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Submission + - Chinese nationals accused of taking SATs for others

Submitted by Vadim Makarov
Vadim Makarov writes: The US Department of Justice has charged 15 Chinese nationals with developing a scheme to have imposters take university entrance exams. Prosecutors said suspects used fake passports to trick administrators into allowing people other than legitimate test takers to sit the SAT, GRE and TOEFL exams. The defendants, both male and female, range in age from 19 to 26, and are currently living in several cities — including Blacksburg, Virginia, and Boston, Massachusetts — where major universities are located. For each count, they could face up to 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000, plus additional 5 years for the conspiracy charges.

Submission + - Australian Prime Minister Thinks Kids Should Not Code (smh.com.au) 4

Submitted by Gob Gob
Gob Gob writes: The Prime Minister of Australia has come out and ridiculed an opposition policy aimed at denying teaching kids to code:

'the Prime Minister said. "He said that he wants primary school kids to be taught coding so they can get the jobs of the future. Does he want to send them all out to work at the age of 11? Is that what he wants to do? Seriously?"

Arguably software development practices can be better group educational tools than maths, literacy and art as a software project can draw on coders, artists, organisers and others with different interests and backgrounds. Is teaching coding and technology from a young age an enabler for your community or should it be discouraged until the twilight years of schooling / collage?

Submission + - Sourceforge is full of shit (sourceforge.net)

Submitted by slashdice
slashdice writes: And not the good kind of shit. You thought those adware installers were bad? It gets worse! Since everybody and their octocat moved to github, sourceforge has taken to creating "mirror" pages for popular software, complete with deceptive adware installers.

Submission + - Sourceforge staff takes over a user's account and wraps their software installer (arstechnica.com) 11

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Sourceforge staff took over the account of the GIMP-for-Windows maintainer claiming it was abandoned and used this opportunity to wrap the installer in crapware. Quoting Ars:

SourceForge, the code repository site owned by Slashdot Media, has apparently seized control of the account hosting GIMP for Windows on the service, according to e-mails and discussions amongst members of the GIMP community—locking out GIMP's lead Windows developer. And now anyone downloading the Windows version of the open source image editing tool from SourceForge gets the software wrapped in an installer replete with advertisements.

Submission + - Higgs Boson Mass Explained in New Theory (quantamagazine.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Three physicists who have been collaborating in the San Francisco Bay Area over the past year have devised a new solution to a mystery that has beleaguered their field for more than 30 years. This profound puzzle, which has driven experiments at increasingly powerful particle colliders and given rise to the controversial multiverse hypothesis, amounts to something a bright fourth-grader might ask: How can a magnet lift a paperclip against the gravitational pull of the entire planet?

Submission + - A new bionic lens implant could give you permanent 20/20 vision (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by Kristine Lofgren
Kristine Lofgren writes: Contacts and eyeglasses are so 2014. Researchers have revealed the Ocumetics Bionic Lens, a painless implant that can correct your vision for the rest of your life. In recent trials, patients walked away with perfect vision after a quick 8 minute procedure. The process is safer than LASIK and even protects against cataracts in the future.

Submission + - A Tool for Analyzing H-1B Visa Applications Reveals Tech Salary Secrets (ieee.org)

Submitted by Tekla Perry
Tekla Perry writes: "The golden age of engineers is not over," says a French software engineer who developed a tool for mining U.S. Department of Labor visa application data, but, he says, salaries appear to be leveling off. Indeed, salary inflation for software engineers and other technical professionals at Google and Facebook has slowed dramatically, according to his database, and Airbnb and Dropbox pay is down a little, though Netflix pay is through the roof. The data also shows that some large companies appear to be playing games with titles to deflate salaries, and Microsoft is finally offering technology professionals comparable salaries to Apple and Google. There's a lot more to be discovered in this interactive database, and researchers are getting ready to mine it.

Submission + - Slashdot is responsible for adware (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Bujang Lapok
Bujang Lapok writes: "SourceForge, the code repository site owned by Slashdot Media, has apparently seized control of the account hosting GIMP for Windows on the service, according to e-mails and discussions amongst members of the GIMP community—locking out GIMP's lead Windows developer. And now anyone downloading the Windows version of the open source image editing tool from SourceForge gets the software wrapped in an installer replete with advertisements."

Submission + - How Tesla Batteries Will Force Home Wiring To Go Low Voltage (cepro.com)

Submitted by CIStud
CIStud writes: The advent of solar power and home batteries from companies like Tesla will force the reinvention of home wiring from primarily AC high voltage to DC home-run low voltage to reduce power conversion loss. To avoid the 20% to 40% power loss when converting from DC to AC, home wiring will have to convert to home-run low-voltage, and eventually eliminate the need for high-voltage 110V electrical wiring.

Submission + - 75% of Google's mobile ad revenue comes from the iPhone (bgr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Though Google these days has its hand in everything, from robotics to advanced AI, the company’s billions by and large continue to come exclusively from advertising. More to the point, 90% of the $66 billion Google generated in revenue in 2014 came directly from advertising-related ventures

Not surprisingly, an increasingly important part of Google’s advertising machine is mobile search. In 2014 alone, 18% of Google’s ad revenue, or about $11.8 billion, came from searches done on mobile devices.

What’s interesting, though, is that the iPhone is responsible for 75% of Google’s mobile-based revenue, leaving Android with a surprisingly low and disproportionate 25% share. This is especially jarring given that Android routinely trounces the iPhone when it comes to overall marketshare.

Submission + - SF Says AdWare Bundled with Gimp Is Intentional (google.com) 5

Submitted by tresf
tresf writes: In response to a Google+ post from the Gimp project claiming that "[Sourceforge] is now distributing an ads-enabled installer of GIMP", Sourceforge had this response:

In cases where a project is no longer actively being maintained, SourceForge has in some cases established a mirror of releases that are hosted elsewhere. This was done for GIMP-Win.

Editor's note: Gimp is actively being maintained and the definition of "mirror" is quite misleading here as a modified binary is no longer a verbatim copy. Download statistics for Gimp on Windows show SourceForge as offering over 1,000 downloads per day of the Gimp software. In an official response to this incident, the official Gimp project team reminds users to use official download methods. Slashdotters may remember the last time news like this surfaced (2013) when the Gimp team decided to move downloads from SourceForge to their own FTP service.

Therefore, we remind you again that GIMP only provides builds for Windows via its official Downloads page.

Note: SourceForge and Slashdot share a corporate parent.

Submission + - Russian rocket now garden furniture in England

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: A British businessman has purchased a discarded Russian rocket and installed it in his garden as decoration.

Almost 40ft long and weighing five tonne, the rocket was first flown in 1991 after being built by the Russians in collaboration with NASA at a cost $10 million. For ten years it held the record for the fastest ever made-made machine before it was jettisoned as archaic.

Somehow it ended up at a car auction at South Marston where it was spotted by Mr Sweet while checking out vintage motors. Mr Sweet, who runs the Cirencester-based computer company Zycko, said: "I saw it for sale at a car auction and decided to buy it, not really knowing what I was going to do with it."

I am curious how the rocket had ended up being owned and offered for sale by a UK company that "specializes in car restorations." I also wonder if this might be a major new profit center for the struggling Russian rocket industry.

Submission + - SourceForge wraps open source software in adware

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "SourceForge, the code repository site owned by Slashdot Media, has apparently seized control of the account hosting GIMP for Windows on the service, according to e-mails and discussions amongst members of the GIMP community—locking out GIMP's lead Windows developer. And now anyone downloading the Windows version of the open source image editing tool from SourceForge gets the software wrapped in an installer replete with advertisements."

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