Month: May 2017

Only 36 Percent of Indian Engineers Can Write Compilable Code, Says Study

New submitter troublemaker_23 quotes a report from ITWire: Only 36% of software engineers in India can write compilable code based on measurements by an automated tool that is used across the world, the Indian skills assessment company Aspiring Minds says in a report. The report is based on a sample of 36, 800 from more than 500 colleges across India. Aspiring Minds said it used the automated tool Automata which is a 60-minute test taken in a compiler integrated environment and rates candidates on programming ability, programming practices, run-time complexity and test case coverage. It uses advanced artificial intelligence technology to automatically grade programming skills. “We find that out of the two problems given per candidate, only 14% engineers are able to write compilable codes for both and only 22% write compilable code for exactly one problem, ” the study said. It further found that of the test subjects only 14.67% were employable by an IT services company. When it came to writing fully functional code using the best practices for efficiency and writing, only 2.21% of the engineers studied made the grade. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Only 36 Percent of Indian Engineers Can Write Compilable Code, Says Study

A single autonomous car could greatly reduce man-made traffic

Traffic. We all hate it, but what can honestly be done to significantly reduce it? Well, according to an experiment conducted by the university of Illinois, simply introducing a few self-driving cars to roads could be the answer. Conducting experiments in Tucson, Arizona the team discovered that even adding a single autonomous vehicle to the roads can massively reduce traffic. They programmed a self-driving car to loop a track continuously and then added 20 other human-driven cars to the mix. While humans somehow naturally create stop-and-go traffic even without lane changes or other disruptions, thanks to the robotic racer, both traffic and fuel consumption were reduced by 40 percent. This isn’t the first example of modern tech helping to reduce congestion. With fixed traffic sensors widely swapped for navigation systems using GPS data, Professor Daniel B. Work believes that automated cars could be the next step — replacing the traffic-reducing variable speed limits. The next stage of the experiment is to test autonomous cars in situations where both human and AI drivers have to change lanes. From our experience with freeways, we already feel bad for the robot cars. Still, this isn’t the only way that drivers can use automation to reduce traffic. With the margin of human error being so high, the same study suggests that even existing tech like adaptive cruise control has the power to greatly reduce the amount of traffic on our roads. With many people understandably wary at the prospect of roads completely ruled by automated cars, the idea of mixing a few with regular vehicles seems like a good way to pilot the risky tech. Via: Phys.org Source: Cornell University Library

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A single autonomous car could greatly reduce man-made traffic

Windows 10 hits 500 million devices, growing by two-thirds in a year

SEATTLE—At its Build developer conference, Microsoft has announced that Windows 10 has now passed 500 million monthly active devices. Little over a year ago, the company said that the operating system had reached 300 million systems . As the operating system nears the end of its second full year on the market, it’s clear that it’s going to fall a long way short of the company’s original estimates. At launch, the ambition was to reach 1 billion devices over the first two to three years of availability, but this estimate assumed that Windows 10 Mobile would be a going concern, selling something of the order of 50 million or more devices a year. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Windows 10 hits 500 million devices, growing by two-thirds in a year

LAX’s New Private Luxury Terminal For The Rich Is The Most Obnoxiously LA Thing Ever

The one thing that helped me combat my irritation at being at an airport was the knowledge that airports are the great social equalizer: generally, it doesn’t matter who you are—rich, poor, famous, normal, whatever—you still have to check-in, go through security and get on the moving sidewalks to your gate. It sucks… Read more…

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LAX’s New Private Luxury Terminal For The Rich Is The Most Obnoxiously LA Thing Ever

California utility augments 1,800 air conditioning units with “ice battery”

Ice Energy A Santa Barbara-based company called Ice Energy has partnered with NRG Energy to deliver 1,800 “ice batteries” to commercial and industrial buildings served by electric utility Southern California Edison (SCE). The units are expected to reduce air conditioning bills by up to 40 percent and eliminate 200,000 tons of CO 2 over the next 20 years. Ice Energy has been building ice-based cooling systems since the early 2000s. Much like pumped storage or compressed air “batteries,” Ice Energy essentially stores electricity by drawing power from the grid at non-peak times to freeze water in a special container. Then at peak times, when the cost of electricity is high and grid operators are struggling to keep up with demand, Ice Energy’s systems kick in and use that block of ice to cool the space that the air conditioning unit normally serves. Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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California utility augments 1,800 air conditioning units with “ice battery”

Soft, synthetic retinas may offer a better implant solution

Scientists have been trying to replace retinas in otherwise healthy eyes to help people suffering from diseases like retinitis pigmentosa. Unfortunately, earlier efforts were only able to use rigid, hard materials , which are very different from the natural retina. A researcher at Oxford University, however, has created a synthetic retina made of biological materials to better match natural human tissues. The study, titled “Light-Patterned Current Generation in a Droplet Bilayer Array” was published this April in Scientific Reports . Your retina sits at the back of your eye collecting light and converting them to electrical signals for your brain. The research, led by 24-year-old Vanessa Restrepo-Schild, uses a retina made of soft water droplets called hydrogels and biological cell membrane proteins. These cells act like pixels to detect light and create a gray scale image. It can then generate electrical signals to stimulate the neurons at the back of your eye just like a natural retina does. The artificial tissues don’t contain anything other than natural, biodegradable materials, making it less likely that recipients’ bodies will reject the implant. It’s also far less invasive than devices that reproduce the system mechanically. While the new synthetic retina has only been tested in the laboratory, Restrepo-Schild hopes to continue her research to explore its potential with living tissues. That may still be a ways off, but it could surely become a more viable way than other efforts to restore sight to people with retinal issues. Via: MedicalXpress Source: Nature.com

