Slashdot Mirror

Nerval's Lobster writes "Location is everything when choosing the site of a data center. Firms such as Microsoft and Google and Facebook spend a lot of time looking into the costs of land, power, regulation and taxes before placing their respective data centers in a particular place. Sometimes, that local tax bill comes into play in a big way. Just ask the National Security Agency which learned it faces a multimillion-dollar annual state tax on the power consumed by its new data center in Camp Williams, south of Salt Lake City. The Salt Lake Tribune obtained a series of email exchanges between the feds and the state, with the NSA protesting a $2.4 million tax on its annual power expenditure, pegged at about $40 million. Harvey Davis, director of installations and logistics for the NSA, sent a letter (subsequently quoted by the newspaper) to state officials that made the logistics argument: 'Long-term stability in the utility rates was a major factor in Utah being selected as our site for our $1.5bn construction at Camp Williams. HP325 [the new law] runs counter to what we expected.'" This would be the data center William Binney et al claim is logging almost all domestic communication.

First time accepted submitter ectoman writes "A third party steps into a financial transaction to make sure all parties exchange funds at the same time and as expected. Can you patent this process? What if the third party is a computer? Rob Tiller, vice president and general counsel for Red Hat, details a recent court ruling on this very matter—one that has critical implications for the future of software patents, and one that divided the judges involved. Tiller writes that: 'The judges mostly agreed that the idea of managing settlement risk with a third party was abstract such that by itself it could not be patented. They differed, though, on whether using a general purpose computer for managing settlement risk meant that the patents avoided invalidity based on abstraction.' Interestingly, some judges suggested that a computer becomes a 'new machine' every time it loads different software."

benrothke writes "Had Locked Down: Information Security for Lawyers not been published by the American Bar Association (ABA) and 2 of its 3 authors not been attorneys; one would have thought the book is a reproach against attorneys for their obliviousness towards information security and privacy. In numerous places, the book notes that lawyers are often clueless when it comes to digital security. With that, the book is a long-overdue and valuable information security reference for anyone, not just lawyers." Read below for the rest of Ben's review. Locked Down: Information Security for Lawyers author Sharon Nelson, David Ries, John Simek pages 319 publisher American Bar Association rating 9/10 reviewer Ben Rothke ISBN 978-1614383642 summary Required reading for all lawyers Such a title is needed as the legal field has embraced digital technology. Wireless (often insecure) networks are pervasive in corporate offices throughout legal America.

The underlying problem is that while attorneys often know the intricacies of tort law, court proceedings and the like; they are utterly unaware of the information security and privacy risks surrounding the very technologies they are using. In many firms, the lawyers think that someone is protecting their data, but don't understand their requirements around those areas of data protection.

Legal IT systems are a treasure trove of personal data. Many small law firms are extremely attractive to identity thieves gives their systems have significant amount of personal information via social security numbers, credit card information, birth dates, financial information and much more. Small law firms are notorious for weak information security controls and attackers will scan those systems and networks for vulnerabilities.

A pervasive aspect of the book is ABA rule 1.6 regarding the confidentiality of information regarding client-lawyer relationships. The rule requires that a lawyer not reveal information relating to the representation of a client unless the client gives informed consent. The lawyer though can reveal information relating to the representation of a client to the extent the lawyer reasonably believes necessary. The myriad details of 1.6 can be left to the bar association to enforce, suffice to say that a lawyer can find themselves on the wrong side of the law if they are not careful with information security controls.

The authors note that although lawyers are all well aware of rule 1.6, the challenge is how to keep client data secure in the digital age. In a world of paper, things were much easier and cheaper This is why the authors note that so many otherwise competent layers fails so miserably in reference to their duty to maintain the confidentiality of digital client data.

The book quotes an ABA 2011 technology survey in which 21% of large law firms reported that their firm had experiences some sort of security breach, and 15% of all firms reported that they suffered a security breach. It is figures like those which show that attorneys really need to read this book and take the information to heart.

The books 17 chapters are in a readable 150 pages, with an additional 120 pages of appendices. Written in an easily understandable style and non-technical for the technologically challenge lawyer.

When it comes to the security of client data, in chapter 4 the authors write that encryption is a topic that most attorneys don't want to touch with a ten-foot pole. But it has reached a point where attorneys must understand how and when encryption should be used. Just as important, they need to know about key managements, and what good encryption is. The chapter provides a high-level detail on what needs to be done regarding encryption.

Chapter 13 is on secure disposal, is an important topic to everyone, and not just lawyers. Digital media needs to be effectively disposed of; and for many lawyers, they often think that means reformatting a hard drive or simply erasing files. The chapter effectively details the issues and offers numerous valuable hardware and software-based solutions.

Chapter 14 on outsourcing and cloud computing is an area where too many attorneys are oblivious to of the security and privacy risks. For example, the authors advise attorneys against the use of the free Gmail service since the terms of service allow Google to do anything it wants with the data. That opens a Pandora's Box when it comes to securing client data. The authors advise to use premium Google business versions, so attorneys can stay in control of their data with added security and privacy features.

Two omissions in chapters 13 and 14 are that the authors don't reference NAID (National Association for Information Destruction) or the CSA (Cloud Security Alliance (CSA).

Firms that outsource their digital disposal to non-NAID certified firms run the risk of having a glorified recycler do their work. As to NAID, it is an international trade association for companies providing information destruction services. NAIDs mission is to promote the information destruction industry and the standards and ethics of its member companies; while the mission of the CSA is to promote the use of best practices for providing security assurance within cloud computing and to provide education on the uses of cloud computing to help secure all other forms of computing.

The authors include many real-world stories and case law to reinforce their point.

The book closes with a number of appendices on various rules from the FTC, state information protection regulations, the SANS Institute glossary of security terms and more.

For the lawyer looking for an easy to read introduction to nearly everything they need to know about information security and privacy, the book is a great resource.

The book closes with the note that since lawyers have an ethical duty to protect their client's data, they have no choice but to keep themselves as well educated as possible.

For the attorney that wants to ensure their requirements remain current and are looking for an easy to read introduction about information security and privacy Locked Down: Information Security for Lawyers should be considered required reading.

Reviewed by Ben Rothke.

You can purchase Locked Down: Information Security for Lawyers from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

benrothke writes "Had Locked Down: Information Security for Lawyers not been published by the American Bar Association (ABA) and 2 of its 3 authors not been attorneys; one would have thought the book is a reproach against attorneys for their obliviousness towards information security and privacy. In numerous places, the book notes that lawyers are often clueless when it comes to digital security. With that, the book is a long-overdue and valuable information security reference for anyone, not just lawyers." Read below for the rest of Ben's review. Locked Down: Information Security for Lawyers author Sharon Nelson, David Ries, John Simek pages 319 publisher American Bar Association rating 9/10 reviewer Ben Rothke ISBN 978-1614383642 summary Required reading for all lawyers Such a title is needed as the legal field has embraced digital technology. Wireless (often insecure) networks are pervasive in corporate offices throughout legal America.

The underlying problem is that while attorneys often know the intricacies of tort law, court proceedings and the like; they are utterly unaware of the information security and privacy risks surrounding the very technologies they are using. In many firms, the lawyers think that someone is protecting their data, but don't understand their requirements around those areas of data protection.

Legal IT systems are a treasure trove of personal data. Many small law firms are extremely attractive to identity thieves gives their systems have significant amount of personal information via social security numbers, credit card information, birth dates, financial information and much more. Small law firms are notorious for weak information security controls and attackers will scan those systems and networks for vulnerabilities.

A pervasive aspect of the book is ABA rule 1.6 regarding the confidentiality of information regarding client-lawyer relationships. The rule requires that a lawyer not reveal information relating to the representation of a client unless the client gives informed consent. The lawyer though can reveal information relating to the representation of a client to the extent the lawyer reasonably believes necessary. The myriad details of 1.6 can be left to the bar association to enforce, suffice to say that a lawyer can find themselves on the wrong side of the law if they are not careful with information security controls.

The authors note that although lawyers are all well aware of rule 1.6, the challenge is how to keep client data secure in the digital age. In a world of paper, things were much easier and cheaper This is why the authors note that so many otherwise competent layers fails so miserably in reference to their duty to maintain the confidentiality of digital client data.

The book quotes an ABA 2011 technology survey in which 21% of large law firms reported that their firm had experiences some sort of security breach, and 15% of all firms reported that they suffered a security breach. It is figures like those which show that attorneys really need to read this book and take the information to heart.

The books 17 chapters are in a readable 150 pages, with an additional 120 pages of appendices. Written in an easily understandable style and non-technical for the technologically challenge lawyer.

When it comes to the security of client data, in chapter 4 the authors write that encryption is a topic that most attorneys don't want to touch with a ten-foot pole. But it has reached a point where attorneys must understand how and when encryption should be used. Just as important, they need to know about key managements, and what good encryption is. The chapter provides a high-level detail on what needs to be done regarding encryption.

Chapter 13 is on secure disposal, is an important topic to everyone, and not just lawyers. Digital media needs to be effectively disposed of; and for many lawyers, they often think that means reformatting a hard drive or simply erasing files. The chapter effectively details the issues and offers numerous valuable hardware and software-based solutions.

Chapter 14 on outsourcing and cloud computing is an area where too many attorneys are oblivious to of the security and privacy risks. For example, the authors advise attorneys against the use of the free Gmail service since the terms of service allow Google to do anything it wants with the data. That opens a Pandora's Box when it comes to securing client data. The authors advise to use premium Google business versions, so attorneys can stay in control of their data with added security and privacy features.

Two omissions in chapters 13 and 14 are that the authors don't reference NAID (National Association for Information Destruction) or the CSA (Cloud Security Alliance (CSA).

Firms that outsource their digital disposal to non-NAID certified firms run the risk of having a glorified recycler do their work. As to NAID, it is an international trade association for companies providing information destruction services. NAIDs mission is to promote the information destruction industry and the standards and ethics of its member companies; while the mission of the CSA is to promote the use of best practices for providing security assurance within cloud computing and to provide education on the uses of cloud computing to help secure all other forms of computing.

The authors include many real-world stories and case law to reinforce their point.

The book closes with a number of appendices on various rules from the FTC, state information protection regulations, the SANS Institute glossary of security terms and more.

For the lawyer looking for an easy to read introduction to nearly everything they need to know about information security and privacy, the book is a great resource.

The book closes with the note that since lawyers have an ethical duty to protect their client's data, they have no choice but to keep themselves as well educated as possible.

For the attorney that wants to ensure their requirements remain current and are looking for an easy to read introduction about information security and privacy Locked Down: Information Security for Lawyers should be considered required reading.

Reviewed by Ben Rothke.

You can purchase Locked Down: Information Security for Lawyers from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

According to reports a bush fire burned down John McAfee's home in Belize on Thursday. The local fire department was unable to to contain the blaze and the the two main buildings were completely destroyed. Property Manager Noel Codd (who was not there at the time) estimated the value of the buildings at $250,000 each. Despite the reported cause of the fire, McAfee says that the destruction of his compound was no accident. We caught up with him to talk about why he thinks the fire was set and what he plans to do now. Read below to see what he had to say. samzenpus: What have you been told about the fire and what do you think happened?

McAfee: Well, the investigators say that it was arson, in spite of the local police saying that it was a brush fire. People don't set brush fires in high winds, so this was the last of the properties. The government took everything away from me. I mean they've got so blatant that at the very end they were coming in, in broad daylight and carrying off, you know, millions of dollars worth of electronic gear and camera gear. And one time they took 300 stun guns that I was going to give to the police department, in broad daylight. But one property was not in my name, and that was the one at the river. And so, finally in one last desperate attempt to get at me, they just set fire to my two major buildings. It was at least a half a million dollars worth of buildings plus art work and invaluable items on the inside that all went up in smoke. But there it is.

samzenpus: Was anyone living there?

McAfee: Just a caretaker.

samzenpus: And he's okay?

McAfee: The caretaker was not there at the time.

samzenpus: This was your last property in Belize?

McAfee: That was my last property in Belize, went up in smoke. It's a very freeing sensation to have no burdensome taxes to pay or wages for upkeep and electricity and what have you. So they did me a favor.

samzenpus: Did anyone see anything suspicious or anyone hanging around?

McAfee: The police have actually arrested a couple of people. But if they're the ones who started the fire, they have nothing to do with it really. Just someone, you know, paid them $25 to "go and set that house on fire." The people responsible, I know who they are, and they're the same ones who've been responsible for taking all of my stuff since I was in Belize. And now there's nothing left for them to take. They must be pretty pissed off.

samzenpus: They haven't said anything to you directly or anything of course?

McAfee: No, of course not. And once I left the country, all attempts to do any formal charges simply disappeared because there was no way that they could do any formal charges. They had no evidence. They had nothing on me other than I refused to give a $2 million donation back in 2012. You know, so all they can do now is cause me a little bit of chaos and inconvenience, which I think they can cause me no more now.

According to reports a bush fire burned down John McAfee's home in Belize on Thursday. The local fire department was unable to to contain the blaze and the the two main buildings were completely destroyed. Property Manager Noel Codd (who was not there at the time) estimated the value of the buildings at $250,000 each. Despite the reported cause of the fire, McAfee says that the destruction of his compound was no accident. We caught up with him to talk about why he thinks the fire was set and what he plans to do now. Read below to see what he had to say. samzenpus: What have you been told about the fire and what do you think happened?

McAfee: Well, the investigators say that it was arson, in spite of the local police saying that it was a brush fire. People don't set brush fires in high winds, so this was the last of the properties. The government took everything away from me. I mean they've got so blatant that at the very end they were coming in, in broad daylight and carrying off, you know, millions of dollars worth of electronic gear and camera gear. And one time they took 300 stun guns that I was going to give to the police department, in broad daylight. But one property was not in my name, and that was the one at the river. And so, finally in one last desperate attempt to get at me, they just set fire to my two major buildings. It was at least a half a million dollars worth of buildings plus art work and invaluable items on the inside that all went up in smoke. But there it is.

samzenpus: Was anyone living there?

McAfee: Just a caretaker.

samzenpus: And he's okay?

McAfee: The caretaker was not there at the time.

samzenpus: This was your last property in Belize?

McAfee: That was my last property in Belize, went up in smoke. It's a very freeing sensation to have no burdensome taxes to pay or wages for upkeep and electricity and what have you. So they did me a favor.

samzenpus: Did anyone see anything suspicious or anyone hanging around?

