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Submission + - Attention, Rockstar Developers: Get a talent agent (infoworld.com)

Submitted by ErichTheRed on Monday February 23, 2015 @10:44PM

ErichTheRed writes: OK, we all know that there are a lot of developers and IT people in the field who shouldn't be, and finding really good people and hanging onto them is very difficult. However, I almost fell out of my chair reading this breathless article suggesting that developers hire agents. I grant the authors that recruiters are sometimes the only way to cut through the HR jungle in some companies, but outside of the hot San Francisco startup market, can you imagine a "10x rockstar developer" swaggering into a job interview with his negotiating team? I'm sure our readers can cite plenty of examples of these types who were only 10x in their own minds...

Submission + - The Ghosts in the MP3s (askaudiomag.com) 1

Submitted by el_flynn on Monday February 23, 2015 @09:21PM

el_flynn writes: Continuing the debate about whether there's really any difference between lossless and lossy audio codecs, as well as the whole Pono debacle, Ryan Maguire, a Ph.D student at the University of Virginia, has found a way to "hear" what we're not hearing. From TFA, Ryan goes on to ask "what does the music which this codec delete sound like?", and builds a technique to recover these "lost" sounds... the ghosts in the MP3, so to speak.

Microsoft Translator Now Supports Yucatec Maya and Querétaro Otomi Language 60

Posted by samzenpus on Monday February 23, 2015 @04:05PM from the because-we-can dept.

First time accepted submitter BrianFagioli writes So, just how rare are these two languages? The Yucatec Maya language is spoken by less than 800,000 people, while the Querétaro Otomi is spoken by about 33,000. These are extremely low numbers in the grand scheme of things, which increases the risk of the languages dying out altogether. With that said, Microsoft's support of the languages in its translator software will essentially preserve it for posterity. Even if the languages end up fading away from actual use, it should live digitally forever.

Is Sega the Next Atari? 153

Posted by samzenpus on Monday February 23, 2015 @03:42PM from the once-false-step dept.

donniebaseball23 writes As CEO of Sega of America in the early 1990s, Tom Kalinske oversaw the company during its glory days, when all eyes in the industry were glued to the titanic struggle for console superiority between the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. Times have changed, to put it mildly, and Sega is now a shell of its former self. Where did things go wrong? According to Kalinske, Sega's downfall was failing to partner with Sony on a new platform, and the bad decisions kept piling on from there. Sega's exit from hardware "could have been avoided if they had made the right decisions going back literally 20 years ago. But they seem to have made the wrong decisions for 20 years."

Submission + - U.S. K-12 Learn-to-Code Initiative Prompted Russia to Launch "Code War"

Submitted by theodp on Monday February 23, 2015 @03:18PM

theodp writes: Overlooked in all the excitement over President Obama 'learning to code' as he kicked off Computer Science Education Week last December was how enthusiastically Russia embraced the U.S. K-12 learn-to-code initiative that's been promoted and bankrolled by the tech industry and its leaders. Late last week, Code.org revealed that "7.1 million Russian students learned an #HourOfCode in December!"" compared to the 10.6 million U.S. participants, adding that the U.S. barely accounted for half of all participation during CS Education Week. So, how did a "partner campaign" of this magnitude involving Microsoft escape notice? "Our Russian partners managed a separate site (coderussia.ru)," Code.org explained in response to a question about inconsistent site stats, "because the ministry of education got involved and didn’t want to rely on a US org. Participation [in the Russia Hour of Code] was tracked here and added to our count after the week." Interestingly, Code.org told the House and the Senate in 2014 that "learning computer science is this generation’s Sputnik moment" as it argued for "comprehensive immigration reform efforts that tie H-1B visa fees to a new STEM education fund...to support the teaching and learning of more computer science in K-12 schools." So, is the K-12 "Code War" the new Cold War?