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Soft, synthetic retinas may offer a better implant solution

Microsoft tests a secured Edge browser for business

If the idea of a more secure Windows browser appeals to you — and why wouldn’t it — then you might want to have a peek at the latest Windows 10 Insider Preview Build . That’s because it includes the Windows Defender Application Guard for Microsoft Edge, which was announced last September but is finally available for testing today. This Application Guard essentially encases your browser in a virtual machine, so that if your browser ever gets attacked by malware, it won’t affect the rest of your PC. To enable this, you need to use the “Turn Windows features on or off” dialog, and then mark the checkbox for “Windows Defender Application Guard.” Now when you open Microsoft Edge and click on the menu, you’ll see the option for a “New Application Guard window.” Click it, and a new special isolated browser window will appear. The whole thing is possible due to the Virtualization Based Security (VBS) made possible by Windows 10. The virtual PC created by Application Guard would keep the Edge browser separate from storage, other apps and the Windows 10 kernel. Other browsers offer “sandboxes” too, but Microsoft says that Application Guard is unique because there’s a hardware container that makes it impossible for malware and other exploits to seep through. There are a couple of caveats though. Running Edge in a virtual machine will likely slow it down, and since each browser’s session is siloed, all data and cookies are lost once you close it. It’s also only available for Enterprise users for now, presumably because their security needs are much higher than the average person. Still, perhaps it could be introduced as an optional feature later on for everyday users. Aside from Application Guard, the Windows 10 Insider Preview Build also includes an improved PDF Reader for Microsoft Edge and integrated Cortana settings.

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Microsoft tests a secured Edge browser for business

18 months after discovery, the “Nintendo PlayStation” is finally working

In the nearly 18 months since a CD-ROM-based “Nintendo PlayStation” prototype was first found in an estate sale , emulator makers and homebrew programmers have created a facsimile of what CD-based games would look like on an SNES . Efforts by hacker Ben Heck to get that kind of software actually working on the one-of-a-kind hardware, though, had been stymied by problems getting the CD-ROM drive to talk to the system. Those problems are now a thing of the past. In a newly posted video , Heck lays out how the system’s CD-ROM drive suddenly started sending valid data to the system literally overnight. “I was working on this yesterday and the CD-ROM wasn’t even detecting the disc,” Heck says in the video. “I came in this morning and jiggled the cables around and got ready to work on it some more, and all of a sudden it works… did a magic elf come in overnight?” Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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18 months after discovery, the “Nintendo PlayStation” is finally working

The hijacking flaw that lurked in Intel chips is worse than anyone thought

Enlarge (credit: Intel ) A remote hijacking flaw that lurked in Intel chips for seven years was more severe than many people imagined, because it allowed hackers to remotely gain administrative control over huge fleets of computers without entering a password. This is according to technical analyses published Friday. As Ars reported Monday , the authentication bypass vulnerability resides in a feature known as Active Management Technology. AMT, as it’s usually called, allows system administrators to perform a variety of powerful tasks over a remote connection. Among the capabilities: changing the code that boots up computers, accessing the computer’s mouse, keyboard, and monitor, loading and executing programs, and remotely powering on computers that are turned off. In short, AMT makes it possible to log into a computer and exercise the same control enjoyed by administrators with physical access. AMT, which is available with many vPro processors, was set up to require a password before it could be remotely accessed over a Web browser interface. But, remarkably, that authentication mechanism can be bypassed by entering any text string—or no text at all. According to a blog post published Friday by Tenable Network Security, the cryptographic hash that the interface’s digest access authentication requires to verify someone is authorized to log in can be anything at all, including no string at all. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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The hijacking flaw that lurked in Intel chips is worse than anyone thought

‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ team says why it used Red’s 8K camera

When director James Gunn revealed that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 would be the first movie shot with Red’s 8K Weapon camera , he triggered a bit of speculation: what prompted the move beyond the incredibly high resolution? You might have a better answer today. Red has posted a behind-the-scenes look at the movie that, to no one’s surprise, talks a lot about why the Vol. 2 team shot with such relatively exotic gear. And no, it’s not just about that picture quality. As director of photography Henry Braham summarizes: the Weapon is a “large format” camera that’s simultaneously “tiny.” That let the crew shoot very detailed imagery regardless of the shot — important for a CG-heavy movie, since it maintains a consistently sharp look. They could use the same cameras for handheld close-ups or unusual rigs, such as a spider rig that flies along a wire. In short, they didn’t have to switch cameras or resort to convoluted setups. The behind-the-scenes video is undoubtedly a puff piece meant to sell you on both the camera and the movie. However, it’s also a hint as to where movie technology is going. You can expect 8K digital cameras to become more commonplace, of course, but they also promise more elaborate cinematography that might have been difficult just a few years ago. Source: Red

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‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ team says why it used Red’s 8K camera