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Submission + - Mark Pincus Tries Again To Save Zynga, Stepping In As CEO (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Zynga founder Mark Pincus is rejoining the gaming company as CEO effective immediately, replacing Don Mattrick, who led Zynga for less than two years. The company reported a net loss of $45 million in the fourth quarter of 2014. In 2013 it laid off more than 500 employees, or 18 percent of its workforce. Pincus’s return is surprising, because he led the company during its downturn as well as in its heady early days.

Submission + - A Low Cost Satellite Groundstation Network using modified RTL-SDRs (rtl-sdr.com)

Submitted by Habberhead
Habberhead writes: The RTL-SDR website is running an article about a group that is aiming to provide low cost radio receivers intended to monitor satellites, to students and any other interested communities in order to promote worldwide education in science, technology and engineering.

By donating the hardware to schools and educational groups, the ThumbNet Project is trying to increase global attention to STEM courses for students who might otherwise never hear about it.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What would a constructed language have to be to replace English? 8

Submitted by Loren Chorley
Loren Chorley writes: This idea has fascinated me for a long time and I'd like to start a project with some of my own ideas and anyone who's interested. Though I'd really like to hear what the Slashdot community thinks on the topic first. Not necessarily is it possible, because it's highly unlikely, but rather if it were to happen, what would that language have to be and have to have. More specifically: How could the language be made as easy as possible to learn coming from any linguistic background? How could interest in the language be fostered in as many people as possible? What sort of grammar would you choose and why? How would you build words and how would you select meanings for them, and why? What sounds and letters (and script(s)) would you choose and why? How important is simplicity and brevity, and why? How important are aesthetics and what makes a language aesthetic? What other factors could be important to consider and what other things would you like to see in such a language?

Comment Re:After School? (Score 1) 2

by braindrainbahrain (#49425811) Attached to: Robotics is better for kids than sports!
There are no easy answers, but some companies and organizations will support the development of a robotics team. See the FIRST robotics website for info:

http://www.usfirst.org/robotic...

Corporate sponsors sometimes make available resources and/or mentors. Maybe some more kids would be interested if they actually saw the robots?

Submission + - Robotics is better for kids than sports! (leadwithastory.com) 2

Submitted by braindrainbahrain
braindrainbahrain writes: This comes as no surprise to the slashdot readership, but motivational speaker and author Paul Smith lists ten reasons why you should have your kids do robotics rather than organized sports as an after-school activity. The reasons range from the very practical (what are the chances of becoming a pro sports player?) to... sportsmanship (the losers congratulating the winners). Won't someone please think of the children?

Submission + - Evidence of ET? Regular pettern observed in Fast Radio Bursts (arxiv.org)

Submitted by braindrainbahrain
braindrainbahrain writes: Fast Radio Bursts are a rarely observed phenomenon in radio astronomy consisting of, well, very short bursts of radio signals. Astronomers have measured the dispersion of recorded bursts and determined that the dispersion measures occur in integer multiples. No known physical cause of this is known. Have we stumbled upon the activities of ET?

Submission + - Why CSI: Cyber Matters (cyberdefensereview.org)

Submitted by hypercard
hypercard writes: CSI: Cyber has been the butt of many jokes in the info community since its inception. But in addition to facilitating lots of cyber bingo events and live tweets to call out technical errors, the show has real value in bringing awareness about infosec issues to the masses. Members of the Army Cyber Institute at West Point discuss the upside of CSI: Cyber in an article in the Cyber Defense Review. Shad Moss (aka Bow Wow), has more followers than the entire top one thousand information security professionals on twitter, and Shad Moss is just one cast member!

