feed on feeds - 2016/01/06 - items 0 to 15

Two detainees of Yemeni origin to be resettled in the west African nation after spending years in the notorious prison.

coondoggie writes: The Airbus anti-drone system employs infrared cameras, radar technology and sensors to spot and track drones over six miles away, the company says. If the incoming drone is considered suspicious, the system can use electronic signals to jam the drone's communications and more: “Based on an extensive threat library and real-time analysis of control signals, a jammer interrupts the link between drone and pilot and/or its navigation. Furthermore, the direction finder tracks the position of the pilot who subsequently can be dealt with by law enforcement. Due to the Smart Responsive Jamming Technology developed by Airbus Defence and Space, the jamming signals are blocking only the relevant frequencies used to operate the drone while other frequencies in the vicinity remain operational. Since the jamming technology contains versatile receiving and transmitting capabilities, more sophisticated measures like remote control classification and GPS spoofing can be utilized as well. This allows effective and specific jamming and, therefore, a takeover of the UAV,” the company stated.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This week my development work has been entirely made up of what I call tight corners. Places where very small amounts of code and data are changing, but every change could easily bring the whole house of cards down, crashing all around you. You have to try to put it back together with pieces scattered all over creation.

But if it goes just right, at every step, when you're done, everything still works as it did before, and you got something new out of it. The new version of the software can do something important that the old version couldn't.

This happens often when you're trying not to break users. You want the new version to work for them, without forcing any kind of conversion. This time I did that especially carefully because I was the main user of the old version. If I broke it, my website would break. So avoiding breakage was mandatory.

This explains the primary rule at UserLand, it was called Rule 1. Don't break users. And Rule 1a, which was even more primal: Don't break Dave. We had to have this rule because I spent the first few years of UserLand being broken by devs. Finally I decided it wasn't acceptable. I wanted a different culture. And devs will always try to talk their way out of tight corners, if they can get away with it.

PS: When I posted the first version of this post, the software failed dramatically. Heh. Serves me right for being too confident. Quickly fixed, knock wood. Even so there are lots of loose-ends to clean up, as there always are after working your way out of a tight corner.

An anonymous reader writes: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings announced at CES that the service had gone live in 130 additional countries including India, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. He called the expansion "the birth of a global TV network." Partnering with LG, the company hopes to expand its reach by providing prepaid access worldwide. China remains the most notable holdout for the streaming service but Hastings is hopeful saying, "We are continuing to work on that and we are very patient."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

UK researchers cite promising signs of 1,000-year-old Anglo Saxon treatment against drug-resistant bacterial infection.

If you make your living in the Apple world as a consultant, developer, designer, or tech, there are a wide variety of conferences you can attend to hone your skills, learn new topics, network with your fellow wizards, and generally open your mind to new ways of thinking. Here’s the list for 2016 and be sure to let us know if you run across any others.

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Api.ai makes an Android voice-controlled utility called Assistant. I have it on my Android phone. It is one of many simiar apps, and I have been trying them a little at a time. Are any of them as good as Siri? Let's just say, "Quality varies." And Android voice assistants aren't the point of this interview, anyway. It's more about the process of developing interactive, voice-based IO systems. This whole voice/response thing is an area that's going to take off any year now -- and has been in that state for several decades -- but may finally be going somewhere, spurred by intense competition between the many companies working in this field, including Ilya's.