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Submission + - FCC Proposes To Extend So-Called "Obamaphone" Program To Broadband (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: The FCC's Lifeline program subsidizes phone service for very poor Americans; it gained notoriety under the label "Obamaphone," even though the program started under Reagan and was extended to cell phones under Clinton. Now the FCC is proposing that the program, which is funded by a fee on telecom providers, be extended to broadband, on the logic that high-speed internet is as necessary today as telephone service was a generation ago.

Submission + - Android M to Embrace USB Type-C and MIDI

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: USB Type-C connection is showing up in more and more devices, and Google is rolling support for the interface in its Android M operating system. The most significant additions relate to the USB Power Delivery spec. Charging will now work in both directions. That effectively means that Type-C devices can be used as external batteries for other devices. Android M is also finally introducing a feature that musicmakers have been long asking for: MIDI support. This builds on some of the audio features Google introduced in Android 5, including reduction in latency, multichannel audio stream mixing, and support for USB microphones, amplifiers, speakers, and other accessories. As others have written, music and media creation apps are much more prevalent in iOS than they are in Android, and Google hopes turning that around.

Submission + - New Freescale i.MX6 SoCs Include IoT-focused UltraLite (linuxgizmos.com)

Submitted by __aajbyc7391
__aajbyc7391 writes: Freescale announced three new versions of its popular i.MX6 SoCs, including new DualPlus and QuadPlus parts featuring enhanced GPUs and expanded memory support, and a new low-end, IoT focused 528MHz UltraLite SoC that integrates a more power-efficient, single-core ARM Cortex-A7 architecture. The UltraLite, which will be available in a tiny 9x9mm package, is claimed by Freescale to be the smallest and most energy-efficient ARM based SoC. It has a stripped-down WXGA interface but adds new security, tamper detection, and power management features. All the new Freescale i.MX6 SoCs are supported with Linux BSPs and evaluation kits.
Space

Neil DeGrasse Tyson Urges America To Challenge China To a Space Race 275

Posted by timothy from the autocorrect-says-neil-degrease-tyson dept.
An anonymous reader writes: According to a Tuesday story in the UK edition of the International Business Times, Neil deGrasse Tyson, the celebrity astrophysicist and media personality, advocates a space race between the United States and China. The idea is that such a race would spur innovation and cause industry to grow. The Apollo race to the moon caused a similar explosive period of scientific research and engineering development. You might prefer the Sydney Morning Herald piece on which the IB Times article is based.

Feed Google News Sci Tech: Google unveils Android Pay, its Apple Pay competitor - VentureBeat (google.com)

From feed by feedfeeder

VentureBeat
Google unveils Android Pay, its Apple Pay competitor
VentureBeat
Today Google unveiled Android Pay at the Google I/O developer conference. The new payment platform is a competitor to Apple Pay, which allows iPhone 6, 6 Plus, and Apple Watch users to make purchases on their device or in brick and mortar stores.
Google announces Android M, available later this yearThe Verge
Confirmed: HBO NOW is coming to Android and ChromecastSlashGear
Android M officially outlined at Google I/O 2015TrustedReviews
USA TODAY-Android Headlines - Android News-Engadget (blog)
all 1,141 news articles

Feed Google News Sci Tech: Google's Gmail hits 900 million users, opens up Inbox - USA TODAY (google.com)

From feed by feedfeeder

Mashable
Google's Gmail hits 900 million users, opens up Inbox
USA TODAY
SAN FRANCISCO — Extending the lead of the world's most popular email service, Gmail now reaches 900 million around the globe, more than double the 425 million monthly active users that it had three years ago. Google's senior vice president of products...
Any Gmail or Google Apps user can now use the Inbox appMashable
Google opens Inbox to everyone, adds new features like Trip Bundles, Undo ... VentureBeat
Google's Newfangled Inbox Email App Opens To Everybody, Unveils New ... Fast Company
TechCrunch
all 8 news articles

Space

Black Hole Plays Pool With Plasma 43

Posted by timothy from the always-bet-on-the-black-hole dept.
the monolith writes: The Hubble Space Telescope is revealing that there is a pool game in progress, with a long shot being played out on a cosmic scale. It appears that the first recorded shot was observed in 1992, while subsequent canon shots were recorded between 1994 an 2014. In actuality, the shots are plasma, the current player is a black hole, and the playing surface is galactic space itself. The BBC has a story on the observations and interpretations, while the journal Nature has the paywalled in-depth article. The current score is unknown, and one can only hope that there were no life forms involved in the collision.

