Text and Data Mining (TDM): Copyright in Europe about to change to allow it?

The possibility of performing TDM in scientific research could drive a Copyright change in Europe to avoid having to ask authors for permission:
http://www.nature.com/news/europe-proposes-copyright-reform-to-help-scientists-mine-research-papers-1.20606


Quoting:
"Software can rapidly analyse millions of online articles and data sets at speeds humans can’t match, an activity known as text and data mining (TDM). Scientists hope that this could reveal patterns in scientific knowledge and generate new hypotheses."

Raspberry Pi ideas

Interesting ideas to try with a Raspberry Pi:
http://www.itpro.co.uk/mobile/21862/raspberry-pi-top-21-projects-to-try-yourself
Catchy ones include:
- The cat feeder
- The connected photo frame
- The home sound system

About dash cameras | Arstechnica

Something to mount in cara and that will probably become mainstream (as it is already in Russia), if your country's laws allows it:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/09/caught-in-the-act-how-and-why-you-should-invest-in-a-dash-cam/?comments=1

TIP: Export More than 1000 Issues to Excel from Issue Navigator in JIRA Cloud - Atlassian Documentation

JIRA is a well known issue tracker (now it's more than this but...) and sometimes you need to export some issue list to Excel in order to handle it more easily (filter, count, graph, etc.).
Unfortunately only the first 1000 issues will get into the resulting downloaded Excel file.
With this trick, several exports can be (manually) appended to the initial Excel:

Export More than 1000 Issues to Excel from Issue Navigator in JIRA Cloud - Atlassian Documentation

Tip Summary: Append "&pager/start=1000" (or 2000, 3000, etc.) to the Export to XLS (all fields) URL.
Control click on the export option to see the URL being opened (and to be able to edit it). Typically it will open in a new Tab in your browser with the URL to be edited.

The World's First Website Went Online 25 Years Ago [August 6, 1991]

Interesting piece of history, including photos and screen shots:
On This Day 25-years Ago, The World's First Website Went Online

The site is still online here:
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

A malware hard to detect

Apparently it took millions to develop. And who has millions to spend on such a thing?
http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/08/researchers-crack-open-unusually-advanced-malware-that-hid-for-5-years/
Quoting:
"Because of the way the software was written, clues left behind by ProjectSauron in so-called software artifacts are unique to each of its targets. That means that clues collected from one infection don't help researchers uncover new infections. Unlike many malware operations that reuse servers, domain names, or IP addresses for command and control channels, the people behind ProjectSauron chose a different one for almost every target."


Report (PDF): https://securelist.com/files/2016/07/The-ProjectSauron-APT_research_KL.pdf

Inside 'No Man's Sky,' the Most Innovative Game in Years

The king of the games? And an interesting trend / novelty (procedural generation):

• Inside 'No Man's Sky,' the Most Innovative Game in Years

Quoting:
"That led Murray and his colleagues to the idea of a sci-fi game built upon real-world equations for describing natural objects. Instead of handcrafting every planet, moon and star in No Man’s Sky, Hello Games inserts formulae that tell an algorithm what planets, moons and stars should look like or how they ought to behave. In mathematics that’s called “procedural generation,” and it’s essentially a way to get massive output (a universe) from relatively bargain basement input (some numbers). Imagine DNA-like super-equations capable of sparking the fabric of space-time itself."

Now that Freebase closed, what are the options?

Freebase is allowing a last full dump download (30GB), here.
Now that it closed, what are the options? Seems like:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikidata
• https://developers.google.com/knowledge-graph/

Nintendo shares are falling... Who really earns from the Pokemon Go madness?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2016/07/25/nintendo-does-not-deserve-most-of-the-credit-for-pokemon-gos-success/#442ddb1b33e9

The Pokemon Go Madness and some implementation details

Some highways are already displaying statements as "DON'T POKEMON AND DRIVE" (as if it was needed). People are joining in groups to hunt for Pokemons (even in remote locations on cities - which is not advisable), accidents have already happened (and people died because of it).
And the game came out only a few days ago.

Some details on how the locations were chosen is provided here in this interview:
http://mashable.com/2016/07/10/john-hanke-pokemon-go/#rd_te_ukomqN

Industrial security report (2016)

Interesting report on industrial security:
https://securelist.com/analysis/publications/75343/industrial-cybersecurity-threat-landscape/


PS. Kudos to JMM for pointing this out.

The code that took America to the moon was just published to GitHub, and it’s like a 1960s time capsule — Quartz

Just "forwarding" this article on this very interesting piece of human history. It includes:
Assembly code, scanned and retyped a few years later with some unreadable parts filled in, apparently correctly. And it shows some parts of the code with some humorous comments and even Shakespeare on it.
Great article, great stuff:
The code that took America to the moon was just published to GitHub, and it’s like a 1960s time capsule — Quartz

A video on some emulator can be seen here:
https://youtu.be/hyhI85Rd1kI

The source code is published here:
https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11/

PS. Kudos to Álvaro for pointing this one out; updated: 2016-08-04 - Added VCS address.