McAfee: The police have actually arrested a couple of people. But if they're the ones who started the fire, they have nothing to do with it really. Just someone, you know, paid them $25 to "go and set that house on fire." The people responsible, I know who they are, and they're the same ones who've been responsible for taking all of my stuff since I was in Belize. And now there's nothing left for them to take. They must be pretty pissed off.

samzenpus: They haven't said anything to you directly or anything of course?

McAfee: No, of course not. And once I left the country, all attempts to do any formal charges simply disappeared because there was no way that they could do any formal charges. They had no evidence. They had nothing on me other than I refused to give a $2 million donation back in 2012. You know, so all they can do now is cause me a little bit of chaos and inconvenience, which I think they can cause me no more now.

Nerval's Lobster writes "Yahoo has agreed to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion. As you know, Yahoo is a major corporation with a need to monetize its assets in a way that makes its shareholders happy, leaving open the question of whether it'll alter Tumblr's DNA in order to make the latter more of a significant cash generator. But at least for the moment, Yahoo seems content to leave its new property alone. 'Per the agreement and our promise not to screw it up, Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business,' read the company's press release. 'The product, service and brand will continue to be defined and developed separately with the same Tumblr irreverence, wit, and commitment to empower creators.' Tumblr CEO David Karp, who has been known to make some very anti-advertising comments in the past, will remain in place. Even so, anyone who likes Tumblr may have some cause for concern, because Yahoo has a history of making high-profile acquisitions that subsequently implode. Back in 1999, for example, it paid over $3 billion for GeoCities, another blogging network that it eventually shut down after years of failing the update the property. In 2005, it acquired popular photo-sharing Website Flickr, which it likewise allowed to languish and die. That same year it bought Delicious, a popular Webpage-bookmarking site, and did exactly nothing with it. So when Yahoo starts off its Tumblr press release with a promise not to screw things up, it's a self-deprecating nod toward all that history. New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has been on a bit of a buying spree of late, snatching up startups such as Summly in an attempt to make her company 'cool' and relevant."

Nerval's Lobster writes "Yahoo has agreed to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion. As you know, Yahoo is a major corporation with a need to monetize its assets in a way that makes its shareholders happy, leaving open the question of whether it'll alter Tumblr's DNA in order to make the latter more of a significant cash generator. But at least for the moment, Yahoo seems content to leave its new property alone. 'Per the agreement and our promise not to screw it up, Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business,' read the company's press release. 'The product, service and brand will continue to be defined and developed separately with the same Tumblr irreverence, wit, and commitment to empower creators.' Tumblr CEO David Karp, who has been known to make some very anti-advertising comments in the past, will remain in place. Even so, anyone who likes Tumblr may have some cause for concern, because Yahoo has a history of making high-profile acquisitions that subsequently implode. Back in 1999, for example, it paid over $3 billion for GeoCities, another blogging network that it eventually shut down after years of failing the update the property. In 2005, it acquired popular photo-sharing Website Flickr, which it likewise allowed to languish and die. That same year it bought Delicious, a popular Webpage-bookmarking site, and did exactly nothing with it. So when Yahoo starts off its Tumblr press release with a promise not to screw things up, it's a self-deprecating nod toward all that history. New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has been on a bit of a buying spree of late, snatching up startups such as Summly in an attempt to make her company 'cool' and relevant."

Nerval's Lobster writes "Yahoo has agreed to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion. As you know, Yahoo is a major corporation with a need to monetize its assets in a way that makes its shareholders happy, leaving open the question of whether it'll alter Tumblr's DNA in order to make the latter more of a significant cash generator. But at least for the moment, Yahoo seems content to leave its new property alone. 'Per the agreement and our promise not to screw it up, Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business,' read the company's press release. 'The product, service and brand will continue to be defined and developed separately with the same Tumblr irreverence, wit, and commitment to empower creators.' Tumblr CEO David Karp, who has been known to make some very anti-advertising comments in the past, will remain in place. Even so, anyone who likes Tumblr may have some cause for concern, because Yahoo has a history of making high-profile acquisitions that subsequently implode. Back in 1999, for example, it paid over $3 billion for GeoCities, another blogging network that it eventually shut down after years of failing the update the property. In 2005, it acquired popular photo-sharing Website Flickr, which it likewise allowed to languish and die. That same year it bought Delicious, a popular Webpage-bookmarking site, and did exactly nothing with it. So when Yahoo starts off its Tumblr press release with a promise not to screw things up, it's a self-deprecating nod toward all that history. New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has been on a bit of a buying spree of late, snatching up startups such as Summly in an attempt to make her company 'cool' and relevant."

Pirate Bay Founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg is to be tried starting tomorrow in Sweden, after his indictment last month for computer hacking and fraud. Wikileaks has released several documents related to his detention and the associated charges. From the summary of this material: "This material includes inter alia the interrogations with GSW and his co-accused, internal correspondence from the Swedish Foreign Minister and the Swedish embassy in Cambodia, damage assessment reports by the companies and the authorities concerned, and correspondence between GSW and Kristina Svartholm and the Swedish prison authorities. The material is formally public, but the Swedish prosecution authority has refused to provide the documents in digital format. Photocopying this volume of paper costs around £350." Notable is the refusal of Warg's request to obtain a graphing calculator while in prison.

Nerval's Lobster writes that a survey from the Uptime Institute "suggests something it calls 'green fatigue' is setting in when it comes to making data centers greener. 'Green fatigue' is exactly as it sounds: managers are getting tired of the increasingly difficult race to chop their PUE, or Power Usage Effectiveness. The PUE is a measure of a data center's efficiency. The lower the PUE, the better — and Microsoft and Google, with nearly limitless resources, have set the bar so high (or low, depending on your perspective) that it's making less-capitalized firms frustrated. Just a few years ago, the Uptime Institute estimated that the average PUE of a data center was around 2.4, which meant for every dollar of electricity to power a data center, $1.4 dollars were spent to cool it. That dropped to 1.8 recently, an improvement to be sure. But then you have companies such as Google and Microsoft building data centers next to rivers for cheap hydroelectric power in remote parts of the Pacific Northwest and reporting insanely low PUEs (below 1.1 in some cases). The Institute latest survey of data center operators shows only 50 percent of respondents in North America said they considered energy efficiency to be very important to their companies, down from 52 percent last year and 58 percent in 2011."

LeadSongDog writes "The Globe and Mail is reporting that the 'Pebble' smartwatch has matched the $15M record for Kickstarter funding after initially being panned by the VC crowd." One advantage that the Pebble has over rumored watches from big names like Google and Apple is existing.

LeadSongDog writes "The Globe and Mail is reporting that the 'Pebble' smartwatch has matched the $15M record for Kickstarter funding after initially being panned by the VC crowd." One advantage that the Pebble has over rumored watches from big names like Google and Apple is existing.

An anonymous reader writes "In a decision that's almost certainly going to result in this issue heading up to the Supreme Court, the Federal 1st Circuit Court of Appeals [Friday] ruled that police can't search your phone when they arrest you without a warrant. That's contrary to most courts' previous findings in these kinds of cases where judges have allowed warrantless searches through cell phones." (But in line with the recently mentioned decision in Florida, and seemingly with common sense.)

Nerval's Lobster writes "At this week's Google I/O in San Francisco, Google CEO Larry Page stood onstage and took unscripted questions from an auditorium of conference attendees. That's an unusual move for any chief executive, the sort of thing that risks giving their PR people a heart attack. But Page wasn't up there to offer insights into strategy or drop hints about upcoming products: he wanted to talk about how negativity in the tech industry stood in the way of innovation. 'Despite the faster change we have in the industry, we're still moving slow relative to the opportunities that we have,' he said. 'And some of that, I think, has to do with the negativity. Every story I read about Google, it's us versus some other company or some stupid thing.' Being negative, he added, is not how the tech industry makes progress. But minutes later, Page couldn't resist swiping at Oracle and Microsoft. And Google's battles are just one small element in the circular firing squad that comprises most of the tech industry: Apple versus Google versus Samsung versus Microsoft versus Oracle versus Salesforce versus lots of little startups. Those battles won't fade away anytime soon, because corporations have one goal: profit. And so long as other rivals' technological innovations or marketplace maneuvers stand in the way of that profit, the lawsuits and the CEO sniping will continue. The part of Page's talk that centered on peace and love played well to the audience at Google I/O; but it's easier to argue that the true mode of the tech industry, at its core, is Darwinian competition. Do you agree?"

hypnosec writes "Mozilla is not going ahead with its plans to block third-party cookies by default in the Beta version of its upcoming Firefox 22. Mozilla needs more time to analyze the outcome of blocking these cookies. The non-profit organization released Firefox Aurora on April 5 with a patch by Jonathan Mayer built into it which would only allow cookies from those websites which the user has visited. The patch would block the ones from sites which hadn't been visited yet. The reason for Mozilla's change in plans is that they're currently looking into 'false positives.' If a user visits one part of a group of site, cookies from that part will be allowed, but cookies from related sites in the group may be blocked, and they're worried it will create a poor user experience. On the other side of the coin, there are 'false negatives.' Just because a user may have visited a particular site doesn't mean she is comfortable with the idea of being tracked."

sciencehabit writes "If you are one of the 20% of healthy adults who struggle with basic arithmetic, simple tasks like splitting the dinner bill can be excruciating. Now, a new study suggests that a gentle, painless electrical current applied to the brain can boost math performance for up to 6 months. Researchers don't fully understand how it works, however, and there could be side effects." We've covered various other potential benefits to having your brain shocked.

sciencehabit writes "If you are one of the 20% of healthy adults who struggle with basic arithmetic, simple tasks like splitting the dinner bill can be excruciating. Now, a new study suggests that a gentle, painless electrical current applied to the brain can boost math performance for up to 6 months. Researchers don't fully understand how it works, however, and there could be side effects." We've covered various other potential benefits to having your brain shocked.

Nerval's Lobster writes "But at this year's Google I/O conference in San Francisco, Google announced that it has a plan to make Google Plus users more engaged, courtesy of new features backed by a handful of data-analytics tricks. Google Plus postings now feature Google-generated hashtags that, when clicked, direct the user to related content from across their network. From a backend-infrastructure perspective, that sort of thing leans heavily on Google's semantic analysis and the ability to make the right connections between various pieces of data. Google Plus will also automatically highlight certain photos out of dozens or even hundreds of shots. Say you went on vacation to India and took some photos of your significant other in front of the Taj Mahal; Google Plus will leverage its database of information to recognize that as a prominent landmark and pluck those photos out of the pile as 'special.' In the words of that posting on the Google+ Blog: 'Your darkroom is now a Google data center.' Are all these nifty, analytics-intensive features enough to change the larger fortunes of Google Plus? That's the big question. Google has a handsome-looking platform, one that performs certain activities with a high degree of polish and zip—but is that enough to counter Facebook?"

Founded just to cover the SCO/Caldera UNIX lawsuits back in 2003, Groklaw has proven itself a great place to read and discuss many of the major tech trials since. And today, it turns ten: "We made it. A decade of Groklaw as of today. Who'd a thunk it? Not I. When I started, I thought I'd do a little fiddling around for a couple of months to learn how to blog. But then all you guys showed up and taught me some important things that I didn't know, and vice versa I hope, and here we are, on our 10th anniversary, still going strong, together on a very different path than I originally imagined. The important moment for me was when I realized the potential we had as a group and decided to try to surf this incredible wave all of you created by contributing your skills and time. I saw we could work as a group, explain technology to the legal world so lawyers and judges could make better decisions, and explain the legal process to techies, so they could avoid troubles and also could be enabled to work effectively to defend Free and Open Source Software from cynical 'Intellectual Property' attacks from the proprietary world." This despite a smear campaign by SCO and nearly shutting down in 2009. And it's archived in the Library of Congress.

Founded just to cover the SCO/Caldera UNIX lawsuits back in 2003, Groklaw has proven itself a great place to read and discuss many of the major tech trials since. And today, it turns ten: "We made it. A decade of Groklaw as of today. Who'd a thunk it? Not I. When I started, I thought I'd do a little fiddling around for a couple of months to learn how to blog. But then all you guys showed up and taught me some important things that I didn't know, and vice versa I hope, and here we are, on our 10th anniversary, still going strong, together on a very different path than I originally imagined. The important moment for me was when I realized the potential we had as a group and decided to try to surf this incredible wave all of you created by contributing your skills and time. I saw we could work as a group, explain technology to the legal world so lawyers and judges could make better decisions, and explain the legal process to techies, so they could avoid troubles and also could be enabled to work effectively to defend Free and Open Source Software from cynical 'Intellectual Property' attacks from the proprietary world." This despite a smear campaign by SCO and nearly shutting down in 2009. And it's archived in the Library of Congress.

Founded just to cover the SCO/Caldera UNIX lawsuits back in 2003, Groklaw has proven itself a great place to read and discuss many of the major tech trials since. And today, it turns ten: "We made it. A decade of Groklaw as of today. Who'd a thunk it? Not I. When I started, I thought I'd do a little fiddling around for a couple of months to learn how to blog. But then all you guys showed up and taught me some important things that I didn't know, and vice versa I hope, and here we are, on our 10th anniversary, still going strong, together on a very different path than I originally imagined. The important moment for me was when I realized the potential we had as a group and decided to try to surf this incredible wave all of you created by contributing your skills and time. I saw we could work as a group, explain technology to the legal world so lawyers and judges could make better decisions, and explain the legal process to techies, so they could avoid troubles and also could be enabled to work effectively to defend Free and Open Source Software from cynical 'Intellectual Property' attacks from the proprietary world." This despite a smear campaign by SCO and nearly shutting down in 2009. And it's archived in the Library of Congress.

Founded just to cover the SCO/Caldera UNIX lawsuits back in 2003, Groklaw has proven itself a great place to read and discuss many of the major tech trials since. And today, it turns ten: "We made it. A decade of Groklaw as of today. Who'd a thunk it? Not I. When I started, I thought I'd do a little fiddling around for a couple of months to learn how to blog. But then all you guys showed up and taught me some important things that I didn't know, and vice versa I hope, and here we are, on our 10th anniversary, still going strong, together on a very different path than I originally imagined. The important moment for me was when I realized the potential we had as a group and decided to try to surf this incredible wave all of you created by contributing your skills and time. I saw we could work as a group, explain technology to the legal world so lawyers and judges could make better decisions, and explain the legal process to techies, so they could avoid troubles and also could be enabled to work effectively to defend Free and Open Source Software from cynical 'Intellectual Property' attacks from the proprietary world." This despite a smear campaign by SCO and nearly shutting down in 2009. And it's archived in the Library of Congress.

