more free stuff on Listia
|
Slashdot News for nerds, stuff that matters Prominent GitHub Engineer Julie Ann Horvath Quits Citing Harrassment First time accepted submitter PvtVoid writes in with the story of Julie Ann Horvath alleging a culture of sexism at GitHub. "The exit of engineer Julie Ann Horvath from programming network GitHub has sparked yet another conversation concerning women in technology and startups. Her claims that she faced a sexist internal culture at GitHub came as a surprise to some, given her former defense of the startup and her internal work at the company to promote women in technology."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. Aussie Attorney General's War On Encrypted Web Services Bismillah writes "If Attorney-General Brandis gets his way in the process of revising Australia's Telecommunications Interception Act, users and providers of VPNs and other encrypted services will by law be required to decrypt government intercepted data. Because, 'sophisticated criminals and terrorists.' New Zealand already has a similar law, the Telecommunications Interception and Computer Security Act. Apparently, large Internet service providers such as Microsoft and Facebook won't be exempt from the TICSA and must facilitate interception of traffic."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. Gates Warns of Software Replacing People; Greenspan Says H-1Bs Fix Inequity dcblogs writes "Bill Gates and Alan Greenspan, in separate forums, offered outlooks and prescriptions for fixing jobs and income. Gates is concerned that graduates of U.S. secondary schools may not be able stay ahead of software automation. 'These things are coming fast,' said Gates, in an interview with the American Enterprise Institute 'Twenty years from now labor demand for a lots of skill sets will be substantially lower, and I don't think people have that in their mental model.' Meanwhile, former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan believes one way to attack income inequity is to raise the H-1B cap. If the program were expanded, income wouldn't necessarily go down much, but it would go down enough to make an impact. Income inequality is a relative concept, he argued. People who are absolutely at the top of the scale in 1925, for instance, would be getting food stamps today, said Greenspan. 'You don't have to necessarily bring up the bottom if you bring the top down.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot. Planet Mercury Has Shrunk More Than Thought sciencehabit writes "Measuring just 4880 kilometers across, Mercury is a small world. The planet became slightly smaller as its interior cooled, which caused Mercury to shrink, buckling its surface and creating numerous cliffs and ridges. Now, after studying 5934 of these features, researchers report online today in Nature Geoscience that Mercury's contraction was much greater than previously thought: During the past 4 billion years, the planet's diameter decreased by 7 to 14 kilometers. The greater estimate of shrinkage accords with models that predict how much a rocky planet should contract as its interior cools; the new work may also lend insight into the evolution of extrasolar planets that, like Mercury and unlike Earth, lack any moving continents."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. Alibaba Confirms Plans To Offer IPO In US hackingbear writes "China e-commerce giant Alibaba Group confirmed early Sunday that it plans to become a public company in the US. The proposed US IPO, which is expected to raise more than $15 billion, is a bid winning over Hong Kong stock exchange, which had been competing for the offering with US stock exchanges but objected to some of Alibaba's proposed listing terms. Founded in 1999 by former English teacher Jack Ma, the Hangzhou, China company, of which Yahoo owns 24%, provides marketplace platforms that allow merchants to sell goods directly to consumers controlling 80% of Internet e-commerce market in China."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. UK Government Wants "Unsavory" Web Content To Be Removed An anonymous reader writes "The UK minister for immigration and security, James Brokenshire has called for the government to do more to deal with 'unsavoury', rather than illegal, material online. 'Terrorist propaganda online has a direct impact on the radicalisation of individuals and we work closely with the internet industry to remove terrorist material hosted in the UK or overseas,' Brokenshire told Wired.co.uk in a statement."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. Eric Schmidt On Why College Is Still Worth It An anonymous reader writes "The wisdom of getting a college degree and saddling yourself with a huge amount of debt has been called into question recently, but not by Eric Schmidt. The Google Chairman says it's still worth it, noting that: 'The economic return to higher education over a lifetime produces significant compound greater earnings.' From the article: 'When asked about the difficulty in paying for college, Schmidt was adamant: "I appreciate it's expensive and we need to fix that," he said, but "figure out a way to do it." One potential problem with Schmidt's statement is that it was an argument for the average student. It may be more advantageous for students at the bottom and top quartiles of the talent distribution to go straight into the workforce (or get vocational training). Case in point, Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college, and I don't think anybody would say he made a mistake.