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Movies

'Citizenfour' Producers Sued Over Edward Snowden Leaks 163

Posted by Soulskill from the indicting-a-ham-sandwich dept.
An anonymous reader writes with this news from The Hollywood Reporter: Horace Edwards, who identifies himself as a retired naval officer and the former secretary of the Kansas Department of Transportation, has filed a lawsuit in Kansas federal court that seeks a constructive trust over monies derived from the distribution of Citizenfour. Edwards ... seeks to hold Snowden, director Laura Poitras, The Weinstein Co., Participant Media and others responsible for "obligations owed to the American people" and "misuse purloined information disclosed to foreign enemies." It's an unusual lawsuit, one that the plaintiff likens to "a derivative action on behalf of the American Public," and is primarily based upon Snowden's agreement with the United States to keep confidentiality. ... Edwards appears to be making the argument that Snowden's security clearance creates a fiduciary duty of loyalty — one that was allegedly breached by Snowden's participation in the production of Citizenfour without allowing prepublication clearance review. As for the producers and distributors, they are said to be "aiding and abetting the theft and misuse of stolen government documents." The lawsuit seeks a constructive trust to redress the alleged unjust enrichment by the film. A 1980 case that involved a former CIA officer's book went up to the Supreme Court and might have opened the path to such a remedy.
Debian

Debian Forked Over Systemd 647

Posted by Soulskill from the a-house-divided dept.
jaromil writes: The so called "Veteran Unix Admin" collective has announced that the fork of Debian will proceed as a result of the recent systemd controversy. The reasons put forward are not just technical; included is a letter of endorsement by Debian Developer Roger Leigh mentioning that "people rely on Debian for their jobs and businesses, their research and their hobbies. It's not a playground for such radical experimentation." The fork is called "Devuan," pronounced "DevOne." The official website has more information.
Businesses

Researchers Say the Tech Worker Shortage Doesn't Really Exist 454

Posted by Soulskill from the just-like-a-healthcare-system-that-everyone-enjoys dept.
Beeftopia sends this excerpt from an article at BusinessWeek: "There’s no evidence of any way, shape, or form that there’s a shortage in the conventional sense," says Hal Salzman, a professor of planning and public policy at Rutgers University. "They may not be able to find them at the price they want. But I’m not sure that qualifies as a shortage, any more than my not being able to find a half-priced TV." ... The real issue, say Salzman and others, is the industry’s desire for lower-wage, more-exploitable guest workers, not a lack of available American staff. "It seems pretty clear that the industry just wants lower-cost labor," Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote in an e-mail. A 2011 review (PDF) by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the H-1B visa program, which is what industry groups are lobbying to expand, had "fragmented and restricted" oversight that weakened its ostensible labor standards. "Many in the tech industry are using it for cheaper, indentured labor," says Rochester Institute of Technology public policy associate professor Ron Hira, an EPI research associate and co-author of the book Outsourcing America.
The Military

How the Pentagon's Robots Would Automate War 117

Posted by Soulskill from the peace-reigns-when-the-war-servers-are-down-for-scheduled-maintenance dept.
rossgneumann writes: Pentagon officials are worried that the U.S. military is losing its edge compared to competitors like China, and are willing to explore almost anything to stay on top—including creating robots capable of becoming fighting machines. A 72-page document throws detailed light on the far-reaching implications of the Pentagon's plan to monopolize imminent "transformational advances" in biotechnology, robotics and artificial intelligence, information technology, nanotechnology, and energy.
Transportation

Toyota Names Upcoming Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car 194

Posted by samzenpus from the a-car-by-any-other-name-would-drive-as-clean dept.
An anonymous reader writes Toyota has announced the name of its new hydrogen-powered car: Mirai, which means "future" in Japanese. Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda said: "Today, we are at a turning point in automotive history. A turning point where a four-door sedan can travel 300 miles on a single tank of hydrogen, can be refueled in under five minutes and emit only water vapor."

Comment Re:Hope! (Score 5, Interesting) 522

by rjmx (#48169543) Attached to: Debian Talks About Systemd Once Again

> In my mind, this comes down to whether we want a better functioning OS or an OS that adheres to the mindset that I think attracted many of us to Linux in the first place.

I'm not even convinced that it makes for a better-functioning OS. I've been a Debian user for 12 years, mostly running 'testing' distributions. When systemd first turned up, I let it run for a couple of weeks, but switched back to sysV after half of my startup daemons didn't. Tried it again a month or two later, but when it had trouble stopping Samba (and, worse, claiming that it would wait *five* *minutes* before killing the processes, I decided enough was enough, and now I'm in the process of switching all five of my Debian boxes to Gentoo. Now, granted, the testing distribution is for just that purpose -- testing -- but if I'm dealing with the kind of idiot that would claim that systemd results in faster startups, but thinks that a five-minute wait to shut down a process is acceptable, then I want no part of it.

