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Social Networks

Twitter is Down [Update] 160

Posted by msmash from the outage-report dept.
Multiple users are reporting issues while trying to load Twitter. Third-party internet firm DownDetector corroborates the claim, saying more than 10,500 users have reported issues with Twitter in the last 15 minutes. (Update: 47,000+ reports in last 25 minutes). TweetDeck, a service offered by Twitter, is also facing an outage. Twitter apps are also not loading new tweets.

Update at 19:00 GMT: Twitter has acknowledged that users are facing issues accessing its service. The microblogging platform said it is investigating the matter.

Update at 20:00 GMT: In a statement, Twitter said it has resolved the issue.
Programming

Early Soyuz Spacecraft Had a Peculiar User Interface, Says Developer Charles Simonyi (ieee.org) 104

Posted by BeauHD from the computers-in-space dept.
Tekla Perry writes: When WYSIWIG pioneer Charles Simonyi went to space, he couldn't but help notice the awkward user interface on the rocket's control panel. It was a case of legacy systems, not wanting to change training and documentation, and an emulator that ran Unix on a 386 chip, he reported during a recent discussion on space software held at the Computer History Museum. "They liked the older chips because of radiation resistance and the feature set," he pointed out, noting how operation of the virtual interface was trickier than it seemed. "There are rows and columns," he said, "and you move the cursor over the button and use another button to push the virtual button."

"On the right side," he said, "there are these windows that are numbers you type in by pushing virtual buttons below them. You use the cursor keys to go to the virtual buttons then push an entry button that is virtual." He added: "You can see that even as the technology changes, they want to keep as many things the same as possible."
Education

'Daylight Savings' Is Grammatically Incorrect (qz.com) 312

Posted by msmash from the things-to-ponder dept.
A reader shares a report: We talk about time like it's money, and that may explain why we say "Daylight Savings Time," capitalizing the concept to emphasize its awesomeness. After all, who wouldn't want to be able to save hours like cash? The phrase "Daylight Savings Time," though commonly used in Australia, Canada, and the US, is technically incorrect. Time and Date, a website devoted to all things chronological, posits that the plural "savings" became popular because it's used in everyday contexts, like "savings account." The grammatically correct usage is "daylight saving time." The expression is singular and not capitalized, according to the US Government Publishing Office style guide. The GPO provides the guidance, "d.s.t., daylight saving (no 's') time."
AI

New AI Is Capable of Beating Humans At Doom (denofgeek.com) 170

Posted by BeauHD from the Skynet-approved dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Den of Geek UK: Two students at Carnegie Mellon University have designed an artificial intelligence program that is capable of beating human players in a deathmatch game of 1993's Doom. Guillaume Lample and Devendra Singh Chaplot spent four months developing a program capable of playing first-person shooter games. The program made its debut at VizDoom (an AI competition that centered around the classic shooter) where it took second place despite the fact that their creation managed to beat human participants. That's not the impressive part about this program, however. No, what's really impressive is how the AI learns to play. The creator's full write-up on the program (which is available here) notes that their AI "allows developing bots that play the game using the screen buffer." What that means is that the program learns by interpreting what is happening on the screen as opposed to following a pre-set series of command instructions alone. In other words, this AI learns to play in exactly the same way a human player learns to play. This theory has been explored practically before, but Doom is arguably the most complicated game a program fueled by that concept has been able to succeed at. The AI's creators have already confirmed that they will be moving on to Quake, which will be a much more interesting test of this technologies capabilities given that Quake presents a much more complex 3D environment.

Comment Re:A good thing? (Score 1) 160

You pointed out that all the apple articles were only from non-approved sources, so i was just pointing out that the malware from this article is also installed from non-approved sources. i didn't mention anything saying android hadn't had any other malware infections.

you want only app store apps for apple? how about this one

and here is a proof of concept showing that apple isn't immune.

BTW, that took exactly ONE SECOND of Google-ing.

Research, THEN Post. Otherwise prepare to be outed as the pompous ass you are.

Comment Re:A good thing? (Score 1) 160

well if you are going that route then it should also be pointed out that this android malware also only comes from non-approved channels

from the article:

The malware is disguised as a porn app called Porn ‘O’ Mania. The malicious app is not found on Google Play and may be downloaded from third-party app stores, forums, or torrent sites. Users who have Google Play installed are protected from this app by Verify Apps even when downloading it outside of Google Play.

sounds like the infection vector for the examples i linked above for apple are quite similar to the one for android in this article.

i don't hate apple by any means, i just don't like it when people seems to think apple is immune just because it is apple. Both this and the articles above prove that if something stupid you are going to get malware.

Comment Re:A good thing? (Score 1) 160

are you sure about that?

these were even posted to slashdot. and i am sure this isn't all of them.

225000 accounts comporised via ios malware

Apple xcodeghost malware more malicious than originally reported

Advertising malware affects non-jailbroken ios devices

apple cleaning up app store after is first major attack

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I haven't lost my mind -- it's backed up on tape somewhere.

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