An anonymous reader writes: Career website Glassdoor today released its eighth annual Employees' Choice Awards, a list of the 50 best companies to work for in the coming year. Airbnb was picked as the number one tech company to work for in 2016, displacing Google. Airbnb didn't even make the list last year. Google, meanwhile, placed sixth in 2013 and 2014, and first in 2015. As with Google last year, it's worth noting that Airbnb hasn't just taken the top tech company spot: It is the top company overall.

New submitter insitus writes: On 10 December, Germany's new Wendelstein 7-X stellarator was fired up for the first time, rounding off a construction effort that took nearly 2 decades and cost €1 billion. Initially and for the first couple of months, the reactor will be filled with helium—an unreactive gas—so that operators can make sure that they can control and heat the gas effectively. At the end of January, experiments will begin with hydrogen in an effort to show that fusing hydrogen isotopes can be a viable source of clean and virtually limitless energy.

schnell writes: The New York Times reports that "the world's most popular song" is at last poised to be released into the public domain. From the story: "In September, a federal judge ruled that Warner Music, the song's publisher, did not have a valid copyright claim to 'Happy Birthday,' which has been estimated to collect $2 million a year in royalties. But what that ruling meant for the future of the song — and Warner's liability — was unclear, and a trial had been set to begin next week. In a filing on Tuesday in United States District Court in Los Angeles, the parties in the case said they had agreed to a settlement to end the case. The terms of that deal are confidential. But if the settlement is approved by the court, the song is expected to formally enter the public domain." (We mentioned the case in September, too.)

1sockchuck writes: Data center providers are offering space with less power infrastructure than traditional mission-critical facilities, citing demand from customers looking to forego extra UPS and generators in return for more affordable pricing. The demand for "variable resiliency" space reflects a growing emphasis on controlling data center costs, along with a focus on application-level requirements like HPC and bitcoin mining. Data center experts differed on whether this trend toward flexible design was a niche, or a long-term trend. "In the next 12 months,data center operators will be challenged to deliver power to support both an HPC environment as well as traditional storage all under one roof," said Tate Cantrell, CTO at Iceland's Verne Global. "HPC will continue the trend to low resiliency options." But some requirements don't change. "Even when they say they're OK with lower reliability, they still want uptime," noted one executive.

itwbennett writes: At a press event at NASA's Advanced Supercomputer Facility in Silicon Valley on Tuesday, the agency was keen to talk about the capabilities of its D-Wave 2X quantum computer. 'Engineers from NASA and Google are using it to research a whole new area of computing — one that's years from commercialization but could revolutionize the way computers solve complex problems,' writes Martyn Williams. But when questions turned to the system's security, a NASA moderator quickly shut things down [VIDEO], saying the topic was 'for later discussion at another time.'

Nerval's Lobster writes: Former CEO Steve Ballmer once publicly referred to Linux as a 'cancer.' Not content to just let Ballmer blow up about it, company also spent a good deal of money and legal effort on claiming that open-source software violated its patents. A decade ago, the idea of Microsoft creating a Linux certification would have seemed like lunacy. But now that very thing has come to pass, (Dice link) with the Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA) Linux on Azure certification, designed in conjunction with the Linux Foundation. Earning the Linux on Azure certification requires tech pros to pass Microsoft Exam 70-533 (Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions) as well as the Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator (LFCS) exam, which collectively require knowledge of Linux and Azure implementation. Microsoft evidently recognizes that open-source technology increasingly powers the cloud and mobile, and that it needs to play nice with the open-source community if it wants to survive and evolve.

An anonymous reader writes: Basic ASLR was not implemented in 3 major antivirus makers, allowing attackers to use the antivirus itself towards attacking Windows PCs. The bug, in layman terms, is: the antivirus would select the same memory address space every time it would run. If attackers found out the memory space's address, they could tell their malicious code to execute in the same space, at the same time, and have it execute with root privileges, which most antivirus have on Windows PCs. It's a basic requirement these days for software programmers to use ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization) to prevent their code from executing in predictable locations. Affected products: AVG, McAfee, Kaspersky. All "quietly" issued fixes.

