source programming language specifically for robot swarms. It's designed for ease of use and is inspired by well-known programming languages such as JavaScript, Python and Lua. Buzz also includes a number of constructs specifically designed for swarm-level development. The “swarm” construct allows a developer to split the robots into multiple groups and assign a specific task to each. Swarms can be created, disbanded, and modified dynamically. The “neighbors” construct captures an important concept in swarm systems: locality. In nature, individuals interact directly and only with nearby swarm-mates. Interactions include communication, obstacle avoidance or leader following. The neighbors construct provides functions to mimic these mechanisms.
Software

How To Make Money As an Independent Developer 56

Posted by Soulskill from the finish-off-that-lottery-bot dept.
itwbennett writes: A new survey of 13,000 developers in 149 countries by U.K.-based research company VisionMobile compared, among other things, the most popular versus the most lucrative revenue models for four groups of developers: those focusing on mobile apps, cloud services, the Internet of Things, and desktop apps. Among their findings for mobile developers: While advertising is by far the most popular revenue model, only 17% of developers who rely primarily on advertising make more than $10,000 per month from their apps. By comparison, 37% of those who make their money by e-commerce (selling real-world goods and services) make $10k per month or more.
Open Source

LibreSSL 2.2.2 Released 33

Posted by samzenpus from the check-it-out dept.
An anonymous reader writes: LibreSSL 2.2.2 has been released. According to the release notes: "This release marks the end of the OpenBSD 5.8 development cycle, featuring expanded portable build support, code improvements, removal of obsolete workarounds....The LibreSSL project continues improvement of the codebase to reflect modern, safe programming practices. We welcome feedback and improvements from the broader community. Thanks to all of the contributors who helped make this release possible." This is the first LibreSSL release that has completely removed SSLv3 support.
Oracle

U.K. Government Seeking To End Reliance On Oracle 190

Posted by timothy from the breathing-the-vapors dept.
jfruh writes: The U.K. Cabinet Office has reportedly asked government departments and agencies to try to find ways to end their reliance on Oracle software, a move motivated by the truly shocking number of Oracle licenses currently being paid for by the British taxpayer. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs alone has paid £1.3 million (US$2 million) per year for some 2 million Oracle licenses, or about 200 licenses per staff member.
Businesses

Starting Now At Netflix: Unlimited Maternity and Paternity Leave 418

Posted by timothy from the but-what-will-they-watch-while-home? dept.
vivaoporto writes: Netflix announced Tuesday that, during the first year after their child's birth or adoption, employees will be able to take off however long they feel they need to. They can return on a full- or part-time basis, and even take subsequent time off later in the year if needed. Netflix will "keep paying them normally." Time comments that Netflix's policy "deserves high marks for extending leave to fathers, as well as understanding that the entire first year after childbirth can be challenging for new parents".
Programming

Id Software Founds a New Office In Germany 50

Posted by timothy from the freud-was-pushing-hard-for-vienna dept.
jones_supa writes: With some high-profile releases on the horizon, ZeniMax Media is expanding with a new studio in Frankfurt, Germany. Posted via Bethesda blog, reads the official ZeniMax statement: "As part of our continued global expansion, ZeniMax Media has opened (and is actively hiring for) a new technology development studio in Frankfurt – home to our German publishing operations. This team, an extension of id Software, will focus their efforts on idTech for DOOM and other titles under development at ZeniMax-owned studios." New positions are expected to pop up at ZeniMax's job listings.

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