Debian should listen to what its users want, rather than just its developers. We're not all technically ignorant.
Earth

Solar Could Lead In Power Production By 2050 167

Posted by timothy from the we-could-all-be-dead-by-then dept.
Lucas123 writes Solar power could be the leading source of electricity compared with other renewables and conventional sources of power, such as oil and coal, according to a pair of reports from the International Energy Agency. PV panels could produce 16% of the world's electricity, while solar thermal electricity (STE) is on track to produce 11%. At the end of 2013, there had been 137GW of solar capacity deployed around the world. Each day, an additional 100MW of power is deployed. One reason solar is so promising is plummeting prices for photovoltaic cells and new technologies that promise greater solar panel efficiency. For example, MIT just published a report on a new material that could be ideal for converting solar energy into heat by tuning the material's spectrum of absorption. Ohio State University just announced what it's referring to as the world's first solar battery, which integrates PV with storage at a microscopic level. "We've integrated both functions into one device. Any time you can do that, you reduce cost," said Yiying Wu, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Ohio State.
Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer Implements HTTP/2 Support 122

Posted by Soulskill from the metadata-transmission dept.
jones_supa writes: As part of the Windows 10 Technical Preview, Internet Explorer will introduce HTTP/2 support, along with performance improvements to the Chakra JavaScript engine, and a top-level domains parsing algorithm based on publicsuffix.org. HTTP/2 is a new standard by the Internet Engineering Task Force. Unlike HTTP/1.1, the new standard communicates metadata in binary format to significantly reduce parsing complexity. While binary is usually more efficient than text, the real performance gains are expected to come from multiplexing. This is where multiple requests can be share the same TCP connection. With this, one stalled request won't block other requests from being honored. Header compression is another important performance concern for HTTP.
Windows

Microsoft Announces Windows 10 644

Posted by Soulskill from the because-7-8-9 dept.
Today at a press conference in San Francisco, Microsoft announced the new version of their flagship operating system, called Windows 10. (Yes, t-e-n. I don't know.) With the new version of the operating system, they'll be unifying the application platform for all devices: desktops, laptops, consoles, tablets, and phones. As early leaks showed, the Start Menu is back — it's a hybrid of old and new, combining a list of applications with a small group of resizable tiles that can include widgets. Metro-style apps can now each operate inside their own window (video). There's a new, multiple-desktop feature, which power users have been demanding for years, and also a feature that lets users easily grab objects from one desktop and transfer it to another. The command line is even getting some love. The Technical Preview builds for desktops and laptops will be available tomorrow through the Windows Insider Program. They're requesting feedback from customers. Windows 10 will launch in late 2015.
Censorship

Putin To Discuss Plans For Disconnecting Russia From the Internet 241

Posted by Soulskill from the taking-his-e-toys-and-going-home dept.
New submitter GlowingCat writes: Russian President Vladimir Putin and several high-ranking officials will discuss the security of the Russian segment of the Internet at the meeting of the Russian Security Council next week. According to various reports, the officials will make a number of decisions about regulating the use of the Internet in Russia. This includes the ability to cut off the Russian Internet, known as Runet, from the outside world, in case of emergency.
Math

New Study Projects World Population of 11B by 2100 326

Posted by timothy from the ok-but-only-one-of-me dept.
vinces99 (2792707) writes Using modern statistical tools, a new study led by the University of Washington and the United Nations finds that world population is likely to keep growing throughout the 21st century. The number of people on Earth is likely to reach 11 billion by 2100, the study concludes, about 2 billion higher than widely cited previous estimates. The paper published online Sept. 18 in the journal Science includes the most up-to-date numbers for future world population, and describes a new method for creating such estimates. "The consensus over the past 20 years or so was that world population, which is currently around 7 billion, would go up to 9 billion and level off or probably decline," said corresponding author Adrian Raftery, a UW professor of statistics and of sociology. ... The paper explains the most recent United Nations population data released in July. This is the first U.N. population report to use modern statistics, known as Bayesian statistics, that combines all available information to generate better predictions.

Most of the anticipated growth is in Africa, where population is projected to quadruple from around 1 billion today to 4 billion by the end of the century. The main reason is that birth rates in sub-Saharan Africa have not been going down as fast as had been expected. There is an 80 percent chance that the population in Africa at the end of the century will be between 3.5 billion and 5.1 billion people.
Space

Universal Big Bang Lithium Deficit Confirmed 171

Posted by samzenpus from the would-you-like-to-try-another-alkali-metal? dept.
An anonymous reader writes New observations of the star cluster Messier 54 show that it is just as deficient in lithium as our own galaxy, furthering a mystery about the element's big bang origins. "Most of the light chemical element lithium now present in the Universe was produced during the Big Bang, along with hydrogen and helium, but in much smaller quantities. Astronomers can calculate quite accurately how much lithium they expect to find in the early Universe, and from this work out how much they should see in old stars. But the numbers don't match — there is about three times less lithium in stars than expected. This mystery remains unsolved, despite several decades of work."

Comment Re:Python is eating Perls lunch (Score 1) 387

by rjmx (#47873587) Attached to: Unpopular Programming Languages That Are Still Lucrative

> Python 3 is the first break in backward compatibility this century!

Yep. And why is that not backward compatible too? Why don't they aim to get it right the first time? And if they don't get it right, why change it when that breaks previous uses?
I'd also remind you that we're not very far into this century yet. If that was supposed to be sarcasm, it fell short.

> Python 2.x up to 2.9 is and will be backwardly compatible with python 1.6

Then how come my Debian system needed 2.6, 2.7 _and_ 2.8 all installed at one point? Why do Pythin apps and libraries keep breaking because somebody introduced a subtle change somewhere?

Whatever Python is, it's not very robust.

I still say it's the new shiny-shiny. Nothing more.

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