Newegg's policy of not backing down from patent trolls, even ones as large as Alcatel-Lucent, continues to result in victory. Earlier this year, Overstock and Newegg successfully defended themselves with a jury invalidating Alcatel-Lucent's main patent used to force companies as large as Amazon to settle. Naturally, Alcatel-Lucent appealed, but the appeals court quickly ruled in favor of Newegg and Overstock.com. From Ars: "Federal Circuit judges typically take months, and occasionally years, to review the patent appeals that come before them. Briefs in this case were submitted last year, and oral arguments were held last Friday, May 10. The three-judge panel upheld Newegg's win (PDF), without comment — in just three days. ... Alcatel-Lucent dropped the case over its other two patents, desperate to get back the '131 patent that Newegg and Overstock had killed at trial. 'If they had been able to revive this patent, the litigation machine would have continued on,' Reines told Reuters after the win."

theodp writes "In 'The Design That Conquered Google,' The New Yorker's Matt Buchanan reports that 'cards' — modeled after real cards — are set to become one of the dominant ways in which Google presents certain types of information to users. The power of a card as a visual-organization metaphor according to Matias Duarte (lead designer of Android), is that 'it makes very clear the atomic unity of things; it's still flexible while creating a kind of regularity.' Hey, maybe that Bill Atkinson was really on to something with that dadgum HyperCard software of his back in the '80s!"

ananyo writes "D-Wave, the small company that sells the world's only commercial quantum computer, has just bagged an impressive new customer: a collaboration between Google, NASA and the non-profit Universities Space Research Association. The three organizations have joined forces to install a D-Wave Two, the computer company's latest model, in a facility launched by the collaboration — the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab at NASA's Ames Research Center. The lab will explore areas such as machine learning — useful for functions such as language translation, image searches and voice-command recognition. The Google-led collaboration is only the second customer to buy computer from D-Wave — Lockheed Martin was the first."

WheezyJoe writes "A story on NPR reports that the TrackingPoint rifle went on sale today, and can enable a 'novice' to hit a target 500 yards away on the first try. The rifle's scope features a sophisticated color graphics display (video). The shooter locks a laser on the target by pushing a small button by the trigger... But here's where it's different: You pull the trigger but the gun decides when to shoot. It fires only when the weapon has been pointed in exactly the right place, taking into account dozens of variables, including wind, shake and distance to the target. The rifle has a built-in laser range finder, a ballistics computer and a Wi-Fi transmitter to stream live video and audio to a nearby iPad. Every shot is recorded so it can be replayed, or posted to YouTube or Facebook."

danomac writes "Canipre, a Canadian anti-infringement enforcement company, has been using photos on their official website without permission. This company hopes to bring U.S.-style copyright lawsuits to Canada, and they are the company behind Voltage's current lawsuits. It says right on their website, 'they all know it's wrong, and they're still doing it' overlaid on top of the image used without permission. Multiple photos from different photographers are used; none of them with permission. Canipre's response? 'We used a third party vendor to develop the website and they purchased images off of an image bank,' they said, trying to pass the blame to someone else. Some of the photos were released under the Creative Commons, meaning they could have used the photos legally if they'd provided proper attribution."

Nerval's Lobster writes "The United States with its H-1B controversy isn't the only country going through that sort of immigration upheaval. As the cult of entrepreneurship spirals upward in Europe, the intricate vagaries of immigration policy on the continent are being newly scrutinized by our company-building classes. Freshly venture-backed European Internet companies want talent, and they are going to remarkable lengths to get it — but not always legally. Milo Yiannopoulos talked to whole bunch of entrepreneurs and investors in Europe about the fudges, shortcuts, workarounds and, in some cases, 'strategic decision-making' are — just about — getting their companies the talent they need. For example, one well-known Parisian venture capitalist told Milo that he knows of 'at least nine' startups in France employing developers illegally, keeping them off the books not only to avoid France's notoriously onerous labor laws but also because it would have been impossible, or simply too expensive, to import them officially."

Nerval's Lobster writes "The United States with its H-1B controversy isn't the only country going through that sort of immigration upheaval. As the cult of entrepreneurship spirals upward in Europe, the intricate vagaries of immigration policy on the continent are being newly scrutinized by our company-building classes. Freshly venture-backed European Internet companies want talent, and they are going to remarkable lengths to get it — but not always legally. Milo Yiannopoulos talked to whole bunch of entrepreneurs and investors in Europe about the fudges, shortcuts, workarounds and, in some cases, 'strategic decision-making' are — just about — getting their companies the talent they need. For example, one well-known Parisian venture capitalist told Milo that he knows of 'at least nine' startups in France employing developers illegally, keeping them off the books not only to avoid France's notoriously onerous labor laws but also because it would have been impossible, or simply too expensive, to import them officially."

Nerval's Lobster writes "The United States with its H-1B controversy isn't the only country going through that sort of immigration upheaval. As the cult of entrepreneurship spirals upward in Europe, the intricate vagaries of immigration policy on the continent are being newly scrutinized by our company-building classes. Freshly venture-backed European Internet companies want talent, and they are going to remarkable lengths to get it — but not always legally. Milo Yiannopoulos talked to whole bunch of entrepreneurs and investors in Europe about the fudges, shortcuts, workarounds and, in some cases, 'strategic decision-making' are — just about — getting their companies the talent they need. For example, one well-known Parisian venture capitalist told Milo that he knows of 'at least nine' startups in France employing developers illegally, keeping them off the books not only to avoid France's notoriously onerous labor laws but also because it would have been impossible, or simply too expensive, to import them officially."

msm1267 writes "There are a lot of echoes of the disclosure debate in the current discussions about vulnerability exploit sales. The commercial exploit market has developed relatively quickly, at least the public portion of it. Researchers have been selling vulnerabilities to a variety of buyers – government agencies, contractors, other researchers and third-party brokers – for years. But it was done mostly under cover of darkness. Now, although the transactions themselves are still private, the fact that they're happening, and who's buying (and in some cases, selling) is out in the open. As with the disclosure debate, there are intelligent people lining up on both sides of the aisle and the discussion is generating an unprecedented level of malice."

Google's I/O annual conference is ramping up at San Francisco's Moscone Center. Last year, in the conference keynote, the company took its biggest-yet dive into hardware when it introduced the Nexus 7 tablet, Google Glass, and the ill-fated Nexus Q. The secret is out on Glass, of course: this year, there's a pavilion inside the conference center where I'm sure they'll be showing off applications for it. (Quite a few of the people in the endless lines here are wearing their own, too.) Anticipating the announcements at I/O is practically its own industry, but it's easy to guess that there will be announcements from all the major pots in which Google has its many thousands of (tapping) fingers. Android, search, Chrome, mapping, and all the other ways in which the behemoth of Mountain View is watching what you do. You can watch the keynote talk (talks, really) streamed online from the main conference link above, but this story will be updated with highlights of the announcements, as well with stories that readers contribute. Update: 05/15 16:22 GMT by T : Updates below. Update: 05/15 19:02 GMT by T :Update details: Notes (ongoing) added below on maps, gaming, the Play store, Google+, and more. And, notable, Larry Page is (at this writing) on stage, with an unannounced Q & A session. Front Matter

After some splashy demos of Android apps and Chrome (Pong played with active windows as the playing pieces is one that stuck out) Vic Gundotra, Senior VP opens the show. Welcomes the 6000 people here, and 40,000 people at viewing parties world wide. (More than a million on YouTube, he says.)

Introduces Sundar Pichai SVP: Android, Chrome, Apps, who reviews the time since the PC revolution: Most people used Windows, boring form factors. Starting seven or so years ago, phones, tablets, etc, really jumped. Two pictures from St. Peter's Basilica: John Paul II's funeral, vs. announcement of new pope: In the first, one person is taking a photo with a clamshell phone; in the second, everyone has a phone or tablet out to record the event. Chrome, he says, is now the most popular browser in the world.

Then it's time for more splashy demo: map shows how much of the world has a penetration of less than 10 percent. Bringing the next four and a half billion" online the next theme.

New Android features and APIs:

Hugo Barro, VP, Product Management Android, shows off some of the new features for developers:

• First, an improved Google Maps Android API (v2), with 3-D building outlines, fast scrolling, etc. A fused location provider, more battery efficient, faster -- should mean less waiting for GPS signals etc. for mapping.
• A new API for activity recognition uses various sensors etc. to track and notice things like whether a user is driving, walking, or doing other activities. Looks both very useful and a bit scary; opt-out needs some attention on this front!
• Google+ sign-in updates and cross-platform single-sign-in. Now users "don't have to remember to find and install" certain apps, because signing in and downloading it on one device can activate doing the same on linked devices.
• Google Cloud Messaging came out last year; this year, it's been updated to give more upstream capabilities. Lets you push data from a service to an app. Upstream messaging, GCM to send messages. Syncs notifications (good for developers, but also for users: if you dismiss a notification on one device, it goes away on all account-linked devices.)

Barro also introduces Google Play game services, and some of its features:

• Cloud save; you can finish a game level on one device, and pick up on it on another.
• Achievements, leaderboards to connect players. Demos with World of Goo, shows how one can instantly check one's status among friends (fun), and globally (humbling) for a particular game.
• Multi-player. Feature announced to huge applause, but demo failed, despite the intent to overcome the very things that make multiplayer games hard for mobile. (This room, he says, isn't very "network friendly" -- true, but then, neither is a huge chunk of the world.)

Shows off a new IDE, Android Studio (big applause, just at the name) for a quick demo. Has some neat features; colors used in code, for instance are parsed and shown in thumbnail next to the line that contains it. Devices' screens can be demoed instantly, on the developer's desktop screen, so developers can see how an app will appear on different sized devices, and in different languages, useful for internationalization and cross-platform building.

For a few dollars more (per month)

Chris Yerga, Engineering Director for Android's most exciting announcement: Google Play Music All Access. This is a $9.99/month subscription service, with a 30-day free trial, launching today. Hook: if you start by June 30th, $7.99.

It's an online streaming music app, music organizer, and music suggestion engine.

Personalized recommendations based on listening habits, and eavesdropping on opted-in friends' lists. Yergo demonstrates that the playlist which it can create shows the *upcoming* choices that the AI bots at Google think you'll want to listen to; the look into the upcoming playlist got many happy shouts, even more so when he shows unwanted items in that list just being wiped off the list with gestures.

Linus on Chrome

(Sorry, not that Linus.) Linus Upson talked about Chrome, and focused on APIs for mobile web. Started with JavaScript speed improvements; says Javascript can be now rendered 57 percent faster through optimizations than this time last year, with "tons more optimizations to come."

Notes that When you download a web page, more than 60pct of the stuff downloaded is images and shows some examples of WebP - open source, royalty-free compression -- with similar quality image compression results at 30+ percent smaller than JPEG. It features like transparency, metadata, etc, and "unfortunately also animated images." But video is the real hog; more than animated cat pictures, there's a need to make video smaller. Upson shows H.264 vs VP9 -- for the demo video shown, 343 vs 125MB for equivalent quality; this will be rolling out for YouTube later this year.

Shows a data compression proxy tool with a user-facing chart on Chrome for Mobile, shows how much data you're using (or saving) by turning on a remote data compression tool.

Another: Using HTML5 autocomplete spec, shows a simple checkout system vs. the typical complex one required to buy from any online merchant with whom a user does not already have an account. "Chrome already knows all your payment information," he says. "This is going to make shopping from your phone much, much easier." (And scarier, IMO.)

Cool Chrome demo: Racer: a Multi player, multi-platform game experiment; stylized, overhead view of a slot-car racing setup; all you need to play is a device running Chrome. (Players have only one thing to control: their cars' speed. Go too fast on a curve, and the car flies off.( The coolest part of the demo, is that various devices places next to each other (tables of various sizes, phones) combine to form a single playing screen across the devices.

Mark of the friendly beast, now for kids!

Chris Yerga back on stage to introduce Google Play for Education. Launching in the fall (apps being accepted starting this summer), for "awesome K-12 apps." This is a single purpose, curated sub-store, with all apps intended for primary and secondary education, and approved by / endorsed by groups of teachers, "because teachers trust other teachers," with apps from private developers, schools, government entities like NASA. Sounds nice, in some ways, but also takes every kid in the schools covered having a Google account, and being part of Google groups. This will take a lot of opt-in-by-proxy. Google does a lot of things well, but should kids be required to have accounts with a particular company to use software required for education? Even with vetting, malware in this context looks particularly troubling.

6,000 new toys, all alike.

Looks like attendees at this year's I/O will land a Pixel laptop running ChromeOS.

Google+ at the age of a late-stage toddler

New design for Google+, and "41 new features," rolling out this afternoon.

User-facing features included Animated sliding menus, animated windows, and other such UI candy.

More depth to be made available through automatic tagging applied by Google to posts; "We also then rank and search the entire universe of Google Plus content, and we rank it just for you."

This automatic hashtagging includes not just text scanning for content, but image recognition; coupled with landmark recognition engine that already exists, a photo of the Eiffel tower is automatically recognized; clicking on that photo can being you to more Eiffel-tower related photos. A little spooky.

You will always have the option of telling Google, either on a particular post, or globally" whether you want to opt-out of all this automatic scanning, tagging, and ranking.

Re: richer communications: "Frankly, even Google's services have been fragmented." Introducing today, new Google+ Hangout app, broken out from general Google+ service. Demo shows how new standalone app by default shows a list of conversations, "not contacts." Group or one-on-one. Contacts are "one tap away," if you want a different lens. The conversations can be long lasting; you can have a group conversation with lots of people, photos, etc. "Of course we give you the ability to turn off history!" Photos attached to conversations are stored in albums. Shown (the slipped-in applause line) on iOS, in a web browser, and on Android.

New features include, too, group video at no charge. And, with the tagline "your darkroom is now a datacenter," cloud-based photo management, with tools for photo retouching and editing, not just storage / backup.

New Auto-Enhance tool which throws photos against a wall of image enhancement algorithms (for tonal distribution, noise reduction, vignetting, sharpening, etc.) A bit like Instagram in simplicity, but with the intent to make photos look "just right" rather than "vintage." Slightly creepy, to have the equivalent of an automatic airbrush on photos.

Somewhat creepier, an automatic highlights-reel creator that does a different kind of automatic enhancement: feed it a few hundred photographs, and AI bots look for smiling faces, good focus, etc, and Google tells you which ones to leave on the cutting-room floor. A nice triage step, but one that will need human scanning in case your opinion differs from the Google AI.

Finally, Auto Awesome: "creates a new image that did not exist!" -- scans for similar, related photos, creates mini movies of them.

