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Submission + - Shadow Fight 2 Special Edition MOD APK for Android (androidhackers.net)

Submitted by denimdrug
denimdrug writes: Shadow Fight 2 Special Edition is the best version of the Studio Nikkis renowned game of battle with an original story. Presence of abundant fresh content will provide enjoyment to the fans of the original and unique section.Shadow Fight 2 Special Edition Mod Apk deserves special means as a game of free fight developed by Nike. It was introduced to the gaming world through mobile until 2015 and was designed for the free purpose. In this game, you will play the role of a wild Ninja who fights for survival against the devil.Make a heroic entryIn Shadow Fight 2 Special Edition Mod

Submission + - Report: Nuclear Energy Too Slow, Too Expensive To Save Climate (reuters.com)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: Reuters reports: "Nuclear power is losing ground to renewables in terms of both cost and capacity as its reactors are increasingly seen as less economical and slower to reverse carbon emissions, an industry report said. In mid-2019, new wind and solar generators competed efficiently against even existing nuclear power plants in cost terms, and grew generating capacity faster than any other power type, the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR) ( https://www.worldnuclearreport... ) showed. 'Stabilizing the climate is urgent, nuclear power is slow,' said Mycle Schneider, lead author of the report. 'It meets no technical or operational need that low-carbon competitors cannot meet better, cheaper and faster.' The report estimates that since 2009 the average construction time for reactors worldwide was just under 10 years, well above the estimate given by industry body the World Nuclear Association (WNA) of between 5 and 8.5 years.The extra time that nuclear plants take to build has major implications for climate goals, as existing fossil-fueled plants continue to emit CO2 while awaiting substitution. 'To protect the climate, we must abate the most carbon at the least cost and in the least time,' Schneider said. The WNA said in an emailed statement that studies have shown that nuclear energy has a proven track record in providing new generation faster than other low-carbon options, and added that in many countries nuclear generation provides on average more low-carbon power per year than solar or wind. It said that reactor construction times can be as short as four years when several reactors are built in sequence."

Submission + - German Prosecutors Indict Top VW Bosses Over Diesel Emissions Scandal (reuters.com)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: Reuters reports: "German prosecutors have accused Volkswagen’s CEO of holding back market-moving information on rigged emissions tests four years ago, raising the prospect of fresh upheaval at the carmaker just as it tries to reinvent itself as a champion of clean driving. Prosecutors in the city of Braunschweig said on Tuesday they would press criminal charges of stock market manipulation against Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess, as well as non-executive Chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch and former CEO Martin Winterkorn. The charges show how the German company, which in September 2015 admitted using illegal software to cheat U.S. diesel engine tests, is struggling to move on from a scandal which has cost it more than $30 billion in vehicle refits, fines and provisions. In a statement issued after an emergency meeting, the (VW supervisory) board’s executive committee said it 'cannot see that there was any deliberate attempt not to inform the capital market'. The former U.S. regulator who helped bring Volkswagen’s cheating to light dismissed the company’s arguments. 'The excuse that top managers knew nothing is very weak,' Alberto Ayala, who served at the California Air Resources Board (CARB) until 2017, told German news magazine Spiegel. Separately on Tuesday, German prosecutors hit rival carmaker Daimler with an 870 million euro fine for breaking diesel emissions rules. The Stuttgart-based maker of Mercedes-Benz cars said it would not appeal. "

Submission + - Messaging App Kik Shuts Down As Company Focuses on Kin Cryptocurrency (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As reported by Tech Crunch:

Kik Interactive CEO Ted Livingston announced today that the company is shutting down Kik Messenger to focus on its cryptocurrency Kin, the target of a lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company’s team will be reduced to 19 people, a reduction that will affect more than 100 employees, as it focuses on converting more Kin users into buyers. “Instead of selling some of our Kin into the limited liquidity that exists today, we made the decision to focus our current resources on the few things that matter most,” Livingston wrote in a blog post, adding that the changes will reduce the company’s burn rate by 85%, enabling it to get through the SEC trial. Kin launched two years ago, raising nearly $100 million in its ICO, one of the first held by a mainstream tech company.

Readers may recall that Kik forced NPM, the Node.js package manager, to reassign the Kik package name to them and the developer retaliated by removing all his packages that also included the ubiquitous left-pad dependency that temporary broke the Internet.

