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Submission + - "Eco-friendly" Buffett Seeks to "Squash" Nevada Rooftop Solar (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Warren Buffett highlights how his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. utilities make massive investments in renewable energy. Meanwhile, in Nevada, the company is fighting a plan that would encourage more residents to use green power.

Berkshire's NV Energy, the state's dominant utility, opposes the proposal to increase a cap on the amount of energy that can be generated with solar panels by residents who sell power back to the grid in a practice known as net metering.

While the billionaire's famed holding company has reaped tax credits from investing in wind farms and solar arrays, net metering is often seen by utilities as a threat. Buffett wants his managers to protect competitive advantages, said Jeff Matthews, an investor and author of books about Berkshireâ¦

In an April presentation to investors, NV Energy laid out its strategy for addressing the growth of home solar. The utility said it would "lobby to hold the subsidized net-metering cap at current 3 percent of peak demand"...

Sellers of rooftop-solar panels are pushing Nevada legislators to raise the cap, and one plan called for the ceiling to be lifted to 10 percent. Nevada State Senator Patricia Farleysaid she is proposing that Nevada's utility regulator study the issue before lawmakers act.

"Across the country the utility industry is pressuring regulators and elected officials to limit solar energy's growth, and the same thing is happening in Nevada," said Gabe Elsner, executive director of the Energy & Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based clean energy think tank. "NV Energy is trying to protect their monopoly by squashing competitors."

The bottom line: it's all about the bottom line for Buffett.

Submission + - Court of Appeals says Samsung's legal payments to Apple should be reduced (betanews.com)

Submitted by Mark Wilson
Mark Wilson writes: Patent lawsuits in the world of technology are nothing new, and the case between Apple and Samsung resulted in one of the largest fines ever being handed down. Samsung was order to pay $930 million in damages after a court found that the company had violated Apple patents with its smartphone and tablet designs.

Today the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturned part of the original ruling, saying that the jury was wrong to say that Samsung infringed on Apple's trade dress intellectual property. The exact details of what this will mean are yet to come out, but it should lead to a fairly hefty reduction in Samsung's legal costs.

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 + - ITT Educational Services charged with fraud over student loan program (cbs4indy.com)

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: Things are tense in the world of for-profit colleges.

The latest to face problems is ITT Educational Services, which was charged with fraud Tuesday. The Securities & Exchange Commission said the company’s chief executive and chief financial officer misled investors and auditors with “outright misstatements” and “half-truths” about its student loan program.

ITT Educational Services allegedly created a fraudulent scheme to show that it was doing better financially than it really was. Students had been defaulting on their loans in droves, but CEO Kevin Modany and CFO Daniel Fitzpatrick hid the real cost from investors, the SEC said.

More than 51,000 students take online courses or attend the 135 ITT Technical Institute campuses located in 39 states. ITT also runs the Daniel Webster College in New Hampshire.

The charges comes on the heels of financial problems at Corinthian College, which was recently shuttered, affecting about 74,000 students.

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?"

Comment Re:Where is the support for ECC RAM? (Score 2) 166

by FirstOne (#49637865) Attached to: AMD Outlines Plans For Zen-Based Processors, First Due In 2016

Nearly all AMD CPU/APU's support ECC memory, you just need the right Mother Board... ASUS bios's have consistently supported AMD/ECC memory combinations for many years.

Not long ago, I configured a number of Phenom II X6 1045t and FX-8320 systems with 8-16GB of ECC memory on ASUS M4A88T-M and M5A78L-M motherboards. This link indicates the Zen series will support 4 channel ECC/DDR4.

Submission + - SpaceX Lauch Abort Test Successful (bbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As we discussed yesterday, SpaceX launched a prototype this morning to test its Dragon passenger capsule in an aborted launch. The test was a success — the capsule separated cleanly, propelled itself to a safe distance, deployed its parachutes, and floaty gently down to a water landing, where it remained floating. You can watch video of the test on SpaceX's website — skip to 15:40 to get right to it. Externally, everything seems to have gone fine. I'm sure we'll hear in the coming weeks whether the downrange distance was ideal, and whether they hit their splashdown target — and how the crash test dummy inside the capsule weathered the abort!

Comment First thing I do is disable all updates. (Score 0) 434

by FirstOne (#49625181) Attached to: Google Can't Ignore the Android Update Problem Any Longer

After I rooted a new android phone. System updates have a nasty habit of screwing up my root access. Likewise, I've found most app updates usually screw up more than they fix. Thus, I opp for stability and predictability over the latest and greatest.

I pick and choose which app's & versions I will use, then I stick with that decision until I'm convinced otherwise. No need to follow the rest of the herd.

