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Submission + - We are in the midst of the worst Ebola outbreak in human history (thebulletin.org)

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: After four decades of confining Ebola outbreaks to small areas, experts acknowledged in an October 9 New England Journal of Medicine article that “we were wrong” about the scope of the current situation. At the present transmission rate, the number of Ebola cases in West Africa doubles every two to three weeks. Early diagnosis is the key to controlling the epidemic, but that's far easier said than done: 'And there are several complicating factors. For one thing, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that 60 percent of all Ebola patients remain undiagnosed in their communities.' A transmission rate below 1 is necessary to keep the outbreak under control (instead of the current rate of 1.5 to 2), and the authors detail what's in the works to help achieve early detection, which is crucial to reducing the current transmission rate.

Submission + - Predatory "scientific" journal exposed. (vox.com)

Submitted by schneidafunk
schneidafunk writes: As a joke, two scientists that were getting spammed by a predatory scientific journal submitted a paper called "Get me off your f-cking mailing list". Apparently no one bothered to read the submitted research and it was accepted by the International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology.
 

Submission + - How Intel and Micron May Finally Kill the Hard Disk Drive (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: For too long, it looked like SSD capacity would always lag well behind hard disk drives, which were pushing into the 6TB and 8TB territory while SSDs were primarily 256GB to 512GB. That seems to be ending. In September, Samsung announced a 3.2TB SSD drive. And during an investor webcast last week, Intel announced it will begin offering 3D NAND drives in the second half of next year as part of its joint flash venture with Micron. Meanwhile, hard drive technology has hit the wall in many ways. They can't really spin the drives faster than 7,200 RPM without increasing heat and the rate of failure. All hard drives have now is the capacity argument; speed is all gone. Oh, and price. We'll have to wait and see on that.

Submission + - UK Pirate Party Slams Theresa May's Plans For Static IPs (theinquirer.net)

Submitted by Carly Page
Carly Page writes: The UK Pirate Party has unveiled plans proposed by Home Secretary Theresa May that could force ISPs to assign fixed IP addresses to individual users and machines, thus allowing authorities to identify with more certainty those responsible for cyber crimes.

Loz Kaye, Pirate Party UK leader said: "It's extraordinary that the Home Office did not consult [the] industry about these plans. To me it shows they don't care whether they will work or not. They are just interested in headlines.

"It's clear that the Liberal Democrats have completely lost the plot on mass surveillance. To suggest this is necessarily the end of this issue is fatuous. Just look what happened with DRIP."

Submission + - NASA to Deploy Four Spacecraft to Study Magnetic Reconnection (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: NASA has released a video depicting the initial deployment of an undertaking designed to study a phenomenon known as magnetic reconnection. The launch of the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission will see four identical spacecraft deployed from a single Atlas V rocket, set to lift off from cape Canaveral, Florida, no earlier than March next year.

Submission + - Wireless Roomba Overlords

Submitted by fuzzel
fuzzel writes: The folks at Thinking Bits are busy trying to solve a big problem which a lot of folks here on Slashdot probably have: vacuuming the house.

Yes, you got that Roomba, yep you indeed forget to turn it on (or just cannot be bothered enabling the scheduling :)

They are currently Kickstarting Thinking Cleaner so that they can do the initial production run of this add-on. Hence give them a hand so that you (and I :) don't have to figure out what the heck the Roomba is doing by walking over but can stay lazy on the couch.

Full details are on their Kickstarter page, including a link to their API which enables one to really program the Roomba from afar using WiFi and some JSON HTTP calls.

Submission + - DHS Set to Destroy Einstein Surveillance Records (nextgov.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The Department of Homeland Security is poised to ditch all records from a controversial network monitoring system called Einstein that are at least three years old, but not for security reasons. DHS reasons the files — which include data about traffic to government websites, agency network intrusions and general vulnerabilities — have no research significance.

But some security experts say, to the contrary, DHS would be deleting a treasure chest of historical threat data. And privacy experts, who wish the metadata wasn’t collected at all, say destroying it could eliminate evidence that the government wide surveillance system does not perform as intended.

