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Submission + - Google To Reopen Maps To User Edits, With An Anti-Abuse Plan (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: When Google opened up its Maps to user edits, a lot of useful information got added — along with plenty of spam and outright abuse, some of it obscene, which led to the program being shut down. Now the company is planning to reopen things to user input, recruiting local mappers that they're calling "regional leads" to filter out problematic content.

Submission + - Cell Phone Radiation Emission Tests Assume Use Of Belt Clip (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: Most Slashdotters rightfully roll their eyes when people panic about the "radiation" put out by cell phone. But there is a germ of truth to some of the nervous talk: when the FCC assesses how much radio-frequency radiation a phone user will absorb, they work on the assumption you'll be wearing it in a belt clip, rather than putting it in your pocket as most people do.

Submission + - Privateer trumps Airbus in Electric Battle for Channel Crossing (australianflying.com.au)

Submitted by savuporo
savuporo writes: Remember how Airbus blocked its tiny competitor Pipistrel from claiming the first English channel crossing in electric airplane ? As reported, A private owner has beaten Airbus in the race to fly the first electric aircraft across the English Channel. Hugues Duwal flew his electric Colomban Cri Cri E-Cristaline across the channel last night, beating the Airbus E-Fan by one day.

Submission + - Hillary Clinton takes aim at 'Uber economy' (marketwatch.com)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: In a major campaign speech in New York City, the former secretary of state didn’t mention the ride-sharing service by name. But it was pretty clear what sort of companies she was talking about when she got to how some Americans earn money.

“Many Americans are making extra money renting out a spare room, designing websites, selling products they design themselves at home, or even driving their own car,” she said at the New School.

But that sort of work comes with its own problems, she said.

“This ‘on demand’ or so-called ‘gig economy’ ... is raising hard questions about workplace protections and what a good job will look like in the future,” Clinton added.

Submission + - For Microsoft, Windows 10 Charity Begins at Home

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "We’re investing $10 million in organizations that are upgrading the world," Microsoft announced on in its new Upgrade Your World website, which was created in conjunction with the Windows 10 launch. "We’ve identified nine global nonprofits, and we’d like your help choosing the 10th." The missions of the selected nonprofits include fighting global poverty, preventing children living with HIV from needlessly dying, increasing access to quality education for children in the developing world, conserving the lands and waters on which all life depends, and ensuring that all kindergartners learn 'computer science.' To paraphrase Sesame Street, can you guess which cause is not like the others? If you guessed Code.org, which wants CS made a "core" K-12 subject in U.S. schools, you're right! Coincidentally, Code.org's biggest donors include Microsoft ($3M+), Ballmer Family Giving ($3M+), and Bill Gates ($1M+). And Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi, who once reported to Satya Nadella, is coincidentally a sometimes jogging partner of Steve Ballmer, as well as the next-door neighbor of Microsoft General Counsel and Code.org Board member Brad Smith, whose FWD.us bio notes is responsible for Microsoft's philanthropic work. Code.org emerged on the scene shortly after Smith suggested that action on Microsoft's 'two-pronged' National Talent Strategy to increase K-12 CS education and the number of H-1B visas could be galvanized by 'producing a crisis'.

Submission + - Facebook's new chief security officer wants to set a date to kill Flash

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook’s new chief security officer, Alex Stamos, has stated publicly that he wants to see Adobe end Flash. This weekend Stamos tweeted: "It is time for Adobe to announce the end-of-life date for Flash and to ask the browsers to set killbits on the same day. Even if 18 months from now, one set date is the only way to disentangle the dependencies and upgrade the whole ecosystem at once."

Submission + - 'Happy Birthday' Hits Sour Notes When It Comes To Song's Free Use (npr.org)

Submitted by vivaoporto
vivaoporto writes: NPR reports that "Happy Birthday to You", the song the Guinness Book of World Records calls the most recognized in the English language, is the subject of a class action complaint regarding the validity of its copyright.

Despite being so popular you'll rarely ever hear it on TV or in a movie. Instead, you usually hear something that sounds sort of like the song, but not quite.

It turns out the publisher Warner/Chappell Music owns the copyright to the "Happy Birthday" song. That means that every time anyone wants to use the song, they must pay a licensing fee, sometimes as high as six figures. But how did Warner/Chappell get the rights?

"This is where it gets complicated," says filmmaker Jennifer Nelson, laughing.

Nelson is working on a documentary about the song. She paid for the rights to use it, and she's suing Warner/Chappell to get her money back, arguing it's part of the public domain — free for anyone to use.

If the company wins the suit, it can keep collecting licensing fees until the copyright expires. If Nelson and her lawyers win, the song will be in the public domain.

"I think it's going to set a precedent for this song and other songs that may be claimed to be under copyright, which aren't," says Newman.

