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Submission + - SKA space telescope to offer neighbours cheap broadband (htxt.co.za)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Square Kilometer Array is a giant space telescope currently being built in the middle of the Karoo in South Africa, which when complete will be 50 times more sensitive than any existing Earth-based telescope. The problem is that it's so sensitive, the thousands of antennas need to be protected from terrestrial radio interference. Given that cell masts and technologies like TB white spaces are the only way people living in the remote areas near SKA are going to be able to get affordable net access, this is a bit of a problem.
In order that its neighbours aren't completely cut-off, SKA is offering them subsidised satellite broadband instead. Which is nice.

Submission + - France Wants To Get Rid Of Diesel Fuel

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: France wants to gradually phase out the use of diesel fuel for private passenger transport and will put in place a system to identify the most polluting vehicles, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Friday. Next year, the government will launch a car identification system that will rank vehicles by the amount of pollution they emit, Valls said in a speech. This will make it possible for local authorities to limit city access for the dirtiest cars. "In France, we have long favoured the diesel engine. This was a mistake, and we will progressively undo that, intelligently and pragmatically," Valls said. About 80 percent of French motorists drive diesel-powered cars. Valls said taxation would have to orient citizens towards more ecological choices, notably the 2015 state budget measures to reduce the tax advantage of diesel fuel versus gas.

Submission + - Another community gets split by systemd: Devuan is "forking" Debian (devuan.org)

Submitted by jaromil
jaromil writes: The so called "Veteran Unix Admin" collective announces that the "fork" of Debian will proceed as a result of the recent systemd debacle. 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". A website is up on https://devuan.org/ with more information.

Submission + - Facebook Can't Cite Evidence to Support Claims of U.S. Tech Worker Shortage

Submitted by sycodon
sycodon writes: Facebook, which has spent millions trying to get massive amnesty legislation that would include huge increases in the number of guest-worker permits that would lower the wages of tech workers, cannot cite any definitive evidence pointing to a shortage of American high-tech workers.

I know..."Breitbart!". Well here it is from a left leaning source... The Atlantic

Submission + - 'Sophisticated' Android malware hits phones .. (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Hundreds of thousands of Android phones have been infected with malware that uses handsets to send spam and buy event tickets in bulk ..

NotCompatible is being spread via spam and websites seeded with booby-trapped downloads, he said and urged Android users to be wary of any app that required a security update to be installed before it was run ...

Submission + - Researchers Find The Tech Worker Shortage Doesn't Really Exist (businessweek.com)

Submitted by Beeftopia
Beeftopia writes: From the article: "For a real-life example of an actual worker shortage, Salzman points to the case of petroleum engineers, where the supply of workers has failed to keep up with the growth in oil exploration. The result, says Salzman, was just what economists would have predicted: Employers started offering more money, more people started becoming petroleum engineers, and the shortage was solved. In contrast, Salzman concluded in a paper released last year by the liberal Economic Policy Institute, real IT wages are about the same as they were in 1999. Further, he and his co-authors found, only half of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) college graduates each year get hired into STEM jobs. “We don’t dispute the fact at all that Facebook (FB) and Microsoft (MSFT) would like to have more, cheaper workers,” says Salzman’s co-author Daniel Kuehn, now a research associate at the Urban Institute. “But that doesn’t constitute a shortage.”

Submission + - "Advanced Life Support" Ambulances May Lead To More Deaths

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Jason Kane reports at PBS that emergency treatments delivered in ambulances that offer “Advanced Life Support” for cardiac arrest may be linked to more death, comas and brain damage than those providing “Basic Life Support.” "They’re taking a lot of time in the field to perform interventions that don’t seem to be as effective in that environment,” says Prachi Sanghavi. “Of course, these are treatments we know are good in the emergency room, but they’ve been pushed into the field without really being tested and the field is a much different environment.” The study suggests that high-tech equipment and sophisticated treatment techniques may distract from what’s most important during cardiac arrest — transporting a critically ill patient to the hospital quickly.

Basic Life Support (BLS) ambulances stick to simpler techniques, like chest compressions, basic defibrillation and hand-pumped ventilation bags to assist with breathing with more emphasis placed on getting the patient to the hospital as soon as possible. Survival rates for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients are extremely low regardless of the ambulance type with roughly 90 percent of the 380,000 patients who experience cardiac arrest outside of a hospital each year not surviving to hospital discharge. But researchers found that 90 days after hospitalization, patients treated in BLS ambulances were 50 percent more likely to survive than their counterparts treated with ALS. Not everyone is convinced of the conclusions. “They’ve done as much as they possibly can with the existing data but I’m not sure that I’m convinced they have solved all of the selection biases,” says Judith R. Lave. “I would say that it should be taken as more of an indication that there may be some very significant problems here.”