The available gratis storage for Google accounts has this week gone to 15 GB rather than free. That will be a lot of storage for some people (my mom), not so much for others (you know who you are). All these neat back-end photo enhancement tools require as much bandwidth as it takes to transmit your photos up and down whatever pipe you're using for that, though. Local photo manipulation isn't going away; it's just being nudged gently by the online adjuncts.

OK computer

Amit Singhal announces what he says is "the end of search as we know it"; the upshot is moving to natural language (whether typed ina search box or spoken into a mic), emphasizing intuition and eroding the need for special searching tricks.

Coolest new thing about search: Search by voice coming to all platforms via Chrome. Talk to your computer; let google answer.

Cards (cute, compact single-topic search result capsules) were shown last year, but now enhanced with more categories and examples -- things like games, books, and public transit commute times.

Search & Assist VP Johanna Wright steps up to demo this voice feature, labeled "Hotwording." "OK Google, show me things to do in Santa Cruz" gets search results richer than plain google search, and "OK Google, how far is it from here?" Gets a link to directions and map, Google Maps' version is the nicely formatted direction source, but the search results include other on-topic hits, too. I can see some SNL sketches showing everyone mumbling to Google as they walk down the street, on Segways, wearing Glass headsets. "OK Google ... OK Google ... "

You are here, or you are someplace else.

Daniel Graf on next generation of google aps for mobile. Last December, they launched maps on iPhone: "sleek, beautiful, and let's not forget, accurate." [Laughline] Today, announcement / sneak peak at next gen version (due out this summer), for both Android and iOS. "Let's go on a little walk in San Francisco."

3D buildings, smooth scrolling, and a 5-star rating system now integrated across all map products -- phone, web, etc -- as a first-class option.

Also -- nice, but a little pat -- integrating "The Zagat experience" integrated with maps searches, too; because "it's nice to have an expert opinion." Also integrated, and in my view also a bit off-putting, special offers related to searches. Starbucks is one company in on this action "but there are many many more."

Fun stats: Over a million transit stops. 50 billion km of turn-by-turn directions for bikes.

Adding live coverage of incident alerts around the world. Dynamic rerouting; if something happens ahead on a scheduled route, navigation app for smart phones will alert the user.

Mobile today, just just about phones, too: brand now, fully-integrated map interface for tablets. "Explore" option lets you browse maps through categories like Eat, Relax, etc. Empashsis on exploration and discovery.

Adding more and more inside views for buildings.

Maps now better labeled, and more directly -- no more jillions of pins to mouse-over for pop-ups. Searching maps integrating more social data (like looking for places that friends have reviewed positively), and many more businesses now have fly-through photo imagery available.

Public transit options much more prominent, directly on map when looking for directions. Most exciting to me, the new scheduling visualizer shows when trains, buses, ferries, etc. will be leaving, and how long each trip takes. Beautiful Gantt-chart UI; simple, scrollable timelines.

More and more interior imagery (inside St. Peter's, etc), but (biggest crowd pleasing moment so far), you can also zoom out as well as in, until you get to a whole Earth globe, from space. Spinnable, with physics. And those clouds? The gloating announcement "Those are in real time." The fawning and clapping continue, as even more zoom continues. View the earth in Eclipse, the Milky Way, etc. Jaw-dropping as a browser-based experience.

Heeeeeere's Larry!

Larry Page's voice is softer and more labored, but he's on stage talking, to great applause.

On the future of Google Fiber, Larry says: "from an engineering standpoint, it's kind of a no-brainer." In a sense, most of the computers we have in the world, most of them are in people's shouses; msot fo them can't be used for anything useful." (I'll take that as creative license.)

"We need these low latency connections that operate a computer speed, no matter what that is."

Encourages other companies to do more things "outside their comfort zone," with both Fiber and Gmail as an example. Cross-pollication. "Almost every time we've tried to something crazy, we've made progress."

Has some politic but unflattering things to say about Oracle, but hedges on the question of how Oracle's tightening control on Java affects Android.

Page made at least five references to untapped efficiencies in transportation; I keep expecting Elon Musk to drive up the auditorium's center aisle in a Tesla in Google Street View livery.

Healthcare: Why are people so cagey about medical history? Insurance, he surmises -- afraid they don't be covered. "We should change the rules around insurance, so they have to insure people," he says, drawing great applause. DNA Sequencing, we're all gonna have that, it'll cost a dollar ..." To a followup question, he says that he has nothing to announce on this front from Google, though. On the company's own health care initaitves? "We had Google Health, we didn't make that much proress on it ... [It's only] one percent of where we can be."

On women in the development community: Says this is a serious concern. He and Sergey, he says, want "to make sure out company doesn't end up all male." Encouraging young girls to be interested is the key.

Google's I/O annual conference is ramping up at San Francisco's Moscone Center. Last year, in the conference keynote, the company took its biggest-yet dive into hardware when it introduced the Nexus 7 tablet, Google Glass, and the ill-fated Nexus Q. The secret is out on Glass, of course: this year, there's a pavilion inside the conference center where I'm sure they'll be showing off applications for it. (Quite a few of the people in the endless lines here are wearing their own, too.) Anticipating the announcements at I/O is practically its own industry, but it's easy to guess that there will be announcements from all the major pots in which Google has its many thousands of (tapping) fingers. Android, search, Chrome, mapping, and all the other ways in which the behemoth of Mountain View is watching what you do. You can watch the keynote talk (talks, really) streamed online from the main conference link above, but this story will be updated with highlights of the announcements, as well with stories that readers contribute. Update: 05/15 16:22 GMT by T : Updates below. Update: 05/15 19:02 GMT by T :Update details: Notes (ongoing) added below on maps, gaming, the Play store, Google+, and more. And, notable, Larry Page is (at this writing) on stage, with an unannounced Q & A session. Front Matter

After some splashy demos of Android apps and Chrome (Pong played with active windows as the playing pieces is one that stuck out) Vic Gundotra, Senior VP opens the show. Welcomes the 6000 people here, and 40,000 people at viewing parties world wide. (More than a million on YouTube, he says.)

Introduces Sundar Pichai SVP: Android, Chrome, Apps, who reviews the time since the PC revolution: Most people used Windows, boring form factors. Starting seven or so years ago, phones, tablets, etc, really jumped. Two pictures from St. Peter's Basilica: John Paul II's funeral, vs. announcement of new pope: In the first, one person is taking a photo with a clamshell phone; in the second, everyone has a phone or tablet out to record the event. Chrome, he says, is now the most popular browser in the world.

Then it's time for more splashy demo: map shows how much of the world has a penetration of less than 10 percent. Bringing the next four and a half billion" online the next theme.

New Android features and APIs:

Hugo Barro, VP, Product Management Android, shows off some of the new features for developers:

• First, an improved Google Maps Android API (v2), with 3-D building outlines, fast scrolling, etc. A fused location provider, more battery efficient, faster -- should mean less waiting for GPS signals etc. for mapping.
• A new API for activity recognition uses various sensors etc. to track and notice things like whether a user is driving, walking, or doing other activities. Looks both very useful and a bit scary; opt-out needs some attention on this front!
• Google+ sign-in updates and cross-platform single-sign-in. Now users "don't have to remember to find and install" certain apps, because signing in and downloading it on one device can activate doing the same on linked devices.
• Google Cloud Messaging came out last year; this year, it's been updated to give more upstream capabilities. Lets you push data from a service to an app. Upstream messaging, GCM to send messages. Syncs notifications (good for developers, but also for users: if you dismiss a notification on one device, it goes away on all account-linked devices.)

Barro also introduces Google Play game services, and some of its features:

• Cloud save; you can finish a game level on one device, and pick up on it on another.
• Achievements, leaderboards to connect players. Demos with World of Goo, shows how one can instantly check one's status among friends (fun), and globally (humbling) for a particular game.
• Multi-player. Feature announced to huge applause, but demo failed, despite the intent to overcome the very things that make multiplayer games hard for mobile. (This room, he says, isn't very "network friendly" -- true, but then, neither is a huge chunk of the world.)

Shows off a new IDE, Android Studio (big applause, just at the name) for a quick demo. Has some neat features; colors used in code, for instance are parsed and shown in thumbnail next to the line that contains it. Devices' screens can be demoed instantly, on the developer's desktop screen, so developers can see how an app will appear on different sized devices, and in different languages, useful for internationalization and cross-platform building.

For a few dollars more (per month)

Chris Yerga, Engineering Director for Android's most exciting announcement: Google Play Music All Access. This is a $9.99/month subscription service, with a 30-day free trial, launching today. Hook: if you start by June 30th, $7.99.

It's an online streaming music app, music organizer, and music suggestion engine.

Personalized recommendations based on listening habits, and eavesdropping on opted-in friends' lists. Yergo demonstrates that the playlist which it can create shows the *upcoming* choices that the AI bots at Google think you'll want to listen to; the look into the upcoming playlist got many happy shouts, even more so when he shows unwanted items in that list just being wiped off the list with gestures.

Linus on Chrome

(Sorry, not that Linus.) Linus Upson talked about Chrome, and focused on APIs for mobile web. Started with JavaScript speed improvements; says Javascript can be now rendered 57 percent faster through optimizations than this time last year, with "tons more optimizations to come."

Notes that When you download a web page, more than 60pct of the stuff downloaded is images and shows some examples of WebP - open source, royalty-free compression -- with similar quality image compression results at 30+ percent smaller than JPEG. It features like transparency, metadata, etc, and "unfortunately also animated images." But video is the real hog; more than animated cat pictures, there's a need to make video smaller. Upson shows H.264 vs VP9 -- for the demo video shown, 343 vs 125MB for equivalent quality; this will be rolling out for YouTube later this year.

Shows a data compression proxy tool with a user-facing chart on Chrome for Mobile, shows how much data you're using (or saving) by turning on a remote data compression tool.

Another: Using HTML5 autocomplete spec, shows a simple checkout system vs. the typical complex one required to buy from any online merchant with whom a user does not already have an account. "Chrome already knows all your payment information," he says. "This is going to make shopping from your phone much, much easier." (And scarier, IMO.)

Cool Chrome demo: Racer: a Multi player, multi-platform game experiment; stylized, overhead view of a slot-car racing setup; all you need to play is a device running Chrome. (Players have only one thing to control: their cars' speed. Go too fast on a curve, and the car flies off.( The coolest part of the demo, is that various devices places next to each other (tables of various sizes, phones) combine to form a single playing screen across the devices.

Mark of the friendly beast, now for kids!

Chris Yerga back on stage to introduce Google Play for Education. Launching in the fall (apps being accepted starting this summer), for "awesome K-12 apps." This is a single purpose, curated sub-store, with all apps intended for primary and secondary education, and approved by / endorsed by groups of teachers, "because teachers trust other teachers," with apps from private developers, schools, government entities like NASA. Sounds nice, in some ways, but also takes every kid in the schools covered having a Google account, and being part of Google groups. This will take a lot of opt-in-by-proxy. Google does a lot of things well, but should kids be required to have accounts with a particular company to use software required for education? Even with vetting, malware in this context looks particularly troubling.

6,000 new toys, all alike.

Looks like attendees at this year's I/O will land a Pixel laptop running ChromeOS.

Google+ at the age of a late-stage toddler

New design for Google+, and "41 new features," rolling out this afternoon.

User-facing features included Animated sliding menus, animated windows, and other such UI candy.

More depth to be made available through automatic tagging applied by Google to posts; "We also then rank and search the entire universe of Google Plus content, and we rank it just for you."

This automatic hashtagging includes not just text scanning for content, but image recognition; coupled with landmark recognition engine that already exists, a photo of the Eiffel tower is automatically recognized; clicking on that photo can being you to more Eiffel-tower related photos. A little spooky.

You will always have the option of telling Google, either on a particular post, or globally" whether you want to opt-out of all this automatic scanning, tagging, and ranking.

Re: richer communications: "Frankly, even Google's services have been fragmented." Introducing today, new Google+ Hangout app, broken out from general Google+ service. Demo shows how new standalone app by default shows a list of conversations, "not contacts." Group or one-on-one. Contacts are "one tap away," if you want a different lens. The conversations can be long lasting; you can have a group conversation with lots of people, photos, etc. "Of course we give you the ability to turn off history!" Photos attached to conversations are stored in albums. Shown (the slipped-in applause line) on iOS, in a web browser, and on Android.

New features include, too, group video at no charge. And, with the tagline "your darkroom is now a datacenter," cloud-based photo management, with tools for photo retouching and editing, not just storage / backup.

New Auto-Enhance tool which throws photos against a wall of image enhancement algorithms (for tonal distribution, noise reduction, vignetting, sharpening, etc.) A bit like Instagram in simplicity, but with the intent to make photos look "just right" rather than "vintage." Slightly creepy, to have the equivalent of an automatic airbrush on photos.

Somewhat creepier, an automatic highlights-reel creator that does a different kind of automatic enhancement: feed it a few hundred photographs, and AI bots look for smiling faces, good focus, etc, and Google tells you which ones to leave on the cutting-room floor. A nice triage step, but one that will need human scanning in case your opinion differs from the Google AI.

Finally, Auto Awesome: "creates a new image that did not exist!" -- scans for similar, related photos, creates mini movies of them.

The available gratis storage for Google accounts has this week gone to 15 GB rather than free. That will be a lot of storage for some people (my mom), not so much for others (you know who you are). All these neat back-end photo enhancement tools require as much bandwidth as it takes to transmit your photos up and down whatever pipe you're using for that, though. Local photo manipulation isn't going away; it's just being nudged gently by the online adjuncts.

OK computer

Amit Singhal announces what he says is "the end of search as we know it"; the upshot is moving to natural language (whether typed ina search box or spoken into a mic), emphasizing intuition and eroding the need for special searching tricks.

Coolest new thing about search: Search by voice coming to all platforms via Chrome. Talk to your computer; let google answer.

Cards (cute, compact single-topic search result capsules) were shown last year, but now enhanced with more categories and examples -- things like games, books, and public transit commute times.

Search & Assist VP Johanna Wright steps up to demo this voice feature, labeled "Hotwording." "OK Google, show me things to do in Santa Cruz" gets search results richer than plain google search, and "OK Google, how far is it from here?" Gets a link to directions and map, Google Maps' version is the nicely formatted direction source, but the search results include other on-topic hits, too. I can see some SNL sketches showing everyone mumbling to Google as they walk down the street, on Segways, wearing Glass headsets. "OK Google ... OK Google ... "

You are here, or you are someplace else.

Daniel Graf on next generation of google aps for mobile. Last December, they launched maps on iPhone: "sleek, beautiful, and let's not forget, accurate." [Laughline] Today, announcement / sneak peak at next gen version (due out this summer), for both Android and iOS. "Let's go on a little walk in San Francisco."

