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Submission + - Fighting the culture of 'Worse is Better' (github.io)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Developer Paul Chiusano thinks much of programming culture has been infected by a "worse is better" mindset, where trade-offs to preserve compatibility and interoperability cripple the functionality of vital languages and architectures. He says, [W]e do not merely calculate in earnest to what extent tradeoffs are necessary or desirable, keeping in mind our goals and values, there is a culture around making such compromises that actively discourages people from even considering more radical, principled approaches." Chiusano takes C++ as an example, explaining how Stroustrup's insistence that it retain full compatibility with C has led to decades of problems and hacks. He says this isn't necessarily the wrong approach, but the culture of software development prevents us from having a reasoned discussion about it. "Developing software is a form of investment management. When a company or an individual develops a new feature, inserts a hack, hires too quickly without sufficient onboarding or training, or works on better infrastructure for software development (including new languages, tools, and the like), these are investments or the taking on of debt. ... The outcome of everyone solving their own narrow short-term problems and never really revisiting the solutions is the sea of accidental complexity we now operate in, and which we all recognize is a problem."

Submission + - Birth control pills threaten fish stocks

Submitted by BarbaraHudson
BarbaraHudson writes: Experimental research has shown that small amounts of estrogen in waste water can lead to rapid large-scale changes in fish populations.

The lead researcher of a new study is calling for improvements to some of Canada's waste water treatment facilities after finding that introducing the birth control pill in waterways created a chain reaction in a lake ecosystem that nearly wiped out a freshwater fish.

"Right away, the male fish started to respond to the estrogen exposure by producing egg yolk proteins and shortly after that they started to develop eggs," she said in an interview from Saint John, N.B. "They were being feminized."

Kidd said shortly after introducing the estrogen, the number of fathead minnow crashed, reducing numbers to just one per cent of the population.

"It was really unexpected that they would react so quickly and so dramatically," she said. "The crash in the population was very evident and very dramatic and very rapid and related directly to the estrogen addition."

Kidd said that created a domino effect, causing the population of lake trout, the fathead minnow's main predator, to decline. She said the number of insects, the fathead minnow's main source of food, also started to increase.

The good news is that after removing the estrogen, the fathead minnow population recovered back to what it was before the research began.

Submission + - Z machine makes progress toward nuclear fusion (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Scientists are reporting a significant advance in the quest to develop an alternative approach to nuclear fusion. Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, using the lab’s Z machine, a colossal electric pulse generator capable of producing currents of tens of millions of amperes, say they have detected significant numbers of neutrons—byproducts of fusion reactions—coming from the experiment. This, they say, demonstrates the viability of their approach and marks progress toward the ultimate goal of producing more energy than the fusion device takes in.

Submission + - Intel processors fails at math. Again.

Submitted by rastos1
rastos1 writes: In a recent blog, software developer Bruce Dawson pointed out some issues with the way the FSIN instruction is described in the “Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer’s Manual.”, noting that the result of FSIN can be very inaccurate in some cases, if compared to the exact mathematical value of the sine function.

Bruce Dawson says: I was shocked when I discovered this. Both the fsin instruction and Intel’s documentation are hugely inaccurate, and the inaccurate documentation has led to poor decisions being made. ... Intel has known for years that these instructions are not as accurate as promised. They are now making updates to their documentation. Updating the instruction is not a realistic option.

Intel processors had a problem with math in past

Submission + - Cold fusion reactor verified by third-party researchers 2

Submitted by Paul Fernhout
Paul Fernhout writes: ExtremeTech reports that "Andrea Rossi's E-Cat — the device that purports to use cold fusion to generate massive amounts of cheap, green energy — has been verified by third-party researchers, according to a new 54-page report. The researchers observed a small E-Cat over 32 days, where it produced net energy of 1.5 megawatt-hours, or "far more than can be obtained from any known chemical sources in the small reactor volume." The researchers were also allowed to analyze the fuel before and after the 32-day run, noting that the isotopes in the spent fuel could only have been obtained by "nuclear reactions"..."