The Courthouse News Service have more information about the pending suit.

Submission + - Death toll from sudden temperature swings may surpass AIDS (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: It’s no surprise that a sudden summer heat wave can kill the elderly; it’s a serious public health hazard that will only grow as the world warms. But will more old folks survive milder winters, balancing out the loss of life in the summers? A new study suggests not. A rise of 1C in mean summer temperatures killed 1% more people, whereas that same rise in mean winter temperatures saved a mere 0.6%, according to an analysis of death records for nearly 3 million people 65 years and older living in New England from 2000 to 2008. Not only that, but sudden swings in temperature—another phenomenon that could increase along with climate change in some regions—were found to be even worse killers, in either winter or summer, surpassing the toll taken by AIDS.

Submission + - Graphene-Based Audio Devices Allow Communication at Bat Frequencies (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: In yet another first for graphene, physicists from the University of California, Berkeley, have employed this versatile material to create ultra-thin, lightweight ultrasonic microphones and speakers that enable high-quality, two-way communication in the audio range normally used by the likes of bats and dolphins.

Submission + - ELIoT, distributed programming for the Internet of Things

Submitted by descubes
descubes writes: ELIoT (Extensible Language for the Internet of Things) is a new programming language designed to facilitate distributed programming. A code sample with less than 20 lines of code looks like a single program, but really runs on three different computers to collect temperature measurements and report when they differ. ELIoT transforms a simple sensor API into a rich, remotely-programmable API, giving your application the opportunity to optimize energy usage and minimize network traffic.

Using less resources than Bash, and capable of serving hundred of clients easily on a Raspberry Pi, ELIoT transparently sends program fragments around, but also the data they need to function, e.g. variable values or function definitions. This is possible because, like in Lisp, programs are data. ELIoT has no keywords, and program constructs such as loops or if-then-else are defined in the library rather than in the language. This makes the language very flexible and extensible, so that you can adapt it to the needs of your application.

The project is still very young (published last week), and is looking for talented developers interested in distributed programming, programming languages or language design.

Submission + - First Java 0-Day In Two Years Exploited By Pawn Storm Hackers

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Another zero-day vulnerability is being exploited in attacks spotted in the wild: this time, the targeted software is Java. The flaw was spotted by Trend Micro researchers, who are closely monitoring a targeted attack campaign mounted by the economic and political cyber-espionage operation Pawn Storm. The existence of the flaw was discovered by finding suspicious URLs that hosted the exploit. The exploit allows attackers to execute arbitrary code on target systems with default Java settings.

Submission + - Technology and Ever-Falling Attention Spans (bbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The BBC has an article about technology's effect on concentration in the workplace. They note research finding that the average information worker's attention span has dropped significantly in only a few years. "Back in 2004 we followed American information workers around with stopwatches and timed every action. They switched their attention every three minutes on average. In 2012, we found that the time spent on one computer screen before switching to another computer screen was one minute 15 seconds. By the summer of 2014 it was an average of 59.5 seconds." Many groups are now researching ways to keep people in states of focus and concentration. An app ecosystem is popping up to support that as well, from activity timing techniques to background noise that minimizes distractions. Recent studies are even showing that walking slowly on a treadmill while you work can have positive effects on focus and productivity. What tricks do you use to keep yourself on task?

Submission + - Senator Bernie Sanders Asks NSA If Agency Is Spying On Congress (foxnews.com) 3

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes: Fox News reports, "A U.S. senator on Friday pressed the National Security Agency on whether its controversial spying practices extend to monitoring members of Congress. “Has the NSA spied, or is the NSA currently spying, on members of Congress or other American elected officials?” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., asked in a letter to NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander released from the senator’s office. Sanders, a self-described “democratic socialist,” defines spying as monitoring the phone calls, emails and internet traffic of elected officials."

Submission + - AOL Sells Winamp And Shoutcast Music Services To Online Radio Aggregator Radiono (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by VISBOT NETWORK
VISBOT NETWORK writes: Some more detail on the fate of Winamp and Shoutcast, the legacy digital music services that owner AOL originally planned to shut down but then halted pending a sale. The properties are instead being acquired by Radionomy — an international aggregator of online radio stations headquartered in Brussels, Belgium.

Submission + - The Future of Neural Networks & MLaaS: Dave Sullivan Interview (datascienceweekly.org)

Submitted by hrb1979
hrb1979 writes: Thought I'd share this interview with Dave Sullivan, founder of Ersatz and machine learning aficionado. His story (he is a history major, for whom machine learning became first a hobby then an obsession), insights on how the machine learning space is evolving, and perspectives on how different industries can benefit are both interesting and inspiring. A recent article shed a little light on what he is working on, though this interview provides much more color on the future of neural networks and MLaaS.

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