60323373
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dcblogs writes:
The San Francisco Bay Area and south to San Jose will soon have what may be the nation's first dedicated Internet of Things network. Sigfox, is a France-based firm that has already deployed such technology in France, hopes the have the system installed by the end of September. Its network is designed for short m-to-m messages and uses a low data rate of 100 bits per second, which gives it very long range over the unlicensed industrial, scientific and medical (ISM), radio bands in the sub-GHz frequencies. Therefore, base stations antennas, depending on whether they are being deployed in an urban core or in rural area, can be spread apart at distances ranging from several miles to tens of miles, if not more. In its various markets, Sigfox seeks out a network provider partner and uses its sites and towers and backhaul, but puts in its own antennas. Sigfox's technology also means that wearable tech can be connected without a smartphone or proximity to a WiFi network. For instance, a GPS-enabled watch may keep track of your running, but the data isn't mapped until a user connects it to a mobile device or PC. But a GPS watch with a Sigfox radio included will be able to send location data via a network so someone can track your run from home. Potential system competitors include U.K.-based Nuel's Weightless technology, and the Japanese-developed Wide Area Ubiquitous Network (WAUN). Analyst believe U.S. firms long-range, low-bandwidth technologies in development as well.
60316463
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Lucas123 writes:
After using Google Glass for several weeks, Computerworld columnist Matt Lake had plenty of reasons to explain why he returned them, not the least of which was that they made him cross-eyed and avoid eye contact. Google Glass batteries also drain like a bath tub when using either audio or video apps and they run warm. And, as cool as being able to take videos and photos with the glasses may be, those shots are always at an angle. Of course, being able to do turn-by-turn directions is cool, but not something you can do without your smart phone's cellular data or a mobile hotspot. The list of reasons goes on... Bottom line, if Google Glass is in the vanguard of a future class of wearable computers, the future isn't the present.
59972989
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dcblogs writes:
Computer science undergrad enrollments increased 13% last year, the sixth straight year of increases, according to the Computing Research Association. This trend began after the Wall Street collapse in 2008. The number of computer science graduates earning degrees from Ph.D.-granting institutions reached a low of 8,021 in 2007, down from 14,185 in the 2003-2004 academic year. The number of bachelor degrees awarded in computer science last year at these schools was 12,503. The number of computer science graduates will continue to increase. Computer science enrollments rose by nearly 30% in the 2011-12 academic year, and they increased 23% the year before that.
59818393
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dcblogs writes:
Dan Geer, the CISO of In-Q-Tel, says that embedded systems, microcontrollers, are "immortal" in the sense that they can continue to function for many years at an assigned task. "The longer lived these devices," said Geer, "the surer it will be that they will be hijacked within their lifetime." Embedded systems without a remote management interface "and thus out of reach, are a life form," and "as the purpose of life is to end, an embedded system without a remote management interface must be so designed to be certain to die no later than some fixed time."
59534561
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KentuckyFC writes:
In June 1972, nuclear scientists at the Pierrelatte uranium enrichment plant in south-east France noticed a strange deficit in the amount of uranium-235 they were processing. That’s a serious problem in a uranium enrichment plant where every gram of fissionable material has to be carefully accounted for. The ensuing investigation found that the anomaly originated in the ore from the Oklo uranium mine in Gabon, which contained only 0.600% uranium-235 compared to 0.7202% for all other ore on the planet. It turned out that this ore was depleted because it had gone critical some 2 billion years earlier, creating a self-sustaining nuclear reaction that lasted for 300,000 years and using up the missing uranium-235 in the process. Since then, scientists have studied this natural reactor to better understand how buried nuclear waste spreads through the environment and also to discover whether the laws of physics that govern nuclear reactions may have changed in the 1.5 billion years since the reactor switched off. Now a review of the science that has come out of Oklo shows how important this work has become but also reveals that there is limited potential to gather more data. After an initial flurry of interest in Oklo, mining continued and the natural reactors--surely among the most extraordinary natural phenomena on the planet-- have all been mined out.
59515585
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dcblogs writes:
John Holdren, who heads the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, told a Senate committee Tuesday that China's R&D spending is growing by 20% to 25% a year, and will surpass U.S. R&D investment before 2022, an often-cited private sector estimate. The U.S., he said, is "in real danger" of being overtaken by China in R&D spending, he said. U.S R&D investments in 2011 was $429 billion, in that same year China spent $208 billion. President Obama, said Holdren, set a goal in 2009 of investing 3% of the nation's GDP in R&D, and the U.S. is near that level. But this analysis combines public and private sector R&D spending; when federal R&D spending is separated out, the picture is different. In a letter to the committee, MIT President Rafael Reif said that from the mid-1950s through the mid-1970s, federally-funded R&D averaged approximately 1.5% of GDP; by 2011, however, funding had fallen to 0.8% of GDP. "This declining benchmark should be a flashing yellow light for the nation," he wrote.
59297687
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dcblogs writes:
There’s an IT professional who, at this moment, is training offshore replacements, the people who are taking over the work. This IT pro is also a good writer, and has penned a short explanation about what life is now like: “As Americans, we maintain our pride and dignity as we are forced to train our H-1B replacements. We struggle with the reality of having no jobs, but yet we train our replacements without prejudice and hold our heads up high because we are ingrained with a work ethic to do our very best."