Submission + - Centos 8 has been released (centos.org)

Submitted by Indy1
Indy1 writes: Centos 8 has been released to the public. Also, Centos Stream has been announced. This will be a rolling release. Details on Centos's website.

Submission + - Graphics Programmer Demos Incredibly Advanced Voxel Destruction Physics (youtube.com)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: Physics and graphics programmer, game developer Dennis Gustafsson has begun showing a Voxel based game ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?... ) that features incredibly advanced destruction physics — everything and anything is destructible in a very physically realistic way, dynamic smoke and fire interacts naturally with destroyed environments — as well as raytracing that doesn't need an RTX GPU, and does 60 FPS on a midrange Nvidia 1070 GPU. The game engine looks like Minecraft with much smaller cubes or voxels, but the engine tech, particularly the physics, is far more advanced than Minecraft's. Gustafsson has a Twitter feed ( https://twitter.com/tuxedolabs ) where he posts demo videos and explains where he is trying to take his Voxel based technology. The game doesn't have a name yet, but some people think that it may very well become the next Minecraft. A lot of comments on the new engine state that "it does pretty much what we hoped the new Battlefield games would be able to do in terms of destruction".

Submission + - China Boosts Government Presence At Alibaba, Private Giants (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The government of one of China’s top technology hubs is dispatching officials to 100 local corporations including e-commerce giantAlibaba, the latest effort to exert greater influence over the country’smassive private sector. Hangzhou, in the eastern province of Zhejiang, is assigning government affairs representatives to facilitate communication and expedite projects, the city government said on itswebsite. Chinese beverage giantHangzhou Wahaha.and automakerZhejiang Geely.are among the other companies based in the prosperous region that have been singled out, according to reports in statemedia.

The Hangzhou government said the initiative was aimed at smoothing work flow between officials and China’s high-tech companies and manufacturers. But the move could be perceived also as an effort to keep tabs on a non state-owned sector that’s gaining clout as a prime driver of the world’s No. 2 economy. Representatives of the country’s public security system are alreadyembeddedwithin China’s largest internet companies, responsible for crime prevention and stamping out false rumors. Government agencies may also be heightening their monitoring of the vast private sector at a time China’s economy is decelerating — raising the prospect of destabiliziing job cuts as enterprises try to protect bottom lines. Alibaba is hosting its annual investors’ conference this week in Hangzhou against the backdrop of a worseningoutlookfor the country.

Submission + - Massive wave of account hijacks hits YouTube creators (zdnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Over the past few days, a massive wave of account hijacks has hit YouTube users, and especially creators in the auto-tuning and car review community, a ZDNet investigation discovered following a tip from one of our readers.

Several high-profile accounts from the YouTube creators car community have fallen victim to these attacks already. The list includes channels such as Built [Instagram post, YouTube channel], Troy Sowers [Instagram post, YouTube channel], MaxtChekVids [YouTube channel], PURE Function [Instagram post, YouTube Support post, YouTube channel], and Musafir [Instagram post, YouTube channel].

The account hacks are the result of a coordinated campaign that consisted of messages luring users to phishing sites, where hackers logged account credentials. Some of these phishing attacks also bypassed 2FA.

Submission + - Researchers find mystery hidden in early 80's Atari game (bbc.com)

Submitted by wired_parrot
wired_parrot writes: Released in 1982, Entombed was far from a best-seller and today it’s largely forgotten. But recently, a computer scientist and a digital archaeologist decided to pull apart the game’s source code to investigate how it was made. An early maze-navigating game, Entombed intrigued the researchers for how early programmers solved the problem of drawing a solvable maze that is drawn procedurally.

But they got more than they bargained for: they found a mystery bit of code they couldn’t explain (Link to full paper). The fundamental logic that the determines how the maze is drawn is locked in a table of possible values written in the games code. However, it seems the logic behind the table has been lost forever.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Why Doesn't The Internet In 2019 Use More Interactive 3D?

