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Comment Re:Remaining merchandise (Score 1) 305

by ackthpt (#61096672) Attached to: Fry's Electronics Going Out of Business, Shutting Down All Stores

Such a useless post and reflecting lack of actual knowledge of Fry's.

20 some years ago I bought my first laptop (still have it) at Fry's in Sunnyvale. It was still in the little grocery location, the shelves (and even former refrigerated goods) aisles has resistor and capacitor models sticking out of the floor. It's long since become some health club or other business after Fry's moved to a big store a couple blocks away.

In the hey day of the stores on E. Arques, E. Brokaw and E. Hamilton had about 40 or 60 cashiers, the queue moved pretty swiftly and they didn't take American Express. I tried to buy my first digital camera there and found that out. Went over to Wolf Camera to pick it up. Anyway, over the past few years I've visited the number of cashiers has dwindled down to only a handful. Few floor walkers, where once they were all over you, asking if you needed any help. Last visit I didn't see one at all.

At the end Fry's probably only had a dozen people working in each of their giant stores, a far cry from the hundreds they employed a decade or two before. The downsizing has been happening over time. Weep not for droves of employees losing their jobs, weep for the few who worked in desolate stores, with unstocked shelves who knew the writing was on the wall. They've been circling the drain for years.

The main hurt here is losing a chain which once carried just about everything the home hobbyist/maniac could ever want. That's been going on with the closure of Weird Stuff and Halted Specialties. I'll have to look to see if there's anyone left who sells components, wire, cable, solder, special tools, etc. I'd say they failed to plan well and we've known the eventual source of stuff is going to be our mailbox.

Comment The new normal (Score 4, Interesting) 396

by erick99 (#60290710) Attached to: Should We Plan For a Future With Fewer Cars?
I am a professor at a college about an hour each way. I am used to filling my tank every week. We went online in early March and I doubt I have used 20 gallons of gas since then. That may change in the fall. This virus has demonstrated that not all interactions have to be face-to-face. I'm sure businesses have enjoyed the drop in that expense. And Zoom has enjoyed the new subscriptions. Anyway, I'm sure you get the idea.

Submission + - Linux team approves new terminology, bans terms like 'blacklist' and 'slave' (zdnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Linus Torvalds approved on Friday a new and more inclusive terminology for the Linux kernel code and documentation. Going forward, Linux developers have been asked to use new terms for the master/slave and blacklist/whitelist terminologies. Proposed alternatives for master/slave include:
  • primary/secondary
  • main/replica or subordinate
  • initiator/target
  • requester/responder
  • controller/device
  • host/worker or proxy
  • leader/follower
  • director/performer

Proposed alternatives for blacklist/whitelist include:

  • denylist/allowlist
  • blocklist/passlist

Submission + - 'Unknown pneumonia' deadlier than coronavirus sweeping Kazakhstan (scmp.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: “The death rate of this disease is much higher than the novel coronavirus. The country’s health departments are conducting comparative research into the pneumonia virus, but have yet to identify the virus,” the embassy said in a warning to Chinese citizens in the country.

The embassy’s website, citing local media reports, said the provinces of Atyrau and Aktobe and the city of Shymkent have reported significant spikes in pneumonia cases since the middle of June.

Submission + - The F-16's Replacement Won't Have a Pilot at All (aviationweek.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The U.S. Air Force is planning to field an operational combat drone by 2023. The service says Skyborg will replace older weapon-slinging drones and even early models of the F-16. Skyborg will be reusable but could be sacrificed in combat if necessary.

Submission + - Facebook Considers Political-Ad Blackout Ahead of US Election (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook is considering imposing a ban on political ads on its social network in the days leading up to the U.S. election in November, according to people familiar with the company’s thinking. The potential ban is still only being discussed and hasn’t yet been finalized, said the people, who asked not to be named talking about internal policies. A halt on ads could serve as a defense against misleading election-related content spreading widely right as people prepare to vote. Still, there are also concerns that an ad blackout could hurt “get out the vote” campaigns, or limit a candidate’s ability to respond widely to breaking news or new information.

Facebook doesn’t fact-check ads from politicians or their campaigns, a point of contention for many lawmakers and advocates, who say the policy means ads on the platform could be used to spread lies and misinformation. The social-media giant has been criticized in recent weeks by civil rights groups that say it doesn’t do enough to remove efforts to limit voter participation, and a recent audit of the company found Facebook failed to enforce its own voter suppression policies when it comes to posts from U.S. President Donald Trump. Hundreds of advertisers are currently boycotting Facebook’s advertising products as part of a protest against its policies.

