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Programming

Interviews: Ask Stack Overflow Co-Founder Jeff Atwood a Question 129

Posted by samzenpus from the go-ahead-and-ask dept.
Jeff Atwood is an author, entrepreneur, and software developer. He runs the popular programming blog Coding Horror and is the co-founder of Stack Overflow and the Stack Exchange Network. In early 2012 he decided to leave Stack Exchange so he could spend more time with his family. A year later he announced his new company the Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc. and the Discourse open-source discussion platform which aims to improve conversations on the internet. Jeff has agreed to give some of his time to answer any questions you may have. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post.
Security

Three Banks Lose Millions After Wire Transfer Switches Hacked 179

Posted by Soulskill from the we're-all-choked-up,-really dept.
mask.of.sanity writes "Criminals have stolen millions from three unnamed U.S. banks by launching slow and stealthy denial of service attacks as a distraction before attacking wire payment switches. The switches manage and execute wire transfers and could have coughed up much more cash should the attackers have pressed on. RSA researcher Limor Kessem said, 'The service portal is down, the bank is losing money and reliability, and the security team is juggling the priorities of what to fix first. That's when the switch attack – which is very rare because those systems are not easily compromised [and require] high-privilege level in a more advanced persistent threat style case – takes place.'"
Movies

Ray Harryhausen, Visual Effects Master, Dies Aged 92 49

Posted by Soulskill from the rest-in-peace dept.
New submitter Diakoneo writes "According to the BBC, 'Visual effects master Ray Harryhausen, whose stop-motion wizardry graced such films as Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans, has died aged 92. The American animator made his models by hand and painstakingly shot them frame by frame to create some of the best-known battle sequences in cinema.' Some of my fondest cinematic memories from my youth are from Ray Harryhausen."

Comment Re:And yet... (Score 3, Insightful) 2987

by akzeac (#42291713) Attached to: 27 Reported Killed In Connecticut Elementary School Shooting

Yes, that's my point. Detractors of gun control are using this sensationalization to silence discussion, accusing proponents of politicizing $nearest_tragedy every time gun control gets mentioned. In two weeks somebody will considering approaching the topic and you'll see Fox News frothing at the mouth in reference to this shooting.

Comment Re:And yet... (Score 5, Insightful) 2987

by akzeac (#42290805) Attached to: 27 Reported Killed In Connecticut Elementary School Shooting

Yes, I know. It's the absolute wrong time to talk about things like this

No, it's not.

No, it's not.

Before this was the Empire State shooting. Before that, the Aurora shooting. Before that, the Tulsa shooting. Before that, the Chardon High School shooting. And that's only 2012. We're quickly coming to a state where gun control discussion is silenced the whole year because there is always a shooting nearby.

Comment Re:Long time WoW player here (Score 4, Funny) 247

by akzeac (#40765213) Attached to: <em>World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria</em> Launches On September 25

I have 5 level 80+ chars on WoW, but haven't played the game in at least a year, maybe two, and don't plan to go back to it, even for Pandas.

I seriously thought that adding Pandas was a bad case of jumping the shark

So after talking goats, walking cows, walrus men, British werewolves, zombies, vampires, zombie vampires, egyptian cat men, fungus people, bearish furbolgs, beings of energy wrapped in bandages and necromantic crow-men... you have a problem with pandas?

Comment Re:Is 2 mm accurate enough? (Score 1) 192

Eh, it depends. The Kinect has only about 1090 depth values between 30 cm and 10 meters. Most of the values are concentrated in the low range.
So yes, while at close depths you'll get a 2 mm resolution, at greater depths the discretization error becomes much higher.

Of course, the main problem is not so much the resolution, but the noise and the image size. At 1.5 meters it gets really hard to track a hand because you get very few samples with unpredictable (noisy) values. You also lose samples (or even worse, get wrong values) around the edges because of registration issues and shadows between the infrared camera and the projector (plus the registration and shadows to the RGB camera if you need the colors). And since fingers are relatively thin, edges are pretty much everywhere. Estimating five fingers under these conditions is pretty hard.
Image

365 Days of Photojournalism With Stormtroopers 30

Posted by samzenpus from the it's-good-to-have-friends dept.
Lanxon writes "Wired reports that for one French fan, the Stormtrooper has become an obsession. Stormtroopers 365 is a collection of wacky, witty, and artistic photographs that its creator Stéfan Le Dû has been adding to daily since 3 April 2009 when the project began. 'I got a new camera and I had some Stormtrooper figures sleeping in their blister packs for months. I wanted to start something a bit challenging on Flickr, and I had previously seen some awesome Star Wars toys pictures, and other "365" projects that I really liked,' he says. The two starring Stormtroopers — TK455 and TK479 — have run into cats, clocks, various household implements, and even a DeLorean sports car."

Comment Re:Obvious choice (Score 0) 481

by williamvergara (#29945982) Attached to: If I Had To Choose, I'd Be A ...

I swear, you guys... it said "IF YOU HAD TO CHOOSE". Ninja and pirate aren't valid choices.

Me, I picked vampire. They're formerly human, in possession of their facilities, don't come out in the daytime (like many of us!). Zombies are by definition stupid, Werewolves turn back into humans when there isn't a full moon and have to live with what they've become. Mummies are dead, Jim. Who wants to be dead? Necromancrs have to (UGH!) have sex with dead bodies. Ringwraiths are slaves to Mordor. Penguins either have to live in Antarctica or Africa, depending on species, and neither climate much appeals to me. Plus I'd get sick of eating nothing but fish (I bet that was what the guys at the science stations down there picked, though, especially if they run Linux). As to trolls, well, you know what I think about trolls.

I swear, you guys... it said "IF YOU HAD TO CHOOSE". Ninja and pirate aren't valid choices.

Me, I picked vampire. They're formerly human, in possession of their facilities, don't come out in the daytime (like many of us!). Zombies are by definition stupid, Werewolves turn back into humans when there isn't a full moon and have to live with what they've become. Mummies are dead, Jim. Who wants to be dead? Necromancrs have to (UGH!) have sex with dead bodies. Ringwraiths are slaves to Mordor. Penguins either have to live in Antarctica or Africa, depending on species, and neither climate much appeals to me. Plus I'd get sick of eating nothing but fish (I bet that was what the guys at the science stations down there picked, though, especially if they run Linux). As to trolls, well, you know what I think about trolls.

well, for the penguins..., u missed the Galapagos Islands. Dream weather all year long. xD

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