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Submission + - How Tech Sites Celebrated April Fools Day (latimes.com) 1

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: Google announced an update for the Android and iPhone version of Google maps that lets you travel the world collecting Pokemon. Twitter announced a new wearable that lets you tweet just by bobbing your head. And Amazon created a web page with ridiculous products like bacon-shaped bandages — all of which are actually real. "As always, the tech world is embracing April Fools' Day 2014 in full force," writes the L.A. Times, "with countless gags from Google, Sony and many others in the space."

Submission + - New Mozilla CEO Defends Controversial Campaign Contributions (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: Brendan Eich responded to controversy over his past political contributions as a new online campaign called for him to step down as the new CEO of Mozilla Corporation. At least five different Mozilla employees called for Eich's resignation on Twitter over his $1,000 donation to California's controversial "Proposition 8" measure in 2008. (The measure banned same-sex marriages, and was later ruled unconstitutional — and Eich had also donated thousands more to political candidates who supported the measure.) "I love @mozilla but I'm disappointed," tweeted Chris McAvoy, project lead on Mozilla's Open Badges project, joining a chorus of voices posting "I'm an employee of @mozilla and I'm asking @brendaneich to step down as CEO." Eich addressed the controversy in a blog post, expressing "sorrow at having caused pain," and asking for time to prove his full commitment to inclusiveness at Mozilla.

Submission + - Amazon might announce a gaming controller alongside its media streamer (the-digital-reader.com)

Submitted by Nate the greatest
Nate the greatest writes: The latest rumors are saying that Amazon is going to launch a media streamer on Wednesday, but I don't think that's the whole story. Digging through the FCC website has revealed that Amazon has a 4" square Roku-like box (with a remote) on the way, not the dongle that TechCrunch reported. What's more, that gaming controller which first showed up in Brazil has also shown up on the FCC website. That is a good sign that it too might also make an appearance on Wednesday. Amazon has been rumored to be working on a gaming console, and now it would appear that the one device is going to serve both purposes.

Submission + - That BBC "100 Books" List is a Giant Hoax (beyond-black-friday.com)

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: “The BBC believes you only read 6 of these books” reads the headline on countless Facebook posts, forum comments, and web pages. But it's a hoax, conflating a 2007 list from Britain's Guardian newspaper (which had simply asked their readers to name which books "they can't live without.") The readers selected The Lord of the Rings trilogy and books from the Harry Potter series — but one reporter notes that the entertaining list is skewed heavily toward British authors. Six of the 100 books were written by Charles Dickens and four by Jane Austen — while not a single book on the list was written by Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, or William Faulkner.

Submission + - Amazon's Book "Bucket List" Includes Tolkein, Dune, 1984 (corporate-ir.net)

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: Eight science fiction classics, including Dune and The Lord of the Rings, earned a spot on a list of "100 Books to Read in a Lifetime" as chosen by the book editors at Amazon. "Over many months, the team passionately debated and defended the books we wanted on this list,” explains their editorial director, noting that the "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams was a near miss. Other books included were "A Wrinkle in Time" and "The Hunger Games", as well as at least six free public domain classic books. But one reporter notes that the list also includes both children's classics like "Where the Wild Things Are" and "House at Pooh Corner", as well as Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". ("We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold...")

Submission + - Don't Help Your Kids With Their Homework

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Dana Goldstein writes in The Atlantic that while one of the central tenets of raising kids in America is that parents should be actively involved in their children’s education: meeting with teachers, volunteering at school, and helping with homework that few parents stop to ask whether they’re worth the effort. Case in point: In the largest-ever study of how parental involvement affects academic achievement researchers combed through nearly three decades’ worth of longitudinal surveys of American parents and tracked 63 different measures of parental participation in kids’ academic lives, from helping them with homework, to talking with them about college plans, to volunteering at their schools. What they found surprised them. Most measurable forms of parental involvement seem to yield few academic dividends for kids, or even to backfire—regardless of a parent’s race, class, or level of education. Once kids enter middle school, parental help with homework can actually bring test scores down, an effect Robinson says could be caused by the fact that many parents may have forgotten, or never truly understood, the material their children learn in school. "As kids get older—we’re talking about K-12 education—parents’ abilities to help with homework are declining," says Keith Robinson. "Even though they may be active in helping, they may either not remember the material their kids are studying now, or in some cases never learned it themselves, but they’re still offering advice. And that means poor quality homework." The study did find a handful of parental behaviors that made a difference in their children's education such as reading aloud to young kids (PDF) (fewer than half of whom are read to daily) and talking with teenagers about college plans. "The most consistent, positive parental involvement activity is talking to your kids about their post-high school plans, and this one stood out because it was, pretty much for every racial, ethnic and socio-economic group, positively related to a number of academic outcomes—such as attendance and marks," concludes Robinson. "What this might be hinting at is the psychological component that comes from kids internalizing your message: school is important. "

Submission + - "Death is Wrong", Argues Futuristic New Children's Book (amazon.com)

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: Hoping to inspire life-extending medical research, science fiction author Gennady Stolyarov has launched a campaign to give away 1,000 free copies of his transhumanist picture book for children, "Death is Wrong". "My greatest fear about the future is not of technology running out of control or posing existential risks to humankind," he explains online. "Rather, my greatest fear is that, in the year 2045, I will be...wondering, 'What happened to that Singularity we were promised by now...?'" Along with recent scientific discoveries, the book tells its young readers about long-lived plants and animals "that point the way toward lengthening lifespans in humans," in an attempt to avoid a future where children "would pay no more attention to technological progress and life-extension possibilities than their predecessors did."

