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Submission + - New York Public Library Releases Over 20,000 Hi-Res Maps (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: Finally, you don't have to raise your voice over a group of whisperers in the New York Public Library to get a better view of its map collection. Actually, you don't even need to visit the place at all. Over 20,000 maps and cartographic works from the NYPL's Lionel Pincus & Princess Firyal Map Division have been uploaded and made downloadable for the public.

"We believe these maps have no known US copyright restrictions," explains a blog post announcing the wholesale release of the library's map collection. "It means you can have the maps, all of them if you want, for free, in high resolution. We’ve scanned them to enable their use in the broadest possible ways by the largest number of people." The NYPL is distributing the maps under Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, which means you can do whatever you want with the maps.

Submission + - US FCC Decision to improve WiFi speeds "Nationwide" (thehill.com)

Submitted by bbsguru
bbsguru writes: Wi-Fi networks will soon be improving thanks to a vote by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today.
    The FCC voted unanimously to open 100 MHz of wireless spectrum in an unlicensed 5GHz block . The move will increase the number of frequencies available to unlicensed wireless networks (such as those set up through Wi-Fi routers) by nearly 15 percent, and in turn, allow them to handle a greater level traffic at higher speeds.
    In English: Private Wi-Fi networks in your homes, businesses, convention centers, airports, music venues, etc., are about to get a lot faster.
    “Today’s action represents the largest amount of spectrum suitable for mobile broadband that the Commission has made available for auction since the 700MHz band was auctioned in 2008,” the FCC wrote in a statement.
“Access to these bands will help wireless companies meet growing consumer demand for mobile data by enabling faster wireless speeds and more capacity.”
    The increased spectrum should mean that Wi-Fi networks will be less congested, and next-gen routers will be able to take better advantage of gigabit broadband speeds that are cropping up all over the country.

Comment Mutagens (Score 1) 558

I suspect, what will be discovered by science and research, is that our civilization has created mutagens, that have helped accelerate the rate at which members of the population have these conditions.

Romans with lead.

Recent history with things like DDT.

History shows us that we often do not know the downside of some of our choices. For example, we only found out about lead poisoning, and removing lead from automotive fuel and residential paints, in one generation.

So my guess is, like we have discovered that some substances are carcinogens, that some things we are exposed to routinely today, will be classified as mutagens, and restricted or banned.

For those that already express the condition, I fear there is no solution. A mutation in the current science, unlike the movie Gattaca, doesn't seem fixable.

Comment One of my children (Score 1) 558

One of my children is a 'special needs' kid.

Takes them an hour to do 25 elementary school math problems. Not because they are 'slow', but cannot stay on task, internally and externally distracted, all the time.

We feel pressured to always have them on meds, different meds if they don't seem to be behaving 'better', drugs roulette, so they can seem more Acceptable to Others.

IEPs. Basically years of adversarial polite conflict with the elementary school, the principal of the elementary school, to accomodate the child's special needs. The principal trying to say the child has a displine problem, and would not provide all the services called out in my child's IEP, until we escalated over the principal's head to the district itself.

My child, that I love, I worry about, contantly. I worry about them beeing bullied, teased, made to feel bad for them just being themselves, in a world that likes to be xenophobic for those that Dont Seem To Fit In.

For me, I feel a sense of resignated acceptance. I already expect for my child to always be living with me, even when I am retired. I torture myself with worry how they will do in this world, once I am no longer alive to help them.

For me, I feel a cosmic finger has pointed at me, and has judged my existance will be a bit more biblical Job than those whose kids are Normals.

For me, I will be happy to be proved wrong, and that my special needs child grows up okay, but so far, I do not see any hope of that yet.

Submission + - Toward Better Programming (chris-granger.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Chris Granger, creator of the flexible, open source LightTable IDE, has written a thoughtful article about the nature of programming. For years, he's been trying to answer the question: What's wrong with programming? After working on his own IDE and discussing it with hundreds of other developers, here are his thoughts: 'If you look at much of the advances that have made it to the mainstream over the past 50 years, it turns out they largely increased our efficiency without really changing the act of programming. I think the reason why is something I hinted at in the very beginning of this post: it's all been reactionary and as a result we tend to only apply tactical fixes. As a matter of fact, almost every step we've taken fits cleanly into one of these buckets. We've made things better but we keep reaching local maxima because we assume that these things can somehow be addressed independently. ... The other day, I came to the conclusion that the act of writing software is actually antagonistic all on its own. Arcane languages, cryptic errors, mostly missing (or at best, scattered) documentation — it's like someone is deliberately trying to screw with you, sitting in some Truman Show-like control room pointing and laughing behind the scenes. At some level, it's masochistic, but we do it because it gives us an incredible opportunity to shape our world.'

