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Submission + - Girls Rule, Boys Not So Much in NYC Plan for High School CS Education 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: While Washington State educators bucked the don't-worry-about-boys approach to high school CS education espoused by Microsoft, Google, and others, the New York City Dept. of Education appear to have no such qualms. According to posted program requirements, principals of NYC Schools seeking a share of the $5.4 million NSF grant for Bringing a Rigorous Computer Science Principles Course to the Largest School System in the United States must "implement a recruitment plan with a focus on enrolling female and underrepresented students into the course." According to a White House fact sheet, "the course will draw more students into the discipline by focusing on foundational computing skills and the creative aspects of computing." In an interview last week, President Obama said that he has encouraged his two daughters to learn to code, although they haven’t taken to it the way he’d like. "Part of the problem," the President added, "is that we are not helping schools and teachers teach it in an interesting way."

Submission + - Routing on OpenStreetMap.org (openstreetmap.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Good news for OpenStreetMap: the main website now has A-to-B routing (directions) built in to the homepage! The OSM website offers directions which are powered by third-parties using OSM data, providing car, bike, and foot routing. OpenStreetMap has a saying: “what gets rendered, gets mapped” – meaning that often you don’t notice a bit of data that needs tweaking unless it actually shows up on the map image. It will make OpenStreetMap’s data better by creating a virtuous feedback loop.

Submission + - When Chess Players Blunder (medium.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Joe Doliner has done a statistical analysis of mistakes in rated chess games. He used a chess engine called Crafty, which is capable of not only finding mistakes, but quantifying how bad they are. After crunching all the matches on chessgames.com in 2014, which amounted to almost 5 million moves, Crafry found only 67,175 blunders that were equivalent to a 2-pawn deficit or worse. With a pair of graphs, Doliner shows how mistakes decrease as player rating increases, as you'd expect. According to the trendline, gaining 600 rating points roughly halves the number of mistakes a player makes. He made the data and tools available in a public repository for others to dig into.

Comment Re:202,586 (Score 2) 233

by NitsujTPU (#49070491) Attached to: Mars One: Final 100 Candidates Selected

A good friend of mine was in the interview process to become an astronaut, and, I have to be honest, I don't think that it hurt her career or her life in any way. She didn't end up an astronaut, but she met a bunch of interesting people, did cool things, and ultimately landed a job at a top university. I doubt she regrets it one bit. If that's what failure looks like, sign me up.

Submission + - AT&T To Match Google Fiber in Kansas City, Charge More If You Want Privacy (kansascity.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: When Google Fiber started bringing gigabit internet to cities around the U.S., we wondered how the incumbent carriers would respond. Now we know: AT&T has announced they will match Google Fiber's gigabit offerings in Kansas City. Of course, there are some caveats. First, AT&T's rollout may stop as it fights the Obama administration over net neutrality. Not that it would be a nationwide rollout anyway: "AT&T does not plan to offer the ultra-fast Internet lines to every home in the market. Rather, he said the company would calculate where demand is strongest and the investment in stringing new cables promised a decent return."

There are also some interesting pricing concerns. The company plans to charge $70/month for gigabit service, but that's a subsidized price. Subsidized by what, you ask? Your privacy. AT&T says if you want to opt out of letting them track your browsing history, you'll have to pay $29 more per month. They say your information is used to serve targeted advertising, and includes any links you follow and search terms you enter.

Submission + - Nanotech Makes Steel 10x Stronger (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A new metal-making process currently in testing at oil fields uses nano-scale plating to make metals like steel as much as ten times stronger than they would be without it. "[The process] uses an advanced form of electroplating, a process already used to make the chrome plating you might see on the engine and exhaust pipes of a motorcycle. Electroplating involves immersing a metal part in a chemical bath containing various metal ions, and then applying an electrical current to cause those ions to form a metal coating. The company uses a bath that contains more than one kind of metal ion and controls how ions are deposited by varying the electrical current. By changing the current at precise moments, it can create a layered structure, with each layer being several nanometers thick and of different composition. The final coating can be up to a centimeter thick and can greatly change the properties of the original material."

Submission + - Nuclear plants delayed in China, watched closely by US firms (pennenergy.com)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: U.S. power companies struggling with the escalating costs of building nuclear plants are closely watching similar efforts in China, where officials are expecting delays.

