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Submission + - Q: Empirical study on how C devs use goto in practice? A: Not harmfully. (peerj.com)

Submitted by Mei Nagappan
Mei Nagappan writes: By qualitatively and quantitatively analyzing a statistically valid random sample from almost 2 million C files and 11K+ projects, we find that developers limit themselves to using goto appropriately in most cases, and not in an unrestricted manner like Dijkstra feared, thus suggesting that goto does not appear to be harmful in practice.

Submission + - Turkey Cites National Security as it Cranks Up Internet Controls (globalvoicesonline.org)

Submitted by skegg
skegg writes: The Turkish government may soon pass new legislation that will leave citizens broadly vulnerable to human rights abuses and extensive police controls. Many suspect the laws are intended to prevent a repeat of the protests that rocked the country in late 2013. One bill currently before Parliament would allow authorities to censor websites without court approval.

Submission + - Study: Smartphones Just As Good As Fitness Trackers For Counting Steps (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: While dedicated fitness trackers that you wear around your wrist have any number of fucntions, many people are focused on a single metric: counting steps, which serves as a proxy for determining how active you are. But a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania showed that if that's mainly what you want out of a fitness tracker, then you almost certainly have a device in your pocket that can do the same thing as well if not better: your smartphone.

Submission + - SpaceX Falcon 9 Launches Rocket Recovery Attempt Scrapped

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After scrubbing a launch Sunday because a radar glitch, and cancelling one Tuesday due to high winds, SpaceX has succesfully launched the Falcon 9 rocket holding the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite. The DSCOVR will orbit between Earth and the sun, observing and providing advanced warning of particles and magnetic fields emitted by the sun. The planned attempt to recover the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket via autonomous drone ship was scrapped due to huge waves in the Atlantic.

Submission + - Autism: Are Social Skills Groups and Social Communication Therapy Worthwhile? 1

Submitted by vortex2.71
vortex2.71 writes: I imagine that enough of us on Slashdot are on the Autism Spectrum or were once diagnosed as having Aspergers that this might be the right venue for this question. My son is on the spectrum, but is in a mainstream classroom at a private school. We have spent thousands of dollars on a bunch of different social skills groups, speech communication therapy, occupational therapy, and physical therapy. We've found that the specific skills and intuition that the therapists possess is much more important than their credentials and are frequently disappointed by the overwhelming mediocrity of special education teachers, speech therapists, and OT/PT therapists. We are at the point where we wonder if our time is better spent with playdates with peers that are facilitated by us than continuing with the groups. I'm curious if there are adult Slashdoters who are on the spectrum who participated in these therapies as children who can weigh in on this? What was your experience with social skills groups and social communication therapy? Did they help?

Submission + - Linux-based Mobile Manipulation Robots Due Soon (linuxgizmos.com)

Submitted by __aajbyc7391
__aajbyc7391 writes: Silicon Valley startup Fetch Robotics, which just announced $3 million in VC funding, plans to ship two mobile manipulation robots running ROS on Linux in the second quarter, targeting logistics and light industrial applications. The company, whose core team hails from seemingly-defunct Willow Garage spinoff Unbounded Robotics, was originally named FYS (Fetch Your Stuff), hinting that the company intends to compete with the Kiva robots that currently speed-up human workers at Amazon's fulfillment centers.

Comment Boilerplate and readibility (Score 1) 411

by Iamthecheese (#49031601) Attached to: Your Java Code Is Mostly Fluff, New Research Finds
For Java, or any other language, removing a lot of boilerplate code would drastically increase the cost of code maintenance. If there's a linked library I already know which functions it includes and I'm free to pick and choose when modifying the code. Furthermore its inclusion allows commonality between code segments.

Of course spaghetti code is bad and plugging in arbitrary lines without understanding them tends to create spaghetti code. But what would be way worse is reducing every program to its core functionality.

Other extra lines of code serve to make a program easier to maintain. Separating functions where you don't really have to, following some expansionary coding rules, and the like create a little inefficiency to avoid creating a good deal more inefficiency for other reasons. Then there are API's, as someone else mentioned, and comments. Good code should contain a large percentage of nonfunctional lines.

Submission + - Russia seeking to ban Tor, VPNs and other anonymising tools (thestack.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Three separate Russian authorities have spoken out in favour of banning online anonymising tools since February 5th, with particular emphasis on Tor, which — despite its popularity with whistle-blowers such as Edward Snowden and with online activists — Russia's Safe Internet League describes as an 'Anonymous network used primarily to commit crimes'. The three authorities involved are the Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications, powerful Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzor and the Safe Internet League, comprising the country's top three network providers, including state telecoms provider Rostelecom. Roskomnadzor's press secretary Vadim Roskomnadzora Ampelonsky describes the obstacles to identifying and blocking Tor and VPN traffic as 'difficult, but solvable'.