Submission + - FTC Settles with Sites over SSL Lies (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The makers of two major mobile apps, Fandango and Credit Karma, have settled with the Federal Trade Commission after the commission charged that they deliberately misrepresented the security of their apps and failed to validate SSL certificates. The apps promised users that their data was being sent over secure SSL connections, but the apps had disabled the validation process.

The settlements with the FTC don’t include any monetary penalties, but both companies have been ordered to submit to independent security audits every other year for the next 20 years and to put together comprehensive security programs.

Submission + - Analysis Of 244,703 DDoS Incidents

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: NSFOCUS released a new report, which details attack trends and methodologies over the past year. The report includes statistical analysis and key observations based on 244,703 DDoS incidents. Observations indicate that DDoS attacks are maturing in the era of APT. DDoS attacks have been used as smokescreens to carry out APT attacks or for other malicious purposes. The report also notes the availability of DDoS-as-a-service, which affords anyone with a computer and a credit card the ability to carry out an attack.

Submission + - 1930s immigrants to US who Americanized their names got income boost (economist.com) 1

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: Economists—most famously the Freakonomics duo, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner—have long worried that having the “wrong” name could set you back in the labour market. A number of studies show that having an “ethnic-sounding” name tends to disadvantage job applicants (though others suggest that names matter little).
Waves of migrants to America did not need economists to tell them that their name could be a disadvantage. Many changed their names to fit in. Almost a third of naturalising immigrants abandoned their first names by 1930 and acquired popular American names such as William, John or Charles. What was the impact? The authors draw on a sample of 3,400 male migrants who naturalised in New York in 1930.
The authors found that changing from a purely foreign name to a very common American name was associated with a 14% hike in earnings.

Submission + - GNOME 3.12 released (gnome.org)

Submitted by Sri Ramkrishna
Sri Ramkrishna writes: Like clockwork, the next version of GNOME has been released with updated applications, bugfixes and so forth. People can look forward to faster loading time and a little more performance than before. There is a video that is also been created to highlight the release! Check it out!

Submission + - Small World Discovered Far Beyond Pluto (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: After a decade of searching, astronomers have found a second dwarf-like planet far beyond Pluto and its Kuiper Belt cousins, a presumed no-man’s land that may turn out to be anything but. How Sedna, which was discovered in 2003, and its newly found neighbor, designated 2012 VP 2113 by the Minor Planet Center, came to settle in orbits so far from the sun is a mystery. Sedna comes no closer than about 76 times as far from the sun as Earth, or 76 astronomical units. The most distant leg of its 11,400-year orbit is about 1,000 astronomical units. Newly found VP 2113’s closest approach to the sun is about 80 astronomical units and its greatest distance is 452 astronomical units. The small world is roughly 280 miles (450 kilometers) wide, less than half the estimated diameter of Sedna.

Submission + - Land Sinking with California Groundwater Drain (nationalgeographic.com)

Submitted by Maria_Celeste
Maria_Celeste writes: In the middle of a major drought, Californians' demand for groundwater is causing at least one 2-sq-mile area to subside by 1 foot per year, according to one researcher. Other areas are subsiding as well, but at less dramatic rates. Not only does that kind of subsidence jeopardize infrastructure (roads, pipelines, etc.), it increases flood risk as well. More importantly, it could put future groundwater reserves at risk by compressing the space available for storage — and minimizing California's ability to outlast future droughts.

Submission + - Former US President says Snowden disclosures are "good for Americans to know" (usatoday.com)

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: Former United States President Jimmy Carter defended the disclosures by fugitive NSA contractor Edward Snowden on Monday, saying revelations that U.S. intelligence agencies were collecting meta-data of Americans' phone calls and e-mails have been "probably constructive in the long run."

"I think it's wrong," President Carter said of the NSA program. "I think it's an intrusion on one of the basic human rights of Americans, is to have some degree of privacy if we don't want other people to read what we communicate."

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