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Government

State Employees Say Rules Prevent Open "Climate Change" Discussion In Florida 366

An anonymous reader writes "The Florida Center for Investigative Reporting has an article in the Miami Herald about there being certain words state employees have been ordered to avoid: "We were told not to use the terms 'climate change', 'global warming', or 'sustainability'," said Christopher Byrd, an attorney with the DEP's Office of General Counsel in Tallahassee from 2008 to 2013. "That message was communicated to me and my colleagues by our superiors in the Office of General Counsel."

Comment Universal apps won't take off (Score 1) 445

Why would developers make an app that's restricted by an interface that would work on a phone and not a desktop? Essentially they would still have to write two different apps, or at least two different interfaces. Metro didn't seem to take off on the desktop so I don't think universal apps with similar interfaces will either, desktop users don't want them and writing apps that essentially only benefit a small userbase is not effective use of resources.
United States

Snowden Reportedly In Talks To Return To US To Face Trial 671

HughPickens.com writes: The Globe and Mail reports that Edward Snowden's Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, says the fugitive former U.S. spy agency contractor is working with American and German lawyers to return home. "I won't keep it secret that he wants to return back home. And we are doing everything possible now to solve this issue. There is a group of U.S. lawyers, there is also a group of German lawyers and I'm dealing with it on the Russian side." Kucherena added that Snowden is ready to return to the States, but on the condition that he is given a guarantee of a legal and impartial trial. The lawyer said Snowden had so far only received a guarantee from the U.S. Attorney General that he will not face the death penalty. Kucherena says Snowden is able to travel outside Russia since he has a three-year Russian residency permit, but "I suspect that as soon as he leaves Russia, he will be taken to the U.S. embassy."
Star Wars Prequels

Star Wars-Style "Bionic Hand' Fitted To First Patients 72

schwit1 writes "Three Austrians have replaced injured hands with bionic ones that they can control using nerves and muscles transplanted into their arms from their legs. The three men are the first to undergo what doctors refer to as "bionic reconstruction," which includes a voluntary amputation, the transplantation of nerves and muscles and learning to use faint signals from them to command the hand. Previously, people with bionic hands have primarily controlled them with manual settings."

Comment Good and bad for everything (Score 1) 94

I'm sure there are good reasons to datamine and bad reasons as well. Some goals yield benefits to many while others are more selfish. The question is if there can be more good done or more bad, and if the benefits outweigh the pitfalls. What are we wiling to sacrifice? Are our desires important enough to risk the pitfalls? Do we think we can account for the pitfalls and protect ourselves against them, or are we just being arrogant and blindsiding ourselves?

Why am I asking you?
Medicine

Low Vaccination Rates At Silicon Valley Daycare Facilities 580

Vaccination rates across the U.S. don't neatly correlate with religiosity or wealth; Wired reports that one conspicuous pocket of low vaccination rates, according to California's state database of daycare records, is a place where you might not expect it: Silicon Valley — specifically, the daycare centers at some large tech companies. A WIRED investigation shows that some children attending day care facilities affiliated with prominent Silicon Valley companies have not been completely vaccinated against preventable infectious diseases. At least, that’s according to a giant database from the California Department of Public Health, which tracks the vaccination rates at day care facilities and preschools in the state. We selected more than 20 large technology and health companies in the Bay Area and researched their day care offerings. Of 12 day care facilities affiliated with tech companies, six—that’s half—have below-average vaccination rates, according to the state’s data. ... And those six have a level of measles vaccination that does not provide the “herd immunity” critical to the spread of the disease. Now, this data has limitations—most critically, it might not be current. But it also suggests an incursion of anti-science, anti-vaccine thinking in one of the smartest regions on Earth.

Comment Best just to use social networks in moderation (Score 1) 467

A lot of people get caught up using these services and wind up judging the people they follow whether they troll them or not, even if snarky thoughts aren't expressed, they're still made, just from scrutinizing so much on such a scale. Just don't go on there every day and take it easy, it'll be better for your mind as well as your exposure to vitriol.
Wikipedia

One Man's Quest To Rid Wikipedia of Exactly One Grammatical Mistake 425

An anonymous reader writes with this Fascinating profile of one particular Wikipedia editor Giraffedata (a 51-year-old software engineer named Bryan Henderson), who has spent the last seven years correcting only the incorrect use of "comprised of" on Wikipedia. Using a code to crawl for uses of "comprised of" throughout all of Wiki's articles, he'll then go in and manually correct them (for example, using "consists of" or "composed of") and has made over 47,000 edits to date.
Displays

Mobile G-SYNC Confirmed and Tested With Leaked Driver 42

jones_supa writes: A few weeks ago, an ASUS Nordic support representative inadvertently made available an interim build of the NVIDIA graphics driver. This was a mobile driver build (version 346.87) focused at ASUS G751 line of laptops. The driver was pulled shortly, but PC Perspective managed to get their hands on a copy of it, and installed it on a ASUS G751 review unit. To everyone's surprise, a 'G-SYNC display connected' system tray notification appeared. It turned out to actually be a functional NVIDIA G-SYNC setup on a laptop. PC Perspective found a 100Hz LCD panel inside, ran some tests, and also noted that G-SYNC is picky about the Tcon implementation of the LCD, which can lead to some glitches if not implemented minutely. NVIDIA confirmed that G-SYNC on mobile is coming in the near future, but the company wasn't able to yet discuss an official arrival date or technology specifics.

Comment How useful will it be? (Score 1) 307

There won't be much to do on/with Windows for the Pi 2, the only thing people will be porting to it is the same open source software that's on Linux for the Pi, buy why take all the work to do that and accomplish basically the same thing that's already possible with Linux? Practice for developers I guess, but I don't see what new opportunities having Windows on the Pi will do, it's not like that will bring along the Windows software ecosysytem. It will be the same ecosystem we already have on Linux, except piece by piece and not everything will be there for a while. It will be easier and faster to get up and running with Linux on the Pi. Will Windows even be able to catch up in this niche that's already so well served?
Microsoft

Microsoft Announces Windows For Raspberry Pi 2 307

jones_supa writes Microsoft is expanding their Windows Developer Program for Internet of Things by delivering a version of Windows 10 that runs on the Raspberry Pi 2. This release of Windows 10 will be free for the maker community through the Windows Developer Program for IoT. With an official partnership with the Raspberry Pi Foundation, Microsoft is bringing development tools, services and ecosystem to the Raspberry Pi community. More details will be shared in the coming months. You can already join the program and be amongst the first to receive product information and beta software releases.

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