opinion – Page 4 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Molecular Clusters That Can Retain Charge Could Revolutionize Computer Memory

jfruh writes:Computing devices have been gobbling up more and more memory, but storage tech has been hitting its limits, creating a bottleneck. Now researchers in Spain and Scotland have reported a breakthrough in working with metal-oxide clusters that can retain their charge. These molecules could serve as the basis for RAM and flash memory that will be leagues smaller than existing components (abstract). Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DOJ Ups the Ante, Says iPhone Encryption Will Kill a Child

Here we go again. Just a few days after a former FBI agent argued that the new iOS 8 encryption would cause somebody to die , a Department of Justice boss upped the ante. At a meeting on October 1, Deputy Attorney General James Cole told a room full off Apple executives that iPhone encryption would cause a child to die. A child! Read more…

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DOJ Ups the Ante, Says iPhone Encryption Will Kill a Child

Rhode Island Comic Con Oversold, Overcrowded

New submitter RobertJ1729 writes The Rhode Island Comic Con (RICC) is in the middle of a complete meltdown as hundreds are turned away at the door or denied reentry due to the event organizers selling far more tickets than the venue can accomodate. The Providence Journal reports that “According to Providence Fire Chief David Soscia, too many people were being let in at a time and the organizers were not correctly counting them. That led to over-congested areas in the building which has a maximum capacity of 17, 000 people.” Meanwhile the Rhode Island Comic Con Facebook page is being flooded with comments from angry attendees describing chaos both inside and out of the convention center. RICC initially posted, “Hello RICC fans! WE ARE NOT OVERSOLD!, ” and promised to honor tomorrow tickets sold for today. That post generated several hundred angry comments before eventually being deleted (though it survives in part on RICC’s twitter feed). Commenters are alleging that RICC is deleting negative Facebook comments. Users are tweeting at #ricomicconfail2014 to vent their frustration. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Rhode Island Comic Con Oversold, Overcrowded

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Premieres On Linux, 2 Years After Windows

An anonymous reader writes Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has finally been released for Linux two years after its Windows debut. The game is reported to work even on the open-source Intel Linux graphics drivers, but your mileage may vary. When it comes to the AMD and NVIDIA drivers, NVIDIA continues dominating for Linux gaming over AMD with Catalyst where there’s still performance levels and other OpenGL issues. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What To Expect With Windows 9

snydeq writes: Two weeks before the its official unveiling, this article provides a roundup of what to expect and the open questions around Windows 9, given Build 9834 leaks and confirmations springing up all over the Web. The desktop’s Start Menu, Metro apps running in resizable windows on the desktop, virtual desktops, Notification Center, and Storage Sense, are among the presumed features in store for Windows 9. Chief among the open questions are the fates of Internet Explorer, Cortana, and the Metro Start Screen. Changes to Windows 9 will provide an inkling of where Nadella will lead Microsoft in the years ahead. What’s your litmus test on Windows 9? Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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What To Expect With Windows 9

Apple Outrages Users By Automatically Installing U2’s Album On Their Devices

Zanadou writes “Apple may have succeeded at breaking two records at once with the free release of U2’s latest album, titled Songs of Innocence, via iTunes. But now, it looks like it’s also on track to become one of the worst music publicity stunts of all time. Users who have opted to download new purchases to their iPhones automatically have found the new U2 album sitting on their phones. But even if iTunes users hadn’t chosen automatic downloads, Songs of Innocence will still be displayed as an “iTunes in the Cloud” purchase. That means it will still be shown as part of your music library, even if you delete all the tracks. The only way to make the U2 album go away is to go to your Mac or PC and hide all of your “iTunes in the Cloud” purchases, or to use iTunes to manually hide each track from your purchased items list. Other reactions include rapper, Tyler, The Creator, saying that having the new U2 album automatically downloaded on his iPhone was like waking up with a STD. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Apple Outrages Users By Automatically Installing U2’s Album On Their Devices

John Romero On Reinventing the Shooter

An anonymous reader writes: John Romero helped bring us Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein, but he’s also known for Daikatana — an immensely-hyped followup that flopped hard. After remaining on the periphery of game development since then, Romero announced last month that he’s coming back to the FPS genre with a new game in development. Today, he spoke with Develop Magazine about his thoughts on the future of shooters. Many players worry that the genre is stagnant, but Romero disagrees that this has to be the case. “Shooters have so many places to go, but people just copy the same thing over and over because they’re afraid to try something new. We’ve barely scratched the surface.” He also thinks the technology underpinning games matters less than ever. Romero says high poly counts and new shaders are a distraction from what’s important: good game design. “Look at Minecraft – it’s unbelievable that it was made by one person, right? And it shows there’s plenty of room for something that will innovate and change the whole industry. If some brilliant designers take the lessons of Minecraft, take the idea of creation and playing with an environment, and try to work out what the next version of that is, and then if other people start refining that, it’ll take Minecraft to an area where it will become a real genre, the creation game genre.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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John Romero On Reinventing the Shooter

The All New Moto X Arrives Later This Month For $499.99 Unlocked

Motorola is updating its flagship Moto X, and it’s an improvement that makes one of the best deals in mobile even better, even if it doesn’t completely revolutionize what came before. The original Moto X was one of the best phones last year, and despite a change in the company’s ownership from Google to Lenovo, this new Moto X looks to be a worthy successor. Google’s… Read More

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The All New Moto X Arrives Later This Month For $499.99 Unlocked

Giant Dinosaur Unearthed In Argentina

sciencehabit writes Researchers working in Argentina have discovered the most complete skeleton of a titanosaur, a group of gigantic plant-eating dinosaurs that dominated the Southern Hemisphere beginning about 90 million years ago. The new dino, named Dreadnoughtus schrani, was 26 meters long and weighed about 59 metric tons—that is, twice as long as Tyrannosaurus rex and as heavy as a herd of elephants. That puts it on a par with other well-known giants such as Argentinosaurus (but it’s four times as large as the perhaps better known Diplodocus). The researchers say that the beast was so big it would have had no fear of predators. And it was about to get bigger: A close examination of the fossils, especially its back and shoulder bones, indicates that the animal was still growing when it died. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Giant Dinosaur Unearthed In Argentina

Connected Collar Lets Your Cat Do the War-Driving

MojoKid (1002251) writes “Security researcher Gene Bransfield, with the help of his wife’s grandmother’s cat, decided to see how many neighborhood WiFi access points he could map and potentially compromise. With a collar loaded with a Spark chip, a Wi-Fi module, a GPS module, and a battery, Coco the cat helped Gene identify Wi-Fi networks around the neighborhood and then reported back. The goal here is obvious: Discover all of the unsecured, or at least poorly-secured, wireless access points around the neighborhood. During his journey, Coco identified dozens of Wi-Fi networks, with four of them using easily-broken WEP security, and another four that had no security at all. Gene has dubbed his collar the “WarKitteh”, and it cost him less than $100 to make. He admits that such a collar isn’t a security threat, but more of a goofy hack. Of course, it could be used for shadier purposes.” (Here’s Wired’s article on the connected cat-collar.) Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Connected Collar Lets Your Cat Do the War-Driving