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Submission + - Chile earthquake triggered icequakes in Antarctica (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: In 2010, a powerful magnitude-8.8 earthquake struck off the coast of central Chile, rocking much of the country and producing tremor as far away as Argentina and Peru. But a new study suggests its effects were felt even farther away—in Antarctica. In the wake of the Maule temblor, the scientists found, several seismic stations on the frozen continent registered “icequakes,” probably due to fracturing of the ice as the planet’s crust shook.

Submission + - Geneticists decry book on race and evolution (sciencemag.org) 1

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: A best-seller by former New York Times science writer Nicholas Wade about recent human evolution and its potential effects on human cultures has drawn critical reviews since its spring publication. Now, nearly 140 senior human population geneticists around the world, many of whose work was cited in the book, have signed a letter to The New York Times Book Review stating that Wade has misinterpreted their work. The letter criticizes “Wade’s misappropriation of research from our field to support arguments about differences among human societies,” and is slated to appear in the 10 August issue of the Book Review.

Submission + - Microsoft Surface drowning?

Submitted by hcs_$reboot
hcs_$reboot writes: Again, no much good news for the MS Surface. Computerworld reports a Microsoft's losses on the tablet device at $US1.7 billion so far. But, still, Microsoft is serene

"It’s been exciting to see the response to the Surface Pro 3 from individuals and businesses alike. In fact, Surface Pro 3 sales are already outpacing prior versions of Surface Pro. The Surface business generated more than $2B in revenue for the fiscal year 2014 and $409 million in revenue during Q4 FY14 alone, the latter of which included just ten days of Intel Core i5 Surface Pro 3 sales in Canada and the US".

Should Microsoft pull the plug on the tablet? Or maybe it's just a matter of users getting used to the Surface?

Submission + - Do Dark Matter and Dark Energy cast doubt on the Big Bang?

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: Back in the 1960s, after the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background, the Big Bang reigned supreme as the only game in town. But back then, we also assumed that what we consider as "normal matter" — i.e., protons, neutrons and electrons — was, along with photons and neutrinos, the only stuff that made up the Universe. But the last 50 years have shown us that dark matter and dark energy actually make up 95% of the energy composition of our cosmos. Given that, is there any wiggle room to possibly invalidate the Big Bang?

Comment Re:Well, I'm impressed. (Score 1) 149

by hcs_$reboot (#47618637) Attached to: Gmail Recognizes Addresses Containing Non-Latin Characters

I would imagine that there they implemented RFC6532, which involves a lot more than changing a regular expression

So we get sometimes unreadable mails because the encoding of the content is unknown. Then some mails will be rejected because of an encoding problem in the address itself. At least in the first case the mail was received and we had enough time to fix the problem.

Comment Re:Over paid (Score 1) 442

by hcs_$reboot (#47612203) Attached to: Big Bang Actors To Earn $1M Per Episode
For most jobs, an initial scale is used to calculate earnings based on how much time you spent doing that work. The scale itself depends a lot on what you could get somewhere else for the same job. Main actors, like traders and many salesmen earn something more or less directly linked to the expected/realized profit. It happens that for such a show, the profit is huge. Hence the high salary.

Comment Re:XP losing Market share is not bad news. (Score 1) 336

by hcs_$reboot (#47592383) Attached to: Windows XP Falls Below 25% Market Share, Windows 8 Drops Slightly
I'm only using Windows to test web applications on older browsers. And it's Windows XP (in VirtualBox). I agree with you that newer does not always mean better. Windows 8 is an example. But I'm on a Mac (latest OS) and my feeling is that Apple is also ( since a couple of years ago ) on a slippery slope. Annoying bugs not fixed, lack of innovation...

Back to XP, the reason I'm glad it disappears - and that explains my parent post - is that I'm writing web applications, and supporting IE < 8 is and has always been a pain. At least from Windows 7, users smoothly upgrade to an earlier version.

Also, please see jbolden post above.

Comment Re:Linux, a miracle (Score 1) 739

by hcs_$reboot (#47546741) Attached to: Linus Torvalds: "GCC 4.9.0 Seems To Be Terminally Broken"

I keep wondering how Linux could become as good as it is, with a coordinator being a person like Torvalds

Well you must have no much management experience, or at least not the management of a team you never meet in person, you don't choose, and which basically has no working obligation. The Linux kernel is one of the best (the best?) thing that happened for the OS community.

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