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An Anonymous Coward writes:

The Guardian:

Vladimir Putin gave his clearest signal yet that he aims to break up the global nature of the internet when he branded the network a "CIA project" on Thursday.

The Russian president told a media conference in St Petersburg that America's overseas espionage agency had originally set up the internet and was continuing to develop it.

Putin has long hinted that he wants a Russian-run alternative.

Original Submission

Woods writes:

Announced today on StarWars.com:

Actors John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, and Max von Sydow will join the original stars of the saga, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, and Kenny Baker in the new film.

Director J.J. Abrams says, "We are so excited to finally share the cast of Star Wars: Episode VII. It is both thrilling and surreal to watch the beloved original cast and these brilliant new performers come together to bring this world to life, once again. We start shooting in a couple of weeks, and everyone is doing their best to make the fans proud."

Star Wars: Episode VII is being directed by J.J. Abrams from a screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan and Abrams. Kathleen Kennedy, J.J. Abrams, and Bryan Burk are producing, and John Williams returns as the composer. The movie opens worldwide on December 18, 2015.

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

A robotic space plane is flying in Low Earth orbit and nobody knows why.

While intelligence gathering is widely regarded as the best explanation, no one can say for certain what it could be.

"That question implies that it has a single, rational mission. And I don't think it does," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org.

[...] The Secure World Foundation, a non-profit based in Broomfield, Colo., published a 2010 report on the craft. It speculated the space plane's most likely purpose was for intelligence gathering and said the vessel had a low probability of other uses, such as satellite repair.

Whatever its real purpose, the X-37B has very real capabilities. It travels low in orbit, staying around 177 to 804 kilometres above the Earth at a cruising speed of about 17,500mph (28,163kph).

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Nerdfest writes:

An outrageous, insightful, and sadly accurate commentary on programming, I found this an extremely entertaining read and agree with most of it. It doesn't offer solutions, but certainly highlights a lot of the problems.

"Double you tee eff?" you say, and start hunting for the problem. You discover that one day, some idiot decided that since another idiot decided that 1/0 should equal infinity, they could just use that as a shorthand for "Infinity" when simplifying their code. Then a non-idiot rightly decided that this was idiotic, which is what the original idiot should have decided, but since he didn't, the non-idiot decided to be a dick and make this a failing error in his new compiler. Then he decided he wasn't going to tell anyone that this was an error, because he's a dick, and now all your snowflakes are urine and you can't even find the cat.

Personally, I think things will only get better (including salaries) when software development is treated like other engineering disciplines.

Original Submission

Papas Fritas writes:

Oklahoma inmate Clayton Lockett died during a botched execution [reuters.com] on Tuesday, minutes after a doctor had called a halt to the procedure, raising more questions about new death penalty cocktails used by the state and others. Thirteen minutes after a doctor administered a lethal injection at the state's death chamber in McAlester, Lockett lifted his head and started mumbling. The doctor halted the execution, said state corrections department spokesman Jerry Massie. Lockett died of an apparent massive heart attack about 40 minutes after the procedure started, he said. "We believe that a vein was blown and the drugs weren't working as they were designed to. The director ordered a halt to the execution," Massie said. The troubled execution was expected to have national implications, with lawyers for death row inmates having argued that new lethal injection cocktails used in Oklahoma and other states could cause undue suffering and violate constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. [...]

[...]Oklahoma had set up a new lethal injection procedure and cocktail of chemicals earlier this year after it was no longer able to obtain the drugs it had once used for executions. "After weeks of Oklahoma refusing to disclose basic information about the drugs for tonight's lethal injection procedures, tonight Clayton Lockett was tortured to death," said Madeline Cohen, an attorney for Warner. Oklahoma and other states have been scrambling to find new suppliers and chemical combinations after drug makers, [nytimes.com] mostly in Europe, imposed sales bans because they objected to having medications made for other purposes being used in lethal injections.[...]

[...] Lockett, 38, was convicted of first-degree murder, rape, kidnapping and robbery [tulsaworld.com] for a 1999 crime spree with two co-defendants. He was found to have shot teen-ager Stephanie Nieman and buried her alive in a shallow grave where she eventually died.

Do you think this is torture, or simply a successful execution?
What alternative execution methods would you prefer to see?

Original Submission

Woods writes:

Google gives us an update on their latest self-driving car escapades. Make sure you check out the video in the article [blogspot.com] for a look at how the car handles various situations thrown at it.

Jaywalking pedestrians. Cars lurching out of hidden driveways. Double-parked delivery trucks blocking your lane and your view. At a busy time of day, a typical city street can leave even experienced drivers sweaty-palmed and irritable. We all dream of a world in which city centers are freed of congestion from cars circling for parking [accessmagazine.org] and have fewer intersections made dangerous by distracted drivers. That's why over the last year we've shifted the focus of the Google self-driving car project onto mastering city street driving.[...]

[...] We've improved our software so it can detect hundreds of distinct objects simultaneously-pedestrians, buses, a stop sign held up by a crossing guard, or a cyclist making gestures that indicate a possible turn. A self-driving vehicle can pay attention to all of these things in a way that a human physically can't-and it never gets tired or distracted.

Would you trust your kids crossing the road with autonomous cars driving in the area?
What if you had an emergency situation and needed the car to hurry up and get you to the hospital in a traffic jam?

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An anonymous Soylentil asks:

My ad-supported Kindle's buttons are dying, so I'm in the market for a new eBook reader. I figured the upcoming sales would be a good time to buy one. To my surprise, eBook readers seem to be regressing rather than advancing.

My hard requirements are:

1. e-Ink display
2. Text-to-speech
3. Doesn't need company's software to transfer books.

My preferred features include:

1. Good PDF support. I want to read technical books on it, something I can't do with the Kindle.
2. Stable software
3. Doesn't spy on everything you do. Kindles track absolutely everything.
4. Support for multiple voices. The same voice gets annoying after a few books.

I'm unable to find anything which fulfills all those conditions. Any recommendations? Before you say smartphone, it needs an e-Ink display. Are smartphones and tablets killing eBook readers?

Original Submission