Submission + - Biden Wants to Create US Version of China's Social Credit Score (cnbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Joe Biden’s policy roadmap aims to create a new, federally-backed credit bureau to close the racial wealth gap.

Business use credit scores as a risk assessment tool. If the score no longer reflects valid risk factors correctly, no businesses in the right mind would use it.

Submission + - Portland Approves 10% Cap On Fees That Food Delivery Apps Can Charge Restuarants (oregonlive.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Portland City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to make it illegal for third-party food delivery services like DoorDash and Grubhub to collect more than 10% in commission fees from city restaurants amid the coronavirus pandemic. Portland joins other cities, including Seattle, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, that have instituted similar caps in recent months. Those cities have limits at 15%. New Jersey last week put a 10% service fee cap that applies to all restaurants in the state. Food delivery company fees can be as high as 30%.

The new rule also makes it illegal for DoorDash, Uber Eats and other companies to decrease payments to delivery workers in order to make up lost money from restaurant fees, the ordinance said. The city council approved an amendment to the order Wednesday to also include a 5% limit if the delivery service allows a restaurant to transport their own food or if a customer orders through the app and picks up their items at the business. The restrictions would end 90 days after Portland’s state of emergency order lifts. No date has been set to lift the order, which has been in place since March 12. Delivery app companies would be liable for up to $500 in civil penalties if the order is violated and the fine would accrue every day and for every restaurant overcharged. The restaurant would have to sue the company involved if they aren’t given refunds.

Submission + - On Firefox, websites can keep filming you from your locked phone (traced.app) 2

Submitted by lateral
lateral writes: Firefox on Android has a bug that keeps the camera and microphone rolling if you put the app in the background or lock your phone while you're using a video chat/conferencing website. Firefox has known about the bug for a year and hasn't fixed it yet, which is fine because... nobody uses video chat or video conferencing these days?

Submission + - New Study Detects Ringing of the Global Atmosphere (phys.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A ringing bell vibrates simultaneously at a low-pitched fundamental tone and at many higher-pitched overtones, producing a pleasant musical sound. A recent study, just published in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences by scientists at Kyoto University and the University of Hawai'i at Mnoa, shows that the Earth's entire atmosphere vibrates in an analogous manner, in a striking confirmation of theories developed by physicists over the last two centuries. In the case of the atmosphere, the "music" comes not as a sound we could hear, but in the form of large-scale waves of atmospheric pressure spanning the globe and traveling around the equator, some moving east-to-west and others west-to-east. Each of these waves is a resonant vibration of the global atmosphere, analogous to one of the resonant pitches of a bell.

Now in a new study by Takatoshi Sakazaki, an assistant professor at the Kyoto University Graduate School of Science, and Kevin Hamilton, an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences and the International Pacific Research Center at the University of Hawaii at Mnoa, the authors present a detailed analysis of observed atmospheric pressure over the globe every hour for 38 years. The results clearly revealed the presence of dozens of the predicted wave modes. The study focused particularly on waves with periods between 2 hours and 33 hours which travel horizontally through the atmosphere, moving around the globe at great speeds (exceeding 700 miles per hour). This sets up a characteristic "chequerboard" pattern of high and low pressure associated with these waves as they propagate.

Submission + - AI Auditors Uncover Biases in Predictive Machine Learning Systems

Submitted by JGrizz
JGrizz writes: Protests for racial justice have rekindled public interest in biased AI systems, particularly in the context of criminal justice (e.g., facial recognition). While bias is an issue for any decision-making process, what makes machine learning systems special is that they can be interrogated for bias using “AI audits.” From a report:

“Biased decision-making certainly isn’t unique to AI systems, but in many ways, it is uniquely discoverable in these systems. Biases in AI systems have been detected in law enforcement, banking, insurance, hiring, and healthcare. Most of these issues stem from training data that are not representative (e.g., a data set containing only white people) or are unintentionally embedded with prejudices (e.g., historical hiring data comparing males and females).

Biased data beget biased models, which beget biased data, and so on (notably, under certain conditions, biased decision-making can also result in “algorithmic affirmative action”).”

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