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: For the benefit of those who are not much into 3D technologies, as far back as the year 2000 and even earlier, there was excitement about "Web3D" — interactive 3D content embedded in HTML webpages, using technologies like VRML and ShockWave3D. 2D vector based Flash and Flash animation was a big deal back then. Very popular with internet users. The more powerful but less installed ShockWave browser plugin — also made by Macromedia — got a fairly capable DirectX 7 / OpenGL based realtime 3D engine developed by Intel Labs around 2001 that could put 3D games, 3D product configurators and VR-style building/environment walkthroughs into an HTML page, and also go full-screen on demand. There were significant problems on the hardware side — 20 years ago, not every PC or Mac connected to the Internet had a decently capable 3D GPU by a long shot. But the 3D software technology was there, it was promising even then, and somehow it died — ShockWave3D was neglected and killed off by Adobe shortly after they bought Macromedia, VRML died pretty much on its own. Now we are in 2019. Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, PCs/Macs as well as Game Consoles have powerful 3D GPUs in them that could render geat interactive 3D experiences into a Web browser. The hardware is there, but 99% of the Internet today is in flat 2D. Why is this? Why do tens of millions of gamers spend hours in 3D game worlds every day, and even the websites that cater to this "3D loving" demographic use nothing but text, 2D JPEGs and 2D Youtube video on their webpages? Everything 3D — 3D software, 3D hardware, 3D programming and scripting languages — is far more evolved than it was around 2000. And yet there appears to be very little interest in putting interactive 3D anything into webpages. What causes this? Do people want to go into the 2020s with a 2D based Internet? Is the future of the Internet text, 2D images and streaming 2D videos?

Submission + - Agile at the Pentagon

Submitted by OneHundredAndTen
OneHundredAndTen writes: According to this (https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2019/09/22/how-fake-agile-at-dod-risks-national-security/#575bfb48fa81) Forbes article, the Pentagon is worried that many in the USA's military nerve center claim to use Agile methods, when in fact, they aren't. Those responsible for these things at the Pentagon have therefore come up with a Detecting Agile BS (https://media.defense.gov/2018/Oct/09/2002049591/-1/-1/0/DIB_DETECTING_AGILE_BS_2018.10.05.PDF) document, so people can tell when they are doing Agile vs. when they are doing BS Agile. The implicit conclusion seems to be the usual "if it doesn't work for you, you are not doing it right".

Submission + - Google Seeks Permission For Staff To Listen To Assistant Recordings (bbc.com)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: BBC Tech reports: "Google has said it will let its human reviewers listen to audio recordings made by its virtual assistant only if users give it fresh permission to do so. The company said the option had always been opt-in but it had not been explicit enough that people were involved in transcribing the clips. The pledge follows Apple's switch to an opt-in model in August. Amazon and Facebook, by contrast, make users ask if they want to be excluded. Google's move has been welcomed by digital rights campaigners. 'Companies should do the right thing and make sure people choose to be recorded,' Open Rights Group executive director Jim Killock said. 'They shouldn't be forced into checking that every company isn't intruding into their homes and daily conversations.' Google has said about one in 500 of all user audio snippets would be subject to the human checks."

Submission + - Streaming's cancel culture problem (axios.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Many Slashdot readers like to game video streaming services, by subscribing just as a popular TV show (like Game of Thrones) was airing, and then cancelling after it ends. Now the services has noticed...

Data shows that consumers across all ages are more than 30% likely to cancel a subscription streaming service after the show or series they are watching has ended. This creates big headaches for streaming companies over how to keep consumers from leaving, especially as the streaming space grows increasingly competitive.


Submission + - Digital Archeologists Can't Figure Out Procedural Algorithm In 1982 Atari Game (bbc.com)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: The BBC reports that Digital Archeologists who are examining the source code of the long forgotten 1982 Atari maze game Entombed are stumped by how maze generation in the game actually works. Entombed didn't store its mazes as 1s and 0s due to lacking memory. It generated the maze procedurally — walls and gaps were placed based on a mysterious lookup table in the source code. What is mysterious about the lookup table? It works perfectly — the mazes are navigable — but the researchers cannot figure out the scientific principle behind how the Atari table actually works. Why bother with this? The researchers believe that cleverly coded 1980s games may contain long forgotten math and programming tricks that are applicable to modern computing problems, but that programmers today do not know anything about. So we may see more 8-Bit or 16-Bit games pulled apart to see what "makes the games tick".