Submission + - NASA found a Delaware-sized methane 'hot spot' in the Southwest

Submitted by merbs
merbs writes: According to new satellite research from scientists at NASA and the University of Michiganthis "hot spot" is "responsible for producing the largest concentration of the greenhouse gas methane seen over the United States—more than triple the standard ground-based estimate." It is 2,500 square miles wide, about the size of Delaware.

Submission + - Multitasking Damages Your Brain And Career (forbes.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: You’ve likely heard that multitasking is problematic, but new studies show that it kills your performance and may even damage your brain.

Research conducted at Stanford University found that multitasking is less productive than doing a single thing at a time. The researchers also found that people who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information cannot pay attention, recall information, or switch from one job to another as well as those who complete one task at a time.

A Special Skill?

But what if some people have a special gift for multitasking? The Stanford researchers compared groups of people based on their tendency to multitask and their belief that it helps their performance. They found that heavy multitaskers—those who multitask a lot and feel that it boosts their performance—were actually worse at multitasking than those who like to do a single thing at a time. The frequent multitaskers performed worse because they had more trouble organizing their thoughts and filtering out irrelevant information, and they were slower at switching from one task to another. Ouch.

Multitasking reduces your efficiency and performance because your brain can only focus on one thing at a time. When you try to do two things at once, your brain lacks the capacity to perform both tasks successfully.

Submission + - Gaining weight? Blame it on the fat person in the room. 1

Submitted by BarbaraHudson
BarbaraHudson writes: Several sites are reporting on a University of Illinois study that shows that people eat more in the presence of a fat person.

The test involved a sample of 82 college coeds who were observed helping themselves to a simple pasta and salad meal. Each of the coeds were themselves of normal weight. The students first required to watch what they believed was a fat woman serving herself some of the food. The fat woman was actually an actress wearing a fat suit.

After observing the "corpulent" woman serve herself, the students were allowed to come forward and serve themselves pasta and salad. On average, the coeds each served themselves more pasta than the "fat" woman had selected while taking less salad than she did. When the same study was performed with the actress appearing sans the fat suit, researchers observed that students ended up eating more salad than pasta. The conclusion was simple: people may consume more unhealthy food and eat less healthy food when in the presence of an overweight person.

As anyone on a diet will tell you, a waste is a terrible thing to mind. And weight control is a lot more complex than the article makes it seem, though some will welcome the opportunity to blame someone else. BTW, since when is pasta unhealthy? We're omnivores, not rabbits.

Submission + - JP Morgan Chase Attacked; data for 76million stolen

Submitted by JakartaDean
JakartaDean writes: J.P. Morgan Chase said about 76 million households were affected by a cybersecurity attack on the bank this summer in one of the most sweeping disclosed breaches of a financial institution.

The largest U.S. bank by assets said the unknown attackers stole customers’ contact information—including names, email addresses, phone numbers and addresses. The breach, which was first disclosed in August and is still under investigation by the bank and law enforcement, extended to the bulk of the bank’s customer base, affecting an amount equivalent to two-thirds of American households. It also affected about seven million of J.P. Morgan’s small-business customers. It isn’t clear how many of those households are U.S.-based.

The bank said hackers were unable to gather detailed information on accounts, such as account numbers, passwords, Social Security numbers or dates of birth. Customer money is “safe,” the bank said in a statement to customers on Thursday.

Submission + - New HDMI Stick Based on Firefox OS Challenges Chromecast (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: A new HDMI streaming media stick is preparing to launch and it's taking on Chromecast in both price and hardware performance. The new HDMI dongle from San Jose-based Matchstick will retail for $25 when it begins shipping in February. The dongle runs on a dual-core Rockchip 3066 processor. It has 4GB of onboard storage capacity and 1GB of DDR3 memory. Google's Chromecast uses a single-core Marvell Armada 1500-Mini CPU and has 2GB of flash and 512MB of DDR3. Matchstick said Mozilla recently certified the dongle and the first of the devices will ship in February. The Matchstick project is based on an open hardware and software platform and has launched a developer program called "Matchstick for Apps." The company is raising money for the project through Kickstarter. After three days, it surpassed its 30-day, $100,000 goal with more than $224,000.

