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Submission + - Microsoft To Teachers: Using Pens And Paper Not Fair To Students

Submitted by Freshly Exhumed
Freshly Exhumed writes: Pens and paper have no place in the modern classroom. And chalkboards? They should be banished from our schools too. That’s what Lia De Cicco Remu, director of Partners in Learning at Microsoft Canada, told the Georgia Straight ahead of the Microsoft Summit 2015 in Vancouver, which is set to be attended by around 200 teachers. “When was the last time you used a piece of chalk to express yourself?” De Cicco Remu, a former teacher, asked by phone from Toronto. “Kids don’t express themselves with chalk or in cursive. Kids text.” Given the Microsoft Study Finds Technology Hurting Attention Spans story posted to Slashdot in the last 2 days it would seem that Redmond's Marketing and R&D people are at cross-purposes.

Submission + - Google and Facebook hypocrisy concerning the Verizon-AOL merger (forbes.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Their friends in Washington want the FCC to start interfering in Internet privacy issues. Convincing the FCC to issue new rules prohibiting Internet service providers (ISPs) from tracking consumers online would keep Verizon out of their markets and could have the effect of killing the deal even if antitrust regulators approve it.

If these groups(Google and Facebook) were serious about protecting consumer privacy on the Internet, they wouldn't be running to the FCC for special rules aimed only at Verizon. They would take their complaint to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC is the primary agency responsible for consumer privacy issues and has been dealing with online tracking issues for years. The FCC has comparatively little experience in the area and a poor track record of enforcing and complying with privacy laws.

It appears these groups are complaining about Verizon at the FCC rather than the FTC in order to help their friends at Google and Facebook maintain their competitive lead in mobile marketing. It is no coincidence that these same groups pushed for the FCC to assume jurisdiction over Internet privacy issues during the net neutrality fight. The FCC could have adopted net neutrality rules without impinging on the FTC's jurisdiction over online privacy.

Submission + - Gates, Zuckerberg Promising Same Jobs to US Kids and Foreign H-1B Workers? 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Over at the Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg-bankrolled Code.org, they're using the number of open computing jobs in each state to convince parents of the need to expand K-12 CS offerings so their kids can fill those jobs. Sounds good, right? But at the same time, the Gates and Zuckerberg-bankrolled FWD.org PAC has taken to Twitter, using the number of open "STEM" jobs in each state to convince politicians of the need to expand the number of H-1B visas so foreign workers can fill those jobs. While the goal of Microsoft's 'two-pronged' National Talent Strategy is to kill two birds [K-12 CS education and H-1B visas] with one crisis, is it cool for organizations backed by many of the same wealthy individuals to essentially promise the same jobs to U.S. kids and foreign H-1B workers?

Submission + - Banks Conspire 2

Submitted by Jim Sadler
Jim Sadler writes: I'll keep it short. Why do banks, charge cards and others have such lousy password software? My bank allows twenty letters or numbers but not all combinations of letters and numbers. Then on top of that one can not use symbols or ASCI symbols in ones password. Needless to say pass phrases are also banned. For example "JackandJillwentupthehilltofetch1394pounds of worms." would be very hard to crack and very easy to recall.
              I can't imagine why such passwords would be so hard to handle for financial institutions and they have everything in the world to lose from sloppy security. So just why, considering that these institutions complain of mega money being lost, do they not have a better password system? Do they somehow gain when money goes missing?

Submission + - Has Mark Shuttleworth gone overboard? 3

Submitted by Linux Torvalds
Linux Torvalds writes: From the article on softpedia which qoutes "Mark Shuttleworth Asks Devs from Different Desktop Environments to Work Together" from Ubuntu Online Summit 2015, which begs us to ask "is he paying attention to any open source development outside of the kingdom of Canonical ?"
Canonical has already started work on making Snappy Package Manager (a replacement for apt based dpkg package manager) and Mir (a replacement for the X window server system) for Ubuntu. But since features promised by Snappy Package Manager are already available in Nix Package Manager, so essentially there is no need to make new one. Similarly Canonical could contribute to make X windows better but instead they are making a new one.
Which makes me wonder has Mark Shuttleworth gone overboard? What do you think?

Submission + - House votes to end spy agencies' bulk collection of phone data (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill on Wednesday that would end spy agencies' bulk collection of Americans' telephone data, setting up a potential showdown with the U.S. Senate over the program, which expires on June 1.

The House voted 338-88 for the USA Freedom Act, which would end the bulk collection and instead give intelligence agencies access to telephone data and other records only when a court finds there is reasonable suspicion about a link to international terrorism.