Submission + - Apple neutered ad blockers in Safari (zdnet.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: There's been much said about Google's supposed plans to limit the power of ad blockers in Chrome, but something similar has already happened in Safari, and not that many people have noticed, let alone criticize Apple. Unlike Google, Apple never received any flak, and came out of the whole process with a reputation of caring about users' privacy.

Apple deprecated Safari extensions, automatically disabling software such as "AdBlock Plus" and "Ghostery". The last to go was uBlock Origin, which shut down a couple of weeks ago.

The replacement system is called App Extensions, but it enforces a limit of 50,000 rules for ad blockers, even fewer than Google's now abandoned proposal for Chrome. Some extensions have soldiered on, converting to App Extensions but with reduced features and effectiveness, while others have been forced to give up.

Submission + - "Inside Bill's Brain: Decoding Bill Gates" (king5.com)

Submitted by hcs_$reboot
hcs_$reboot writes: hcs_$reboot shares a report from king5.com:

"Inside Bill's Brain: Decoding Bill Gates" is a new documentary on Netflix from Academy Award-winning director Davis Guggenheim. It debuted on September 20. The Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist is asked what his worst fear is. It's not family tragedy or personal pain. "I don't want my brain to stop working," he responds. A portrait emerges of a visionary who gnaws on his eyeglasses' arms, downs Cokes and is relentlessly optimistic that technology can solve social ills. He is also someone who reads manically — he'll scrutinize the Minnesota state budget for fun — and who is a wicked opponent at cards.
Gates himself said he appreciated Guggenheim serving as a reality check for many of the seemingly intractable public health issues that his foundation has tackled. "I'm not that objective. It was interesting, through Davis' eyes, to have him say, 'Are you sure?' Well, I'm not sure," said Gates. "So I thought that was good. It made me step back."


Submission + - WeWork and Jared Kushner Tied 2016 Bid for Prime NYC Site to Kids' CS Education

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Office-space company WeWork announced that it was postponing its IPO this week amid suspicion it is not actually a tech company worth $47B. "WeWork isn't a tech company," argued a recent HBR article, although one may get a different impression from the company's communications, including SEC filings, case studies, and videos. Indeed, a failed 2016 $50M development bid (68 pgs, PDF) by WeWork and First Son-in-Law Jared Kushner even went so far as to suggest that New York City's efforts to provide schoolkids with a CS education — and in turn boost NYC's economy and workforce — would be advanced by allowing WeWork to redevelop and occupy a prime publicly-owned site on Union Square. From the proposal:

"I am pleased to write this letter of support for the WeWork / Kushner Companies team regarding their proposed development of 124 East 14th Street," wrote CSNYC Executive Director Michael Preston. "My organization, CSNYC (the New York City Foundation for Computer Science Education), is interested in exploring the possibility of leasing up to half of a floor of this location along with our fellow nonprofit organizations working to expand access to computer science education in NYC public schools. In addition, we hope to partner with the Academy for Software Engineering (AFSE), a new public high school with a CTE computer science program that we helped launch with the NYC Department of Education in 2012. The school is a few blocks from the proposed site and would like to share lab/workshop space that could support student learning during the day and teacher training in the afternoons and evenings. We believe that locating our team and partner organizations in a building where WeWork serves as the anchor tenant could help to support and enhance the work we do by connecting us to the WeWork member network for services and support, and to be able to use their spaces for events. By co-locating CSNYC in this building with WeWork and other organizations that focus on innovation and technology, we feel strongly that we can contribute to a hub that supports the education, development and growth of the city’s innovation economy and future workforce."

Also providing a letter of support for the development was Flatiron School CEO Adam Enbar, who pledged, "If Kushner Company is awarded the building Flatiron School would likely occupy 15,000 – 30,000 square feet on the property, serving as instructional space for computer programming courses, as well as community space for the NYC tech community at large." While not mentioned in the letter, Flatiron School's lead investor was Thrive Capital, whose founder is coincidentally Jared Kushner's brother Josh. In 2017, it was announced that Flatiron School was sold to WeWork for an undisclosed sum, after the latter landed a massive $4.4B investment from SoftBank. WeWork's recent IPO paperwork revealed it paid $28M for the coding bootcamp.

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