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Submission + - ACLU Warns of 'Unchecked Power' of Twitter, Facebook After Trump Suspension (newsweek.com) 1

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: A legislative counsel member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) warned Friday that the suspension of President Donald Trump's social media accounts wielded "unchecked power," by Twitter and Facebook.

Kate Ruane, a senior legislative counsel at the ACLU said in a statement that the decision to suspend Trump from social media could set a precedent for big tech companies to silence less privileged voices.

"For months, President Trump has been using social media platforms to seed doubt about the results of the election and to undermine the will of voters. We understand the desire to permanently suspend him now, but it should concern everyone when companies like Facebook and Twitter wield the unchecked power to remove people from platforms that have become indispensable for the speech of billions – especially when political realities make those decisions easier," the statement read.

"President Trump can turn his press team or Fox News to communicate with the public, but others – like many Black, Brown, and LGTBQ activists who have been censored by social media companies – will not have that luxury. It is our hope that these companies will apply their rules transparently to everyone.

The ACLU isn't the only voice in the legal community citing concern over the move to suspend Trump.

"I want a wide range of ideas, even those I loathe, to be heard, and I think Twitter especially holds a concerning degree of power over public discourse," Gregory P. Magarian, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis told The New York Times.

Submission + - NYSE Will Not Delist Chinese Teleco Giants (cnbc.com)

Submitted by phalse phace
phalse phace writes: The NYSE announced late Monday night that, after consulting further with regulatory authorities in connection with Office of Foreign Assets Control, they will no longer be delisting 3 Chinese telco companies.

The announcement comes after the NYSE said on Dec. 31 that it would move to delist American depositary shares of China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom.

The NYSE had originally planned to drop the Chinese telecom listings in order to comply with an executive order that President Donald Trump signed in November. That order sought to bar American companies and individuals from investing in firms that the Trump administration alleged aid the Chinese military.

Submission + - Zodiac '340 Cipher' cracked

Submitted by bellwould
bellwould writes: The solution to what’s known as the 340 Cipher, one of the most vexing mysteries of the Zodiac Killer’s murderous saga, has been found by a code-breaking team from the United States, Australia and Belgium.

Submission + - Radiation Tolerant FPGAs reach engineering silicon (microchip.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microchip Technology has recently announced it is shipping engineering silicon for its new radiation tolerant RT PolarFire FPGAs. These devices are designed to survive a rocket launch and meet demanding performance needs in space. The FPGAs will enable high-resolution passive and active imaging, precision remote scientific measurement, multi-spectral and hyper-spectral imaging, and object detection and recognition using neural networks. They enable more system complexity than previous FPGAs and withstand Total Ionizing Dose (TID) exposure beyond the 100 kilorads (kRads) typical of most earth-orbiting satellites and many deep-space missions.

Submission + - Windows 10x may be ready for release to manufacturing (RTM) today (windows10xnews.com)

Submitted by Ammalgam
Ammalgam writes: According to Microsoft Windows expert Zac Bowden, Windows 10x may be released to manufacturing as soon as today.

He expressed his opinion on Twitter today.

A month ago, we reported that Windows 10X was set to RTM sometime in December.

With a Release To Manufacturing, Microsoft will release the baseline version of the Operating System and continue to work on bugs before devices running the OS are released sometime next year.

When news broke of Windows X, it was originally intended for high-end dual-screen tablets. Due to logistical and scheduling delays, the OS has now been repurposed for cheaper laptops running UWP apps and PWAs.

It is widely assumed that the Operating System will be positioned as a competitor to ChromeOS.

Submission + - Elon Musk On the Problem With Corporate America: 'Too Many MBAs' (cnbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk says the biggest problem with corporate America today is that too many business school graduates are running the show. “I think that there might be too many MBAs running companies,” Musk said Tuesday at the WSJ CEO Summit. This “MBA-ization of America,” isn’t great, Musk said, especially when it comes to product innovation. Big corporate CEOs often get caught up in the numbers and lose sight of their mission, which is to create “awesome” products or services, according to Musk.

“There should be more focus on the product or service itself, less time on board meetings, less time on financials.” “A company has no value in itself. It only has value to the degree that is [an] effective allocator of resources to create business services that are of a greater value than the costs of the inputs,” Musk said. This thing they call “profit,” Musk added, “should just mean over time that the value of the output is worth more than the inputs.” Musk said the biggest mistake he has made as a leader of both Tesla and SpaceX was spending too much time in meetings looking at PowerPoints and spreadsheets, instead of being out on the factory floor. “When I go spend time on the factory floor or really using the cars or thinking about the rockets...that’s where things have gone better,” Musk said at the WSJ summit.

He finds that if he is engrossed in the details of the issues, it boosts morale and his team is “more energized.” Musk urged CEOs to “get out there on the goddamn front line and show them that you care, and that you’re not just in some plush office somewhere.”

Submission + - NextMind's brain-computer interface is ready for developers (engadget.com)

Submitted by clubalien
clubalien writes: NextMind is the latest in a long line of companies trying to harness the brain as a means of controlling our digital world. At first, its take on things may seem familiar: Don a headset which places a sensor on the back of your head, and it’ll detect your brainwaves which can then be translated into digital actions. One area where NextMind differs is that the sensor seems more practical than many we’ve seen and won’t leave you looking like a shower cap-wearing lab rat. In fact, the wearable can just as easily clip onto the rear of a snapback.