Submission + - Are there quality but affordable large HD/UHD/4K "stupid" screens? 1

Submitted by LOGINS SUC
LOGINS SUC writes: Truly in the first-world problems category, I've been looking for large format (>55") HD/UHD screens for home entertainment. In light of the recent Samsung big-brother monitoring and advertisement injection concerns, does any reputable manufacturer still make "stupid" TVs? I don't want to pay for all the WiFi, apps, cameras, or microphones. I don't need it to have speakers. And at this point, I don't even care if it has the TV receiver functionality. All this stuff leads to vendor lock-in or is well on the path to obsolescence by the time I purchase the device. I prefer all of this non-visual functionality be handled by devices better suited to the purpose and I don't want to pay for screens including these widgets I have no intention of ever using, at all.

I've searched all the normal retail outlets. If I find anything, they are wildly expensive. "Computer monitors" fit the bill but are almost all 55") LCDs in the sub-$3,000 range anymore? Are projectors the last bastion of visual purity for home entertainment?

Submission + - Doctors Warn Against 'Measle Parties'

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: The San Francisco Chronicle reports that it's hard to know if the “measles party,” a relic of pre-vaccination times, is really making a comeback. But after a report out of Marin showed that some parents might indeed be thinking about hosting one to infect their children in a more “natural” way, the health department decided not to take chances. Marin County Public Health Officer Matt Willis says that although his office has received no reports of such parties, officials have fielded several calls from parents asking about the benefits of "natural immunity," or the idea that immunity gained from contracting a disease is superior to immunity conferred through vaccination. Measles is a serious illness that can cause brain swelling, long-term neurological effects and even death, Willis says. Plus, he added, there is no evidence that immunity gained through becoming sick with measles is any better than vaccine-imparted immunity. "Any parents who are considering this, they should have a look at a child who’s really sick with measles, and I think they’d change their minds."

Willis and other health officials suspect the concept of a measles party may have grown out of "pox parties," which were popular in the 1980s, before the chickenpox vaccine was widely available. Some parents, reports said, even arranged to pay strangers for licked lollipops, saliva or other items from infected children. Willis says he still hears reports of “pox parties” occurring in Marin today, even though a chickenpox vaccine has been available for more than two decades. "It was not a good idea then, and it's still not a good idea," says Wilbert Mason.

Submission + - Apple Invests $848 Million Into Solar Farm (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Apple is making a huge investment in solar energy, sending $848 million to First Solar’s California Flats Solar Project. The deal will supply Apple with energy for 25 years. Construction of the new 2,900-acre solar farm will start this summer and finish by the end of 2016. Apple's share of the energy produced will be about 130 megawatts, while another 150 MW will be sold to Pacific Gas & Electric. "The iPhone maker already powers all of its data centers with renewable energy. Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive officer, has advocated taking more steps to combat climate change."

Submission + - Wasp virus turns ladybugs into zombie babysitters (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: The green-eyed wasp Dinocampus coccinellae turns ladybugs into zombie babysitters. Three weeks after a wasp lays its egg inside the hapless beetle, a wasp larva bursts from her belly and weaves itself a cocoon between her legs. The ladybug doesn’t die, but becomes paralyzed, involuntarily twitching her spotted red carapace to ward off predators until the adult wasp emerges a week later. How D. coccinellae enslaves its host at just the right time had been a mystery, but now researchers believe the insect has an accomplice: a newly identified virus that attacks the beetle’s brain. The findings raise questions about whether other parasites also use viruses as neurological weapons.

Comment You have got to be fucking kidding me (Score 5, Insightful) 493

Let me summarize this entire thread so we can get back to stuff that matters:

"Men and women are different, deal with it" (rotates between -1 flamebait and +5 interesting)

"That hasn't been proven" (+3 insightful)

"Gamergate is evil" (+3 troll)

"Gamergate is good" (rotates between -1 flamebait and +5 interesting)

"Here's a comprehensive discussion of the merits of this article" (no moderation)

"The patriarchy is real" (+2) "No it isn't"(+4)


Here's my own input:

Slashdot will you PLEASE stop running the sjw story of the day. You're not fooling anyone and it will never come out the way you want until you start actively censoring comments. And pushing clickbait isn't giving you any points either.

Everyone who holds a gender-based opinion on this: PLEASE take half the time you would otherwise argue about this and review the latest studies, but take into account who funded them and the difference in funding dollars for two conflicting points of view.

Everyone else: I hope you see the obvious agenda-pushing that has been happening these last few months and inoculate yourself against it with knowledge.

Comment Utility (Score 5, Interesting) 117

by Iamthecheese (#49011641) Attached to: Google Earth Pro Now Available Free
Just as Google Maps and friends has saved millions of man-hours and probably hundreds of millions of dollars from people not being lost sufficiently wide adoption and awareness of these advanced features may save an immense amount of temporal and fiscal expense.

Common usage combined with other services can, for example, create self-aware communities, allow public input for city planning, resolve boundary arguments, help individuals planning to, for example, install a swimming pool, and provide data for planning crop layouts.And that's just off the top of my very non-expert head. I think the implications of this are far broader than may be immediately recognized.

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