Submission + - Black Hole Plays Pool With Plasma

Submitted by the monolith
the monolith writes: The Hubble Space Telescope is revealing that there is a pool game in progress, with a long shot being played out on a cosmic scale. It appears that the first recorded shot was observed in 1992, while subsequent canon shots were recorded between 1994 an 2014. In actuality, the shots are plasma, the current player is a black hole, and the playing surface is galactic space itself.

The BBC has a story on the observations and interpretations While the journal Nature has the paywalled in-depth article.

The current score is unknown, and one can only hope that there were no life forms involved in the collision.

Submission + - Demographers Says Older, Better Educated Women Are Having More Children

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: The Economist reports that based on an analysis of census data the proportion of all women who reach their mid-40s without ever having a child has fallen, but the decline is sharpest among the best-educated women. In 1994, 35% of women with a doctoral degree aged 40 to 44 were childless; by last year, this had fallen to 20%. Their families are bigger, too. In 1994, half of women with a master’s degree had had two more or more children. By last year, the figure was 60%. Why might older, better-educated women be having more children? Partly because access to education has widened—and so women who were always going to have children are spending more time in college. Another reason is that fertility treatment has improved dramatically, and access to that, too, has widened. Older women who, in the past, wanted children but were unable to have them are now able to.

But according to demographer Philip Cohen this does not explain the entire leap. Social changes in the nature of marriage seem to be driving the change. Whereas marriage was once near-universal and unequal, in recent decades it has become a deliberate option and more equal. Well-educated women have been able to form strong relationships with similarly brainy men, in which both parents earn and both do some child care. Getting an education and having a career are no longer always a barrier to having children; sometimes, they make it easier. Also as more career-minded women have had children, they have become powerful enough to demand time off from their employers. Although America has no national system of paid maternity leave, many professional firms now offer paid maternity leave—Ernst & Young, an accountancy firm, offers 39 weeks to its employees, for example. Meanwhile poorer women have had little luck of that sort. "Iif I’m a lower-income woman," says Stephanie Coontz, "do I want to hitch myself to a guy who may become just another mouth to feed?”
The Media

How a Scientist Fooled Millions With Bizarre Chocolate Diet Claims 260

Posted by timothy from the tongue-in-cheek-sandwich-diet-works-too dept.
__roo writes: Did you know chocolate helps you lose weight? You can read all about this great news for chocoholics in the Daily Star, Daily Express, Irish Examiner, and TV shows in Texas and Australia, and even the front page of Bild, Europe's largest daily newspaper. The problem is that it's not true. A researcher who previously worked with Science to do a sting operation on fee-charging open access journals ran a real—but obviously flawed—study rigged to generate false positives, paid €600 to get it published in a fee-charging open access journal, set up a website for a fake institute, and issued press releases to feed the ever-hungry pool of nutrition journalists. The doctor who ran the trial had the idea to use chocolate, because it's a favorite of the "whole food" fanatics. "Bitter chocolate tastes bad, therefore it must be good for you. It's like a religion."
Stats

A Tool For Analyzing H-1B Visa Applications Reveals Tech Salary Secrets 124

Posted by timothy from the sifting-and-stacking dept.
Tekla Perry writes: The golden age of engineers is not over,' says a French software engineer who developed a tool for mining U.S. Department of Labor visa application data, but, he says, salaries appear to be leveling off. Indeed, salary inflation for software engineers and other technical professionals at Google and Facebook has slowed dramatically, according to his database, and Airbnb and Dropbox pay is down a little, though Netflix pay is through the roof. The data also shows that some large companies appear to be playing games with titles to deflate salaries, and Microsoft is finally offering technology professionals comparable salaries to Apple and Google. There's a lot more to be discovered in this interactive database, and researchers are getting ready to mine it.

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