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: what do you guys do with moderator points?

Submitted by X10
X10 writes: Every once in a while, I get 5 moderator points. But I don't know what to do with them. I can go through comments, but rating them feels like to much of a responsibility to me. Rating down a troll is easy, but the rest, well, I let it go. So my points go away after a few days.
What's your opinion about moderator points? Do you like getting them?

Submission + - The era of Facebook is an anomaly (theverge.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Speaking to The Verge, author and Microsoft Researcher Danah Boyd put words to a feeling I've had about Facebook and other social networking sites for a while, now: 'The era of Facebook is an anomaly.' She continues, 'The idea of everybody going to one site is just weird. Give me one other part of history where everybody shows up to the same social space. Fragmentation is a more natural state of being. Is your social dynamic interest-driven or is it friendship-driven? Are you going there because there’s this place where other folks are really into anime, or is this the place you’re going because it’s where your pals from school are hanging out? That first [question] is a driving function.' Personally, I hope this idea continues to propagate — it's always seemed odd that our social network identities are locked into certain websites. Imagine being a Comcast customer and being unable to email somebody using Time Warner, or a T-Mobile subscriber who can't call somebody who's on Verizon. Why do we allow this with our social networks?

Submission + - XKCD Author's Unpublished Book Has Already Become a Best-Seller (beyond-black-friday.com)

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: Wednesday the geeky cartoonist behind XKCD announced that he'd publish a new book answering hypothetical science questions in September. And within 24 hours, his as-yet-unpublished work had become Amazon's #2 best-selling book. "Ironically, this book is titled 'What If?'," jokes one blogger, noting it resembles an XKCD comic where "In our yet-to-happen future, this book decides to travel backwards through time, stopping off in March of 2014 to inform Amazon’s best-seller list that yes, in our coming timeline this book will be widely read..." Randall Munroe new book will be collecting his favorite "What If..." questions, but will also contain his never-before published answers to some questions that he'd found "particularly neat".

Submission + - How Amazon, Google, and O'Reilly Books Celebrate Valentines' Day (beyond-black-friday.com)

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: O'Reilly Books is offering 50% discounts today on every one of their ebooks that has a pink cover. It's one of several fun ways the top tech sites are celebrating Valentine's Day. Amazon's offering up to $80 off on Kindle Fire tablets (plus digital gift cards that you can print out at home), and Barnes & Noble is giving away a free Valentine's Day app for Nook owners. The Google Play store just put up a free video from Walt Disney studios with a Valentine's Day theme — plus a heart-warming doodle on their front page for Valentine's Day.

Submission + - Legend of Zelda Tops Amazon's 2013 Best-Seller List (beyond-black-friday.com)

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: "The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia was Amazon's #6 best-selling print book for the entire year of 2013. But the demographics are changing for book buyers, with 13 of the top 20 best-selling print books not even appearing anywhere on Amazon's list of the top 100 best-selling Kindle ebooks of the year. Amazon points out that 19 of their 20 best-selling books for the year sold more Kindle versions than print versions — with one exception. "Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead" was the one book this year which remained more popular in its print edition.

Submission + - Apple Censors Lawrence Lessig over iOS 7 Wi-Fi Glitch (zdnet.com)

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: A glitch in iOS7 has cost "a significant number" of Apple users their Wi-Fi access, according to ZDNet. But they also report that Apple is now censoring posts in their "Apple Support Communities" forums where users suggest possible responses to their loss of WiFi capabilities (including exercising their product warranty en masse). "We understand the desire to share experiences in your topic, 'Re: wifi greyed out after update to ios7,'" read one warning sent to Lawrence Lessig, "but because these posts are not allowed on our forums, we have removed it." Lessig — who co-founded Creative Commons (and was a board member of the Free Software Foundation) has been documenting the ongoing "comments slaughter" on his Twitter feed, drawing attention to what he says is the Borg-like behavior of Apple as a corporation. Lessig "is now part of an angry mob in Apple's forums who upgraded to iOS 7 and lost Wi-Fi connectivity," ZDNet notes, adding that as of this morning their reporter has been unable to obtain an official response from Apple.

Submission + - Why Iran's Hackers Are More Dangerous Than China's (motherjones.com) 2

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: Security experts are warning that newly-discovered computer attacks from Iran "could ultimately be more worrisome, because its hackers are targeting critical infrastructure and developing the ability to cause serious damage to the United States' power grid." A White House security advisor argues that "attacks on critical infrastructure are probably the bigger threatIran is much more unstable," and a Fortune 100 security consultant agrees that a country like Iran "is much more willing to be destructive." On the other hand, Richard Clarke, a former counterterrorism adviser for presidents Clinton and Bush, estimates that Chinese hackers have already caused U.S. losses in the billions of dollars above the normal security measures that are affecting other industries. (One telecom industry executive recently noted that hackers "are continually probing for insecure switches," and the Voice of America reports that 1.5 million people are victimized by cybercrime every day — about 18 people every second. "The Iranians appear to be more interested in destruction and damage, but it's about deterrence," Clarke argues, "deterring the U.S. from bombing them Iran would be crazy to launch a preemptive cyberstrike. And they're not crazy."

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