Two plants under construction in Sanmen and Haiyang, China, are the first-ever built using Westinghouse Electric Co.'s AP1000 reactor design. Utility companies in Georgia and South Carolina are building two similar plants in the United States using a very similar design. Since the project in China is father along, U.S. executives and safety regulators watch it closely.

Officials at China's State Nuclear Power Technology Corp. blame the delays on the late delivery of equipment from the United States. Westinghouse Electric Co. and project manufacturers are working to redesign a coolant pump for the plant.

Chinese officials are building a fleet of nuclear plants as they aim to produce a fifth of their country's electricity from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030.

"Because it is the first of this kind in the world, it is normal to have some delay," said Guo Hongbo, director of the firm's general office. He was vague on how long the delays may last. "It is not a problem whether the delay is one year or two years. The technological breakthrough will be utterly valuable to the development of ... world nuclear power."

The projects in the United States are already under cost pressure. Westinghouse Electric Co. and Chicago Bridge & Iron Co. expect construction of two new AP1000 reactors at Plant Vogtle in eastern Georgia will go three years beyond the approved schedule, according to financial filings. Southern Co., which owns a 46 percent stake in the plant, and the plant's other owners have not accepted that timeline.

Regulators in Georgia estimate the latest delays could push Southern Co.'s share of spending on the plant from $6.1 billion to more than $8 billion.

A sister plant owned by SCANA Corp. and Santee Cooper in South Carolina has run into similar delays and cost overruns.

Submission + - CPUC Decision on Comcast/TimeWarner Merger

Submitted by Lord Flipper
Lord Flipper writes: The California Public Utilities Commission decision on the Comcast/Time-Warner proposed merger has just been released. It's not an exciting read, BUT, the 25-bullet-point Appendix to the decision is a shocker. Example:

"19. Comcast shall for a period of five years following the effective date of the parent company merger neither oppose, directly or indirectly, nor fund opposition to, any municipal broadband development plan in California, nor any CASF or CTF application within its service territory that otherwise meets the requirements of CASF or CTF."

- Whoa! Trust me, Comcast was NOT expecting this at all. Here's one more, as an example:

"8. Comcast shall offer Time Warner’s Carrier Ethernet Last Mile Access product to interested CLECs throughout the combined service territories of the merging companies for a period of five years from the effective date of the parent company at the same prices, terms and conditions as offered by Time Warner prior to the merger."

What #8 means, was confusing to me, at first, as it appears they are saying Comcast has to let current TW customers continue to use, or take advantage of, something they already have. But that's not the case, at all. "CLECs" is CPUC shorthand for Competitive Local Exchange Carrier. And the ruling by the CPUC covers all customers, now, or in the future of the combined entity, here in California. What they're talking about here, simply, is opening up Last Mile Access.

Personally, I see this as a much larger "step, but step only, in the right direction, but the ruling today is definitely a total shocker. It could nix the merger, in California, only, or... it could light a fire under the asses of the FCC, or, the "codified" long-shot: it could bring real competition to Internet access, here in California, pronto.

The CPUC is basing their entire decision on Common Carrier law (Setion 706, as opposed to Title II), and, unlike the projected FCC decision (coming around the 26th of the month) the CPUC's decision has all kinds of "teeth" as opposed to the FCC's "Title II, with forbearance" approach. It could very interesting, very soon.

Here's the link to the PDF of the Decision: http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/Publis...
Displays

Ask Slashdot: Affordable Large HD/UHD/4K "Stupid" Screens? 330

Posted by timothy from the sorry-dave-can't-let-you-do-that dept.
New submitter LOGINS SUC (713291) writes Truly in the first-world problems category, I've been looking for large format (>55") HD/UHD screens for home entertainment. In light of the recent Samsung big-brother monitoring and advertisement injection concerns, does any reputable manufacturer still make "stupid" TVs? I don't want to pay for all the WiFi, apps, cameras, or microphones. I don't need it to have speakers. And at this point, I don't even care if it has the TV receiver functionality. All this stuff leads to vendor lock-in or is well on the path to obsolescence by the time I purchase the device. I prefer all of this non-visual functionality be handled by devices better suited to the purpose and I don't want to pay for screens including these widgets I have no intention of ever using, at all.

