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Submission + - U.S. home electricity use declines for 3rd straight year (www.cbc.ca) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For a third year in a row the U.S. home has used less electricity. The continuing focus on energy conservation combined with new technology has and probably will continue to show promise.

Submission + - You Are Your Metadata (theguardian.com)

Submitted by sidemouse
sidemouse writes: We are asked to accept invasions of privacy based on a distinction between information we deem personal and private and the cyber-techno term metadata. I'm not sure this distinction exists. Imagine the pre-internet world again: what is your metadata? The pub you frequent, the friends you talk to, the duration of your conversation with an attractive stranger, where you go afterwards and for how long. I think the metadata of my life *is* my life.

Submission + - USA Today names Edward Snowden tech person of the year (usatoday.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the American people, through their elected representatives in Washington, chose to exchange a significant amount of freedom for safety. But until a lone information-technology contractor named Edward Snowden leaked a trove of National Security Agency documents to the media this summer, we didn't know just how much we'd surrendered. Now that we do, our nation can have a healthy debate — out in the open, as a democracy should debate — about how good a bargain we got in that exchange.

For facilitating that debate, at great risk to his own personal liberty, Snowden is this column's technology person of the year for 2013."

Submission + - When Slashdot Beta goes mainstream, where will you go? 5

Submitted by EzInKy
EzInKy writes: I'm sure most of you have checked it out, and am just as sure most of you don't like what they are plan to force upon us. So my question is, where do you plan on getting your Slashdot fix once the beta becomes the default? I know I'm trying to learn CSS so I can undo the damage they are inflicting.

Comment Re:what about your next job? (Score 1) 229

When sitting in that job interview with a prospective employer, you can't even be coy about what you used to make, since the new employer can just look it up on Buffer's site... "oh, you made $128k at Buffer. We'll pay you $129k"

Except your actual sample number is wrong -- you must not have read the original post. They're hardly even paying anyone the market rates for SF. Their highest paid engineer, a "senior" one at that, is only getting $107,9k, in SF!

So, it's more like, "oh, you made a $96k at Buffer? We'll pay you $97k"

Although on the other hand, for a gaining company, it's also a matter of providing competitive compensation for employee retention purposes, so, even if your old salary is posted somewhere, a new company isn't necessarily going to employ you at the lowest possible cost, since the likelihood of you leaving for competitive pay would be higher, and turnover is expensive.

Submission + - Building Snow Dens for the Saimaa Seals

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: A project to construct man-made dens for the endangered Saimaa seal will continue after recently receiving EU funding for the next five years. The Saimaa ringed seal is among the most endangered seals in the world, having a current total population of only about 310 in the Saimaa area of Finland. The population is descended from ringed seals that were separated from the rest of their species after the last ice age. This seal, along with the Ladoga seal and the Baikal seal, is one of the few living freshwater seals in the world and Finland is working hard to preserve its tiny population. The University of Eastern Finland and Finland’s Forest Government Organization are leading a group of volunteers to build the right size snow drifts near the water. Finding volunteers has not been a problem as dozens of volunteers participate in den counts each spring, covering the entire Saimaa area. Last winter, a full one-half of the man-made dens were housed by the seals, so the project is considered to be successful.

Submission + - France's 'Culture Tax' Could Hit YouTube and Facebook (businessweek.com)

Submitted by PolygamousRanchKid
PolygamousRanchKid writes: Should YouTube subsidize le cinéma français? France’s audiovisual regulator thinks so. In a report this week, the Superior Audiovisual Council (CSA) says that video-sharing websites should be subject to a tax that helps finance the production of French films and TV shows. Although the CSA report says that videos posted online by private individuals should not be subject to taxation, it contends that video-sharing sites increasingly have become “professional” content providers.

Separately, France is considering a tax on smartphones, tablets, and other devices as another source of revenue for cultural subsidies. The proposed tax would raise an estimated €86 million annually that would be used to finance the “cultural industries’ digital transition,” France’s Culture Ministry said at the time.

Submission + - Facebook is "dead and bured" to young users (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by JoeyRox
JoeyRox writes: The recent decline in Facebook's popularity with teenagers appears to be worsening. A Global Social Media Impact study of 16 to 18 year olds found that many considered the site "uncool" and keep their profiles alive only to keep in touch with older relatives, for whom the site remains popular. Researches say teens have switched to using WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Twitter in place of Facebook.

Submission + - Target Says Encrypted PIN Data Taken in Breach 1

Submitted by danlip
danlip writes: Target says Encrypted PIN Data Taken in Breach but doesn't think they can be unencrypted by whoever may have taken them because they never had the key in their system. The article has no details on exactly how they were encrypted, but it doesn't seem like it would be hard to brute force it given that there are only 10^4 possibilities for each PIN.

Submission + - Facebook is Dead and Buried: Survey (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by retroworks
retroworks writes: A study of how teenagers use social media has found that Facebook is “not just on the slide, it is basically dead and buried”, but that the network is morphing into a tool for keeping in touch with older family members

Submission + - Google: Tax Loopholes Good, SEO Loopholes Evil

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "I view that you should pay the taxes that are legally required," quipped Google Chairman Eric Schmidt in a blame-the-victim-defense after Google came under fire for exploiting loopholes that allowed it to pay a mere £6m in UK tax on sales of £2.6bn. "If the British system changes the tax laws then we will comply." But don't try to get away with exploiting loopholes in Google's rules with your stupid Search Engine Optimization tricks, kids, or your site may end up sleeping with the fishes like Rap Genius. Google, you see, makes it crystal clear in its Webmaster Guidelines that it won't tolerate any BS letter-of-the-rules defenses: "These quality guidelines cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative behavior, but Google may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here. It's not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn't included on this page, Google approves of it. Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit."

Submission + - Most Unaware Of Looming Popular Light Bulb Phase Out (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: Even though production of 75W and 100W incandescent lamps were phased out earlier this year, many U.S. consumers remain blissfully unaware of The Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007, an energy efficiency standard that requires an initial 30% reduction in energy use for screw-in bulbs. By 2020, the federal standard requires bulbs to use 65% less energy. According to a new survey, only 40% of Americans are aware that incandescent bulbs are being phased out. However, the federal regulations are about to impact the most popular bulbs of all — 40W and 60W lamps. As of Jan. 1, 2014, the bulbs will no longer be produced. A significant portion of those who are aware of the phase out have been hoarding the bulbs in anticipation of the ban.

Submission + - Why Don't Open Source Databases Use GPUs? (gatech.edu) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A recent paper from Georgia Tech describes a system than can run the complete TPC-H benchmark suite on an NVIDIA Titan card, at a 7x speedup over a commercial database running on a 32-core Amazon EC2 node, and a 68x speedup over a single core Xeon. A previous story described an MIT project that achieved similar speedups.

There has been a steady trickle of work on GPU-accelerated database systems for several years, but it doesn't seem like any code has made it into Open Source databases like MonetDB, MySQL, CouchDB, etc. Why not? Many queries that I write are simpler than TPC-H, so what's holding them back?

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