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Medicine

Columbia University Doctors Ask For Dr. Mehmet Oz's Dismissal 320

Posted by timothy from the that's-just-like-your-opinion-man dept.
circletimessquare writes Dr. Mehmet Oz serves as vice chairman of Columbia University Medical Center's department of surgery. He is a respected cardiothoracic surgeon but his television show has been accused of pushing snake oil. Now other doctors at Columbia University want Dr. Oz kicked off the medical school faculty. Dr. Oz has responded on his Facebook account: "I bring the public information that will help them on their path to be their best selves. We provide multiple points of view, including mine which is offered without conflict of interest. That doesn't sit well with certain agendas which distort the facts. For example, I do not claim that GMO foods are dangerous, but believe that they should be labeled like they are in most countries around the world." In their letter, the doctors accuse Dr. Oz of quackery: "Dr. Oz has repeatedly shown disdain for science and for evidence-based medicine, as well as baseless and relentless opposition to the genetic engineering of food crops. Worst of all, he has manifested an egregious lack of integrity by promoting quack treatments and cures in the interest of personal financial gain."

Comment Re:Must hackers be such dicks about this? (Score 1) 270

by ljw1004 (#49496857) Attached to: FBI Accuses Researcher of Hacking Plane, Seizes Equipment

Replace "tweet" with "stand up and announce" and "laptop" with "metal pipe" and the story becomes "Man stands up in aircraft cabin and announces he 'could disable flight instruments' with metal pipe." Not that he necessarily was going to. Just that he could...and he's got to the tool to do so right here...kinda maybe thinking about it...

How would it be "unreasonable" to seize the man's metal pipe on the spot? No warrant required.

Let's fill out your analogy more completely...

* An expert researcher on the use of metal pipes for their use in disabling various things
* Who had done known research on the use of metal pipes for disabling aircraft instruments
* Which is interesting because it's not generally known or understood that metal pipes can disable aircraft instruments
* Is going to a conference to give a talk (on the use of metal pipes for disabling aircraft instruments?)
* Announces -- to fellow professionals in the field of disabling things with metal pipes -- that he knows how it's possible to use metal pipes to disable flight instruments, contrary to the general understanding

Yep, no matter how you dice it, detaining the fellow and seizing his metal pipe still seems ludicrous.

Comment Re:Accepting a story from Florian Meuller? (Score 1) 110

So far their acclaimed commitments seem to be mostly fluff with very little real substance in them..

How about completely opening .Net, moving their build system to GitHub, and moving the compiler to LLVM? Those seem to have some real substance to me. Then there's them embracing Docker for Windows Server 10 and open sourcing that work. This is not your fathers Microsoft.

...and how much of that is usable on any non-Microsoft platform? A percentage would be fine as an answer.

I think it's close to 100%, on mac+linux. When Microsoft open-sourced their VB+C# compilers a year ago, Miguel was on stage as well to show it running on mac.
Build

MakerBot Lays Off 20 Percent of Its Employees 177

Posted by timothy from the new-ones-being-printed dept.
Jason Koebler writes MakerBot fired roughly 20 percent of its staff Friday. Figures from 2014 placed the company's ranks at 500, meaning the cuts could equate to roughly 100 employees. The orders came from new CEO Jonathan Jaglom, Motherboard was told. Employees are apparently being led out of the company's Brooklyn office by security today. "It's about 20 percent of staff," a MakerBot representative, who asked not to be identified because she had not received approval to speak to the press, told Motherboard. "Everyone suspected that something would be coming with the new CEO, and that there would be restructuring coming."
Security

Exploit For Crashing Minecraft Servers Made Public 118

Posted by timothy from the hey-fellas-door's-unlocked dept.
An anonymous reader writes "After nearly two years of waiting for Mojang to fix a security vulnerability that can be used to crash Minecraft servers, programmer Ammar Askar has released a proof of concept exploit for the flaw in the hopes that this will force them to do something about it. "Mojang is no longer a small indie company making a little indie game, their software is used by thousands of servers, hundreds of thousands people play on servers running their software at any given time. They have a responsibility to fix and properly work out problems like this," he noted." Here is Askar's own post on the exploit, and his frustration with the response he's gotten to disclosing it to the developers.
Stats