Submission + - Physical sciences contribute 22% of economy (universityworldnews.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: According to a report published in Australit — http://www.science.org.au/scie... — physical sciences, including core disciplines of physics, chemistry, earth sciences and the mathematical sciences have contributed around 22% of the Australian economy The direct contribution of the advanced physical and mathematical sciences is equal to 11% of the economy while additional and flow-on benefits add another 11%, bringing the total benefits to almost A$300 billion a year The report also notes that this estimate is likely to be conservative, and sets out several other areas of benefit that are harder to measure The report carefully considered the pathways by which the advanced physical and mathematical sciences yielded economic benefits and the Australian community’s continuing commitment to the advanced physical and mathematical sciences would be needed to ensure that the benefits from what is essentially a global scientific enterprise will continue to accrue to the Australian economy The economists who prepared the report conducted industry consultations to determine the importance of the physical sciences to Australia’s 506 industry classes. They outline the economic contribution of the sciences to the top 10 industry groups in an appendix to the report There are three distinct sources of useful knowledge, the report says: the core disciplines of mathematics, physics and chemistry can provide useful knowledge individually and it takes banking as an example: "“Part of the banking industry relies on complex mathematically based models that support risk and investment decisions, but on no other science input. We estimate that 3.6% of Australia’s economic output is produced from inputs that embody useful knowledge from a single core discipline” The economists also estimate that 7.3% of Australia’s economic output is produced from inputs that embody useful knowledge from multiple disciplines. So the multidisciplinary nature of science means that the total impact of science is greater than the sum of the contributions of the individual sciences

Submission + - Arizona Senator Proposes Law to Require Mandatory Church Attendance

Submitted by Pikoro
Pikoro writes: Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen (R), during a committee meeting, put forth a proposal to submit a law requiring mandatory church attendance.

Allen explained that without a "moral rebirth" in the country, more people may feel the need to carry a weapon.
"I believe what's happening to our country is that there's a moral erosion of the soul of America," she said.

It's a sad sign of the times when Senators have forgotten that one of the founding pillars of the United States is separation of church and state.

Submission + - Rebuilding the PDP-8...with a Raspberry Pi (hackaday.io)

Submitted by braindrainbahrain
braindrainbahrain writes: Hacker Oscarv wanted a PDP-8 mini computer. But a buying a real PDP-8 was horribly expensive and out of the question. So Oscarv did the next best thing: use a Raspberry Pi as the computing engine and interface it to a replica PDP-8 front panel, complete with boatloads of fully functional switches and LEDs.

Submission + - US Government Doesn't Want You to Know How to Make a Hydrogen Bomb 3

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: The atom bomb — leveler of Hiroshima and instant killer of some 80,000 people — is just a pale cousin compared to the hydrogen bomb, another product of American ingenuity, that easily packs the punch of a thousand Hiroshimas. That is why Washington has for decades done everything in its power to keep the details of its design out of the public domain. Now William J. Broad reports in the NYT that Kenneth W. Ford has defied a federal order to cut material from his new book that the government says teems with thermonuclear secrets. Ford says he included the disputed material because it had already been disclosed elsewhere and helped him paint a fuller picture of an important chapter of American history. But after he volunteered the manuscript for a security review, federal officials told him to remove about 10 percent of the text, or roughly 5,000 words. “They wanted to eviscerate the book,” says Ford. “My first thought was, ‘This is so ridiculous I won’t even respond.’ ” For instance, the federal agency wanted him to strike a reference to the size of the first hydrogen test device — its base was seven feet wide and 20 feet high. Dr. Ford responded that public photographs of the device, with men, jeeps and a forklift nearby, gave a scale of comparison that clearly revealed its overall dimensions.

Though difficult to make, hydrogen bombs are attractive to nations and militaries because their fuel is relatively cheap. Inside a thick metal casing, the weapon relies on a small atom bomb that works like a match to ignite the hydrogen fuel. Today, Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States are the only declared members of the thermonuclear club, each possessing hundreds or thousands of hydrogen bombs. Military experts suspect that Israel has dozens of hydrogen bombs. India, Pakistan and North Korea are seen as interested in acquiring the potent weapon. The big secret the book discusses is thermal equilibrium, the discovery that the temperature of the hydrogen fuel and the radiation could match each other during the explosion (PDF). World Scientific, a publisher in Singapore, recently made Dr. Ford’s book public in electronic form, with print versions to follow. Ford remains convinced the book “contains nothing whatsoever whose dissemination could, by any stretch of the imagination, damage the United States or help a country that is trying to build a hydrogen bomb.” “Were I to follow all — or even most — of your suggestions,” says Ford, “it would destroy the book.”

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