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Submission + - IA State AIDS Researcher Admits to Falsifying Findings

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "With countless lives depending on their work," writes Brett Smith, "it seems unthinkable that AIDS researchers might falsify their work. However, that's just what Iowa State University assistant professor Dong-Pyou Han has admitted to, according to federal documents." Han resigned from the project in October after admitting to tampering with samples to give the appearance that an experimental vaccine was causing lab animals to build up protections against HIV. According to the NIH, Han apparently spiked rabbit blood with human blood components from people whose bodies had produced antibodies to HIV. 'This positive result was striking, and it caught everybody’s attention,' said the NIH. However, researchers at other institutions became suspicious after they were unsuccessful in duplicating the ISU results. The Iowa State AIDS research project had been awarded $19 million in federal grants over the past several years. Han has agreed to be banned from participating in any federally-financed research for three years.

Submission + - Chromebooks' Success in 2013 is a Gut Punch to Microsoft 3

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Gregg Keizer reports at Computerworld that Chromebooks accounted for 21% of all US commercial notebook sales in 2013 through November, and 10% of all computers and tablets. Both shares were up massively from 2012 when Chromebooks accounted for an almost-invisible two-tenths of one percent of all computer and tablet sales. That’s really rough news news for Microsoft, which is the principal loser of market share against the Chromebooks. Part of the attraction of Chromebooks is their low prices: The systems forgo high-resolution displays, rely on inexpensive graphics chipsets, include paltry amounts of RAM — often just 2GB — and get by with little local storage. And their operating system, Chrome OS, doesn't cost computer makers a dime. "A few years ago, Chromebooks were a bit of a laughing stock. They were underperforming single-purpose laptops that weren’t even good at the only thing they could do that is, surf the web," says Frederic Lardinois. "Over the last year, ChromeOS also went from a one-trick pony to something that’s more like a “real” operating system." Today’s Chromebooks are nothing like the old Cr-48 prototype Google once sent out to bloggers in late 2010. The fact that Microsoft has now started making fun of them just shows that it’s concerned about losing market share in the business world. "Google is doing with its Chrome OS for PCs what it did with Android for smartphones," says Matt Marshall. "No wonder Google is starting to eating Microsoft’s lunch."

Submission + - Tech Startup Publishes the Salary Of Every Employee including the CEO 2

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Paul Szoldra reports at Business Insider that Joel Gascoigne, CEO of social media startup Buffer, reveals his salary along with the salary of every single employee in the company, and includes the formula the company uses to get to each one. "One of the highest values we have at Buffer is transparency," says Gascoigne. "We do quite a number of things internally and externally in line with this value. Transparency breeds trust, and that’s one of the key reasons for us to place such a high importance on it." Gascoigne, who has a salary of $158,800, revealed the exact formula Buffer uses to get to each employe's number: Salary = job type X seniority X experience + location (+ $10K if salary choice). Gascoigne says his open salary system is part of Buffer's “Default to Transparency" and says Buffer is willing to update the formula as the company grows but hopes that its focus on work/life balance fosters employees that are in it for the long haul. “In Silicon Valley, there’s a culture of people jumping from one place to the next,” says Gascoigne. “That’s why we focus on culture. Doing it this way means we can grow just as fast—if not faster—than doing it the ‘normal’ cutthroat way. We’re putting oil into the engine to make sure everything can work smoothly so we can just shoot ahead and that’s what we’re starting to see.”

Submission + - NSA's Legal Win Introduces a Lot of Online Insecurity (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: The decision of a New York judge that the wholesale collection of cell-phone metadata by the National Security Agency is constitutional ties the score between pro- and anti-NSA forces at one victory apiece. The contradictory decisions use similar reasoning and criteria to come to opposite conclusions, leaving both individuals and corporations uncertain of whether their phone calls, online activity or even data stored in the cloud will ultimately be shielded by U.S. laws protecting property, privacy or search and seizure by law-enforcement agencies. On Dec. 27, Judge William H. Pauley threw out a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that sought to stop the NSA PRISM cell-phone metadata-collection program on the grounds it violated Fourth Amendment provisions protecting individual privacy and limits on search and seizure of personal property by the federal government. Pauley threw out the lawsuit largely due to his conclusion that Fourth Amendment protections do not apply to records held by third parties. That eliminates the criteria for most legal challenges, but throws into question the privacy of any data held by phone companies, cloud providers or external hosting companies – all of which could qualify as unprotected third parties.

Comment Re:There must be a very good reason... (Score 1) 579

by shugah (#45797509) Attached to: Utilities Fight Back Against Solar Energy
One more thing - diesel or bio-diesel plants (70% of Hawaiian mix) are often used for peaking / on-demand power production so are entirely suitable for quickly turning up or down depending on demand. There is only 1 coal plant in Hawaii and very little natural gas, so the most of Hawaii's base load is of the on-demand variety.

Comment Re:There must be a very good reason... (Score 1) 579

by shugah (#45797469) Attached to: Utilities Fight Back Against Solar Energy
Hawaii's electrical energy mix is approximately 12% from all renewable sources. 70% of electrical generation is from petroleum (mostly Bio-Diesell) with the remainder from a single coal plant. Roughly half of that renewable energy supply is sourced from biomass and geothermal, which are both highly available and predictable. Solar provides roughly 8% of Hawaii's renewable energy or less than 1% of its total electrical energy supply. Wind energy provides roughly 30% of the renewable supply or 4% of the total. Based on these numbers, solar production is far from saturated.

Submission + - Copyright troll lawfirm Prenday Law facing repurcussions at home (startribune.com)

Submitted by onyxruby
onyxruby writes: A Federal judge has taken the unusual step of re-opening a number of cases in Minnesota that may have also suffered fraud from Prenda lawfirm lawyers Paul Hansmeier, John Steele and Paul Duffy. This is a direct result of the Prenda decision that was handed down in May.

It remains to be seen if they will face further repercussions for seeding their own torrents as they were often the ones who put their films on the Internet to begin with.

Comment Re:Yes, (Score 1) 614

by shugah (#43666353) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Why Won't Companies Upgrade Old Software?
I just did a risk assessment for a large hospital whose radiology information system is running OpenVMS on unclustered DEC Alpha hardware. The application stack is MUMPS based and no longer supported by the vendor (who no longer exists). They backup to tape and have never in the long, long life of the system test restored a backup set. Needless to say the risk assessment had a lot of red on it.

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