Social Science Journal 'Bans' Use of p-values 208

Posted by Soulskill from the let's-argue-about-sabermetrics-instead dept.
sandbagger writes: Editors of Basic and Applied Social Psychology announced in a February editorial that researchers who submit studies for publication would not be allowed to use common statistical methods, including p-values. While p-values are routinely misused in scientific literature, many researchers who understand its proper role are upset about the ban. Biostatistician Steven Goodman said, "This might be a case in which the cure is worse than the disease. The goal should be the intelligent use of statistics. If the journal is going to take away a tool, however misused, they need to substitute it with something more meaningful."

Comment Not good enough. (Score 2) 229

by westlake (#49491073) Attached to: GNU Hurd 0.6 Released

Who the hell works on the 99% of open source software that isn't popular, and why do they care? Because they do.

Show me some proof that anyone cares enough to drive GNU/Hurd to a 1.0 release.

Richard Stallman founded the GNU project in September 1983 with an aim to create a free GNU operating system. Initially the components required for kernel and development were written: editors, shell, compiler and all the others. By 1989, GPL came into being and the only major component missing was the kernel.

In 2010, after twenty years under development, Stallman said that he was ''not very optimistic about the GNU Hurd. It makes some progress, but to be really superior it would require solving a lot of deep problems'', but added that ''finishing it is not crucial'' for the GNU system because a free kernel already existed (Linux), and completing Hurd would not address the main remaining problem for a free operating system: device support.

GNU Hurd

Comment Re:Fight within a platform, not between platforms (Score 1) 179

by westlake (#49490131) Attached to: Cyanogen Partners With Microsoft To Replace Google Apps

Microsoft, on the other hand, saw an opportunity and happily licensed their code to all comers.

The MS-DOS PC was a commercially viable platform before the cloning of the IBM PC BIOS.

Microsoft entered the 16 bit market with a full suite of programming languages that made the transition from the eight bit world of CP/M remarkably fast and painless. It's a part of a part of the story the geek tends to forget.
Space

An Engineering Analysis of the Falcon 9 First Stage Landing Failure 113

Posted by Soulskill from the ground-not-soft-enough dept.
schwit1 writes: AviationWeek has posted an analysis of SpaceX's latest attempt to land its Falcon 9 rocket on an ocean barge. Quoting: "SpaceX founder and chief technology officer Elon Musk tweeted that "excess lateral velocity caused it [the booster] to tip over post landing." In a later tweet that was subsequently withdrawn, Musk then indicated that "the issue was stiction in the biprop throttle valve, resulting in control system phase lag." In this statement, Musk was referring to "stiction" — or static friction — in the valve controlling the throttling of the engine. The friction appears to have momentarily slowed the response of the engine, causing the control system to command more of an extreme reaction from the propulsion system than was required. As a result, the control system entered a form of hysteresis, a condition in which the control response lags behind changes in the effect causing it.

Despite the failure of the latest attempt, SpaceX will be encouraged by the landing accuracy of the Falcon 9 and the bigger-picture success of its guidance, navigation and control (GNC) system in bringing the booster back to the drone ship. The GNC also worked as designed during the prior landing attempt in January, which ended in the destruction of the vehicle following a hard touchdown on the edge of the platform." In related news, SpaceX is hoping to attempt its next landing on solid ground.
Robotics

Video Embedded Linux Takes to the Skies (Video) 26

Posted by Roblimo from the robot-drones-want-you-to-take-them-to-your-leader-(beep) dept.
This is an interview with Clay McClure. He makes his living designing 'custom Linux software solutions for technology start-ups in Atlanta and the San Francisco Bay area.' He also works on Embedded Linux for autonomous drones. Here's a link to slides from a talk he gave on exactly that topic: Flying Penguins - Embedded Linux Applications for autonomous UAVs, and that's far from all he has to say about making Linux-controlled drones. However, for some reason Timothy and Clay didn't talk about using drones for target practice. Perhaps they can discuss that another time.

