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EU

The EU Has a Plan To Break Up Google 334

Posted by Soulskill from the better-get-on-that-don't-be-evil-stuff-quick dept.
An anonymous reader points out a report at the Financial Times (paywalled) which says the European Parliament is preparing to call for the break-up of Google. According to the draft seen by the FT, a potential solution to ongoing anti-trust concerns with Google is "unbundling search engines from other services." The article notes, "The European parliament has no formal power to split up companies, but has increasing influence on the commission, which initiates all EU legislation. The commission has been investigating concerns over Google’s dominance of online search for five years, with critics arguing that the company’s rankings favour its own services, hitting its rivals’ profits. Unbundling cannot be excluded, said Andreas Schwab, a German MEP who is one of the motion’s backers."
Games

The Man Who Made Tetris 37

Posted by samzenpus from the fitting-it-in dept.
rossgneumann writes Life gets pretty chill after creating 'Tetris' and escaping the KGB. A quick web search for "Alexey Pajitnov" brings up pages of articles and interviews that fixate only on his seminal creation—a work that remains, far and away, the best selling video game of all time. But clearly, there's more to the man than just Tetris. Meeting Pajitnov himself led me to wonder about, well, everything else. What was the Tetris-less life of Alexey Pajitnov?
United States

Greenwald Advises Market-Based Solution To Mass Surveillance 157

Posted by samzenpus from the you-get-what-you-demand dept.
Nicola Hahn writes In his latest Intercept piece Glenn Greenwald considers the recent defeat of the Senate's USA Freedom Act. He remarks that governments "don't walk around trying to figure out how to limit their own power." Instead of appealing to an allegedly irrelevant Congress Greenwald advocates utilizing the power of consumer demand to address the failings of cyber security. Specifically he argues that companies care about their bottom line and that the trend of customers refusing to tolerate insecure products will force companies to protect user privacy, implement encryption, etc. All told Greenwald's argument is very telling: that society can rely on corporate interests for protection. Is it true that representative government is a lost cause and that lawmakers would never knowingly yield authority? There are people who think that advising citizens to devolve into consumers is a dubious proposition.
Canada

Millions of Spiders Seen In Mass Dispersal Event In Nova Scotia 81

Posted by samzenpus from the arachnophobia dept.
Freshly Exhumed writes A bizarre and oddly beautiful display of spider webs have been woven across a large field along a walking trail in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada. "Well it's acres and acres; it's a sea of web," said Allen McCormick. Prof. Rob Bennett, an expert on spiders who works at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, BC, Canada, said tiny, sheet-web weaver spiders known as Erigoninae linyphiidae most likely left the webs. Bennett said the spiders cast a web net to catch the wind and float away in a process known as ballooning. The webs in the field are the spiders' drag lines, left behind as they climb to the top of long grass to be whisked away by the wind. Bennett said it's a mystery why these spiders take off en masse.

Comment Re:yaaaaaaay... (Score 1) 226

by Hognoxious (#48408375) Attached to: Coding Bootcamps Presented As "College Alternative"

If someone doesn't know more than just JQuery they will be unable to cope when their code doesn't produce the desired result.

You could say exactly the same about Visual Basic. And yet there's plenty of VB monkeys who don't know anything else.

If the project's requirements change in such a way that it can no longer be completed in baby's first development library, that "developer" then becomes a liability to his or her employer.

Then they boot him and hire someone who knows kQuery. Or if he's lucky they send him on a course.

he or she will be unable to assess situations in which JQuery is not used yet may be appropriate, or in which jQuery is used but would not be appropriate.

Why is that part of a JQuery developer's job description?
Science

Electric Shock Study Suggests We'd Rather Hurt Ourselves Than Others 123

Posted by Soulskill from the unless-it's-over-the-internet dept.
sciencehabit writes: If you had the choice between hurting yourself or someone else in exchange for money, how altruistic do you think you'd be? In one infamous experiment, people were quite willing to deliver painful shocks to anonymous victims when asked by a scientist. But a new study that forced people into the dilemma of choosing between pain and profit finds that participants cared more about other people's well-being than their own. It is hailed as the first hard evidence of altruism for the young field of behavioral economics.

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