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Submission + - Pew Survey Documents Gaps Between Public and Scientists

Submitted by PvtVoid
PvtVoid writes: A new Pew Research Study documents an alarming gap between public perception of scientific issues and the opinions of the scientists themselves, as measured by a poll of AAAS scientists. Even worse, the gap is partisan, with clear differences between Republicans and Democrats, and between conservatives and liberals. For example, while 98% of AAAS members agree with the statement that "Human beings and other living things have evolved over time", only 21% of conservatives agree, compared with 54% of liberals. Global warming, similarly, shows an ideological gap: 98% of AAAS scientists agreed with the statement that "the Earth is getting warmer mostly due to human activity", compared with 21% of conservatives and 54% of liberals. Encouragingly, almost everybody thinks childhood vaccines should be required (86% of AAAS members, 65% of conservatives, and 74% of liberals.)

Go here for an interactive view of the data.

Submission + - NASA to waste $150 million on SLS engine that will be used once.

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: NASA's safety panel has noticed that NASA's SLS program either plans to spend $150 million man-rating a rocket engine it will only use once, or will fly a manned mission without man-rating that engine.

The Block 1 SLS is the "basic model", sporting a Delta Cryogenic Second Stage (DCSS), renamed the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion System (ICPS) for SLS. The current plan calls for this [interim] stage to be used on [the unmanned] Exploration Mission -1 (EM-1) and [manned] Exploration Mission -2 (EM-2), prior to moving to the [Exploration Upper Stage] — also to be built by Boeing — that will become the workhorse for SLS.

However, using the [interim upper stage] on a crewed mission will require it to be human rated. It is likely NASA will also need to fly the [Exploration Upper Stage] on an unmanned mission to validate the new stage ahead of human missions. This has been presenting NASA with a headache for some time, although it took the recent ASAP meeting to finally confirm those concerns to the public.

Up until now, no one at NASA would admit that their SLS plans called for flying humans with an upper stage that has not been man-rated. They don't have the funds to man-rate it, and even if they get those funds, man-rating it will likely cause SLS's schedule to slip even more, something NASA fears because they expect the commercial manned ships to be flying sooner and with increasing capability. The contrast — a delayed and unflown and very expensive SLS vs a flying and inexpensive commercial effort — will not do SLS good politically.

However, if they are going to insist (properly I think) that SpaceX and Boeing man-rate their capsules and rockets, then NASA is going to have to man-rate its SLS systems as well. The result: more problems for SLS, contributing to what I believe will be its inevitable cancellation.

Government marches on!

Submission + - Where Facebook Stores 900 Million New Photos Per Day (datacenterfrontier.com)

Submitted by 1sockchuck
1sockchuck writes: Facebook faces unique storage challenges. Its users upload 900 million new images daily, most of which are only viewed for a couple of days. The social network has built specialized cold storage facilities to manage these rarely-accessed photos. Data Center Frontier goes inside this facility, providing a closer look at Facebook's newest strategy: Using thousands of Blu-Ray disks to store images, complete with a robotic retrieval system (see video demo). Others are interested as well. Sony recently acquired a Blu-Ray storage startup founded by Open Compute chairman Frank Frankovsky, which hopes to drive enterprise adoption of optical data storage.

Submission + - Scientist Union's Talks Stall Over Pay

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: The Sacramento Bee reports that the labor contract between California state government and the 2,800 employees represented by California Association of Professional Scientists expired this week, spotlighting yet again the long-running feud over whether the tiny union’s members should earn as much as their peers in federal and local governments and private industry. “It’s a challenge to keep people motivated,” says Rita Hypnarowski. “We talk about retaining the best and the brightest, but I can see that’s not going to happen.” A recent survey by the Brown administration found that the total compensation for half of state-employed chemists is less than $8,985 per month. That’s 33 percent less than the median total compensation for federal chemists, nearly 13 percent less than the midpoint for local-government chemists and almost 6 percent below the private sector. Members of the union perform a wide variety of tasks, everything from fighting food-borne illnesses to mopping up the Refugio State Beach oil spill. For example Cassandra McQuaid left a job last year at the Department of Public Health’s state-of-the-art Richmond laboratories where she tracked foodborne illnesses. It’s the kind of vital, behind-the-scenes work that goes unnoticed until an E. coli outbreak makes headlines and local health officials need a crack team of scientists to unravel how it happened. “It really came down to money,” says McQuaid. “I just couldn’t live in the Bay Area on a state salary.”