3D buildings, smooth scrolling, and a 5-star rating system now integrated across all map products -- phone, web, etc -- as a first-class option.

Also -- nice, but a little pat -- integrating "The Zagat experience" integrated with maps searches, too; because "it's nice to have an expert opinion." Also integrated, and in my view also a bit off-putting, special offers related to searches. Starbucks is one company in on this action "but there are many many more."

Fun stats: Over a million transit stops. 50 billion km of turn-by-turn directions for bikes.

Adding live coverage of incident alerts around the world. Dynamic rerouting; if something happens ahead on a scheduled route, navigation app for smart phones will alert the user.

Mobile today, just just about phones, too: brand now, fully-integrated map interface for tablets. "Explore" option lets you browse maps through categories like Eat, Relax, etc. Empashsis on exploration and discovery.

Adding more and more inside views for buildings.

Maps now better labeled, and more directly -- no more jillions of pins to mouse-over for pop-ups. Searching maps integrating more social data (like looking for places that friends have reviewed positively), and many more businesses now have fly-through photo imagery available.

Public transit options much more prominent, directly on map when looking for directions. Most exciting to me, the new scheduling visualizer shows when trains, buses, ferries, etc. will be leaving, and how long each trip takes. Beautiful Gantt-chart UI; simple, scrollable timelines.

More and more interior imagery (inside St. Peter's, etc), but (biggest crowd pleasing moment so far), you can also zoom out as well as in, until you get to a whole Earth globe, from space. Spinnable, with physics. And those clouds? The gloating announcement "Those are in real time." The fawning and clapping continue, as even more zoom continues. View the earth in Eclipse, the Milky Way, etc. Jaw-dropping as a browser-based experience.

Heeeeeere's Larry!

Larry Page's voice is softer and more labored, but he's on stage talking, to great applause.

On the future of Google Fiber, Larry says: "from an engineering standpoint, it's kind of a no-brainer." In a sense, most of the computers we have in the world, most of them are in people's shouses; msot fo them can't be used for anything useful." (I'll take that as creative license.)

"We need these low latency connections that operate a computer speed, no matter what that is."

Encourages other companies to do more things "outside their comfort zone," with both Fiber and Gmail as an example. Cross-pollication. "Almost every time we've tried to something crazy, we've made progress."

Has some politic but unflattering things to say about Oracle, but hedges on the question of how Oracle's tightening control on Java affects Android.

Page made at least five references to untapped efficiencies in transportation; I keep expecting Elon Musk to drive up the auditorium's center aisle in a Tesla in Google Street View livery.

Healthcare: Why are people so cagey about medical history? Insurance, he surmises -- afraid they don't be covered. "We should change the rules around insurance, so they have to insure people," he says, drawing great applause. DNA Sequencing, we're all gonna have that, it'll cost a dollar ..." To a followup question, he says that he has nothing to announce on this front from Google, though. On the company's own health care initaitves? "We had Google Health, we didn't make that much proress on it ... [It's only] one percent of where we can be."

On women in the development community: Says this is a serious concern. He and Sergey, he says, want "to make sure out company doesn't end up all male." Encouraging young girls to be interested is the key.

Google's I/O annual conference is ramping up at San Francisco's Moscone Center. Last year, in the conference keynote, the company took its biggest-yet dive into hardware when it introduced the Nexus 7 tablet, Google Glass, and the ill-fated Nexus Q. The secret is out on Glass, of course: this year, there's a pavilion inside the conference center where I'm sure they'll be showing off applications for it. (Quite a few of the people in the endless lines here are wearing their own, too.) Anticipating the announcements at I/O is practically its own industry, but it's easy to guess that there will be announcements from all the major pots in which Google has its many thousands of (tapping) fingers. Android, search, Chrome, mapping, and all the other ways in which the behemoth of Mountain View is watching what you do. You can watch the keynote talk (talks, really) streamed online from the main conference link above, but this story will be updated with highlights of the announcements, as well with stories that readers contribute. Update: 05/15 16:22 GMT by T : Updates below. Update: 05/15 19:02 GMT by T :Update details: Notes (ongoing) added below on maps, gaming, the Play store, Google+, and more. And, notable, Larry Page is (at this writing) on stage, with an unannounced Q & A session. Front Matter

After some splashy demos of Android apps and Chrome (Pong played with active windows as the playing pieces is one that stuck out) Vic Gundotra, Senior VP opens the show. Welcomes the 6000 people here, and 40,000 people at viewing parties world wide. (More than a million on YouTube, he says.)

Introduces Sundar Pichai SVP: Android, Chrome, Apps, who reviews the time since the PC revolution: Most people used Windows, boring form factors. Starting seven or so years ago, phones, tablets, etc, really jumped. Two pictures from St. Peter's Basilica: John Paul II's funeral, vs. announcement of new pope: In the first, one person is taking a photo with a clamshell phone; in the second, everyone has a phone or tablet out to record the event. Chrome, he says, is now the most popular browser in the world.

Then it's time for more splashy demo: map shows how much of the world has a penetration of less than 10 percent. Bringing the next four and a half billion" online the next theme.

New Android features and APIs:

Hugo Barro, VP, Product Management Android, shows off some of the new features for developers:

• First, an improved Google Maps Android API (v2), with 3-D building outlines, fast scrolling, etc. A fused location provider, more battery efficient, faster -- should mean less waiting for GPS signals etc. for mapping.
• A new API for activity recognition uses various sensors etc. to track and notice things like whether a user is driving, walking, or doing other activities. Looks both very useful and a bit scary; opt-out needs some attention on this front!
• Google+ sign-in updates and cross-platform single-sign-in. Now users "don't have to remember to find and install" certain apps, because signing in and downloading it on one device can activate doing the same on linked devices.
• Google Cloud Messaging came out last year; this year, it's been updated to give more upstream capabilities. Lets you push data from a service to an app. Upstream messaging, GCM to send messages. Syncs notifications (good for developers, but also for users: if you dismiss a notification on one device, it goes away on all account-linked devices.)

Barro also introduces Google Play game services, and some of its features:

• Cloud save; you can finish a game level on one device, and pick up on it on another.
• Achievements, leaderboards to connect players. Demos with World of Goo, shows how one can instantly check one's status among friends (fun), and globally (humbling) for a particular game.
• Multi-player. Feature announced to huge applause, but demo failed, despite the intent to overcome the very things that make multiplayer games hard for mobile. (This room, he says, isn't very "network friendly" -- true, but then, neither is a huge chunk of the world.)

Shows off a new IDE, Android Studio (big applause, just at the name) for a quick demo. Has some neat features; colors used in code, for instance are parsed and shown in thumbnail next to the line that contains it. Devices' screens can be demoed instantly, on the developer's desktop screen, so developers can see how an app will appear on different sized devices, and in different languages, useful for internationalization and cross-platform building.

For a few dollars more (per month)

Chris Yerga, Engineering Director for Android's most exciting announcement: Google Play Music All Access. This is a $9.99/month subscription service, with a 30-day free trial, launching today. Hook: if you start by June 30th, $7.99.

It's an online streaming music app, music organizer, and music suggestion engine.

Personalized recommendations based on listening habits, and eavesdropping on opted-in friends' lists. Yergo demonstrates that the playlist which it can create shows the *upcoming* choices that the AI bots at Google think you'll want to listen to; the look into the upcoming playlist got many happy shouts, even more so when he shows unwanted items in that list just being wiped off the list with gestures.

Linus on Chrome

(Sorry, not that Linus.) Linus Upson talked about Chrome, and focused on APIs for mobile web. Started with JavaScript speed improvements; says Javascript can be now rendered 57 percent faster through optimizations than this time last year, with "tons more optimizations to come."

Notes that When you download a web page, more than 60pct of the stuff downloaded is images and shows some examples of WebP - open source, royalty-free compression -- with similar quality image compression results at 30+ percent smaller than JPEG. It features like transparency, metadata, etc, and "unfortunately also animated images." But video is the real hog; more than animated cat pictures, there's a need to make video smaller. Upson shows H.264 vs VP9 -- for the demo video shown, 343 vs 125MB for equivalent quality; this will be rolling out for YouTube later this year.

Shows a data compression proxy tool with a user-facing chart on Chrome for Mobile, shows how much data you're using (or saving) by turning on a remote data compression tool.

Another: Using HTML5 autocomplete spec, shows a simple checkout system vs. the typical complex one required to buy from any online merchant with whom a user does not already have an account. "Chrome already knows all your payment information," he says. "This is going to make shopping from your phone much, much easier." (And scarier, IMO.)

Cool Chrome demo: Racer: a Multi player, multi-platform game experiment; stylized, overhead view of a slot-car racing setup; all you need to play is a device running Chrome. (Players have only one thing to control: their cars' speed. Go too fast on a curve, and the car flies off.( The coolest part of the demo, is that various devices places next to each other (tables of various sizes, phones) combine to form a single playing screen across the devices.

Mark of the friendly beast, now for kids!

Chris Yerga back on stage to introduce Google Play for Education. Launching in the fall (apps being accepted starting this summer), for "awesome K-12 apps." This is a single purpose, curated sub-store, with all apps intended for primary and secondary education, and approved by / endorsed by groups of teachers, "because teachers trust other teachers," with apps from private developers, schools, government entities like NASA. Sounds nice, in some ways, but also takes every kid in the schools covered having a Google account, and being part of Google groups. This will take a lot of opt-in-by-proxy. Google does a lot of things well, but should kids be required to have accounts with a particular company to use software required for education? Even with vetting, malware in this context looks particularly troubling.

6,000 new toys, all alike.

Looks like attendees at this year's I/O will land a Pixel laptop running ChromeOS.

Google+ at the age of a late-stage toddler

New design for Google+, and "41 new features," rolling out this afternoon.

User-facing features included Animated sliding menus, animated windows, and other such UI candy.

More depth to be made available through automatic tagging applied by Google to posts; "We also then rank and search the entire universe of Google Plus content, and we rank it just for you."

This automatic hashtagging includes not just text scanning for content, but image recognition; coupled with landmark recognition engine that already exists, a photo of the Eiffel tower is automatically recognized; clicking on that photo can being you to more Eiffel-tower related photos. A little spooky.

You will always have the option of telling Google, either on a particular post, or globally" whether you want to opt-out of all this automatic scanning, tagging, and ranking.

Re: richer communications: "Frankly, even Google's services have been fragmented." Introducing today, new Google+ Hangout app, broken out from general Google+ service. Demo shows how new standalone app by default shows a list of conversations, "not contacts." Group or one-on-one. Contacts are "one tap away," if you want a different lens. The conversations can be long lasting; you can have a group conversation with lots of people, photos, etc. "Of course we give you the ability to turn off history!" Photos attached to conversations are stored in albums. Shown (the slipped-in applause line) on iOS, in a web browser, and on Android.

New features include, too, group video at no charge. And, with the tagline "your darkroom is now a datacenter," cloud-based photo management, with tools for photo retouching and editing, not just storage / backup.

New Auto-Enhance tool which throws photos against a wall of image enhancement algorithms (for tonal distribution, noise reduction, vignetting, sharpening, etc.) A bit like Instagram in simplicity, but with the intent to make photos look "just right" rather than "vintage." Slightly creepy, to have the equivalent of an automatic airbrush on photos.

Somewhat creepier, an automatic highlights-reel creator that does a different kind of automatic enhancement: feed it a few hundred photographs, and AI bots look for smiling faces, good focus, etc, and Google tells you which ones to leave on the cutting-room floor. A nice triage step, but one that will need human scanning in case your opinion differs from the Google AI.

Finally, Auto Awesome: "creates a new image that did not exist!" -- scans for similar, related photos, creates mini movies of them.

The available gratis storage for Google accounts has this week gone to 15 GB rather than free. That will be a lot of storage for some people (my mom), not so much for others (you know who you are). All these neat back-end photo enhancement tools require as much bandwidth as it takes to transmit your photos up and down whatever pipe you're using for that, though. Local photo manipulation isn't going away; it's just being nudged gently by the online adjuncts.

OK computer

Amit Singhal announces what he says is "the end of search as we know it"; the upshot is moving to natural language (whether typed ina search box or spoken into a mic), emphasizing intuition and eroding the need for special searching tricks.

Coolest new thing about search: Search by voice coming to all platforms via Chrome. Talk to your computer; let google answer.

Cards (cute, compact single-topic search result capsules) were shown last year, but now enhanced with more categories and examples -- things like games, books, and public transit commute times.

Search & Assist VP Johanna Wright steps up to demo this voice feature, labeled "Hotwording." "OK Google, show me things to do in Santa Cruz" gets search results richer than plain google search, and "OK Google, how far is it from here?" Gets a link to directions and map, Google Maps' version is the nicely formatted direction source, but the search results include other on-topic hits, too. I can see some SNL sketches showing everyone mumbling to Google as they walk down the street, on Segways, wearing Glass headsets. "OK Google ... OK Google ... "

You are here, or you are someplace else.

Daniel Graf on next generation of google aps for mobile. Last December, they launched maps on iPhone: "sleek, beautiful, and let's not forget, accurate." [Laughline] Today, announcement / sneak peak at next gen version (due out this summer), for both Android and iOS. "Let's go on a little walk in San Francisco."

3D buildings, smooth scrolling, and a 5-star rating system now integrated across all map products -- phone, web, etc -- as a first-class option.

Also -- nice, but a little pat -- integrating "The Zagat experience" integrated with maps searches, too; because "it's nice to have an expert opinion." Also integrated, and in my view also a bit off-putting, special offers related to searches. Starbucks is one company in on this action "but there are many many more."

Fun stats: Over a million transit stops. 50 billion km of turn-by-turn directions for bikes.

Adding live coverage of incident alerts around the world. Dynamic rerouting; if something happens ahead on a scheduled route, navigation app for smart phones will alert the user.

Mobile today, just just about phones, too: brand now, fully-integrated map interface for tablets. "Explore" option lets you browse maps through categories like Eat, Relax, etc. Empashsis on exploration and discovery.

Adding more and more inside views for buildings.

Maps now better labeled, and more directly -- no more jillions of pins to mouse-over for pop-ups. Searching maps integrating more social data (like looking for places that friends have reviewed positively), and many more businesses now have fly-through photo imagery available.

Public transit options much more prominent, directly on map when looking for directions. Most exciting to me, the new scheduling visualizer shows when trains, buses, ferries, etc. will be leaving, and how long each trip takes. Beautiful Gantt-chart UI; simple, scrollable timelines.