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dcblogs writes:
The 75 students in the 2014 Master of Science in Analytics class at North Carolina State University received, in total, 246 job offers from 55 employers, valued at $22.5 million in salaries and bonuses, which is 24% higher than last year's combined offers. But the problem ahead is admissions. There may not be enough master’s programs in analytics to meet demand. NC State has received nearly 800 applications for 85 seats. Its acceptance rate is now at 12.5%. Northwestern University's Master of Science in Analytics received 600 applications for 30 openings its September class. That's an acceptance rate of 6%
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mk1004 writes:
This is yet another story about H-1B workers displacing American workers. In the article from Computerworld, we hear about a loophole that allows companies to replace existing workers with H-1B workers.
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jfruh writes:
In the world of petty tech annoyances, laptop power bricks are among the most annoying: they either take the form of something big and heavy that gets tangled up underfoot, or a huge plug that blocks other outlets. A group of MIT grad students think they've found a better way, a slimmer, lighter alternative that includes a USB port as well that so you can charge your laptop and phone at the same time. They're crowdfunding the project on Kickstarter.
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jfruh writes:
Over the past few years, the growth rate in Detroit tech jobs has been twice the natural average. The reason is the industry that still makes Detroit a company town: U.S. automotive companies are getting into high tech in a big way, and need qualified people to help them do it. Another bonus: the rent is a lot cheaper than it is in San Francisco.
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dcblogs writes:
Southern California Edison is preparing to offshore IT jobs, the second major U.S. utility in the last year to do so. It will be cutting its staff, but it hasn’t said by how much. The utility is using at least two offshore outsourcing firms, according to government records. SCE’s management culture may be particularly primed for firing its IT workers. Following a workplace shooting in SCE’s IT offices in 2011, the utility conducted an independent audit of its organizational and management culture. One observation in this report, which was completed a year later, was that "employees perceive managers to be more concerned about how they 'look' from above, and less concerned about how they are viewed by their subordinates. This fosters an unhealthy culture and climate by sending a message to employees that it is more important to focus on how things look from the top than how they actually are down below."
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Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes:
Just in time for the April 15 IRS filing deadline comes news from the Washington Post that hundreds of thousands of taxpayers who are expecting refunds are instead getting letters informing them that because of a debt they never knew about — often a debt incurred by their parents — the government has confiscated their check — sometimes on debts 20 or 30 years old. For example, when Mary Grice was 4, back in 1960, her father died, leaving her mother with five children to raise. Until the kids turned 18, Sadie Grice got survivor benefits from Social Security to help feed and clothe them. Now, Social Security claims it overpaid someone in the Grice family — it’s not sure who — in 1977. After 37 years of silence, four years after Sadie Grice died, the government is coming after her daughter. “It was a shock,” says Grice, 58. “What incenses me is the way they went about this. They gave me no notice, they can’t prove that I received any overpayment, and they use intimidation tactics, threatening to report this to the credit bureaus.”
The Treasury Department has intercepted $1.9 billion in tax refunds already this year — $75 million of that on debts delinquent for more than 10 years, says Jeffrey Schramek, assistant commissioner of the department’s debt management service. The aggressive effort to collect old debts started three years ago — the result of a single sentence tucked into the farm bill lifting the 10-year statute of limitations on old debts to Uncle Sam. The Federal Trade Commission, on its Web site, advises Americans that “family members typically are not obligated to pay the debts of a deceased relative from their own assets.” But Social Security officials say that if children indirectly received assistance from public dollars paid to a parent, the children’s money can be taken, no matter how long ago any overpayment occurred. Many of the taxpayers whose refunds have been taken say they’ve been unable to contest the confiscations because of the cost, because Social Security cannot provide records detailing the original overpayment, and because the citizens, following advice from the IRS to keep financial documents for just three years, had long since trashed their own records. More than 1,200 appeals have been filed on the old cases but only about 10 percent of taxpayers have won those appeals. "The government took the money first and then they sent us the letter," says Brenda Samonds.." We could never get one sentence from them explaining why the money was taken.”
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jfruh writes:
'So-and-so is about to release a smartphone' is one of the oldest tech rumors around, and most of the time nothing comes of it. But Stephen Lawson of the IDG News Service argues that if anyone non-phonemaker were going to dip their toes into that treacherous water, it'd be Amazon. The company hasn't been afraid to take on incumbents in the tablet and TV set-top box markets, and the financial rewards for breaking out of the content ecosystem imposed by other providers are too great to ignore.
58813929
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dcblogs writes:
A study of New York City's tech workforce found that 44% of jobs in the city's "tech ecosystem," or 128,000 jobs, "are accessible" to people without a Bachelor's degree. This eco-system includes both tech specific jobs and those jobs supported by tech. For instance, a technology specific job that doesn't require a Bachelor's degree might be a computer user support specialist, earning $28.80 an hour, according to this study. Tech industry jobs that do not require a four-year degree and may only need on-the-job training include customer services representatives, at $18.50 an hour, telecom line installer, $37.60 an hour, and sales representatives, $33.60 an hour. The study did not look at "who is actually sitting in those jobs and whether people are under-employed," said Kate Wittels, a director at HR&A Advisors, a real-estate and economic-development consulting firm, and report author.. Many people in the "accessible" non-degree jobs may indeed have degrees. For instance. About 75% of the 25 employees who work at New York Computer Help in Manhattan have a Bachelor's degree. Of those with Bachelor's degrees, about half have IT-related degrees.
