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Submission + - Google: "Miles From Where We Want To Be" On Diversity

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "Put simply," wrote HR Chief Laszlo Bock as Google disclosed diversity data for the first time ever, "Google is not where we want to be when it comes to diversity, and it’s hard to address these kinds of challenges if you’re not prepared to discuss them openly, and with the facts." [Got that, Facebook?]. With only 2% of Google employees black and 30% women, observes Valleywag, "no wonder the corporation, consistently voted the one of the best places you can work, has 'always been reluctant to publish numbers' showing who has been locked out." Brian Dear looks further into the disclosed numbers, including the EEO-1 report, and notes that Google's so-called diversity disclosure makes no mention of age. "To my surprise," writes Dear, "the EEO-1 document only talks about gender and race. So I called the EEOC to ask, 'what about age?' The woman at the EEOC who answered the phone told me, 'We just collect it for race and gender, we don't do age.' How convenient for Google."

Comment Cinema-like (Score 5, Funny) 261

by rujasu (#47123311) Attached to: Curved TVs Nothing But a Gimmick

Samsung and LG claim that the curve provides a cinema-like experience by offering a more balanced and uniform view so that the edges of the set don't appear further away than the middle...

Reality: the curved TVs provide a cinema-like experience by charging roughly four times what a reasonable person would pay.

Submission + - Library of Congress: All that Big Data Is Not Going to Manage Itself (scientificcomputing.com)

Submitted by Scientific Computing
Scientific Computing writes: On February 26, 2003, the National Institutes of Health released the “Final NIH Statement on Sharing Research Data.” As you’ll be reminded when you visit that link, 2003 was eons ago in “Internet time.” Yet the vision NIH had for the expanded sharing of research data couldn’t have been more prescient.

Submission + - Did the Universe have a beginning at all? 1

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: For thousands of years, there were three known possibilities concerning the origin of the Universe: it had a moment at which it sprang into existence, it had always existed eternally into the past, or it was a cyclical, repeating entity. In the 20th century, observations appeared to vindicate the Big Bang theory as the origin of our Universe, but more recently, we've learned that the Hot Big Bang was preceded by a period of cosmic inflation, and wasn't the origin of time after all. So how did the Universe get its start? A great walk through what we know, and what the viable possibilities are.

Submission + - Why the Descent Games Should Return (gamespot.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Gamers of a certain age will probably remember Descent, a game that combined first-person shooters with flight sims in a way that has never really been replicated. GameSpot has an article calling for a new entry in the Descent series, and it reminded me of all the stomach-churning battles I had as a kid (when the game wasn't bringing my 33MHz 486 to its knees). 'ere's where modern gaming innovations make Descent an even more tempting reboot. From the two-dimensional mines of Spelunky to the isometric caves of Path of Exile, procedurally generated levels help deliver fresh experiences to players in a number of genres. The mines of Descent would be perfect candidates for such creation, and they wouldn't have to be limited to the metallic walls and lunar geology of past Descent games. Imagine exploring organic tunnels carved by some unknown alien creature, or floating past dazzling crystalline stalactites in pristine ancient caves. Perhaps the influences of Red Faction and Minecraft could also come into play as you bored your own shortcuts through layers of destructible sediment. All of Descent's dizzying navigation challenges could be even more exciting with the immersive potential of a virtual reality headset like the Oculus Rift or the Sony Morpheus. Feeling the mine walls close in on you from all sides could get your heart racing, and turning your head to spot shortcuts, power-ups, or delicate environmental details could greatly heighten the sense of being an explorer in an uncharted land. '

Submission + - Google Fiber: No Charge For Peering, No Fast Lanes (gigaom.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Addressing the recent controversy over Netflix paying ISPs directly for better data transfer speeds, Google's Director of Network Engineering explains how their Fiber server handles peering. He says, 'Bringing fiber all the way to your home is only one piece of the puzzle. We also partner with content providers (like YouTube, Netflix, and Akamai) to make the rest of your video’s journey shorter and faster. (This doesn't involve any deals to prioritize their video ‘packets’ over others or otherwise discriminate among Internet traffic — we don't do that.) Like other Internet providers, Google Fiber provides the ‘last-mile’ Internet connection to your home. Meanwhile, content providers spend a lot of money (many billions of dollars) building their own networks to transport their content all the way to those ‘last-mile’ connections. In that process, the content may run into bottlenecks — if the connections between the content provider and our network are slow or congested, that will slow down your access to content, no matter how fast your connection is. So that your video doesn't get caught up in this possible congestion, we invite content providers to hook up their networks directly to ours. This is called ‘peering,’ and it gives you a more direct connection to the content that you want.'

Submission + - Helium.com Closes, Deleting 1 Million Articles (beyond-black-friday.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "After eight years and well over one million articles, we regret to announce that Helium Publishing will be closing," announced an e-mail last week. The online writer's community shared its ad revenue with contributors, sometimes offering them upfront payments of up to $3.50 per article — though "changing market conditions" have finally rendered that model unprofitable. (One Helium writer bragged about earning $900 from the site by submitting 300 bad movie reviews, and then another $1750 by reviewing 500 children's picture books.) But this technology blog notes that Helium's founder still earned over $57 million — by selling Helium in 2011 to the big print publisher, R. R. Donnelly.