Submission + - SpaceX Testing Passenger Escape System Tomorrow (sen.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: On Wednesday, SpaceX will be performing the first test of a prototype for its passenger capsule escape system. Most rockets have a launch abort system that will save the lives of its crew within the first few minutes of launch, but not beyond a relatively low altitude. SpaceX is designing the new system to be able to return astronauts safely from the ground all the way up into orbit. The Dragon capsule will fire eight SuperDraco thrusters, each capable of producing 120,000 lbs of axial thrust in under a second. With that amount of thrust, the capsule can get half a kilometer away from a failing rocket in under 5 seconds. SpaceX will have 270 sensors about the prototype, including a crash test dummy. The main mission goals include determining the best sequencing for the launch abort timeline, getting all eight thrusters to fire in unison, and seeing how an aborted launch affects both the inside of the capsule and the area around it. The test is planned to start at 7 a.m. EDT (11:00 UTC), but they have a 7.5-hour window if there are minor delays.

Submission + - Appeals Judge Calls Prenda an "Ingenuous Crooked Extortionate Operation"

Submitted by ktetch-pirate
ktetch-pirate writes: Today was the long-awaited appeals court hearing in the ongoing Prenda copyright troll saga. Almost exactly two years after Judge Otis Wright went sci-fi on Prenda and its principles, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held an appeals hearing requested by Prenda on the sanctions, and it was not a pretty day for Prenda. Highlights included Senior Judge Pregerson calling Prenda's operation an "Ingenuous Crooked Extortionate Operation" after describing in detail how they operate.

Prenda also astonished the judges by welcoming the idea of a criminal contempt hearing, which Legal blog Popehat thinks is likely to happen, on top of the sanctions being sustained.

Submission + - CareerBuilder cyberattack delivers malware straight to employers (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Security threat researchers Proofpoint have uncovered an email-based phishing attack which infected businesses with malware via the CareerBuilder online job search website. The attack involved the hacker browsing job adverts across the platform and uploading malicious files during the application process, titling the documents “resume.doc” and “cv.doc.” Once the CV was submitted, an automatic email notification was sent to the business advertising the position, along with the uploaded document. In this case, Proofpoint found that as a business opens the automatic email from CareerBuilder to view the attached file the document plays on a known Word vulnerability to sneak a malicious code onto the victim’s computer. According to the threat research group, the manual attack technique although time-consuming has a higher success rate than automated tools as the email attachments are more likely to be opened by the receiver.

Comment Re:The Winter of Discontent (Score 1) 636

by FirstOne (#49592885) Attached to: Disney Replaces Longtime IT Staff With H-1B Workers

If one under-reports the real inflation rate, the net difference appears to be economic growth.

Try looking at some numbers that haven't been mangled by the feds.. FYI Ground beef is now 3.00$/lb, Rib-eye is 8.00$/lb, and still going up just like everything else. Here is a link explaining how our government mangled inflation stats.

If you need more proof, just look at the near zero interest rates for savings or short term CD's. That should be a red flag that all is not well.

Submission + - NSA Reform Bill Backed by Both Parties Set to Pass House of Representatives

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: The NYT reports that after more than a decade of wrenching national debate over the intrusiveness of government intelligence agencies, a bipartisan wave of support has gathered to sharply limit the federal government’s sweeps of phone and Internet records. A bill that would overhaul the Patriot Act and curtail the metadata surveillance exposed by Edward J. Snowden overwhelmingly passed the House Judiciary Committee by a vote of a 25-2 vote and is heading to almost certain passage in the House of Representatives while an identical bill in the Senate — introduced with the support of five Republicans — is gaining support over the objection of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who is facing the prospect of his first policy defeat since ascending this year to majority leader. "The bill ends bulk collection, it ends secret law,” says Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, the original author of the Patriot Act who has now helped author the Freedom Act. “It increases the transparency of our intelligence community and it does all this without compromising national security.”

The Patriot Act is up for its first reauthorization since the revelations about bulk data collection. The impending June 1 deadline for reauthorization, coupled with an increase of support among members of both parties, pressure from technology companies and a push from the White House have combined to make changes to the provisions more likely. The Snowden disclosures, along with data breaches at Sony Pictures, Target and the insurance giant Anthem, have unsettled voters and empowered those in Congress arguing for greater civil liberties protection — who a few years ago “could have met in a couple of phone booths,” says Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon. The Freedom Act very nearly passed both chambers of Congress last year, but it failed to garner the 60 votes to break a filibuster in the Senate. It fell short by two votes.

However some say the bill doesn't go far enough. The bill leaves intact surveillance programs conducted by the Drug Enforcement Agency and levies high penalties against those offering “material support” to terrorists. It also renews the expiring parts of the Patriot Act through 2019. "This bill would make only incremental improvements, and at least one provision – the material-support provision – would represent a significant step backwards,” says American Civil Liberties Union Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer. “The disclosures of the last two years make clear that we need wholesale reform.”

Submission + - Nuclear waste: Bury nuclear waste down a very deep hole, say scientists (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Scientists at the University of Sheffield calculate that all of the UK's high level nuclear waste from spent fuel reprocessing could be disposed of in just six boreholes 5km deep, fitting within a site no larger than a football pitch.

The concept — called deep borehole disposal — has been developed primarily in the UK but is likely to see its first field trials in the USA next year. If the trials are successful, the USA hopes to dispose of its 'hottest' and most radioactive waste — left over from plutonium production and currently stored at Hanford in Washington State — in a deep borehole.

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