Pandora Pays Artists $0.001 Per Stream, Thinks This Is "Very Fair" 305

Posted by samzenpus on Monday February 23, 2015 @11:17AM from the getting-your-cut dept.

journovampire writes with this story about how much artists make on Spotify. "Pandora founder Tim Westergren has claimed that the company is paying out 'very fair' sums to artists, despite its per-stream royalty weighing in at just one sixth of Spotify's. The digital personalized radio platform has previously gone on-record as saying that it pays music rights-holders approximately $0.0014 for each play of their tracks: Westergren blogged in 2013 that Pandora pays ‘around $1,370 for a million spins’. That’s around 80% smaller than Spotify’s per-stream payout, which officially stands somewhere between $0.006 and $0.0084."

What If We Lost the Sky? 421

Posted by timothy on Monday February 23, 2015 @09:03AM from the we'd-still-have-the-space-needle dept.

HughPickens.com (3830033) writes "Anna North writes in the NYT that a report released last week by the National Research Council calls for research into reversing climate change through a process called albedo modification: reflecting sunlight away from earth by, for instance, spraying aerosols into the atmosphere. But such a process could, some say, change the appearance of the sky — and that in turn could affect everything from our physical health to the way we see ourselves. "You'd get whiter skies. People wouldn't have blue skies anymore." says Alan Robock. "Astronomers wouldn't be happy, because you'd have a cloud up there permanently. It'd be hard to see the Milky Way anymore."

According to Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at the University of California, losing the night sky would have big consequences. "When you go outside, and you walk in a beautiful setting, and you just feel not only uplifted but you just feel stronger. There's clearly a neurophysiological basis for that," says Keltner, adding that looking up at a starry sky provides "almost a prototypical awe experience," an opportunity to feel "that you are small and modest and part of something vast." If we lose the night sky "we lose something precious and sacred." "We're finding in our lab that the experience of awe gets you to feel connected to something larger than yourself, see the humanity in other people," says Paul K. Piff. "In many ways it's kind of an antidote to narcissism." And the sky is one of the few sources of that experience that's available to almost everybody: "Not everyone has access to the ocean or giant trees, or the Grand Canyon, but we certainly all live beneath the night sky."

Alan Robock says one possible upside of adding aerosols could be beautiful red and yellow sunsets as "the yellow and red colors reflect off the bottom of this cloud." Robock recommends more research into albedo modification: "If people ever are tempted to do this, I want them to have a lot of information about what the potential benefits and risks would be so they can make an informed decision. Dr. Abdalati says deploying something like albedo modification is a last-ditch effort. "We've gotten ourselves into a climate mess. The fact that we're even talking about these kinds of things is indicative of that."

Linux Kernel Switching To Linux v4.0, Coming With Many New Addons 264

Posted by timothy on Monday February 23, 2015 @06:50AM from the year-of-the-hurr-durr dept.

An anonymous reader writes Following polling on Linus Torvald's Google+ page, he's decided to make the next kernel version Linux 4.0 rather than Linux 3.20. Linux 4.0 is going to bring many big improvements besides the version bump with there being live kernel patching, pNFS block server support, VirtIO 1.0, IBM z13 mainframe support, new ARM SoC support, and many new hardware drivers and general improvements. Linux 4.0 is codenamed "Hurr durr I'ma sheep."

In Florida, Secrecy Around Stingray Leads To Plea Bargain For a Robber 246

Posted by timothy on Monday February 23, 2015 @04:00AM from the it-looks-just-like-a-snipe dept.

schwit1 writes The case against Tadrae McKenzie looked like an easy win for prosecutors. He and two buddies robbed a small-time pot dealer of $130 worth of weed using BB guns. Under Florida law, that was robbery with a deadly weapon, with a sentence of at least four years in prison. But before trial, his defense team detected investigators' use of a secret surveillance tool, one that raises significant privacy concerns. In an unprecedented move, a state judge ordered the police to show the device — a cell-tower simulator sometimes called a StingRay — to the attorneys. Rather than show the equipment, the state offered McKenzie a plea bargain. Today, 20-year-old McKenzie is serving six months' probation after pleading guilty to a second-degree misdemeanor. He got, as one civil liberties advocate said, the deal of the century.