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot. Jack A. Kinzler, Savior of the Skylab Mission, Dies At 94 puddingebola writes "From his New York Times Obituary, 'Had Jack A. Kinzler not built model planes as a boy, had he not visited the post office as a youth and had he not, as a grown man, purchased four fishing rods at $12.95 apiece, Skylab — the United States' $2.5 billion space station — would very likely have been forfeit.' An excellent obit from the NYT, recounting the story of how Kinzler saved the Skylab mission with a telescoping parasol to patch a damaged heat shield. An inventive thinker and tinkerer, Mr. Kinzler was also responsible for the flags and plaques placed during the Apollo mission."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. Sons of Anarchy Creator On Google Copyright Anarchy theodp writes "Over at Slate, Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter argues that Google's anti-copyright stance is just a way to devalue content, which is bad for artists and bad for consumers. The screed is Sutter's response to an earlier anti-copyright rant in Slate penned by a lawyer who represents Google and is a Fellow at the New America Foundation, a public policy institute chaired by Google Chairman Eric Schmidt that receives funding from Schmidt and Google. 'Everyone is aware that Google has done amazing things to revolutionize our Internet experience,' writes Sutter. 'And I'm sure Mr. and Mrs. Google are very nice people. But the big G doesn't contribute anything to the work of creatives. Not a minute of effort or a dime of financing. Yet Google wants to take our content, devalue it, and make it available for criminals to pirate for profit. Convicted felons like Kim Dotcom generate millions of dollars in illegal revenue off our stolen creative work. People access Kim through Google. And then, when Hollywood tries to impede that thievery, it's presented to the masses as a desperate attempt to hold on to antiquated copyright laws that will kill your digital buzz. It's so absurd that Google is still presenting itself as the lovable geek who's the friend of the young everyman. Don't kid yourself, kids: Google is the establishment. It is a multibillion-dollar information portal that makes dough off of every click on its page and every data byte it streams. Do you really think Google gives a s**t about free speech or your inalienable right to access unfettered content? Nope. You're just another revenue resource Google can access to create more traffic and more data streams. Unfortunately, those streams are now pristine, digital ones of our work, which all flow into a huge watershed of semi-dirty cash. If you want to know more about how this works, just Google the word "parasite."'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot. US Navy Strategists Have a Long History of Finding the Lost Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Benedict Carey reports at the NYT that the uncertainties surrounding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370's disappearance are enormous, but naval strategists have been unraveling lost-at-sea mysteries as far back as the U-boat battles of World War II, and perhaps most dramatically in 1968, when an intelligence team found the submarine Scorpion, which sank in the North Atlantic after losing contact under equally baffling circumstances. "The same approach we used with Scorpion could be applied in this case and should be," says John P. Craven who helped pioneer the use of Bayesian search techniques to locate objects lost at sea. "But you need to begin with the right people." The approach is a kind of crowdsourcing, but not one in which volunteers pored over satellite images, like they have in search of Flight 370. "That effort is akin to good Samaritans combing a forest for a lost child without knowing for certain that the child is there," writes Carey. Instead, forecasters draw on expertise from diverse but relevant areas — in the case of finding a submarine, say, submarine command, ocean salvage, and oceanography experts, as well as physicists and engineers. Each would make an educated guess as to where the ship is, based on different scenarios: the sub was attacked; a torpedo activated onboard; a battery exploded. Craven's work was instrumental in the Navy's search for the missing hydrogen bomb that had been lost in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Spain in 1966 and this is how Craven located the Scorpion. "I knew these guys and I gave probability scores to each scenario they came up with," says Craven. The men bet bottles of Chivas Regal to keep matters interesting, and after some statistical analysis, Craven zeroed in on a point about 400 miles from the Azores, near the Sargasso Sea. The sub was found about 200 yards away. In the case of the downed Malaysian plane, forecasters might bring in climate and ocean scientists, engineers who worked on building the plane's components and commercial pilots familiar with the route. Those specialists would then make judgments based on the scenarios already discussed as possible causes for the disappearance of Flight 370: terrorism, pilot error, sudden depressurization and engine failure. Sound-detection technology in and around the Indian Ocean may aid this forecasting. The sound of the airliner's fall — if it hit the water — might already have been picked up by submarines watching each other. "In that case the information would be classified," says former submarine commander Alfred Scott McLare, "and we wouldn't know anything until it was released through back channels somehow.""
