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Comment very healthy (Score 4, Interesting) 55

> 18 hottest or the 18 coldest days
That's 10% of the Year.

> nearly 6% -- almost 1 million -- of all deaths between those years happened on days of extreme heat and cold.

During 10% of the year only 6% of the yearly deaths? The extreme temperatures seem to be very healthy.

Submission + - Boeing achieved law changes likely to make future aircraft less safe.

Submitted by AleRunner
AleRunner writes: fixes earlier version

Just before the latest crashes of two 737 Max aircraft (formerly known as 737 Max), Boeing had just achieved a major goal by getting a law passed to reduce future FAA oversight according to an article in the New York Times. Even the FAA, which was “constrained” in it's ability to comment described the law as “not be in the best interest of safety”. The “law allows companies to make recommendations about the compensation of F.A.A. employees” and “ensure that the regulator is meeting metrics set by the industry” effectively, the “act mandated regulatory capture,” according to the FAA's former chief counsel quoted in the article. Commercially, one of the most important changes Boeing is making is renaming the 737 Max as the B737 or 737-8200 with the aim of avoiding the stigma of the 737 Max brand. Although future accidents might undermine this strategy, with Boeing's outsourced software process subject to FAA audit demands which may delay the return of the 737 Max the reasons Boeing supports weakened regulatory regime can be clearly seen.

Submission + - NASA Overpaid Boeing Again and Did Not Let SpaceX Offer a Lower Cost Solution (nextbigfuture.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Boeing was paid $287.2 million to address a "potential" crew transport gap. SpaceX was not.

In our examination of the CCP contracts, we found that NASA agreed to pay an additional $287.2 million above Boeing’s fixed prices to mitigate a perceived 18-month gap in ISS flights anticipated in 2019 for the company’s third through sixth crewed missions and to ensure the company continued as a second commercial crew provider. For these four missions, NASA essentially paid Boeing higher prices to address a schedule slippage caused by Boeing’s 13-month delay in completing the ISS Design Certification Review milestone and due to Boeing seeking higher prices than those specified in its fixed price contract. In our judgment, the additional compensation was unnecessary given that the risk of a gap between Boeing’s second and third crewed missions was minimal when the Agency conducted its analysis in 2016.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Is any amount of Facebook paranoia too much?

Journal by shanen

At the highest level, I think phishing works. In general terms that means some of the suckers are going to get suckered by phishing broadcasts. However at the specific and personal level, I think it's even worse. If you are personally targeted for spear-phishing (or worse) by a serious "player", you might as well surrender and hand over your passwords. Just questions of how badly they want you and how many resources they are willing to invest in such toys as imposter wireless routers.

Submission + - SPAM: Why Switching Jobs Makes You a Worse Programmer

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Forrest Brazeal explains why switching jobs or teams makes you, at least temporarily, a worse programmer. "When you do take a new job," Brazeal writes, "everybody else will know things you don’t know. You’ll expend an enormous amount of time and mental energy just trying to keep up. This is usually called 'the learning curve'. The unstated assumption is that you must add new knowledge on top of the existing base of knowledge you brought from your previous job in order to succeed in the new environment. But that’s not really what’s happening. After all, some of your new coworkers have never worked at any other company. You have way more experience than they do. Why are they more effective than you right now? Because, for the moment, your old experience doesn’t matter. You don’t just need to add knowledge; you need to replace a wide body of experiences that became irrelevant when you turned in your notice at the old job. To put it another way: if you visualize your entire career arc as one giant learning curve, the places where you change jobs are marked by switchbacks." He concludes, "I’m not saying you shouldn’t switch jobs. Just remember that you can’t expect to be the same person in the new cubicle. Your value is only partly based on your own knowledge and ingenuity. It’s also wrapped up in the connections you’ve made inside your team: your ability to help others, their shared understanding of your strengths and weaknesses, and who knows what else. You will have to figure out new paths of communication in the new organization, build new backlogs of code references pertaining to your new projects, and find new mentors who can help you continue to grow. You will have to become a different programmer. There is no guarantee you will be a better one."

Submission + - UK Parliament seizes cache of Facebook internal papers

Submitted by infolation
infolation writes: The UK Parliament has used its legal powers to seize internal Facebook documents in an extraordinary attempt to hold the US social media giant to account after chief executive Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly refused to answer MPs' questions. The documents are alleged to contain revelations on data and privacy controls that led to Cambridge Analytica scandal. Damian Collins, the chair of the culture, media and sport select committee, invoked a rare parliamentary mechanism to compel the founder of a US software company, Six4Three, to hand over the documents during a business trip to London.

Submission + - Nearby star is Sun's long-lost sibling

Submitted by The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: A nearby star, HD 186302, was almost certainly born from the same cloud of gas the Sun was 4.6 billion years ago. Astronomers have found it has an almost identical chemical composition as the Sun, is on a similar orbit around the Milky Way, and has the same age (within uncertainties). Interestingly, it's only 184 light years away, implying statistically many more such stars are waiting to be discovered.

Submission + - EPA's Fuel Economy sourcing needs an update

Submitted by sziring
sziring writes: We're on the cusp of 2019. Most cars today are sending all sorts of information back to the manufactures for analysis. Isn't it time for the EPA to ask manufactures collecting fuel consumption data to use this in conjunction with the laboratory testing? What's the upside and downside of incorporating this data into the mix?

Submission + - The Story of Lenny, the Internet's Favorite Telemarketing Troll (vice.com)

Submitted by dmoberhaus
dmoberhaus writes: Motherboard spoke with the developer who maintains the public server for Lenny, a robocalling algorithm throws telemarketers through a loop. Lenny was created in 2009 and almost a decade later has developed a cult following online. Anyone can forward their telemarketing calls to Lenny, who is a kind and forgetful old man who is interested in whatever the telemarketer is selling. Some telemarketers stay on the line for up to an hour interacting with this chatbot, leading to hundreds of hours of hilarious recordings on YouTube. This is the story of Lenny's rise, and an analysis of its effectiveness at stopping unsolicited calls.

Submission + - AMD Plans For Finally Releasing Reworked Catalyst Linux Driver This Year (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Two years after announcing a new Linux driver model and one year since beginning to release the new AMDGPU Linux kernel code, Radeon Technologies Group is planning to release their new Catalyst Linux driver this year — likely in the first half of the year. This new driver is targeting just the very latest GCN 1.2+ GPUs, will offer better performance, new releases will be timed in sync with Windows, and hopefully address the longstanding complaints about AMD support on Linux. They also confirmed they have their Vulkan Linux driver ready to launch.

Submission + - Scientology received $5.7 million from Google .. (tonyortega.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: At a $100 per person event held in the San Fernando Valley on September 6, about 500 Scientologists were told, among other things, that Google has approved advertising grants totaling $5.7 million for Scientology churches around the country.

Also, that the Chinese government has approved Scientology’s website, scientology.org, as one of only a few religious websites Chinese citizens can access without restrictions.

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