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Submission + - The Billionaires' Space Club

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Silicon sultans are the new robber barons, writes The Economist, adding that "they have been diversifying into businesses that have little to do with computers, while egotistically proclaiming that they alone can solve mankind’s problems, from ageing to space travel." But over at Slate, NYU journalism prof Charles Seife is less-than impressed with The Billionaires' Space Club. "It's an old trick," begins Seife. "Multimillionaires regularly try to spin acts of crass ego gratification as selfless philanthropy, no matter how obviously self-serving. They jump out of balloons at the edge of the atmosphere, take submarines to the bottom of the ocean, or shoot endangered animals on safari, all in the name of science and exploration. The more recent trend is billionaires making fleets of rocket ships for private space exploration. What makes this one different is that the public actually seems to buy the farce." Seife goes on to argue that "neither [Elon] Musk's nor [Richard] Branson's goals really seem to break new ground, despite all the talk of exploration."

Submission + - Pope Francis to Issue Encyclical on Global Warming 1

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: The Guardian reports that following a visit in March to Tacloban, the Philippine city devastated in 2012 by typhoon Haiyan, Pope Francis plans to publish a rare encyclical on climate change and human ecology urging all Catholics to take action on moral and scientific grounds. "A papal encyclical is rare," says Bishop Marcelo Sorondo, chancellor of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences who revealed the pope's plans when he delivered Cafod’s annual Pope Paul VI lecture. "It is among the highest levels of a pope’s authority. It will be 50 to 60 pages long; it’s a big deal." The encyclical will be sent to the world’s 5,000 Catholic bishops and 400,000 priests, who will distribute it to parishioners. Within Catholicism in recent times, an encyclical is generally used for significant issues, and is second in importance only to the highest ranking document now issued by popes, an Apostolic Constitution. “Just as humanity confronted revolutionary change in the 19th century at the time of industrialization, today we have changed the natural environment so much," says Sorondo. "If current trends continue, the century will witness unprecedented climate change and destruction of the ecosystem with tragic consequences.”

Francis’s environmental radicalism is likely to attract resistance from Vatican conservatives and in rightwing church circles, particularly in the US – where Catholic climate sceptics also include John Boehner, Republican leader of the House of Representatives and Rick Santorum, the former Republican presidential candidate. “There will always be 5-10% of people who will take offence. They are very vocal and have political clout," says Dan Misleh, director of the Catholic climate covenant. "This encyclical will threaten some people and bring joy to others. The arguments are around economics and science rather than morality." Francis will also be opposed by the powerful US evangelical movement, says Calvin Beisner, spokesman for the conservative Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, which has declared the US environmental movement to be “un-biblical” and a false religion. “The pope should back off,” says Beisner. “The Catholic church is correct on the ethical principles but has been misled on the science. It follows that the policies the Vatican is promoting are incorrect. Our position reflects the views of millions of evangelical Christians in the US.”

Submission + - Adobe Flash Update Installs McAfee Security Scan Plus Crapware

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: If you get an update notification for Adobe Flash you will also be installing McAfee Security Scan Plus. This mornings update did open an Adobe webpage but did not give the option of unticking a box to prevent installation of McAfee crapware like previous updates have had. To uninstall — Start, McAfee Security Scan Plus, Uninstall, restart, cross your fingers nothing gets borked.

Submission + - Paquete Semanal (Weekly Packet) (theguardian.com)

Submitted by FarnsworthG
FarnsworthG writes: Every morning, Teresita Rodriguez ferries external hard drives back and forth across Havana, using her feet to carry out the role that cables and wi-fi perform in other countries with less-restricted access to the world wide web.
Her job is both high-tech and extraordinarily simple. At one end, she sits and waits for a couple hours in the front room of the home of an information peddler, while he copies the latest terabyte-sized package of global films, TV dramas, comedies, magazines, applications and anti-virus software to her hard drive via a USB cable. She then takes those digital files to the home of her employer so he can download it and sell it on to his customers, many of whom will in turn charge their friends and neighbours for a copy.

Submission + - Three-hundred-million-year-old fossil fish still has traces of eye tissue (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Researchers have unearthed a fossil fish so well preserved, it still has traces of eye tissues. What’s more, these fossil tissues reveal that the 300-million-year-old fish called Acanthodes bridgei, like its living relatives, possessed two types of photoreceptors called rods and cones—cells that make vision possible. This is the first time that mineralized rods and cones have been found conserved in a vertebrate fossil. The discovery of cones, which help the eye see colors, is suggestive of the presence of color vision in fish for at least 300 million years.

Submission + - Marissa Mayer's reinvention of Yahoo! stumbles

Submitted by schnell
schnell writes: The New York Times Magazine has an in-depth profile of Marissa Mayer's time at the helm of Yahoo!, detailing her bold plans to reinvent the company and spark a Jobs-ian turnaround through building great new products. But some investors are saying that her product focus (to the point of micromanaging) hasn't generated results, and that the company should give up on trying to create the next iPod, merge with AOL to cut costs and focus on the unglamorous core business that it has. Is it time for Yahoo! to "grow up" and set its sights lower?