Submission + - SpaceX Starship high altitude test flight ends in a fiery explosion (engadget.com)

Submitted by Thelasko
Thelasko writes: After a successful launch, the Starship rose and successfully maneuvered its way to the landing area. However, it appeared that the spacecraft didn’t slow down enough for a proper landing, and it exploded in thrilling fashion.

Elon Musk Posted on Twitter:
"Fuel header tank pressure was low during landing burn, causing touchdown velocity to be high & RUD, but we got all the data we needed! Congrats SpaceX team hell yeah!!"

Submission + - Tesla Full Self-Driving System's Beta Developer Settings Leaked (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It's a long time coming for Tesla's Full Self-Driving feature, and it hasn't been a cheap journey. The price for the self-driving feature has increased multiple times and is currently available for supported Teslas for $10,000.While Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) beta continues to expand to more Tesla owners ahead of a planned end-of-year launch, the actual settings for the system have been uncovered and published on Twitter by a well-known Tesla hacker named Green. Not only are there dozens of settings and available adjustments, but there's also a way to show a detailed vehicle view of the world while a Tesla is driving down the road.

In a Twitter thread, Green shares the status of internal states within the system while taking us on a tour of dozens of settings ranging from controls for FSD and Enhanced Summon to information about the Camera and Ultrasonics. The system also shows sliders for GPS, speed threshold, and other items that no one outside of Tesla should ever mess with. There’s also an Augmented Vision area where developers can toggle what's seen on a Tesla display while driving. It includes toggles for Pretty, Developer, and Camera Image. Once Developer is enabled, it shows options for a whole host of data that can be shown on the infotainment system. This all may be information overload for the average Tesla owner, but it's a fun way to get more details on how a Tesla sees the world.

Submission + - A spiritual successor to CentOS emerges (github.com) 1

Submitted by JDShewey
JDShewey writes: It was recently announced that despite a previously published End-Of-Life date for CentOS 8 of 2029, this will instead be shifted to 2021 and users must move over to "CentOS Stream 8". Comments in response to this are overwhelmingly negative, and this has understandably left corporate users of CentOS concerned and considering alternatives such as Oracle Linux, OpenSUSE, and Ubuntu.

One promising option however comes from the comments of this announcement. In this comment, Gregory Kurtzer, founder of the original CentOS project states that "I am considering creating another rebuild of RHEL and may even be able to hire some people for this effort."

This new distribution of linux, named "Rocky" is sure to be one to watch!

Submission + - Pfizer tells US it cannot supply additional vaccine until June or July (washingtonpost.com) 1

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Pfizer has told the Trump administration it cannot provide substantial additional doses of its coronavirus vaccine until late June or July because other countries have rushed to buy up most of its supply, according to multiple individuals familiar with the situation. That means the U.S. government may not be able to ramp up as rapidly as it had expected from the 100 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine that it purchased earlier this year, raising questions about whether it can keep to its aggressive schedule to vaccinate most Americans by late spring or early summer. Trump administration officials denied there would be availability issues in the second quarter, citing other vaccines in the pipeline — most immediately, Moderna’s, also expected to be approved in coming weeks. Both vaccines are two-dose regimens, so the 100 million doses purchased of each would cover 50 million people each.

In related news charities warned that rich countries are hoarding doses of Covid vaccines and people living in poor countries are set to miss out, a coalition of campaigning bodies warns. The People's Vaccine Alliance says nearly 70 lower-income countries will only be able to vaccinate one in 10 people. This is despite Oxford-AstraZeneca pledging to provide 64% of its doses to people in developing nations.

Submission + - Facial recognition toilet paper dispensers in China put on hold (scmp.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Mounting concerns over privacy have pushed Chinese authorities to pause the use of facial recognition technology in a public loo.
The facial recognition system in a public toilet in Guangdong province’s Dongguan city was used to recognise individuals and limit the amount of toilet paper each could take within a certain amount of time, according to a post on the official Weibo account of the city’s Urban Management And Law Enforcement Bureau. Photos of users were deleted after some time and the system was not connected to a network, according to the post, which said that the system was suspended after some citizens raised concerns.
A Weibo topic page about using facial recognition to access toilet paper was viewed more than 100 million times by noon on Monday. “I think they can stop offering free toilet paper, or charge a fee. Why would they need facial recognition to [stop toilet paper theft]?” one user on microblogging site Weibo wrote.

Submission + - 2020 AP CS Scores: Still Big Gaps in Performance, Participation

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: As the 8th annual Hour of Code kicked off this week, the College Board released 2020 AP national and state score breakouts for AP CS program participants. As in past years, this year's results still showed striking gaps in performance and participation across gender and ethnicity segments.

Passing rates across major ethnic group segments ranged from 39.8%-78.6% for the Java-based AP CS A course, and 52%-83% for the newer "language agnostic" AP Computer Science Principles (CSP) course. Across gender segments, females accounted for 25% of AP CS A scores (16.2K of 64.9K total students) and 33.9% of AP CSP scores (38.6K of 113.9K students). Asian students accounted for 47% of all passing female AP CS A students.

Due to pandemic-related school closures, the overall number of students completing AP STEM-related courses in 2020 declined for all subjects except CS. AP CS A, which had an abbreviated taken-at-home final exam, saw a modest 1.5% YOY increase in completions, while AP CSP saw a whopping 21.5% YOY increase in completions, no doubt helped by the cancellation of its end-of-course exam, which was to have counted for 60% of scores (students were instead assessed only by their portfolio submissions).

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