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Submission + - CBC Caves In to the Mobile UI Craze, No Recourse for Desktop Users (responsive.cbc.ca) 1

Submitted by product_bucket
product_bucket writes: CBC becomes the latest broadcaster/news site to ditch their normal UI, attempting to please the mobile masses with a new touchscreen-oriented one that will work "well". The site claims that with 70% of their hits originating from a mobile device, their site needs to keep up. Once the transition is complete, there will be no going back, ever.

Submission + - Tim Cook: Coding Languages Were 'Too Geeky' for Students Until We Invented Swift

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Speaking to a class of Grade 7 students taking coding lessons at the Apple Store in Eaton Centre, the Toronto Star reports that Apple CEO Tim Cook told the kids that most students would shun programming because coding languages were 'too geeky' until Apple introduced Swift. "Swift came out of the fundamental recognition that coding languages were too geeky. Most students would look at them and say, 'that’s not for me,'" Cook said as the preteens participated in an Apple-designed 'Everyone Can Code' workshop. "That’s not our view. Our view is that coding is a horizontal skill like your native languages or mathematics, so we wanted to design a programming language that is as easy to learn as our products are to use."

Submission + - Study of Twitter's censorship (buzzfeed.com)

Submitted by mi
mi writes: To comply with government censors, Twitter will hide (or "withold") individual Tweets or the entire accounts from users in some countries — while keeping the same contents accessible for others.

TFA reviews this practices, citing examples and quantifying the censorship-requests per state. Twitter's own reports can be found here.

Submission + - Disco ball snuck into space... (nzherald.co.nz)

Submitted by ClarkMills
ClarkMills writes: When the electric/lithium powered (ok, just the fuel pumps) Electron launched earlier this week, apart from 3 cube-sats deployed there was also a rather large disco ball. You can track it's potential visibility here.

The show will be over in 9 months when the thing plays shooting star but it will be brighter than the moon if you happen to get a good sun reflection.

Submission + - SPAM: Monkeys cloned for first time

Submitted by mknewman
mknewman writes: For the first time, researchers have used the cloning method that produced Dolly the sheep to create two healthy monkeys, bringing science an important step closer to being able to do the same with humans.

"The barrier of cloning primate species is now overcome," declared Muming Poo of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai.

In principle, Poo said, the feat means humans can be cloned. But he said his team has no intention of doing that. Mainstream scientists generally oppose making human babies by cloning, and Poo said society would ban it for ethical reasons.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Climate change melting pre-Viking artifacts out of Norway's glaciers (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by bsharma
bsharma writes: Ancient ice has preserved thousands of artifacts left in Norway’s highest mountain passes by hunters and travelers over the last 6,000 years. But even as rising temperatures are revealing these artifacts for the first time, the vanishing ice is putting them at risk.

Well above the tree line in Norway’s highest mountains, ancient fields of ice are shrinking as Earth’s climate warms. As the ice has vanished, it has been giving up the treasures it has preserved in cold storage for the last 6,000 years: Neolithic arrows, scraps of clothing from the Bronze Age, and skis from Viking Age traders. And those artifacts have provided some surprising insights into how ancient Norwegians made their livings.

Submission + - 3 pages of spam in the firehose?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Filters needed.

Submission + - Ursula K Leguin, 88 (nytimes.com)

Submitted by sandbagger
sandbagger writes: Ursula K. Le Guin, the immensely popular author who brought literary depth and a tough-minded feminist sensibility to science fiction and fantasy with books like “The Left Hand of Darkness” and the Earthsea series, died on Monday at her home in Portland, Ore. She was 88.

Submission + - Samsung India to Focus on Large Screen Smartphones (samsung.com)

Submitted by Riathakurr
Riathakurr writes: Samsung, the leading player in mobile phones in the country, will lay emphasis on large screen displays to accelerate adoption rate for such devices among consumers.

"Samsung will now focus on large screen devices with display sizes of 5.5-inches and upwards. Samsung today has two devices with screen sizes of six inches," Samsung India, VP (Mobile Business) Manu Sharma told reporters on Wednesday.

Launching the Galaxy C9 Pro smartphone in Kolkata, he said worldwide the trend was shifting towards large screen devices and India is no exception.

"Samsung will drive the adoption of large screen devices in India," he said.

For Samsung, the Indian market had been driven by specific innovations which had been made at its R&D centre in the country.

The company had garnered a market share of 46.9 percent last year, Sharma said adding, the prospects for the current year seemed to be better despite demonetisation which had hit consumer spending across the country.

Submission + - Facebook To Build Data Centre In Denmark Powered By 100% Green Energy

Submitted by Mickeycaskill
Mickeycaskill writes: Facebook is to open a 55,000 square metre data centre in Denmark, the third such facility has built outside the US, and is to be powered entirely by clean energy.

It was reported last October that the social network had purchased land in Odense, the country’s third largest city, and the Danish government said the deal was the product of “three years of confidential preparation.”

One of the reasons Denmark was selected was because of its abundance of renewable energy. Facebook has few links to Denmark, but the country has been a popular location for US tech firms recently, with Apple building a data centre in Viborg.

Submission + - EU's SatNav constellation Still Functioning after Series of Clock Failures (esa.int)

Submitted by product_bucket
product_bucket writes: A number of satellites forming the Galileo constellation have suffered multiple clock failures, and the European Space Agency is currently investigating the cause of the fairly widespread problem. The sats each carry two Rubidium Atomic clocks and two Passive Hydrogen Masers, so the redundancy enables the system to carry on working, for now.

Submission + - Toy inspired medical centrifuge costing under 1 dollar

Submitted by colinwb
colinwb writes: Stanford researchers (link has video) have developed a human-powered medical centrifuge, costing 20 cents, based on a whirligig children's toy. As proof of concept, it can separate malaria parasites from blood cells in 15 minutes, and the parasites can be identified using a cheap microscope previously reported on Slashdot.

A Nature article and video, with useful caveats about whether this will actually be used, and a full description with diagrams and seriously impressive mathematics. They've also applied for a Guinness World Record of the fastest rotational speed from a human-powered device: 125,000 rpm.

Submission + - Mapping the brain functions of extinct animals

Submitted by brindafella
brindafella writes: How can scientists map the brain functions of an extinct animal? The technique is called diffusion tensor imaging, and it has recently mapped the preserved brains of two thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus), extinct as of 1936 in Tasmania, the island state of Australia. Thylacine were the largest known carnivorous marsupial (pouched mammal) of modern times. Diffusion tensor imaging looks at how water diffuses inside parts of the brain. Using it with traditional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the researchers mapped how molecules moved through the brain of the thylacine while it was alive to reveal the neural wiring of different brain regions. They tested the technique with a brain of a similar animal, a Tasmanian Devil (Sarcophilus harrisii), preserved at about the same time, and the brain of a recently deceased Devil.

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