More and more interior imagery (inside St. Peter's, etc), but (biggest crowd pleasing moment so far), you can also zoom out as well as in, until you get to a whole Earth globe, from space. Spinnable, with physics. And those clouds? The gloating announcement "Those are in real time." The fawning and clapping continue, as even more zoom continues. View the earth in Eclipse, the Milky Way, etc. Jaw-dropping as a browser-based experience.

Heeeeeere's Larry!

Larry Page's voice is softer and more labored, but he's on stage talking, to great applause.

On the future of Google Fiber, Larry says: "from an engineering standpoint, it's kind of a no-brainer." In a sense, most of the computers we have in the world, most of them are in people's shouses; msot fo them can't be used for anything useful." (I'll take that as creative license.)

"We need these low latency connections that operate a computer speed, no matter what that is."

Encourages other companies to do more things "outside their comfort zone," with both Fiber and Gmail as an example. Cross-pollication. "Almost every time we've tried to something crazy, we've made progress."

Has some politic but unflattering things to say about Oracle, but hedges on the question of how Oracle's tightening control on Java affects Android.

Page made at least five references to untapped efficiencies in transportation; I keep expecting Elon Musk to drive up the auditorium's center aisle in a Tesla in Google Street View livery.

Healthcare: Why are people so cagey about medical history? Insurance, he surmises -- afraid they don't be covered. "We should change the rules around insurance, so they have to insure people," he says, drawing great applause. DNA Sequencing, we're all gonna have that, it'll cost a dollar ..." To a followup question, he says that he has nothing to announce on this front from Google, though. On the company's own health care initaitves? "We had Google Health, we didn't make that much proress on it ... [It's only] one percent of where we can be."

On women in the development community: Says this is a serious concern. He and Sergey, he says, want "to make sure out company doesn't end up all male." Encouraging young girls to be interested is the key.

Google's I/O annual conference is ramping up at San Francisco's Moscone Center. Last year, in the conference keynote, the company took its biggest-yet dive into hardware when it introduced the Nexus 7 tablet, Google Glass, and the ill-fated Nexus Q. The secret is out on Glass, of course: this year, there's a pavilion inside the conference center where I'm sure they'll be showing off applications for it. (Quite a few of the people in the endless lines here are wearing their own, too.) Anticipating the announcements at I/O is practically its own industry, but it's easy to guess that there will be announcements from all the major pots in which Google has its many thousands of (tapping) fingers. Android, search, Chrome, mapping, and all the other ways in which the behemoth of Mountain View is watching what you do. You can watch the keynote talk (talks, really) streamed online from the main conference link above, but this story will be updated with highlights of the announcements, as well with stories that readers contribute. Update: 05/15 16:22 GMT by T : Updates below. Update: 05/15 19:02 GMT by T :Update details: Notes (ongoing) added below on maps, gaming, the Play store, Google+, and more. And, notable, Larry Page is (at this writing) on stage, with an unannounced Q & A session. Front Matter

After some splashy demos of Android apps and Chrome (Pong played with active windows as the playing pieces is one that stuck out) Vic Gundotra, Senior VP opens the show. Welcomes the 6000 people here, and 40,000 people at viewing parties world wide. (More than a million on YouTube, he says.)

Introduces Sundar Pichai SVP: Android, Chrome, Apps, who reviews the time since the PC revolution: Most people used Windows, boring form factors. Starting seven or so years ago, phones, tablets, etc, really jumped. Two pictures from St. Peter's Basilica: John Paul II's funeral, vs. announcement of new pope: In the first, one person is taking a photo with a clamshell phone; in the second, everyone has a phone or tablet out to record the event. Chrome, he says, is now the most popular browser in the world.

Then it's time for more splashy demo: map shows how much of the world has a penetration of less than 10 percent. Bringing the next four and a half billion" online the next theme.

New Android features and APIs:

Hugo Barro, VP, Product Management Android, shows off some of the new features for developers:

• First, an improved Google Maps Android API (v2), with 3-D building outlines, fast scrolling, etc. A fused location provider, more battery efficient, faster -- should mean less waiting for GPS signals etc. for mapping.
• A new API for activity recognition uses various sensors etc. to track and notice things like whether a user is driving, walking, or doing other activities. Looks both very useful and a bit scary; opt-out needs some attention on this front!
• Google+ sign-in updates and cross-platform single-sign-in. Now users "don't have to remember to find and install" certain apps, because signing in and downloading it on one device can activate doing the same on linked devices.
• Google Cloud Messaging came out last year; this year, it's been updated to give more upstream capabilities. Lets you push data from a service to an app. Upstream messaging, GCM to send messages. Syncs notifications (good for developers, but also for users: if you dismiss a notification on one device, it goes away on all account-linked devices.)

Barro also introduces Google Play game services, and some of its features:

• Cloud save; you can finish a game level on one device, and pick up on it on another.
• Achievements, leaderboards to connect players. Demos with World of Goo, shows how one can instantly check one's status among friends (fun), and globally (humbling) for a particular game.
• Multi-player. Feature announced to huge applause, but demo failed, despite the intent to overcome the very things that make multiplayer games hard for mobile. (This room, he says, isn't very "network friendly" -- true, but then, neither is a huge chunk of the world.)

Shows off a new IDE, Android Studio (big applause, just at the name) for a quick demo. Has some neat features; colors used in code, for instance are parsed and shown in thumbnail next to the line that contains it. Devices' screens can be demoed instantly, on the developer's desktop screen, so developers can see how an app will appear on different sized devices, and in different languages, useful for internationalization and cross-platform building.

For a few dollars more (per month)

Chris Yerga, Engineering Director for Android's most exciting announcement: Google Play Music All Access. This is a $9.99/month subscription service, with a 30-day free trial, launching today. Hook: if you start by June 30th, $7.99.

It's an online streaming music app, music organizer, and music suggestion engine.

Personalized recommendations based on listening habits, and eavesdropping on opted-in friends' lists. Yergo demonstrates that the playlist which it can create shows the *upcoming* choices that the AI bots at Google think you'll want to listen to; the look into the upcoming playlist got many happy shouts, even more so when he shows unwanted items in that list just being wiped off the list with gestures.

Linus on Chrome

(Sorry, not that Linus.) Linus Upson talked about Chrome, and focused on APIs for mobile web. Started with JavaScript speed improvements; says Javascript can be now rendered 57 percent faster through optimizations than this time last year, with "tons more optimizations to come."

Notes that When you download a web page, more than 60pct of the stuff downloaded is images and shows some examples of WebP - open source, royalty-free compression -- with similar quality image compression results at 30+ percent smaller than JPEG. It features like transparency, metadata, etc, and "unfortunately also animated images." But video is the real hog; more than animated cat pictures, there's a need to make video smaller. Upson shows H.264 vs VP9 -- for the demo video shown, 343 vs 125MB for equivalent quality; this will be rolling out for YouTube later this year.

Shows a data compression proxy tool with a user-facing chart on Chrome for Mobile, shows how much data you're using (or saving) by turning on a remote data compression tool.

Another: Using HTML5 autocomplete spec, shows a simple checkout system vs. the typical complex one required to buy from any online merchant with whom a user does not already have an account. "Chrome already knows all your payment information," he says. "This is going to make shopping from your phone much, much easier." (And scarier, IMO.)

Cool Chrome demo: Racer: a Multi player, multi-platform game experiment; stylized, overhead view of a slot-car racing setup; all you need to play is a device running Chrome. (Players have only one thing to control: their cars' speed. Go too fast on a curve, and the car flies off.( The coolest part of the demo, is that various devices places next to each other (tables of various sizes, phones) combine to form a single playing screen across the devices.

Mark of the friendly beast, now for kids!

Chris Yerga back on stage to introduce Google Play for Education. Launching in the fall (apps being accepted starting this summer), for "awesome K-12 apps." This is a single purpose, curated sub-store, with all apps intended for primary and secondary education, and approved by / endorsed by groups of teachers, "because teachers trust other teachers," with apps from private developers, schools, government entities like NASA. Sounds nice, in some ways, but also takes every kid in the schools covered having a Google account, and being part of Google groups. This will take a lot of opt-in-by-proxy. Google does a lot of things well, but should kids be required to have accounts with a particular company to use software required for education? Even with vetting, malware in this context looks particularly troubling.

6,000 new toys, all alike.

Looks like attendees at this year's I/O will land a Pixel laptop running ChromeOS.

Google+ at the age of a late-stage toddler

New design for Google+, and "41 new features," rolling out this afternoon.

User-facing features included Animated sliding menus, animated windows, and other such UI candy.

More depth to be made available through automatic tagging applied by Google to posts; "We also then rank and search the entire universe of Google Plus content, and we rank it just for you."

This automatic hashtagging includes not just text scanning for content, but image recognition; coupled with landmark recognition engine that already exists, a photo of the Eiffel tower is automatically recognized; clicking on that photo can being you to more Eiffel-tower related photos. A little spooky.

You will always have the option of telling Google, either on a particular post, or globally" whether you want to opt-out of all this automatic scanning, tagging, and ranking.

Re: richer communications: "Frankly, even Google's services have been fragmented." Introducing today, new Google+ Hangout app, broken out from general Google+ service. Demo shows how new standalone app by default shows a list of conversations, "not contacts." Group or one-on-one. Contacts are "one tap away," if you want a different lens. The conversations can be long lasting; you can have a group conversation with lots of people, photos, etc. "Of course we give you the ability to turn off history!" Photos attached to conversations are stored in albums. Shown (the slipped-in applause line) on iOS, in a web browser, and on Android.

New features include, too, group video at no charge. And, with the tagline "your darkroom is now a datacenter," cloud-based photo management, with tools for photo retouching and editing, not just storage / backup.

New Auto-Enhance tool which throws photos against a wall of image enhancement algorithms (for tonal distribution, noise reduction, vignetting, sharpening, etc.) A bit like Instagram in simplicity, but with the intent to make photos look "just right" rather than "vintage." Slightly creepy, to have the equivalent of an automatic airbrush on photos.

Somewhat creepier, an automatic highlights-reel creator that does a different kind of automatic enhancement: feed it a few hundred photographs, and AI bots look for smiling faces, good focus, etc, and Google tells you which ones to leave on the cutting-room floor. A nice triage step, but one that will need human scanning in case your opinion differs from the Google AI.

Finally, Auto Awesome: "creates a new image that did not exist!" -- scans for similar, related photos, creates mini movies of them.

The available gratis storage for Google accounts has this week gone to 15 GB rather than free. That will be a lot of storage for some people (my mom), not so much for others (you know who you are). All these neat back-end photo enhancement tools require as much bandwidth as it takes to transmit your photos up and down whatever pipe you're using for that, though. Local photo manipulation isn't going away; it's just being nudged gently by the online adjuncts.

OK computer

Amit Singhal announces what he says is "the end of search as we know it"; the upshot is moving to natural language (whether typed ina search box or spoken into a mic), emphasizing intuition and eroding the need for special searching tricks.

Coolest new thing about search: Search by voice coming to all platforms via Chrome. Talk to your computer; let google answer.

Cards (cute, compact single-topic search result capsules) were shown last year, but now enhanced with more categories and examples -- things like games, books, and public transit commute times.

Search & Assist VP Johanna Wright steps up to demo this voice feature, labeled "Hotwording." "OK Google, show me things to do in Santa Cruz" gets search results richer than plain google search, and "OK Google, how far is it from here?" Gets a link to directions and map, Google Maps' version is the nicely formatted direction source, but the search results include other on-topic hits, too. I can see some SNL sketches showing everyone mumbling to Google as they walk down the street, on Segways, wearing Glass headsets. "OK Google ... OK Google ... "

You are here, or you are someplace else.

Daniel Graf on next generation of google aps for mobile. Last December, they launched maps on iPhone: "sleek, beautiful, and let's not forget, accurate." [Laughline] Today, announcement / sneak peak at next gen version (due out this summer), for both Android and iOS. "Let's go on a little walk in San Francisco."

3D buildings, smooth scrolling, and a 5-star rating system now integrated across all map products -- phone, web, etc -- as a first-class option.

Also -- nice, but a little pat -- integrating "The Zagat experience" integrated with maps searches, too; because "it's nice to have an expert opinion." Also integrated, and in my view also a bit off-putting, special offers related to searches. Starbucks is one company in on this action "but there are many many more."

Fun stats: Over a million transit stops. 50 billion km of turn-by-turn directions for bikes.

Adding live coverage of incident alerts around the world. Dynamic rerouting; if something happens ahead on a scheduled route, navigation app for smart phones will alert the user.

Mobile today, just just about phones, too: brand now, fully-integrated map interface for tablets. "Explore" option lets you browse maps through categories like Eat, Relax, etc. Empashsis on exploration and discovery.

Adding more and more inside views for buildings.

Maps now better labeled, and more directly -- no more jillions of pins to mouse-over for pop-ups. Searching maps integrating more social data (like looking for places that friends have reviewed positively), and many more businesses now have fly-through photo imagery available.

Public transit options much more prominent, directly on map when looking for directions. Most exciting to me, the new scheduling visualizer shows when trains, buses, ferries, etc. will be leaving, and how long each trip takes. Beautiful Gantt-chart UI; simple, scrollable timelines.

More and more interior imagery (inside St. Peter's, etc), but (biggest crowd pleasing moment so far), you can also zoom out as well as in, until you get to a whole Earth globe, from space. Spinnable, with physics. And those clouds? The gloating announcement "Those are in real time." The fawning and clapping continue, as even more zoom continues. View the earth in Eclipse, the Milky Way, etc. Jaw-dropping as a browser-based experience.

Heeeeeere's Larry!

Larry Page's voice is softer and more labored, but he's on stage talking, to great applause.

On the future of Google Fiber, Larry says: "from an engineering standpoint, it's kind of a no-brainer." In a sense, most of the computers we have in the world, most of them are in people's shouses; msot fo them can't be used for anything useful." (I'll take that as creative license.)

"We need these low latency connections that operate a computer speed, no matter what that is."

Encourages other companies to do more things "outside their comfort zone," with both Fiber and Gmail as an example. Cross-pollication. "Almost every time we've tried to something crazy, we've made progress."

Has some politic but unflattering things to say about Oracle, but hedges on the question of how Oracle's tightening control on Java affects Android.

Page made at least five references to untapped efficiencies in transportation; I keep expecting Elon Musk to drive up the auditorium's center aisle in a Tesla in Google Street View livery.

Healthcare: Why are people so cagey about medical history? Insurance, he surmises -- afraid they don't be covered. "We should change the rules around insurance, so they have to insure people," he says, drawing great applause. DNA Sequencing, we're all gonna have that, it'll cost a dollar ..." To a followup question, he says that he has nothing to announce on this front from Google, though. On the company's own health care initaitves? "We had Google Health, we didn't make that much proress on it ... [It's only] one percent of where we can be."