NOTE: We urge you to read the transcript of this interview even if you prefer watching videos; it contains material we left out of the video due to sound problems.
Education

LA Schools Seeking Refund Over Botched iPad Plan 325

Posted by Soulskill from the good-luck-with-that dept.
A reader sends news that Los Angeles Unified School District is asking Apple for a refund of the district's effort to equip students with iPads. The project was budgeted at around $1.3 billion to equip its 650,000 students, though only about 120,000 iPads have been purchased so far. After the program went bad, the FBI launched an investigation into their procurement practices. The iPads weren't standalone education devices — they were supposed to work in conjunction with another device carrying curriculum from a company named Pearson. But the district now says the combined tech didn't meet their needs, and they want their money back. Lawyers for the local Board of Education are looking into litigation options. They've also notified Apple and Pearson they won't pay for any new products or services.
Businesses

Chinese Ninebot Buys US Rival Segway 134

Posted by samzenpus from the lean-into-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes Xiaomi-backed startup Ninebot, a Chinese maker of electric-powered personal transportation products, has acquired U.S. rival Segway – the two-wheeler upright scooter which has become a running joke, synonymous with various comedic appearances (such as in U.S. sitcom Arrested Development and the 2009 comedy Paul Blart: Mall Cop), and the death of its owner at the hands of an unfortunate Segway-induced cliff fall. However Gao Lufeng, chief executive, still recognizes the potential of the Segway and has bought the U.S. company for an undisclosed amount. Lufeng confirmed that Ninebot had also secured $80mn in funding from Xiaomi and venture capital firm Sequoia Capital.

Comment Re:No. (Score 1) 700

by Jesus_666 (#49478593) Attached to: 'We the People' Petition To Revoke Scientology's Tax Exempt Status
Scientology has plenty of experience in lobbying. After Germany decided to deny them tax-exempt status (and then engaged in further actions against the CoS because some of their rhethoric and practices were uncomfortably reminiscent of Germany's past) the Scientologists spent a lot of money and effort on getting the US government to step in on their behalf, even going as far as asking for political sanctions.

I actually think they're not going to lose the tax exemptions in the first place because their lobbyists will pay off the right politicians before it can happen.
Space

Hubble and the VLT Uncover Evidence For Self-Interacting Dark Matter 117

Posted by Soulskill from the it's-perfectly-natural-and-healthy dept.
astroengine writes: A new study carried out by the ESO's Very Large Telescope and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has revealed for the first time that dark matter may well interact with itself — a discovery that, at first glance, seems to contradict what we thought we knew about the nature of this invisible mass. "In this study, the researchers observed the four colliding galaxies and found that one dark matter clump appeared to be lagging behind the galaxy it surrounds. The dark matter is currently 5000 light-years (50 000 million million kilometers) behind the galaxy — it would take NASA’s Voyager spacecraft 90 million years to travel that far. A lag between dark matter and its associated galaxy is predicted during collisions if dark matter interacts with itself, even very slightly, through forces other than gravity. Dark matter has never before been observed interacting in any way other than through the force of gravity."
News

World's Oldest Stone Tools Discovered In Kenya 89

Posted by Soulskill from the when-all-you-have-is-a-stone-flake,-everything-looks-like-a-bone-chip dept.
sciencehabit writes: Researchers say they have found the oldest tools made by human ancestors—stone flakes dated to 3.3 million years ago. That's 700,000 years older than the oldest-known tools to date, suggesting that our ancestors were crafting tools several hundred thousand years before our genus Homo arrived on the scene. If correct, the new evidence could confirm disputed claims for very early tool use, and it suggests that ancient australopithecines like the famed 'Lucy' may have fashioned stone.

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