Submission + - Musk denies berating employee (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: An upcoming on Elon Musk has several claims that Musk has vehemently denied

Musk denied that he ever reprimand a Tesla employee for missing a work event to be at the birth of his child

Musk claims that it is "Total BS and hurtful to claim that I told a guy to miss his child's birth just to attend a company meeting"

Musk reportedly sent an email to the employee, saying: "That is no excuse. I am extremely disappointed. You need to figure out where your priorities are. We're changing the world and changing history, and you either commit or you don't"

In another tweet, ( https://twitter.com/elonmusk/s... ) Musk has publicly denied another claim that Musk has once said to a potential investor "My mentality is that of a samurai. I would rather commit seppuku than fail"

Musk, who has been married three times and twice to the same woman, with whom he filed for a second divorce in December 2014, talked about finding the time to date. "I would like to allocate more time to dating, though. I need to find a girlfriend. That's why I need to care out just a little more time. I think maybe even another five to 10 — how much time does a woman want a week? Maybe 10 hours? That's kind of the minimum? I don't know"

There are other quotes from the book that Musk has not issued any denial, yet, including:

... from Christie Nicholson, the daughter of an advisor to Musk... "One night he told me, 'If there was a way that I could not eat, so I could work more, I would not eat. I wish there was a way to get nutrients without sitting down for a meal'"

Submission + - Bill Gates Still Trying to Buy Some Common Core Testing Love

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "Bill Gates famously spent hundreds of millions of dollars to develop, implement and promote the now controversial Common Core State Standards," reports the Washington Post's Valerie Strauss. "He hasn't stopped giving." In the last seven months, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has poured more than $10 million into implementation and parent support for the Core. Strauss adds: "Gates is the leader of education philanthropy in the United States, spending a few billion dollars over more than a decade to promote school reforms that he championed, including the Common Core, a small-schools initiative in New York City that he abandoned after deciding it wasn’t working, and efforts to create new teacher evaluation systems that in part use a controversial method of assessment that uses student standardized test scores to determine the 'effectiveness' of educators. Such philanthropy has sparked a debate about whether American democracy is well-served by wealthy people who pour part of their fortunes into their pet projects — regardless of whether they are grounded in research — to such a degree that public policy and funding follow." By the way, the use of a BillG look-alike kid in the pro-Common Core ad made by recent $3.7M Gates Foundation awardee the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation was a nice touch! And if you're still on the fence about Common Core after viewing it, the Onion just came out with a nice list of the pros and cons of standardized testing that may help you decide.

Submission + - The Mathematician Who Loves Hitting People 1

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Kate Murphy writes at NYT about mathematician John Urschel whose latest contribution to the mathematical realm was a paper for the Journal of Computational Mathematics with the impressively esoteric title, "A Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fiedler Vector of Graph Laplacians." "Believe me, I am aware that terms such as multigrid, Fiedler, and vector are not words that people use in their daily lives," says Urshel.

But as an offensive guard for the Baltimore Ravens, John Urschel regularly goes head to head with the top defensive players in the NFL and does his best to keep quarterback Joe Flacco out of harm's way. "I play because I love the game. I love hitting people," Urshel writes. "There's a rush you get when you go out on the field, lay everything on the line and physically dominate the player across from you. This is a feeling I'm (for lack of a better word) addicted to, and I'm hard-pressed to find anywhere else."

Urschel acknowledges that he has faced questions from NFL officials, journalists, fans and fellow mathematicians about why he runs the risk of potential brain injury from playing football when he has "a bright career ahead of me in mathematics" but doesn't feel able to quit. "When I go too long without physical contact I'm not a pleasant person to be around. This is why, every offseason, I train in kickboxing and wrestling in addition to my lifting, running and position-specific drill work."

Submission + - Defense Dept paid millions to NFL teams for "heartfelt" salutes to troops (nj.com)

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: The U.S. Department of Defense has paid $5.4 million in taxpayer money to 14 National Football League (NFL) teams across the country, including $377,500 to the Jets, with the bulk spent by the National Guard. They payments were first revealed by U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz)., who said most in the general public believe the segments were heartfelt salutes by their hometown football team, not an advertising campaign paid for with their money. The senator explained: "Those of us go to sporting events and see them honoring the heroes. You get a good feeling in your heart. Then to find out they're doing it because they're compensated for it, it leaves you underwhelmed. It seems a little unseemly."

Teams that received taxpayer funds include the Baltimore Ravens ($799,000), Cincinnati Bengals ($138,960) Cleveland Browns ($22,500), the Green Bay Packers ($600,000), Pittsburgh Steelers, ($36,000) Minnesota Vikings ($605,000), Atlanta Falcons ($1,049,500) Indianapolis Colts ($620,000), Buffalo Bills ($679,000), Dallas Cowboys ($62,500), Miami Dolphins ($20,000), Kansas City Chiefs ($250,000), St. Louis Rams ($60,000), and the Jets ($377,000). (http://www.scout.com/story/1545004-nfl-teams-paid-to-thank-troops-at-games)

Submission + - Linux Mint Will Continue to Provide Both Systemd and Upstart (softpedia.com)

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: After Debian had adopted systemd, many of the Linux distributions based on that operating system made the switch as well. Ubuntu has already rolled out systemd in 15.04, but Linux Mint is providing dual options for users. The Ubuntu transition was surprisingly painless, and no one really put up a fight, but the Linux Mint team chose the middle ground. The Mint developers consider that the project needs to still wait for systemd to become more stable and mature, before it will be the default and only option.