Read more of this story at Slashdot. Transhumanist Children's Book Argues, "Death Is Wrong" destinyland writes "Hoping to inspire life-extending medical research, science fiction author Gennady Stolyarov has launched a campaign to give away 1,000 free copies of his transhumanist picture book for children, Death is Wrong. 'My greatest fear about the future is not of technology running out of control or posing existential risks to humankind,' he explains. 'Rather, my greatest fear is that, in the year 2045, I will be...wondering, "What happened to that Singularity we were promised by now...?"' Along with recent scientific discoveries, the book tells its young readers about long-lived plants and animals '"that point the way toward lengthening lifespans in humans,' in an attempt to avoid a future where children 'would pay no more attention to technological progress and life-extension possibilities than their predecessors did.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot. Harsh Wireless Conditions? Send In the Drone Hot Spot coondoggie writes "The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has moved along a project it says would use hot-spot enabled drones to bring wireless communications to even the most distant and harsh environments. The project known as Fixed Wireless at a Distance is designed specifically to overcome the challenge inherent with cell communication in remote areas and this week the agency awarded L-3 $16.4 million to support the next iteration of the system."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. Federal Student Aid Requirements At For-Profit Colleges Overhauled An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. Department of Education has released a proposal for new regulations that would hold colleges that receive federal student aid accountable for the employment success of their graduates. The overhaul is prompted by the fact that students from for-profit colleges account for nearly 50% of all loan defaults yet only account for about 13% of the total higher education population. '[O]f the for-profit gainful employment programs the Department could analyze and which could be affected by [the proposed regulations], the majority--72%--produced graduates who on average earned less than high school dropouts.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot. Friendly Fungus Protects Our Mouths From Invaders sciencehabit writes "When we talk about the human microbiome, bacteria usually get all the press. But microscopic fungi live in and on us, too. New research shows that a little-known fungus called Pichia lives in healthy mouths and may play an important role in protecting us from an infection caused by the harmful fungus Candida. The friendly fungus makes a substance that may even lead to a new anti-fungal drug."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. The Billionaires Privatizing American Science An anonymous reader writes "Government-funded science is struggling in the United States. With the unstable economy over the past decade and the growing hostility to science in popular rhetoric, basic research money is getting hard to find. Part of the gap is being filled by billionaire philanthropists. Steven Edwards of the American Association for the Advancement of Science says, 'For better or worse, the practice of science in the 21st century is becoming shaped less by national priorities or by peer-review groups and more by the particular preferences of individuals with huge amounts of money.' Vast amounts of research are now driven by names like Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, David Koch, and Eric Schmidt. While this helps in some ways, it can hurt in others. 'Many of the patrons, they say, are ignoring basic research — the kind that investigates the riddles of nature and has produced centuries of breakthroughs, even whole industries — for a jumble of popular, feel-good fields like environmental studies and space exploration. ... Fundamentally at stake, the critics say, is the social contract that cultivates science for the common good.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot. Newsfeed display by CaRP |
|
CNN.com - Technology CNN.com delivers up-to-the-minute news and information on the latest top stories, weather, entertainment, politics and more. Robot band gives new meaning to heavy metal What has 78 fingers, 22 arms, and no brain? Answer: The coolest robot band you've ever seen. 5 things we learned at SXSW Interactive Even when pared down to just its Interactive portion, South by Southwest can feel like a huge and amorphous thing -- sort of like, as director Hugh Forrest says, the Internet itself. LeBron's Samsung tweet gaffe In the tech world, paying a celebrity to love your product can sometimes backfire. Flashbacks from Web's 25 years From Napster to balloon-powered Internet, here is a look back at the history of the World Wide Web Oculus Rift demo wows SXSW Night gathers, and now your watch begins. Pi Day celebrated nationwide March 14 is Albert Einstein's birthday, and also Pi Day. LeBron's tweet the latest celebrity tech gaffe In the tech world, paying a celebrity to love your product can sometimes backfire. 5 things we learned at SXSW Even when pared down to just its Interactive portion, South by Southwest can feel like a huge and amorphous thing -- sort of like, as director Hugh Forrest says, the Internet itself. Musician gets bionic drumming arm With a little help from Georgia Tech, musician Jason Barnes is back behind his drum kit. CNN affiliate WXIA reports. Flashbacks from the Web's 25 years From Napster to balloon-powered Internet, here is a look back at the history of the World Wide Web Biz Stone: Humans can outsmart the Internet At 9:45 in the morning after his 40th birthday you might expect Biz Stone, best known for co-founding Twitter, to be a little bleary. After all, many millionaire tech execs flaunt their party lifestyle like a badge of honor. Text and talk in the air? The FCC is considering allowing passengers to talk and text on their cell phones while in-flight. Meet the Rules of the Internet Hello! Welcome to the Internet. It's a big place, so let me show you around. Netiquette: Saying farewell So many folks manage to lose their netiquette heads when they scramble, legs flailing and akimbo, toward the denouement of events and life chapters. So here is the ultimate (get it?) digital-etiquette guide to a polite big finish. 10 smartphone habits to avoid How annoying and rude and antisocial have we all become with our smartphones? We're embarrassing ourselves all over the place. Please stop. Newsfeed display by CaRP |
|
CNN.com - Science & Space CNN.com delivers up-to-the-minute news and information on the latest top stories, weather, entertainment, politics and more. Mars Science Lab launch delayed two years NASA's launch of the Mars Science Laboratory -- hampered by technical difficulties and cost overruns -- has been delayed until the fall of 2011, NASA officials said at a news conference Thursday in Washington. Shuttle lands at California air base NASA officials Sunday waved off the first opportunity for space shuttle Endeavour to return to Earth, citing poor weather conditions. iReporters watch planets, moon align Inspiration for 'Contact' still listening From a remote valley in Northern California, Jill Tarter is listening to the universe. Indian lunar orbiter hit by heat rise Scientists have switched off several on-board instruments to halt rising temperatures inside India's first unmanned lunar spacecraft. Newsfeed display by CaRP |