On women in the development community: Says this is a serious concern. He and Sergey, he says, want "to make sure out company doesn't end up all male." Encouraging young girls to be interested is the key.

itwbennett writes "The goal of saving $3 billion by closing 1253 data centers is 'very realistic,' says David Powner, director of IT management issues at the U.S. Government Accountability Office — except that agencies haven't been able to track cost savings for the initiative. Eighteen months from the 2015 deadline, 'we have no idea how much we've saved the taxpayers,' said Steve O'Keeffe, founder of MeriTalk, an online community for government IT issues. This isn't the first snag in the project. Almost a year ago, Slashdot reported that the project was woefully behind schedule." The government released a summary of what data they do have (PDF), and at least the DoD expects to save $575 million next fiscal year. Also see the full GAO report.

itwbennett writes "The goal of saving $3 billion by closing 1253 data centers is 'very realistic,' says David Powner, director of IT management issues at the U.S. Government Accountability Office — except that agencies haven't been able to track cost savings for the initiative. Eighteen months from the 2015 deadline, 'we have no idea how much we've saved the taxpayers,' said Steve O'Keeffe, founder of MeriTalk, an online community for government IT issues. This isn't the first snag in the project. Almost a year ago, Slashdot reported that the project was woefully behind schedule." The government released a summary of what data they do have (PDF), and at least the DoD expects to save $575 million next fiscal year. Also see the full GAO report.

theodp writes "Last summer, unspecified voice problems caused Google CEO Larry Page to miss Google's Annual Shareholder Meeting, the I/O conference, and a quarterly earnings call. Now, Page has come forward and revealed that he suffers from partial paralysis of each of his vocal chords, an 'extremely rare' condition. Not unlike what Sergey Brin and his wife are doing with Parkinson's research, Page and his wife will be funding and overseeing 'a significant research program' led by Dr. Steven Zeitels of Harvard Medical School."

itwbennett writes "We've all had a chuckle over Google's autocomplete results for various search queries. But one German businessman had a less funny experience when he searched for his name on Google.de: The autocomplete suggested search terms where his name was tied with 'Scientology' and 'fraud' (in German, of course). This was back in 2010. In 2012, a German court ruled that the autocomplete terms did not infringe the plaintiff's privacy. Now, a year later, the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe has overturned that ruling and ordered that Google remove offensive search suggestions when notified."

grub writes writes with news that BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins has announced that BBM (BlackBerry Messenger, one of the favorite features of BlackBerry device-owners) will soon be coming to rival mobile operating systems. Devices running iOS 6 and Android ICS or later will be supported, pending approval with the App Store and Google Play. "BBM uses carrier data networks to pass secure messages back and forth through its servers to other BlackBerry users. The service recently gained the ability to make phone calls, conduct video chats and even share screen tops with other BBM users (requires BlackBerry 10). Normal chat and group chats will be the first features to hit the Android and iOS BBM apps, followed by the others (including voice and video) during the course of the year. BBM for Android and iOS will be free." The company also unveiled a new smartphone today: the Q5. It's a budget device intended for emerging markets.

Nerval's Lobster writes "Roughly 85 percent of IT managers polled by Forrester said they would hold onto networking infrastructure longer, but vendors retire products prematurely in an effort to force customers to upgrade. In a response that may seem familiar to anyone who's ever been pressured into buying a maintenance contract—either by an enterprise vendor or a major electronics retailer—over 80 percent of the 304 respondents said they don't like the misrepresented cost savings, new fees, and inflexible pricing models—but buy the products anyway. One of the survey's interesting points is that IT decision makers aren't willing to contradict the vendor. The uncertainty seems to come from the fact that the vendor may in fact be right—and a customer who contradicts what they're saying may end up shouldering the blame if the equipment goes south. It's the 'you never got fired for buying IBM' argument, applied to the networking space. The problem, of course, is that the vendor often works for its own agenda. Do you upgrade when the vendor (or reseller) suggests you do so? Or do you stick to your own way of doing things?"

vikingpower writes "The winner of this year's World Press Photo award, Paul l Hanssen, is under fire for allegedly having photoshopped the winning picture. The Hacker Factor is detailing the reasons and technicalities for the accusations. ExtremeTech also runs an item about the possible faking. Upon questions by Australian news site news.com.au, Hanssen answers his photo is not a fake. The whole story, however, is based upon somewhat thin proof: three different times in the file's Adobe XMP block; this does not necessarily mean that more than one file was used in order to obtain a composite image." Update: 05/14 20:04 GMT by S : World Press Photo says the photo is genuine.

It appears that Prenda Law, freshly defeated, has formed a new shell company named the "Anti-Piracy Law Group," and has resumed sending threatening letters to supposed porn pirates. But this time, they've expanded their threats (from a letter (PDF) sent to Fight Copyright Trolls): "The list of possible suspects includes you, members of your household, your neighbors (if you maintain an open wi-fi connection) and anyone who might have visited your house. In the coming days we will contact these individuals to investigate whether they have any knowledge of the acts described in my client’s prior letter" Naturally, the letter also notes that the recipient can avoid having the list of videos they supposedly copied sent to their neighbors and family if they settle for a few thousand bucks...

MojoKid writes "For the past decade, AMD and Intel have been racing each other to incorporate more components into the CPU die. Memory controllers, integrated GPUs, northbridges, and southbridges have all moved closer to a single package, known as SoCs (system-on-a-chip). Now, with Haswell, Intel is set to integrate another important piece of circuitry. When it launches next month, Haswell will be the first x86 CPU to include an on-die voltage regulator module, or VRM. Haswell incorporates a refined VRM on-die that allows for multiple voltage rails and controls voltage for the CPU, on-die GPU, system I/O, integrated memory controller, as well as several other functions. Intel refers to this as a FIVR (Fully Integrated Voltage Regulator), and it apparently eliminates voltage ripple and is significantly more efficient than your traditional motherboard VRM. Added bonus? It's 1/50th the size." Update: 05/14 01:22 GMT by U L : Reader AdamHaun comments: "They already have a test chip that they used to power a ~90W Xeon E7330 for four hours while it ran Linpack. ... Voltage ripple is less than 2mV. Peak efficiency per cell looks like ~76% at 8A. They claim hitting 82% would be easy..." and links to a presentation on the integrated VRM (PDF).

zacharye writes "The HTC First, or 'Facebook phone' as many prefer to call it, is officially a flop. It certainly wasn't a good sign when AT&T dropped the price of HTC's First to $0.99 just one month after its debut, and now BGR has confirmed that HTC and Facebook's little experiment is nearing its end. BGR has learned from a trusted source that sales of the HTC First have been shockingly bad. So bad, in fact, that AT&T has already decided to discontinue the phone. Our source at AT&T has confirmed that the HTC First, which is the first smartphone to ship with Facebook Home pre-installed, will soon be discontinued and unsold inventory will be returned to HTC. How much unsold inventory is there? We don’t have an exact figure, but things aren’t looking good. According to our source, AT&T sold fewer than 15,000 units nationwide through last week when the phone’s price was slashed to $0.99."

benrothke writes "One of the challenges in reading The Plateau Effect: Getting from Stuck to Success is figuring how to classify it. Amazon has it ranked mainly in applied psychology, but also time management and inexplicable personal finance. In some ways it is all of the above and more. In fewer than 300 pages, the authors reference myriad different areas of science, mathematics, psychology and more; in the effort to show the reader how they can elevate themselves from the stuff in life that glues them to the status quo." Read below for the rest of Ben's review. The Plateau Effect: Getting from Stuck to Success author Bob Sullivan and Hugh Thompson pages 320 publisher Dutton rating 8/10 reviewer Ben Rothke ISBN 978-0525952800 summary Book shows how to learn to identify plateaus and break through any stagnancy in your life. Full disclosure: I am friends with Hugh Thompson, one of the authors of this book.

With that, the premise of the book is that the plateau effect is something that affects everyone. We all have our ups and down in life, relationships, work and more. The book attempts to help the reader identify plateaus in their life, in order to break through them.

While a plateau is often simply flat terrain, the authors are all over the terrain in the book. They quote and reference liberally from science, statistics, life sciences, psychology, ethics, information technology and much more. From that end, the book is a fascinating and insightful read.

At the start of the book, the authors use the term acclimation to refer to the plateaus that many of us reach. This is the inability to notice changes in the environment around us. To a degree, acclimation is a critical element of our lives. If everything was brand new, life would be overwhelming; both to our senses and psyche. The downside is that this acclimation often leads us to accepting things the way they are, staying at the plateau, getting stuck and the inability to move forward.

The authors note that a real plateau means that you have stopped growing and that your mind and senses are being dulled by sameness; by a routine that sucks the life and soul out of you. Plateaus force you to make bad decisions and feel desperate. By understanding the force and tapping into it, you can get more out of life with less effort, and feel more in tune to your existence. If this scares you that the book sounds like a new-age title, relax, it is far from it, thankfully.

Chapter 3 is one of the many fascinating sections in the book where the authors detail the greedy algorithm, where the locally optimal choice is what is generally preferred. They tie this into the Gekko mantra of greed being good. But note that research has shown that long-term greed is good, but short-term greed, the type that maximizes the here and now seems to work for a while but almost always leads to a plateau. And as you realize, plateaus are bad.

Chapter 5 details flow mechanisms, step functions and choke points. Author Hugh Thompson is a mathematician and it's obvious this chapter is his baby. A choke point is a part of a system that breaks first and slows everything else down. The book notes that a common cause of plateaus is not recognizing when and where choke points will occur.

Chapter 6 is another fascinating chapter that details people's inability to effectively deal with risk. The example given is around shark attacks. While the risk of shark attack is extraordinarily low, the media often makes it seem like an epidemic, and the gullible populace overreacts. The authors give many examples of where people don't comprehend risk and statistics. The authors note that people buy lottery tickets, often described as a tax on the mathematically disinclined, despite knowing the odds. They also write that due to various factors, people and society have become overly risk-averse, not realizing how risky that is.

While not new, chapter 7 details the problems with multitasking and its illusions of productivity. The authors quote Jordon Grafman, chief of the cognitive neuroscience section of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke who states that multitasking is actually a misnomer. He terms it rapid toggling between tasks. The downside to this rapid toggling is that people become less effective and productive. The reality they show is that people can't multitask.

While the book is indeed a fascinating and valuable read, some readers may find it somewhat frustrating that the authors at times can seem like they are all over the place, quoting and integrating different facets of science and psychology. While the theme of the book is plateaus, there is not always a discernible sense of unity between all of the examples.

Another lacking is the shortage of prescriptive actions the reader can take. For the reader who may be indifferent to their need for change, the book may not be of full value to then. It would have been appreciated if the authors could have created action items and exercises for each chapter.

But perhaps the best advice is on the 3rd to the last page of the book. The authors note that if your company is stuck and has plateaued, and unable to get past some vexing problems. What should you do? Tell the type A's in the room to be quiet for a while and set out some frontline introvert an ask for their advice. Giving voice to the quietest person in the room might be the most unique exercise a firm undertakes.

With that, The Plateau Effect: Getting from Stuck to Success is an extremely stimulating read. For the reader who wants to grow and move off their plateau, this will certainly help them. The book promises to help the reader unstick themselves from the things in life that weigh them down. It certainly lives up to its promise and makes for a fascinating read.

About the reviewer: Ben Rothke.

You can purchase The Plateau Effect: Getting from Stuck to Success from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

benrothke writes "One of the challenges in reading The Plateau Effect: Getting from Stuck to Success is figuring how to classify it. Amazon has it ranked mainly in applied psychology, but also time management and inexplicable personal finance. In some ways it is all of the above and more. In fewer than 300 pages, the authors reference myriad different areas of science, mathematics, psychology and more; in the effort to show the reader how they can elevate themselves from the stuff in life that glues them to the status quo." Read below for the rest of Ben's review. The Plateau Effect: Getting from Stuck to Success author Bob Sullivan and Hugh Thompson pages 320 publisher Dutton rating 8/10 reviewer Ben Rothke ISBN 978-0525952800 summary Book shows how to learn to identify plateaus and break through any stagnancy in your life. Full disclosure: I am friends with Hugh Thompson, one of the authors of this book.

With that, the premise of the book is that the plateau effect is something that affects everyone. We all have our ups and down in life, relationships, work and more. The book attempts to help the reader identify plateaus in their life, in order to break through them.

While a plateau is often simply flat terrain, the authors are all over the terrain in the book. They quote and reference liberally from science, statistics, life sciences, psychology, ethics, information technology and much more. From that end, the book is a fascinating and insightful read.

At the start of the book, the authors use the term acclimation to refer to the plateaus that many of us reach. This is the inability to notice changes in the environment around us. To a degree, acclimation is a critical element of our lives. If everything was brand new, life would be overwhelming; both to our senses and psyche. The downside is that this acclimation often leads us to accepting things the way they are, staying at the plateau, getting stuck and the inability to move forward.

The authors note that a real plateau means that you have stopped growing and that your mind and senses are being dulled by sameness; by a routine that sucks the life and soul out of you. Plateaus force you to make bad decisions and feel desperate. By understanding the force and tapping into it, you can get more out of life with less effort, and feel more in tune to your existence. If this scares you that the book sounds like a new-age title, relax, it is far from it, thankfully.

Chapter 3 is one of the many fascinating sections in the book where the authors detail the greedy algorithm, where the locally optimal choice is what is generally preferred. They tie this into the Gekko mantra of greed being good. But note that research has shown that long-term greed is good, but short-term greed, the type that maximizes the here and now seems to work for a while but almost always leads to a plateau. And as you realize, plateaus are bad.

Chapter 5 details flow mechanisms, step functions and choke points. Author Hugh Thompson is a mathematician and it's obvious this chapter is his baby. A choke point is a part of a system that breaks first and slows everything else down. The book notes that a common cause of plateaus is not recognizing when and where choke points will occur.

Chapter 6 is another fascinating chapter that details people's inability to effectively deal with risk. The example given is around shark attacks. While the risk of shark attack is extraordinarily low, the media often makes it seem like an epidemic, and the gullible populace overreacts. The authors give many examples of where people don't comprehend risk and statistics. The authors note that people buy lottery tickets, often described as a tax on the mathematically disinclined, despite knowing the odds. They also write that due to various factors, people and society have become overly risk-averse, not realizing how risky that is.

While not new, chapter 7 details the problems with multitasking and its illusions of productivity. The authors quote Jordon Grafman, chief of the cognitive neuroscience section of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke who states that multitasking is actually a misnomer. He terms it rapid toggling between tasks. The downside to this rapid toggling is that people become less effective and productive. The reality they show is that people can't multitask.