Mike Godwin worked as the first staff counsel of the EFF and served as general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation. He has been a contributing editor of Reason magazine and was elected to the Open Source Initiative board in 2011. Mike is probably best known however for coining the internet adage Godwin's Law. He is currently general counsel and director of innovation policy at the R Street Institute. Mike has given us some of his time to answer any questions you may have. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question (and one comparison involving Nazis or Hitler) per post.

An anonymous reader writes: Insurance group Chubb will start offering the UK's first cyber-bullying policy – 'troll insurance' – through which it will accept claims of up to £50,000 to cover counselling and relocation costs, as well as time spent out of work. Chubb will provide its personal insurance policy customers the option to claim expenses ensued from online abuse. Cyberbullying is defined by the insurer as 'three or more acts by the same person or group to harass, threaten or intimidate a customer.' While the new insurance option is targeted towards parents concerned about their children's online activities, adults who are targeted by cyber abuse will also be able to make a claim.

Patrick O'Neill writes: Despite requests from police following the deadly Paris attacks, France will not ban the Tor anonymity network or public Wi-Fi, Prime Minister Manual Valls said on Wednesday."A ban of Wi-Fi is not a course of action envisaged," Valls responded on Wednesday. Nor is he in favor of a ban on Tor, which encrypts and masks users' identifying data. "Internet is a freedom, is an extraordinary means of communication between people, it is a benefit to the economy," Valls added.

theodp writes: Stephen Wolfram received a PhD in particle physics at age 20 (his thesis committee included Richard Feynman). So it's probably not too surprising that Wolfram's new book, An Elementary Introduction to the Wolfram Language (free on the web), aspires to teach those new to programming how to do much more than just move Minecraft and Star Wars characters around. "The goal of the book," explains Wolfram in a blog post, "is to take people from zero to the point where they know enough about the Wolfram Language that they can routinely use it to create programs for things they want to do. And when I say 'zero', I really mean 'zero'. This is a book for everyone. It doesn't assume any knowledge of programming, or math (beyond basic arithmetic), or anything else. It just starts from scratch and explains things. I've tried to make it appropriate for both adults and kids. I think it'll work for typical kids aged about 12 and up."

An anonymous reader writes: Chinese web giant Baidu has successfully completed a driverless car test route on a variety of road types near the company's Beijing headquarters. The self-driving BMW 3 Series traveled almost two miles, navigating 'complex road conditions.' The vehicle completed a number of maneuvers, including U-turns, lane changes, and joining traffic [WSJ, paywalled] from a motorway ramp. The autonomous car peaked at a speed of 62 miles per hour. According to Baidu, its Highly Automated Driving (HAD) mapping technology is able to capture 3D road data and detect vehicles, lanes and objects to within a matter of centimeters.

Bruce Perens writes: At the TAPR conference this year, I did a talk on why Open Hardware licenses don't actually work, and how it would actually hurt us if they did. I'm not saying you should stop making Open Hardware, I just want to make sure you don't assume the license works better than it actually does. Also, I explain why my latest project is 100% Open Source but the hardware design is more restrictively licensed than the Open Hardware Definition would allow. The video is here. There's a long prelude of talk about Amateur Radio stuff before the Open Hardware part. But you'll probably find it interesting. Gary didn't succeed with the Kickstarter to fund recording the entire conference this year, but he made the trip and recorded it with a multi-camera shoot anyway, at significant personal expense. If you like the video, please help cover his expenses. Even $1 would help.

Rei writes: After being grounded for six months after a strut failure doomed the launch vehicle, Elon Musk has confirmed rumors that SpaceX plans to try for launch again on December 19th, with a static test firing on December 16th. SpaceX will also attempt a landing of their first stage — not at sea, but on land. Lastly, this will be the first launch of a Falcon 9 "Full Thrust" variant, where the propellants are supercooled (with the oxygen just above its freezing point) to increase their density and thus fuel flow and thrust.