The National Archives and Records Administration has tentatively approved the disposal plan, pending a public comment period.

Submission + - Open source and Internet of Things can save public sector millions (cio.co.uk)

Submitted by Qedward
Qedward writes: Open source software and the Internet of Things are two of the disruptive approaches which can save the public sector during the UK government's austerity measures and lay the ground to deliver next generation digital services, Camden Council CIO John Jackson believes.

Local government organisations are approaching a critical tipping point which could save the public sector and the taxpayer billions, Jackson said.

Camden has to save £150 million between 2012 and 2018 from its bottom line while at the same time delivering fundamental transformation to tackle inequality, foster economic growth and deliver citizen centric services, Jackson explained as he outlined the council's challenges.

"But there's lots of cynicism around open source and the art of the possible, particularly in the CIO community who want to buy things off the shelf and are too worried about security, Jackson said."

"We need to harness the potential of open source. Don't outsource IT, crowdsource it."

Submission + - Class-Action suit Claims copyright enforcement company made harassing robo-calls

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Morgan Pietz, one of the lawyers who took on Prenda Law, has a new target in his sights: copyright enforcement company, Rightscorp. In a class action suit(pdf) Pietz claims the company made illegal, harassing robo-calls to people who were accused of illegal downloading and by doing so Rightscorp broke the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which limits how automated calling devices can be used. "They robo-called Jeanie Reif's cell phone darn near every day for a couple of months," Pietz said. "And there could be thousands of members of this class."

Submission + - Both NY and LA Times write that Silicon Valley can't find enough talent. 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The New York Times has featured Zenefits in an article about the need for more H1-B visas, because they can't find enough qualified U.S. workers to fill their active positions, even after President Obama's recent Executive Actions. The Los Angeles Times has done similarly. Why are so many jobs, primarily in Silicon Valley it seems, going unfilled in 2014?

Submission + - Debian Votes not to Mandate Non-systemd Compatibility

Submitted by paskie
paskie writes: Voting on a Debian General Resolution that would require packagers to maintain support even for systems not running systemd ended tonight with the resolution failing to gather enough support.

This means that some Debian packages could require users to run systemd on their systems in theory — however, in practice Debian still works fine without systemd (even with e.g. GNOME) and this will certainly stay the case at least for the next stable release Jessie.

However, the controversial GR proposed late in the development cycle opened many wounds in the community, prompting some prominent developers to resign or leave altogether, stirring strong emotions — not due to adoption of systemd per se, but because of the emotional burn-out and shortcomings in the decision processes apparent in the wake of the systemd controversy.

Nevertheless, work on the next stable release is well underway and some developers are already trying to mend the community and soothe the wounds.

Submission + - Researchers discover ancient massive landslide (sciencemag.org) 1

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: For decades, geologists have noted the signs of ancient landslides in southwestern Utah. Although many parts of the landscape don’t look that odd at first glance, certain layers include jumbled masses of fractured rock sandwiched among thick veins of lava, ash, and mud. Now, new fieldwork suggests that many of those ancient debris flows are the result of one of Earth’s largest known landslides, which covered an area nearly 39 times the size of Manhattan.

Submission + - Evernote's quest to change the world with productivity

Submitted by Gamoid
Gamoid writes: For the massively popular note-taking platform Evernote, recent changes reflect an almost religious crusade to rid the world of skeuomorphism and change the world by bringing people together under a new way of working.

In other words, we need to stop pretending paper is a thing. It's not a thing.

Submission + - Organic molecules detected on comet by Philae (bbc.com)

Submitted by Shortguy881
Shortguy881 writes: Carbon-containing "organics" are the basis of life on Earth and may give clues to chemical ingredients delivered to our planet early in its history. The compounds were picked up by a German-built instrument designed to "sniff" the comet's thin atmosphere. Other analyses suggest the comet's surface is largely water-ice covered with a thin dust layer. The European Space Agency (Esa) craft touched down on the Comet 67P on 12 November after a 10-year journey.

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