While the book is indeed a fascinating and valuable read, some readers may find it somewhat frustrating that the authors at times can seem like they are all over the place, quoting and integrating different facets of science and psychology. While the theme of the book is plateaus, there is not always a discernible sense of unity between all of the examples.

Another lacking is the shortage of prescriptive actions the reader can take. For the reader who may be indifferent to their need for change, the book may not be of full value to then. It would have been appreciated if the authors could have created action items and exercises for each chapter.

But perhaps the best advice is on the 3rd to the last page of the book. The authors note that if your company is stuck and has plateaued, and unable to get past some vexing problems. What should you do? Tell the type A's in the room to be quiet for a while and set out some frontline introvert an ask for their advice. Giving voice to the quietest person in the room might be the most unique exercise a firm undertakes.

With that, The Plateau Effect: Getting from Stuck to Success is an extremely stimulating read. For the reader who wants to grow and move off their plateau, this will certainly help them. The book promises to help the reader unstick themselves from the things in life that weigh them down. It certainly lives up to its promise and makes for a fascinating read.

About the reviewer: Ben Rothke.

You can purchase The Plateau Effect: Getting from Stuck to Success from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Nerval's Lobster writes "Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates displayed a bit of emotion when talking to CBS's 60 Minutes about Steve Jobs. The interview didn't focus entirely on the relationship between the two men, with most of its running time devoted instead to Gates's charitable efforts. But when the conversation shifted to their last meeting before Jobs's death from cancer in 2011, Gates—normally so cerebral—seemed a bit sad. 'When he was sick I got to go down and spend time with him,' Gates said, describing their meeting as 'forward looking.' Jobs spent a portion of their time together showing off designs for his yacht, which he would never see completed—something that Gates defended when the interviewer seemed a little bit incredulous. 'Thinking about your potential mortality isn't very constructive,' he said. Gates also praised Steve Jobs's marketing and design skills: 'He understood, he had an intuitive sense for marketing that was amazing.' In contrast to his subtle—and not so subtle—digs at the iPad over the years, Gates conceded that Apple had 'put the pieces together in a way that succeeded' with regard to tablets. Gates's magnanimity toward his former rival and Apple is a reflection, perhaps, of his current position in life: it's been nearly five years since his last full-time day at Microsoft, and all of his efforts seem focused on his philanthropic endeavors. He simply has no reason to rip a rival limb from limb in the same way he did as Microsoft CEO."

A while ago you had the chance to ask mathematician and theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson about his work in quantum electrodynamics, nuclear propulsion, and his thoughts on the past, present, and future of science. Below you'll find his answers to your questions. Why the United States?
by eldavojohn

Why did you take a fellowship at Cornell and stay in the United States? There's plenty of world renowned institutions in the United Kingdom and you were a pilot in the RAF -- what appealed to you about the United States? Do you have any comments or opinions on H1-Bs and the United States' current stance on immigration?

Dyson: During world war II I made plans to go to Russia after the war. I had fallen in love with the Russian language, and I knew that physics and mathematics in Russia were first-rate. So I planned to stay several years in Russia to study the Russian culture as well as science. Then soon after the war Stalin made it clear that he did not welcome foreign students. So my second choice was the USA. The main reason was that money was available from the Commonwealth Fund (now the Harkness Fund) for student fellowships in the USA. It was then easier to cross the Atlantic than to cross the Channel. I applied for a Commonwealth Fellowship and got generous support for two years in the USA. I went to Cornell because I happened by chance to meet G.I.Taylor who had been at Los Alamos with the British team during the war. He said, ``Go to Cornell, that is where all the bright people from Los Alamos went after the war.'' He was right. At Cornell I worked with Bethe and Feynman who were at the cutting edge of physics at that time.

I was never a pilot in the RAF, only a humble statistician collecting data about operations. The US is always schizophrenic about immigration. In those days the situation was generally worse than today, with strict immigration quotas. I benefited because I was British and we had the biggest quota. Now the situation is still bad but not so unfair as it was then. The quotas were overtly racist and designed to keep America for the WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants).



Education
by flogger

How has your education helped or hindered you? You are the "ideal" educated man. In our (American) culture, we don;t seem to be producing people devoted to learning, discovering, thinking, inventing, etc. What in your opinion can an educational system do to foster what you've become?

Dyson: I was extremely lucky because I came through the British education system during the war when everything was screwed up. The whole system depended on written examinations and we did not have enough ships to import paper. So there was no paper and no exams. Also there was a high shortage of teachers since all the young people were away fighting the war. As a result, I was in class only seven hours a week. A wonderful time to get an education. We had maximum freedom, and the kids learned more from one another than we would have learned from teachers.

The kids today spend far too much time in class and as a result are turned off from the things they are supposed to be learning. That is true not only in the USA but also in other countries.



Global warming: genetic engineering and coal death
by doom

In your article The Question of Global Warming, you make the point that the Earth's vegetation acts as a big carbon sink, and suggest that genetically engineered plants might do an even better job -- thus becoming the first person in history to make environmentalists angry by suggesting that top soil management is important. I have a few questions about this: (1) you mention the fanciful-sounding notion of "carbon-eating trees", but aren't there technologies that already exist that might do the job? There are claims that "no till" agriculture via the dreaded "roundup ready" plants reduce greenhouse gas emissions substantially. (2) A big part of the argument against immediate reductions in CO2 emissions is economic. Do the analyses you've seen really make an effort to capture all the costs and benefits associated with a move like banning coal burning completely? The annual deaths estimated from coal pollution seem big enough to make it worth doing even before you put global warming on the table.

Dyson: This is a complicated subject and I only discuss it in general terms. What you say about carbon-eating trees is true. Trees eat carbon almost as fast as we can burn it. No-till farming also eats carbon. The question I raised is whether we could eat more carbon by genetically engineering trees.I did not answer the question. We cannot answer it until the science of tree genetics is much better understood. The same thing is true of the effects of carbon on climate. We cannot predict the effects of carbon on climate until we understand the science of climate much better than we do now.

The shale-gas revolution has changed the economics of energy production drastically. Shale-gas is a greenhouse gas, but it is otherwise clean, doing far less damage than coal to the environment and to human health. Shale-gas is cheap and well distributed over the planet. The replacement of coal by shale-gas is by far the most practical way to get rid of coal and clean up the planet.



What are your views on the current state of fusion
by smaddox

I am of the opinion that without economical fusion, humanity will not last more than a few thousand years. I am also of the opinion that most fusion research funding is targeted at projects with little or no application to economical fusion (I see no evidence that tokamaks or inertial confinement will ever be economical. In fact, all evidence seems to suggest they will never be economical). What are your views on the current state of fusion research? Is funding misplaced? Disproportionately allocated?

Dyson: I am not an expert on plasma physics. I know only that plasma physics is very difficult and poorly understood. In my opinion the governments of the world, not only the USA, made a wrong choice about forty years ago when they stopped exploring the science of fusion with small-scale experiments and put their money into high engineering projects. The big engineering projects such as ITER are absurdly expensive and can never lead to economic fusion power. I agree with your opinions about this. I consider the funding to be misplaced. The only hope of economically useful fusion power is a radically different design which might emerge from better understanding of the basic science of plasma physics.

I do not agree that humanity needs economical fusion power in order to survive, unless you include the sun as a fusion power source. The sun is a splendid fusion reactor that will continue running for several billion years. All we need is to learn how to use sunlight economically. There are probably many ways to achieve this.



Nuclear Freeze Movement
by rotenberry

Professor Dyson,

I had the pleasure of listening to you speak at Caltech in the 1980s about the Nuclear Freeze Movement. You were a supporter even though you indicated that since the number of nuclear weapons was decreasing (at that time), keeping the current number of nuclear weapons was not desirable. Thirty years have passed. Do you think this movement accomplished any of their goals?

Dyson: The biggest reduction of nuclear weapons was done by George Bush Senior in 1989. He removed all tactical nukes from the US army and the surface navy. This was done quietly and unilaterally without any international negotiations. He got rid of about half of all our nuclear weapons, and these were the most dangerous weapons, deployed all over the world and likely to be involved in local fighting. As a result of his action, the world is much safer.

I believe we could go much further in the same direction. Unilateral action is much quicker and more effective than negotiating treaties. The next obvious step would be to get rid of nuclear bombs on airplanes. After that, land-based nuclear missiles, leaving the nuclear missile submarines till last. I think there is a good chance that the military will support such unilateral moves. The military knows that our nuclear weapons are essentially useless for fighting real wars. The problem is to educate the politicians.



Targets for the Space Industry
by manonthemoon

Given that we finally seem to have a vital and growing private space industry, what do you think the likeliest successful target for long term space industrialization/exploitation/habitation is? The Moon, near earth asteroids, Mars?

Dyson: I think it is absurd and illusory to guess what kind of space activities will be profitable. I think of the Virginia colonists who came to America to mine gold and finally got rich by growing tobacco. This is a situation where the market will decide and the market is unpredictable. They began with about a hundred years of fishing and trading operations off the coast before settlements became profitable. Things may go faster than this in space, or things may go slower. I see no point in guessing.



On the question of near/faster-than-light travel
by SixDimensionalArray

In my understanding, the concepts of nuclear pulse propulsion that were investigated in the Orion Project had the highest real potential for generating enormous energies required for "faster" travel in space than anything we have, even today. I have always felt that it is a tragedy that this research couldn't be taken further into our modern realities of exploration.

Today, we have NASA exploring the potential (on a very small scale) of faster than light (FTL) travel using ideas such as the Alcubierre drive. In common discussion, we now hear about things such as: dark matter, quantum teleportation, FTL particles in the form of cosmic rays, the likely discovery of the Higgs Boson, spacetime, etc. These appear, to the layman like myself, to be serious discussions, with new realities and new possibilities being discovered every day.

The entirety of the NASA space program as we know it has developed within the last 60 years.

Given the advances in technology we have made in such a short time, the laws of physics, and the realities of the politics of our world, do you think it is feasible that we will develop the ability for very fast, near or faster-than-light travel in the next 60 years, and which direction seems the most feasible to you?

Thank you for your contributions to science, I am humbled to be able to ask this question of you!

Dyson: I disagree with almost everything here. There are two NASAs, the real NASA which is intensely conservative and likes to use safe and reliable technology, and the paper NASA which pretends to support radical ideas but never does anything real. The paper NASA will generate a lot of hype but will certainly not lead to anything real. Faster-than-light travel is rubbish. The Orion project was designed to travel only within the solar system and is far too slow for interesting interstellar voyages. In the next 60 years we may see a public highway system started which will bring down the costs of space operations substantially, but it will not be increasing the speed of travel substantially. The important barrier to space operations is cost, not speed.



Mr. Dyson. Is AI more important than space travel?
by gestalt_n_pepper

While space travel is important for human survival in the long term, the more I think about it, the more it seems that developing a human style, scalable, artificial intelligence has for more potential to provide humans with rapid access to a much larger set of useful answers in the general domain of practical, solvable problems.

The investment should be, relatively speaking, trivial, and we already have 7 billion or so working models, so I think it's fairly certain that this can be done. Given a choice, would you advocate more resources be allocated to space travel, or AI?

Dyson: You ask whether, given a choice, I would put more resources into space or AI. My answer is that either choice would be stupid. Politicians always want to make such choices too soon, because they imagine they can pick winners. Usually they pick losers. The only way to improve the chances for finding winners is to keep all the choices open and try them all. That is particularly true for space and AI, which are not really competing with each other. They are done by different kinds of people in different kinds of enterprise. Both can and should be supported. It would be totally stupid to starve one and over-feed the other.

My own opinion is that AI has failed to fulfill its promise because we are using the wrong kind of computers. We are using digital computers, and the human brain is probably analog rather than digital. So my guess is that AI will succeed only after we move from digital to analog computing. This is a tough intellectual problem that cannot be solved just by spending a lot of money.



Transhumanism, Moore's Law, etc...
by BorisSkratchunkov

Perhaps this has been asked already (throughout the various interviews, engagements, etc that you have had hitherto), but what are your general thoughts on the Singularity movement, transhumanism, and Ray Kurzweil's overall philosophy on human progress? Are these folks realistic, optimistic, or pessimistic? What are your beliefs about the current state of human advancement, and what we must work on as we careen toward the future?

Dyson: I do not believe in any kind of ism. I believe we understand very little about human nature, about psychology or about economics. I do not take seriously any of the people who claim to predict the future. I believe them even less when they claim to be accurate predictors.



The Future of Physicists
by werepants

The early to mid 20th century was one of the most dynamic times to ever happen in physics, with massive shifts in thinking and incredible applications of science that led to some of the greatest achievements of mankind. For a variety of reasons, it seems as though progress recently has been more incremental, collective, and focused on confirming the big ideas of previous thinkers. What attribute do you think is most needed in the upcoming generation of physicists to usher in the next era of scientific progress?

Dyson: Scientific progress happens in two ways, either driven by new ideas or by new tools. The first half of the twentieth century was the time of new ideas, the second half was the time of new tools.New ideas are more exciting but new tools are often more important. For the twenty-first century, it seems that the most important contribution of physicists is to build new tools for other sciences. Examples, chemistry and biology and astronomy and computer-technology, all driven by new tools supplied by physics. This is not so exciting as discovering the Dirac equation, but probably more useful. There is plenty of good stuff for physicists to do.



Fewer Polymaths in the Modern World?
by eldavojohn

When weighted against population, it appears that there are fewer "Renaissance men/women" than there have been historically. I've heard many regular people opine about how fields require more depth and learning to make progress in them but, as a polymath yourself, what is your opinion on it?

Dyson: It is undoubtedly true that we are today drowning in information. Each of us knows a smaller fraction of the total information than earlier generations knew. Our skills have become more specialized. But I do not see any decrease in breadth of interest. The young people today are still interested in as wide a variety of subjects as we old ones were. Tools of knowledge such as the internet and Wikipedia make it easier for young people today to spread their minds over many subjects.



Parenting Esther Dyson
by ideonexus

You're daughter Esther is one of the most incredibly inspiring women role models alive today. Do you have any parenting advice for those of out here with kids of our own who would like them to become similarly active, positive, and brilliant adults?

Dyson: Thank you for your compliment to Esther and to her parents. We do not claim credit for her achievements. She was lucky to be the oldest of six, so we had little time for her and gave her little of our attention. She befitted from our benign neglect. She learned from a young age to choose her own path through life. She chose for her motto: "Always make new mistakes." I believe that is the key to her happy and productive life.