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How to get mother back into programming after long maternity leave

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: My wife has been on a maternity leave for 3 years now. She is starting to think about refreshing her coding skills and looking for a job. Before, she worked as a Java developer for around 2 years doing mostly Java Enterprise stuff.
However she is not very eager to go back to coding. I think she has the right mental skills to be a developer but she is just not very passionate about coding or IT in general. On the other hand, it's relatively easier to find a job in IT than starting a new career.
We live in Spain and with the current economic situation the market for software developers is not great but it's definitely better than other jobs.
I there anything else she might do, ideally Java (but could be anything IT related) that would be easier and more fun than the typical Java Enterprise stuff, while also giving her a good change to find a decent job?
Btw: I'm a Java developer myself with many years of experience but mostly doing boring Java Enterprise stuff.

Submission + - People Are Obtaining Windows 7 Licenses To Get Cheap Windows 10 (softpedia.com)

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: Windows 7 has quickly started increasing its market share of desktop operating systems, nearing 61%. If you are wondering how come this is happening when Windows 10 is almost here, the reason is a simple trick people are using. Windows 10 will be available as a free upgrade for those running Windows 7 and 8, and the new OS will have the exact same hardware requirements as its predecessor, so the majority of PCs should be able to run it flawlessly. Because Windows 7 was launched in 2009, a license is more affordable than for Windows 8, so many users are switching to this version to take advantage of the Windows 10 free upgrade offer.

Submission + - Surveillance Court: NSA Can Resume Bulk Surveillance (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We all celebrated back in May when a federal court ruled the NSA's phone surveillance illegal, and again at the beginning of June, when the Patriot Act expired, ending authorization for that surveillance. Unfortunately, the NY Times now reports on a ruling from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which concluded that the NSA may temporarily resume bulk collection of metadata about U.S. citizens's phone calls. From the article: "In a 26-page opinion (PDF) made public on Tuesday, Judge Michael W. Mosman of the surveillance court rejected the challenge by FreedomWorks, which was represented by a former Virginia attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, a Republican. And Judge Mosman said that the Second Circuit was wrong, too. 'Second Circuit rulings are not binding' on the surveillance court, he wrote, 'and this court respectfully disagrees with that court’s analysis, especially in view of the intervening enactment of the U.S.A. Freedom Act.' When the Second Circuit issued its ruling that the program was illegal, it did not issue any injunction ordering the program halted, saying that it would be prudent to see what Congress did as Section 215 neared its June 1 expiration."

Submission + - MIT's Bitcoin-Inspired 'Enigma' Lets Computers Mine Encrypted Data (wired.com)

Submitted by Guy Zyskind
Guy Zyskind writes: On Tuesday, a pair of bitcoin entrepreneurs and the MIT Media Lab revealed a prototype for a system called Enigma, designed to achieve a decades-old goal in data security known as “homomorphic” encryption: A way to encrypt data such that it can be shared with a third party and used in computations without it ever being decrypted. That mathematical trick—which would allow untrusted computers to accurately run computations on sensitive data without putting the data at risk of hacker breaches or surveillance—has only become more urgent in an age when millions of users constantly share their secrets with cloud services ranging from Amazon and Dropbox to Google and Facebook. Now, with bitcoin’s tricks in their arsenal, Enigma’s creators say they can now pull off homomorphically encrypted computations more efficiently than ever.

Submission + - Apple Loses Ebook Price Fixing Appeal, Must Pay $450 Million (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A federal appeals court ruled 2-1 today that Apple indeed conspired to with publishers to increase ebook prices. The ruling puts Apple on the hook for the $450 million settlement reached in 2014 with lawyers and attorneys general from 33 states. The Justice Dept. contended that the price-fixing conspiracy raised the price of some e-books from the $10 standard set by Amazon to $13-$15. The one dissenting judge argued that Apple's efforts weren't anti-competitive because Amazon held 90% of the market at the time. Apple is unhappy with the ruling, but they haven't announced plans to take the case further. They said, "While we want to put this behind us, the case is about principles and values. We know we did nothing wrong back in 2010 and are assessing next steps."

Submission + - Is Safari the new IE? (nolanlawson.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Software developer Nolan Lawson says Apple's Safari has taken the place of Microsoft's Internet Explorer as the major browser that lags behind all the others. This comes shortly after the Edge Conference, where major players in web technologies got together to discuss the state of the industry and what's ahead. Lawson says Mozilla, Google, Opera, and Microsoft were all in attendance and willing to talk — but not Apple. "It’s hard to get insight into why Apple is behaving this way. They never send anyone to web conferences, their Surfin’ Safari blog is a shadow of its former self, and nobody knows what the next version of Safari will contain until that year’s WWDC. In a sense, Apple is like Santa Claus, descending yearly to give us some much-anticipated presents, with no forewarning about which of our wishes he’ll grant this year. And frankly, the presents have been getting smaller and smaller lately." He argues, "At this point, we in the web community need to come to terms with the fact that Safari has become the new IE. Microsoft is repentant these days, Google is pushing the web as far as it can go, and Mozilla is still being Mozilla. Apple is really the one singer in that barbershop quartet hitting all the sour notes, and it’s time we start talking about it openly instead of tiptoeing around it like we’re going to hurt somebody’s feelings."