Submission + - Mutation, not Natural Selection, which led to the rise of new species (phys.org) 1

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: Blair Hedges, a biologist at Temple University in Philadelphia, has proposed a provocative alternative to the natural selection view of evolution

According to Mr. Hedges, Adaptation had little to do with it. It was simply a matter of chance and time

No matter what the life form — plant or animal, insect or mammal — it takes about 2 million years for a new species to form. Random genetic events, not natural selection, play the main role in speciation

This controversial proposal stems from efforts by Hedges and collaborators to build the world’s most comprehensive tree of life — a chart plotting the connections among 50,000 species of Earth’s vast menagerie. Their analysis suggests that speciation is essentially random

Evolutionary biologists find the research effort intriguing, particularly in its size and scope, but they are also somewhat skeptical of the provocative ideas that have emerged. “It’s a huge tour de force” said Arne Mooers, a biologist at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. “There are lots of interesting claims — the devil will be in the details”

To build the tree, Hedges, his Temple colleague Sudhir Kumar, and their collaborators compiled data from nearly 2,300 published studies, gleaning from each the time when two species diverged from a common ancestor. They used those data to construct a map of relationships among different species, known as a “timetree.” To form a branch, the researchers started with the two species within a closely related taxonomic group that have the most recent common ancestor. Then they added the next closest species, and so on

In a family tree for example, it is akin to starting with siblings, then adding in first cousins and second cousins

Bringing all those branches together results in a comprehensive timetree of life

It will take some time for scientists to sort through the technical details of the paper, which was published in April in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution. And while some scientists have been complimentary, others immediately challenged the results, questioning both the accuracy of the tree and the conclusions that Hedges has drawn. “I am very skeptical about inferring patterns of speciation from such a broad overview of the tree of life,” said Chris Jiggins, a biologist at the University of Cambridge in England

“The classic view of evolution is that it happens in fits and starts,” said Michael Benton, a paleontologist at the University of Bristol in England

A change in the environment, such as a rise in temperatures after an ice age, might spark a burst of speciation as organisms adapt to their new surroundings. Alternatively, a single remarkable adaptation such as flight in the ancestors of birds or hair in mammals might trigger a massive expansion of animals with those characteristics

Hedges argues that while such bursts do occur, the vast majority of speciation is more prosaic and evenly timed

To start, two populations become separated, driven apart by geography or other factors. New species emerge every 2 million years, on average, in a metronomic rhythm tapped out by the random nature of genetic mutations. He likens the process to radioactive decay. It’s impossible to predict when an individual radioactive nucleus will decay, but a clump of many atoms will decay at a highly predictable rate known as the material’s half-life

Similarly, mutations strike the genome randomly, but over a long enough time the accumulation of mutations follows a pattern. “There is a kind of speciation clock ticking along” Hedges said

Submission + - Scientists Find Alarming Deterioration In DNA of the Urban Poor

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Nico Pitney reports that the urban poor in the United States are experiencing accelerated aging at the cellular level, and that chronic stress linked both to income level and racial-ethnic identity is driving this physiological deterioration. Researchers analyzed telomeres, tiny caps at the ends of DNA strands that protect cells from aging prematurely, of poor and lower middle-class black, white, and Mexican residents of Detroit and found that low-income residents of Detroit, regardless of race, have significantly shorter telomeres than the national average. "There are effects of living in high-poverty, racially segregated neighborhoods — the life experiences people have, the physical exposures, a whole range of things — that are just not good for your health," says Nobel laureate. Dr. Arline Geronimus, the lead author of the study, described as the most rigorous research of its kind examining how "structurally rooted social processes work through biological mechanisms to impact health." White Detroit residents who were lower-middle-class had the longest telomeres in the study. But the shortest telomeres belonged to poor whites. Black residents had about the same telomere lengths regardless of whether they were poor or lower-middle-class. And poor Mexicans actually had longer telomeres than Mexicans with higher incomes. Geronimus says these findings demonstrate the limitations of standard measures — like race, income and education level — typically used to examine health disparities. "We've relied on them too much to be the signifiers of everything that varies in the life experiences of difference racial or ethnic groups in different geographic locations and circumstances."

One co-author of this new study is Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn who helped to discover telomeres, an achievement that won her the Nobel Prize in physiology in 2009. Blackburn ticked off a list of studies in which people's experiences and perceptions directly correlated with their telomere lengths: whether people say they feel stressed or pessimistic; whether they feel racial discrimination towards others or feel discriminated against; whether they have experienced severely negative experiences in childhood, and so on. "These are all really adding up in this quantitative way," says Blackburn. "Once you get a quantitative relationship, then this is science, right?"

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