Submission + - Conscious Sentient Robots Capable of Feelings are Impossible, Say Researchers (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: If you're a big fan of Isaac Asimov and sentient robots like Johnny Five and Sonny, you might not be happy to hear that computer science researchers have used mathematical theory to prove that robots capable of feelings and emotions will never exist.

Using a variation of Giulio Tononi's influential mathematical framework for consciousness, a team of researchers from the National University of Ireland have proved mathematically that computers are unable to completely integrate information.

Tononi's 2008 framework argued that integrated information cannot be reduced into smaller components, so for example, if a human were to perceive a red triangle, the human brain would not be able to break down the triangle as a colourless outline of a triangle and a shapeless patch of red at the same time. The researchers disagree.

"There's no computer you could build that could integrate information so that it cannot be edited. Computers can still be useful and intelligent without complete integration, but we will never trust it as we trust a person, as the computer is just following certain algorithms," said Dr Maguire, who led the research.

"We agree with Tononi's approach but we feel his quantification of integrated information didn't work. The cost of integrating something was that you would lose a lot of your memories at the same time, so we decided to provide a new type of quantification."

Submission + - 1 TB memory chip about to become reality (phys.org)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: Toshiba, teaming up with its memory partner Sandisk, in a deal worth a reported 500 billion yen ($4.84 billion) to set up a plant to produce flash chip which can be as large as One Terabyte (TB) each

Inside the 1TB flash chip several layers of wafers would be stacked on top of each other using the 3D packing technique

The different layers of wafer would hooked on and linked to each others using the through-silicon via (TSV) technology

The proposed chip would be 16 times as large as the 64gigabyte (GB) flash chip Toshiba produces.

Submission + - Why Cheap Smartphones Are Going To Upset the Industry (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Just when people got used to good smartphones costing $200 with a 2-year contract, they also started to realize that those 2-year contracts were bad news. Still, it's often more palatable than fronting $600 for good, new hardware. But that's starting to change. Cell phone internals are getting cheap enough that prices for capable devices have been creeping downward below $200 without a contract. We ran into something similar with the PC industry some years back — previous-gen chips had no trouble running next-gen software (excluding game with bleeding edge graphics), and so the impetus to keep getting the latest-and-greatest disappeared for a lot of people. That revolution is underway now for smartphones, and it's going to shake things up for everybody, including Apple and Samsung. But the biggest effects will be felt in the developing world: 'That means for a vast number of people in a vast number of countries, the cheap handset will be the first screen, and the only screen. Their primary interface with the world. A way of connecting to the Internet where there are no telephone lines or coaxial cables or even electricity. In nations without subsidized cell phone contracts or access to consumer credit, the $50-and-you-own-it handset is going to be transformative.'

Submission + - Tux3 Could Finally Make It Into The Mainline Linux Kernel (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Tux3 file-system that's been in development since 2008 as the public replacement to the patent-blocked Tux2 file-system is now under review for inclusion into the Linux kernel. Tux3 tries to act as a "light, tight, modern file-system. We offer a fresh approach to some ancient problems," according to its lead developer Daniel Phillips. Tux3 strives for minimal resource consumption but lacks enterprise-grade reliability at this point. Tux3 at the end of the day tries to be "robust, fast, and simple" with the Linux FS reportedly being as fast as other well known file-systems. Details on the project are at Tux3.org.

Submission + - Embedded Devices Leak Authentication Data Via SNMP (threatpost.com)

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: Researchers have discovered previously unreported problems in SNMP on embedded devices where devices such as secondary market home routers and a popular enterprise-grade load balancer are leaking authentication details in plain text.

The data could be extracted by gaining access to the read-only public SNMP community string, which enables outside access to device information. While only vulnerabilities in three brands were disclosed today, a Shodan search turns up potentially hundreds of thousands of devices that are exposing SNMP to the Internet that could be equally vulnerable.

Submission + - Data Mining Shows How Down-Voting Leads To Vicious Circle Of Negative Feedback

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: In behavioural psychology, the theory of operant conditioning is the notion that an individual’s future behaviour is determined by the punishments and rewards he or she has received in the past. It means that specific patterns of behaviour can be induced by punishing unwanted actions while rewarding others. While the theory is more than 80 years old, it is hard at work in the 21st century in the form of up and down votes--or likes and dislikes--on social networks. But does this form of reward and punishment actually deter unwanted actions while encouraging good behaviour? Now a new study of the way voting influences online behaviour has revealed the answer. The conclusion is that that negative feedback leads to behavioural changes that are hugely detrimental to the community. Not only do authors of negatively-evaluated content contribute more but their future posts are of lower quality and are perceived by the community as such. What's more, these authors are more likely to evaluate fellow users negatively in future, creating a vicious circle of negative feedback. By contrast, positive feedback does not influence authors much at all. That's exactly the opposite of what operant conditioning theory predicts. The researchers have a better suggestion for social networks: "Given that users who receive no feedback post less frequently, a potentially effective strategy could be to ignore undesired behaviour and provide no feedback at all." Would /.-ers agree?

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