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Java

Apple Hit By Hackers Who Targeted Facebook 148

snydeq writes "Apple was recently attacked by hackers who infected the Macintosh computers of some employees, the company said on Tuesday in an unprecedented disclosure that described the widest known cyber attacks against Apple-made computers to date, Reuters reports. 'The same software, which infected Macs by exploiting a flaw in a version of Oracle Corp's Java software used as a plug-in on Web browsers, was used to launch attacks against Facebook, which the social network disclosed on Friday. ... A person briefed on the investigation into the attacks said that hundreds of companies, including defense contractors, had been infected with the same malicious software, or malware. The attacks mark the highest-profile cyber attacks to date on businesses running Mac computers.'"
Hardware

Submission + - Open Hardware & Software Laptop

mihai.todor85 writes: It looks like Andrew "bunnie" Huang has been quite busy lately, developing a nice open hardware laptop. He was even kind enough to provide all the schematics without NDA. For anybody interested in owning such a device, he says that he "might be convinced to try a Kickstarter campaign in several months, once the design is stable and tested" if enough people are interested.

Submission + - Adam Lanza's Asperger's, Autism Cannot Be Blamed for CT School Shooting, Experts 1

An anonymous reader writes: Did Adam Lanza's Asperger's syndrome have anything to do with his murderous rampage that claimed 28 lives? Authorities investigating the tragedy said that the 20-year-old gunman in the Connecticut elementary school shooting had been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a mild form of autism characterized by difficulties in social interaction. Since the latest details of Lanza's mental health have surfaced, many have been quick to tie his mental disorder to his actions.
Education

Young Students Hiding Academic Talent To Avoid Bullying 684

jones_supa writes "The recent anti-bullying survey conducted by ABA brings up some interesting findings. According to it, more than 90% of the 1,000 11-16 year-olds surveyed said they had been bullied or seen someone bullied for being too intelligent or talented. Almost half of children and young people (49.5%) have played down a talent for fear of being bullied, rising to 53% among girls. One in 10 (12%) said they had played down their ability in science and almost one in five girls (18.8%) and more than one in 10 boys (11.4%) are deliberately underachieving in maths – to evade bullying. Worryingly, this means our children and young people are shying away from academic achievement for fear of victimization."

Comment Creepy... (Score 1) 81

Let's see: stem cells -> eggs -> ovary tissue -> natural ovaries -> oocytes -> removed from ovaries -> fertilized -> transplanted into "foster mothers"... To me, that sounds like a combination between Frankenstein and Fantastic Voyage

Comment That's just a subjective and biased impression (Score 1) 285

While these online courses are not as rigorous, well structured and of the same quality as Stanford / MIT / Oxford / whatever courses, I do think that most of them are much better than what students usually get at standard universities in poorer countries. Does anyone from Romania want to contradict me?

Even though there is enough room for improvement, there are many students in other countries who don't even have access to courses such as Machine Learning, Cryptography, Quantum Computing, etc so any introduction to such topics is most welcome.

I think that in a few years they will only get better, based on feedback received from the forums as well as from the quizzes. Also, they should implement some mechanism to determine which segments of the videos are re-winded over and over, since those might need clarifications. A term index is also welcome.

Just think about it: if an online course doesn't live up to the expectations of the students, then it will just die out when they will stop following it. Now, compare this to a professor who teaches poorly a certain course: generations upon generations of students will be forced to try and make sense of that course, because they have no other alternative.

I personally followed Andrew Ng's course on Machine Learning and, while it wasn't rigorous regarding the mathematics, it did offer me a really good intuition on how those algorithms work, as well as the required terminology to be able to start reading a book on this subject. I also followed Jennifer Widom's course on databases, which was really, really good and Dan Boneh's course on Cryptography helped me get a decent understanding of this subject for my current job.

So, we should encourage them to improve the courses instead of just yelling that some of them doesn't really live up to "the standards".

Comment My 2 cents (Score 1) 140

It's quite funny that people with modest coding skills still believe that they can make good money as freelancers. Putting aside the rare occasions when you find (a fat pigeon) some clueless and wealthy investors, if you're not backed up by some company with a nice portfolio, then you're usually out of luck. A few years ago, I was digging around sites like rent-a-coder to see if it's even remotely feasible to make some money as a freelancer. What I found was a swamp of "experts" who were willing to code youtube clones for 100$ and small companies that posed as users with perfect ratings. My conclusion is that if you're good enough and you have many years of experience in the industry, then you're better off as a consultant for (big) companies, paid by the hour. Otherwise, just find a nice job at a company that's willing to invest time in training you, and, heck, you might end up learning how to code while making some money as well.

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