Feed Google News Sci Tech: Lenovo hit with lawsuit over Superfish snafu - PCWorld (google.com)

From feed by feedfeeder on Monday February 23, 2015 @01:12AM

Boston Herald

Lenovo hit with lawsuit over Superfish snafu
PCWorld
Lenovo admitted to pre-loading the Superfish adware on some consumer PCs, and unhappy customers are now dragging the company to court on the matter. A proposed class-action suit was filed late last week against Lenovo and Superfish, which charges...
Booting Up: Laptop security hole puts buyers at risk, damages trust in companyBoston Herald
Microsoft, Lenovo scramble to protect users from Superfish security flawCBS News
Mozilla mulls Superfish torpedoThe Register
Mail & Guardian Online-McDuffie Mirror
all 82 news articles

Rocket Flown Through Northern Lights To Help Unlock Space Weather Mysteries 33

Posted by timothy on Monday February 23, 2015 @12:57AM from the david-bowie-enjoyed-the-trip dept.

Zothecula writes The northern lights are more than one of nature's most awe inspiring sights, they are an electromagnetic phenomena that can adversely affect power grids and communications and navigation systems. Researchers from the University of Oslo have flown a rocket through the phenomena to take a closer look with the aim of gathering data that will help in predicting space weather.

Submission + - Secrecy around police surveillance equipment proves a case's undoing (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by schwit1 on Monday February 23, 2015 @12:39AM

schwit1 writes: The case against Tadrae McKenzie looked like an easy win for prosecutors. He and two buddies robbed a small-time pot dealer of $130 worth of weed using BB guns. Under Florida law, that was robbery with a deadly weapon, with a sentence of at least four years in prison.

But before trial, his defense team detected investigators' use of a secret surveillance tool, one that raises significant privacy concerns. In an unprecedented move, a state judge ordered the police to show the device — a cell-tower simulator sometimes called a StingRay — to the attorneys.

Rather than show the equipment, the state offered McKenzie a plea bargain.

Today, 20-year-old McKenzie is serving six months' probation after pleading guilty to a second-degree misdemeanor. He got, as one civil liberties advocate said, the deal of the century.

Submission + - Snowden Film 'Citizenfour' Wins Oscar for Best Documentary (nationaljournal.com)

Submitted by schwit1 on Monday February 23, 2015 @12:35AM

schwit1 writes: Citizenfour, a film chronicling the living history of Edward Snowden's unprecedented heist of U.S. government secrets, won the Academy Award for best documentary Sunday night—an unusual feat for a movie so critical of a sitting president's policies.

Directed by Laura Poitras, the political thriller captures Snowden in a claustrophobic Hong Kong hotel room in the days leading up to and after the release of the first of batch of classified documents that publicly revealed the sweeping scope of the National Security Agency's mass surveillance of phone and Internet communications.

Submission + - Everything About Kepler-432b is Extreme, Especially the Way it's Going to Die (universetoday.com)

Submitted by schwit1 on Monday February 23, 2015 @12:25AM

schwit1 writes: A rare planet has been discovered, and it doesn’t seem like a stop anyone would want to make on an intergalactic cruise. Found by two research teams independently of each other, Kepler-432b is extreme in its mass, density, and weather. Roughly the same size of Jupiter, the planet is also doomed — in 200 million years it will be consumed by its sun whose radius is 'quickly' increasing.

Submission + - Linux Kernel Switching To Linux v4.0, Coming With Many New Addons (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 22, 2015 @11:09PM

An anonymous reader writes: Following polling on Linus Torvald's Google+ page, he's decided to make the next kernel version Linux 4.0 rather than Linux 3.20. Linux 4.0 is going to bring many big improvements besides the version bump with there being live kernel patching, pNFS block server support, VirtIO 1.0, IBM z13 mainframe support, new ARM SoC support, and many new hardware drivers and general improvements. Linux 4.0 is codenamed "Hurr durr I'ma sheep."

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