Submission + - Magic Leap Hires Sci-Fi Writer Neal Stephenson as Chief Futurist (hacked.com)

Submitted by giulioprisco
giulioprisco writes: Magic Leap, a secretive Florida augmented reality startup that raised $542 million in October, hired renowned science fiction writer Neal Stephenson as its “Chief Futurist.” Stephenson offers hints at the company’s technology and philosophy: "Magic Leap is bringing physics, biology, code, and design together to build a system that is going to blow doors open for people who create things." According to the Magic Leap website, their Dynamic Digitized Lightfield Signal technology permits generating images indistinguishable from real objects.

Submission + - Did Alcatraz escapees survive? Computer program says they might have (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: This week Dutch scientists from Delft University of Technology presented findings from a computer modeling program they were working on, unrelated to the mystery, that demonstrated the escapees could have survived the journey. “In hindsight, the best time to launch a boat from Alcatraz was [11:30 am], one and a half hours later than has generally been assumed. A rubber boat leaving Alcatraz at [11:30 am] would most likely have landed just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. The model also shows that debris in that scenario would be likely to wash up at Angel Island, exactly where one of the paddles and some personal belongings were found.

Submission + - China officially became the world's largest economy, ahead of the United States

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: For the first time in 150 years, the USA has lost its title of the largest economy in the world to China. China officially became the world’s largest economy, ahead of the United States, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). According to the latest figures of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) just released in December 8th, 2014, China has come ahead the United States as the world’s largest economy. China’s GDP will indeed reach 17600 billion in 2014 against 17400 billion for the United States. These data are calculated using the method known as “purchasing power parity”, which is economically significant. It measures the purchasing power of different currencies in a common unit as opposed to changes in exchange rates. Now China represents 16.5% of the global economy in terms of real purchasing power, ahead of the US, 16.3%. According to IMF estimates, the gap should continue to widen in the coming years. By 2019, China would reach more than 26,800 billion of national wealth, against just 22,000 billion for the United States. The United States had become the leading economic power in 1872 after overtaking Britain.

Submission + - Russia wants its own space station, threatens future of ISS

Submitted by BarbaraHudson
BarbaraHudson writes: The Globe and Mail reports that Russian space agency Roscosmos is considering building its own space station.

"I confirm we are considering such an option. This is a possible direction of development," RIA quoted Roscosmos head Oleg Ostapenko. He said such a space station could become a key part of Russian missions to the moon.

Moscow has cast doubt on the ISS’s long-term future as ties with Washington plummet over Ukraine. Washington wants to keep the $100-billion ISS in use until at least 2024, four years beyond the previous target. But a Russian government official said in May that Moscow would reject Washington’s request to prolong its operations.

Submission + - Google Earth API Will Be Retired On December 12, 2015

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google today announced it plans to retire the Google Earth API on December 12, 2015. The reason is simple: Both Chrome and Firefox are removing support for Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) plugins due to security reasons, so the API’s death was inevitable. The timing makes sense. Last month, Google updated its plan for killing off NPAPI support in Chrome, saying that it would block all plugins by default in January and drop support completely in September. The company also revealed that the Google Earth plugin had dropped in usage from 9.1 percent of Chrome users in October 2013 to 0.1 percent in October 2014. Add dwindling cross-platform support (particularly on mobile devices), and we’re frankly surprised the announcement didn’t come sooner.

Submission + - How One Man Changed the Ecology of the Great Lakes with Salmon

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: During the sixties the Great Lakes were facing an ecological disaster due to invasive species and over fishing. Biologist Howard Tanner's solution to the problem was to bring in another non-native species, the Pacific salmon. Fishing boomed for many years but with the recent salmon crash in Lake Huron many wonder if the salmon were a band-aid on a ecological wound that's too big to fix. From the article: "Tanner's goal wasn't to just alter the species composition of the lakes; he wanted to change the public's relationship with the lakes themselves. Beyond pier fishing for perch and smallmouth bass, fishing in the lakes primarily had been the domain of relatively few commercial fishing crews using big boats and nets to harvest lake trout, perch, whitefish and chubs for restaurants and stores. But because these commercially fished native species had been so destroyed by overfishing and the lamprey and alewife infestations, Tanner inherited something of a blank slate — almost like a freshly filled reservoir in the West. He had little interest in trying to repaint the same old picture, but wanted instead to turn the waters over to large numbers of sportsmen who fished as much for thrill as fillet."

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Can a felon work in IT? 10

Submitted by Lesrahpem
Lesrahpem writes: I'm a felon with several prior misdemeanor convictions from an immature time in my life. I've since cleaned up my act, and I want to go back into the IT sector. I keep running into potential employers who tell me they'd like to hire me but can't because of my past record (expunging won't work, I'm in Ohio). Does anyone have any suggestions for me? Should I just give up and change careers?

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