Submission + - Test Pilot Admits the F-35 Can't Dogfight (medium.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: A test pilot has some very, very bad news about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The pricey new stealth jet can't turn or climb fast enough to hit an enemy plane during a dogfight or to dodge the enemy's own gunfire, the pilot reported following a day of mock air battles back in January.

And to add insult to injury, the JSF flier discovered he couldn't even comfortably move his head inside the radar-evading jet's cramped cockpit. "The helmet was too large for the space inside the canopy to adequately see behind the aircraft." That allowed the F-16 to sneak up on him.

The test pilot's report is the latest evidence of fundamental problems with the design of the F-35 — which, at a total program cost of more than a trillion dollars, is history's most expensive weapon.

Your tax dollars at work.

Submission + - Whitehouse Lures Mudge From Google to launch a UL for Cyber (securityledger.com)

Submitted by chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: The Obama Whitehouse has tapped famed hacker Peiter Zatko (aka “Mudge”) to head up a new project aimed at developing an “underwriters’ lab” for cyber security, The Security Ledger reports. (https://securityledger.com/2015/06/whitehouse-taps-google-advanced-projects-lead-for-software-safety-lab/)

Zatko announced the new initiative on Monday via Twitter (https://twitter.com/dotmudge). “The White House asked if I would kindly create a #CyberUL, so here goes,” he wrote.

The new organization would function as an independent, non-profit entity designed to assess the security strengths and weaknesses of products and publishing the results of its tests.

Zatko is a famed hacker and security luminary, who cut his teeth with the Boston-based hacker collective The L0pht in the 1990s before moving on to work in private industry and, then, to become a program manager at the DARPA in 2010. Though known for keeping a low profile, his scruffy visage (circa 1998) graced the pages of the Washington Post in a recent piece that remembered testimony that Mudge and other L0pht members gave to Congress about the dangers posed by insecure software.(http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/business/2015/06/22/net-of-insecurity-part-3/)

Since leaving DARPA, Zatko has served as Deputy Director of Google's Advanced Technology and Projects division. He did not respond to requests for comment prior to publication.

Underwriters Lab — or "UL" — was founded in 1894 as a private firm dedicated to developing testing and safety standards for everything from fire extinguishers to lithium batteries to heating and cooling equipment and trash cans. UL has developed safety and performance standards for evaluating quality of information technology equipment, as well, but does not make a practice of testing software security or quality.

Submission + - Microsoft to sell Bing Maps, advertising sections (computerworld.com)

Submitted by UnknowingFool
UnknowingFool writes: Microsoft has announced that they will sell some Bing Maps technology to Uber and their advertising business to AOL. About 1300 employees are expected to be offered positions in their new companies. CEO Nadella said previously that there would be "tough choices" to be made. Some outside analysts have said neither venture was very profitable for Microsoft and may have been unprofitable at times.

Submission + - Bill Gates To Invest $2 Billion In Renewables (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Bill Gates has invested about a billion dollars in renewable energy, and now he's ready to double down. Gates announced he will increase his investment in renewable energy technologies to $2 billion in an attempt to "bend the curve" on limiting climate change. He is focusing on risky investments that favor "breakthrough" technologies because he thinks incremental improvements to existing tech won't be enough to meet energy needs while avoiding a climate catastrophe. "There’s no battery technology that’s even close to allowing us to take all of our energy from renewables and be able to use battery storage in order to deal not only with the 24-hour cycle but also with long periods of time where it’s cloudy and you don’t have sun or you don’t have wind. Power is about reliability. We need to get something that works reliably." At the same time, Gates rejected calls to divest himself and his charitable foundation of investments in fossil fuel companies.

Submission + - When a Company Gets Sold, Your Data May Be Sold, Too (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A new report points out that many of the top internet sites have language in their privacy policies saying that your private data might be transferred in the event of an acquisition, bankruptcy sale, or other transaction. They effectively say, "We won't ever sell your information, unless things go bad for us." 85 of the top 100 websites in the U.S. (ranked by Alexa), had this sort of language, including Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Hulu, and LinkedIn. (RadioShack did this recently.) "The potential ramifications of the fire sale provisions became clear two years ago when True.com, a dating site based in Plano, Tex., that was going through a bankruptcy proceeding, tried to sell its customer database on 43 million members to a dating site based in Canada. The profiles included consumers’ names, birth dates, sexual orientation, race, religion, criminal convictions, photos, videos, contact information and more. Because the site’s privacy policy had promised never to sell or share members’ personal details without their permission, Texas was able to intervene to stop the sale of customer data, including intimate details on about two million Texans." But with this new language, users no longer enjoy that sort of protection. Only 17 of the top 100 sites even say they will notify customers of the data transfer. Only a handful allow users to opt out.

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