Submission + - Both NY and LA Times write that Silicon Valley can't find enough talent. 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The New York Times has featured Zenefits in an article about the need for more H1-B visas, because they can't find enough qualified U.S. workers to fill their active positions, even after President Obama's recent Executive Actions. The Los Angeles Times has done similarly. Why are so many jobs, primarily in Silicon Valley it seems, going unfilled in 2014?

Submission + - Robots Put To Work On E-Waste (unsw.edu.au)

Submitted by aesoteric
aesoteric writes: Australian researchers have programmed industrial robots to tackle the vast array of e-waste thrown out every year. The research shows robots can learn and memorise how various electronic products — such as LCD screens — are designed, enabling those products to be disassembled for recycling faster and faster. The end goal is less than five minutes to dismantle a product.

Submission + - women (and to a lesser degree men) with multiple children are most productive (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by jehan60188
jehan60188 writes: from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

"That’s the conclusion of a recent study from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, which found that over the course of a 30-year career, mothers outperformed women without children at almost every stage of the game. In fact, mothers with at least two kids were the most productive of all. ...
They decided to analyze the amount of research published by more than 10,000 academic economists as a proxy for performance. A job in the ivory tower of academia requires higher education by definition, and their work is easily searched, recorded and ranked.

It's important to point out that the authors are examining a very narrow group of women with privileged circumstances. Parenthood was likely planned for many them, with benefits such as maternity leave and paid sick time. They can also better afford to pay for resources like reliable childcare that allow them to work longer. Low-income or low-skilled mothers often face a very different working environment."

full paper: http://research.stlouisfed.org...

Submission + - Google to lease and refurbish Naval Air Base for space exploration (go.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: Google has signed a long-term lease for part of a historic Navy air base, where it plans to renovate three massive hangars and use them for projects involving aviation, space exploration and robotics. The giant Internet company will pay $1.16 billion in rent over 60 years for the property, which also includes a working air field, golf course and other buildings. The 1,000-acre site is part of the former Moffett Field Naval Air Station on the San Francisco Peninsula. Google plans to invest more than $200 million to refurbish the hangars and add other improvements, including a museum or educational facility that will showcase the history of Moffett and Silicon Valley, according to a NASA statement. The agency said a Google subsidiary called Planetary Ventures LLC will use the hangars for "research, development, assembly and testing in the areas of space exploration, aviation, rover/robotics and other emerging technologies"

NASA plans to continue operating its Ames Research Center on the former Navy site. Google will take over operations at the runways and hangars, including a massive structure that was built to house dirigible-style Navy airships in the 1930s. NASA said the deal will save it $6.3 million in annual maintenance and operation costs

Submission + - U.S. Postal service hacked and 500k+ employess and public data breached (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Postal Service has admitted that it has suffered a massive security breach, with the disclosure to hackers of the personal details of over 500,000 USPS workers, along with details supplied by members of the public when contacting Postal Service call centers between January and mid-August of 2015.

The breach is a hard blow to the integrity and reputation of the USPS's internal security set-up, the Corporate Information Security Office (CISO). In 2012 CISO reports that it blocked 257 billion unauthorised attempts to access the USPS network, 66,734 attempts to distribute credit-card information, 1,278 attempts to reveal USPS-ordained credit-card transactions and 345,342 attempts to distribute social security numbers.

Submission + - Italian Supreme Court Bans the 'Microsoft Tax' (fsf.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In a post at the Free Software Foundation, lawyer Marco Ciurcina reports that the Italian Supreme Court has ruled that the practice of forcing users to pay for a Windows license when they buy a new PC is illegal. Manufacturers in Italy are now legally obligated to refund that money if a buyer wants to put GNU/Linux or another free OS on the computer. Ciurcina says, "The focus of the Court's reasoning is that the sale of a PC with software preinstalled is not like the sale of a car with its components (the 4 wheels, the engine, etc.) that therefore are sold jointly. Buying a computer with preinstalled software, the user is required to conclude two different contracts: the first, when he buys the computer; the second, when he turns on the computer for the first time and he is required to accept or not the license terms of the preinstalled software.9 Therefore, if the user does not accept the software license, he has the right to keep the computer and install free software without having to pay the 'Microsoft tax.'"

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