I've searched all the normal retail outlets. If I find anything, they are wildly expensive. "Computer monitors" fit the bill but are almost all 55") LCDs in the sub-$3,000 range anymore? Are projectors the last bastion of visual purity for home entertainment?

Submission + - Jay Z makes €50m bid to take on Spotify (musicbusinessworldwide.com)

Submitted by journovampire
journovampire writes: Watch out Daniel Ek: Jay Z might be coming for your market share.

According to breaking reports out of Scandinavia, the rap legend and entrepreneur’s company has tabled a bid of half a billion Swedish Krone (€53m) for Aspiro – the parent company of high-def streaming platform WimP/Tidal.

Submission + - BT Unveils 1000Mbps Capable G.fast Broadband Rollout for the United Kingdom

Submitted by Mark.JUK
Mark.JUK writes: The national telecoms operator for the United Kingdom, BT, has today announced that it will begin a country-wide deployment of the next generation hybrid-fibre G.fast (ITU G.9701) broadband technology from 2016/17, with most homes being told to expect speeds of up to 500Mbps (Megabits per second) and a premium service offering 1000Mbps will also be available.

At present BT already covers most of the UK with hybrid Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) technology, which delivers download speeds of up to 80Mbps by running a fibre optic cable to a local street cabinet and then using VDSL2 over the remaining copper line from the cabinet to homes. G.fast follows a similar principal, but it brings the fibre optic cable even closer to homes (often by installing smaller remote nodes on telegraph poles) and uses more radio spectrum (17-106MHz) over a shorter remaining run of copper cable (ideally less than 250 metres).

The reliance upon copper cable means that the real-world speeds for some, such as those living furthest away from the remote nodes, will probably struggle to match up to BT’s claims. Never the less many telecoms operators see this as being a more cost effective approach to broadband than deploying a pure fibre optic / Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) network.

Submission + - Facebook Censoring Images of the Prophet Muhammad In Turkey (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Immediately following the Charlie Hebdo attack, Mark Zuckerberg said, "... this is what we all need to reject — a group of extremists trying to silence the voices and opinions of everyone else around the world. I won't let that happen on Facebook. I'm committed to building a service where you can speak freely without fear of violence." Now, Facebook has begun censoring images of the prophet Muhammad in Turkey. According to the Washington post, "It’s an illustration, perhaps, of how extremely complicated and nuanced issues of online speech really are. It’s also conclusive proof of what many tech critics said of Zuckerberg’s free-speech declaration at the time: Sweeping promises are all well and good, but Facebook’s record doesn't entirely back it up." To be fair to Zuckerberg and Facebook, the company must obey the law of any country in which it operates. But it stands in stark contrast to the principles espoused by its founder.

Submission + - Justice Department: Default Encryption Has Created a 'Zone of Lawlessness'

Submitted by Jason Koebler
Jason Koebler writes: Leslie Caldwell, an assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, said Tuesday that the department is “very concerned” by the Google’s and Apple’s decision to automatically encrypt all data on Android and iOS devices.
“We understand the value of encryption and the importance of security,” she said. “But we’re very concerned they not lead to the creation of what I would call a ‘zone of lawlessness,’ where there’s evidence that we could have lawful access through a court order that we’re prohibited from getting because of a company’s technological choices.”

Submission + - Interview with a pentester (rawhex.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Penetration testers are often viewed as professional versions of hackers, galavanting from conference to datacentre around the world popping systems left, right and centre. The truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. Raw Hex interviews John Carroll, a penetration tester in an internal bank. Interestingly, John was the first person to win a bugcrowd bug bounty and also talks about the incorrect perception of pentesters having access to some sort of black magic.

Submission + - Apple posts $18B quarterly profit, highest ever by any company

Submitted by jmcbain
jmcbain writes: Today, Apple reported its financial results for the quarter ending December 31, 2014. It posted $18 billion in profit (on $74 billion in revenue), the largest quarterly profit by any company ever. The previous record was $16 billion by Russia’s Gazprom (the largest natural gas extractor in the world) in 2011. Imagine how much better Apple could be if they open-sourced their software.

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