38741127
submission
An anonymous reader writes:
AMD is preparing to lay off 20 to 30 percent of its workforce after warning of a 10 percent decline in Q3 revenues driven by the weak global economy and PC sales, according to AllThingsD's Arik Hesseldehl. The layoffs will reportedly focus on engineering and sales, and are in addition to a 10 percent headcount reduction 11 months ago. Teams of consultants from McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group are reportedly swarming headquarters to advise the
CEO Rory Read, who took over from Dirk Meyer a little over a year ago; several
senior executives including the CFO, have recently departed.
38737783
submission
theodp writes:
In Ken Kesey's 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Nurse Ratched maintained order in the mental institution by dispensing antipsychotic and anticonvulsant drugs to the patients. Fifty years later, the NY Times reports that some physicians are prescribing stimulants to struggling students in schools starved of extra money, not to treat ADHD, necessarily, but to boost their academic performance. 'We as a society have been unwilling to invest in very effective nonpharmaceutical interventions for these children and their families,' said Dr. Ramesh Raghavan, an expert in prescription drug use among low-income children. 'We are effectively forcing local community psychiatrists to use the only tool at their disposal, which is psychotropic medications.'
38736923
submission
NeutronCowboy writes:
From the yahoo story:
"The majority of top decision-makers at the Federal Trade Commission believe that an antitrust case should be brought against Google Inc, meaning the search giant could soon be headed into tough negotiations, three people familiar with the matter said.
Four of the FTC commissioners have become convinced after more than a year of investigation that Google illegally used its dominance of the search market to hurt its rivals, while one commissioner is skeptical, the sources said."
38730645
submission
An anonymous reader writes:
Is Google planning on integrating an antivirus scanner into Android? A just-released Google Play store app update as well as the company’s recent acquisition of VirusTotal seem to hint that yes, Google is looking into it.
38730309
submission
stinkymountain writes:
At a launch event for MIT's new wireless technology research center, PhD student Swarun Kumar presented technology for a new autonomous vehicle that recognizes when it may be in danger of striking other cars and pedestrians.
38730219
submission
colinneagle writes:
Several other autonomous cars have been developed elsewhere, most famously by Google, and they are generally capable of identifying objects in the road directly ahead of or behind them. The challenge undertaken by the MIT researchers is making these cars aware of dangers lurking around corners and behind buildings.
MIT PhD student Swarun Kumar showed a video of a test run by the MIT researchers in which an autonomous golf cart running the technology, called CarSpeak, encountered a pedestrian walking from the entrance of a building to a crosswalk. The golf cart stopped roughly five yards ahead of the crosswalk and waited long enough for the pedestrian to walk to the other side of the road. The vehicle then continued driving automatically.
The solution Kumar presented is based on a method of communications that is intended to expand the vehicle's field of view. This can be accomplished by compressing and sharing the data that autonomous vehicles generate while they're in motion, which Kumar says can amount to gigabits per second.
In a comparison test, a car using CarSpeak's MAC-based communications was able to stop with a maximum average delay of 0.45 seconds, compared to the minimum average delay time of 2.14 seconds for a car running 802.11, the report noted.
38727137
submission
another random user writes:
Apple is planning to shift production of its ARM-based microprocessors from Samsung to the Taiwanese chip-baking giant TSMC as early as next year, according to a report by the China Economic News Service (CENS).
The report cites CitiGroup Global Markets analyst J.T. Hsu as saying that TSMC will be Apple's sole supplier of 20nm quad-core processors, with volume production to begin in the fourth quarter of 2013. He also noted that Apple began its 20nm chip-verfication process at TSMC in August of this year.
Hsu told CENS that the future quad-core chips were intended for Apple's "iPad, iTV and even Macbook," turning up the heat on two rumors that have been simmering for months: that Apple is planning a move into the television market, and that an ARM-based MacBook is in the works.
38725097
submission
wiredog writes:
This is what happens when your drop down list is organized alphabetically, not by "most likely choice" first.
38724131
submission
hypnosec writes:
Raynaldo Rivera has pled guilty of hacking Sony Pictures Entertainment website in May 2011 at the US District Court for the Central District of California. The 20 year old, in his plea agreement, revealed that he joined Lulzsec in the month of May last year in a bid to help the hacking collective carry out cyberattacks on governments and businesses. Rivera, who surrendered to the FBI on August 28 this year, admitted that he was the one who launched an SQL injection attack against sonypictures.com that enabled him to extract confidential information from the website's database.
38721039
submission
space_in_your_face writes:
Since chocolate consumption could hypothetically improve cognitive function not only in individuals but also in whole populations, a researcher wondered whether there would be a correlation between a country's level of chocolate consumption and its population's cognitive function. And apparently, there is. At least, he found a correlation between chocolate consumption in a country and the number of Nobel laureates in said country. Interesting read after the discussion about correlation vs causation.
38719381
submission
another random user writes:
Downloading a car – or a pair of sneakers – will be entirely possible, although Ford and Nike won’t be particularly happy if people use their designs to do so.
A new patent, issued this week by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office and titled ‘Manufacturing control system’, describes a system whereby 3D printer-like machines (the patent actually covers additive, subtractive, extrusion, melting, solidification, and other types of manufacturing) will have to obtain authorization before they are allowed to print items requested by the user.
In a nutshell, a digital fingerprint of “restricted items” will be held externally and printers will be required to compare the plans of the item they’re being asked to print against those in a database. If there’s a match, printing will be disallowed or restricted.