Submission + - Experiment Shows Stylized Rendering Enhances Presence in Immersive AR (roadtovr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: William Steptoe, a senior researcher in the Virtual Environments and Computer Graphics group at University College London, published a paper detailing experiments dealing with the seamless integration of virtual objects into a real scene. Participants were tested to see if they could correctly identify which objects in the scene were real or virtual. With standard rendering, participants were able to correctly guess 73% of the time. Once a stylized rendering outline was applied, accuracy dropped to 56% (around change) and even further to 38% as the stylized rendering was increased. Less accuracy means users were less able to tell the difference between real and virtual objects. Steptoe says that this blurring of real and virtual can increase 'presence', the feeling of being truly present in another space, in immersive augmented reality applications.

Submission + - MIT Thinks It Has Discovered the 'Perfect' Solar Cell (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: A new MIT study offers a way out of one of solar power's most vexing problems: the matter of efficiency, and the bare fact that much of the available sunlight in solar power schemes is wasted. The researchers appear to have found the key to perfect solar energy conversion efficiency—or at least something approaching it. It's a new material that can accept light from an very large number of angles and can withstand the very high temperatures needed for a maximally efficient scheme.

Conventional solar cells, the silicon-based sheets used in most consumer-level applications, are far from perfect. Light from the sun arrives here on Earth's surface in a wide variety of forms. These forms—wavelengths, properly—include the visible light that makes up our everyday reality, but also significant chunks of invisible (to us) ultraviolet and infrared light. The current standard for solar cells targets mostly just a set range of visible light.

Submission + - U.S. may be falling behind in cyber-physical system research (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: The White House has identified cyber-physical system research and development as a “national priority” that could boost U.S. productivity. But federal spending is telling a different story. A major source of research dollars is the National Science Foundation (NSF). It will fund more than $40 million in cyber-physical systems research in the 2014 fiscal year, which ended Tuesday. This amounts to about 0.5% of the approximately $7 billion the U.S. spends on basic research through this agency. It has spent, in total, $200 million in this area since 2009. Separately, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which is deeply involved in standards and data formats, is running its cyber-physical program on $4.3 million. A NIST report found that the European Union “is already investing $343 million per year for 10 years to pursue ‘world leadership’ through advanced strategic research and technology development related to CPS" (cyber-physical systems). That includes $199 million in public funds and $144 million in private funds

Submission + - FDA issues Guidance on Cybersecurity of Medical Devices (securityledger.com)

Submitted by chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: The Security Ledger reports (https://securityledger.com/2014/10/fda-issues-guidance-on-security-of-medical-devices) that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued final guidance on Wednesday that calls on medical device manufacturers to consider cyber security risks as part of the design and development of devices.(http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm416809.htm)
The document, “Content of Premarket Submissions for Management of Cybersecurity in Medical Devices,” (http://www.fda.gov/downloads/MedicalDevices/DeviceRegulationandGuidance/GuidanceDocuments/UCM356190.pdf) asks device makers seeking FDA approval of medical devices to disclose any “risks identified and controls in place to mitigate those risks” in medical devices. The guidance also recommends that manufacturers submit documentation of plans for patching and updating the operating systems and medical software that devices run.

While the guidance does not have the force of a mandate, it does put medical device makers on notice that FDA approval of their device will hinge on a consideration of cyber risks alongside other kinds of issues that may affect the functioning of the device. Among other things, medical device makers are asked to avoid worst-practices like 'hardcoded' passwords and use strong (multi-factor) authentication to restrict access to devices. Device makers are also urged to restrict software and firmware updates to authenticated (signed) code and to secure inbound and outbound communications and data transfers.

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