Microsoft proposes Web Logs to help on cancer diagnosis

Screening for Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma Using Signals From Web Search Logs: Feasibility Study and Results


here:
http://m.jop.ascopubs.org/content/early/2016/06/02/JOP.2015.010504.full?version=meter+at+8&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=https%253A%252F%252Ft.co%252FQjr4hXSyxi&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click

Linkedin sucks?

Well I'm having less and less doubts these days. Received the email and still... Digesting it:
http://m.techgig.com/tech-news/editors-pick/parm=44277?mailer_id=2646&utm_source=Mailer&utm_medium=TG_batch&utm_campaign=digest_news_2016-05-27&etoken=cGZzaWx2YUBnbWFpbC5jb20=&activity_name=MTMwOTA2&template_type=3&dt=&auto_login=lKaUjJKbhWOnk7@@OkG6EkpNlR0eASYJcXXFUV1dlR0eASYJWWHNZWV1cWVt0&src_type=autoLogin

Windows 10 FAQ | The Guardian

An interesting FAQ with links about Windows 10 upgrade and also talking of deprecated features:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2016/may/26/10-quick-questions-about-installing-windows-10-and-how-to-block-it

Who is doing self-driving cars and how do they work

With sensors, actuators and... Software of course.
Interesting article on the state of the art and how do they work:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/26/self-driving-cars-whos-building-them-and-how-do-they-work

Best VPN Services | PCMag

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2403388,00.asp?mailing_id=1825356&mailing=SecurityWatch&mailingID=D38C7109779FF73CBB7ABC2B5739266E

Why use a VPN?
Quoting:
"Most of us understand that we should use an antivirus utility to protect against ransomware and the other malicious tools used by hackers and scammers. But less well known is the humble virtual private network, or VPN. These services keep your Web traffic safe from scammers, hackers, and government snoops. If you ever use an unsecured public Wi-Fi network, this is an essential tool."

UTIL: Street View "player"

A google street view player is an interesting "service" a friend of mine pointed me to this week.
Cool:
http://www.brianfolts.com/driver/#origin=40.200369%2C+-8.500405&destination=40.198107%2C+-8.512873&fps=1&travelmode=DRIVING&rn=

5 man-year to optimize strings?

The always insightful Java Performance Tuning newsletter has one interesting piece on Java strings:
http://www.javaperformancetuning.com/news/news185.shtml


"For JDK 9, Oracle has targeted improving String in this way. Analysis
of String indicates that most Strings are ascii, so Oracle have changed
String to use a byte array instead of a char array. To make this work
efficiently without impacting String performance across all it's uses,
took 5 man years to achieve. In the news items, you can find Aleksey
Shipilev's fascinating talk about exactly why it took so much effort."

Windows 10 IoT

Old news but still news for me:
http://m.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/21/first_look_windows_10_iot_core_on_raspberry_pi_2/
Quoting:
"A good effort, if a bit odd: Windows 10 IoT Core on Raspberry Pi 2:
The question is, does the Pi really need Windows? Microsoft has released a preview of Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2, the £30 ARMv7 computer board produced by the Cambridge-based Raspberry Pi Foundation."


PS. Link for download: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=48232

Kids and Programming

An interesting trend I am also investing in:
https://www.microsoft.com/en/mobile/experiences/manfredi/?dcmpid=omc-app-lht.6148842..6148926
Quoting:
"Learning to code is just as important as learning any other science, and when you show the kids how to do it, they begin to see everything in a whole new way. We generally start with algorithms, cycles, and the ‘if’ condition. Nothing too hard in the beginning because the main goal is to show the kids that coding is about building something new, and that the creative possibilities are endless."


PS. FFR is also the Windows 10 Internet of Things core that can be put to run in a Raspberry Pi.


"

About MS profits

Microsoft presents a detailed inside view of its profits (contrarily to some other companies like Apple). The Office division (Business division) continues to be the golden egg chicken, which surprises some people.

Here are some of the interesting details on an old report I've crossed my eyes recently:
http://www.tannerhelland.com/4993/microsoft-money-updated-2013/ (based on the information publicly available at http://www.microsoft.com/investor/SEC/default.aspx?year=2013)

2015 data:
https://www.microsoft.com/investor/SEC/default.aspx?year=2015

OS Market Share Statistics

Statististics come in all flavours. Also the techniques used to gather data could vary and sometimes be questionable. But if you read between the lines interesting trends and data can for sure be extracted.

Some recent statistics on OS market Shares inlcude:

• https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0
• http://www.statista.com/statistics/268237/global-market-share-held-by-operating-systems-since-2009/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems

Using Audacity to backup non-digital sources

Audacity is a freeware recording software. It can be used for converting your tapes to digital. here's how:
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/record.html
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/quick_help.html

The gender code study

... not peer reviewed:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/women-better-code-men-github-study-a6870836.html
Direct link to the study:
https://peerj.com/preprints/1733.pdf

Lumberyard: Game engine by Amazon?

A game engine by Amazon is an interesting trend:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2499031,00.asp